Failure of activation of striatum during the performance of executive function tasks in adult patients with bipolar disorder

AbstractBackgroundAlthough numerous studies have used functional neuroimaging to identify executive dysfunction in patients with bipolar disorder (BD), the findings are not consistent. The aim of this meta-analysis is to identify the most reliable functional anomalies in BD patients during performance of Executive Function (EF) tasks.MethodsA web-based search was performed on publication databases to identify functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of BD patients performing EF tasks and a voxel-based meta-analytic method known as anisotropic Effect Size Signed Differential Mapping (ES-SDM) was used to identify brain regions which showed anomalous activity in BD patients compared with healthy controls (HC).ResultsTwenty datasets consisting of 463 BD patients and 484 HC were included. Compared with HC, BD patients showed significant hypo-activation or failure of activation in the left striatum (p = 0.00007), supplementary motor area (BA 6, p = 0.00037), precentral gyrus (BA 6, p = 0.0014) and cerebellum (BA 37, p = 0.0019), and hyper-activation in the left gyrus rectus (BA 11, p ≈ 0) and right middle temporal gyrus (BA 22, p = 0.00031) during performance of EF tasks. Sensitivity and subgroup analyses showed that the anomaly of left striatum is consistent across studies and present in both euthymic and BD I patients.ConclusionsPatients with BD consistently showed abnormal activation in the cortico-striatal system during performance of EF tasks compared with HC. Failure of activation of the striatum may be a reliable marker for impairment in performance of especially inhibition tasks by patients with BD.

Download Full-text

Network Localization of Executive Function Deficits in Patients with Focal Thalamic Lesions

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_01628 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 32 (12) ◽

pp. 2303-2319

Author(s):

Kai Hwang ◽

Joel Bruss ◽

Daniel Tranel ◽

Aaron D. Boes

Keyword(s):

Executive Function ◽

Functional Connectivity ◽

Brain Injuries ◽

Functional Neuroimaging ◽

Executive Dysfunction ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Functional Networks ◽

Thalamic Lesion ◽

Human Thalamus ◽

Thalamic Lesions

The human thalamus has been suggested to be involved in executive function, based on animal studies and correlational evidence from functional neuroimaging in humans. Human lesion studies, examining behavioral deficits associated with focal brain injuries, can directly test the necessity of the human thalamus for executive function. The goal of our study was to determine the specific lesion location within the thalamus as well as the potential disruption of specific thalamocortical functional networks, related to executive dysfunction. We assessed executive function in 15 patients with focal thalamic lesions and 34 comparison patients with lesions that spared the thalamus. We found that patients with mediodorsal thalamic lesions exhibited more severe impairment in executive function when compared to both patients with thalamic lesions that spared the mediodorsal nucleus and to comparison patients with lesions outside the thalamus. Furthermore, we employed a lesion network mapping approach to map cortical regions that show strong functional connectivity with the lesioned thalamic subregions in the normative functional connectome. We found that thalamic lesion sites associated with more severe deficits in executive function showed stronger functional connectivity with ACC, dorsomedial PFC, and frontoparietal network, compared to thalamic lesions not associated with executive dysfunction. These are brain regions and functional networks whose dysfunction could contribute to impaired executive functioning. In aggregate, our findings provide new evidence that delineates a thalamocortical network for executive function.

Download Full-text

Establishing a Role of the Semantic Control Network in Social Cognitive Processing: A Meta-analysis of Functional Neuroimaging Studies

10.1101/2021.04.01.437961 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Richard J Binney ◽

Veronica Diveica ◽

Kami Koldewyn

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Processing ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

Functional Neuroimaging ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽

Neural Activation ◽

Control Mechanisms ◽

Meta Analyses

Most leading models of socio-cognitive processing devote little discussion to the nature and neuroanatomical correlates of cognitive control mechanisms. Recently, it has been proposed that the regulation of social behaviours could rely on brain regions specialised in the controlled retrieval of semantic information, namely the anterior inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and posterior middle temporal gyrus. Accordingly, we set out to investigate whether the neural activation commonly found in social functional neuroimaging studies extends to these semantic control regions. We conducted five coordinate-based meta-analyses to combine results of over 500 fMRI/PET experiments and identified the brain regions consistently involved in semantic control, as well as four social abilities: theory of mind, trait inference, empathy and moral reasoning. This allowed an unprecedented parallel review of the neural networks associated with each of these cognitive domains. The results confirmed that the anterior left IFG region involved in semantic control is reliably engaged in all four social domains. This suggests that social cognition could be partly regulated by the neurocognitive system underpinning semantic control.

