Engaging regularly with fiction influences connectivity in cortical areas for language and mentalizing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roel M. Willems ◽  
Franziska Hartung
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Brain Areas ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Cortical Areas ◽  
Social Abilities ◽  
Behavioral Evidence ◽  
Amount Of Reading

Behavioral evidence suggests that engaging with fiction is positively correlated with social abilities. The rationale behind this link is that engaging with fictional narratives offers a ‘training modus’ for mentalizing and empathizing. We investigated the influence of the amount of reading that participants report doing in their daily lives, on connections between brain areas while they listened to literary narratives. Participants (N=57) listened to two literary narratives while brain activation was measured with fMRI. We computed time-course correlations between brain regions, and compared the correlation values from listening to narratives to listening to reversed speech. The between-region correlations were then related to the amount of fiction that participants read in their daily lives. Our results show that amount of fiction reading is related to functional connectivity in areas known to be involved in language and mentalizing. This suggests that reading fiction influences social cognition as well as language skills.

scholarly journals Amount of fiction reading correlates with higher connectivity between cortical areas for language and mentalizing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Hartung ◽  
Roel M. Willems
Keyword(s):  
Time Course ◽  
Network Dynamics ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Brain Network ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Social Abilities ◽  
Training Mode ◽  
Behavioral Evidence ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Fictional Story

AbstractBehavioral evidence suggests that engaging with fiction is positively correlated with social abilities. The rationale behind this link is that engaging with fiction and fictional characters may offer a ‘training mode’ for mentalizing and empathizing with sentient agents in the real world, analogous to a flight simulator for pilots. In this study, we explored the relationship between reading fiction and mentalizing by looking at brain network dynamics in 57 participants who varied on how much fiction they read in their daily lives. The hypothesis was that if reading fiction indeed trains mentalizing, a task that requires mentalizing –Like immersing in a fictional story and engaging with a protagonist-should elicit differences in brain network dynamics depending on how much people read. More specifically, more frequent readers should show increased connectivity within the theory of mind network (ToM) or between the ToM network and other brain networks. While brain activation was measured with fMRI, participants listened to two literary narratives. We computed time-course correlations between brain regions and compared the correlation values from listening to narratives to listening to an auditory baseline condition. The between-region correlations were then related to individual differences measures including the amount of fiction that participants consume in their daily lives. Our results show that there is a linear relationship between how much people read and the functional connectivity in areas known to be involved in language and mentalizing. This adds neurobiological credibility to the ‘fiction influences mentalizing abilities’ hypothesis as suggested on the basis of conceptual analysis.

Differential recovery of acetylcholinesterase in guinea pig muscle and brain regions after soman treatment

1998 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxine C Lintern ◽  
Janet R Wetherell ◽  
Margaret E Smith
Keyword(s):  
Enzyme Activity ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Similar Rate ◽  
Molecular Forms ◽  
Similar Degree ◽  
Brain Areas ◽  
Pig Muscle ◽  
Rate Of Recovery ◽  
The Brain

1 In brain areas of untreated guinea-pigs the highest activity of acetylcholinesterase was seen in the striatum and cerebellum, followed by the midbrain, medulla-pons and cortex, and the lowest in the hippocampus. The activity in diaphragm was sevenfold lower than in the hippocampus. 2 At 1 h after soman (27 mg/kg) administration the activity of the enzyme was dramatically reduced in all tissues studied. In muscle the three major molecular forms (A12, G4 and G1) showed a similar degree of inhibition and a similar rate of recovery and the activity had returned to normal by 7 days. 3 In the brain soman inhibited the G4 form more than the G1 form. The hippocampus, cortex and midbrain showed the greatest reductions in enzyme activity. At 7 days the activity in the cortex, medulla pons and striatum had recovered but in the hippocampus, midbrain and cerebellum it was still inhibited. 4 Thus the effects of soman administration varied in severity and time course in the different tissues studied. However the enzyme activity was still reduced in all tissues at 24 h when the overt signs of poisoning had disappeared.

scholarly journals Reduced Brain Electric Activity and Functional Connectivity in Bipolar Euthymia: An sLORETA Source Localization Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 155-166
Author(s):  
Annamaria Painold ◽  
Pascal L. Faber ◽  
Eva Z. Reininghaus ◽  
Sabrina Mörkl ◽  
Anna K. Holl ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Electric Activity ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Frequency Bands ◽  
Head Surface ◽  
Density Values ◽  
Surface Eeg

