Matthew Sutherland
Florida International University, Psychology, Faculty Member
ABSTRACTAs natural disasters increase in frequency and severity1, 2, mounting evidence reveals that their human toll extends beyond death, injury, and loss. Posttraumatic stress (PTS) can be common among exposed individuals, and children... more
ABSTRACTAs natural disasters increase in frequency and severity1, 2, mounting evidence reveals that their human toll extends beyond death, injury, and loss. Posttraumatic stress (PTS) can be common among exposed individuals, and children are particularly vulnerable3, 4. Curiously, PTS can even be found among youth far removed from harm’s way, and media-based exposure may partially account for this phenomenon5–8. Unfortunately, susceptibility to media effects has been difficult to characterize because most research is initiated post-event, precluding examination of pre-disaster factors. In this study, we mitigate this issue with data from nearly 400 9- to 11-year-old children collected prior to and after Hurricane Irma. We evaluate whether preexisting neural patterns predict degree of media effects on later Irma-related PTS. We show that “dose” of Irma-related media exposure predicted Irma-related PTS–even among children dwelling thousands of kilometers away from the hurricane. Furth...
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ABSTRACTBackgroundThe cue-reactivity paradigm is a widely adopted neuroimaging probe assessing brain activity linked to attention, memory, emotion, and reward processing associated with the presentation of appetitive stimuli. Lacking, is... more
ABSTRACTBackgroundThe cue-reactivity paradigm is a widely adopted neuroimaging probe assessing brain activity linked to attention, memory, emotion, and reward processing associated with the presentation of appetitive stimuli. Lacking, is the apperception of more precise brain regions, neurocircuits, and mental operations comprising cue-reactivity’s multi-elemental nature. To resolve such complexities, we employed emergent meta-analytic techniques to enhance insight into drug and natural cue-reactivity in the brain.MethodsOperating from this perspective, we first conducted multiple coordinate-based meta-analyses to define common and distinct brain regions showing convergent activation across studies involving drug-related and natural-reward cue-reactivity paradigms. In addition, we examined the activation profiles of each convergent brain region linked to cue-reactivity as seeds in task-dependent and task-independent functional connectivity analyses. Using methods to cluster regions ...
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Understanding how students learn is crucial for helping them succeed. We examined brain function in 107 undergraduate students during a task known to be challenging for many students—physics problem solving—to characterize the underlying... more
Understanding how students learn is crucial for helping them succeed. We examined brain function in 107 undergraduate students during a task known to be challenging for many students—physics problem solving—to characterize the underlying neural mechanisms and determine how these support comprehension and proficiency. Further, we applied module analysis to response distributions, defining groups of students who answered by using similar physics conceptions, and probed for brain differences linked with different conceptual approaches. We found that integrated executive, attentional, visual motion, and default mode brain systems cooperate to achieve sequential and sustained physics-related cognition. While accuracy alone did not predict brain function, dissociable brain patterns were observed when students solved problems by using different physics conceptions, and increased success was linked to conceptual coherence. Our analyses demonstrate that episodic associations and control proc...
The habenula, an epithalamic nucleus involved in reward and aversive processing, may contribute to negative reinforcement mechanisms maintaining nicotine use. We used a performance feedback task that differentially activates the striatum... more
The habenula, an epithalamic nucleus involved in reward and aversive processing, may contribute to negative reinforcement mechanisms maintaining nicotine use. We used a performance feedback task that differentially activates the striatum and habenula and administered nicotine and varenicline (versus placebos) to overnight-abstinent smokers and nonsmokers to delineate feedback-related functional brain alterations both as a function of smoking trait (smokers versus nonsmokers) and drug administration state (drug versus placebo). Smokers showed less striatal responsivity to positive feedback, an alteration not mitigated by drug administration, but rather correlated with trait-level addiction severity. Conversely, nicotine administration reduced habenula activity following both positive and negative feedback among abstinent smokers, but not nonsmokers, and increased habenula activity among smokers correlated with elevated state-level tobacco cravings. These outcomes highlight a dissocia...
