Gene-culture interaction on human behavior and the brain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shihui Han
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Functional Organization ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Receptor Gene ◽  
Individual Development ◽  
Genetic Studies ◽  
Oxytocin Receptor Gene ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
The Brain

Chapter 7 reviews empirical findings that allow consideration of biological and environmental influences on human behavior from an evolutionary perspective (e.g., gene-culture coevolution) and from a perspective of individual development (e.g., gene-culture interaction). It also reviews imaging genetic studies that link genes with brain functional organization. It introduces a cultural neuroscience paradigm for investigating genetic influences on the coupling of brain activity and culture by presenting two studies that examined how serotonin transporter functional polymorphism and oxytocin receptor gene moderate the association between interdependence and brain activities involved in self-reflection and empathy. These studies illustrate a new approach to understanding the manner with which culture interacts with gene to shape human brain activity.

scholarly journals The oxytocin receptor gene predicts brain activity during an emotion recognition task in autism

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Florina Uzefovsky ◽  
Richard A. I. Bethlehem ◽  
Simone Shamay-Tsoory ◽  
Amber Ruigrok ◽  
Rosemary Holt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Receptor Gene ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Oxytocin Receptor ◽  
Oxytocin Receptor Gene

scholarly journals Epigenetic dynamics in infancy and the impact of maternal engagement

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
pp. eaay0680 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen M. Krol ◽  
Robert G. Moulder ◽  
Travis S. Lillard ◽  
Tobias Grossmann ◽  
Jessica J. Connelly
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Receptor Gene ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Oxytocin Receptor ◽  
First Year ◽  
Oxytocin Receptor Gene ◽  
Early Environment ◽  
Nature Versus Nurture ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Regulatory Sites

The contribution of nature versus nurture to the development of human behavior has been debated for centuries. Here, we offer a piece to this complex puzzle by identifying the human endogenous oxytocin system—known for its critical role in mammalian sociality—as a system sensitive to its early environment and subject to epigenetic change. Recent animal work suggests that early parental care is associated with changes in DNA methylation of conserved regulatory sites within the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTRm). Through dyadic modeling of behavior and OXTRm status across the first year and a half of life, we translated these findings to 101 human mother-infant dyads. We show that OXTRm is dynamic in infancy and its change is predicted by maternal engagement and reflective of behavioral temperament. We provide evidence for an early window of environmental epigenetic regulation of the oxytocin system, facilitating the emergence of individual differences in human behavior.

Oxytocin receptor gene and racial ingroup bias in empathy-related brain activity

NeuroImage ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 22-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siyang Luo ◽  
Bingfeng Li ◽  
Yina Ma ◽  
Wenxia Zhang ◽  
Yi Rao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Receptor Gene ◽  
Oxytocin Receptor ◽  
Ingroup Bias ◽  
Oxytocin Receptor Gene

scholarly journals Distributed affective space represents multiple emotion categories across the brain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heini Saarimäki ◽  
Lara Farzaneh Ejtehadian ◽  
Enrico Glerean ◽  
liro P. Jääskeläinen ◽  
Patrik Vuilleumier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Organization ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Subjective Feeling ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Discrete Emotion ◽  
Subcortical Regions ◽  
The Brain

The functional organization of human emotion systems as well as their neuroanatomical basis and segregation in the brain remains unresolved. Here we used pattern classification and hierarchical clustering to reveal and characterize the organization of discrete emotion categories in the human brain. We induced 14 emotions (6 “basic”, such as fear and anger; and 8 “non-basic”, such as shame and gratitude) and a neutral state in participants using guided mental imagery while their brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Twelve out of 14 emotions could be reliably classified from the fMRI signals. All emotions engaged a multitude of brain areas, primarily in midline cortices including anterior and posterior cingulate and precuneus, in subcortical regions, and in motor regions including cerebellum and premotor cortex. Similarity of subjective emotional experiences was associated with similarity of the corresponding neural activation patterns. We conclude that the emotions included in the study have discrete neural bases characterized by specific, distributed activation patterns in widespread cortical and subcortical circuits, and highlight both overlaps and differences in the locations of these for each emotion. Locally differentiated engagement of these globally shared circuits defines the unique neural fingerprint activity pattern and the corresponding subjective feeling associated with each emotion.

