Deficits in perception of emotional prosody have been described in patients with affective disorders at behavioral and neural level. In the current study, we use an imaging genetics approach to ...examine the impact of CACNA1C, one of the most promising genetic risk factors for psychiatric disorders, on prosody processing on a behavioral, functional and microstructural level. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) we examined key areas involved in prosody processing, i.e. the amygdala and voice areas, in a healthy population. We found stronger activation to emotional than neutral prosody in the voice areas and the amygdala, but CACNA1C rs1006737 genotype had no influence on fMRI activity. However, significant microstructural differences (i.e. mean diffusivity) between CACNA1C rs1006737 risk allele carriers and non carriers were found in the amygdala, but not the voice areas. These modifications in brain architecture associated with CACNA1C might reflect a neurobiological marker predisposing to affective disorders and concomitant alterations in emotion perception.
The Dark Triad of personality – narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy – is characterized by callous manipulation and social exploitation. Thus, dark personalities should be more prone to ...unethical behavior. Unethical behavior has been shown to vary during the course of the day with individuals displaying lower morality in the evening (Morning Morality Effect, MME). Hence, the present study investigated the association between the Dark Triad and unethical behavior as a function of time of day in an experimental design. Participants (N=195) completed the study either in the morning or in the evening. In one task, participants had the choice to cheat on a fictitious partner for monetary benefit at the partner's expense. In a second task, they had the opportunity to lie about their performance for personal gain. Machiavellianism scores positively predicted unethical behavior in the first task. In the second task, psychopathy scores positively predicted lying. Neither could the MME be replicated, nor did time of day moderate the influence of the Dark Triad on unethical behavior. Thus, the present study indicates that the dark traits are differentially related to aspects of unethical behavior, such that Machiavellians display a preference for complex deception, while psychopaths engage in impulsive cheating.
•We assessed the Dark Triad and unethical behavior at different times of day.•In contrast to previous studies, time of day did not influence unethical behavior.•Machiavellianism and psychopathy were differentially related to unethical behavior.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by a biased emotion perception. In the auditory domain, MDD patients have been shown to exhibit attenuated processing of positive emotions expressed ...by speech melody (prosody). So far, no neuroimaging studies examining the neural basis of altered processing of emotional prosody in MDD are available. In this study, we addressed this issue by examining the emotion bias in MDD during evaluation of happy, neutral, and angry prosodic stimuli on a five‐point Likert scale during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). As expected, MDD patients rated happy prosody less intense than healthy controls (HC). At neural level, stronger activation in the middle superior temporal gyrus (STG) and the amygdala was found in all participants when processing emotional as compared to neutral prosody. MDD patients exhibited an increased activation of the amygdala during processing prosody irrespective of valence while no significant differences between groups were found for the STG, indicating that altered processing of prosodic emotions in MDD occurs rather within the amygdala than in auditory areas. Concurring with the valence‐specific behavioral effect of attenuated evaluation of positive prosodic stimuli, activation within the left amygdala of MDD patients correlated with ratings of happy, but not neutral or angry prosody. Our study provides first insights in the neural basis of reduced experience of positive information and an abnormally increased amygdala activity during prosody processing.
Laughter is a multifaceted signal, which can convey social acceptance facilitating social bonding as well as social rejection inflicting social pain. In the current study, we addressed the neural ...correlates of social intent attribution to auditory or visual laughter within an fMRI study to identify brain areas showing linear increases of activation with social intent ratings. Negative social intent attributions were associated with activation increases within the medial prefrontal cortex/anterior cingulate cortex (mPFC/ACC). Interestingly, negative social intent attributions of auditory laughter were represented more rostral than visual laughter within this area. Our findings corroborate the role of the mPFC/ACC as key node for processing “social pain” with distinct modality‐specific subregions. Other brain areas that showed an increase of activation included bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and right superior/middle temporal gyrus (STG/MTG) for visually presented laughter and bilateral STG for auditory presented laughter with no overlap across modalities. Similarly, positive social intent attributions were linked to hemodynamic responses within the right inferior parietal lobe and right middle frontal gyrus, but there was no overlap of activity for visual and auditory laughter. Our findings demonstrate that social intent attribution to auditory and visual laughter is located in neighboring, but spatially distinct neural structures.
