Alterations in reward processes may underlie motivational and anhedonic symptoms in depression and schizophrenia. However it remains unclear whether these alterations are disorder-specific or shared, ...and whether they clearly relate to symptom generation or not. We studied brain responses to unexpected rewards during a simulated slot-machine game in 24 patients with depression, 21 patients with schizophrenia, and 21 healthy controls using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We investigated relationships between brain activation, task-related motivation, and questionnaire rated anhedonia. There was reduced activation in the orbitofrontal cortex, ventral striatum, inferior temporal gyrus, and occipital cortex in both depression and schizophrenia in comparison with healthy participants during receipt of unexpected reward. In the medial prefrontal cortex both patient groups showed reduced activation, with activation significantly more abnormal in schizophrenia than depression. Anterior cingulate and medial frontal cortical activation predicted task-related motivation, which in turn predicted anhedonia severity in schizophrenia. Our findings provide evidence for overlapping hypofunction in ventral striatal and orbitofrontal regions in depression and schizophrenia during unexpected reward receipt, and for a relationship between unexpected reward processing in the medial prefrontal cortex and the generation of motivational states.
Background:
The use of electronic interventions to improve reading is becoming a common resource. This systematic review aims to describe the main characteristics of randomized controlled trials or ...quasi-experimental studies that have used these tools to improve first-language reading, in order to highlight the features of the most reliable studies and guide future research.
Methods:
The whole procedure followed the PRISMA guidelines, and the protocol was registered before starting the process (doi:
10.17605/OSF.IO/CKM4N
). Searches in Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science and an institutional reference aggregator (Unika) yielded 6,230 candidate articles. After duplicate removal, screening, and compliance of eligibility criteria, 55 studies were finally included.
Results:
They were research studies on improving first-language reading, both in children and adults, and including a control group. Thirty-three different electronic tools were employed, most of them in English, and studies were very diverse in sample size, length of intervention, and control tasks. Risk of bias was analyzed with the PEDro scale, and all studies had a medium or low risk. However, risk of bias due to conflicts of interest could not be evaluated in most studies, since they did not include a statement on this issue.
Conclusion:
Future research on this topic should include randomized intervention and control groups, with sample sizes over 65 per group, interventions longer than 15 h, and a proper disclosure of possible conflicts of interest.
Systematic Review Registration
: The whole procedure followed the PRISMA guidelines, and the protocol was registered before starting the process in the Open Science Framework (doi:
10.17605/OSF.IO/CKM4N
).
Depression and borderline personality disorder (BPD) are both thought to be accompanied by alterations in the subjective experience of environmental rewards. We evaluated responses in women to sweet, ...bitter and neutral tastes (juice, quinine and water): 29 with depression, 17 with BPD and 27 healthy controls. The BPD group gave lower pleasantness and higher disgust ratings for quinine and juice compared with the control group; the depression group did not differ significantly from the control group. Juice disgust ratings were related to self-disgust in BPD, suggesting close links between abnormal sensory processing and self-identity in BPD.
Beyond the p factor: Is there a d factor? Cortese, Samuele; Arrondo, Gonzalo; Correll, Christoph U. ...
JCPP advances,
December 2021, Volume:
1, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Imaging studies help to understand the evolution of key cognitive processes related to aging, such as working memory (WM). This study aimed to test three hypotheses in older adults. First, that the ...brain activation pattern associated to WM processes in elderly during successful low load tasks is located in posterior sensory and associative areas; second, that the prefrontal and parietal cortex and basal ganglia should be more active during high-demand tasks; third, that cerebellar activations are related to high-demand cognitive tasks and have a specific lateralization depending on the condition.
We used a neuropsychological assessment with functional magnetic resonance imaging and a core N-back paradigm design that was maintained across the combination of four conditions of stimuli and two memory loads in a sample of twenty elderly subjects.
During low-loads, activations were located in the visual ventral network. In high loads, there was an involvement of the basal ganglia and cerebellum in addition to the frontal and parietal cortices. Moreover, we detected an executive control role of the cerebellum in a relatively symmetric fronto-parietal network. Nevertheless, this network showed a predominantly left lateralization in parietal regions associated presumably with an overuse of verbal storage strategies. The differential activations between conditions were stimuli-dependent and were located in sensory areas.
Successful WM processes in the elderly population are accompanied by an activation pattern that involves cerebellar regions working together with a fronto-parietal network.
