Face-selective Activation in a Congenital Prosopagnosic Subject

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uri Hasson ◽  
Galia Avidan ◽  
Leon Y. Deouell ◽  
Shlomo Bentin ◽  
Rafael Malach

Congenital prosopagnosia is a severe impairment in face identification manifested from early childhood in the absence of any evident brain lesion. In this study, we used fMRI to compare the brain activity elicited by faces in a congenital prosopagnosic subject (YT) relative to a control group of 12 subjects in an attempt to shed more light on the nature of the brain mechanisms subserving face identification. The face-related activation pattern of YT in the ventral occipito-temporal cortex was similar to that observed in the control group on several parameters: anatomical location, activation profiles, and hemispheric laterality. In addition, using a modified vase – face illusion, we found that YT's brain activity in the face-related regions manifested global grouping processes. However, subtle differences in the degree of selectivity between objects and faces were observed in the lateral occipital cortex. These data suggest that face-related activation in the ventral occipito-temporal cortex, although necessary, might not be sufficient by itself for normal face identification.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiuping Cheng ◽  
Xue Wen ◽  
Guozhen Ye ◽  
Yanchi Liu ◽  
Yilong Kong ◽  
...  

AbstractMorality judgment usually refers to the evaluation of moral behavior`s ability to affect others` interests and welfare, while moral aesthetic judgment often implies the appraisal of moral behavior's capability to provide aesthetic pleasure. Both are based on the behavioral understanding. To our knowledge, no study has directly compared the brain activity of these two types of judgments. The present study recorded and analyzed brain activity involved in the morality and moral aesthetic judgments to reveal whether these two types of judgments differ in their neural underpinnings. Results reveled that morality judgment activated the frontal, parietal and occipital cortex previously reported for motor representations of behavior. Evaluation of goodness and badness showed similar patterns of activation in these brain regions. In contrast, moral aesthetic judgment elicited specific activations in the frontal, parietal and temporal cortex proved to be involved in the behavioral intentions and emotions. Evaluation of beauty and ugliness showed similar patterns of activation in these brain regions. Our findings indicate that morality judgment and moral aesthetic judgment recruit different cortical networks that might decode others' behaviors at different levels. These results contribute to further understanding of the essence of the relationship between morality judgment and aesthetic judgment.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiuping Cheng ◽  
Xue Wen ◽  
Yanchi Liu ◽  
Lei Mo

Abstract Morality judgment usually refers to the evaluation of moral behavior`s ability to affect others` interests and welfare, while moral aesthetic judgment often implies the appraisal of moral behavior's capability to provide aesthetic pleasure. Both are based on the behavioral understanding. To our knowledge, no study has directly compared the brain activity of these two types of judgments. The present study recorded and analyzed brain activity involved in the morality and moral aesthetic judgments to reveal whether these two types of judgments differ in their neural underpinnings. Results reveled that morality judgment activated the frontal, parietal and occipital cortex previously reported for motor representations of behavior. Evaluation of goodness and badness showed similar patterns of activation in these brain regions. In contrast, moral aesthetic judgment elicited specific activations in the frontal, parietal and temporal cortex proved to be involved in the behavioral intentions and emotions. Evaluation of beauty and ugliness showed similar patterns of activation in these brain regions. Our findings indicate that morality judgment and moral aesthetic judgment recruit different cortical networks that might decode others' behaviors at different levels. These results contribute to further understanding of the essence of the relationship between morality judgment and aesthetic judgment.


2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (01) ◽  
pp. 23-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyung Rae Kim ◽  
Soo Yong Kim ◽  
Dai Jin Kim ◽  
Young Youn Kim ◽  
Sang Kyu Park ◽  
...  

We have evaluated the effect of 'Brain Respiration training on brain activity' using Karhunen-Loeve (KL) decomposition as a method for spatio-temporal analysis of the electroencepha logram (EEG). BR training is a form of breath-work to optimize the function of the brain by concentrating Qi energy in the brain. Recently, BR-training has been reported to improve emotional maturity (i.e., EQ), short-term memory and intuition (Yoo et al., 1998). EEG data were taken during BR-training from 12 young BR-trainees (average age: 9.4 years) who had trained fro 4 to 14 months, and during relaxation from age matched non-trained children. Spatio-temporal analysis showed a significant difference of EEG dynamics in right prefrontal, right inferior frontal, posterior temporal, parietal and occipital areas between BR-trainees and the control group. Amplitude of eigenvector components of BR-trainees in the areas of frontal, temporal and occipital cortex was larger than that of non-trained children (values were smaller in parietal cortex), with remarkably high amplitude alpha coherence all over the scalp. These results suggest that BR-taining possibly activates brain function through changes in the activity of the frontal association area where higher mental integration and creative activities are mediated.