scholarly journals Cholinergic neuromodulation of inhibitory interneurons facilitates functional integration in whole-brain models

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Coronel-Oliveros ◽  
Rodrigo Cofré ◽  
Patricio Orio
Keyword(s):  
Computational Models ◽  
Functional Organization ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Functional Integration ◽  
Whole Brain ◽  
Inhibitory Circuits ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Inhibitory Feedback ◽  
Noradrenergic Modulation ◽  
The Brain

AbstractSegregation and integration are two fundamental principles of brain structural and functional organization. Neuroimaging studies have shown that the brain transits between different functionally segregated and integrated states, and neuromodulatory systems have been proposed as key to facilitate these transitions. Although computational models have reproduced the effect of neuromodulation at the whole-brain level, the role of local inhibitory circuits and their cholinergic modulation has not been studied. In this article, we consider a Jansen & Rit whole-brain model in a network interconnected using a human connectome, and study the influence of the cholinergic and noradrenergic neuromodulatory systems on the segregation/integration balance. In our model, a newly introduced local inhibitory feedback enables the integration of whole-brain activity, and its modulation interacts with the other neuromodulatory influences to facilitate the transit between different functional states. Moreover, the new proposed model is able to reproduce an inverted-U relationship between noradrenergic modulation and network integration. Our work proposes a new possible mechanism behind segregation and integration in the brain.

scholarly journals Regions and Connections: Complementary Approaches to Characterize Brain Organization and Function

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Horien ◽  
Abigail S. Greene ◽  
R. Todd Constable ◽  
Dustin Scheinost
Keyword(s):  
Functional Organization ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Brain Organization ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Relative Utility ◽  
And Function ◽  
Brain Behavior ◽  
The Brain

Functional magnetic resonance imaging has proved to be a powerful tool to characterize spatiotemporal patterns of human brain activity. Analysis methods broadly fall into two camps: those summarizing properties of a region and those measuring interactions among regions. Here we pose an unappreciated question in the field: What are the strengths and limitations of each approach to study fundamental neural processes? We explore the relative utility of region- and connection-based measures in the context of three topics of interest: neurobiological relevance, brain-behavior relationships, and individual differences in brain organization. In each section, we offer illustrative examples. We hope that this discussion offers a novel and useful framework to support efforts to better understand the macroscale functional organization of the brain and how it relates to behavior.

scholarly journals Retinotopic-like maps of spatial sound in primary ‘visual’ cortex of blind human echolocators

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1912) ◽  
pp. 20191910 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liam J. Norman ◽  
Lore Thaler
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Primary Visual Cortex ◽  
Functional Organization ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Sensory Modality ◽  
Spatial Sound ◽  
Sensory Cortices ◽  
Spatial Locations ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Rule Out

The functional specializations of cortical sensory areas were traditionally viewed as being tied to specific modalities. A radically different emerging view is that the brain is organized by task rather than sensory modality, but it has not yet been shown that this applies to primary sensory cortices. Here, we report such evidence by showing that primary ‘visual’ cortex can be adapted to map spatial locations of sound in blind humans who regularly perceive space through sound echoes. Specifically, we objectively quantify the similarity between measured stimulus maps for sound eccentricity and predicted stimulus maps for visual eccentricity in primary ‘visual’ cortex (using a probabilistic atlas based on cortical anatomy) to find that stimulus maps for sound in expert echolocators are directly comparable to those for vision in sighted people. Furthermore, the degree of this similarity is positively related with echolocation ability. We also rule out explanations based on top-down modulation of brain activity—e.g. through imagery. This result is clear evidence that task-specific organization can extend even to primary sensory cortices, and in this way is pivotal in our reinterpretation of the functional organization of the human brain.