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Cognitive deficits during nicotine withdrawal may contribute to smoking relapse. However, interacting effects of chronic nicotine dependence and acute nicotine withdrawal on cognitive control are poorly understood. Here, we examine the... more
Cognitive deficits during nicotine withdrawal may contribute to smoking relapse. However, interacting effects of chronic nicotine dependence and acute nicotine withdrawal on cognitive control are poorly understood. Here, we examine the effects of nicotine dependence (trait; smokers versus non-smoking controls), and acute nicotinic stimulation (state; administration of nicotine and varenicline, two FDA-approved smoking cessation aids, during abstinence), on two well-established tests of cognitive control, the Go-Nogo task and the Flanker task, during fMRI scanning. We compared performance and neural responses between these four pharmacological manipulations in a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover design. As expected, performance in both tasks was modulated by nicotine dependence, abstinence and pharmacological manipulation. However, effects were driven entirely by conditions that required less cognitive control. When demand for cognitive control was high, abstinent smokers sh...
Understanding how students learn is crucial for helping them succeed. We examined brain function in 107 undergraduate students during a task known to be challenging for many students - physics problem solving - to characterize underlying... more
Understanding how students learn is crucial for helping them succeed. We examined brain function in 107 undergraduate students during a task known to be challenging for many students - physics problem solving - to characterize underlying neural mechanisms and determine how these support comprehension and proficiency. Further, we applied module analysis to response distributions, defining groups of students who answered using similar physics conceptions, and probed for brain differences linked with different conceptual approaches. We found integrated executive, attentional, visual motion, and default mode brain systems cooperate to achieve sequential and sustained physics-related cognition. While accuracy alone did not predict brain function, dissociable brain patterns were observed when students solved problems using different physics conceptions, and increased success was linked to conceptual coherence. Our analyses demonstrate that episodic associations and control processes opera...
Problem solving is a complex skill engaging multi-stepped reasoning processes to find unknown solutions. The breadth of real-world contexts requiring problem solving is mirrored by a similarly broad, yet unfocused neuroimaging literature,... more
Problem solving is a complex skill engaging multi-stepped reasoning processes to find unknown solutions. The breadth of real-world contexts requiring problem solving is mirrored by a similarly broad, yet unfocused neuroimaging literature, and the domain-general or context-specific brain networks associated with problem solving are not well understood. To more fully characterize those brain networks, we performed activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis on 280 neuroimaging problem solving experiments reporting 3166 foci from 1919 individuals across 131 papers. The general map of problem solving revealed broad fronto-cingulo-parietal convergence, regions similarly identified when considering separate mathematical, verbal, and visuospatial problem solving domain-specific analyses. Conjunction analysis revealed a common network supporting problem solving across diverse contexts, and difference maps distinguished functionally-selective sub-networks specific to task type. Our result...
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Meta-analytic techniques for mining the neuroimaging literature continue to exert an impact on our conceptualization of functional brain networks contributing to human emotion and cognition. Traditional theories regarding the... more
Meta-analytic techniques for mining the neuroimaging literature continue to exert an impact on our conceptualization of functional brain networks contributing to human emotion and cognition. Traditional theories regarding the neurobiological substrates contributing to affective processing are shifting from regional- towards more network-based heuristic frameworks. To elucidate differential brain network involvement linked to distinct aspects of emotion processing, we applied an emergent meta-analytic clustering approach to the extensive body of affective neuroimaging results archived in the BrainMap database. Specifically, we performed hierarchical clustering on the modeled activation maps from 1,747 experiments in the affective processing domain, resulting in five meta-analytic groupings of experiments demonstrating whole-brain recruitment. Behavioral inference analyses conducted for each of these groupings suggested dissociable networks supporting: (1) visual perception within pri...
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The ABCD study is recruiting and following the brain development and health of over 10,000 9-10 year olds through adolescence. The imaging component of the study was developed by the ABCD Data Analysis and Informatics Center (DAIC) and... more
The ABCD study is recruiting and following the brain development and health of over 10,000 9-10 year olds through adolescence. The imaging component of the study was developed by the ABCD Data Analysis and Informatics Center (DAIC) and the ABCD Imaging Acquisition Workgroup. Imaging methods and assessments were selected, optimized and harmonized across all 21 sites to measure brain structure and function relevant to adolescent development and addiction. This article provides an overview of the imaging procedures of the ABCD study, the basis for their selection and preliminary quality assurance and results that provide evidence for the feasibility and age-appropriateness of procedures and generalizability of findings to the existent literature.
