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Psychoneuroendocrinology Feb 2022Acute stress is associated with a shift from goal-directed to habitual behavior. This stress-induced preference for habitual behavior has been suggested as a potential...
Acute stress is associated with a shift from goal-directed to habitual behavior. This stress-induced preference for habitual behavior has been suggested as a potential mechanism by which binge eating disorder (BED) patients succumb to eating large amounts of high-caloric foods in an uncontrolled manner (i.e., binge episodes). While in healthy subjects the balance between goal-directed and habitual behavior is subserved by the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), insular cortex, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior caudate nucleus, and posterior putamen, the brain mechanism that underlies this (possibly amplified) stress-induced behavioral shift in BED patients is currently unknown. In the current study, 76 participants (38 BED, 38 healthy controls (HCs)) learned six stimulus-response-outcome associations in a well-established instrumental learning task. Subsequently, three outcomes were selectively devalued, after which participants underwent either a stress induction procedure (Maastricht Acute Stress Test; MAST) or a no-stress control procedure. Next, the balance between goal-directed and habitual behavior was assessed during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Findings show that the balance between goal-directed and habitual behavior was associated with activity in the ACC, insula, and OFC in no-stress HCs. Although stress and BED did not modulate the balance between goal-directed and habitual behavior, BED participants displayed a smaller difference in putamen activation between trials probing goal-directed and habitual behavior compared with HCs when using a ROI approach. We conclude that putamen activity differences between BED and HC could reflect changes in monitoring of response accuracy or reward value, albeit perhaps not sufficiently to induce a measurable shift from goal-directed to habitual behavior. Future research could clarify potential boundary conditions of stress-induced shifts in instrumental behavior in BED patients.
Topics: Binge-Eating Disorder; Conditioning, Operant; Goals; Humans; Motivation; Putamen
PubMed: 34839081
DOI: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2021.105596 -
NeuroImage Jul 2021A wide homology between human and macaque striatum is often assumed as in both the striatum is involved in cognition, emotion and executive functions. However,... (Comparative Study)
Comparative Study
A wide homology between human and macaque striatum is often assumed as in both the striatum is involved in cognition, emotion and executive functions. However, differences in functional and structural organization between human and macaque striatum may reveal evolutionary divergence and shed light on human vulnerability to neuropsychiatric diseases. For instance, dopaminergic dysfunction of the human striatum is considered to be a pathophysiological underpinning of different disorders, such as Parkinson's disease (PD) and schizophrenia (SCZ). Previous investigations have found a wide similarity in structural connectivity of the striatum between human and macaque, leaving the cross-species comparison of its functional organization unknown. In this study, resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) derived striatal parcels were compared based on their homologous cortico-striatal connectivity. The goal here was to identify striatal parcels whose connectivity is human-specific compared to macaque parcels. Functional parcellation revealed that the human striatum was split into dorsal, dorsomedial, and rostral caudate and ventral, central, and caudal putamen, while the macaque striatum was divided into dorsal, and rostral caudate and rostral, and caudal putamen. Cross-species comparison indicated dissimilar cortico-striatal RSFC of the topographically similar dorsal caudate. We probed clinical relevance of the striatal clusters by examining differences in their cortico-striatal RSFC and gray matter (GM) volume between patients (with PD and SCZ) and healthy controls. We found abnormal RSFC not only between dorsal caudate, but also between rostral caudate, ventral, central and caudal putamen and widespread cortical regions for both PD and SCZ patients. Also, we observed significant structural atrophy in rostral caudate, ventral and central putamen for both PD and SCZ while atrophy in the dorsal caudate was specific to PD. Taken together, our cross-species comparative results revealed shared and human-specific RSFC of different striatal clusters reinforcing the complex organization and function of the striatum. In addition, we provided a testable hypothesis that abnormalities in a region with human-specific connectivity, i.e., dorsal caudate, might be associated with neuropsychiatric disorders.
Topics: Adult; Aged; Animals; Caudate Nucleus; Cerebral Cortex; Connectome; Datasets as Topic; Female; Humans; Macaca; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Middle Aged; Nerve Net; Parkinson Disease; Putamen; Schizophrenia; Species Specificity; Young Adult
PubMed: 33819611
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118006 -
Nature Neuroscience Oct 2020Time perception and prediction errors are essential for everyday life. We hypothesized that their putative shared circuitry in the striatum might enable these two...
Time perception and prediction errors are essential for everyday life. We hypothesized that their putative shared circuitry in the striatum might enable these two functions to interact. We show that positive and negative prediction errors bias time perception by increasing and decreasing perceived time, respectively. Imaging and behavioral modeling identify this interaction to occur in the putamen. Depending on context, this interaction may have beneficial or adverse effects.
Topics: Adult; Brain; Brain Mapping; Choice Behavior; Discrimination, Psychological; Female; Gyrus Cinguli; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Prefrontal Cortex; Putamen; Time Perception; Young Adult
PubMed: 32839618
DOI: 10.1038/s41593-020-0698-3 -
Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) Nov 2022The morphological development of the fetal striatum during the second trimester has remained poorly described. We manually segmented the striatum using 7.0-T MR images...
