scholarly journals Seeking the “beauty center” in the brain: A meta-analysis of fMRI studies of beautiful human faces and visual art

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuan-Peng Hu ◽  
Yi Huang ◽  
Simon B. Eickhoff ◽  
Kaiping Peng ◽  
Jie Sui
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Ventral Striatum ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Likelihood Estimation ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
The Common ◽  
Conjunction Analysis ◽  
Human Faces ◽  
The Brain

AbstractThe existence of a common beauty is a long-standing debate in philosophy and related disciplines. In the last two decades, cognitive neuroscientists have sought to elucidate this issue by exploring the common neural basis of the experience of beauty. Still, empirical evidence for such common neural basis of different forms of beauty is not conclusive. To address this question, we performed an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis on the existing neuroimaging studies of beauty appreciation of faces and visual art by non-expert adults (49 studies, 982 participants, meta-data are available at https://osf.io/s9xds/). We observed that perceiving these two forms of beauty activated distinct brain regions: while the beauty of faces convergently activated the left ventral striatum, the beauty of visual art convergently activated the anterior medial prefrontal cortex (aMPFC). However, a conjunction analysis failed to reveal any common brain regions for the beauty of visual art and faces. The implications of these results are discussed.

scholarly journals The Neural Basis of Motivational Influences on Cognitive Control

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Parro ◽  
Matthew L Dixon ◽  
Kalina Christoff
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Likelihood Estimation ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
The Brain

AbstractCognitive control mechanisms support the deliberate regulation of thought and behavior based on current goals. Recent work suggests that motivational incentives improve cognitive control, and has begun to elucidate the brain regions that may support this effect. Here, we conducted a quantitative meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies of motivated cognitive control using activation likelihood estimation (ALE) and Neurosynth in order to delineate the brain regions that are consistently activated across studies. The analysis included functional neuroimaging studies that investigated changes in brain activation during cognitive control tasks when reward incentives were present versus absent. The ALE analysis revealed consistent recruitment in regions associated with the frontoparietal control network including the inferior frontal sulcus (IFS) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS), as well as consistent recruitment in regions associated with the salience network including the anterior insula and anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC). A large-scale exploratory meta-analysis using Neurosynth replicated the ALE results, and also identified the caudate nucleus, nucleus accumbens, medial thalamus, inferior frontal junction/premotor cortex (IFJ/PMC), and hippocampus. Finally, we conducted separate ALE analyses to compare recruitment during cue and target periods, which tap into proactive engagement of rule-outcome associations, and the mobilization of appropriate viscero-motor states to execute a response, respectively. We found that largely distinct sets of brain regions are recruited during cue and target periods. Altogether, these findings suggest that flexible interactions between frontoparietal, salience, and dopaminergic midbrain-striatal networks may allow control demands to be precisely tailored based on expected value.

scholarly journals Willingness to Pay in the Human Brain: A fMRI Activation Likelihood Estimation Meta-analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoqiang Yao ◽  
Zhigang Huang ◽  
Yiwen Wang
Keyword(s):  
Willingness To Pay ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Likelihood Estimation ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Angular Gyrus ◽  
Activation Likelihood Estimation ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Medial Cortex ◽  
The Brain

The neural substrate of willingness to pay (WTP) ultimately supports human economic exchange activities and plays a crucial role in daily life. This paper aimed to identify the neural basis of WTP for food and nonfood, as well as the brain regions related to real and hypothetical WTP choices. We found the human brain centers of WTP by performing an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis (27 experiments, 796 subjects) on the existing neuroimaging studies. The conjunction analysis revealed that WTP for food and nonfood engaged a common cluster in the paracingulate and cingulate gyrus, revealing a common reward circuit in the brain. The frontal medial cortex and paracingulate gyrus were particularly activated by WTP for nonfood. Furthermore, the left caudate, left thalamus, angular gyrus and supramarginal gyrus (subregions of inferior parietal lobule) were more convergently activated by hypothetical WTP choice. Our findings support the idea that a common currency representation in the brain and reward-specific neural basis. Results also provide evidence of neural representations of the hypothetical bias.

scholarly journals Common and distinct neural correlates of music and food-induced pleasure: a coordinate-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Mas-Herrero ◽  
Larissa Maini ◽  
Guillaume Sescousse ◽  
Robert J. Zatorre
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Processing ◽  
Ventral Striatum ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Reward Circuitry ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Partial Dissociation ◽  
Reward Network ◽  
The Brain

ABSTRACTNeuroimaging studies have shown that, despite the abstractness of music, it may mimic biologically rewarding stimuli (e.g. food) in its ability to engage the brain’s reward circuity. However, due to the lack of research comparing music and other types of reward, it is unclear to what extent the recruitment of reward-related structures overlaps among domains. To achieve this goal, we performed a coordinate-based meta-analysis of 38 neuroimaging studies (703 subjects) comparing the brain responses specifically to music and food-induced pleasure. Both engaged a common set of brain regions including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum, and insula. Yet, comparative analyses indicated a partial dissociation in the engagement of the reward circuitry as a function of the type of reward, as well as additional reward type-specific activations in brain regions related to perception, sensory processing, and learning. These results support the idea that hedonic reactions rely on the engagement of a common reward network, yet through specific routes of access depending on the modality and nature of the reward.

