The anatomy of human emotion

2012 ◽  
pp. 257-262
Author(s):  
R. J. Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
General Utility ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
Emotional System

Emotions, uniquely among mental states, are characterized by psychological and somatic referents. The former embody the subjectivity of all psychological states. The latter are evident in objectively measurable stereotyped behavioural patterns of facial expression, comportment, and states of autonomic arousal. These include unique patterns of response associated with discrete emotional states, as for example seen in the primary emotions of fear, anger, or disgust often thought of as emotion proper. Emotional states are also unique among psychological states in exerting global effects on virtually all aspects of cognition including attention, perception, and memory. Emotion also exerts biasing influences on high level cognition including the decision-making processes that guide extended behaviour. An informed neurobiological account of emotion needs to incorporate how these wide ranging effects are mediated. Although much of what we can infer about emotional processing in the human brain is derived from clinic-pathological correlations, the advent of high resolution, non-invasive functional neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) has greatly expanded this knowledge base. This is particularly the case for emotion, as opposed to other areas of cognition, where normative studies have provided a much richer account of the underlying neurobiology than that available on the basis of observations from pathology as in classical neuropsychology. Emotion has historically been considered to reflect the product of activity within the limbic system of the brain. The general utility of the concept of a limbic-based emotional system is limited by a lack of a consensus as to its precise anatomical extent and boundaries, coupled with knowledge that emotion-related brain activity is, to a considerable degree, configured by behavioural context. What this means is that brain regions engaged by, for example, an emotion of fear associated with seeing a snake can have both distinct and common features with an emotion of fear associated with a fearful recollection. Consequently, within this framework emotional states are not unique to any single brain region but are expressed in widespread patterns of brain activity, including activity within early sensory cortices, shaped by the emotion eliciting context. This perspective emphasizes a global propagation of emotional signals as opposed to a perspective of circumscribed limbic-mediated emotion-related activity.

scholarly journals Functional neuroimaging of psychiatric disorders: exploring hidden behaviour

2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. C. FLETCHER
Keyword(s):  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Healthy Person ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Unrealistic Expectation ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Function Mapping

From the outset, people have had high expectations of functional neuroimaging. Many will have been disappointed. After roughly a decade of widespread use, even an enthusiastic advocate must be diffident about the impact of the two most frequently used techniques – positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) – upon clinical psychiatry. Perhaps this disappointment arises from an unrealistic expectation of what these techniques are able to tell us about the workings of the normal and the disordered brain. Anyone who hoped for intricate and unambiguous region-to-function mapping was always going to be disappointed. This expectation presupposes, among other things, a thorough understanding of the cognitive functions that are to be mapped onto the brain regions. This understanding, however, while developing, is still rudimentary. Mapping disorder along comparable lines is even more complex since it demands two levels of understanding. The first is of the healthy region-to-function mapping, the second of the disordered region-to-function mapping, which immediately demands a consideration of the nature of the function in the disordered state. After all, someone with schizophrenia, when confronted with a psychological task, might tackle it in a very different way, in terms of the cognitive strategies used, from a healthy person confronted with the same task. The observation that brain activity differs across the two individuals would only be interpretable insofar as one thoroughly understood the processes that each individual invoked in response to the task demands.

scholarly journals Opioidergic Regulation of Emotional Arousal: A Combined PET–fMRI Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (9) ◽  
pp. 4006-4016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomi Karjalainen ◽  
Kerttu Seppälä ◽  
Enrico Glerean ◽  
Henry K Karlsson ◽  
Juha M Lahnakoski ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Emotional Arousal ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Μ Opioid Receptor ◽  
Positive Correlations ◽  
Arousal And Valence

Abstract Emotions can be characterized by dimensions of arousal and valence (pleasantness). While the functional brain bases of emotional arousal and valence have been actively investigated, the neuromolecular underpinnings remain poorly understood. We tested whether the opioid and dopamine systems involved in reward and motivational processes would be associated with emotional arousal and valence. We used in vivo positron emission tomography to quantify μ-opioid receptor and type 2 dopamine receptor (MOR and D2R, respectively) availability in brains of 35 healthy adult females. During subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging carried out to monitor hemodynamic activity, the subjects viewed movie scenes of varying emotional content. Arousal and valence were associated with hemodynamic activity in brain regions involved in emotional processing, including amygdala, thalamus, and superior temporal sulcus. Cerebral MOR availability correlated negatively with the hemodynamic responses to arousing scenes in amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, and hypothalamus, whereas no positive correlations were observed in any brain region. D2R availability—here reliably quantified only in striatum—was not associated with either arousal or valence. These results suggest that emotional arousal is regulated by the MOR system, and that cerebral MOR availability influences brain activity elicited by arousing stimuli.

