Neural correlates of consciousness

The present work addresses an analysis of the phenomena of inattention and hyperactivity, which are contemporarily associated with the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, currently prevalent in psychiatry. Our investigation primarily focused on understanding the temporal dimension of the world experience in question regarding the phenomena of inattention and hyperactivity. Such an experience is characterized by a particular and predominantly dissonant rhythm in relation to the temporality of more direct everyday demands. We argue that a desynchronization between the patient's subjective temporality and the temporal processes of their environment, based on the fact that the relationship with time is a determinant in human experience, would be one of the foundations of the phenomenon of inattention and hyperactivity. Lastly, we also propose a reflection on how the prevailing socio-historical circumstances and their temporal regimes intensify and delineate this phenomenon in a particular way.

We propose that semantic retrieval constitutes a proto-conscious substrate, a layer of cognitive activity in which semantic structures are locally reactivated and integrated without yet achieving global ignition. Building on the strengths and limitations of current frameworks-Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW), Integrated Information Theory (IIT), and predictive processing-we argue that the retrieval and recombination of semantic memory play a pivotal role in the transition from unconscious processing to conscious awareness. We formalize this idea within a language-based framework, inspired by retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architectures in machine learning. This framework leads to testable predictions regarding neural signatures of protoconscious states, measurable thresholds of integration, and dissociations between semantic activation and conscious access. We outline experimental paradigms (EEG/fMRI decoding, TMS perturbation, computational simulations) and translational applications for disorders of consciousness and brain-computer interfaces. RES positions semantic retrieval as the missing substrate in contemporary theories of consciousness emergence.

Background: Reasoning biases such as the jumping-to-conclusions bias (JTC) are thought to contribute to delusions. Interventions targeting these biases such as metacognitive training (MCT) may improve delusions. So far, it is not clear whether JTC depends on dopaminergic reward areas that constitute the main action locus of antipsychotic drugs, or on additional cortical areas. The present study aimed to investigate fMRI activation and functional connectivity patterns underlying JTC, and their changes following MCT, in patients with delusions. Methods: Participants were 25 healthy individuals and 26 patients with current delusions who were either medication-free or on stable medication without sufficient response. We assessed (1) BOLD activity in the taskpositive (TPN), task-negative (TNN), and subcortical reward network (RN); (2) Psychophysiological interactions (PPI) of peak activation areas. Results: Presence of JTC (irrespective of group) was associated with lower RN activity during conclusion events, and with increased effective connectivity between TPN and TNN during draw events. Following MCT, changes were observed in TPN activity and in effective connectivity of inferior parietal cortex (part of the TPN) with all three target networks. Conclusion: JTC is associated not only with reward system areas that constitute the main target of antipsychotic drugs, but also with cortical areas, particularly of the TPN.

Reasoning biases such as the jumping-to-conclusions bias (JTC) are thought to contribute to delusions. Interventions targeting these biases such as metacognitive training (MCT) may improve delusions. So far, it is not clear whether JTC depends on dopaminergic reward areas that constitute the main action locus of antipsychotic drugs, or on additional cortical areas. The present study aimed to investigate fMRI activation and functional connectivity patterns underlying JTC, and their changes following MCT, in patients with delusions. Participants were 25 healthy individuals and 26 patients with current delusions who were either medication-free or on stable medication without sufficient response. We assessed (1) BOLD activity in the task-positive (TPN), task-negative (TNN), and subcortical reward network (RN); (2) Psychophysiological interactions (PPI) of peak activation areas. Presence of JTC (irrespective of group) was associated with lower RN activity during conclusion events, and wi...

From a behavioral as well as neurobiological point of view, sleep and consciousness are intimately connected. A better understanding of sleep cycles and sleep architecture of patients suffering from disorders of consciousness (DOC) might therefore improve the clinical care for these patients as well as our understanding of the neural correlations of consciousness. Defining sleep in severely brain-injured patients is however problematic as both their electrophysiological and sleep patterns differ in many ways from healthy individuals. This paper discusses the concepts involved in the study of sleep of patients suffering from DOC and critically assesses the applicability of standard sleep criteria in these patients. The available literature on comatose and vegetative states as well as that on locked-in and related states following traumatic or non-traumatic severe brain injury will be reviewed. A wide spectrum of sleep disturbances ranging from almost normal patterns to severe loss and architecture disorganization are reported in cases of DOC and some patterns correlate with diagnosis and prognosis. At the present time the interactions of sleep and consciousness in brain-injured patients are a little studied subject but, the authors suggest, a potentially very interesting field of research.

Background: 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) is caused by a microdeletion on chromosome 22q11.2 and associated with an increased risk to develop psychosis. The gene coding for catechol-O-methyl-transferase (COMT) is located at the deleted region, resulting in disrupted dopaminergic neurotransmission in 22q11DS, which may contribute to the increased vulnerability for psychosis. A dysfunctional motivational reward system is considered one of the salient features in psychosis and thought to be related to abnormal dopaminergic neurotransmission. The functional anatomy of the brain reward circuitry has not yet been investigated in 22q11DS. Methods: This study aims to investigate neural activity during anticipation of reward and loss in adult patients with 22q11DS. We measured blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) activity in 16 patients with 22q11DS and 12 healthy controls during a monetary incentive delay task using a 3T Philips Intera MRI system. Data were analysed using SPM8. Results: During anticipation of reward, the 22q11DS group alone displayed significant activation in bilateral middle frontal and temporal brain regions. Compared to healthy controls, significantly less activation in bilateral cingulate gyrus extending to premotor, primary motor and somatosensory areas was found. During anticipation of loss, the 22q11DS group displayed activity in the left middle frontal gyrus and anterior cingulate cortex, and relative to controls, they showed reduced brain activation in bilateral (pre)cuneus and left posterior cingulate. Within the 22q11DS group, COMT Val hemizygotes displayed more activation compared to Met hemizygotes in right posterior cingulate and bilateral parietal regions during anticipation of reward. During anticipation of loss, COMT Met hemizygotes compared to Val hemizygotes showed more activation in bilateral insula, striatum and left anterior cingulate. Conclusions: This is the first study to investigate reward processing in 22q11DS. Our preliminary results suggest that people with 22q11DS engage a fronto-temporal neural network. Compared to healthy controls, people with 22q11DS primarily displayed reduced activity in medial frontal regions during reward anticipation. COMT hemizygosity affects responsivity of the reward system in this condition. Alterations in reward processing partly underlain by the dopamine system may play a role in susceptibility for psychosis in 22q11DS.