Adult Lower Secondary Education is an education program for basic qualifications for the labor market. Our study aimed to compare lifetime mental health problems between current Adult Lower Secondary ...Education students and higher Vocational Education students, as the former constitutes a highly distinct and understudied group.
Findings were based on a cross-sectional self-report survey. Lifetime relative odds of occurrence of mental disorders i.e., psychiatric disorders typically diagnosed in adults, learning difficulties or deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were compared between Adult Lower Secondary Education students (
= 134) and Vocational Education students (
= 149).
While the frequency of mental health problems was high in both groups, psychiatric disorders typically diagnosed in adults were more common in Adult Lower Secondary Education students than among other students. Vocational Education students reported higher rates of ADHD.
There is a need for additional psychological resources for Adult Lower Secondary Education students, an educational level that is the last path for many to acquire a basic degree.
Semantic memory is the subsystem of human memory that stores knowledge of concepts or meanings, as opposed to life-specific experiences. How humans organize semantic information remains poorly ...understood. In an effort to better understand this issue, we conducted a verbal fluency experiment on 200 participants with the aim of inferring and representing the conceptual storage structure of the natural category of animals as a network. This was done by formulating a statistical framework for co-occurring concepts that aims to infer significant concept–concept associations and represent them as a graph. The resulting network was analyzed and enriched by means of a missing links recovery criterion based on modularity. Both network models were compared to a thresholded co-occurrence approach. They were evaluated using a random subset of verbal fluency tests and comparing the network outcomes (linked pairs are clustering transitions and disconnected pairs are switching transitions) to the outcomes of two expert human raters. Results show that the network models proposed in this study overcome a thresholded co-occurrence approach, and their outcomes are in high agreement with human evaluations. Finally, the interplay between conceptual structure and retrieval mechanisms is discussed.
La conformación de las estructuras anatómicas es compleja en los 3 planos del espacio. Históricamente, la enseñanza de la anatomía se ha hecho a partir de representaciones bidimensionales, de modelos ...físicos tridimensionales o de cuerpos reales. Solo recientemente ha sido factible crear modelos anatómicos digitales tridimensionales, que pueden ser explorados en línea a través de Internet. El objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar 2 de las herramientas en línea más conocidas para la visualización anatómica (Anatomography® y BioDigital® Human), y presentar una experiencia docente de uso en el área de neurociencias. Se crearon imágenes de estructuras cerebrales animadas que se usaron en clase posteriormente, y se preguntó a los alumnos sobre su interés y utilidad. Los resultados indicaron que la utilización de este tipo de recursos es interesante por su flexibilidad, atractivo y coste.
The conformation of anatomical structures is complex in the 3 spatial planes. Historically, anatomy teaching has been carried out using 2-dimensional representation, 3-dimensional physical models, or real bodies. Only recently has it been possible to create digital 3-dimensional anatomical models that can be explored online or downloaded. The aim of this work is to critically describe two of the best-known online tools for anatomical visualisation (Anatomography® and BioDigital® Human), and to present a teaching experience in the neuroscience domain. Animated images of brain structures were created and later used in class, and students were asked about their interest and usefulness. Results indicated that the use of this kind of resource is interesting, due to its flexibility, attractiveness and cost.
Repetitive and alternating lower limb movements are a specific component of human gait. Due to technical challenges, the neural mechanisms underlying such movements have not been previously studied ...with functional magnetic resonance imaging. In this study, we present a novel treadmill device employed to investigate the kinematics and the brain activation patterns involved in alternating and repetitive movements of the lower limbs. Once inside the scanner, 19 healthy subjects were guided by two visual cues and instructed to perform a motor task which involved repetitive and alternating movements of both lower limbs while selecting their individual comfortable amplitude on the treadmill. The device facilitated the performance of coordinated stepping while registering the concurrent lower-limb displacements, which allowed us to quantify some movement primary kinematic features such as amplitude and frequency. During stepping, significant blood oxygen level dependent signal increases were observed bilaterally in primary and secondary sensorimotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, premotor cortex, prefrontal cortex, superior and inferior parietal lobules, putamen and cerebellum, regions that are known to be involved in lower limb motor control. Brain activations related to individual adjustments during motor performance were identified in a right lateralized network including striatal, extrastriatal, and fronto-parietal areas.
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