Large Scale Neurocognitive Networks Underlying Episodic Memory

2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Nyberg ◽  
Jonas Persson ◽  
Reza Habib ◽  
Endel Tulving ◽  
Anthony R. McIntosh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Target Density ◽  
Functional Connections ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
Episodic Encoding

Large-scale networks of brain regions are believed to mediate cognitive processes, including episodic memory. Analyses of regional differences in brain activity, measured by functional neuroimaging, have begun to identify putative components of these networks. To more fully characterize neurocognitive networks, however, it is necessary to use analytical methods that quantify neural network interactions. Here, we used positron emission tomography (PET) to measure brain activity during initial encoding and subsequent recognition of sentences and pictures. For each type of material, three recognition conditions were included which varied with respect to target density (0%, 50%, 100%). Analysis of large-scale activity patterns identified a collection of foci whose activity distinguished the processing of sentences vs. pictures. A second pattern, which showed strong prefrontal cortex involvement, distinguished the type of cognitive process (encoding or retrieval). For both pictures and sentences, the manipulation of target density was associated with minor activation changes. Instead, it was found to relate to systematic changes of functional connections between material-specific regions and several other brain regions, including medial temporal, right prefrontal and parietal regions. These findings provide evidence for large-scale neural interactions between material-specific and process-specific neural substrates of episodic encoding and retrieval.

scholarly journals Functional neuroimaging studies of the effects of psychotherapy

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-81 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Behavioral Changes ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Psychological Interventions ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Major Depressive ◽  
Psychotherapeutic Interventions ◽  
Functional Brain Activity ◽  
Neuroimaging Techniques

It has been long established that psychological interventions can markedly alter patients' thinking patterns, beliefs, attitudes, emotional states, and behaviors. Little was known about the neural mechanisms mediating such alterations before the advent of functional neuroimaging techniques. Since the turn of the new millenium, several functional neuroimaging studies have been conducted to tackle this important issue. Some of these studies have explored the neural impact of various forms of psychotherapy in individuals with major depressive disorder. Other neuroimaging studies have investigated the effects of psychological interventions for anxiety disorders. I review these studies in the present article, and discuss the putative neural mechanisms of change in psychotherapy. The findings of these studies suggest that mental and behavioral changes occurring during psychotherapeutic interventions can lead to a normalization of functional brain activity at a global level.

scholarly journals Brain Connectivity Analysis Under Semantic Vigilance and Enhanced Mental States

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fares Al-Shargie ◽  
Usman Tariq ◽  
Omnia Hassanin ◽  
Hasan Mir ◽  
Fabio Babiloni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Brain Connectivity ◽  
Vigilance Task ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Processing Efficiency ◽  
Vigilance State ◽  
The Right

In this paper, we present a method to quantify the coupling between brain regions under vigilance and enhanced mental states by utilizing partial directed coherence (PDC) and graph theory analysis (GTA). The vigilance state is induced using a modified version of stroop color-word task (SCWT) while the enhancement state is based on audio stimulation with a pure tone of 250 Hz. The audio stimulation was presented to the right and left ears simultaneously for one-hour while participants perform the SCWT. The quantification of mental states was performed by means of statistical analysis of indexes based on GTA, behavioral responses of time-on-task (TOT), and Brunel Mood Scale (BRMUS). The results show that PDC is very sensitive to vigilance decrement and shows that the brain connectivity network is significantly reduced with increasing TOT, p < 0.05. Meanwhile, during the enhanced state, the connectivity network maintains high connectivity as time passes and shows significant improvements compared to vigilance state. The audio stimulation enhances the connectivity network over the frontal and parietal regions and the right hemisphere. The increase in the connectivity network correlates with individual differences in the magnitude of the vigilance enhancement assessed by response time to stimuli. Our results provide evidence for enhancement of cognitive processing efficiency with audio stimulation. The BRMUS was used to evaluate the emotional states of vigilance task before and after using the audio stimulation. BRMUS factors, such as fatigue, depression, and anger, significantly decrease in the enhancement group compared to vigilance group. On the other hand, happy and calmness factors increased with audio stimulation, p < 0.05.