Author(s):  
Veryudha Eka Prameswari ◽  
ASIROTUL MA’RIFAH ◽  
NANING PUJI SURYANTINI ◽  
INDAH KUSMINDART

Dysmenorrhea is a menstrual problem that usually occurs in young women. When dysmenorrhea, interferes with activity, non-pharmacological treatment will be an alternative to reduce dysmenorrhea. One way to deal with pain in a non-pharmacological way is by intellectual distraction, with the theory of reticular activation, which can inhibit pain stimulation when a person receives adequate or excessive sensory input, which results in the inhibition of pain impulses to the brain. Intellectual distraction techniques include filling in crosswords, playing cards, doing hobbies (in bed) such as collecting stamps, writing stories. This study aims to identify the effectiveness of intellectual disorders in reducing dysmenorrhea in young women. This study uses a design that is Quasi-Experiment with a pretest and posttest design without a control group. Population In this study were 122 female students from Mojoanyar Middle School. The sample in this study were all students of Mojoanyar Middle School who experienced dysmenorrhoea who had fulfilled the inclusion criteria of 23 respondents. The tool used to determine changes in the level of pain of respondents is the Face pain rating. The intervention provided was that respondents were asked to fill in the TTS. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS data normality test using the Wilcoxon test with SPSS 23 for Windows. And it was found that before less than half (43.5%) of Intellectual Distraction or 10 respondents experienced mild pain, whereas after being given Intellectual Distraction less than half (34.8%) or 8 respondents experienced mild and moderate pain and no more respondents experienced very severe pain. Therefore young women need to reduce the intensity of menstrual pain by providing Intellectual Distractions techniques with crosswords and accessing them can be through cellphones


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Yoonessi ◽  
Seyed Amir Hossein Batouli ◽  
Iman Ahmadnezhad ◽  
Hamid Soltanian-zadeh

Background: Addiction is currently one of the problems of human society. Drug abuse is one of the most important issues in the field of addiction. Methamphetamine (crystal) is one of the drugs that has been abused in recent decades. Methods: In this case-control study, 10 individuals aged 20 to 40 years old with at least 2 years of experience of methamphetamine consumption without any history of drug use or other stimulants from clients and drug withdrawal centers in Tehran City, and 10 healthy volunteers were selected. Age, social status, and economic status of addicts were included in the fMRI apparatus, and 90 selected pleasurable, non-pleasurable, and neutral images (IAPS) were displayed by the projector through an event-related method. The playback time of each photo was 3 s, and after this process, the person outside the device, without the time limit selected the enjoyable and unpleasant images. Results: The results showed that there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of age, alcohol use, and smoking history (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in terms of the age at first use between members of the methamphetamine-dependent group. Also, the methamphetamine-dependent group showed more brain activity in their pre-center and post-center gyrus than the normal (control) group. Conclusions: According to the results obtained in this study, in general, it can be concluded that there are some areas in the brain of addicts that are activated when watching pleasant photos, while these areas are not active in the brains of normal people.


2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 374-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Laganaro ◽  
Stéphanie Morand ◽  
Christoph M. Michel ◽  
Laurent Spinelli ◽  
Armin Schnider

Changes in brain activity characterizing impaired speech production after brain damage have usually been investigated by comparing aphasic speakers with healthy subjects because prestroke data are normally not available. However, when interpreting the results of studies of stroke patients versus healthy controls, there is an inherent difficulty in disentangling the contribution of neuropathology from other sources of between-subject variability. In the present work, we had an unusual opportunity to study an aphasic patient with severe anomia who had incidentally performed a picture naming task in an ERP study as a control subject one year before suffering a left hemisphere stroke. The fortuitous recording of this patient's brain activity before his stroke allows direct comparison of his pre- and poststroke brain activity in the same language production task. The subject did not differ from other healthy subjects before his stroke, but presented major electrophysiological differences after stroke, both in comparison to himself before stroke and to the control group. ERP changes consistently appeared after stroke in a specific time window starting about 250 msec after picture onset, characterized by a single divergent but stable topographic configuration of the scalp electric field associated with a cortical generator abnormally limited to left temporal posterior perilesional areas. The patient's pattern of anomia revealed a severe lexical–phonological impairment and his ERP responses diverged from those of healthy controls in the time window that has previously been associated with lexical–phonological processes during picture naming. Given that his prestroke ERPs were indistinguishable from those of healthy controls, it seems highly likely that the change in his poststroke ERPs is due to changes in language production processes as a consequence of stroke. The patient's neurolinguistic deficits, combined with the ERPs results, provide unique evidence for the role of left temporal cortex in lexical–phonological processing from about 250 to 450 msec during word production.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongjie Xu ◽  
Chuanjun Zhuo ◽  
Wen Qin ◽  
Jiajia Zhu ◽  
Chunshui Yu

Altered spontaneous brain activity as measured by ALFF, fALFF, and ReHo has been reported in schizophrenia, but no consensus has been reached on alternations of these indexes in the disorder. We aimed to clarify the regional alterations in ALFF, fALFF, and ReHo in schizophrenia using a meta-analysis and a large-sample validation. A meta-analysis of activation likelihood estimation was conducted based on the abnormal foci of ten studies. A large sample of 86 schizophrenia patients and 89 healthy controls was compared to verify the results of the meta-analysis. Meta-analysis demonstrated that the alternations in ALFF and ReHo had similar distribution in schizophrenia patients. The foci with decreased ALFF/fALFF and ReHo in schizophrenia were mainly located in the somatosensory cortex, posterior parietal cortex, and occipital cortex; however, foci with increased ALFF/fALFF and ReHo were mainly located in the bilateral striatum, medial temporal cortex, and medial prefrontal cortex. The large-sample study showed consistent findings with the meta-analysis. These findings may expound the pathophysiological hypothesis and guide future research.


