Cingulate-centered large-scale networks: Normal functions, aging, and neurodegenerative disease

Single-nucleus multi-omics analyses reveal cellular and molecular innovations in the anterior cingulate cortex during primate evolution

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of the human brain is involved in higher-level cognitive functions such as emotion and self-awareness. We generated profiles of human and macaque ACC gene expression and chromatin accessibility at single-nucleus resolution. We characterized the conserved patterns of gene expression, chromatin accessibility, and transcription factor binding in different cell types. Combining the published mouse data, we discovered the molecular identities and cell-lineage origin of the primate von Economo neurons (VENs). Our in vitro and in vivo experiments identified a group of primate-shared and human-specific VEN marker genes, such as PCSK6, ADAMTSL3, and CDHR3, potentially contributing to VEN morphogenesis. We demonstrated that the human-specific sequence changes account for the cellular and functional innovations in the ACC during primate evolution and human origin. These findings provide new insights into understanding the cellular composition and molecular regulation of ACC and its evolutionary role in shaping human-owned higher cognitive skills.

Altered activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex during oddball performance in individuals at risk for Alzheimer's disease

INTRODUCTION

The neural mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative disorders in the elderly remain elusive, despite extensive neuroimaging research in recent decades. Amnestic type mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and late-life major depressive disorder (MDD) are two such conditions characterized by intersecting cognitive and affective symptomatology, and they are at a higher risk for Alzheimer's disease.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This study analyzed the neural underpinnings of cognitive and depressive symptoms in a cohort comprising 12 aMCI subjects, 24 late-life MDD patients, and 26 healthy controls (HCs). Participants underwent a detailed neuropsychological assessment and completed a visual attentional oddball task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), with evaluations at baseline and at 2-year follow-up.

RESULTS

Initial findings showed that aMCI subjects had reduced dACC activation during oddball (target) stimulus detection, a pattern that persisted in longitudinal analyses and correlated with cognitive functioning measures. For HCs, subsequent dACC activation was linked to depression scores. Furthermore, in the affective-cognitive altered groups, later dACC activation correlated with oddball and memory performance.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings enhance our comprehension of the neurobiological basis of cognitive and depressive disturbances in aging, indicating that dACC activation in response to a visual attentional oddball task could serve as a neural marker for assessing cognitive impairment and depression in conditions predisposing to Alzheimer's disease.

Aging, cingulate cortex, and cognition: insights from structural MRI, emotional recognition, and theory of mind

The cingulate cortex is a limbic structure involved in multiple functions, including emotional processing, pain, cognition, memory, and spatial orientation. The main goal of this structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) study was to investigate whether age affects the cingulate cortex uniformly across its anteroposterior dimensions and determine if the effects of age differ based on sex, hemisphere, and regional cingulate anatomy, in a large cohort of healthy individuals across the adult lifespan. The second objective aimed to explore whether the decline in emotional recognition accuracy and Theory of Mind (ToM) is linked to the potential age-related reductions in the pregenual anterior cingulate (ACC) and anterior midcingulate (MCC) cortices. We recruited 126 healthy participants (18-85 years) for this study. MRI datasets were acquired on a 4.7 T system. The cingulate cortex was manually segmented into the pregenual ACC, anterior MCC, posterior MCC, and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). We observed negative relationships between the presence and length of the superior cingulate gyrus and bilateral volumes of pregenual ACC and anterior MCC. Age showed negative effects on the volume of all cingulate cortical subregions bilaterally except for the right anterior MCC. Most of the associations between age and the cingulate subregional volumes were linear. We did not find a significant effect of sex on cingulate cortical volumes. However, stronger effects of age were observed in men compared to women. This study also demonstrated that performance on an emotional recognition task was linked to pregenual ACC volume, whist the ToM capabilities were related to the size of pregenual ACC and anterior MCC. These results suggest that the cingulate cortex contributes to emotional recognition ability and ToM across the adult lifespan.

Multimodal magnetic resonance imaging on brain network in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: A mini-review

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) is a stage between normal aging and Alzheimer disease (AD) where individuals experience a noticeable decline in memory that is greater than what is expected with normal aging, but dose not meet the clinical criteria for AD. This stage is considered a transitional phase that puts individuals at a high risk for developing AD. It is crucial to intervene during this stage to reduce the changes of AD development. Recently, advanced multimodal magnetic resonance imaging techniques have been used to study the brain structure and functional networks in individuals with aMCI. Through the use of structural magnetic resonance imaging, diffusion tensor imaging, and functional magnetic resonance imaging, abnormalities in certain brain regions have been observed in individuals with aMCI. Specifically, the default mode network, salience network, and executive control network have been found to show abnormalities in both structure and function. This review aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the brain structure and functional networks associated with aMCI. By analyzing the existing literature on multimodal magnetic resonance imaging and aMCI, this study seeks to uncover potential biomarkers and gain insight into the underlying pathogenesis of aMCI. This knowledge can then guide the development of future treatments and interventions to delay or prevent the progression of aMCI to AD.