Food choices are influenced by one's current mindset, suggesting that supporting health (vs. a palatability) mindsets could improve daily food choices. The question rises, however, to what extent ...internal mindsets still guide choices when people are exposed to external food-context stimuli in an obesogenic environment. To examine these two competing effects we induced health vs. palatability mindsets, and investigated the robustness of the mindset effect by presenting food-context stimuli during a Pavlovian-to-Instrumental-Transfer (PIT) task in two separate cohorts of 102 (76 females) Dutch and 120 (60 females) German participants. For the mindset induction, participants rated food items on visual analogue scales (VAS), based on healthiness and palatability, respectively. In each cohort, half of the participants received a health, the other half a palatability mindset induction. Additionally, we explored whether ‘mindset triggers’ could be used to further shape behavior. Triggers were established by placing unfamiliar logos at the extreme ends of the VASs used for the mindset inductions.
Independent of the mindset, food-associated stimuli influenced food choices in accordance with the previously learned association in each test phase. Health mindset induction biased food choices towards healthier, palatability mindset towards unhealthier choices in the first cohort, but not in the second. The mindset triggers had a more robust effect. These induced healthier (triggers for healthy and not-palatable) and unhealthier (triggers for unhealthy and palatable) food choices in both cohorts alike. Interestingly, these effects did not tamper with the overall effect of Pavlovian cues and were thus true in the presence and absence of food-context stimuli. Therefore, we show that, in our experimental setting, food-associated mindset triggers can be used to bias food choices towards a healthy snack even in an obesogenic environment.
In current diagnostic systems, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are still conceptualized as distinct categorical entities. Recently, both clinical and genomic evidence have challenged this ...Kraepelinian dichotomy. There are only few longitudinal studies addressing potential overlaps between these conditions. Here, we present design and first results of the PsyCourse study (N = 891 individuals at baseline), an ongoing transdiagnostic study of the affective‐to‐psychotic continuum that combines longitudinal deep phenotyping and dimensional assessment of psychopathology with an extensive collection of biomaterial. To provide an initial characterization of the PsyCourse study sample, we compare two broad diagnostic groups defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM‐IV) classification system, that is, predominantly affective (n = 367 individuals) versus predominantly psychotic disorders (n = 524 individuals). Depressive, manic, and psychotic symptoms as well as global functioning over time were contrasted using linear mixed models. Furthermore, we explored the effects of polygenic risk scores for schizophrenia on diagnostic group membership and addressed their effects on nonparticipation in follow‐up visits. While phenotypic results confirmed expected differences in current psychotic symptoms and global functioning, both manic and depressive symptoms did not vary between both groups after correction for multiple testing. Polygenic risk scores for schizophrenia significantly explained part of the variability of diagnostic group. The PsyCourse study presents a unique resource to research the complex relationships of psychopathology and biology in severe mental disorders not confined to traditional diagnostic boundaries and is open for collaborations.
Cover Image, Volume 180B, Number 2, March 2019 Budde, Monika; Anderson‐Schmidt, Heike; Gade, Katrin ...
American Journal of Medical Genetics - Neuropsychiatric Genetics,
03/2019, Letnik:
180, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Epigenetic changes are emerging as one of the most important events in carcinogenesis. Two alterations in the pattern of DNA methylation in breast cancer (BC) have been previously reported; active ...estrogen receptor-alpha (ER-alpha) is associated with decreased methylation of ER-alpha target (ERT) genes, and polycomb group target (PCGT) genes are more likely than other genes to have promoter DNA hypermethylation in cancer. However, whether DNA methylation in normal unrelated cells is associated with BC risk and whether these imprints can be related to factors which can be modified by the environment, is unclear.
Using quantitative methylation analysis in a case-control study (n = 1,083) we found that DNA methylation of peripheral blood cell DNA provides good prediction of BC risk. We also report that invasive ductal and invasive lobular BC is characterized by two different sets of genes, the latter particular by genes involved in the differentiation of the mesenchyme (PITX2, TITF1, GDNF and MYOD1). Finally we demonstrate that only ERT genes predict ER positive BC; lack of peripheral blood cell DNA methylation of ZNF217 predicted BC independent of age and family history (odds ratio 1.49; 95% confidence interval 1.12-1.97; P = 0.006) and was associated with ER-alpha bioactivity in the corresponding serum.
This first large-scale epigenotyping study demonstrates that DNA methylation may serve as a link between the environment and the genome. Factors that can be modulated by the environment (like estrogens) leave an imprint in the DNA of cells that are unrelated to the target organ and indicate the predisposition to develop a cancer. Further research will need to demonstrate whether DNA methylation profiles will be able to serve as a new tool to predict the risk of developing chronic diseases with sufficient accuracy to guide preventive measures.
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