- Eschweiler, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
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Research Interests: Pharmacology, Neuropsychopharmacology, Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Medicine, Humans, and 15 morePlacebo, Antidepressant, Major Depressive Disorder, Female, Male, Ketamine, Middle Aged, Adult, Glutamine, Glutamic Acid, Glutamate Receptor, NMDA receptor, Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, Medical and Health Sciences, and Antidepressive agents
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Increasing evidence suggests a hypoglutamatergic state in major depressive disorder (MDD), however spatial- and metabolite specific abnormalities have not been fully characterized. Using short TE/TM STEAM MRS, we evaluated Glu, Gln,... more
Increasing evidence suggests a hypoglutamatergic state in major depressive disorder (MDD), however spatial- and metabolite specific abnormalities have not been fully characterized. Using short TE/TM STEAM MRS, we evaluated Glu, Gln, Gln/Glu and GABA metabolism in two histoarchitectonically distinct subdivisions of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The pregenual ACC, involved in emotion processing, showed altered glutamine-glutamine cycling but not altered GABAergic metabolism in MDD, whereas no differences between patients and controls were found in the anteromedial ACC. Increased Gln/Glu in MDD in pgACC but not aMCC confirms a regionally specific role of altered glutamatergic metabolism and neuronal-glial interaction
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In "Two heads are better than one," "head" stands for people and focuses the message on the intelligence of people. This is an example of figurative language through metonymy, where substituting a whole entity by one... more
In "Two heads are better than one," "head" stands for people and focuses the message on the intelligence of people. This is an example of figurative language through metonymy, where substituting a whole entity by one of its parts focuses attention on a specific aspect of the entity. Whereas metaphors, another figurative language device, are substitutions based on similarity, metonymy involves substitutions based on associations. Both are figures of speech but are also expressed in coverbal gestures during multimodal communication. The closest neuropsychological studies of metonymy in gestures has been nonlinguistic tool-use, illustrated by the classic apraxic problem of body-part-as-object (BPO, equivalent to an internal metonymy representation of the tool) vs. pantomimed action (external metonymy representation of the absent object/tool). Combining these research domains with concepts in cognitive linguistic research on gestures, we conducted an fMRI study to in...
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Abnormal anterior insula (AI) response and functional connectivity (FC) is associated with depression. In addition to clinical features, such as severity, AI FC and its metabolism further predicted therapeutic response. Abnormal FC... more
Abnormal anterior insula (AI) response and functional connectivity (FC) is associated with depression. In addition to clinical features, such as severity, AI FC and its metabolism further predicted therapeutic response. Abnormal FC between anterior cingulate and AI covaried with reduced glutamate level within cingulate cortex. Recently, deficient glial glutamate conversion was found in AI in major depression disorder (MDD). We therefore postulate a local glutamatergic mechanism in insula cortex of depressive patients, which is correlated with symptoms severity and itself influences AI's network connectivity in MDD. Twenty-five MDD patients and 25 healthy controls (HC) matched on age and sex underwent resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic resonance spectroscopy scans. To determine the role of local glutamate-glutamine complex (Glx) ratio on whole brain AI FC, we conducted regression analysis with Glx relative to creatine (Cr) ratio as factor of interest...
Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Creatine, Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Medicine, and 15 moreHumans, Major Depressive Disorder, Cerebral Cortex, Insula, Default Mode Network, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Female, Male, Clinical Sciences, Adult, Glutamine, Connectome, Glutamic Acid, Anterior cingulate cortex, and Glutamate Receptor
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To retrospectively assess perception of safety of healthy individuals working with human 7 Tesla (T) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. A total of 66 healthy individuals with a mean age of 31 ± 7 years participated in this... more
To retrospectively assess perception of safety of healthy individuals working with human 7 Tesla (T) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. A total of 66 healthy individuals with a mean age of 31 ± 7 years participated in this retrospective multicentre survey study. Nonparametric correlation analysis was conducted to evaluate the relation between self-reported perception of safety and prevalence of sensory effects while working with 7 T MRI scanners for an average 47 months. The results indicated that 98.5 % of the study participants had a neutral or positive feeling about safety aspects at 7 T MRI scanners. 45.5 % reported that they feel very safe and none of the participants stated that they feel moderately or very unsafe while working with 7 T MRI scanners. Perception of safety was not affected by the number of hours per week spent in the vicinity of the 7 T MRI scanner or the duration of experience with 7 T MRI. More than 50 % of individuals experienced vertigo and metallic ...