scholarly journals Neural features of sustained emotional information processing in autism spectrum disorder

Autism ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 941-953 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla A Mazefsky ◽  
Amanda Collier ◽  
Josh Golt ◽  
Greg J Siegle
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Autism Spectrum Disorder Group

Emotion dysregulation is common in autism spectrum disorder; a better understanding of the underlying neural mechanisms could inform treatment development. The tendency toward repetitive cognition in autism spectrum disorder may also increase susceptibility to perseverate on distressing stimuli, which may then increase emotion dysregulation. Therefore, this study investigated the mechanisms of sustained processing of negative information in brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We used an event-related task that alternated between emotional processing of personally relevant negative words, neutral words, and a non-emotional task. A priori criteria were developed to define heightened and sustained emotional processing, and feature conjunction analysis was conducted to identify all regions satisfying these criteria. Participants included 25 adolescents with autism spectrum disorder and 23 IQ-, age-, and gender-matched typically developing controls. Regions satisfying all a priori criteria included areas in the salience network and the prefrontal dorsolateral cortex, which are areas implicated in emotion regulation outside of autism spectrum disorder. Collectively, activity in the identified regions accounted for a significant amount of variance in emotion dysregulation in the autism spectrum disorder group. Overall, these results may provide a potential neural mechanism to explain emotion dysregulation in autism spectrum disorder, which is a significant risk factor for poor mental health. Lay abstract Many individuals with autism spectrum disorder struggle with emotions that are intense and interfering, which is referred to as emotion dysregulation. Prior research has established that individuals with autism may be more likely than individuals who are not autistic to have repetitive thoughts. It is possible that persistent thoughts about negative or distressing stimuli may contribute to emotion dysregulation in autism spectrum disorder. This study aimed to identify areas of the brain with evidence of persistent processing of negative information via functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging. We used a task that alternated between emotional processing of personally relevant negative words, neutral words, and a non-emotional task. Criteria were developed to define heightened and persistent emotional processing, and analyses were conducted to identify all brain regions satisfying these criteria. Participants included 25 adolescents with autism spectrum disorder and 23 typically developing adolescents who were similar to the autism spectrum disorder group in IQ, age, and gender ratios. Brain regions identified as having greater and continued processing following negative stimuli in the autism spectrum disorder group as compared with the typically developing group included the salience network and the prefrontal dorsolateral cortex. These areas have been previously implicated in emotion dysregulation outside of autism spectrum disorder. Collectively, brain activity in the identified regions was associated with parent-reported emotion dysregulation in the autism spectrum disorder group. These results help to identify a potential process in the brain associated with emotion dysregulation in autism spectrum disorder. This information may be useful for the development of treatments to decrease emotion dysregulation in autism spectrum disorder.

Auditory verbal hallucinations: neuroimaging and treatment

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. M. Bohlken ◽  
K. Hugdahl ◽  
I. E. C. Sommer
Keyword(s):  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Behavioural Therapy ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Auditory Verbal Hallucinations ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Control Functions

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are a frequently occurring phenomenon in the general population and are considered a psychotic symptom when presented in the context of a psychiatric disorder. Neuroimaging literature has shown that AVH are subserved by a variety of alterations in brain structure and function, which primarily concentrate around brain regions associated with the processing of auditory verbal stimuli and with executive control functions. However, the direction of association between AVH and brain function remains equivocal in certain research areas and needs to be carefully reviewed and interpreted. When AVH have significant impact on daily functioning, several efficacious treatments can be attempted such as antipsychotic medication, brain stimulation and cognitive–behavioural therapy. Interestingly, the neural correlates of these treatments largely overlap with brain regions involved in AVH. This suggests that the efficacy of treatment corresponds to a normalization of AVH-related brain activity. In this selected review, we give a compact yet comprehensive overview of the structural and functional neuroimaging literature on AVH, with a special focus on the neural correlates of efficacious treatment.

scholarly journals Functional Specialization within Rostral Prefrontal Cortex (Area 10): A Meta-analysis

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 932-948 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam J. Gilbert ◽  
Stephanie Spengler ◽  
Jon S. Simons ◽  
J. Douglas Steele ◽  
Stephen M. Lawrie ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Peak Performance ◽  
Functional Variation ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
Cortex Area ◽  
Rostral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Multiple Task