The contribution of the cingulate cortex: treating depressive symptoms in first-episode drug naïve schizophrenia

Background

Our previous study has shown the cingulate cortex abnormalities in first-episode drug naïve (FEDN) schizophrenia patients with comorbid depressive symptoms. However, it remains largely unknown whether antipsychotics may induce morphometric change in cingulate cortex and its relationship with depressive symptoms. The purpose of this study was to further clarify the important role of cingulate cortex in the treatment on depressive symptoms in FEDN schizophrenia patients.

Method

In this study, 42 FEDN schizophrenia patients were assigned into depressed patients group (DP, n = 24) and non-depressed patients group (NDP, n = 18) measured by the 24-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD). Clinical assessments and anatomical images were obtained from all patients before and after 12-week treatment with risperidone.

Results

Although risperidone alleviated psychotic symptoms in all patients, depressive symptoms were decreased only in DP. Significant group by time interaction effects were found in the right rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) and other subcortical regions in the left hemisphere. After risperidone treatment, the right rACC were increased in DP. Further, the increasing volume of right rACC was negatively associated with improvement in depressive symptoms.

Conclusion

These findings suggested that the abnormality of the rACC is the typical characteristics in schizophrenia with depressive symptoms. It's likely key region contributing to the neural mechanisms underlying the effects of risperidone treatment on depressive symptoms in schizophrenia.

Multisite test-retest reliability and compatibility of brain metrics derived from FreeSurfer versions 7.1, 6.0, and 5.3

Automatic neuroimaging processing tools provide convenient and systematic methods for extracting features from brain magnetic resonance imaging scans. One tool, FreeSurfer, provides an easy-to-use pipeline to extract cortical and subcortical morphometric measures. There have been over 25 stable releases of FreeSurfer, with different versions used across published works. The reliability and compatibility of regional morphometric metrics derived from the most recent version releases have yet to be empirically assessed. Here, we used test-retest data from three public data sets to determine within-version reliability and between-version compatibility across 42 regional outputs from FreeSurfer versions 7.1, 6.0, and 5.3. Cortical thickness from v7.1 was less compatible with that of older versions, particularly along the cingulate gyrus, where the lowest version compatibility was observed (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.37-0.61). Surface area of the temporal pole, frontal pole, and medial orbitofrontal cortex, also showed low to moderate version compatibility. We confirm low compatibility between v6.0 and v5.3 of pallidum and putamen volumes, while those from v7.1 were compatible with v6.0. Replication in an independent sample showed largely similar results for measures of surface area and subcortical volumes, but had lower overall regional thickness reliability and compatibility. Batch effect correction may adjust for some inter-version effects when most sites are run with one version, but results vary when more sites are run with different versions. Age associations in a quality controlled independent sample (N = 106) revealed version differences in results of downstream statistical analysis. We provide a reference to highlight the regional metrics that may yield recent version-related inconsistencies in published findings. An interactive viewer is provided at http://data.brainescience.org/Freesurfer_Reliability/.

Brain morphometric similarity and flexibility

Background

The cerebral cortex is represented through multiple multilayer morphometric similarity networks to study their modular structures. The approach introduces a novel way for studying brain networks' metrics across individuals, and can quantify network properties usually not revealed using conventional network analyses.

Methods

A total of 8 combinations or types of morphometric similarity networks were constructed – 4 combinations of the inter-regional cortical features on 2 brain atlases. The networks' modular structures were investigated by identifying those modular interactions that stay consistent across the combinations of inter-regional morphometric features and individuals.

Results

The results provide evidence of the community structures as the property of (i) cortical lobar divisions, and also as (ii) the product of different combinations of morphometric features used for the construction of the multilayer representations of the cortex. For the first time, this study has mapped out flexible and inflexible morphometric similarity hubs, and evidence has been provided about variations of the modular network topology across the multilayers with age and IQ.

Conclusions

The results contribute to understanding of intra-regional characteristics in cortical interactions, which potentially can be used to map heterogeneous neurodegeneration patterns in diseased brains.