The mechanisms that support infant action processing are thought to be involved in the development of later social cognition. While a growing body of research demonstrates longitudinal links between action processing and explicit theory of mind (TOM), it remains unclear why this link emerges in some measures of action encoding and not others. In this paper, we recruit neural measures as a unique lens into which aspects of human infant action processing (i.e., action encoding and action execution; age 7 months) are related to preschool TOM (age 3 years; n = 31). We test whether individual differences in recruiting the sensorimotor system or attention processes during action encoding predict individual differences in TOM. Results indicate that reduced occipital alpha during action encoding predicts TOM at age 3. This finding converges with behavioral work and suggests that attentional processes involved in action encoding may support TOM. We also test whether neural processing during ...

The brain's resting-state has attracted considerable interest in recent years, but currently little is known either about typical experience during the resting-state or about whether there are inter-individual differences in resting-state phenomenology. We used descriptive experience sampling (DES) in an attempt to apprehend high fidelity glimpses of the inner experience of five participants in an extended fMRI study. Results showed that the inner experiences and the neural activation patterns (as quantified by amplitude of low frequency fluctuations analysis) of the five participants were largely consistent across time, suggesting that our extended-duration scanner sessions were broadly similar to typical resting-state sessions. However, there were very large individual differences in inner phenomena, suggesting that the resting-state itself may differ substantially from one participant to the next. We describe these individual differences in experiential characteristics and display some typical moments of restingstate experience. We also show that retrospective characterizations of phenomena can often be very different from moment-by-moment reports. We discuss implications for the assessment of inner experience in neuroimaging studies more generally, concluding that it may be possible to use fMRI to investigate neural correlates of phenomena apprehended in high fidelity.

It is a unique human ability to regulate negative thoughts and feelings. Two well-investigated emotion-regulation strategies (ERSs), cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, are associated with overlapping prefrontal neural correlates, but differ temporally during the emotion-generation process. Although functional imaging studies have mainly investigated these ERS as a reaction to an emotion-inducing event, the intention to regulate upcoming negative emotions might already be associated with differences in neural activity. Hence, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was recorded in 42 participants while they completed an emotion-regulation paradigm. During this task, participants were instructed to proactively prepare to use a specific ERS knowing that a negative, high-arousing image would appear after the preparation period. As expected, the results demonstrated prefrontal and parietal activation while participants were suppressing or reappraising their emotions (family-wise error (FWE)-corrected). The intention to suppress emotions was associated with increased activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral putamen, pre-supplementary motor area and right supramarginal gyrus (FWE-corrected). This enhanced proactive inhibitory control: (i) predicted decreased motoric activity during the actual suppression of emotional expressions and (2) trended toward a significant association with how successfully participants suppressed their emotions. However, neural correlates of preparatory control for cognitive reappraisal were not observed, possibly because contextual cues about the upcoming emotional stimulus are necessary to proactively start to cognitively reinterpret the situation.

The neural correlates of successful retrieval on tests of word stem recall and recognition memory were compared. In the recall test, subjects viewed word stems, half of which were associated with studied items and half with unstudied items, and for each stem attempted to recall a corresponding study word. In the recognition test, old/new judgments were made on old and new words. The neural correlates of successful retrieval were identified by contrasting activity elicited by correctly endorsed test items. Old > new effects common to the two tasks were found in medial and lateral parietal and right entorhinal cortex. Common new > old effects were identified in medial and left frontal cortex, and left anterior intra-parietal sulcus. Greater old > new effects were evident for cued recall in inferior parietal regions abutting those demonstrating common effects, whereas larger new > old effects were found for recall in left frontal cortex and the anterior cingulate. New > old effects were also found for the recall task in right lateral anterior prefrontal cortex, where they were accompanied by old > new effects during recognition. It is concluded that successful recall and recognition are associated with enhanced activity in a common set of recollection-sensitive parietal regions, and that the greater activation in these regions during recall reflects the greater dependence of that task on recollection. Larger new > old effects during recall are interpreted as reflections of the greater opportunity for iterative retrieval attempts when retrieval cues are partial rather than copy cues.

A decline in instrumental activities of daily living has been described as the earliest functional deficit in patients with neurodegenerative disease. It embraces specific competencies such as: "recalling the date and telephone calls, orienting to new places, remembering the location of objects at home, understanding conversation and the plot of a movie, keeping belongings in order, doing mental calculations and handling money, remembering appointments and shopping lists and performing clerical work". Since changes in instrumental daily living activities are one of the descriptors of behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia, we decided to investigate the neural correlates of a reduced awareness in this specific domain in twenty-three consecutive behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia patients. Gray matter volume changes associated with a reduced awareness for the instrumental domain, assessed using a validated caregiver-patient discrepancy questionnaire, were examined. Interestingly, we found disabilities in instrumental daily living activities and a reduced awareness of these to be related to medial prefrontal cortex atrophy, where the mid-cingulate cortices, dorsal anterior insula and cuneous play an important role. Importantly, if the executive system does not function correctly, the comparator mechanism of action self-monitoring does not detect mismatches between the current and previous performance states stored in the personal database, and produces a reduced awareness for the instrumental domain.

