0000000000261045
AUTHOR
Giannis Lois
Experimental and methodological factors affecting test-retest reliability of amygdala BOLD responses.
Previous studies reported poor to fair test-retest reliability of amygdala BOLD responses to emotional stimuli. However, these findings are very heterogeneous across and within studies. The present study sought to systematically examine experimental and methodological factors that contribute to this heterogeneity. Forty-six young subjects were scanned twice with a mean test-retest interval of 7 weeks. We compared amygdala reliability across three tasks: A face-matching task, passive viewing of emotional faces, and passive viewing of emotional scenes. We also explored whether extraction of physiological noise can affect the stability of amygdala responses. We assessed test-retest reliability…
Creating sanctioning norms in the lab: the influence of descriptive norms in third-party punishment
ABSTRACTThird-party punishment is a form of peer-to-peer sanctioning that is influenced by descriptive norms. The present study aims to investigate how aggregate peer punishment and the presence of...
Large-scale network functional interactions during distraction and reappraisal in remitted bipolar and unipolar patients.
Objectives The human brain is organized into large-scale networks that dynamically interact with each other. Extensive evidence has shown characteristic changes in certain large-scale networks during transitions from internally directed to externally directed attention. The aim of the present study was to compare these context-dependent network interactions during emotion regulation and to examine potential alterations in remitted unipolar and bipolar disorder patients. Methods We employed a multi-region generalized psychophysiological interactions analysis to quantify connectivity changes during distraction vs reappraisal pair-wise across 90 regions placed throughout the four networks of i…
Brain Functional Effects of Psychopharmacological Treatment in Major Depression: A Focus on Neural Circuitry of Affective Processing
In the last two decades, neuroimaging research has reached a much deeper understanding of the neurobiological underpinnings of major depression (MD) and has converged on functional alterations in limbic and prefrontal neural networks, which are mainly linked to altered emotional processing observed in MD patients. To date, a considerable number of studies have sought to investigate how these neural networks change with pharmacological antidepressant treatment. In the current review, we therefore discuss results from a) pharmacological functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies investigating the effects of selective serotonin or noradrenalin reuptake inhibitors on neural activation…
Altered neural responses to social fairness in bipolar disorder
Highlights • Bipolar disorder is characterized by impaired processing of social fairness. • BD patients exhibit increased rejection of moderate unfairness in Ultimatum Game. • BD patients display decreased response to moderate unfairness in anterior insula. • BD patients deactivate posterior and middle insula in response to unfairness. • Trait impulsivity positively correlated with deactivations in posterior insula.
Investigating individual stress reactivity: High hair cortisol predicts lower acute stress responses
Identifying individual differences in stress reactivity is of particular interest in the context of stress-related disorders and resilience. Previous studies already identified several factors mediating the individual stress response of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA). However, the impact of long-term HPA axis activity on acute stress reactivity remains inconclusive. To investigate associations between long-term HPA axis variation and individual acute stress reactivity, we tested 40 healthy volunteers for affective, endocrine, physiological, and neural reactions to a modified, compact version of the established in-MR stress paradigm ScanSTRESS (ScanSTRESS-C). Hair cortisol con…
Differential association of default mode network connectivity and rumination in healthy individuals and remitted MDD patients
Rumination is associated with increased default-mode network (DMN) activity and functional connectivity (FC) in depressed and healthy individuals. In this study, we sought to examine the relationship between self-reported rumination and resting-state FC in the DMN and cognitive control networks in 25 remitted depressed patients and 25 matched healthy controls using independent component and seed-based analyses. We also explored potential group differences in the global pattern of resting-state FC. Healthy subjects with increased levels of rumination exhibited increased anterior DMN connectivity with the posterior DMN and the dorsal attention network and low connectivity within the anterior …
Honest mistake or perhaps not: The role of descriptive and injunctive norms on the magnitude of dishonesty
Trivial acts of dishonesty are very prevalent in everyday life and have severe economic and societal consequences. The present study aims to examine the role of descriptive and injunctive norms in minor and major dishonesty under ambiguity. We devised a novel experimental design in which rule violations can be the result of honest mistakes or various dishonest processes. In this ambiguous context, we observed a high prevalence of minor rule violations at baseline. In two experiments, exposure to increased peer cheating (i.e., negative descriptive norms) promoted major rule violations, whereas the presence of explicit or subtle rule reminders (i.e., injunctive norms) marginally reduced minor…
Cognitive emotion regulation withstands the stress test: An fMRI study on the effect of acute stress on distraction and reappraisal
Cognitive emotion regulation is a key mechanism for the maintenance of mental health, but may fail, when individuals are exposed to acute stress. To date, it is not well understood whether and to what extent acute stress effects contribute to impairments in emotion regulation capacities as the sparse existing studies have yielded heterogeneous results, indicating that stress timing might be a crucial factor.In the present study, 81 healthy participants underwent either an acute stress task (ScanSTRESS-C; n = 40) or a control condition (n = 41) while lying in the MRI scanner. In the subsequent Cognitive Emotion Regulation Task (CERT), participants were confronted with neutral or negative pic…