Search results for "anterior cingulate cortex"
showing 10 items of 47 documents
Frontocingular Dysfunction in Bulimia Nervosa when Confronted with Disease-specific Stimuli
2011
Objective Bulimia nervosa (BN) is characterized by dysregulation of impulse control, in other words, uncontrolled eating. Functional neuroimaging studies have been sparse and have used variable methodologies. Method Thirteen medication-free female BN patients and 13 female healthy controls were investigated by functional magnetic resonance imaging using a disease-specific food paradigm. Stimuli were rated after the scanning procedure. Results Bulimia nervosa patients showed increased fear ratings and a trend for increased disgust. Magnetic resonance imaging data of 10 BN patients could be analysed. Three BN patients had to be excluded from the analysis because of minimal blood oxygen level …
Extensive migration of young neurons into the infant human frontal lobe
2016
Building the human brain As the brain develops, neurons migrate from zones of proliferation to their final locations, where they begin to build circuits. Paredes et al. have discovered that shortly after birth, a group of neurons that proliferates near the ventricles migrates in chains alongside circulatory vessels into the frontal lobes (see the Perspective by McKenzie and Fishell). Young neurons that migrate postnatally into the anterior cingulate cortex then develop features of inhibitory interneurons. The number of migratory cells decreases over the first 7 months of life, and by 2 years of age, migratory cells are not evident. Any damage during migration, such as hypoxia, may affect th…
Obesity-associated deficits in inhibitory control are phenocopied to mice through gut microbiota changes in one-carbon and aromatic amino acids metab…
2021
Gut: first published.
Spontaneous Cingulate High-Current Spikes Signal Normal and Pathological Pain States
2019
Prominent 7–12 Hz oscillations in frontal cortical networks in rats have been reported. However, the mechanism of generation and the physiological function of this brain rhythm have not yet been clarified. Multichannel extracellular field potentials of the ACC were recorded and analyzed using the current source density method in halothane-anesthetized rats. Spontaneous high-current spikes (HCSs) were localized in the deep part of layer II/III and upper part of layer V of the ACC. The frequency of HCSs in the ACC was 7–12 Hz, with an amplitude of 6.5 ± 0.76 mV/mm(2) and duration of 55.24 ± 2.43 ms. The power density significantly decreased (84.56 ± 6.93%, p < 0.05, t test) after pinching the…
Neurochemical correlates of rapid treatment response to electroconvulsive therapy in patients with major depression
2016
Background: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a highly effective brain stimulation treatment for severe depression. Identifying neurochemical changes linked with ECT may point to biomarkers and predictors of successful treatment response. Methods: We used proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) to measure longitudinal changes in glutamate/glutamine (Glx), creatine (Cre), choline (Cho) and N-acetylaspartate (NAA) in the dorsal (dACC) and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) and bilateral hippocampus in patients receiving ECT scanned at baseline, after the second ECT session and after the ECT treatment series. Patients were compared with demographically similar controls at bas…
Investigating individual stress reactivity: High hair cortisol predicts lower acute stress responses
2020
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…
Inhibition processes are dissociable and lateralized in human prefrontal cortex
2016
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is known to make fundamental contributions to executive functions. However, the precise nature of these contributions is incompletely understood. We focused on a specific executive function, inhibition, the ability to suppress a pre-potent response. Functional imaging and animal studies have studied inhibition. However, there are only few lesion studies, typically reporting discrepant findings. For the first time, we conducted cognitive and neuroimaging investigations on patients with focal unilateral PFC lesions across two widely used inhibitory tasks requiring a verbal response: The Hayling Part 2 and Stroop Colour-Word Tests. We systematically explored the rel…
Pattern analyses reveal separate experience-based fear memories in the human right Amygdala
2017
Learning fear via the experience of contingencies between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) is often assumed to be fundamentally different from learning fear via instructions. An open question is whether fear-related brain areas respond differently to experienced CS–US contingencies than to merely instructed CS–US contingencies. Here, we contrasted two experimental conditions where subjects were instructed to expect the same CS–US contingencies while only one condition was characterized by prior experience with the CS–US contingency. Using multivoxel pattern analysis of fMRI data, we found CS-related neural activation patterns in the right amygdala (but…
Cognitive control in auditory working memory is enhanced in musicians
2010
Musical competence may confer cognitive advantages that extend beyond processing of familiar musical sounds. Behavioural evidence indicates a general enhancement of both working memory and attention in musicians. It is possible that musicians, due to their training, are better able to maintain focus on task-relevant stimuli, a skill which is crucial to working memory. We measured the blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) activation signal in musicians and non-musicians during working memory of musical sounds to determine the relation among performance, musical competence and generally enhanced cognition. All participants easily distinguished the stimuli. We tested the hypothesis that mus…
Feeling addressed! The neural processing of social communicative cues in patients with major depression
2020
Abstract The feeling of being addressed is the first step in a complex processing stream enabling successful social communication. Social impairments are a relevant characteristic of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Here, we investigated a mechanism which—if impaired—might contribute to withdrawal or isolation in MDD, namely, the neural processing of social cues such as body orientation and gesture. During funtional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data acquisition, 33 patients with MDD and 43 healthy control subjects watched video clips of a speaking actor: one version with a gesture accompanying the speech and one without gesture. Videos were filmed simultaneously from two …