One of the least well understood regions of the human brain is rostral prefrontal cortex, approximating Brodmann's area 10. Here, we investigate the possibility that there are functional subdivisions within this region by conducting a meta-analysis of 104 functional neuroimaging studies (using positron emission tomography/functional magnetic resonance imaging). Studies involving working memory and episodic memory retrieval were disproportionately associated with lateral activations, whereas studies involving mentalizing (i.e., attending to one's own emotions and mental states or those of other agents) were disproportionately associated with medial activations. Functional variation was also observed along a rostral-caudal axis, with studies involving mentalizing yielding relatively caudal activations and studies involving multiple-task coordination yielding relatively rostral activations. A classification algorithm was trained to predict the task, given the coordinates of each activation peak. Performance was well above chance levels (74% for the three most common tasks; 45% across all eight tasks investigated) and generalized to data not included in the training set. These results point to considerable functional segregation within rostral prefrontal cortex.

Functional Neuroimaging Studies in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Overview and Synthesis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian P. Brennan ◽  
Scott L. Rauch
Keyword(s):  
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Resting State Fmri ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Obsessive Compulsive ◽  
Compulsive Disorder ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
Cortical Circuit

Studies using functional neuroimaging have played a critical role in the current understanding of the neurobiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Early studies using positron emission tomography (PET) identified a core cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical circuit that is dysfunctional in OCD. Subsequent studies using behavioral paradigms in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have provided additional information about the neural substrates underlying specific psychological processes relevant to OCD. More recently, studies utilizing resting state fMRI have identified abnormal functional connectivity within intrinsic brain networks including the default mode and frontoparietal networks in OCD patients. Although these studies, as a whole, clearly substantiate the model of cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical circuit dysfunction in OCD and support the continued investigation of neuromodulatory treatments targeting these brain regions, there is also growing evidence that brain regions outside this core circuit, particularly frontoparietal regions involved in cognitive control processes, may also play a significant role in the pathophysiology of OCD.

scholarly journals Reorganization of the Social Brain in Individuals with Only One Intact Cerebral Hemisphere

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 965
Author(s):  
Dorit Kliemann ◽  
Ralph Adolphs ◽  
Lynn K. Paul ◽  
J. Michael Tyszka ◽  
Daniel Tranel
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Cerebral Hemisphere ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Brain Networks ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Cortical Activation ◽  
Social Emotional ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Left And Right

Social cognition and emotion are ubiquitous human processes that recruit a reliable set of brain networks in healthy individuals. These brain networks typically comprise midline (e.g., medial prefrontal cortex) as well as lateral regions of the brain including homotopic regions in both hemispheres (e.g., left and right temporo-parietal junction). Yet the necessary roles of these networks, and the broader roles of the left and right cerebral hemispheres in socioemotional functioning, remains debated. Here, we investigated these questions in four rare adults whose right (three cases) or left (one case) cerebral hemisphere had been surgically removed (to a large extent) to treat epilepsy. We studied four closely matched healthy comparison participants, and also compared the patient findings to data from a previously published larger healthy comparison sample (n = 33). Participants completed standardized socioemotional and cognitive assessments to investigate social cognition. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were obtained during passive viewing of a short, animated movie that distinctively recruits two social brain networks: one engaged when thinking about other agents’ internal mental states (e.g., beliefs, desires, emotions; so-called Theory of Mind or ToM network), and the second engaged when thinking about bodily states (e.g., pain, hunger; so-called PAIN network). Behavioral assessments demonstrated remarkably intact general cognitive functioning in all individuals with hemispherectomy. Social-emotional functioning was somewhat variable in the hemispherectomy participants, but strikingly, none of these individuals had consistently impaired social-emotional processing and none of the assessment scores were consistent with a psychiatric disorder. Using inter-region correlation analyses, we also found surprisingly typical ToM and PAIN networks, as well as typical differentiation of the two networks (in the intact hemisphere of patients with either right or left hemispherectomy), based on idiosyncratic reorganization of cortical activation. The findings argue that compensatory brain networks can process social and emotional information following hemispherectomy across different age levels (from 3 months to 20 years old), and suggest that social brain networks typically distributed across midline and lateral brain regions in this domain can be reorganized, to a substantial degree.

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