TMS over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex increases GABA concentration in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in major depression

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (8) ◽  
pp. e46-e47 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Dubin ◽  
X. Mao ◽  
R. Gordon ◽  
G. Kang ◽  
C. Liston ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Major Depression ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Gaba Concentration ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal

scholarly journals Reducing future fears by suppressing the brain mechanisms underlying episodic simulation

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (52) ◽  
pp. E8492-E8501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland G. Benoit ◽  
Daniel J. Davies ◽  
Michael C. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Episodic Simulation ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal ◽  
Future Events ◽  
The Right ◽  
Development Of Anxiety ◽  
The Brain

Imagining future events conveys adaptive benefits, yet recurrent simulations of feared situations may help to maintain anxiety. In two studies, we tested the hypothesis that people can attenuate future fears by suppressing anticipatory simulations of dreaded events. Participants repeatedly imagined upsetting episodes that they feared might happen to them and suppressed imaginings of other such events. Suppressing imagination engaged the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which modulated activation in the hippocampus and in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Consistent with the role of the vmPFC in providing access to details that are typical for an event, stronger inhibition of this region was associated with greater forgetting of such details. Suppression further hindered participants’ ability to later freely envision suppressed episodes. Critically, it also reduced feelings of apprehensiveness about the feared scenario, and individuals who were particularly successful at down-regulating fears were also less trait-anxious. Attenuating apprehensiveness by suppressing simulations of feared events may thus be an effective coping strategy, suggesting that a deficiency in this mechanism could contribute to the development of anxiety.

Regional cerebral perfusion correlates with anxiety in neuropsychiatric SLE: evidence for a mechanism distinct from depression

Lupus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (14) ◽  
pp. 1678-1689 ◽  
Author(s):  
E Papadaki ◽  
E Kavroulakis ◽  
G Bertsias ◽  
A Fanouriakis ◽  
D Karageorgou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Blood Flow ◽  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Cerebral Blood Volume ◽  
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Anxiety And Depression ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal ◽  
Depression Symptomatology

The study examined the hypothesis that hypoperfusion in brain areas known to be involved in emotional disturbances in primary psychiatric disorders is also linked to emotional difficulties in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and that these are not secondary to the physical and social burden incurred by the disease. Nineteen SLE patients without overt neuropsychiatric manifestations (non-NPSLE), 31 NPSLE patients, and 23 healthy controls were examined. Dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI was used and cerebral blood flow and cerebral blood volume values were estimated in six manually selected regions of interest of brain regions suspected to play a role in anxiety and depression (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, hippocampi, caudate nuclei and putamen). NPSLE patients reported high rates of anxiety and depression symptomatology. Significantly reduced cerebral blood flow and cerebral blood volume values were detected in the NPSLE group compared to healthy controls in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, bilaterally. Within the NPSLE group, anxiety symptomatology was significantly associated with lower perfusion in frontostriatal regions and in the right anterior cingulate gyrus. Importantly, the latter associations appeared to be specific to anxiety symptoms, as they persisted after controlling for depression symptomatology and independent of the presence of visible lesions on conventional MRI. In conclusion, hypoperfusion in specific limbic and frontostriatal regions is associated with more severe anxiety symptoms in the context of widespread haemodynamic disturbances in NPSLE.

scholarly journals Neural representations of honesty predict future trust behavior

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Bellucci ◽  
Felix Molter ◽  
Soyoung Q. Park
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Multivariate Analyses ◽  
Posterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Intraparietal Sulcus ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
Brain Signals ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal

AbstractTheoretical accounts propose honesty as a central determinant of trustworthiness impressions and trusting behavior. However, behavioral and neural evidence on the relationships between honesty and trust is missing. Here, combining a novel paradigm that successfully induces trustworthiness impressions with functional MRI and multivariate analyses, we demonstrate that honesty-based trustworthiness is represented in the posterior cingulate cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and intraparietal sulcus. Crucially, brain signals in these regions predict individual trust in a subsequent social interaction with the same partner. Honesty recruited the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), and stronger functional connectivity between the VMPFC and temporoparietal junction during honesty encoding was associated with higher trust in the subsequent interaction. These results suggest that honesty signals in the VMPFC are integrated into trustworthiness beliefs to inform present and future social behaviors. These findings improve our understanding of the neural representations of an individual’s social character that guide behaviors during interpersonal interactions.

