scholarly journals Empirical examination of the replicability of associations between brain structure and psychological variables

eLife ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahrzad Kharabian Masouleh ◽  
Simon B Eickhoff ◽  
Felix Hoffstaedter ◽  
Sarah Genon ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Structure ◽  
Gray Matter Volume ◽  
Brain Morphology ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Psychological Variables ◽  
Psychological Measures ◽  
Exploratory Approach ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Cognitive Neurosciences ◽  
Brain Behavior

Linking interindividual differences in psychological phenotype to variations in brain structure is an old dream for psychology and a crucial question for cognitive neurosciences. Yet, replicability of the previously-reported ‘structural brain behavior’ (SBB)-associations has been questioned, recently. Here, we conducted an empirical investigation, assessing replicability of SBB among heathy adults. For a wide range of psychological measures, the replicability of associations with gray matter volume was assessed. Our results revealed that among healthy individuals 1) finding an association between performance at standard psychological tests and brain morphology is relatively unlikely 2) significant associations, found using an exploratory approach, have overestimated effect sizes and 3) can hardly be replicated in an independent sample. After considering factors such as sample size and comparing our findings with more replicable SBB-associations in a clinical cohort and replicable associations between brain structure and non-psychological phenotype, we discuss the potential causes and consequences of these findings.

scholarly journals Empirical examination of the replicability of associations between brain structure and psychological variables

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahrzad Kharabian Masouleh ◽  
Simon B. Eickhoff ◽  
Felix Hoffstaedter ◽  
Sarah Genon
Keyword(s):  
Brain Structure ◽  
Gray Matter Volume ◽  
Brain Morphology ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Psychological Variables ◽  
Psychological Measures ◽  
Exploratory Approach ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Cognitive Neurosciences ◽  
Brain Behavior

AbstractLinking interindividual differences in psychological phenotype to variations in brain structure is an old dream for psychology and a crucial question for cognitive neurosciences. Yet, replicability of the previously-reported “structural brain behavior” (SBB)-associations has been questioned, recently. Here, we conducted an empirical investigation, assessing replicability of SBB among heathy adults. For a wide range of psychological measures, the replicability of associations with gray matter volume was assessed. Our results revealed that among healthy individuals 1) finding an association between performance at standard psychological tests and brain morphology is relatively unlikely 2) significant associations, found using an exploratory approach, have overestimated effect sizes and 3) can hardly be replicated in an independent sample. After considering factors such as sample size and comparing our findings with more replicable SBB-associations in a clinical cohort and replicable associations between brain structure and non-psychological phenotype, we discuss the potential causes and consequences of these findings.

scholarly journals Author response: Empirical examination of the replicability of associations between brain structure and psychological variables

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahrzad Kharabian Masouleh ◽  
Simon B Eickhoff ◽  
Felix Hoffstaedter ◽  
Sarah Genon ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Structure ◽  
Author Response ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Psychological Variables

scholarly journals Long-term association of pregnancy and maternal brain structure: the Rotterdam Study

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jurate Aleknaviciute ◽  
Tavia E. Evans ◽  
Elif Aribas ◽  
Merel W. de Vries ◽  
Eric A. P. Steegers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
White Matter ◽  
Gray Matter ◽  
Brain Structure ◽  
Gray Matter Volume ◽  
Brain Morphology ◽  
Rotterdam Study ◽  
Pregnancy And Childbirth ◽  
Matter Volume ◽  
Maternal Brain

AbstractThe peripartum period is the highest risk interval for the onset or exacerbation of psychiatric illness in women’s lives. Notably, pregnancy and childbirth have been associated with short-term structural and functional changes in the maternal human brain. Yet the long-term effects of pregnancy on maternal brain structure remain unknown. We investigated a large population-based cohort to examine the association between parity and brain structure. In total, 2,835 women (mean age 65.2 years; all free from dementia, stroke, and cortical brain infarcts) from the Rotterdam Study underwent magnetic resonance imaging (1.5 T) between 2005 and 2015. Associations of parity with global and lobar brain tissue volumes, white matter microstructure, and markers of vascular brain disease were examined using regression models. We found that parity was associated with a larger global gray matter volume (β = 0.14, 95% CI = 0.09–0.19), a finding that persisted following adjustment for sociodemographic factors. A non-significant dose-dependent relationship was observed between a higher number of childbirths and larger gray matter volume. The gray matter volume association with parity was globally proportional across lobes. No associations were found regarding white matter volume or integrity, nor with markers of cerebral small vessel disease. The current findings suggest that pregnancy and childbirth are associated with robust long-term changes in brain structure involving a larger global gray matter volume that persists for decades. Future studies are warranted to further investigate the mechanism and physiological relevance of these differences in brain morphology.