Mind-wandering is a frequent, daily mental activity, experienced in unique ways in each person. Yet neuroimaging evidence relating mind-wandering to brain activity, for example in the default mode network (DMN), has relied on population-rather than individual-based inferences due to limited within-individual sampling. Here, three densely-sampled individuals each reported hundreds of mind-wandering episodes while undergoing multi-session functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found reliable associations between mind-wandering and DMN activation when estimating brain networks within individuals using precision functional mapping. However, the timing of spontaneous DMN activity relative to subjective reports, and the networks beyond DMN that were activated and deactivated during mind-wandering, were distinct across individuals. Connectome-based predictive modeling further revealed idiosyncratic, whole-brain functional connectivity patterns that consistently predicted mind-wandering within individuals but did not fully generalize across individuals. Predictive models of mind-wandering and attention that were derived from larger-scale neuroimaging datasets largely failed when applied to densely-sampled individuals, further highlighting the need for personalized models. Our work offers novel evidence for both conserved and variable neural representations of self-reported mind-wandering in different individuals. The previously-unrecognized inter-individual variations reported here underscore the broader scientific value and potential clinical utility of idiographic approaches to brain-experience associations.

The ability to delay gratification in childhood has been linked to positive outcomes in adolescence and adulthood. Here we examine a subsample of participants from a seminal longitudinal study of self-control throughout a subject's life span. Self-control, first studied in children at age 4 years, is now re-examined 40 years later, on a task that required control over the contents of working memory. We examine whether patterns of brain activation on this task can reliably distinguish participants with consistently low and high self-control abilities (low versus high delayers). We find that low delayers recruit significantly higherdimensional neural networks when performing the task compared with high delayers. High delayers are also more homogeneous as a group in their neural patterns compared with low delayers. From these brain patterns, we can predict with 71% accuracy, whether a participant is a high or low delayer. The present results suggest that dimensionality of neural networks is a biological predictor of self-control abilities.

IMPORTANCE Differences in neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics are important considerations in understanding differences in risk vs resilience in mental health. Neighborhood disadvantage is associated with alterations in the function and structure of threat neurocircuitry. OBJECTIVE To investigate associations of neighborhood disadvantage with white and gray matter and neural reactivity to positive and negative stimuli in the context of trauma exposure. In this cross-sectional study, survivors of trauma who completed sociodemographic and posttraumatic symptom assessments and neuroimaging were recruited as part of the Advancing Understanding of Recovery After Trauma (AURORA) study

We explored the neural mechanisms allowing humans to report the subjective onset times of conscious events. Magnetoencephalographic recordings of neural oscillations were obtained while human subjects introspected the timing of sensory, intentional, and motor events during a forced choice task. Brain activity was reconstructed with high spatio-temporal resolution. Event-time introspection was associated with specific neural activity at the time of subjective event onset which was spatially distinct from activity induced by the event itself. Different brain regions were selectively recruited for introspection of different event types, e.g., the bilateral angular gyrus for introspection of intention. Our results suggest that event-time introspection engages specific neural networks to assess the contents of consciousness. Subjective event times should therefore be interpreted as the result of complex interactions between introspection and experience networks, rather than as direct reproduction of the individual's conscious state or as a mere posthoc interpretation.

Objective-Interoception is the perception of one's internal physiological, sensory, and emotional status. Extensive evidence supports a link between interoception and subjective experience. An altered ability to monitor or modulate interoception as it relates to subjective experience may provide a mechanistic explanation for the development of some forms of psychiatric illness. Methods-We investigated which neural networks are activated when anticipating a change in affective (and thus interoceptive) state, which we term "affective set-shifting", in women with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to intimate partner violence, and in non-traumatized healthy volunteers. Results-Although both groups activated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during affective setshifting, the PTSD group showed significantly less activation in the right anterior insula than did the controls. Conclusions-These findings may suggest that although individuals with PTSD are cognitively aware of the impending shift in interoceptive state, they fail to appropriately activate neural circuitry involved in modulating interoceptive responses.

Objective-Interoception is the perception of one's internal physiological, sensory, and emotional status. Extensive evidence supports a link between interoception and subjective experience. An altered ability to monitor or modulate interoception as it relates to subjective experience may provide a mechanistic explanation for the development of some forms of psychiatric illness. Methods-We investigated which neural networks are activated when anticipating a change in affective (and thus interoceptive) state, which we term "affective set-shifting", in women with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to intimate partner violence, and in non-traumatized healthy volunteers. Results-Although both groups activated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during affective setshifting, the PTSD group showed significantly less activation in the right anterior insula than did the controls. Conclusions-These findings may suggest that although individuals with PTSD are cognitively aware of the impending shift in interoceptive state, they fail to appropriately activate neural circuitry involved in modulating interoceptive responses.

Background: In spite of many similarities in the psychopathology of anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN), the 2 groups seem to differ in terms of body image disturbances. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to compare neuronal correlates of viewing photographs of one's own body and another woman's body in patients with these forms of eating disorders as well as controls. Methods: We performed functional magnetic resonance imaging while women with AN (n = 13), BN (n = 15) and healthy controls (n = 27) viewed 16 standardized pictures of their own body and another woman's body, taken while the participants were wearing a bikini. Results: When viewing their own body, participants with AN and BN showed reduced activity in the inferior parietal lobule compared with healthy women. In response to looking at another woman's body, participants with AN had higher amygdala activity than did those in the BN and control groups. Limitations: The generalizability of the results is limited by the small sample size. Conclusion: Our data suggest decreased attentional processes in AN and BN toward one's own body, possibly reflecting body-related avoidance behaviour. Enhanced limbic activity elicited by looking at another woman's body in participants with AN might be a neural correlate of stronger emotional activation and enhanced vigilance, possibly resulting from social comparison processes. Our study reveals hints about body image-associated alterations in brain activity, which seem to be more pronounced among women with AN than among those with BN.