Emotional Regulation: Implications for the Psychobiology of Psychotherapy

CNS Spectrums ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan J. Stein
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Functional Imaging ◽  
Orbitofrontal Cortex ◽  
Emotional Regulation ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Gene Variants ◽  
Biological Mechanisms ◽  
Imaging Studies ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal

ABSTRACTA range of studies have contributed to understanding the psychobiology of emotional regulation. Functional imaging studies have demonstrated that cortico-limbic circuitry plays an important role in mediating processes such as reappraisal and suppression. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex may be important in conscious reframing, while ventromedial prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex may be particularly important in emotion evaluation. Gene variants and early environments impact underlying emotional regulation and its neurobiology. It may be hypothesized that during interventions such as psychotherapy there are improvements in emotional regulation, together with the normalization of related psycho-biological mechanisms.

scholarly journals Cognitive regulation alters social and dietary choice by changing attribute representations in domain-general and domain-specific brain circuits

eLife ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Tusche ◽  
Cendri A Hutcherson
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Computational Modeling ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Cognitive Regulation ◽  
Brain Circuits ◽  
Specific Attribute ◽  
Dietary Choice ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal

Are some people generally more successful using cognitive regulation or does it depend on the choice domain? Why? We combined behavioral computational modeling and multivariate decoding of fMRI responses to identify neural loci of regulation-related shifts in value representations across goals and domains (dietary or altruistic choice). Surprisingly, regulatory goals did not alter integrative value representations in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which represented all choice-relevant attributes across goals and domains. Instead, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) flexibly encoded goal-consistent values and predicted regulatory success for the majority of choice-relevant attributes, using attribute-specific neural codes. We also identified domain-specific exceptions: goal-dependent encoding of prosocial attributes localized to precuneus and temporo-parietal junction (not DLPFC). Our results suggest that cognitive regulation operated by changing specific attribute representations (not integrated values). Evidence of domain-general and domain-specific neural loci reveals important divisions of labor, explaining when and why regulatory success generalizes (or doesn’t) across contexts and domains.

scholarly journals Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying immoral decisions benefiting self or others

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Qu ◽  
Yang Hu ◽  
Zixuan Tang ◽  
Edmund Derrington ◽  
Jean-Claude Dreher
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Functional Coupling ◽  
Linear Summation ◽  
Immoral Behavior ◽  
Subjective Value ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal ◽  
Moral Cost ◽  
Monetary Gain

AbstractImmoral behavior often consists of weighing transgression of a moral norm against maximizing personal profits. One important question is to understand why immoral behaviors vary based on who receives specific benefits and what are the neurocomputational mechanisms underlying such moral flexibility. Here, we used model-based fMRI to investigate how immoral behaviors change when benefiting oneself or someone else. Participants were presented with offers requiring a tradeoff between a moral cost (i.e., profiting a morally bad cause) and a benefit for either oneself or a charity. Participants were more willing to obtain ill-gotten profits for themselves than for a charity, driven by a devaluation of the moral cost when deciding for their own interests. The subjective value of an immoral offer, computed as a linear summation of the weighed monetary gain and moral cost, recruited the ventromedial prefrontal cortex regardless of beneficiaries. Moreover, paralleling the behavioral findings, this region enhanced its functional coupling with mentalizing-related regions while deciding whether to gain morally-tainted profits for oneself vs. charity. Finally, individual differences in moral preference differentially modulated choice-specific signals in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex according to who benefited from the decisions. These findings provide insights for understanding the neurobiological basis of moral flexibility.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document