Abnormal function of the brain system supporting motivated attention in medicated patients with schizophrenia: an fMRI study

Background. Patients with schizophrenia have an impaired ability to generate activity that is appropriate to current circumstances and goals.Method. We report a study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine cerebral activity during a three-tone auditory oddball target detection task in a sample of 28 patients with schizophrenia and 28 healthy controls.Results. The patients exhibited significantly less activation in response to target stimuli relative to baseline in an extensive set of sites in association neocortex, paralimbic cortex, limbic structures and subcortical nuclei, yet demonstrated a normal level of activation in the sensorimotor cortex. Comparison of activity elicited by rare target stimuli with that elicited by equally rare novel stimuli makes it possible to distinguish cerebral activity associated with attention to behaviourally salient stimuli from activity associated with attending to other attention-capturing stimuli. This comparison revealed that the patients with schizophrenia also exhibited a deficit in activation of basal forebrain areas that mediate motivation during the processing of behaviourally salient stimuli, including the amygdala, ventral striatum, orbital frontal cortex and rostral anterior cingulate cortex.Conclusion. Patients with schizophrenia have a deficit in function of the brain system concerned with mediating motivation, in addition to a more general deficit in the cerebral response to attention-captivating stimuli.

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Forward planning driven by context-dependent conflict processing in anterior cingulate cortex

10.1101/2021.07.19.452905 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Florian Ott ◽

Stefan Kiebel ◽

Eric Legler

Keyword(s):

Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽

Cingulate Cortex ◽

Context Dependency ◽

Anterior Cingulate ◽

Response Strategy ◽

Explicit Calculation ◽

Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽

Fmri Study ◽

The Brain ◽

Allocation Decisions

Forward planning is often essential to achieve goals over extended time periods. However, forward planning is typically computationally costly for the brain and should only be employed when necessary. The explicit calculation of how necessary forward planning will be, is in itself computationally costly. We therefore assumed that the brain generates a mapping from a particular situation to a proxy of planning value to make fast decisions about whether to use forward planning, or not. Moreover, since the state space of real world decision problems can be large, we hypothesized that such a mapping will rely on mechanisms that generalize sets of situations based on shared demand for planning. We tested this hypothesis in an fMRI study using a novel complex sequential task. Our results indicate that participants abstracted from the set of task features to more generalized control contexts that govern the balancing between forward planning and a simple response strategy. Strikingly, we found that correlations of conflict with response time and with activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex were dependent on context. This context-dependency might reflect that the cognitive control system draws on category-based cognition, harnessing regularities in control demand across task space to generate control contexts that help reduce the complexity of control allocation decisions.

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Apathy

10.1093/med/9780198841807.003.0009 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 156-173

Author(s):

Richard Levy

Keyword(s):

Prefrontal Cortex ◽

Basal Ganglia ◽

Severe Form ◽

Anterior Cingulate ◽

Brain System ◽

Severe Reduction ◽

Affective Value ◽

Stereotypic Behaviour ◽

The Brain ◽

Cognitive Inertia

‘Auto-activation’ deficit, the most severe form of apathy, is a model to approach apathy. Auto-activation deficit consists of a severe reduction in self-initiated actions contrasting with the sparing of externally driven ones under strong solicitations and the presence of automatic (stereotypic) behaviour. This severe apathy can be viewed as the consequence of a quantitative reduction of goal-directed behaviour. Auto-activation deficit is due to lesions in the prefrontal cortex (PFC)–basal ganglia circuitry, the brain system that generates and controls goal-directed behaviour. In this chapter it is proposed that several different mechanisms may be responsible for apathy. Damage to three PFC–basal ganglia circuits may explain most of the cases of apathy: (i) lesions in the orbital and ventromedial PFC–basal ganglia circuit lead to apathy through difficulties in evaluating the affective value of a given behavioural context (‘amotivation’); (ii) lesions in the lateral PFC–basal ganglia circuit contribute to apathy via an inability to generate or activate strategies required to successfully complete a given programme of actions (‘cognitive inertia’); (iii) lesions to the anterior cingulate cortex–basal ganglia circuit (located in an intermediary anatomical position between the ventral and lateral circuit) may lead to apathy via an inability to transfer the affective value of a given context (‘invigoration deficit’); (iv) the summation or the synergy of damage to these three circuits within the basal ganglia may lead to a frank decrease in the amplification of signals representing goal-directed behaviour that reach the PFC (‘empty mind’); and (v) if all three circuits are structurally intact, apathy may nevertheless occur via alterations of neurotransmission systems that modulate the activity of these circuits (i.e. dopamine, serotonin, and acetylcholine).