Historically, the scientific and medical communities have taken a corticocentric view on consciousness, emphasizing the need for a cortex in producing the conscious experience. The preserved consciousness observed in hydranencephalic children and decorticated rats suggests that some form of consciousness may be produced by a subcortical network. The brainstem, a phylogenetically ancient and conserved brain structure, could serve as the major integrative machinery to produce this form of consciousness, which is called affective consciousness-the evolutionary antecedent to the reflective consciousness that allows humans to reflect on their experiences. The functional convergence of the brainstem with the amygdala, motor system, and other subcortical structures provides the necessary architecture to support an affective state of consciousness by which instinctual-emotional goal-directed behavior is produced. This subcortical system operates by what Merker ( ) calls the selection triangle-an interface between bodily actions (action selection), the world (target selection), and personal motivationto produce action through integration. By this model, it is possible that consciousness may persist in the absence of a cortex, such as in the persistent vegetative state. Because of this, it is necessary to establish that multiple forms of consciousness exist and to distinguish between affective and reflective consciousness, because such a distinction would have tremendous ethical implications in the conventional medical treatment of those with disorders of consciousness.

Historically, the scientific and medical communities have taken a corticocentric view on consciousness, emphasizing the need for a cortex in producing the conscious experience. The preserved consciousness observed in hydranencephalic children and decorticated rats suggests that some form of consciousness may be produced by a subcortical network. The brainstem, a phylogenetically ancient and conserved brain structure, could serve as the major integrative machinery to produce this form of consciousness, which is called affective consciousness—the evolutionary antecedent to the reflective consciousness that allows humans to reflect on their experiences. The functional convergence of the brainstem with the amygdala, motor system, and other subcortical structures provides the necessary architecture to support an affective state of consciousness by which instinctual-emotional goal-directed behavior is produced. This subcortical system operates by what Merker (2007) calls the selection tri...

Electrophysiology and neuroimaging provide conflicting evidence for the neural contributions to target detection. Scalp electroencephalography (EEG) studies localize the P3b event-related potential component mainly to parietal cortex, whereas neuroimaging studies report activations in both frontal and parietal cortices. We addressed this discrepancy by examining the sources that generate the target-detection process using electrocorticography (ECoG). We recorded ECoG activity from cortex in 14 patients undergoing epilepsy monitoring, as they performed an auditory or visual target-detection task. We examined target-related responses in 2 domains: high frequency band (HFB) activity and the P3b. Across tasks, we observed a greater proportion of electrodes that showed target-specific HFB power relative to P3b over frontal cortex, but their proportions over parietal cortex were comparable. Notably, there was minimal overlap in the electrodes that showed targetspecific HFB and P3b activity. These results revealed that the target-detection process is characterized by at least 2 different neural markers with distinct cortical distributions. Our findings suggest that separate neural mechanisms are driving the differential patterns of activity observed in scalp EEG and neuroimaging studies, with the P3b reflecting EEG findings and HFB activity reflecting neuroimaging findings, highlighting the notion that target detection is not a unitary phenomenon.

Recent public and academic commentary has framed subjective experience (qualia) as increasingly tractable to scientific modeling. Through advances in neural imaging and predictive processing frameworks, some researchers and communicators now claim that formerly intractable philosophical questions-particularly the "hard problem" of consciousness-are either solvable or fundamentally misconstrued. This paper offers a structural critique of that framing. I argue that the perceived progress results not from genuine resolution, but from epistemic compression: the substitution of structural correlates for the phenomena they are meant to clarify. Using Chalmers' and Nagel's original formulations as a baseline, I show that recent neurocognitive models often fail to preserve the first-person referential integrity of experience, and instead collapse epistemological problems into computational analogues. This collapse is not a solution but a form of recursive self-masking-one that, if left unexamined, may hinder rather than advance any rigorous science of consciousness.

Objectives: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) may be adopted as a complementary tool for bedside observation in the disorders of consciousness (DOC). However, the diagnostic value of this technique is still debated because of the lack of accuracy in determining levels of consciousness within a single patient. Recently, Giacino and colleagues (2014) hypothesized that a longitudinal fMRI evaluation may provide a more informative assessment in the detection of residual awareness. The aim of this study was to measure the correspondence between clinically defined level of awareness and neural responses within a single DOC patient. Methods: We used a follow-up fMRI design in combination with a passive speech-processing task. Patient’s consciousness was measured through time by using the Coma Recovery Scale. Results: The patient progressed from a vegetative state (VS) to a minimally conscious state (MCS). Patient’s task-related neural responses mirrored the clinical change from ...

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with information-processing defi cits and a reduction of selective attention, along with hyperarousal and hyperreactivity to threat-and emotion-related stimuli. PTSD may involve an enhancement in automatic processing and an inability to inhibit automatic processing when required. The predominant neurophysiological model of PTSD has focused on medial prefrontal disruptions during the processing of fear-related stimuli and does not include potential alterations in the explicit inhibitory control of automatic responding. We investigated executive inhibitory control in PTSD during an emotionally neutral (go/no go) response inhibition task in individuals with PTSD (n = 23) and matched healthy controls (n = 23) using functional magnetic resonance imaging. PTSD was associated with diminished inhibitory control and reduced activation of a cortical inhibitory network (particularly right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex), as well as an increase in areas associated with sensory processing (somatosensory and visual cortices) and increased inhibitory task demand (striatum). These fi ndings are consistent with diminished executive inhibitory control in PTSD and may refl ect increased stimulus processing, which undermines cortical control mechanisms.

Prior research has shown that perceived social isolation (loneliness) motivates people to attend to and connect with others but to do so in a self-protective and paradoxically self-defeating fashion. Although recent research has shed light on the neural correlates of social perception, cooperation, empathy, rejection, and love, little is known about how individual differences in loneliness relate to neural responses to social and emotional stimuli. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that there are at least two neural mechanisms differentiating social perception in lonely and nonlonely young adults. For pleasant depictions, lonely individuals appear to be less rewarded by social stimuli, as evidenced by weaker activation of the ventral striatum to pictures of people than of objects, whereas nonlonely individuals showed stronger activation of the ventral striatum to pictures of people than of objects. For unpleasant depictions, lonely individuals were characterized b...