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ABSTRACT The neurobiology of social anxiety disorder (SAD) is not yet fully understood. Structural and functional neuroimaging studies in SAD have identified abnormalities in various brain areas, particularly the amygdala and elements of... more
ABSTRACT The neurobiology of social anxiety disorder (SAD) is not yet fully understood. Structural and functional neuroimaging studies in SAD have identified abnormalities in various brain areas, particularly the amygdala and elements of the salience network. This study is the first to examine resting-state functional brain connectivity in a drug-naive sample of SAD patients without psychiatric comorbidity and healthy controls, using seed regions of interest in bilateral amygdala, in bilateral dorsal anterior cingulate cortex for the salience network, and in bilateral posterior cingulate cortex for the default mode network. Twelve drug-naive SAD patients and pair-wise matched healthy controls, all drawn from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety sample, underwent resting-state fMRI. Group differences were assessed with voxel-wise gray matter density as nuisance regressor. All results were cluster corrected for multiple comparisons (Z>2.3, p<.05). Relative to control subjects, drug-naive SAD patients demonstrated increased negative right amygdala connectivity with the left middle temporal gyrus, left supramarginal gyrus and left lateral occipital cortex. In the salience network patients showed increased positive bilateral dorsal anterior cingulate connectivity with the left precuneus and left lateral occipital cortex. Default mode network connectivity was not different between groups. These data demonstrate that drug-naive SAD patients without comorbidity show differences in functional connectivity of the amygdala, and of areas involved in self-awareness, some of which have not been implicated in SAD before.
Research Interests: Neuroscience, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Medicine, Humans, Cerebral Cortex, and 15 moreDefault Mode Network, Female, Male, Netherlands, Amygdala, Middle Aged, Precuneus, Posterior Cingulate, Adult, Functional Neuroimaging, Neural pathways, Anterior cingulate cortex, Case Control Studies, Phobic disorders, and Medical and Health Sciences
BACKGROUND Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) show glutamatergic deficits in the ventral anterior cingulate cortex. The glutamine/glutamate (Gln/Glu) ratio was proposed to be connected to glutamatergic cycling, which is... more
BACKGROUND Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) show glutamatergic deficits in the ventral anterior cingulate cortex. The glutamine/glutamate (Gln/Glu) ratio was proposed to be connected to glutamatergic cycling, which is hypothesized to be dysregulated in MDD. As an indicator of regional metabolite status, this ratio might be a robust state marker sensitive to clinical heterogeneity. METHODS Thirty-two MDD patients (mean age 40.88 ± 13.66 years, 19 women) and control subjects (mean age 33.09 ± 8.24 years, 19 women) were compared for pregenual anterior cingulate cortex levels of Gln/Glu, Gln/total creatine (tCr), Glu/tCr, and gamma-aminobutyric acid/tCr as determined by high-field magnetic resonance spectroscopy. We tested if symptom severity (Hamilton Depression Rating Scale) and anhedonia (Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale) influence the relation of metabolites to clinical symptoms. RESULTS MDD patients showed higher Gln/Glu. This was driven by marginally higher Gln/tCr and nonsignificantly lower Glu/tCr. Groups defined by severity moderated relationship between Gln/Glu and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. Moreover, severe cases differed from both control subjects and moderate cases. Groups defined by the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale also displayed differential relationship between Gln/Glu and levels of anhedonia, predominantly driven by Gln/tCr. CONCLUSIONS We elaborate previous accounts of metabolite deficits in the anterior cingulate cortex toward increased Gln/Glu. There is a moderated relationship between severity and the ratio, which suggests consideration of different mechanisms or disease state for the respective subgroups in future studies.