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Increased fMRI activation of anterior cingulate to infrequent compared to frequent stimuli in an auditory oddball task

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e526132012-233 ◽

1996 ◽

Author(s):

Vinod Menon ◽

Kelvin O. Lim ◽

Judith M. Ford ◽

Adolf Pfefferbaum

Keyword(s):

Anterior Cingulate ◽

Auditory Oddball ◽

Oddball Task ◽

Auditory Oddball Task

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Self-awareness of arousal states and the anterior cingulate cortex: An fMRI study of personality

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e633872013-580 ◽

2003 ◽

Author(s):

Naomi Eisenberger ◽

Ajay Satpute ◽

Matthew Lieberman

Keyword(s):

Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽

Cingulate Cortex ◽

Anterior Cingulate ◽

Self Awareness ◽

Fmri Study

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Control of the anterior cingulate/mPFC over the amygdala: a longitudinal fMRI study in patients with panic disorder

Pharmacopsychiatry ◽

10.1055/s-2007-991795 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 40 (05) ◽

Author(s):

N Chechko ◽

M Czisch ◽

A Erhardt ◽

D Hoehn ◽

R Wehrle ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Panic Disorder ◽

Anterior Cingulate ◽

Fmri Study

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Peripheral arterial stiffness during electrocutaneous stimulation is positively correlated with pain-related brain activity and subjective pain intensity: an fMRI study

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-83833-6 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Toshio Tsuji ◽

Fumiya Arikuni ◽

Takafumi Sasaoka ◽

Shin Suyama ◽

Takashi Akiyoshi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Arterial Stiffness ◽

Pain Intensity ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Anterior Cingulate ◽

Electrocutaneous Stimulation ◽

Pain Matrix ◽

Fmri Study ◽

Subjective Pain ◽

Peripheral Arterial

AbstractBrain activity associated with pain perception has been revealed by numerous PET and fMRI studies over the past few decades. These findings helped to establish the concept of the pain matrix, which is the distributed brain networks that demonstrate pain-specific cortical activities. We previously found that peripheral arterial stiffness $${\beta }_{\text{art}}$$ β art responds to pain intensity, which is estimated from electrocardiography, continuous sphygmomanometer, and photo-plethysmography. However, it remains unclear whether and to what extent $${\beta }_{\text{art}}$$ β art aligns with pain matrix brain activity. In this fMRI study, 22 participants received different intensities of pain stimuli. We identified brain regions in which the blood oxygen level-dependent signal covaried with $${\beta }_{\text{art}}$$ β art using parametric modulation analysis. Among the identified brain regions, the lateral and medial prefrontal cortex and ventral and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex were consistent with the pain matrix. We found moderate correlations between the average activities in these regions and $${\beta }_{\text{art}}$$ β art (r = 0.47, p < 0.001). $${\beta }_{\text{art}}$$ β art was also significantly correlated with self-reported pain intensity (r = 0.44, p < 0.001) and applied pain intensity (r = 0.43, p < 0.001). Our results indicate that $${\beta }_{\text{art}}$$ β art is positively correlated with pain-related brain activity and subjective pain intensity. This study may thus represent a basis for adopting peripheral arterial stiffness as an objective pain evaluation metric.

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A probabilistic atlas of the human ventral tegmental area (VTA) based on 7 Tesla MRI data

Brain Structure and Function ◽

10.1007/s00429-021-02231-w ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 226 (4) ◽

pp. 1155-1167 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Anne C. Trutti ◽

Laura Fontanesi ◽

Martijn J. Mulder ◽

Pierre-Louis Bazin ◽

Bernhard Hommel ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Ventral Tegmental Area ◽

Region Of Interest ◽

Reward Processing ◽

7 Tesla ◽

Subcortical Structures ◽

7 Tesla Mri ◽

Subcortical Nuclei ◽

Ventral Tegmental ◽

The Brain

AbstractFunctional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) BOLD signal is commonly localized by using neuroanatomical atlases, which can also serve for region of interest analyses. Yet, the available MRI atlases have serious limitations when it comes to imaging subcortical structures: only 7% of the 455 subcortical nuclei are captured by current atlases. This highlights the general difficulty in mapping smaller nuclei deep in the brain, which can be addressed using ultra-high field 7 Tesla (T) MRI. The ventral tegmental area (VTA) is a subcortical structure that plays a pivotal role in reward processing, learning and memory. Despite the significant interest in this nucleus in cognitive neuroscience, there are currently no available, anatomically precise VTA atlases derived from 7 T MRI data that cover the full region of the VTA. Here, we first provide a protocol for multimodal VTA imaging and delineation. We then provide a data description of a probabilistic VTA atlas based on in vivo 7 T MRI data.

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