scholarly journals Psychological Correlates of Self-reported Disease Activity in Ankylosing Spondylitis

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 829-834 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAMAR F. BRIONEZ ◽  
SHERVIN ASSASSI ◽  
JOHN D. REVEILLE ◽  
CHARLES GREEN ◽  
THOMAS LEARCH ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Ankylosing Spondylitis ◽  
Disease Activity ◽  
Activity Index ◽  
Disease Activity Index ◽  
Multivariate Regression Analysis ◽  
Passive Coping ◽  
Psychological Variables ◽  
Psychological Measures

Objective.To investigate the role of psychological variables in self-reported disease activity in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), while controlling for demographic and medical variables.Methods.Patients with AS (n = 294) meeting modified New York criteria completed psychological measures evaluating depression, resilience, active and passive coping, internality, and helplessness. Demographic, clinical, and radiologic data were also collected. Univariate and multivariate analyses were completed to determine the strength of the correlation of psychological variables with disease activity, as measured by the Bath AS Disease Activity Index (BASDAI).Results.In the multivariate regression analysis, the psychological variables contributed significantly to the variance in BASDAI scores, adding an additional 33% to the overall R-square beyond that accounted for by demographic and medical variables (combined R-square 18%). Specifically, arthritis helplessness and depression accounted for the most significant portion of the variance in BASDAI scores in the final model.Conclusion.Arthritis helplessness and depression accounted for significant variability in self-reported disease activity beyond clinical and demographic variables in patients with AS. These findings have important clinical implications in the treatment and monitoring of disease activity in AS, and suggest potential avenues of intervention.

scholarly journals Advances in studying brain morphology: The benefits of open-access data

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R Madan
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Brain Structure ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Brain Morphology ◽  
Subcortical Structures ◽  
Open Access Data ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Neuroimaging Data ◽  
Access Data

Until recently, neuroimaging data for a research study needed to be collected within one’s own lab. However, when studying inter-individual differences in brain structure, a large sample of participants is necessary. Given the financial costs involved in collecting neuroimaging data from hundreds or thousands of participants, large-scale studies of brain morphology could previously only be conducted by well-funded laboratories with access to MRI facilities and to large samples of participants. With the advent of broad open-access data-sharing initiatives, this has recently changed–here the primary goal of the study is to collect large datasets to be shared, rather than sharing of the data as an afterthought. This paradigm shift is evident as increase in the pace of discovery, leading to a rapid rate of advances in our characterization of brain structure. The utility of open-access brain morphology data is numerous, ranging from observing novel patterns of age-related differences in subcortical structures to the development of more robust cortical parcellation atlases, with these advances being translatable to improved methods for characterizing clinical disorders (see Figure 1 for an illustration). Moreover, structural MRIs are generally more robust than functional MRIs, relative to potential artifacts and in being not task-dependent, resulting in large potential yields. While the benefits of open-access data have been discussed more broadly within the field of cognitive neuroscience elsewhere (Gilmore et al., 2017; Poldrack and Gorgolewski, 2014; Van Horn and Gazzaniga, 2013; Voytek, 2016), as well as in other fields (Ascoli et al., 2017; Choudhury et al., 2014; Davies et al., 2017), the current paper is focused specifically on the implications of open data to brain morphology research.

scholarly journals Attentional bias to threat and gray mater volume morphology in high anxious individuals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua M. Carlson ◽  
Lin Fang
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Gray Matter ◽  
Posterior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Gray Matter Volume ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Brain Morphology ◽  
Matter Volume ◽  
Posterior Parietal ◽  
The Right