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Major depressive disorder (MDD), panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder are among the most prevalent and frequently co-occurring psychiatric disorders in adults and may be characterized by a common deficiency in processing of... more
Major depressive disorder (MDD), panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder are among the most prevalent and frequently co-occurring psychiatric disorders in adults and may be characterized by a common deficiency in processing of emotional information. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging during the performance of an emotional word encoding and recognition paradigm in patients with MDD (n = 51), comorbid MDD and anxiety (n = 59), panic disorder and/or social anxiety disorder without comorbid MDD (n = 56), and control subjects (n = 49). In addition, we studied effects of illness severity, regional brain volume, and antidepressant use. Patients with MDD, prevalent anxiety disorders, or both showed a common hyporesponse in the right hippocampus during positive (>neutral) word encoding compared with control subjects. During negative encoding, increased insular activation was observed in both depressed groups (MDD and MDD + anxiety), whereas increased amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex activation during positive word encoding were observed as depressive state-dependent effects in MDD only. During recognition, anxiety patients showed increased inferior frontal gyrus activation. Overall, effects were unaffected by medication use and regional brain volume. Hippocampal blunting during positive word encoding is a generic effect in depression and anxiety disorders, which may constitute a common vulnerability factor. Increased insular and amygdalar involvement during negative word encoding may underlie heightened experience of, and an inability to disengage from, negative emotions in depressive disorders. Our results emphasize a common neurobiological deficiency in both MDD and anxiety disorders, which may mark a general insensitiveness to positive information.
Research Interests: Cognition, Adolescent, Fatigue, Anxiety, Biological Sciences, and 15 moreBiological Psychiatry, Brain, Cerebellum, Caudate Nucleus, Cerebral Cortex, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Female, Clinical Sciences, Adult, Functional Neuroimaging, ANXIETY, Anxiety Disorder, Bayes Theorem, Anterior cingulate cortex, and Case Control Studies
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Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Attention, Medicine, and 13 moreBrain Mapping, Brain, Humans, Default Mode Network, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Reaction Time, Precuneus, Adult, Neural pathways, resting state fMRI, Neurosciences, and Psychomotor Performance
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Research Interests: Psychology, Gesture, Embodied Cognition, Conceptual Metaphor, Semantic Memory, and 11 moreMetaphor, Cognitive Linguistics, Medicine, FMRI, Multimodal Communication, Comprehension, Language Culture and Communication, Language and the Brain, Utterance, Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, and Medical and Health Sciences
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BackgroundPrevious research showed that automatic emotion regulation is associated with activation of subcortical areas and subsequent feedforward processes to cortical areas. In contrast, cognitive awareness of emotions is mediated by... more
BackgroundPrevious research showed that automatic emotion regulation is associated with activation of subcortical areas and subsequent feedforward processes to cortical areas. In contrast, cognitive awareness of emotions is mediated by negative feedback from cortical to subcortical areas. Pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC) is essential in the modulation of both affect and alexithymia. We considered the interplay between these two mechanisms in the pgACC and their relationship with alexithymia.MethodIn 68 healthy participants (30 women, age = 26.15 ± 4.22) we tested associations of emotion processing and alexithymia with excitation/inhibition (E/I) balance represented as glutamate (Glu)/GABA in the pgACC measured via magnetic resonance spectroscopy in 7 T.ResultsAlexithymia was positively correlated with the Glu/GABA ratio (N= 41,p= 0.0393). Further, cognitive self-awareness showed an association with Glu/GABA (N= 52,p= 0.003), which was driven by a correlation with GABA. In...