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a chronic illness with a relapsing and remitting time course. Relapses are manic or depressive in nature and intermitted by euthymic states. During euthymic states, patients lack the criteria for a manic or depressive diagnosis, but still suffer from impaired cognitive functioning as indicated by difficulties in executive and language-related processing. The present study investigated whether these deficits are reflected by altered intracortical activity in or functional connectivity between brain regions involved in these processes such as the prefrontal and the temporal cortices. Vigilance-controlled resting state EEG of 13 euthymic BD patients and 13 healthy age- and sex-matched controls was analyzed. Head-surface EEG was recomputed into intracortical current density values in 8 frequency bands using standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography. Intracortical current densities were averaged in 19 evenly distributed regions of interest (ROIs). Lagged coherences were computed between each pair of ROIs. Source activity and coherence measures between patients and controls were compared (paired t tests). Reductions in temporal cortex activity and in large-scale functional connectivity in patients compared to controls were observed. Activity reductions affected all 8 EEG frequency bands. Functional connectivity reductions affected the delta, theta, alpha-2, beta-2, and gamma band and involved but were not limited to prefrontal and temporal ROIs. The findings show reduced activation of the temporal cortex and reduced coordination between many brain regions in BD euthymia. These activation and connectivity changes may disturb the continuous frontotemporal information flow required for executive and language-related processing, which is impaired in euthymic BD patients.

Dynamic modulation of intrinsic functional connectivity by transcranial direct current stimulation

2012 ◽  
Vol 108 (12) ◽  
pp. 3253-3263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Sehm ◽  
Alexander Schäfer ◽  
Judy Kipping ◽  
Daniel Margulies ◽  
Virginia Conde ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Direct Current ◽  
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation ◽  
Healthy Subjects ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Cortical Excitability ◽  
Eigenvector Centrality ◽  
Resting State Functional Connectivity ◽  
Brain Areas ◽  
Direct Current Stimulation

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive brain stimulation technique capable of modulating cortical excitability and thereby influencing behavior and learning. Recent evidence suggests that bilateral tDCS over both primary sensorimotor cortices (SM1) yields more prominent effects on motor performance in both healthy subjects and chronic stroke patients than unilateral tDCS over SM1. To better characterize the underlying neural mechanisms of this effect, we aimed to explore changes in resting-state functional connectivity during both stimulation types. In a randomized single-blind crossover design, 12 healthy subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging at rest before, during, and after 20 min of unilateral, bilateral, and sham tDCS stimulation over SM1. Eigenvector centrality mapping (ECM) was used to investigate tDCS-induced changes in functional connectivity patterns across the whole brain. Uni- and bilateral tDCS over SM1 resulted in functional connectivity changes in widespread brain areas compared with sham stimulation both during and after stimulation. Whereas bilateral tDCS predominantly modulated changes in primary and secondary motor as well as prefrontal regions, unilateral tDCS affected prefrontal, parietal, and cerebellar areas. No direct effect was seen under the stimulating electrode in the unilateral condition. The time course of changes in functional connectivity in the respective brain areas was nonlinear and temporally dispersed. These findings provide evidence toward a network-based understanding regarding the underpinnings of specific tDCS interventions.

scholarly journals Neural Signatures of Spatial Statistical Learning: Characterizing the Extraction of Structure from Complex Visual Scenes

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (12) ◽  
pp. 1963-1976 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth A. Karuza ◽  
Lauren L. Emberson ◽  
Matthew E. Roser ◽  
Daniel Cole ◽  
Richard N. Aslin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Functional Integration ◽  
Univariate Analysis ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Posttest Performance ◽  
Behavioral Evidence ◽  
Performance Results ◽  
The Brain

Behavioral evidence has shown that humans automatically develop internal representations adapted to the temporal and spatial statistics of the environment. Building on prior fMRI studies that have focused on statistical learning of temporal sequences, we investigated the neural substrates and mechanisms underlying statistical learning from scenes with a structured spatial layout. Our goals were twofold: (1) to determine discrete brain regions in which degree of learning (i.e., behavioral performance) was a significant predictor of neural activity during acquisition of spatial regularities and (2) to examine how connectivity between this set of areas and the rest of the brain changed over the course of learning. Univariate activity analyses indicated a diffuse set of dorsal striatal and occipitoparietal activations correlated with individual differences in participants' ability to acquire the underlying spatial structure of the scenes. In addition, bilateral medial-temporal activation was linked to participants' behavioral performance, suggesting that spatial statistical learning recruits additional resources from the limbic system. Connectivity analyses examined, across the time course of learning, psychophysiological interactions with peak regions defined by the initial univariate analysis. Generally, we find that task-based connectivity with these regions was significantly greater in early relative to later periods of learning. Moreover, in certain cases, decreased task-based connectivity between time points was predicted by overall posttest performance. Results suggest a narrowing mechanism whereby the brain, confronted with a novel structured environment, initially boosts overall functional integration and then reduces interregional coupling over time.