Reduced age-related gray matter loss in the subgenual cingulate cortex in long-term meditators

Accumulating evidence suggests that meditation practices have positive effects on brain ageing overall. The cingulate is known to be recruited during meditation, but research into possible effects of meditation on the ageing of the cingulate is currently missing. Thus, the present study was designed to help close this knowledge gap, with particular focus on the subgenual cingulate, a region involved in emotional regulation and autonomic and endocrine functions, making it potentially relevant for meditation. Here, we investigated differences in age-related gray matter loss between 50 long-term meditation practitioners (28 male, 22 female), aged between 24 and 77, and 50 age- and sex-matched controls. Areas of interest were four subregions of the subgenual cingulate gyrus (areas 25, 33, s24, and s32) defined as per the Julich-Brain atlas. Our study revealed a significant age-related decline in all subregions in both meditators and controls, but with significantly lower rates of annual tissue loss in meditators, specifically in left and right area s32 and right area 25. These regions have been shown to play a role in mood regulation, autonomic processing, and the integration of emotion and cognitive processes, which are all involved in and impacted by meditation. Overall, the results add further evidence to the emerging notion that meditation may slow the effects of ageing on the brain.

Predicting the Emergence of Major Neurocognitive Disorder Within Three Months After a Stroke

Background: Neurocognitive disorder (NCD) is common after stroke, with major NCD appearing in about 10% of survivors of a first-ever stroke. We aimed to classify clinical- and imaging factors related to rapid development of major NCD 3 months after a stroke, so as to examine the optimal composition of factors for predicting rapid development of the disorder. We hypothesized that the prediction would mainly be driven by neurodegenerative as opposed to vascular brain changes. Methods: Stroke survivors from five Norwegian hospitals were included from the "Norwegian COgnitive Impairment After STroke" (Nor-COAST) study. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier was trained to distinguish between patients who developed major NCD 3 months after the stroke and those who did not. Potential predictor factors were based on previous literature and included both vascular and neurodegenerative factors from clinical and structural magnetic resonance imaging findings. Cortical thickness was obtained via FreeSurfer segmentations, and volumes of white matter hyperintensities (WMH) and stroke lesions were semi-automatically gathered using FSL BIANCA and ITK-SNAP, respectively. The predictive value of the classifier was measured, compared between classifier models and cross-validated. Results: Findings from 227 stroke survivors [age = 71.7 (11.3), males = (56.4%), stroke severity NIHSS = 3.8 (4.8)] were included. The best predictive accuracy (AUC = 0.876) was achieved by an SVM classifier with 19 features. The model with the fewest number of features that achieved statistically comparable accuracy (AUC = 0.850) was the 8-feature model. These features ranked by their weighting were; stroke lesion volume, WMH volume, left occipital and temporal cortical thickness, right cingulate cortical thickness, stroke severity (NIHSS), antiplatelet medication intake, and education. Conclusion: The rapid (<3 months) development of major NCD after stroke is possible to predict with an 87.6% accuracy and seems dependent on both neurodegenerative and vascular factors, as well as aspects of the stroke itself. In contrast to previous literature, we also found that vascular changes are more important than neurodegenerative ones. Although possible to predict with relatively high accuracy, our findings indicate that the development of rapid onset post-stroke NCD may be more complex than earlier suggested.

Laughter as a paradigm of socio-emotional signal processing in dementia

Laughter is a fundamental communicative signal in our relations with other people and is used to convey a diverse repertoire of social and emotional information. It is therefore potentially a useful probe of impaired socio-emotional signal processing in neurodegenerative diseases. Here we investigated the cognitive and affective processing of laughter in forty-seven patients representing all major syndromes of frontotemporal dementia, a disease spectrum characterised by severe socio-emotional dysfunction (twenty-two with behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, twelve with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia, thirteen with nonfluent-agrammatic variant primary progressive aphasia), in relation to fifteen patients with typical amnestic Alzheimer's disease and twenty healthy age-matched individuals. We assessed cognitive labelling (identification) and valence rating (affective evaluation) of samples of spontaneous (mirthful and hostile) and volitional (posed) laughter versus two auditory control conditions (a synthetic laughter-like stimulus and spoken numbers). Neuroanatomical associations of laughter processing were assessed using voxel-based morphometry of patients' brain MR images. While all dementia syndromes were associated with impaired identification of laughter subtypes relative to healthy controls, this was significantly more severe overall in frontotemporal dementia than in Alzheimer's disease and particularly in the behavioural and semantic variants, which also showed abnormal affective evaluation of laughter. Over the patient cohort, laughter identification accuracy was correlated with measures of daily-life socio-emotional functioning. Certain striking syndromic signatures emerged, including enhanced liking for hostile laughter in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, impaired processing of synthetic laughter in the nonfluent-agrammatic variant (consistent with a generic complex auditory perceptual deficit) and enhanced liking for numbers ('numerophilia') in the semantic variant. Across the patient cohort, overall laughter identification accuracy correlated with regional grey matter in a core network encompassing inferior frontal and cingulo-insular cortices; and more specific correlates of laughter identification accuracy were delineated in cortical regions mediating affective disambiguation (identification of hostile and posed laughter in orbitofrontal cortex) and authenticity (social intent) decoding (identification of mirthful and posed laughter in anteromedial prefrontal cortex) (all p < .05 after correction for multiple voxel-wise comparisons over the whole brain). These findings reveal a rich diversity of cognitive and affective laughter phenotypes in canonical dementia syndromes and suggest that laughter is an informative probe of neural mechanisms underpinning socio-emotional dysfunction in neurodegenerative disease.

