scholarly journals Emotional imagination of negative situations: Functional neuroimaging in anorexia and bulimia

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. e0231684
Author(s):  
Federico D’Agata ◽  
Paola Caroppo ◽  
Angela Spalatro ◽  
Luca Lavagnino ◽  
Giovanni Abbate Daga ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Region Of Interest ◽  
Resistance Mechanisms ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
First Episode ◽  
Therapeutic Resistance ◽  
Significant Group

Aim The present study aims to extend the knowledge of the neural correlates of emotion processing in first episode subjects affected by anorexia nervosa (AN) or bulimia nervosa (BN). We applied an emotional distress paradigm targeting negative emotions thought to be relevant for interpersonal difficulties and therapeutic resistance mechanisms. Methods The current study applied to 44 female participants with newly diagnosed AN or BN and 20 matched controls a neuroimaging paradigm eliciting affective responses. The measurements also included an extensive assessment comprising clinical scales, neuropsychological tests, measures of emotion processing and empathy. Results AN and BN did not differ from controls in terms of emotional response, emotion matching, self-reported empathy and cognitive performance. However, eating disorder and psychopathological clinical scores, as well as alexithymia levels, were increased in AN and BN. On a neural level, no significant group differences emerged, even when focusing on a region of interest selected a priori: the amygdala. Some interesting findings put in relation the hippocampal activity with the level of Body Dissatisfaction of the participants, the relative importance of the key nodes for the common network in the decoding of different emotions (BN = right amygdala, AN = anterior cingulate area), and the qualitative profile of the deactivations. Conclusions Our data do not support the hypothesis that participants with AN or BN display reduced emotional responsiveness. However, peculiar characteristics in emotion processing could be associated to the three different groups. Therefore, relational difficulties in eating disorders, as well as therapeutic resistance, could be not secondary to a simple difficulty in feeling and identifying basic negative emotions in AN and BN participants.

scholarly journals Emotional responsiveness task in emotional distress: correlated of functional neuroimaging in anorexia and bulimia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico D’Agata ◽  
Paola Caroppo ◽  
Angela Spalatro ◽  
Luca Lavagnino ◽  
Giovanni Abbate Daga ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Distress ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Resistance Mechanisms ◽  
First Episode ◽  
Therapeutic Resistance ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Emotional Responsiveness

AbstractAimThe present study aims to extend the knowledge of the neural correlates of emotion processing in first episode subjects affected by anorexia nervosa (AN) or bulimia nervosa (BN). We applied an emotional distress paradigm targeting negative emotions thought to be relevant for interpersonal difficulties and therapeutic resistance mechanisms.MethodsThe current study applied a neuroimaging paradigm eliciting affective responses to 44 female participants with newly diagnosed AN or BN and 20 matched controls. The measurements also included an extensive assessment comprised of clinical scales, neuropsychological tests, measures of emotion processing and empathy.ResultsAN and BN did not differ from controls in terms of emotional response, emotion matching, self-reported empathy and cognitive performance. However, scores of eating disorder and psychopathological clinical scores, as well alexithymia levels, were increased in AN and BN. On a neural level, no significant group differences emerged, even when focusing on a region of interest selected a priori: the amygdala.ConclusionsOur data are against the hypothesis that participants with AN or BN display a reduced emotional responsiveness. This supports the hypothesis that relational difficulties, as well as therapeutic resistance, are not secondary to simple difficulty in feeling and identifying basic negative emotions in AN and BN participants.

scholarly journals Parents still matter! Parental warmth predicts adolescent brain function and anxiety and depressive symptoms 2 years later

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalind D. Butterfield ◽  
Jennifer S. Silk ◽  
Kyung Hwa Lee ◽  
Greg S. Siegle ◽  
Ronald E. Dahl ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Psychological Disorder ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Parental Warmth ◽  
Maternal Warmth ◽  
Affective Stimuli ◽  
The Brain