scholarly journals Mass spectrometry imaging identifies abnormally elevated brain l-DOPA levels and extrastriatal monoaminergic dysregulation in l-DOPA–induced dyskinesia

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. eabe5948
Author(s):  
Elva Fridjonsdottir ◽  
Reza Shariatgorji ◽  
Anna Nilsson ◽  
Theodosia Vallianatou ◽  
Luke R. Odell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Side Effects ◽  
Mass Spectrometry Imaging ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Stria Terminalis ◽  
Brain Areas ◽  
Bed Nucleus ◽  
Neuronal Signaling ◽  
Cortical Areas ◽  
The Brain

l-DOPA treatment for Parkinson’s disease frequently leads to dyskinesias, the pathophysiology of which is poorly understood. We used MALDI-MSI to map the distribution of l-DOPA and monoaminergic pathways in brains of dyskinetic and nondyskinetic primates. We report elevated levels of l-DOPA, and its metabolite 3-O-methyldopa, in all measured brain regions of dyskinetic animals and increases in dopamine and metabolites in all regions analyzed except the striatum. In dyskinesia, dopamine levels correlated well with l-DOPA levels in extrastriatal regions, such as hippocampus, amygdala, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and cortical areas, but not in the striatum. Our results demonstrate that l-DOPA–induced dyskinesia is linked to a dysregulation of l-DOPA metabolism throughout the brain. The inability of extrastriatal brain areas to regulate the formation of dopamine during l-DOPA treatment introduces the potential of dopamine or even l-DOPA itself to modulate neuronal signaling widely across the brain, resulting in unwanted side effects.

scholarly journals Disrupted functional connectivity between sub-regions in the sensorimotor areas and cortex in migraine without aura

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhaoxia Qin ◽  
Jingjing Su ◽  
Xin-Wei He ◽  
Shiyu Ban ◽  
Qian Zhu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Pain Perception ◽  
Primary Motor Cortex ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Brain Disorder ◽  
Brain Areas

Abstract Background: Migraine is a severe and disabling brain disorder, and the exact neurological mechanisms remain unclear. Migraineurs have altered pain perception, and headache attacks disrupt their sensory information processing and sensorimotor integration. The altered functional connectivity of sub-regions of sensorimotor brain areas with other brain cortex associated with migraine needs further investigation.Methods: Forty-eight migraineurs without aura during the interictal phase and 48 age- and sex-matched healthy controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. We utilized seed-based functional connectivity analysis to investigate whether patients exhibited abnormal functional connectivity between sub-regions of sensorimotor brain areas and cortex regions.Results: We found that patients with migraineurs without aura exhibited disrupted functional connectivities between the sensorimotor areas and the visual cortex, temporal cortex, posterior parietal lobule, prefrontal areas, precuneus, cingulate gyrus, sensorimotor areas proper and cerebellum areas compared with healthy controls. In addition, the clinical data of the patients, such as disease duration, pain intensity and HIT-6 score, were negatively correlated with these impaired functional connectivities.Conclusion: In patients with migraineurs without aura, the functional connectivities between the sensorimotor brain areas and other brain regions was reduced. These disrupted functional connectivities might contribute to abnormalities in visual processing, multisensory integration, nociception processing, spatial attention and intention and dysfunction in cognitive evaluation and modulation of pain. Recurrent headache attacks might lead to the disrupted network between primary motor cortex and temporal regions and between primary somatosensory cortex and temporal regions. Pain sensitivity and patient quality of life are closely tied to the abnormal functional connectivity between sensorimotor regions and other brain areas.

scholarly journals Functional connectome reorganization relates to post-stroke motor recovery and structural disconnection

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Olafson ◽  
Keith Jamison ◽  
Elizabeth Sweeney ◽  
Hesheng Liu ◽  
Danhong Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Graph Matching ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Motor Recovery ◽  
First Episode ◽  
Resting State Functional Connectivity ◽  
Functional Reorganization ◽  
Time Points ◽  
Post Stroke

Motor recovery following ischemic stroke is contingent on the ability of surviving brain networks to compensate for damaged tissue. In rodent models, sensory and motor cortical representations have been shown to remap onto intact tissue around the lesion site, but remapping to more distal sites (e.g. in the contralesional hemisphere) has also been observed. Resting state functional connectivity (FC) analysis has been employed to study compensatory network adaptations in humans, but mechanisms and time course of motor recovery are not well understood. Here, we examine longitudinal FC in 23 first-episode ischemic pontine stroke patients (34-74 years old; 8 female, 15 male) and utilize a graph matching approach to identify patterns of regional functional connectivity reorganization during recovery. We quantified functional reorganization between several intervals ranging from 1 week to 6 months following stroke, and demonstrated that the areas that undergo functional reorganization most frequently are in cerebellar/subcortical networks. Brain regions with more structural connectome disruption due to the stroke also had more functional remapping over time. Finally, we show that the amount of functional reorganization between time points is correlated with the extent of motor recovery observed between those time points in the early to late subacute phases, and, furthermore, individuals with greater baseline motor impairment demonstrate more extensive early subacute functional reorganization (from one to two weeks post-stroke) and this reorganization correlates with better motor recovery at 6 months. Taken together, these results suggest that our graph matching approach can quantify recovery-relevant, whole-brain functional connectivity network reorganization after stroke.