Language influences how we process information from multiple domains. Thus, working in first (L1) or second language (L2) can modulate bilinguals’ performance on basic activities, such as visual search, decision-making, or reading. However, few studies have explored the role of L1 and L2 processing during an essential ability, such as Prospective Memory (PM). This type of memory allows us to set intentions to perform in the future (e.g., to attend an appointment). Thus, this is a novel study that allows us to explore the influence of bilingual language processing on certain cognitive abilities, which have not been deeply studied yet, such as the recall of future intentions. Thereby, this study aimed to explore the neural and behavioural correlates of bilinguals during L1 and L2 processing in a PM task where participants had to carry out an ongoing task while recovering a prospective intention given a PM cue. Importantly, the nature of the PM cue (focal or non-focal) varied the monit...

Early traumatization and additional posttraumatic stress disorder are frequent in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). The purpose of this study was to investigate neural correlates of traumatic memory in BPD with and without posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Methods: We studied 12 traumatized female patients BPD, 6 of them with and 6 without PTSD. According to an autobiographical interview key words (cues) were defined for traumatic and for negative but nontraumatic episodes. In a block-designed fMRI task patients recalled these episodes. Contrasts between trauma condition and nontrauma condition were analyzed. Results: Analyses for all subjects revealed activation of orbitofrontal cortex areas in both hemispheres, anterior temporal lobes, and occipital areas. In the subgroup without PTSD, activation of orbitofrontal cortex on both sides and Broca's area predominated. In the subgroup with additional PTSD, we observed right more than left activation of anterior temporal lobes, mesiotemporal areas, amygdala, posterior cingulate gyrus, occipital areas, and cerebellum. Conclusions: Dependent on absence or presence of additional PTSD different neural networks seem to be involved in the traumatic memory of patients with BPD.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) are highly prevalent and closely related disorders. Affected individuals often exhibit substantially overlapping symptomatology – a major challenge for differential diagnosis in both military and civilian contexts. According to our symptom assessment, the PTSD group exhibited comparable levels of concussion symptoms and severity to the mTBI group. An objective and reliable system to uncover the key neural signatures differentiating these disorders would be an important step towards translational and applied clinical use. Here we explore use of MEG (magnetoencephalography)-multivariate statistical learning analysis in identifying the neural features for differential PTSD/mTBI characterisation. Resting state MEG-derived regional neural activity and coherence (or functional connectivity) across seven canonical neural oscillation frequencies (delta to high gamma) were used. The selected features were consistent...

A central observation in the recognition memory literature is that neural processes occurring during encoding of stimuli are predictive of their later recognition. Compared to items that are later forgotten, encoding of correctly recognised items has been associated with greater amplitude between 400 ms and 800 ms post stimulus onset across centro-parietal sites (the difference-due-to-memory ERP effect), increased EEG power in the theta and gamma frequency bands and decreased EEG power in the alpha and beta bands, and increased theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling. Importantly, theories of encoding based on these findings imply that these effects should be domain-general. In this pre-registered study, we tested this assumption by exploring neural correlates of successful encoding in learning of novel names for novel concepts. Following the previous studies, we used three different measures of neural activity, ERPs, time-frequency representations of power, and phase-amplitude couplin...

In social interactions, strategic uncertainty arises when the outcome of one's choice depends on the choices of others. An important question is whether strategic uncertainty can be resolved by assessing subjective probabilities to the counterparts' behavior, as if playing against nature, and thus transforming the strategic interaction into a risky (individual) situation. By means of functional magnetic resonance imaging with human participants we tested the hypothesis that choices under strategic uncertainty are supported by the neural circuits mediating choices under individual risk and deliberation in social settings (i.e. strategic thinking). Participants were confronted with risky lotteries and two types of coordination games requiring different degrees of strategic thinking of the kind 'I think that you think that I think etc.' We found that the brain network mediating risk during lotteries (anterior insula, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and parietal cortex) is...

Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to exposure to abuse and neglect during childhood is associated with particularly severe and persistent deleterious outcomes. Amygdala hyperreactivity has been observed in childhood trauma survivors and implicated in symptoms of PTSD. Objective: The neuropeptide oxytocin holds promise as a potential treatment for PTSD due to its ability to attenuate amygdala response to threat cues. However, the effect of oxytocin on amygdala reactivity in individuals with childhood trauma-related PTSD has not been investigated. Method: We employed a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled crossover design to examine the effects of intranasal oxytocin (24 IU) versus placebo on amygdala reactivity to fearful faces among childhood-trauma exposed individuals with PTSD (n = 17) and without PTSD (control group; n = 16). Results: Region-of-interest based amygdala fMRI signal magnitude did not differ by group, drug, or group x drug interaction. Self-report of childhood trauma exposure severity was negatively associated with the oxytocin-related change in left amygdala response in the PTSD group, but not in the control group. Supplementary and exploratory whole-brain analyses conducted separately in each group revealed that left amygdala reactivity to fearful faces was absent on placebo but increased on oxytocin in the control group. The PTSD group showed right amygdala activation to fearful faces in both the oxytocin and placebo conditions, but the left amygdala response observed in the placebo condition was diminished on oxytocin. Conclusions: Findings extend the literature pertaining to the potential for oxytocin to attenuate neural correlates of PTSD to a childhood trauma-related PTSD sample. El impacto de la oxitocina en los correlatos neurales del procesamiento de las caras de miedo en tept relacionado con trauma infantil Antecedentes: El trastorno de Estrés Postraumático (TEPT) relacionado con exposición a abuso y negligencia durante la infancia se asocia con consecuencias deletéreas particularmente persistentes y severas. Se ha observado una hiperreactividad de la amígdala en sobrevivientes de trauma infantil y también se ha implicado en los síntomas de TEPT. Objetivo: El neuropéptido oxitocina es prometedor como un potencial tratamiento para el TEPT debido a su habilidad de atenuar la respuesta de la amígdala frente a señales de amenaza. Sin embargo, el efecto de la oxitocina en la reactividad de la amígdala en individuos con TEPT relacionado a trauma infantil no ha sido investigado. Método: Empleamos un diseño doble ciego, aleatorizado, cruzado placebo-control para examinar los efectos de la oxitocina intranasal (24 IU) versus placebo en la reactividad de la amígdala a las caras de miedo entre individuos expuestos a trauma infantil con TEPT (n=17) y sin TEPT (grupo control; n=16). Resultados: La magnitud de la señal por IRMf de la amígdala basada en la región de interés no difirió por grupo, droga, o interacción droga x grupo. El auto-reporte de la severidad de la exposición a trauma infantil se asoció negativamente con el cambio asociado a oxitocina en la respuesta de la amígdala izquierda en el grupo con TEPT, pero no en el grupo control. Los análisis suplementarios de todo el cerebro revelaron que la reactividad de la amígdala izquierda a caras de miedo estuvo ausente con placebo, pero aumentó con la oxitocina en el grupo control. El grupo con TEPT mostró una activación de la amígdala derecha a caras de miedo en ambas condiciones, con oxitocina y con placebo, pero la respuesta de la amígdala izquierda observada en la condición de placebo estuvo disminuida con la oxitocina. Conclusiones: Los hallazgos amplían la literatura sobre el potencial de la oxitocina para atenuar los correlatos neurales del TEPT a una muestra de TEPT relacionado con trauma infantil.