AbstractIn a sample of highly anxious individuals, the relationship between gray matter volume brain morphology and attentional bias to threat was assessed. Participants performed a dot-probe task of attentional bias to threat and gray matter volume was acquired from whole brain structural T1-weighted MRI scans. The results replicate previous findings in unselected samples that elevated attentional bias to threat is linked to greater gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, middle frontal gyrus, and striatum. In addition, we provide novel evidence that elevated attentional bias to threat is associated with greater gray matter volume in the right posterior parietal cortex, cerebellum, and other distributed regions. Lastly, exploratory analyses provide initial evidence that distinct sub-regions of the right posterior parietal cortex may contribute to attentional bias in a sex-specific manner. Our results illuminate how differences in gray matter volume morphology relate to attentional bias to threat in anxious individuals. This knowledge could inform neurocognitive models of anxiety-related attentional bias to threat and targets of neuroplasticity in anxiety interventions such as attention bias modification.

scholarly journals The expectant brain: Being pregnant causes changes in brain morphology in the early postpartum period

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Chechko ◽  
Juergen Dukart ◽  
Svetlana Tchaikovski ◽  
Christian Enzensberger ◽  
Irene Neuner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Research ◽  
Morphological Changes ◽  
Gray Matter Volume ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Brain Morphology ◽  
Cortical Thinning ◽  
Nulliparous Women ◽  
Maternal Brain ◽  
Multiparous Women ◽  
The Right

There is growing evidence that pregnancy may have a significant impact on the maternal brain, causing changes in its structure. However, the patterns of these changes have not yet been systematically investigated. Using voxel-based (VBM) and surface-based morphometry (SBM), we compared a group of healthy primiparous women (n = 40) with healthy multiparous mothers (n = 37) as well as nulliparous women (n = 40). Compared to the nulliparous women, the young mothers showed decreases in gray matter volume in the bilateral hippocampus/amygdala, the orbitofrontal cortex/subgenual prefrontal area, the right superior temporal gyrus, the right insula, and the cerebellum. However, these pregnancy-related changes in brain structure did not predict the quality of mother-infant attachment at either 3 or 12 weeks postpartum, nor were they more pronounced among the multiparous women. SBM analyses showed significant cortical thinning especially in the frontal and parietal cortices, with the parietal cortical thinning likely potentiated by multiple pregnancies. We conclude, therefore, that the widespread morphological changes seen in the brain shortly after childbirth reflect substantial neuroplasticity. Also, the experience of pregnancy alone may not be the underlying cause of the adaptations for mothering and caregiving. As regards the exact biological function of the changes in brain morphology as well as the long-term effect of pregnancy on the maternal brain, further longitudinal research with larger cohorts will be needed to draw any definitive conclusions.

Changes in Gender Stereotypes Over Time: A Computational Analysis

2020 ◽  
pp. 036168432097717
Author(s):  
Nazlı Bhatia ◽  
Sudeep Bhatia
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Data Science ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Psychological Variables ◽  
Psychological Measures ◽  
Gender Biases ◽  
Language Data ◽  
Physical Traits ◽  
Over Time

We combined established psychological measures with techniques in machine learning to measure changes in gender stereotypes over the course of the 20th century as expressed in large-scale historical natural language data. Although our analysis replicated robust gender biases previously documented in the literature, we found that the strength of these biases has diminished over time. This appears to be driven by changes in gender biases for stereotypically feminine traits (rather than stereotypically masculine traits) and changes in gender biases for personality-related traits (rather than physical traits). Our results illustrate the dynamic nature of stereotypes and show how recent advances in data science can be used to provide a long-term historical analysis of core psychological variables. In terms of practice, these findings may, albeit cautiously, suggest that women and men can be less constrained by prescriptions of feminine traits. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’s website at 10.1177/0361684320977178

scholarly journals The quandary of covarying: A brief review and empirical examination of covariate use in structural neuroimaging studies on psychological variables

NeuroImage ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 205 ◽  
pp. 116225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtland S. Hyatt ◽  
Max M. Owens ◽  
Michael L. Crowe ◽  
Nathan T. Carter ◽  
Donald R. Lynam ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Psychological Variables ◽  
Structural Neuroimaging
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