Emotion-regulation strategies are understood to influence food intake. This study examined the neurophysiological underpinnings of negative emotion processing and emotion regulation in individuals ...with excess weight compared to normal-weight controls. Fifteen participants with excess-weight (body mass index >25) and sixteen normal-weight controls (body mass index 18-25) performed an emotion-regulation task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants were exposed to 24 negative affective or neutral pictures that they were instructed to Observe (neutral pictures), Maintain (sustain the emotion elicited by negative pictures) or Regulate (down-regulate the emotion provoked by negative pictures through previously trained reappraisal techniques). When instructed to regulate negative emotions by means of cognitive reappraisal, participants with excess weight displayed persistently heightened activation in the right anterior insula. Decreased responsivity was also found in right anterior insula, the orbitofrontal cortex and cerebellum during negative emotion experience in participants with excess weight. Psycho-physiological interaction analyses showed that excess-weight participants had decreased negative functional coupling between the right anterior insula and the right dlPFC, and the bilateral dmPFC during cognitive reappraisal. Our findings support contentions that excess weight is linked to an abnormal pattern of neural activation and connectivity during the experience and regulation of negative emotions, with the insula playing a key role in these alterations. We posit that ineffective regulation of emotional states contributes to the acquisition and preservation of excess weight.
Objective
Impulsivity and difficulties in regulating emotions are considered to be transdiagnostic characteristics of patients with eating disorders (EDs). The study aimed to investigate trait ...impulsivity and inhibitory components of impulsivity, related or unrelated to emotions in patients with EDs.
Method
A total of 17 patients with anorexia nervosa (AN), 16 patients with bulimic‐spectrum EDs (BSD) and 20 healthy control (HC) participants completed an impulsivity scale (UPPS‐P) before performing an emotional inhibitory control task during electroencephalography (EEG) acquisition.
Results
Higher trait impulsivity in EDs than HC (with higher scores among BSD patients) was observed. However, no differences in behavioural measures or neural indexes event‐related potential (ERP) of emotional and non‐emotional inhibitory control were observed between patients and HC.
Conclusion
The present results highlighted negative urgency, an impulsive personality trait related to emotions, as a common feature of AN and BSD. Lack of perseverance, a trait which is less related to emotions, specifically characterises patients with BSD. On the other hand, behavioural and ERP data did not show altered inhibitory control in EDs, for either general or emotional‐related response inhibition.
Anxiety is one of the most common mental states of humans. Although it drives us to avoid frightening situations and to achieve our goals, it may also impose significant suffering and burden if it ...becomes extreme. Because we experience anxiety in a variety of forms, previous studies investigated neural substrates of anxiety in a variety of ways. These studies revealed that individuals with high state, trait, or pathological anxiety showed altered neural substrates. However, no studies have directly investigated whether the different dimensions of anxiety share a common neural substrate, despite its theoretical and practical importance. Here, we investigated a brain network of anxiety shared by different dimensions of anxiety in a unified analytical framework using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We analyzed different datasets in a single scale, which was defined by an anxiety-related brain network derived from whole brain. We first conducted the anxiety provocation task with healthy participants who tended to feel anxiety related to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in their daily life. We found a common state anxiety brain network across participants (1585 trials obtained from 10 participants). Then, using the resting-state fMRI in combination with the participants' behavioral trait anxiety scale scores (879 participants from the Human Connectome Project), we demonstrated that trait anxiety shared the same brain network as state anxiety. Furthermore, the brain network between common to state and trait anxiety could detect patients with OCD, which is characterized by pathological anxiety-driven behaviors (174 participants from multi-site datasets). Our findings provide direct evidence that different dimensions of anxiety have a substantial biological inter-relationship. Our results also provide a biologically defined dimension of anxiety, which may promote further investigation of various human characteristics, including psychiatric disorders, from the perspective of anxiety.
•Common brain networks among different dimensions of anxiety were investigated.•The state anxiety brain network was similarly represented across participants.•There was a common brain network for trait anxiety and state anxiety.•This common brain network was generalized to pathological anxiety.
Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) display impaired social interactions, implicated in the development and prognosis of the disorder. Importantly, social behavior is modulated by reward-based ...processes, and dysfunctional at-brain-level reward responses have been involved in AN neurobiological models. However, no prior evidence exists of whether these neural alterations would be equally present in social contexts. In this study, we conducted a cross-sectional social-judgment functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of 20 restrictive-subtype AN patients and 20 matched healthy controls. Brain activity during acceptance and rejection was investigated and correlated with severity measures (Eating Disorder Inventory -EDI-2) and with personality traits of interest known to modulate social behavior (The Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire). Patients showed hypoactivation of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) during social acceptance and hyperactivation of visual areas during social rejection. Ventral striatum activation during rejection was positively correlated in patients with clinical severity scores. During acceptance, activation of the frontal opercula-anterior insula and dorsomedial/dorsolateral prefrontal cortices was differentially associated with reward sensitivity between groups. These results suggest an abnormal motivational drive for social stimuli, and involve overlapping social cognition and reward systems leading to a disruption of adaptive responses in the processing of social reward. The specific association of reward-related regions with clinical and psychometric measures suggests the putative involvement of reward structures in the maintenance of pathological behaviors in AN.
Objective
Research suggests abnormalities in reward‐based processes in anorexia nervosa (AN). However, few studies have explored if such alterations might be associated with different temporal ...activation patterns. This study aims to characterize alterations in time‐dependent processes in the ventral striatum (VS) during social feedback in AN using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Method
Twenty women with restrictive‐subtype AN and 20 age‐matched healthy controls (HC) underwent a social judgment experimental fMRI task. Temporal VS hemodynamic responses were extracted in SPM for each participant and each social condition (acceptance/rejection).
Results
Compared with age‐matched HC, patients with AN showed a significant time by group interaction of peak VS response throughout the task, with a progressive blunting of peak activation responses, accompanied by a progressive increase in baseline activity levels over time.
Discussion
The results suggest an attenuated response pattern to repetitive social rejection in the VS in patients with AN, together with a difficulty in returning to baseline. The information obtained from this study will guide future, design‐specific studies to further explore alterations temporal dynamics.
Abstract
Integrase strand transfer inhibitors (INSTI) are a main component of the current antiretroviral regimens recommended for treatment of HIV infection. However, little is known about the impact ...of INSTI on neurocognition and neuroimaging. We developed a prospective observational trial to evaluate the effects of INSTI-based antiretroviral therapy on comprehensive brain outcomes (cognitive, functional, and imaging) according to the time since HIV-1 acquisition. We recruited men living with HIV who initiated antiretroviral therapy with INSTI < 3 months since the estimated date of HIV-1 acquisition (n = 12) and > 6 months since estimated date of HIV-1 acquisition (n = 15). We also recruited a group of matched seronegative individuals (n = 15). Assessments were performed at baseline (before initiation of therapy in HIV arms) and at weeks 4 and 48. Baseline cognitive functioning was comparable between the arms. At week 48, we did not find cognitive differences between starting therapy with INSTI earlier than 3 months or later than 6 months after acquisition of HIV-1 infection. Functional status was poorer in individuals diagnosed earlier. This effect recovered 48 weeks after initiation of therapy. Regarding brain imaging, we found that men living with HIV initiating antiretroviral therapy later experienced a greater decrease in medial orbitofrontal cortex over time, with expected negative repercussions for decision-making tasks.
Human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies suggest that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) contributes to the learned discrimination of threat and safety signals, although its ...precise contribution to these processes remains unclear. One hypothesis is that the vmPFC supports the positive affective processing of safety signals linked to their implicit stress-relieving properties. We set out to test this hypothesis and to examine the specificity of vmPFC responses to safety signal processing versus its high level of ‘default mode’ activity. Sixty participants completed an fMRI conditioning task that involved the generation of a conditioned threat (CS+) and safety (CS-) signal following the completion of a pre-conditioning baseline. Confirming past findings, activation of the vmPFC and other midline cortical and parietal areas – broadly resembling the default mode network – robustly discriminated between the CS- and CS+. However, when adjusting for this network's characteristic ‘baseline’ activity, only a subset of regions, including the vmPFC, was activated by the CS-. Regional selectivity for safety signal processing was confirmed by demonstrating a significant correlation between the magnitude of vmPFC responses and self-rated positive affect evoked by the CS-. Taken together, our current findings confirm a link between human vmPFC activity and the positive affective processing of safety signals. We discuss these findings with regards a broader model of human vmPFC function and its suggested higher-order contribution to emotionally adaptive behavior.