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BACKGROUND Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) show glutamatergic deficits in the ventral anterior cingulate cortex. The glutamine/glutamate (Gln/Glu) ratio was proposed to be connected to glutamatergic cycling, which is... more
BACKGROUND Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) show glutamatergic deficits in the ventral anterior cingulate cortex. The glutamine/glutamate (Gln/Glu) ratio was proposed to be connected to glutamatergic cycling, which is hypothesized to be dysregulated in MDD. As an indicator of regional metabolite status, this ratio might be a robust state marker sensitive to clinical heterogeneity. METHODS Thirty-two MDD patients (mean age 40.88 ± 13.66 years, 19 women) and control subjects (mean age 33.09 ± 8.24 years, 19 women) were compared for pregenual anterior cingulate cortex levels of Gln/Glu, Gln/total creatine (tCr), Glu/tCr, and gamma-aminobutyric acid/tCr as determined by high-field magnetic resonance spectroscopy. We tested if symptom severity (Hamilton Depression Rating Scale) and anhedonia (Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale) influence the relation of metabolites to clinical symptoms. RESULTS MDD patients showed higher Gln/Glu. This was driven by marginally higher Gln/tCr and nonsignificantly lower Glu/tCr. Groups defined by severity moderated relationship between Gln/Glu and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. Moreover, severe cases differed from both control subjects and moderate cases. Groups defined by the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale also displayed differential relationship between Gln/Glu and levels of anhedonia, predominantly driven by Gln/tCr. CONCLUSIONS We elaborate previous accounts of metabolite deficits in the anterior cingulate cortex toward increased Gln/Glu. There is a moderated relationship between severity and the ratio, which suggests consideration of different mechanisms or disease state for the respective subgroups in future studies.
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Anxiety disorders are common and debilitating conditions with higher prevalence in women. However, factors that predispose women to anxiety phenotypes are not clarified. Here we investigated potential contribution of the single nucleotide... more
Anxiety disorders are common and debilitating conditions with higher prevalence in women. However, factors that predispose women to anxiety phenotypes are not clarified. Here we investigated potential contribution of the single nucleotide polymorphism rs2236418 in gene to changes in regional inhibition/excitation balance, anxiety-like traits and related neural activity in both sexes. 105 healthy individuals were examined with high-field (7T) multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), including resting state fMRI in combination with assessment of GABA and Glutamate (Glu) levels via MR spectroscopy (MRS). Regional GABA/Glu levels in ACC subregions were assessed as mediators of gene-personality interaction for the trait harm avoidance and moderation by sex was tested. In AA homozygotes, with putatively lower promoter activity, we observed increased intrinsic neuronal activity and higher inhibition/excitation balance in pregenual ACC (pgACC), as compared to G carriers. The pgACC drove...
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A salience network (SN) anchored in the anterior insula (AI) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) plays a key role in switching between brain networks during salience detection and attention regulation. Previous fMRI studies have... more
A salience network (SN) anchored in the anterior insula (AI) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) plays a key role in switching between brain networks during salience detection and attention regulation. Previous fMRI studies have associated expectancy behaviors and SN activation with novelty seeking (NS) and reward dependence (RD) personality traits. To address the question of how functional connectivity (FC) in the SN is modulated by internal (expectancy-related) salience assignment and different personality traits, 68 healthy participants performed a salience expectancy task using functional magnetic resonance imaging, and psychophysiological interaction analysis (PPI) was conducted to determine salience-related connectivity changes during these anticipation periods. Correlation was then evaluated between PPI and personality traits, assessed using the temperament and character inventory of 32 male participants. During high salience expectancy, SN-seed regions showed reduced...
Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Medicine, Brain Mapping, Brain, and 15 moreHumans, Default Mode Network, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Female, Male, Middle Aged, Adult, Expectancy Theory, Human Brain Mapping, Neural pathways, Exploratory Behavior, Neurosciences, Novelty Seeking, Anterior cingulate cortex, and Neuropsychological Tests
The relationship between task-positive and task-negative components of brain networks has repeatedly been shown to be characterized by dissociated fluctuations of spontaneous brain activity. We tested whether the interaction between... more
The relationship between task-positive and task-negative components of brain networks has repeatedly been shown to be characterized by dissociated fluctuations of spontaneous brain activity. We tested whether the interaction between task-positive and task-negative brain areas during resting-state predicts higher interference susceptibility, i.e. increased reaction times (RTs), during an Attention Modulation by Salience Task (AMST). 29 males underwent 3T resting-state Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanning. Subsequently, they performed the AMST, which measures RTs to early- and late-onset auditory stimuli while perceiving high- or low-salient visual distractors. We conducted seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) analyses using global signal correction. We assessed general responsiveness and salience related interference in the AMST and set this into context of the resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between a key salience network region (dACC; task-positive re...
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Attention, Medicine, and 13 moreBrain Mapping, Brain, Humans, Default Mode Network, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Reaction Time, Precuneus, Adult, Neural pathways, resting state fMRI, Neurosciences, and Psychomotor Performance
The brain's connectivity skeleton-a rich club of strongly interconnected members-was initially shown to exist in human structural networks, but recent evidence suggests a functional counterpart. This rich club typically includes key... more
The brain's connectivity skeleton-a rich club of strongly interconnected members-was initially shown to exist in human structural networks, but recent evidence suggests a functional counterpart. This rich club typically includes key regions (or hubs) from multiple canonical networks, reducing the cost of inter-network communication. The posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), a hub node embedded within the default mode network, is known to facilitate communication between brain networks and is a key member of the "rich club." Here, we assessed how metabolic signatures of neuronal integrity and cortical thickness influence the global extent of a functional rich club as measured using the functional rich club coefficient (fRCC). Rich club estimation was performed on functional connectivity of resting state brain signals acquired at 3T in 48 healthy adult subjects. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy was measured in the same session using a point resolved spectroscopy sequence. We ...
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ObjectiveTo investigate how brain metabolites, especially glutamate and glutamate to glutamine ratio of pgACC modulate the neural response within these areas and how this affects their function during emotion facial expression matching... more
ObjectiveTo investigate how brain metabolites, especially glutamate and glutamate to glutamine ratio of pgACC modulate the neural response within these areas and how this affects their function during emotion facial expression matching task.MethodsSeventy healthy volunteers underwent magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and task functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 7 Tesla scanner. PgACC MRS data were obtained using STEAM sequence and analyzed using LCModel.Angry, fearful, and happy facial expressions were presented in an affect-matching block where one of the two facial expressions presented matched the target facial expression. The control condition was form matching. Data were preprocessed and analyzed in SPM 8.ResultsGlutamate to Creatine ratio measured in pgACC positively correlated with BOLD response in the right DLPFC during negative emotional perception (FWE = 0.05) Glutamate to glutamine ratio indicating on-off mechanisms in pgACC positively correlated with BOLD...
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Research Interests: Psychology, Algorithms, Graph Theory, Narrative, Cognition, and 15 moreMagnetic Resonance Imaging, Medicine, FMRI, Brain Mapping, Functional Connectivity, Humans, Male, Motor Cortex, Adult, Neural pathways, Resting State, Disconnection, Connectome, Cognitive Affective Neuroscience, and Acoustic Stimulation
People with low Self-directedness (SD) tend to explain their behaviour as being significantly influenced by events in the external environment. One important dimension of external cues is their level of salience: highly salient external... more
People with low Self-directedness (SD) tend to explain their behaviour as being significantly influenced by events in the external environment. One important dimension of external cues is their level of salience: highly salient external stimuli are more likely to capture attention, even when such stimuli are not relevant to goals. We examined whether adults reporting low SD would exhibit greater susceptibility to distraction by highly salient external stimuli. Fifty-four (42 males) subjects completed the Attention Modulation by Salience Task (AMST) measuring reaction times to early- or late-onset auditory stimuli in the presence of high- or low-salience visual distractors. SD was assessed via self-report, and analyses tested the relationship between SD and performance on the AMST. Results showed a slowed early response to auditory cues during high salience compared to low salience. Indeed, individuals reporting low SD showed stronger salience interference, suggesting that external causality attribution is accompanied by a subconscious perceptual deficit.