The morphological development of the fetal striatum during the second trimester has remained poorly described. We manually segmented the striatum using 7.0-T MR images of the fetal specimens ranging from 14 to 22 gestational weeks. The global development of the striatum was evaluated by volume measurement. The absolute volume (Vabs) of the caudate nucleus (CN) increased linearly with gestational age, while the relative volume (Vrel) showed a quadratic growth. Both Vabs and Vrel of putamen increased linearly. Through shape analysis, the changes of local structure in developing striatum were specifically demonstrated. Except for the CN tail, the lateral and medial parts of the CN grew faster than the middle regions, with a clear rostral-caudal growth gradient as well as a distinct "outside-in" growth gradient. For putamen, the dorsal and ventral regions grew obviously faster than the other regions, with a dorsal-ventral bidirectional developmental pattern. The right CN was larger than the left, whereas there was no significant hemispheric asymmetry in the putamen. By establishing the developmental trajectories, spatial heterochrony, and hemispheric dimorphism of human fetal striatum, these data bring new insight into the fetal striatum development and provide detailed anatomical references for future striatal studies.
Topics: Pregnancy; Female; Humans; Pregnancy Trimester, Second; Corpus Striatum; Caudate Nucleus; Putamen; Sex Characteristics
PubMed: 35078212
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhab532 -
Brain : a Journal of Neurology Apr 2023The diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been linked with changes in frontostriatal resting-state connectivity. However, replication of prior findings is...
The diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been linked with changes in frontostriatal resting-state connectivity. However, replication of prior findings is lacking, and the mechanistic understanding of these effects is incomplete. To confirm and advance knowledge on changes in frontostriatal functional connectivity in OCD, participants with OCD and matched healthy controls underwent resting-state functional, structural and diffusion neuroimaging. Functional connectivity changes in frontostriatal systems were here replicated in individuals with OCD (n = 52) compared with controls (n = 45). OCD participants showed greater functional connectivity (t = 4.3, PFWE = 0.01) between the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) but lower functional connectivity between the dorsal putamen and lateral prefrontal cortex (t = 3.8, PFWE = 0.04) relative to controls. Computational modelling suggests that NAcc-OFC connectivity changes reflect an increased influence of NAcc over OFC activity and reduced OFC influence over NAcc activity (posterior probability, Pp > 0.66). Conversely, dorsal putamen showed reduced modulation over lateral prefrontal cortex activity (Pp > 0.90). These functional deregulations emerged on top of a generally intact anatomical substrate. We provide out-of-sample replication of opposite changes in ventro-anterior and dorso-posterior frontostriatal connectivity in OCD and advance the understanding of the neural underpinnings of these functional perturbations. These findings inform the development of targeted therapies normalizing frontostriatal dynamics in OCD.
Topics: Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Prefrontal Cortex; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; Nucleus Accumbens; Putamen; Brain Mapping
PubMed: 36380526
DOI: 10.1093/brain/awac425 -
Human Brain Mapping Jan 2022To identify neuroimaging biomarkers of alcohol dependence (AD) from structural magnetic resonance imaging, it may be useful to develop classification models that are... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis
To identify neuroimaging biomarkers of alcohol dependence (AD) from structural magnetic resonance imaging, it may be useful to develop classification models that are explicitly generalizable to unseen sites and populations. This problem was explored in a mega-analysis of previously published datasets from 2,034 AD and comparison participants spanning 27 sites curated by the ENIGMA Addiction Working Group. Data were grouped into a training set used for internal validation including 1,652 participants (692 AD, 24 sites), and a test set used for external validation with 382 participants (146 AD, 3 sites). An exploratory data analysis was first conducted, followed by an evolutionary search based feature selection to site generalizable and high performing subsets of brain measurements. Exploratory data analysis revealed that inclusion of case- and control-only sites led to the inadvertent learning of site-effects. Cross validation methods that do not properly account for site can drastically overestimate results. Evolutionary-based feature selection leveraging leave-one-site-out cross-validation, to combat unintentional learning, identified cortical thickness in the left superior frontal gyrus and right lateral orbitofrontal cortex, cortical surface area in the right transverse temporal gyrus, and left putamen volume as final features. Ridge regression restricted to these features yielded a test-set area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.768. These findings evaluate strategies for handling multi-site data with varied underlying class distributions and identify potential biomarkers for individuals with current AD.
Topics: Alcoholism; Cerebral Cortex; Humans; Machine Learning; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Multicenter Studies as Topic; Neuroimaging; Putamen; Reproducibility of Results
PubMed: 33064342
DOI: 10.1002/hbm.25248 -
Minerva Medica Dec 2023
Topics: Humans; Putamen; Punctures
PubMed: 37293891
DOI: 10.23736/S0026-4806.23.08662-7 -
Neuropsychologia Jun 2019Adolescence is a critical period for social orientation to peers and for developing social skills in interactions with peers. In the current study we examined the neural...