•Human vmPFC is linked to the positive affective processing of safety signals.•vmPFC responses to safety signals can be dissociated from broader ‘default mode network’ activity.•The definition of baseline states is critical in fMRI studies of safety learning.
Preliminary evidence suggests that hoarding disorder (HD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) may show distinct patterns of brain activation during executive performance, although results have ...been inconclusive regarding the specific neural correlates of their differential executive dysfunction. In the current study, we aim to evaluate differences in brain activation between patients with HD, OCD and healthy controls (HCs) during response inhibition, response switching and error processing.
We assessed 17 patients with HD, 18 patients with OCD and 19 HCs. Executive processing was assessed inside a magnetic resonance scanner by means of two variants of a cognitive control protocol (i.e. stop- and switch-signal tasks), which allowed for the assessment of the aforementioned executive domains.
OCD patients performed similar to the HCs, differing only in the number of successful go trials in the switch-signal task. However, they showed an anomalous hyperactivation of the right rostral anterior cingulate cortex during error processing in the switch-signal task. Conversely, HD patients performed worse than OCD and HC participants in both tasks, showing an impulsive-like pattern of response (i.e. shorter reaction time and more commission errors). They also exhibited hyperactivation of the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex during successful response switching and abnormal deactivation of frontal regions during error processing in both tasks.
Our results support that patients with HD and OCD present dissimilar cognitive profiles, supported by distinct neural mechanisms. Specifically, while alterations in HD resemble an impulsive pattern of response, patients with OCD present increased error processing during response conflict protocols.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a clinically heterogeneous condition. Although structural brain alterations have been consistently reported in OCD, their interaction with particular clinical ...subtypes deserves further examination. Among other approaches, a two-group classification in patients with autogenous and reactive obsessions has been proposed. The purpose of the present study was to assess, by means of a voxel-based morphometry analysis, the putative brain structural correlates of this classification scheme in OCD patients. Ninety-five OCD patients and 95 healthy controls were recruited. Patients were divided into autogenous (n = 30) and reactive (n = 65) sub-groups. A structural magnetic resonance image was acquired for each participant and pre-processed with SPM8 software to obtain a volume-modulated gray matter map. Whole-brain and voxel-wise comparisons between the study groups were then performed. In comparison to the autogenous group, reactive patients showed larger gray matter volumes in the right Rolandic operculum. When compared to healthy controls, reactive patients showed larger volumes in the putamen (bilaterally), while autogenous patients showed a smaller left anterior temporal lobe. Also in comparison to healthy controls, the right middle temporal gyrus was smaller in both patient subgroups. Our results suggest that autogenous and reactive obsessions depend on partially dissimilar neural substrates. Our findings provide some neurobiological support for this classification scheme and contribute to unraveling the neurobiological basis of clinical heterogeneity in OCD.
Although deficits in affective processing are a core component of anorexia nervosa (AN), we lack a detailed characterization of the neurobiological underpinnings of emotion regulation impairment in ...AN. Moreover, it remains unclear whether these neural correlates scale with clinical outcomes.
We investigated the neural correlates of negative emotion regulation in a sample of young women receiving day-hospital treatment for AN (n = 21) and healthy controls (n = 21). We aimed to determine whether aberrant brain activation patterns during emotion regulation predicted weight gain following treatment in AN patients and were linked to AN severity. To achieve this, participants completed a cognitive reappraisal paradigm during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Skin conductance response, as well as subjective distress ratings, were recorded to corroborate task engagement.
Compared to controls, patients with AN showed reduced activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) during cognitive reappraisal pFWE<0.05, threshold-free cluster enhancement (TFCE) corrected. Importantly, psycho-physiological interaction analysis revealed reduced functional connectivity between the dlPFC and the amygdala in AN patients during emotion regulation (pFWE<0.05, TFCE corrected), and dlPFC-amygdala uncoupling was associated with emotion regulation deficits (r = -0.511, p = 0.018) and eating disorder severity (r = -0.565, p = .008) in the AN group. Finally, dlPFC activity positively correlated with increases in body mass index (r = 0.471, p = 0.042) and in body fat mass percentage (r = 0.605, p = 0.008) following 12 weeks of treatment.
Taken together, our findings indicate that individuals with AN present altered fronto-amygdalar response during cognitive reappraisal and that this response may serve as a predictor of response to treatment and be linked to clinical severity.
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