scholarly journals Intuitive Cognition-Based Method for Generating Speech Using Hand Gestures

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (16) ◽  
pp. 5291
Author(s):  
Eldad Holdengreber ◽  
Roi Yozevitch ◽  
Vitali Khavkin
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Hand Movement ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Depth Camera ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Speech Interface ◽  
Vocal Speech ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Basic Level

Muteness at its various levels is a common disability. Most of the technological solutions to the problem creates vocal speech through the transition from mute languages to vocal acoustic sounds. We present a new approach for creating speech: a technology that does not require prior knowledge of sign language. This technology is based on the most basic level of speech according to the phonetic division into vowels and consonants. The speech itself is expected to be expressed through sensing of the hand movements, as the movements are divided into three rotations: yaw, pitch, and roll. The proposed algorithm converts these rotations through programming to vowels and consonants. For the hand movement sensing, we used a depth camera and standard speakers in order to produce the sounds. The combination of the programmed depth camera and the speakers, together with the cognitive activity of the brain, is integrated into a unique speech interface. Using this interface, the user can develop speech through an intuitive cognitive process in accordance with the ongoing brain activity, similar to the natural use of the vocal cords. Based on the performance of the presented speech interface prototype, it is substantiated that the proposed device could be a solution for those suffering from speech disabilities.

FRACTAL-BASED ANALYSIS OF THE INFLUENCE OF VARIATIONS OF RHYTHMIC PATTERNS OF MUSIC ON HUMAN BRAIN RESPONSE

Fractals ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (05) ◽  
pp. 1850080 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZHALEH MOHAMMAD ALIPOUR ◽  
REZA KHOSROWABADI ◽  
HAMIDREZA NAMAZI
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Fractal Structure ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Chaotic Signal ◽  
Auditory Stimuli ◽  
Eeg Signal ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Human Eeg ◽  
The Brain

Analysis of human behavior is one of the major research topics in neuroscience. It is known that human behavior is related to his brain activity. In this way, the analysis of human brain activity is the root for analysis of his behavior. Electroencephalography (EEG) as one of the most famous methods for measuring of the brain activity generates a chaotic signal, which has fractal characteristic. This study reveals the relation between the fractal structure (complexity) of human EEG signal and the applied auditory stimuli. For this purpose, we chose a range of auditory stimuli with different rhythmic patterns. We demonstrated that the fractal structure of human EEG signal changes significantly based on different rhythmic patterns. The capability observed in this research can be applied to other kinds of stimuli in order to classify the brain response based on the types of stimuli.

scholarly journals Cholinergic neuromodulation of inhibitory interneurons facilitates functional integration in whole-brain models

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. e1008737
Author(s):  
Carlos Coronel-Oliveros ◽  
Rodrigo Cofré ◽  
Patricio Orio
Keyword(s):  
Computational Models ◽  
Functional Organization ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Functional Integration ◽  
Whole Brain ◽  
Inhibitory Circuits ◽  
Inhibitory Feedback ◽  
Biophysical Mechanism ◽  
The Brain

Segregation and integration are two fundamental principles of brain structural and functional organization. Neuroimaging studies have shown that the brain transits between different functionally segregated and integrated states, and neuromodulatory systems have been proposed as key to facilitate these transitions. Although whole-brain computational models have reproduced this neuromodulatory effect, the role of local inhibitory circuits and their cholinergic modulation has not been studied. In this article, we consider a Jansen & Rit whole-brain model in a network interconnected using a human connectome, and study the influence of the cholinergic and noradrenergic neuromodulatory systems on the segregation/integration balance. In our model, we introduce a local inhibitory feedback as a plausible biophysical mechanism that enables the integration of whole-brain activity, and that interacts with the other neuromodulatory influences to facilitate the transition between different functional segregation/integration regimes in the brain.

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