Anxiety Modulates Reward Circuitry: Altered Cross-Modal Neural Connectivity Revealed by fMRI During Monetary Incentive Processing

This is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed. Data may be preliminary. Anxiety Modulates Reward Circuitry: Altered Cross-Modal Neural Connectivity Revealed by fMRI During Monetary Incentive Processing Abstract Aim: Anxiety disorders are characterized by dysregulated emotional and reward processing. While dysregulated interactions between reward and emotion circuits are central to anxiety pathology, their functional neural signatures in sub-clinical populations, particularly the precise spatial activity and whether they have similar pattern remain poorly understood. Methods: This study investigates how anxiety modulates functional connectivity within the reward system and related networks using fMRI data from healthy men performing the Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task. Generalized psychophysiological interaction (gPPI) analysis identified anxiety-related connectivity alterations in several key regions, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), anterior insula (aInsula), and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). A spatial encoding methodology to quantify whole-brain representational similarity. Simple linear regression was used to analyze the association between clinical scale scores and connectivity strength. Results: Anxious subjects showed stronger ACC to left precentral gyrus connectivity, reduced left aInsula to superior lateral occipital cortex (sLOC) connectivity and increased mPFC to sLOC connectivity (p-FDR < 0.05). Cross-correlation for similar patterns revealed that spatially encoded information was also located within functional connectivity clusters. Higher anxiety (GAD) and negative syndrome (PANSS-NA) scores also associated with reduced or increased connectivity with several target regions (p-FDR < 0.05), linear regression between connectivity strength and clinical scores further proved these positive/negative correlations (p < 0.05). Conclusion: These findings highlight the disruptive influence of anxiety on reward network dynamics, particularly in regions governing visual, motor and cognitive control. By integrating functional connectivity fMRI with spatial encoding, this study advanced the identification of the neural signature for anxiety-related reward dysfunction, offering translational insights for targeted interventions. Information & Authors Information Version history Copyright This work is licensed under a Non Exclusive No Reuse License. Authors Metrics & Citations Metrics Article Usage 154views 107downloads Citations Download citation Xuezhu FENG, Haoran HOU, Kunlin SONG, et al. Anxiety Modulates Reward Circuitry: Altered Cross-Modal Neural Connectivity Revealed by fMRI During Monetary Incentive Processing. Authorea. 09 December 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.176526571.15397326/v1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.176526571.15397326/v1 If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download. For more information or tips please see 'Downloading to a citation manager' in the Help menu.