Decline of anterior cingulate functional network efficiency in first-episode, medication-naïve somatic symptom disorder and its relationship with catastrophizing

The high prevalence of somatic symptom disorder (SSD) led to cumulative burdens to the medical system. However, the pathogenesis of this disease still remains unclear. Graph theoretical analysis discovered altered network topology across various psychiatric disorders, yet alteration in the topological structure of brain functional network in SSD patients is still unexplored. Catastrophizing is a common cognitive distortion in SSD. We hypothesize that the network topological metrics of SSD should be altered, and should correlate with catastrophizing scales. 32 medication-naïve, first-episode SSD patients and 30 age, gender matched HCs were recruited. The 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD-17), Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAMA) and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) were accessed. Functional MRI were scanned and brain functional networks were constructed based on 166 anatomically cerebrum regions from the automated anatomical labeling 3 (AAL3) template. Network topological metrics were calculated and compared between the two groups. Correlation between these metrics and clinical scales were also calculated. Network global efficiency of SSD was significantly lower than that of HC. Nodal global efficiency of the left subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) of SSD was significantly lower than that of HC. FCs between the left sgACC and other 21 seed nodes were significantly declined in SSD in comparison with HC. In SSD group, HAMD total score was significantly negatively correlated with the connection between the left medial superior frontal gyrus and the left sgACC. CERQ catastrophizing score was significantly negatively correlated with nodal global efficiency of left sgACC and with the FCs between the left sgACC and other 13 seed nodes. Catastrophizing could reflect the specific sgACC-centered dysfunction of brain network global efficiency of SSD. The left sgACC may be a future treatment target of dealing with catastrophizing, which is a core cognitive distortion of SSD.

Assessing effect of long-term abstinence on coupling of three core brain networks in male heroin addicts: A resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Abstinence is one of the important measures for heroin addiction. However, it is unknown whether long-term abstinence (LA) would improve the coupling among three core brain networks (salience, default mode, and executive control) and decrease craving in treated heroin addicts. Forty-three heroin addicts with LA, 27 heroin addicts with short-term abstinence (SA), and 46 demographically matched healthy controls (HC) participated in the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study. The authors compared the functional connectivity among the three groups and examined how the coupling among salience, default mode, and executive control networks related to duration of abstinence and craving before and after drug cue exposure among heroin addicts. Compared with the SA group, with a tendency toward the HC group, the LA group showed lower drug cue-induced craving, stronger connectivity between the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (a key node of salience network) and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right posterior parietal cortex (key nodes of executive control network), and stronger connectivity between the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and precuneus (a key node of default mode network). Meanwhile, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex-precuneus connectivity positively correlated with duration of abstinence. The LA and SA groups demonstrated lower connectivity between the left anterior insula (a key node of salience network) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and lower connectivity within the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, compared with the HC group. Our findings revealed that LA is associated with lower drug cue induced craving and improve the coupling among the three core brain networks in heroin addicts.

Functional connectivity differences in Alzheimer's disease and amnestic mild cognitive impairment associated with AT(N) classification and anosognosia

Alzheimer's continuum biological profiles (A⁺T^-N^-, A⁺T⁺N^-, A⁺T^-N⁺, and A⁺T⁺N⁺) were established in the 2018 National Institute on Aging and Alzheimer's Association research framework for Alzheimer's disease (AD). We aim to assess the relation between AT(N) biomarker profiles and brain functional connectivity (FC) and assess the neural correlates of anosognosia. We assessed local functional coupling and between-network connectivity through between-group intrinsic local correlation and independent component analyses. The neural correlates of anosognosia were assessed via voxel-wise linear regression analysis in prodromal AD. Statistical significance for the FC analysis was set at p ≤ 0.05 false discovery rate (FDR)-corrected for cluster size. One hundred and twenty-one and 73 participants were included in the FC and the anosognosia analysis, respectively. The FC in the default mode network is greater in prodromal AD than AD with dementia (i.e., local correlation: T = 8.26, p-FDR < 0.001, k = 1179; independent component analysis: cerebellar network, T = 4.01, p-FDR = 0.0012, k = 493). The default mode network is persistently affected in the early stages of Alzheimer's biological continuum. The anterior cingulate cortex (T = 2.52, p-FDR = 0.043, k = 704) is associated with anosognosia in prodromal AD.