Adolescence is a critical period for social orientation to peers and for developing social skills in interactions with peers. In the current study we examined the neural correlates of prosocial decisions for friends and disliked peers, and their links with participants' friendship quality and empathy as indices of social competence. Participants' friends and disliked peers were identified using sociometric nominations. Mid-adolescents (M = 14.6; N = 50) distributed coins between themselves and another player in a set of allocation games where they could make prosocial or selfish decisions for their friends and disliked peers, as well as for neutral and unfamiliar peers. Participants made the most prosocial decisions for friends and the least prosocial decisions for disliked peers. Prosocial decisions for friends yielded activity in the putamen and posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) when compared to prosocial decisions for disliked peers, and in the superior parietal lobule (SPL) and precentral gyrus when compared to prosocial decisions for unfamiliar peers. Selfish decisions for friends and decisions for disliked peers did not result in heightened neural activity. Exploratory analyses of the associations between these neural activation patterns and measures of social competence revealed that putamen activity related negatively to negative friendship quality and that empathic personal distress related positively to SPL and precentral gyrus activity. Together, the findings illustrated that the SPL, precentral gyrus, pMTG, and putamen may be involved in promoting the continuation of friendships, and that social competence may modulate these neural mechanisms.
Topics: Adolescent; Adolescent Behavior; Brain Mapping; Cerebral Cortex; Decision Making; Empathy; Female; Friends; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Longitudinal Studies; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Peer Group; Putamen; Social Behavior; Social Skills
PubMed: 30871971
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.03.004 -
Schizophrenia Bulletin Jun 2018Schizophrenia (SCZ) is associated with differences in subcortical brain volumes and intracranial volume (ICV). However, little is known about the underlying etiology of...
Schizophrenia (SCZ) is associated with differences in subcortical brain volumes and intracranial volume (ICV). However, little is known about the underlying etiology of these brain alterations. Here, we explored whether brain structure volumes and SCZ share genetic risk factors. Using conditional false discovery rate (FDR) analysis, we integrated genome-wide association study (GWAS) data on SCZ (n = 82315) and GWAS data on 7 subcortical brain volumes and ICV (n = 11840). By conditioning the FDR on overlapping associations, this statistical approach increases power to discover genetic loci. To assess the credibility of our approach, we studied the identified loci in larger GWAS samples on ICV (n = 26577) and hippocampal volume (n = 26814). We observed polygenic overlap between SCZ and volumes of hippocampus, putamen, and ICV. Based on conjunctional FDR < 0.05, we identified 2 loci shared between SCZ and ICV implicating genes FOXO3 (rs10457180) and ITIH4 (rs4687658), 2 loci shared between SCZ and hippocampal volume implicating SLC4A10 (rs4664442) and SPATS2L (rs1653290), and 2 loci shared between SCZ and volume of putamen implicating DCC (rs4632195) and DLG2 (rs11233632). The loci shared between SCZ and hippocampal volume or ICV had not reached significance in the primary GWAS on brain phenotypes. Proving our point of increased power, 2 loci did reach genome-wide significance with ICV (rs10457180) and hippocampal volume (rs4664442) in the larger GWAS. Three of the 6 identified loci are novel for SCZ. Altogether, the findings provide new insights into the relationship between SCZ and brain structure volumes, suggesting that their genetic architectures are not independent.
Topics: Brain; Genetic Loci; Genetic Pleiotropy; Genome-Wide Association Study; Hippocampus; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Putamen; Schizophrenia
PubMed: 29136250
DOI: 10.1093/schbul/sbx148 -
Neuropsychologia Feb 2020Episodic future thinking (EFT), the mental ability of projecting oneself into the future to pre-experience an event, has strong adaptive value for allowing people to...
Episodic future thinking (EFT), the mental ability of projecting oneself into the future to pre-experience an event, has strong adaptive value for allowing people to consider potential consequences before taking actions. EFT includes two important components: the ability to construct detailed and vivid scenes of future events to achieve a goal (measured here by the EFT-sensory perceptual qualities scale) and the ability to subjectively experience "mental time travel" in which the person feels oneself to be in the future (measured here by the EFT-Autonoetic consciousness scale). However, little is known about the neuroanatomical structures of EFT. To shed light on this question, we employed voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to investigate the neural substrates underlying EFT. In Sample 1 (135 participants), EFT-sensory perceptual qualities was positively correlated with the gray matter (GM) volume of the hippocampus and putamen. EFT-Autonoetic consciousness was positively correlated with GM volume of the insula and amygdala, and negatively correlated with GM volumes of the medial frontal gyrus. The verification results from Sample 2 (59 participants) found that EFT-sensory perceptual qualities can be predicted by the GM volumes of the hippocampus and putamen, and EFT-Autonoetic consciousness can be predicted by the GM volumes of insula and amygdala. The present findings suggest that the hippocampus, putamen, and amygdala and insula are key regions for scene construction, goal-directed processing, and emotion respectively, and play important roles in the underlying structural neural substrates of EFT.
Topics: Adult; Amygdala; Cerebral Cortex; Consciousness; Female; Goals; Hippocampus; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Neuroimaging; Perception; Putamen; Self Concept; Thinking; Young Adult
PubMed: 31715196
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107255