Recollection of emotional autobiographical memories (AMs) is important to healthy cognitive and affective functioning 1 -remembering positive AMs is associated with increased personal well-being and self-esteem 2 , whereas remembering and ruminating on negative AMs may lead to affective disorders 3 . Although significant progress has been made in understanding the brain mechanisms underlying AM retrieval in general (reviewed in 4, 5 ), less is known about the effect of emotion on the subjective re-experience of AMs and the associated neural correlates. This is in part due to the fact that, unlike the investigations of the emotion effect on memory for laboratory-based microevents (reviewed in 6, 7-9 ), often times AM studies do not have a clear focus on the emotional aspects of remembering personal events (but see 10 ). Here, we present a protocol that allows investigation of the neural correlates of recollecting emotional AMs using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Cues for these memories are collected prior to scanning by means of an autobiographical memory questionnaire (AMQ), therefore allowing for proper selection of emotional AMs based on their phenomenological properties (i.e., intensity, vividness, personal significance). This protocol can be used in healthy and clinical populations alike.

Experimental approaches in neuroeconomics generally involve monetary utility. Utility in the health domain is relevant in diabetes because constant daily life decisions are critical for self-consequential long-term outcomes. We used fMRI to investigate self-consequent decision-making in the health and economic domains in Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and controls (N = 50). We focused on two critical phases of decision-making: Investment and Feedback (Positive or Negative). Patients showed larger BOLD activation of limbic, and reward/dopaminergic regions in particular in the health trust game. Importantly, the worse the trajectory of metabolic control (increasing HbA1C), the higher the BOLD activity in regions of the interoceptive saliency network. This was manifested by positive correlations between brain activity during investment in anterior cingulate cortex and insula and HbA1c blood level progression. We conclude that the neural correlates of healthconsequent decision-making domain involve limbic and reward related dopaminergic regions in Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus. Furthermore, the temporal trajectory of HbA1C blood levels is correlated with neural risk processing in the saliency network. Evidence for differential risk processing in the health versus the neuroeconomic context, and the discovery of a role for the saliency interoceptive network in metabolic control trajectories suggests a new perspective on the development of personalized interventions.

Recent studies with younger adults have shown that performance feedback can serve as a reward, and it elicits reward-related brain activations. This study investigated whether performance feedback is processed similarly in younger and older adults and whether there are differential aging effects for positive and negative performance feedback. We used event-related fMRI in a choice reaction-time task and provided performance feedback after each trial. Although younger and older adults differed in task-related activation, they showed comparable reward-related activation. Positive performance feedback elicited the strongest striatal and amygdala activation, which was reflected behaviorally in slightly faster reaction times. These results suggest that performance feedback serves as a reward in both younger and older adults.

Dermal fibroblasts (dFBs) are an essential component of skin; they not only produce and organize the extracellular matrix of the dermis, but also are essential for wound healing, hair growth, fibrosis and defense against infection. Fibroblast heterogeneity has long been recognized in mouse and human skin, but the cellular hierarchy and mechanisms governing fibroblast heterogeneity are incompletely understood. Here, we used single-cell RNAsequencing to study how cellular heterogeneity of murine skin is turned at the transcriptional level during post-natal periods using single cells isolated from the skin of new born (P1), young (3 weeks) and adult (2 month) mice. Unbiased clustering of >10,000 single-cell transcriptomes revealed 29 distinct population of the skin. Within these clusters, Pdgfra clearly marked 13 dFB clusters, which were then re-clustered into 23 dFB clusters. Pseudotime analyses of these dFB clusters identified a Pdgfra + CD24 hi Thy1 lo Sca1 lo progenitor population that was highly abundant in neonatal skin early in life but declined in adulthood. Pseudotime analyses revealed that this progenitor population gave rise to several FB subtypes, including dermal papillary FBs, reticular FBs that produce high levels of type1 collagen, adipocytes that produce antimicrobial peptide Camp as well as the interstitial reticular FB that are enriched with inflammatory gene signature during post-natal development. The ability of this progenitor population to commit to collagen 1 producing reticular dFB and to differentiate into adipocytes was confirmed by primary dFB culture in vitro. Together, our study allows the reconstruction of gene expression programs during fibroblast development and provides insights into how fibroblasts develop heterogeneity from progenitors during adulthood.

Although brain development continues well into adolescence, the most rapid and impressive improvements in motor, cognitive, and perceptual abilities take place during the first and second years of life. The progress of the neuroimaging techniques provided the neuroanatomical data, showing that the most rapid postnatal neuroanatomical development also occurs in the first two years of age, followed by much more gradual changes. A link between the rapidly emerging psychological and behavioral functions I am also grateful to my Russian colleagues: Prof. Alexander Batuev, Drs. Ksenia Bystrova and Yuri Kropotov, and all the personnel at the Department of Higher Nervous Activity and Psychophysiology of St. Petersburg State University, where I graduated from. My family deserves my special thanks for their support, inspiring and understanding: my parents, Nona Alexeeva and Vladimir Kushnerenko, my husband, Ivan Pavlov and my daughter, Alexandra.