Abstract Anxiety is the most prevalent psychological disorder among youth, and even following treatment, it confers risk for anxiety relapse and the development of depression. Anxiety disorders are associated with heightened response to negative affective stimuli in the brain networks that underlie emotion processing. One factor that can attenuate the symptoms of anxiety and depression in high-risk youth is parental warmth. The current study investigates whether parental warmth helps to protect against future anxiety and depressive symptoms in adolescents with histories of anxiety and whether neural functioning in the brain regions that are implicated in emotion processing and regulation can account for this link. Following treatment for anxiety disorder (Time 1), 30 adolescents (M age = 11.58, SD = 1.26) reported on maternal warmth, and 2 years later (Time 2) they participated in a functional neuroimaging task where they listened to prerecorded criticism and neutral statements from a parent. Higher maternal warmth predicted lower neural activation during criticism, compared with the response during neutral statements, in the left amygdala, bilateral insula, subgenual anterior cingulate (sgACC), right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex. Maternal warmth was associated with adolescents’ anxiety and depressive symptoms due to the indirect effects of sgACC activation, suggesting that parenting may attenuate risk for internalizing through its effects on brain function.

scholarly journals Neurostructural Correlates of Cannabis Use in Adolescent Bipolar Disorder

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alysha A Sultan ◽  
Kody G Kennedy ◽  
Lisa Fiksenbaum ◽  
Bradley J MacIntosh ◽  
Benjamin I Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
Bipolar Disorder ◽  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Brain Structure ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Region Of Interest ◽  
Cannabis Use ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Intracranial Volume ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Healthy Control

Abstract Objective Little is known regarding the association of cannabis use with brain structure in adolescents with bipolar disorder (BD). This subject is timely, given expanded availability of cannabis contemporaneously with increased social acceptance and diminished societal constraints to access. Therefore, we set out to examine this topic in a sample of adolescents with BD and healthy control (HC) adolescents. Methods Participants included 144 adolescents (47 BD with cannabis use [BDCB+; including 13 with cannabis use disorder], 34 BD without cannabis use [BDCB-], 63 HC without cannabis use) ages 13-20 years. FreeSurfer-processed 3T MRI with T1-weighted contrast, yielded measures of cortical thickness, surface area (SA), and volume. Region of interest (ROI; amygdala, hippocampus, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex [vlPFC], ventromedial prefrontal cortex [vmPFC], and anterior cingulate cortex [ACC]), analyses and exploratory vertex-wise analysis were undertaken. A general linear model tested for between-group differences, accounting for age, sex, and intracranial volume. Results Vertex-wise analysis revealed significant group effects in frontal and parietal regions. In post-hoc analyses, BDCB+ exhibited larger volume and SA in parietal regions, and smaller thickness in frontal regions, relative to HC and BDCB-. BDCB- had smaller volume, SA and thickness in parietal and frontal regions relative to HC. There were no significant ROI findings after correcting for multiple comparisons. Conclusion This study found that cannabis use is associated with differences in regional brain structure among adolescents with BD. Future prospective studies are necessary to determine the direction of the observed association and to assess for dose effects.

scholarly journals Altered Task-Evoked Corticolimbic Responsivity in Generalized Anxiety Disorder

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 3630
Author(s):  
Nayoung Kim ◽  
M. Justin Kim
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Generalized Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Blood Oxygen Level Dependent ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Generalized Anxiety ◽  
Blood Oxygen Level ◽  
Size Limits

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is marked by uncontrollable, persistent worry and exaggerated response to uncertainty. Here, we review and summarize the findings from the GAD literature that employs functional neuroimaging methods. In particular, the present review focuses on task-based blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. We find that select brain regions often regarded as a part of a corticolimbic circuit (e.g., amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex) are consistently targeted for a priori hypothesis-driven analyses, which, in turn, shows varying degrees of abnormal BOLD responsivity in GAD. Data-driven whole-brain analyses show the insula and the hippocampus, among other regions, to be affected by GAD, depending on the task used in each individual study. Overall, while the heterogeneity of the tasks and sample size limits the generalizability of the findings thus far, some promising convergence can be observed in the form of the altered BOLD responsivity of the corticolimbic circuitry in GAD.