Download Full-text

A Meta-analysis of Functional Neuroimaging Studies of Self- and Other Judgments Reveals a Spatial Gradient for Mentalizing in Medial Prefrontal Cortex

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_00233 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 24 (8) ◽

pp. 1742-1752 ◽

Cited By ~ 411

Author(s):

Bryan T. Denny ◽

Hedy Kober ◽

Tor D. Wager ◽

Kevin N. Ochsner

Keyword(s):

Functional Organization ◽

Functional Neuroimaging ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Brain Regions ◽

The Self ◽

Spatial Gradient ◽

Self And Other ◽

Neuroimaging Data ◽

Medial Pfc ◽

Meta Analyses

The distinction between processes used to perceive and understand the self and others has received considerable attention in psychology and neuroscience. Brain findings highlight a role for various regions, in particular the medial PFC (mPFC), in supporting judgments about both the self and others. We performed a meta-analysis of 107 neuroimaging studies of self- and other-related judgments using multilevel kernel density analysis [Kober, H., & Wager, T. D. Meta-analyses of neuroimaging data. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews, 1, 293–300, 2010]. We sought to determine what brain regions are reliably involved in each judgment type and, in particular, what the spatial and functional organization of mPFC is with respect to them. Relative to nonmentalizing judgments, both self- and other judgments were associated with activity in mPFC, ranging from ventral to dorsal extents, as well as common activation of the left TPJ and posterior cingulate. A direct comparison between self- and other judgments revealed that ventral mPFC as well as left ventrolateral PFC and left insula were more frequently activated by self-related judgments, whereas dorsal mPFC, in addition to bilateral TPJ and cuneus, was more frequently activated by other-related judgments. Logistic regression analyses revealed that ventral and dorsal mPFC lay at opposite ends of a functional gradient: The z coordinates reported in individual studies predicted whether the study involved self- or other-related judgments, which were associated with increasingly ventral or dorsal portions of mPFC, respectively. These results argue for a distributed rather than localizationist account of mPFC organization and support an emerging view on the functional heterogeneity of mPFC.

Download Full-text

Chemotherapy Pharmacodynamics and Neuroimaging and Neurocognitive Outcomes in Long-Term Survivors of Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Journal of Clinical Oncology ◽

10.1200/jco.2015.65.4574 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 34 (22) ◽

pp. 2644-2653 ◽

Cited By ~ 60

Author(s):

Kevin R. Krull ◽

Yin Ting Cheung ◽

Wei Liu ◽

Slim Fellah ◽

Wilburn E. Reddick ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Executive Function ◽

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia ◽

Lymphoblastic Leukemia ◽

Executive Dysfunction ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia ◽

Long Term Follow Up ◽

Long Term Survivors

Purpose To examine associations among methotrexate pharmacodynamics, neuroimaging, and neurocognitive outcomes in long-term survivors of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia treated on a contemporary chemotherapy-only protocol. Patients and Methods This longitudinal study linked pharmacokinetic assays collected during therapy to neurocognitive and brain imaging outcomes during long-term follow-up. A total of 218 (72.2%) of 302 eligible long-term survivors were recruited for outcome studies when they were more than 5 years post-diagnosis and older than 8 years of age. At long-term follow-up, survivors were an average of 13.8 years old and 7.7 years from diagnosis, and 51% were male. Neurocognitive testing, functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) during an executive function task, and structural MRI with diffusion tensor imaging were conducted. Generalized linear models were developed to identify predictors, and models were adjusted for age at diagnosis, sex, and parent education. Results Intelligence was within normal limits (mean, 98; standard deviation, 14) compared with population expectations (mean, 100; standard deviation, 15), though measures of executive function, processing speed, and memory were less than population means (all P < .02 after correction for false discovery rates). Higher plasma concentration of methotrexate was associated with a poorer executive function score (P < .02). Higher plasma methotrexate was also associated with higher functional MRI activity, with thicker cortices in dorsolateral prefrontal brain regions, and with white matter microstructure in the frontostriatal tact. Neurocognitive impairment was associated with these imaging findings as well. Associations did not change after adjustment for age or dose of leucovorin rescue. Conclusion Survivors of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia treated on contemporary chemotherapy-only protocols demonstrate executive dysfunction. A higher plasma concentration of methotrexate was associated with executive dysfunction as well as with a thicker cortex and higher activity in frontal brain regions, regions often associated with executive function.

