Search results for "prefrontal cortex."
showing 10 items of 320 documents
Media multitasking is associated with distractibility and increased prefrontal activity in adolescents and young adults.
2016
The current generation of young people indulges in more media multitasking behavior (e.g., instant messaging while watching videos) in their everyday lives than older generations. Concerns have been raised about how this might affect their attentional functioning, as previous studies have indicated that extensive mediamultitasking in everyday life may be associated with decreased attentional control. In the current study, 149 adolescents and young adults (aged 13-24 years) performed speech-listening and reading tasks that required maintaining attention in the presence of distractor stimuli in the othermodality or dividing attention between two concurrent tasks. Brain activity during task pe…
Gaming is related to enhanced working memory performance and task-related cortical activity
2017
Gaming experience has been suggested to lead to performance enhancements in a wide variety of working memory tasks. Previous studies have, however, mostly focused on adult expert gamers and have not included measurements of both behavioral performance and brain activity. In the current study, 167 adolescents and young adults (aged 13–24 years) with different amounts of gaming experience performed an n-back working memory task with vowels, with the sensory modality of the vowel stream switching between audition and vision at random intervals. We studied the relationship between self-reported daily gaming activity, working memory (n-back) task performance and related brain activity measured u…
FOXP2 expression and gray matter density in the male brains of patients with schizophrenia
2021
Common genetic variants ofFOXP2may contribute to schizophrenia vulnerability, but controversial results have been reported for this proposal. Here we evaluated the potential impact of the commonFOXP2rs2396753 polymorphism in schizophrenia. It was previously reported to be part of a risk haplotype for this disease and to have significant effects on gray matter concentration in the patients. We undertook the first examination into whether rs2396753 affects the brain expression ofFOXP2and a replication study of earlier neuroimaging findings of the influence of this genetic variant on brain structure.FOXP2expression levels were measured in postmortem prefrontal cortex samples of 84 male subject…
Attraction to sexual pheromones and associated odorants in female mice involves activation of the reward system and basolateral amygdala
2005
Adult female mice are innately attracted to non-volatile pheromones contained in male-soiled bedding. In contrast, male-derived volatiles become attractive if associated with non-volatile attractive pheromones, which act as unconditioned stimulus in a case of Pavlovian associative learning. In this work, we study the chemoinvestigatory behaviour of female mice towards volatile and non-volatile chemicals contained in male-soiled bedding, in combination with the analysis of c-fos expression induced by such a behaviour to clarify: (i) which chemosensory systems are involved in the detection of the primary attractive non-volatile pheromone and of the secondarily attractive volatiles; (ii) where…
Chronic social stress inhibits cell proliferation in the adult medial prefrontal cortex: hemispheric asymmetry and reversal by fluoxetine treatment.
2006
Profound neuroplastic changes have been demonstrated in various limbic structures after chronic stress exposure and antidepressant treatment in animal models of mood disorders. Here, we examined in rats the effect of chronic social stress and concomitant antidepressant treatment on cell proliferation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). We also examined possible hemispheric differences. Animals were subjected to 5 weeks of daily social defeat by an aggressive conspecific and received concomitant, daily, oral fluoxetine (10 mg/kg) during the last 4 weeks. Bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) labeling and quantitative stereological techniques were used to evaluate the treatment effects on proliferatio…
Characterization of oscillatory changes in hippocampus and amygdala after deep brain stimulation of the infralimbic prefrontal cortex
2016
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a new investigational therapy that has generated positive results in refractory depression. Although the neurochemical and behavioral effects of DBS have been examined, less attention has been paid to the influence of DBS on the network dynamics between different brain areas, which could contribute to its therapeutic effects. Herein, we set out to identify the effects of 1 h DBS in the infralimbic cortex (IL) on the oscillatory network dynamics between hippocampus and basolateral amygdala (BLA), two regions implicated in depression and its treatment. Urethane-anesthetized rats with bilaterally implanted electrodes in the IL were exposed to 1 h constant stimul…
The default mode network and the working memory network are not anti-correlated during all phases of a working memory task
2015
INTRODUCTION:\ud \ud The default mode network and the working memory network are known to be anti-correlated during sustained cognitive processing, in a load-dependent manner. We hypothesized that functional connectivity among nodes of the two networks could be dynamically modulated by task phases across time.\ud METHODS:\ud \ud To address the dynamic links between default mode network and the working memory network, we used a delayed visuo-spatial working memory paradigm, which allowed us to separate three different phases of working memory (encoding, maintenance, and retrieval), and analyzed the functional connectivity during each phase within and between the default mode network and the …
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…
Distinct patterns of Fos immunoreactivity in striatum and hippocampus induced by different kinds of novelty in mice.
2010
In this study the immediate-early gene Fos was used to investigate the response to different novel stimuli in a wide array of brain regions including the hippocampus, the rhinal cortex, the frontal cortex and different components of the striatal complex. Independent groups of CD-1 mice were exposed to three different novelty conditions: (1) novel environment (empty open field); (2) complex novel environment (i.e. open field containing objects); and (3) identity-based detection of novel objects. We observed that a complex novel environment and a knowledge-based novelty modulated Fos levels in both the dorsal and the ventral components of the striatum, while Fos immunoreactivity in the medial…
Spontaneous confabulation, temporal context confusion and reality monitoring: a study of three patients with anterior communicating artery aneurysms.
2010
AbstractSpontaneous confabulation involves the production of false or distorted memories, and is commonly associated with ventromedial prefrontal damage. One influential theory proposes that the critical deficit is a failure to suppress currently irrelevant memory traces that intrude into ongoing thinking (Schnider & Ptak, 1999). In this study, we report experimental investigations with three spontaneously confabulating patients aimed at exploring this account. Using Schnider and Ptak’s (1999) continuous recognition paradigm, we replicated their experimental results with our patients. However, our data suggest that the critical impairment might be more generalized than a failure to supp…