Emotional stress during the COVID-19 lockdown: how negative X/Twitter posts correlated with changes in the brain's fear network.

Abstract

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected mental health, with lockdown periods particularly exacerbating negative emotions such as fear, sadness, and uncertainty. This study examines brain metabolic changes associated with the psychological context of the first French COVID-19 lockdown in vulnerable individuals.

Methods: As a proxy measure of the psychological context, we used a composite negative-emotion score derived from an open-source X/Twitter dataset ("The First French COVID-19 Lockdown Twitter Dataset"), designed to capture public sentiment over the 55-day lockdown. This score was day-by-day correlated with whole-brain voxel-based [18F]FDG PET imaging in 95 patients with neurological conditions, using statistical parametric mapping (SPM) (p-voxel < 0.001, k > 108).

Results: A significant negative correlation was found between daily negative-emotion scores and metabolism in the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), key regions of the brain's fear circuit. Inter-regional correlation analysis (IRCA) of metabolic connectivity from the right vmPFC/ACC further revealed a right limbic-dominant network including the amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, and basal ganglia.

Discussion: These findings highlight the sensitivity of the right vmPFC/ACC to societal emotional stressors, suggesting a potential cerebral substrate for the increase in psychological and psychiatric disorders observed during the pandemic. Further research is needed to validate these results in larger populations and to explore their longitudinal implications, to better understand the neurological impact of collective stress.