Download Full-text

Common and distinct brain regions in both parietal and frontal cortex support symbolic and nonsymbolic number processing in humans: A functional neuroimaging meta-analysis

NeuroImage ◽

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.10.028 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 146 ◽

pp. 376-394 ◽

Cited By ~ 51

Author(s):

H. Moriah Sokolowski ◽

Wim Fias ◽

Ahmad Mousa ◽

Daniel Ansari

Keyword(s):

Frontal Cortex ◽

Functional Neuroimaging ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Number Processing

Download Full-text

Altered Neurovascular Coupling in Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Disease

Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnagi.2021.598365 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 ◽

Author(s):

Xiaoshuang Liu ◽

Runtian Cheng ◽

Li Chen ◽

Junwei Gong ◽

Tianyou Luo ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Impairment ◽

Vascular Disease ◽

Early Stage ◽

Neurovascular Coupling ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽

Precentral Gyrus ◽

Neuropsychological Assessments ◽

Left Insula ◽

Normal Controls

Patients with subcortical ischemic vascular disease (SIVD) exhibit a high risk of cognitive impairment that might be caused by neurologic deficits and vascular injuries. However, the mechanism remains unknown. In current study, 24 normal controls (NC) and 54 SIVD patients, including 26 SIVD patients with no cognitive impairment (SIVD-NCI) and 28 SIVD patients with mild cognitive impairment (SIVD-MCI) underwent the resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) and neuropsychological assessments. We combined regional homogeneity (ReHo) and cerebral blood flow (CBF) by using the global ReHo-CBF correlations coefficient and the ReHo/CBF ratio to detect the inner link between neuronal activity and vascular responses. Correlations between the ReHo/CBF ratio and neuropsychological assessments were explored in patients with SIVD. As a result, we identified significantly decreased global ReHo-CBF coupling in the SIVD-NCI group and SIVD- MCI group with respect to the NC. The SIVD-MCI group showed more serious decoupling of the global ReHo-CBF correlation. We also found a significantly abnormal ReHo/CBF ratio predominantly located in cognitive-related brain regions, including the left insula, right middle temporal gyrus, right precuneus, left precentral gyrus, and left inferior parietal lobule but not the supramarginal and angular gyri. The SIVD-MCI group showed more severe disorders of neurovascular coupling than the other two groups. Moreover, the ReHo/CBF ratio in the left precentral gyrus of the SIVD-NCI group exhibited a positive correlation with the MMSE scores. These findings suggested that patients with SIVD show abnormal neurovascular coupling at the early stage of the disease and during disease development. It might be associated with disease severity and cognitive impairment. Neurovascular decoupling in brain may be a possible neuropathological mechanism of SIVD.

Download Full-text

The neural bases of program comprehension: a coordinate-based fMRI meta-analysis

10.1101/2021.04.15.439937 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Yoshiharu Ikutani ◽

Takeshi D. Itoh ◽

Takatomi Kubo

Keyword(s):

Brain Activity ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽

Posterior Part ◽

Program Comprehension ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽

Activation Patterns ◽

Neural Bases ◽

Kernel Density Analysis

AbstractThe understanding of brain activity during program comprehension have advanced thanks to noninvasive neuroimaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, individual neuroimaging studies of program comprehension often provided inconsistent results and made it difficult to identify the neural bases. To identify the essential brain regions, this study performed a small meta-analysis on recent fMRI studies of program comprehension using multilevel kernel density analysis (MKDA). Our analysis identified a set of brain regions consistently activated in various program comprehension tasks. These regions consisted of three clusters, each of which centered at the left inferior frontal gyrus pars triangularis (IFG Tri), posterior part of middle temporal gyrus (pMTG), and right middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Additionally, subsequent analyses revealed relationships among the activation patterns in the previous studies and multiple cognitive functions. These findings suggest that program comprehension mainly recycles the language-related networks and partially employs other domain-general resources in the human brain.

