Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent and disabling but seem particularly tractable to investigation with translational neuroscience methodologies. Neuroimaging has informed our understanding of the neurobiology of anxiety disorders, but research has been limited by small sample sizes and low statistical power, as well as heterogenous imaging methodology.

Research aim

The ENIGMA-Anxiety Working Group has brought together researchers from around the world in a harmonized and coordinated effort to address these challenges and generate more robust and reproducible findings. They endeavour to unravel the neurobiology of anxiety disorders and related constructs.

Approach

Multiple researchers, based in Leiden and affiliated with the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), have a prominent role within the ENIGMA-Anxiety Working Group (chairs: dr. Bas-Hoogendam, prof. van der Wee). The group initiates mega-analyses of existing neuroimaging data. ENIGMA-Anxiety has six subgroups, researching:

• generalized anxiety disorder
• panic disorder
• social anxiety disorder
• specific phobia
• inhibited temperament
• fear conditioing

At present, ENIGMA-Anxiety has 250 members from all over the world; the ENIGMA-Anxiety database contains information about more than 140 unique samples, from 95 research institutes. The worldwide ENIGMA consortium creates synergy at the intersection of global mental health and clinical neuroscience, and the ENIGMA-Anxiety Working Group extends the promise of this approach to neuroimaging research on anxiety disorders.

ENIGMA publications

• ENIGMA-anxiety working group: Rationale for and organization of large-scale neuroimaging studies of anxiety disorders
• Brain-based classification of youth with anxiety disorders: transdiagnostic examinations within the ENIGMA-Anxiety database using machine learnin
• Volume of subcortical brain regions in social anxiety disorder: mega-analytic results from 37 samples in the ENIGMA-Anxiety Working Group
• Mega-analysis methods in ENIGMA: The experience of the generalized anxiety disorder working group
• Structural Brain Correlates of Childhood Inhibited Temperament: An ENIGMA-Anxiety Mega-analysis

• Cortical and subcortical brain structure in generalized anxiety disorder: findings from 28 research sites in the ENIGMA-Anxiety Working Group

• (f)mri research
• anxiety
• neurobiology
• neuroimaging
• reproducibility