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Research Interests: Computer Science, Anger, Fear, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Facial expression, and 15 moreMedicine, Emotions, Functional Connectivity, Humans, Negative Affect, Female, Neuroimage, Male, Amygdala, Middle Aged, Adult, Neural pathways, Affective Disorder, Anterior cingulate cortex, and Medical and Health Sciences
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Emotion recognition deficits emerge with the increasing age, in particular, a decline in the identification of sadness. However, little is known about the age-related changes of emotion processing in sensory, affective, and executive... more
Emotion recognition deficits emerge with the increasing age, in particular, a decline in the identification of sadness. However, little is known about the age-related changes of emotion processing in sensory, affective, and executive brain areas. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated neural correlates of auditory processing of prosody across adult lifespan. Unattended detection of emotional prosody changes was assessed in 21 young (age range: 18–35 years), 19 middle-aged (age range: 36–55 years), and 15 older (age range: 56–75 years) adults. Pseudowords uttered with neutral prosody were standards in an oddball paradigm with angry, sad, happy, and gender deviants (total 20% deviants). Changes in emotional prosody and voice gender elicited bilateral superior temporal gyri (STG) responses reflecting automatic encoding of prosody. At the right STG, responses to sad deviants decreased linearly with age, whereas happy events exhibited a nonlinear relationshi...
Research Interests: Functional Analysis, Anxiety Disorders, Auditory Perception, Depression, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and 15 moreAdolescent, FMRI, Anxiety, Emotions, Brain Mapping, Functional Connectivity, Brain, Humans, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Female, Biomed, Aged, Adult, Emotional Prosody, and ANXIETY
This paper presents an fMRI study on healthy adult understanding of metaphors in multimodal communication. We investigated metaphors expressed either only in coverbal gestures ("monomodal metaphors") or in speech with accompanying... more
This paper presents an fMRI study on healthy adult understanding of metaphors in multimodal communication. We investigated metaphors expressed either only in coverbal gestures ("monomodal metaphors") or in speech with accompanying gestures ("multimodal metaphors"). Monomodal metaphoric gestures convey metaphoric information not expressed in the accompanying speech (e.g. saying the non-metaphoric utterance, "She felt bad" while dropping down the hand with palm facing up; here, the gesture alone indicates metaphoricity), whereas coverbal gestures in multimodal metaphors indicate metaphoricity redundant to the speech (e.g. saying the metaphoric utterance, "Her spirits fell" while dropping the hand with palm facing up). In other words, in monomodal metaphors, gestures add information not spoken, whereas the gestures in multimodal metaphors can be redundant to the spoken content. Understanding and integrating the information in each modality, here spoken and visual, is important in multimodal communication, but most prior studies have only considered multimodal metaphors where the gesture is redundant to what is spoken. Our participants watched audiovisual clips of an actor speaking while gesturing. We found that abstract metaphor comprehension recruited the lateral superior/middle temporal cortices, regardless of the modality in which the conceptual metaphor is expressed. These results suggest that abstract metaphors, regardless of modality, involve resources implicated in general semantic processing and are consistent with the role of these areas in supramodal semantic processing as well as the theory of embodied cognition.