Although brain development continues well into adolescence, the most rapid and impressive improvements in motor, cognitive, and perceptual abilities take place during the first and second years of life. The progress of the neuroimaging techniques provided the neuroanatomical data, showing that the most rapid postnatal neuroanatomical development also occurs in the first two years of age, followed by much more gradual changes. A link between the rapidly emerging psychological and behavioral functions I am also grateful to my Russian colleagues: Prof. Alexander Batuev, Drs. Ksenia Bystrova and Yuri Kropotov, and all the personnel at the Department of Higher Nervous Activity and Psychophysiology of St. Petersburg State University, where I graduated from. My family deserves my special thanks for their support, inspiring and understanding: my parents, Nona Alexeeva and Vladimir Kushnerenko, my husband, Ivan Pavlov and my daughter, Alexandra.

Many neuroimaging studies have investigated reward processing dysfunction in major depressive disorder. These studies have led to the common idea that major depressive disorder is associated with blunted responses within the reward circuit, particularly in the ventral striatum. Yet, the link between major depressive disorder and reward-related responses in other regions remains inconclusive, thus limiting our understanding of the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder. To address this issue, we performed a coordinate-based meta-analysis of 41 whole-brain neuroimaging studies encompassing reward-related responses from a total of 794 patients with major depressive disorder and 803 healthy controls. Our findings argue against the common idea that major depressive disorder is primarily linked to deficits within the reward system. Instead, our results demonstrate that major depressive disorder is associated with opposing abnormalities in the reward circuit: hypo-responses in the ventral striatum and hyper-responses in the orbitofrontal cortex. The current findings suggest that dysregulated corticostriatal connectivity may underlie rewardprocessing abnormalities in major depressive disorder, providing an empirical foundation for a more refined understanding of abnormalities in the reward circuitry in major depressive disorder.

Nightmares are highly dysphoric dreams that are well-remembered upon awakening. Frequent nightmares have been associated with psychopathology and emotional dysregulation, yet their neural mechanisms remain largely unknown. Our neurocognitive model posits that nightmares reflect dysfunction in a limbic-prefrontal circuit comprising medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, hippocampus, and amygdala. However, there is a paucity of studies that used brain imaging to directly test the neural correlates of nightmares. One such study compared the regional homogeneity (ReHo) of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging blood-oxygen level-dependent signals between frequent nightmare recallers and controls. The main results were greater regional homogeneity in the left anterior cingulate cortex and right inferior parietal lobule for the nightmare recallers than for the controls. In the present study, we aimed to document the ReHo correlates of frequent nightmares using sev...

We would like to thank Dr. Vancini et al. regarding their letter (1) discussing the importance of our recent research (2). Drawing attention to our findings of health professionals' lack of knowledge of the benefits of exercise for people with epilepsy as a barrier to exercise, Vancini et al. agreed that there needs to be an increase in the education of health professionals in relation to exercising with epilepsy (1, 2). Through acknowledging the lack of education of health professionals within this area (2, 3), further movements towards increasing health professionals' education on the benefits of exercise for people with epilepsy will be a positive gain toward decreasing barriers to exercise for people with epilepsy.

"All unified theories of cognition today involve theater metaphors." -Bernard J. Baars A mong the most perplexing challenges for cognitive philoso- phers are those pertaining to representationalism, Gilbert Ryle's denial of the "ghost in the machine," the languages of cognition, and the "self" as the one-time audience and author of consciousness. 1 Each of these topics can be discussed metaphorically in terms of the theater. The mind is a kind of acting space in which thoughts and images are in some fashion prepared and represented in rapid sequence. Consciousness is a theatrical machine behind which there is a director who helps to determine how the narrative of the mind will play itself out. The discrete "I" is not only the prompter of consciousness, but its audience, receiving all that is played in the mind's theater. Or, in the words of C. S. Sherrington, "each waking day is a stage dominated for good or ill, in comedy, farce or tragedy by a dramatis persona, the 'self,' and so it will be until the curtain drops." 2 The problem, however, is that in matters so difficult to comprehend as the workings of the human brain and the mind operations attached to it, metaphors develop vectors of their own that shade and nuance understanding in ways that obstruct the plasticity of analysis. For this reason, theater analogies in relation to consciousness have been widely endorsed in characterizing its distinctive operations, yet widely criticized for epitomizing the philosophical thinking in the past (and the present) that detaches consciousness from the emotions, the body, and the material world. For the latter reason, the metaphor of

The aim of our study was to examine characteristics of self-disturbances measured by the Self-disturbances Scale (SDS), where 0-5 Likert scale is applied as a measure of the intensity of experiences, and to examine their relationship to auditory and visual hallucinations assessed with the Questionnaire of Psychotic Experiences (QPE). QPE is a newly developed tool, a symptom-based questionnaire that covers a range of questions comprehensively characterizing different types of hallucinations (frequency, content description, duration, emotional valence, experienced distress, impact on functioning, repetitions, complexity, localization, time of occurrence, insight, patients' interaction with AH, complying with commands). Scoring of the questionnaire is within the 0-5 severity range. The scale was administered to a group of schizophrenia patients (N=84) and healthy volunteers (N=170). Spearman correlations assessed the association between self-disturbances and hallucinations. We have identified a strong association between self-disturbances and hallucinatory experiences. Detailed psychometric approach allowed to reveal the specifics of this association. Notably, such characteristics as novelty, compelling reality and mental absorption were associated with the severity of hallucinations regardless of their modality. This finding corresponds well to the salience models suggesting dysfunction of the capacity to compare predicted and incoming stimuli and, thus, to adequately interpret the experience. Violation of expectations (prediction errors) makes an event attention grabbing, i.e., more salient hallucinations are experienced as more severe. However, the severity of AH (and not VH) was better explained by the lack of control fitting into the self-monitoring model and altered sense of ownership.