scholarly journals Sex-specific neural responses to acute psychosocial stress in depression

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daifeng Dong ◽  
Maria Ironside ◽  
Emily L. Belleau ◽  
Xiaoqiang Sun ◽  
Chang Cheng ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Exposure Time ◽  
Stress Responses ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Stress Sensitivity ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
First Episode ◽  
Stress Exposure ◽  
Frontoparietal Network ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal

AbstractMajor Depressive Disorder (MDD) is characterized by increased stress sensitivity. Emerging findings in healthy adults suggest that stress responses within limbic/striatal-prefrontal regions are moderated by sex and unfold over time. Thus, we hypothesized that stress response abnormalities in MDD might be affected by sex and stress exposure time. The Montreal Imaging Stress Task was administered to 124 unmedicated patients with first-episode MDD (76 females) and 243 healthy controls (HC; 137 females) during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Based on prior studies, amygdala, hippocampus, medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), nucleus accumbens (NAc) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) were selected as a priori regions of interest. In a complementary approach, we probed the effects of stress on the frontoparietal network (FPN) and a network including the amygdala, NAc and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Across groups, males exhibited higher dlPFC activity and right FPN amplitude than females. Relative to female HCs, the female MDD group had less deactivation in limbic/striatal regions (amygdala, NAc, hippocampus, Amygdala-NAc-ACC network). Furthermore, unlike female HCs, the female MDD group failed to show a significant increase of deactivation over stress exposure time in the amygdala, mOFC and NAc. Our findings confirm the importance of considering sex differences when investigating neural stress responses. Case-control differences in neural stress responses observed in females (but not males) provide insights into sex differences in the etiology and pathophysiology of depression. The failure to deactivate limbic/NAc regions in depressed females point to dysfunction of adaptive stress responses over stress exposure time.

scholarly journals Emotion processing in joint hypermobility: A potential link to the neural bases of anxiety and related somatic symptoms in collagen anomalies

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 454-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Mallorquí-Bagué ◽  
A. Bulbena ◽  
N. Roé-Vellvé ◽  
E. Hoekzema ◽  
S. Carmona ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Trait Anxiety ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Somatic Symptoms ◽  
Joint Hypermobility ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Affective Processing ◽  
Joint Hypermobility Syndrome ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Neural Underpinnings

AbstractBackground:Joint hypermobility syndrome (JHS) has repeatedly been associated with anxiety and anxiety disorders, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome and temporomandibular joint disorder. However, the neural underpinnings of these associations still remain unclear. This study explored brain responses to facial visual stimuli with emotional cues using fMRI techniques in general population with different ranges of hypermobility.Methods:Fifty-one non-clinical volunteers (33 women) completed state and trait anxiety questionnaire measures, were assessed with a clinical examination for hypermobility (Beighton system) and performed an emotional face processing paradigm during functional neuroimaging.Results:Trait anxiety scores did significantly correlate with both state anxiety and hypermobility scores. BOLD signals of the hippocampus did positively correlate with hypermobility scores for the crying faces versus neutral faces contrast in ROI analyses. No results were found for any of the other studied ROIs. Additionally, hypermobility scores were also associated with other key affective processing areas (i.e. the middle and anterior cingulate gyrus, fusiform gyrus, parahippocampal region, orbitofrontal cortex and cerebellum) in the whole brain analysis.Conclusions:Hypermobility scores are associated with trait anxiety and higher brain responses to emotional faces in emotion processing brain areas (including hippocampus) described to be linked to anxiety and somatic symptoms. These findings increase our understanding of emotion processing in people bearing this heritable variant of collagen and the mechanisms through which vulnerability to anxiety and somatic symptoms arises in this population.