Author(s):  
Vinod Menon

This review examines brain and cognitive processes involved in arithmetic. I take a distinctly developmental perspective because neither the cognitive nor the brain processes involved in arithmetic can be adequately understood outside the framework of how developmental processes unfold. I review four basic neurocognitive processes involved in arithmetic, highlighting (1) the role of core dorsal parietal and ventral temporal-occipital cortex systems that form basic building blocks from which number form and quantity representations are constructed in the brain; (2) procedural and working memory systems anchored in the basal ganglia and frontoparietal circuits, which create short-term representations that allow manipulation of multiple discrete quantities over several seconds; (3) episodic and semantic memory systems anchored in the medial and lateral temporal cortex that play an important role in long-term memory formation and generalization beyond individual problem attributes; and (4) prefrontal cortex control processes that guide allocation of attention resources and retrieval of facts from memory in the service of goal-directed problem solving. Next I examine arithmetic in the developing brain, first focusing on studies comparing arithmetic in children and adults, and then on studies examining development in children during critical stages of skill acquisition. I highlight neurodevelopmental models that go beyond parietal cortex regions involved in number processing, and demonstrate that brain systems and circuits in the developing child brain are clearly not the same as those seen in more mature adult brains sculpted by years of learning. The implications of these findings for a more comprehensive view of the neural basis of arithmetic in both children and adults are discussed.


Circulation ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 116 (suppl_16) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregor Springler ◽  
Andreas Janata ◽  
Wolfgang Weihs ◽  
Keywan Bayegan ◽  
Alexandra Schratter ◽  
...  

Purpose: The aim of our study was to assess the effect of hypothermia on histological damage in 19 brain regions after prolonged cardiac arrest in pigs. Methods: Pigs were anaesthetized and mechanically ventilated. After stabilisation of pulmonary artery temperature (Tpa) at 38.5±0.2 °C, ventricular fibrillation (VF) was induced and 10 min of untreated VF were followed by 8 min of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (mechanical chest compressions, two doses of vasopressin 0.4 IE/kg). At 8 min of CPR, up to 3 countershocks were delivered. Pigs that had return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) were randomized to one of 2 groups (control, hypothermia). Pigs in the hypothermia group were cooled to Tpa 33.0±1.0 °C with a surface cooling device (LRS Thermosuit™) circulating ice water over most of the skin surface. Pigs in the control group were kept at 38.5±1.0 °C throughout the experiment. After 14 hours of hypothermia, pigs were rewarmed, weaned and brought to the stable. At day 9 of the experiment, final neurologic examination was performed. After that the animals were sacrificed and perfused with 4 liters of saline, followed by 1 liter of paraformaldehyde (3%, pH 7.4). The brain was removed and 19 different regions of the brain were examined by means of lightmicroscopy using a histopathologic damage score that was used in previous studies. Following damage qualities were considered: edema, eosinophilic necrosis (oncosis), vacuolar degeneration and malacia. The total numeric histological damage score (HDS) was the sum of all area scores. Data are presented as median and interquartile range, group comparison was done with a Mann-Whitney-U test. Results: 16 (29 –35 kg) pigs were randomized. The time to reach target temperature in the hypothermia group (n = 8) was 9.0 (5.3; 11.9) min. Total HDS in the hypothermia group was 71 (61; 84), in the control group 132 (124; 174; p<0.001). Significant (p<0.05) improvements in damage were found in hippocampus, temporal, parietal, frontal and occipital cortex. Conclusions: Histological damage after prolonged cardiac arrest was improved significantly in cooled animals compared to control animals. Not all brain regions could benefit to the same extent.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003329412098810
Author(s):  
Kaori Usui ◽  
Issaku Kawashima ◽  
Nozomi Tomita ◽  
Toru Takahashi ◽  
Hiroaki Kumano

This study aimed to investigate the neurocognitive effects of the Attention Training Technique (ATT) on brain activity in healthy participants. The participants included 20 university students who were asked to practice ATT as a homework assignment for 20 days. The intracerebral source localization of their electroencephalogram during rest and the ATT task, which comprised selective attention, attention switching, and divided attention conditions, was evaluated by standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography. Brain activity during rest was subtracted from that during the ATT task, and that was compared before and after the homework assignment. The results for the divided attention condition indicated significantly decreased alpha 1 frequency band power in the left orbital frontal cortex (OFC) and alpha 2 power in the right inferior temporal cortex. Further, decreased alpha 1 power in the left OFC correlated with reduced subjective difficulty during the divided attention condition. One possibility is that the brain activity changed as the effect of ATT practice, although this study cannot confirm causality. Further studies are required which include a control group that would complete similar training without the ATT task.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document