scholarly journals Disrupted functional connectivity between sub-regions in the sensorimotor areas and cortex in migraine without aura

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhaoxia Qin ◽  
Jingjing Su ◽  
Xin-Wei He ◽  
Shiyu Ban ◽  
Qian Zhu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Migraine Without Aura ◽  
Pain Perception ◽  
Primary Motor Cortex ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Brain Areas ◽  
Investigation Methods

Abstract Background: Migraine is a severe and disabling brain disorder, and the exact neurological mechanisms remain unclear. Migraineurs have altered pain perception, and headache attacks disrupt their sensory information processing and sensorimotor integration. The altered functional connectivity (FC) of sub-regions of sensorimotor brain areas with other brain cortex associated with migraine needs further investigation. Methods: Forty-eight migraine without aura (MWoAs) during the interictal phase and 48 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs) underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. We utilized seed-based functional connectivity analysis to investigate whether patients exhibited abnormal functional connectivity between sub-regions of sensorimotor brain areas and cortex regions. Results : We found that MWoAs exhibited disrupted FC between the sensorimotor areas and the visual cortex, temporal cortex, posterior parietal lobule, prefrontal areas, precuneus, cingulate gyrus, sensorimotor areas proper and cerebellum areas compared with healthy controls. In addition, the clinical data of the patients, such as disease duration, pain intensity and HIT-6 score, were negatively correlated with these impaired FC s. Conclusion : In MWoAs, the FCs between the sensorimotor brain areas and other brain regions was reduced. These disrupted FCs might contribute to abnormalities in visual processing, multisensory integration, nociception processing, spatial attention and intention and dysfunction in cognitive evaluation and modulation of pain. Recurrent headache attacks might lead to the disrupted network between L M1 (primary motor cortex) and temporal regions and between L S1 (primary somatosensory cortex) and temporal regions. Pain sensitivity and patient quality of life are closely tied to the abnormal functional connectivity between sensorimotor regions and other brain regions.

scholarly journals Sequence Alterations of Cortical Genes Linked to Individual Connectivity of the Human Brain

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (9) ◽  
pp. 3828-3835 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qilong Xin ◽  
Laura Ortiz-Terán ◽  
Ibai Diez ◽  
David L Perez ◽  
Julia Ginsburg ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Expression Profiles ◽  
Gene Expression Profiles ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Genetic Sequence ◽  
Cortical Areas ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The Brain

Abstract Individual differences in humans are driven by unique brain structural and functional profiles, presumably mediated in part through differential cortical gene expression. However, the relationships between cortical gene expression profiles and individual differences in large-scale neural network organization remain poorly understood. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether the magnitude of sequence alterations in regional cortical genes mapped onto brain areas with high degree of functional connectivity variability across individuals. First, human genetic expression data from the Allen Brain Atlas was used to identify protein-coding genes associated with cortical areas, which delineated the regional genetic signature of specific cortical areas based on sequence alteration profiles. Thereafter, we identified brain regions that manifested high degrees of individual variability by using test-retest functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging and graph-theory analyses in healthy subjects. We found that rates of genetic sequence alterations shared a distinct spatial topography with cortical regions exhibiting individualized (highly-variable) connectivity profiles. Interestingly, gene expression profiles of brain regions with highly individualized connectivity patterns and elevated number of sequence alterations are devoted to neuropeptide-signaling-pathways and chemical-synaptic-transmission. Our findings support that genetic sequence alterations may underlie important aspects of brain connectome individualities in humans. Significance Statement: The neurobiological underpinnings of our individuality as humans are still an unsolved question. Although the notion that genetic variation drives an individual’s brain organization has been previously postulated, specific links between neural connectivity and gene expression profiles have remained elusive. In this study, we identified the magnitude of population-based sequence alterations in discrete cortical regions and compared them to the brain topological distribution of functional connectivity variability across an independent human sample. We discovered that brain regions with high degree of connectional individuality are defined by increased rates of genetic sequence alterations; these findings specifically implicated genes involved in neuropeptide-signaling pathways and chemical-synaptic transmission. These observations support that genetic sequence alterations may underlie important aspects of the emergence of the brain individuality across humans.

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