ABSTRACTSocial incentives (rewards or punishments) motivate human learning and behaviour, and alterations in the brain circuits involved in the processing social incentives have been linked with several neuropsychiatric disorders. However, questions still remain about the exact neural substrates implicated in social incentive processing. Here, we conducted four Anisotropic Effect Size Signed Differential Mapping voxel-based meta-analyses of fMRI studies investigating the neural correlates of the anticipation and receipt of social rewards and punishments using the Social Incentive Delay task. We map the regions involved in each of these four processes in the human brain, identify decreases in the BOLD signal during the anticipation of both social reward and punishment avoidance that were missed in individual studies due to a lack of power, and characterise the effect size and direction of changes in the BOLD signal for each brain area. Our results provide a better understanding of th...

Philosophical anthropology is as old as philosophy: Anaxagoras claimed that man is the most intelligent animal because he has hands, and Aristotle replied that man has hands because he is intelligent (de Partibus Animalium: 687a7-23). It has seen some glorious days; recall the works of Hume, Reid, or Kant in the eighteenth century, and the German school of Cassirer, Scheler, Plessner, Rothacker, Lipps, and Gehlen in the twentieth century. But the sub-discipline is not very active in Anglophone philosophy today, with some exceptions like Pinker's (2002), although Pinker's argument that the latest discoveries about the human brain give us fundamental insights about our nature might be thought to involve a philosophically problematic form of scientistic reductionism. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we find Hacker's recent effort to revive a genuine philosophical anthropology, which, unlike Pinker's, does not make empirical claims about what all human beings happen to have in common, but conceptual ones, about the most general categories we employ to describe, and indeed make possible, the huge variety of phenomena that we call human mind and action. Projected as a trilogy on human nature, the first volume, Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (2007), deals with the most general concepts of substance, causation, power, and agency, employed in the description of the spatiotemporal world, teleological concepts employed with respect to the animate realm, and the more specific anthropological concepts of rationality, mind, body, and person. The second volume, The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature (2013), investigates concepts grounding human cognition and cogitation, i.e., consciousness, intentionality, language, knowledge and belief, sensation, perception and memory, and thinking and imagination. The first volume contains a propaedeutic chapter sketching the overall project and its method, while the second volume ends with a methodological appendix aimed at refuting [etc.]

Background-Behavioral processes and neural systems dysfunctions that put individuals at risk for drug use in general-and stimulant use in particular-are poorly understood. Here, the hypothesis is examined that stimulant-using subjects adjust their decision-making less as a function of errors as evidenced by attenuated behavioral and neural substrate activation patterns. Methods-Twelve young adults who had used stimulants were compared with 12 educationmatched stimulant-naïve comparison subjects. Subjects completed the two-choice prediction task with three fixed error-rate conditions (20%, 50%, or 80% errors) during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results-Stimulant users relative to comparison subjects showed less strategy adjustment to different error rates, e.g., they were less likely to stay with winning responses (win-stay) and to shift away from losing responses (lose-shift). These subjects also showed different activation patterns as a function of error rate in left insular and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, but not anterior cingulate. The degree to which individuals adjusted switching rate, or win-stay/lose-shift consistent responses, as a function of errors was correlated with the difference in insular cortex activation differences between high and low error rates. Conclusions-The behavior of stimulant users is less adaptive to the frequency of errors made and fewer brain processing resources are deployed during decision-making to anticipate erroneous performance. These findings could be markers for the predisposition of drug taking; however, their relevance for development of drug dependence needs further study.

Objective: Conventional assessments of consciousness rely on motor responses to indicate awareness. However, overt behaviors may be absent or ambiguous in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) resulting in underrating capacity for cognition. fMRI during a silent picturenaming task was evaluated as an indicator of command following when conventional methods are not sufficient. Methods: A total of 10 patients with and without conventional evidence of awareness, who met diagnostic criteria for the minimally conscious state (MCS) (n ϭ 5), vegetative state (VS) (n ϭ 3), emerged from MCS (EMCS) (n ϭ 1), and locked-in syndrome (LIS) (n ϭ 1), participated in this observational fMRI study. The LIS and EMCS patients engaged a complete network of essential language-related regions during the object-naming task. The MCS and 2 of the VS patients demonstrated both complete and partial preservation of the object-naming system. Patients who engaged a complete network scored highest on the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised. This study supports the view that fMRI during object naming can elicit brain activations in patients with DOC similar to those observed in healthy subjects during command following, and patients can be stratified by completeness of the engaged neural system. These results suggest that activity of the language network may serve as an indicator of high-level cognition and possibly volitional processes that cannot be discerned through conventional behavioral assessment alone. Neurology ® 2010;75:1871-1878 GLOSSARY BA ϭ Brodmann area; BOLD ϭ blood oxygenation level-dependent; CRS-R ϭ Coma Recovery Scale-Revised; DOC ϭ disorders of consciousness; EMCS ϭ emerged from minimally conscious state; GFi(d) ϭ dorsal inferior frontal gyrus; GFi(v) ϭ ventral inferior frontal gyrus; hrf ϭ hemodynamic response function; LIS ϭ locked-in syndrome; MCS ϭ minimally conscious state; preSMA ϭ pre-supplementary motor area; STG ϭ superior temporal gyrus; VS ϭ vegetative state.

Social reorientation from parents to same-age peers is normative in adolescence, but the neural correlates of youths' socioemotional processing of parents and peers have not been explored. In the current study, twenty-two adolescents (average age 16.98) underwent neuroimaging (fMRI) while viewing and rating emotions shown in brief video clips featuring themselves, their parents, or an unfamiliar peer. Viewing self vs. other and parents vs. the peer activated regions in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), replicating prior findings that this area responds to self-relevant stimuli, including familiar and not just similar others (Kreinen, Tu, & Buckner, 2010). Viewing the peer compared with parents elicited activation in posterior 'mentalizing' structures, the precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), bilateral pSTS and right TPJ, as well as the ventral striatum and bilateral amygdala and hippocampus. Relative activations in the PCC and precuneus to the peer vs. the parent were related both to reported risk-taking behavior and to affiliations with more risk-taking peers. The results suggest neural correlates of the adolescent social reorientation towards peers and away from parents that may be associated with adolescents' real-life risk-taking behaviors and social relationships.