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Lee SM, Tibon R, Zeidman P, Yadav PS, Henson R. Effects of face repetition on ventral visual stream connectivity using dynamic causal modelling of fMRI data. Neuroimage 2022; 264:119708. [PMID: 36280098 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119708] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/05/2022] [Revised: 10/20/2022] [Accepted: 10/20/2022] [Indexed: 11/06/2022] Open
Abstract
Stimulus repetition normally causes reduced neural activity in brain regions that process that stimulus. Some theories claim that this "repetition suppression" reflects local mechanisms such as neuronal fatigue or sharpening within a region, whereas other theories claim that it results from changed connectivity between regions, following changes in synchrony or top-down predictions. In this study, we applied dynamic causal modeling (DCM) on a public fMRI dataset involving repeated presentations of faces and scrambled faces to test whether repetition affected local (self-connections) and/or between-region connectivity in left and right early visual cortex (EVC), occipital face area (OFA) and fusiform face area (FFA). Face "perception" (faces versus scrambled faces) modulated nearly all connections, within and between regions, including direct connections from EVC to FFA, supporting a non-hierarchical view of face processing. Face "recognition" (familiar versus unfamiliar faces) modulated connections between EVC and OFA/FFA, particularly in the left hemisphere. Most importantly, immediate and delayed repetition of stimuli were also best captured by modulations of connections between EVC and OFA/FFA, but not self-connections of OFA/FFA, consistent with synchronization or predictive coding theories, though also possibly reflecting local mechanisms like synaptic depression.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sung-Mu Lee
- Taiwan International Graduate Program in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience, National Cheng Kung University and Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan; MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
| | - Roni Tibon
- MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom
| | - Peter Zeidman
- Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Pranay S Yadav
- MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
| | - Richard Henson
- MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
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Korisky A, Gordon I, Goldstein A. Oxytocin impacts top-down and bottom-up social perception in adolescents with ASD: a MEG study of neural connectivity. Mol Autism 2022; 13:36. [PMID: 36064612 PMCID: PMC9446859 DOI: 10.1186/s13229-022-00513-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/09/2022] [Accepted: 07/18/2022] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Background In the last decade, accumulative evidence has shown that oxytocin can modulate social perception in typically developed individuals and individuals diagnosed with autism. While several studies show that oxytocin (OT) modulates neural activation in social-related neural regions, the mechanism that underlies OT effects in ASD is not fully known yet. Despite evidence from animal studies on connections between the oxytocinergic system and excitation/inhibition neural balance, the influence of OT on oscillatory responses among individuals with ASD has been rarely examined. To bridge these gaps in knowledge, we investigated the effects of OT on both social and non-social stimuli while focusing on its specific influence on the neural connectivity between three socially related neural regions—the left and right fusiform and the medial frontal cortex.
Methods Twenty-five adolescents with ASD participated in a wall-established social task during a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled MEG and OT administration study. Our main task was a social-related task that required the identification of social and non-social-related pictures. We hypothesized that OT would modulate the oscillatory connectivity between three pre-selected regions of interest to be more adaptive to social processing. Specifically, we focused on alpha and gamma bands which are known to play an important role in face processing and top-down/bottom-up balance.
Results Compared to placebo, OT reduced the connectivity between the medial frontal cortex and the fusiform in the low gamma more for social stimuli than for non-social ones, a reduction that was correlated with individuals’ performance in the task. Additionally, for both social and non-social stimuli, OT increased the connectivity in the alpha and beta bands. Limitations Sample size was determined based on sample sizes previously reported in MEG in clinical populations, especially OT administration studies in combination with neuroimaging in ASD. We were limited in our capability to recruit for such a study, and as such, the sample size was not based on a priori power analysis. Additionally, we limited our analyses to specific neural bands and regions. To validate the current results, future studies may be needed to explore other parameters using whole-brain approaches in larger samples. Conclusion These results suggest that OT influenced social perception by modifying the communication between frontal and posterior regions, an attenuation that potentially impacts both social and non-social early perception. We also show that OT influences differ between top-down and bottom-up processes, depending on the social context. Overall, by showing that OT influences both social-related perception and overall attention during early processing stages, we add new information to the existing understanding of the impact of OT on neural processing in ASD. Furthermore, by highlighting the influence of OT on early perception, we provide new directions for treatments for difficulties in early attentional phases in this population. Trial registration Registered on October 27, 2021—Retrospectively registered, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/record/NCT05096676 (details on clinical registration can be found in www.clinicalTrial.gov, unique identifier: NCT05096676). Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13229-022-00513-6.