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Cognitive processes do not occur by pure insertion and instead depend on the full complement of co-occurring mental processes, including perceptual and motor functions. As such, there is limited ecological validity to human neuroimaging... more
Cognitive processes do not occur by pure insertion and instead depend on the full complement of co-occurring mental processes, including perceptual and motor functions. As such, there is limited ecological validity to human neuroimaging experiments that use highly controlled tasks to isolate mental processes of interest. However, a growing literature shows how dynamic, interactive tasks have allowed researchers to study cognition as it more naturally occurs. Collective analysis across such neuroimaging experiments may answer broader questions regarding how naturalistic cognition is biologically distributed throughout the brain. We applied an unbiased, data-driven, meta-analytic approach that uses k-means clustering to identify core brain networks engaged across the naturalistic functional neuroimaging literature. Functional decoding allowed us to, then, delineate how information is distributed between these networks throughout the execution of dynamical cognition in realistic settin...
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Computational cognitive neuroimaging approaches can be leveraged to characterize the hierarchical organization of distributed, functionally specialized networks in the human brain. To this end, we performed large-scale mining across the... more
Computational cognitive neuroimaging approaches can be leveraged to characterize the hierarchical organization of distributed, functionally specialized networks in the human brain. To this end, we performed large-scale mining across the BrainMap database of coordinate-based activation locations from over 10,000 task-based experiments. Meta-analytic coactivation networks were identified by jointly applying independent component analysis (ICA) and meta-analytic connectivity modeling (MACM) across a wide range of model orders (i.e., d=20-300). We then iteratively computed pairwise correlation coefficients for consecutive model orders to compare spatial network topologies, ultimately yielding fractionation profiles delineating how "parent" functional brain systems decompose into constituent "child" sub-networks. Fractionation profiles differed dramatically across canonical networks: some exhibited complex and extensive fractionation into a large number of sub-network...
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Whereas acute nicotine administration alters brain function which may, in turn, contribute to enhanced attention and performance, chronic cigarette smoking is linked with regional brain atrophy and poorer cognition. However, results from... more
Whereas acute nicotine administration alters brain function which may, in turn, contribute to enhanced attention and performance, chronic cigarette smoking is linked with regional brain atrophy and poorer cognition. However, results from structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies comparing smokers versus nonsmokers have been inconsistent and measures of gray matter possess limited ability to inform functional relations or behavioral implications. The purpose of this study was to address these interpretational challenges through meta-analytic techniques in the service of clarifying the impact of chronic smoking on gray matter integrity and more fully contextualizing such structural alterations. We first conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis of structural MRI studies to identify consistent structural alterations associated with chronic smoking. Subsequently, we conducted two additional meta-analytic assessments to enhance insight into potential functional and behavioral ...
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Research Interests: Algorithms, Brain Imaging, Data Analysis, Magnetoencephalography, Back Propagation, and 15 moreIndependent Component Analysis, Electroencephalography, Brain Computer Interface, Blind Source Separation, Cognitive Neuroscience, Evoked Potentials, Humans, EEG Signal Processing, EEG Biofeedback, Female, Brain Plasticity, Male, Adult, Median Nerve, and Functional Laterality
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Research Interests: Algorithms, Magnetoencephalography, Independent Component Analysis, Electroencephalography, Blind Source Separation, and 13 moreBrain Mapping, Humans, Source Localization, Female, Neuroimage, Male, Artifacts, Human Brain, Adult, High Density Concrete, Signal to Noise Ratio, Median Nerve, and Time Course
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Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) agonists augment cognition among cigarette smokers and nonsmokers, yet the systems-level neurobiological mechanisms underlying such improvements are not fully understood. Aggregating neuroimaging... more
Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) agonists augment cognition among cigarette smokers and nonsmokers, yet the systems-level neurobiological mechanisms underlying such improvements are not fully understood. Aggregating neuroimaging results regarding nAChR agonists provides a means to identify common functional brain changes that may be related to procognitive drug effects. We conducted a meta-analysis of pharmacologic neuroimaging studies within the activation likelihood estimation framework. We identified published studies contrasting a nAChR drug condition versus a baseline and coded each contrast by activity change direction (decrease or increase), participant characteristics (smokers or nonsmokers), and drug manipulation employed (pharmacologic administration or cigarette smoking). When considering all studies, nAChR agonist administration was associated with activity decreases in multiple regions, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), posterior cingulate co...