scholarly journals Action Concepts in the Brain: An Activation Likelihood Estimation Meta-analysis

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (8) ◽  
pp. 1191-1205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine E. Watson ◽  
Eileen R. Cardillo ◽  
Geena R. Ianni ◽  
Anjan Chatterjee
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Memory ◽  
Visual Motion ◽  
Likelihood Estimation ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Activation Likelihood Estimation ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Action Execution ◽  
Motor Systems ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
The Brain

Many recent neuroimaging studies have investigated the representation of semantic memory for actions in the brain. We used activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses to answer two outstanding questions about the neural basis of action concepts. First, on an “embodied” view of semantic memory, evidence to date is unclear regarding whether visual motion or motor systems are more consistently engaged by action concepts. Second, few studies have directly investigated the possibility that action concepts accessed verbally or nonverbally recruit different areas of the brain. Because our meta-analyses did not include studies requiring the perception of dynamic depictions of actions or action execution, we were able to determine whether conceptual processing alone recruits visual motion and motor systems. Significant concordance in brain regions within or adjacent to visual motion areas emerged in all meta-analyses. By contrast, we did not observe significant concordance in motor or premotor cortices in any analysis. Neural differences between action images and action verbs followed a gradient of abstraction among representations derived from visual motion information in the left lateral temporal and occipital cortex. The consistent involvement of visual motion but not motor brain regions in representing action concepts may reflect differences in the variability of experience across individuals with perceiving versus performing actions.

scholarly journals Seeking the “Beauty Center” in the Brain: A Meta-Analysis of fMRI Studies of Beautiful Human Faces and Visual Art

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1200-1215
Author(s):  
Hu Chuan-Peng ◽  
Yi Huang ◽  
Simon B. Eickhoff ◽  
Kaiping Peng ◽  
Jie Sui
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Human Faces ◽  
The Brain

Neural Underpinnings of Numerical and Spatial Cognition: An fMRI Meta-Analysis of Brain Regions Associated with Symbolic Number, Arithmetic, and Mental Rotation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary Hawes ◽  
H Moriah Sokolowski ◽  
Chuka Bosah Ononye ◽  
Daniel Ansari
Keyword(s):  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Parietal Lobe ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Likelihood Estimation ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Angular Gyrus ◽  
Number Representation ◽  
Neural Underpinnings ◽  
The Right ◽  
Symbolic Number

Where and under what conditions do spatial and numerical skills converge and diverge in the brain? To address this question, we conducted a meta-analysis of brain regions associated with basic symbolic number processing, arithmetic, and mental rotation. We used Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) to construct quantitative meta-analytic maps synthesizing results from 86 neuroimaging papers (~ 30 studies/cognitive process). All three cognitive processes were found to activate bilateral parietal regions in and around the intraparietal sulcus (IPS); a finding consistent with shared processing accounts. Numerical and arithmetic processing were associated with overlap in the left angular gyrus, whereas mental rotation and arithmetic both showed activity in the middle frontal gyri. These patterns suggest regions of cortex potentially more specialized for symbolic number representation and domain-general mental manipulation, respectively. Additionally, arithmetic was associated with unique activity throughout the fronto-parietal network and mental rotation was associated with unique activity in the right superior parietal lobe. Overall, these results provide new insights into the intersection of numerical and spatial thought in the human brain.

scholarly journals Graph Ricci Curvatures Reveal Disease-related Changes in Autism Spectrum Disorder

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavithra Elumalai ◽  
Yasharth Yadav ◽  
Nitin Williams ◽  
Emil Saucan ◽  
Jürgen Jost ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Neurodevelopmental Disorders ◽  
Data Exchange ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Resting State Fmri ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
The Brain

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a set of neurodevelopmental disorders that pose a significant global health burden. Measures from graph theory have been used to characterise ASD-related changes in resting-state fMRI functional connectivity networks (FCNs), but recently developed geometry-inspired measures have not been applied so far. In this study, we applied geometry-inspired graph Ricci curvatures to investigate ASD-related changes in resting-state fMRI FCNs. To do this, we applied Forman-Ricci and Ollivier-Ricci curvatures to compare networks of ASD and healthy controls (N = 1112) from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange I (ABIDE-I) dataset. We performed these comparisons at the brain-wide level as well as at the level of individual brain regions, and further, determined the behavioral relevance of region-specific differences with Neurosynth meta-analysis decoding. We found brain-wide ASD-related differences for both Forman-Ricci and Ollivier-Ricci curvatures. For Forman-Ricci curvature, these differences were distributed across 83 of the 200 brain regions studied, and concentrated within the Default Mode, Somatomotor and Ventral Attention Network. Meta-analysis decoding identified the brain regions showing curvature differences as involved in social cognition, memory, language and movement. Notably, comparison with results from previous non-invasive stimulation (TMS/tDCS) experiments revealed that the set of brain regions showing curvature differences overlapped with the set of brain regions whose stimulation resulted in positive cognitive or behavioural outcomes in ASD patients. These results underscore the utility of geometry-inspired graph Ricci curvatures in characterising disease-related changes in ASD, and possibly, other neurodevelopmental disorders.

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