scholarly journals Clinical and neural responses to cognitive behavioral therapy for functional tremor

Neurology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (19) ◽  
pp. e1787-e1798 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto J. Espay ◽  
Scott Ries ◽  
Thomas Maloney ◽  
Jennifer Vannest ◽  
Erin Neefus ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy ◽  
Rating Scale ◽  
Behavioral Therapy ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Region Of Interest ◽  
Emotional Dysregulation ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Cognitive Behavioral ◽  
Basic Emotion ◽  
Psychogenic Movement Disorders

ObjectivesTo evaluate changes in tremor severity and motor/emotion-processing circuits in response to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) delivered as treatment for functional tremor (FT), the most common functional movement disorder in adults.MethodsFifteen patients with FT underwent fMRI with motor, basic-emotion, and intense-emotion tasks before and after 12 weeks of CBT. Baseline fMRI was compared to those of 25 healthy controls (HCs). The main clinical endpoint was the tremor score (sum of severity, duration, and incapacitation subscores) adapted from the Rating Scale for Psychogenic Movement Disorders (PMDRS) assessed by a blinded clinician. CBT responders were defined as those with PMDRS score reduction >75%. Anatomic and functional brain images were obtained with a 4T MRI system. Generalized linear model and region-of-interest analyses were used to evaluate before-versus-after treatment-related changes in brain activation.ResultsCBT markedly reduced tremor severity (p < 0.01) with remission/near remission achieved in 73.3% of the cohort. Compared to HCs, in those with FT, a functionally defined fMRI region of interest in the anterior cingulate/paracingulate cortex showed increased activation at baseline and decreased activation after CBT during basic-emotion processing (p = 0.012 for CBT responders). Among CBT responders, the change in anterior cingulate/paracingulate was more significant in those with more severe baseline depression (r = 0.75, p < 0.01).ConclusionsTremor severity improved significantly after CBT. The improvement was associated with changes in the anterior cingulate/paracingulate activity, which may represent a marker of emotional dysregulation in FT and a predictor of treatment response.Classification of evidenceThis study provides Class III evidence that CBT significantly improves tremor severity in patients with functional tremor.

Two Distinct Neuronal Networks Mediate the Awareness of Environment and of Self

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 570-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Vanhaudenhuyse ◽  
Athena Demertzi ◽  
Manuel Schabus ◽  
Quentin Noirhomme ◽  
Serge Bredart ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Healthy Volunteers ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
A Priori ◽  
External Input ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Switching Frequency ◽  
Brain Areas ◽  
Neuroimaging Data ◽  
Parietal Cortices

Evidence from functional neuroimaging studies on resting state suggests that there are two distinct anticorrelated cortical systems that mediate conscious awareness: an “extrinsic” system that encompasses lateral fronto-parietal areas and has been linked with processes of external input (external awareness), and an “intrinsic” system which encompasses mainly medial brain areas and has been associated with internal processes (internal awareness). The aim of our study was to explore the neural correlates of resting state by providing behavioral and neuroimaging data from healthy volunteers. With no a priori assumptions, we first determined behaviorally the relationship between external and internal awareness in 31 subjects. We found a significant anticorrelation between external and internal awareness with a mean switching frequency of 0.05 Hz (range: 0.01–0.1 Hz). Interestingly, this frequency is similar to BOLD fMRI slow oscillations. We then evaluated 22 healthy volunteers in an fMRI paradigm looking for brain areas where BOLD activity correlated with “internal” and “external” scores. Activation of precuneus/posterior cingulate, anterior cingulate/mesiofrontal cortices, and parahippocampal areas (“intrinsic system”) was linearly linked to intensity of internal awareness, whereas activation of lateral fronto-parietal cortices (“extrinsic system”) was linearly associated with intensity of external awareness.

scholarly journals Increased Cerebral Blood Flow Associated with Better Response Inhibition in Bipolar Disorder