Download Full-text

The Neural Basis of Motivational Influences on Cognitive Control

10.1101/113126 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Cameron Parro ◽

Matthew L Dixon ◽

Kalina Christoff

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Control ◽

Large Scale ◽

Functional Neuroimaging ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Premotor Cortex ◽

Likelihood Estimation ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Control Mechanisms ◽

Neural Basis ◽

The Brain

AbstractCognitive control mechanisms support the deliberate regulation of thought and behavior based on current goals. Recent work suggests that motivational incentives improve cognitive control, and has begun to elucidate the brain regions that may support this effect. Here, we conducted a quantitative meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies of motivated cognitive control using activation likelihood estimation (ALE) and Neurosynth in order to delineate the brain regions that are consistently activated across studies. The analysis included functional neuroimaging studies that investigated changes in brain activation during cognitive control tasks when reward incentives were present versus absent. The ALE analysis revealed consistent recruitment in regions associated with the frontoparietal control network including the inferior frontal sulcus (IFS) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS), as well as consistent recruitment in regions associated with the salience network including the anterior insula and anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC). A large-scale exploratory meta-analysis using Neurosynth replicated the ALE results, and also identified the caudate nucleus, nucleus accumbens, medial thalamus, inferior frontal junction/premotor cortex (IFJ/PMC), and hippocampus. Finally, we conducted separate ALE analyses to compare recruitment during cue and target periods, which tap into proactive engagement of rule-outcome associations, and the mobilization of appropriate viscero-motor states to execute a response, respectively. We found that largely distinct sets of brain regions are recruited during cue and target periods. Altogether, these findings suggest that flexible interactions between frontoparietal, salience, and dopaminergic midbrain-striatal networks may allow control demands to be precisely tailored based on expected value.

Download Full-text

Altered neural activities during response inhibition in adults with addiction: a voxel-wise meta-analysis

Psychological Medicine ◽

10.1017/s0033291721000362 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-13

Author(s):

Zeguo Qiu ◽

Junjing Wang

Keyword(s):

Response Inhibition ◽

Substance Dependence ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽

Activity Patterns ◽

Behavioral Addiction ◽

Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽

Precentral Gyrus ◽

Meta Analyses

Abstract Background Previous literature has extensively investigated the brain activity during response inhibition in adults with addiction. Inconsistent results including both hyper- and hypo-activities in the fronto-parietal network (FPN) and the ventral attention network (VAN) have been found in adults with addictions, compared with healthy controls (HCs). Methods Voxel-wise meta-analyses of abnormal task-evoked regional activity were conducted for adults with substance dependence (SD) and behavioral addiction during response inhibition tasks to solve previous inconsistencies. Twenty-three functional magnetic resonance imaging studies including 479 substance users, 38 individuals with behavioral addiction and 494 HCs were identified. Results Compared with HCs, all addictions showed hypo-activities in regions within FPN (inferior frontal gyrus and supramarginal gyrus) and VAN (inferior frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, temporal pole and insula), and hyper-activities in the cerebellum during response inhibition. SD subgroup showed almost the same activity patterns, with an additional hypoactivation of the precentral gyrus, compared with HCs. Stronger activation of the cerebellum was associated with longer addiction duration for adults with SD. We could not conduct meta-analytic investigations into the behavioral addiction subgroup due to the small number of datasets. Conclusion This meta-analysis revealed altered activation of FPN, VAN and the cerebellum in adults with addiction during response inhibition tasks using non-addiction-related stimuli. Although FPN and VAN showed lower activity, the cerebellum exhibited stronger activity. These results may help to understand the neural pathology of response inhibition in addiction.

Download Full-text