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People with low Self-directedness (SD) tend to explain their behaviour as being significantly influenced by events in the external environment. One important dimension of external cues is their level of salience: highly salient external... more
People with low Self-directedness (SD) tend to explain their behaviour as being significantly influenced by events in the external environment. One important dimension of external cues is their level of salience: highly salient external stimuli are more likely to capture attention, even when such stimuli are not relevant to goals. We examined whether adults reporting low SD would exhibit greater susceptibility to distraction by highly salient external stimuli. Fifty-four (42 males) subjects completed the Attention Modulation by Salience Task (AMST) measuring
reaction times to early- or late-onset auditory stimuli in the presence of high- or low-salience visual distractors. SD was assessed via self-report, and analyses tested the relationship between SD and performance on the AMST. Results showed a
slowed early response to auditory cues during high salience compared to low salience. Indeed, individuals reporting low SD showed stronger salience interference, suggesting that external causality attribution is accompanied by a subconscious perceptual deficit.
reaction times to early- or late-onset auditory stimuli in the presence of high- or low-salience visual distractors. SD was assessed via self-report, and analyses tested the relationship between SD and performance on the AMST. Results showed a
slowed early response to auditory cues during high salience compared to low salience. Indeed, individuals reporting low SD showed stronger salience interference, suggesting that external causality attribution is accompanied by a subconscious perceptual deficit.
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Emotion recognition deficits emerge with the increasing age, in particular, a decline in the identification of sadness. However, little is known about the age-related changes of emotion processing in sensory, affective, and executive... more
Emotion recognition deficits emerge with the increasing age, in particular, a decline in the identification of sadness. However, little is known about the age-related changes of emotion processing in sensory, affective, and executive brain areas. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated neural correlates of auditory processing of prosody across adult lifespan. Unattended detection of emotional prosody changes was assessed in 21 young (age range: 18–35 years), 19 middle-aged (age range: 36–55 years), and 15 older (age range: 56–75 years) adults. Pseudowords uttered with neutral prosody were standards in an oddball paradigm with angry, sad, happy, and gender deviants (total 20% deviants). Changes in emotional prosody and voice gender elicited bilateral superior temporal gyri (STG) responses reflecting automatic encoding of prosody. At the right STG, responses to sad deviants decreased linearly with age, whereas happy events exhibited a nonlinear relationship. In contrast to behavioral data, no age by sex interaction emerged on the neural networks. The aging decline of emotion processing of prosodic cues emerges already at an early automatic stage of information processing at the level of the auditory cortex. However, top-down modulation may lead to an additional perceptional bias, for example, towards positive stimuli, and may depend on context factors such as the listener's sex.
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Major depressive disorder is characterized by abnormal brain connectivity at rest. Currently, most studies investigating resting-state activity rely on a priori restrictions on specific networks or seed regions, which may bias... more
Major depressive disorder is characterized by abnormal brain connectivity at rest. Currently, most studies investigating resting-state activity rely on a priori restrictions on specific networks or seed regions, which may bias observations. We hence sought to elicit functional alterations in a hypothesis-free approach. We applied functional connectivity density (FCD) to identify abnormal connectivity for each voxel in the whole brain separately. Comparing resting-state fMRI in 21 MDD patients and 23 matched healthy controls, we identified atypical connections for regions exhibiting abnormal FCD and compared our results to those of an independent component analysis (ICA) on networks previously investigated in MDD. Patients showed reduced FCD in mid-cingulate cortex (MCC) and increased FCD in occipital cortex (OCC). These changes in global FCD were driven by abnormal local connectivity changes and reduced functional connectivity (FC) toward the left amygdala for MCC, and increased FC ...
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Background / Purpose: The human recognition of the world has been highly influenced and regulated by attention, which is modulated by both expectancy and stimulus salience. A salience network anchored in the anterior insula (AI) and... more
Background / Purpose: The human recognition of the world has been highly influenced and regulated by attention, which is modulated by both expectancy and stimulus salience. A salience network anchored in the anterior insula (AI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays a key role in salience detection and attention regulation process. The study aims to investigate salience and expectancy interaction on neural mechanism of attentional processing. Main conclusion: Salience network is activated by expectancy and picture display, and expectancy seems to modulate visual detection of high salient pictures. Moreover, a functional connectivity between salience network and visual area provided more evidence of the large scale network theory.