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheena I. Dev ◽  
Benjamin S. McKenna ◽  
Ashley N. Sutherland ◽  
David D. Shin ◽  
Thomas T. Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bipolar Disorder ◽  
Blood Flow ◽  
Cerebral Blood Flow ◽  
Color Word ◽  
Region Of Interest ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Or Education ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Inhibition Performance

AbstractImpairment on inhibitory tasks has been well documented in bipolar disorder (BD). Differences in cerebral blood flow (CBF) between BD patients and healthy comparison (HC) participants have also been reported. Few studies have examined the relationship between cognitive performance and regional CBF in this patient population. We hypothesized that group differences on an inhibitory task (the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function Scale’s Color-Word Inhibition task) would be associated with differential CBF in bilateral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) regions. Whole brain resting CBF was measured using Multiphase Pseudocontinuous Arterial Spin Labeling MR imaging for 28 euthymic BD and 36 HC participants. Total gray matter (GM) CBF was measured, and regional CBF values were extracted for each region of interest (ROI) using Freesurfer-based individual parcellations. Group, CBF, and group-by-CBF interaction were examined as predictors of inhibition performance. Groups did not differ in age, gender or education. BD patients performed significantly worse on Color-Word inhibition. There were no significant group differences in CBF in either total GM or in any ROI. There was a group by CBF interaction in the bilateral ACC, right IPL and right DLPFC such that better inhibitory performance was generally associated with higher resting state CBF in BD subjects, but not HC participants. Although CBF was not abnormal in this euthymic BD sample, results confirm previous reports of inter-episode inhibitory deficits and indicate that the perfusion-cognition relationship is different in BD compared to HC individuals. (JINS, 2015, 21, 105–115)

scholarly journals Machine learning-based ability to classify psychosis and early stages of disease through parenting and attachment-related variables is associated with social cognition

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda A. Antonucci ◽  
Alessandra Raio ◽  
Giulio Pergola ◽  
Barbara Gelao ◽  
Marco Papalino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Attachment Style ◽  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
Early Recognition ◽  
Emotion Perception ◽  
First Episode ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Early Stages

Abstract Background Recent views posited that negative parenting and attachment insecurity can be considered as general environmental factors of vulnerability for psychosis, specifically for individuals diagnosed with psychosis (PSY). Furthermore, evidence highlighted a tight relationship between attachment style and social cognition abilities, a key PSY behavioral phenotype. The aim of this study is to generate a machine learning algorithm based on the perceived quality of parenting and attachment style-related features to discriminate between PSY and healthy controls (HC) and to investigate its ability to track PSY early stages and risk conditions, as well as its association with social cognition performance. Methods Perceived maternal and paternal parenting, as well as attachment anxiety and avoidance scores, were trained to separate 71 HC from 34 PSY (20 individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia + 14 diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychotic manifestations) using support vector classification and repeated nested cross-validation. We then validated this model on independent datasets including individuals at the early stages of disease (ESD, i.e. first episode of psychosis or depression, or at-risk mental state for psychosis) and with familial high risk for PSY (FHR, i.e. having a first-degree relative suffering from psychosis). Then, we performed factorial analyses to test the group x classification rate interaction on emotion perception, social inference and managing of emotions abilities. Results The perceived parenting and attachment-based machine learning model discriminated PSY from HC with a Balanced Accuracy (BAC) of 72.2%. Slightly lower classification performance was measured in the ESD sample (HC-ESD BAC = 63.5%), while the model could not discriminate between FHR and HC (BAC = 44.2%). We observed a significant group x classification interaction in PSY and HC from the discovery sample on emotion perception and on the ability to manage emotions (both p = 0.02). The interaction on managing of emotion abilities was replicated in the ESD and HC validation sample (p = 0.03). Conclusion Our results suggest that parenting and attachment-related variables bear significant classification power when applied to both PSY and its early stages and are associated with variability in emotion processing. These variables could therefore be useful in psychosis early recognition programs aimed at softening the psychosis-associated disability.

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