Postconcussive Symptoms Are Associated With Compensatory Cortical Recruitment During a Working Memory Task

Abstract BACKGROUND: The severity of sports-related concussion is often characterized by the number and severity of postconcussive symptoms (eg, headache, dizziness, difficulty concentrating). Although the level of postconcussive symptoms after injury is believed to index the severity of the neurological insult sustained, studies examining the relationship between symptom severity and neural functioning in concussed athletes remain rare. OBJECTIVE: This exploratory study examined the association between self-reported symptom severity and functional activation on a working memory task in a group of 16 recently concussed student athletes. METHODS: Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine the relationship of symptom severity to brain activation during a working memory task in 16 concussed subjects. RESULTS: Findings indicated that symptom severity was associated with regionally specific hyperactivation during a working memory task, even though symptom severity was not significantly related to task accuracy. CONCLUSION: The results add to a growing body of literature that demonstrates that functional neuroimaging may have the potential to serve as a sensitive biomarker of the severity of concussion and mild traumatic brain injury.

Download Full-text

A Novel Paradigm for Examining the Interfering Effects of Emotional Distracters During a Working Memory Task: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Study

NeuroImage ◽

10.1016/s1053-8119(09)72145-7 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 47 ◽

pp. S191

Author(s):

RV Kerestes ◽

CD Ladouceur ◽

S Meda ◽

H Blumberg ◽

PJ Nathan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽

Working Memory ◽

Magnetic Resonance ◽

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽

Memory Task ◽

Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽

Resonance Imaging ◽

Fmri Study

Download Full-text

Spontaneous Eye Blink Rate during the Working Memory Delay Period Predicts Task Performance

10.1101/2021.03.15.435433 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jefferson Ortega ◽

Chelsea Reichert Plaska ◽

Bernard A Gomes ◽

Timothy M Ellmore

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Task Performance ◽

Memory Task ◽

Delay Period ◽

Blink Rate ◽

Indirect Measure ◽

Eye Blink ◽

Non Invasive ◽

Relationship Of ◽

The Relationship

Spontaneous eye blink rate (sEBR) has been found to be a non-invasive indirect measure of striatal dopamine activity. Dopamine (DA) neurons project to the prefrontal cortex (PFC) through the mesocortical dopamine pathway and their activity is implicated in a range of cognitive functions, including attention and working memory (WM). The goal of the present study was to understand how fluctuations in sEBR during different phases of a working memory task relate to task performance. Across two experiments, with recordings of sEBR inside and outside of a magnetic resonance imaging bore, we observed sEBR to be positively correlated with WM performance during the WM delay period. Additionally we investigated the non-linear relationship between sEBR and WM performance, and modeled a proposed Inverted-U-shape relationship between DA and WM performance. We also investigated blink duration, which is proposed to be related to sustained attention, and found blink duration to be significantly shorter during the encoding and probe periods of the task. Taken together, these results provide support towards sEBR as an important correlate of working memory task performance. The relationship of sEBR to DA activity and the influence of DA on the PFC during WM maintenance is discussed.

Download Full-text

Brain Activation of Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder During a Mental Rotation Task: A Functional MRI Study

Frontiers in Psychiatry ◽

10.3389/fpsyt.2021.659121 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Sanghoon Oh ◽

Wi Hoon Jung ◽

Taekwan Kim ◽

Geumsook Shim ◽

Jun Soo Kwon

Keyword(s):

Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽

Cognitive Function ◽

Neural Activity ◽

Symptom Severity ◽

Brain Activation ◽

Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽

Resonance Imaging ◽

Obsessive Compulsive ◽

Compulsive Disorder ◽

The Relationship

Functional neuroimaging studies have implicated alterations in frontostriatal and frontoparietal circuits in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) during various tasks. To date, however, brain activation for visuospatial function in conjunction with symptoms in OCD has not been comprehensively evaluated. To elucidate the relationship between neural activity, cognitive function, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms, we investigated regional brain activation during the performance of a visuospatial task in patients with OCD using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Seventeen medication-free patients with OCD and 21 age-, sex-, and IQ-matched healthy controls participated in this study. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were obtained while the subjects performed a mental rotation (MR) task. Brain activation during the task was compared between the two groups using a two-sample t-test. Voxel-wise whole-brain multiple regression analyses were also performed to examine the relationship between obsessive-compulsive symptom severity and neural activity during the task. The two groups did not differ in MR task performance. Both groups also showed similar task-related activation patterns in frontoparietal regions with no significant differences. Activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in patients with OCD during the MR task was positively associated with their total Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) scores. This study identified the specific brain areas associated with the interaction between symptom severity and visuospatial cognitive function during an MR task in medication-free patients with OCD. These findings may serve as potential neuromodulation targets for OCD treatment.

Download Full-text