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Affiliation(s)
- Adi Korisky
- The Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, 5290002, Ramat Gan, Israel
| | - Ilanit Gordon
- The Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, 5290002, Ramat Gan, Israel. .,Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, 5290002, Ramat Gan, Israel.
| | - Abraham Goldstein
- The Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, 5290002, Ramat Gan, Israel.,Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, 5290002, Ramat Gan, Israel
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Medial prefrontal and occipito-temporal activity at encoding determines enhanced recognition of threatening faces after 1.5 years. Brain Struct Funct 2022; 227:1655-1672. [PMID: 35174416 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-022-02462-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/10/2021] [Accepted: 01/24/2022] [Indexed: 11/02/2022]
Abstract
Studies demonstrated that faces with threatening emotional expressions are better remembered than non-threatening faces. However, whether this memory advantage persists over years and which neural systems underlie such an effect remains unknown. Here, we employed an individual difference approach to examine whether the neural activity during incidental encoding was associated with differential recognition of faces with emotional expressions (angry, fearful, happy, sad and neutral) after a retention interval of > 1.5 years (N = 89). Behaviorally, we found a better recognition for threatening (angry, fearful) versus non-threatening (happy and neutral) faces after a delay of > 1.5 years, which was driven by forgetting of non-threatening faces compared with immediate recognition after encoding. Multivariate principal component analysis (PCA) on the behavioral responses further confirmed the discriminative recognition performance between threatening and non-threatening faces. A voxel-wise whole-brain analysis on the concomitantly acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data during incidental encoding revealed that neural activity in bilateral inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) and ventromedial prefrontal/orbitofrontal cortex (vmPFC/OFC) was associated with the individual differences in the discriminative emotional face recognition performance measured by an innovative behavioral pattern similarity analysis (BPSA). The left fusiform face area (FFA) was additionally determined using a regionally focused analysis. Overall, the present study provides evidence that threatening facial expressions lead to persistent face recognition over periods of > 1.5 years, and that differential encoding-related activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and occipito-temporal cortex may underlie this effect.
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Wang D, Liang S. Dynamic Causal Modeling on the Identification of Interacting Networks in the Brain: A Systematic Review. IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng 2021; 29:2299-2311. [PMID: 34714747 DOI: 10.1109/tnsre.2021.3123964] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) has long been used to characterize effective connectivity within networks of distributed neuronal responses. Previous reviews have highlighted the understanding of the conceptual basis behind DCM and its variants from different aspects. However, no detailed summary or classification research on the task-related effective connectivity of various brain regions has been made formally available so far, and there is also a lack of application analysis of DCM for hemodynamic and electrophysiological measurements. This review aims to analyze the effective connectivity of different brain regions using DCM for different measurement data. We found that, in general, most studies focused on the networks between different cortical regions, and the research on the networks between other deep subcortical nuclei or between them and the cerebral cortex are receiving increasing attention, but far from the same scale. Our analysis also reveals a clear bias towards some task types. Based on these results, we identify and discuss several promising research directions that may help the community to attain a clear understanding of the brain network interactions under different tasks.
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Halls D, Leslie M, Leppanen J, Sedgewick F, Surguladze S, Fonville L, Lang K, Simic M, Nicholls D, Williams S, Tchanturia K. The emotional face of anorexia nervosa: The neural correlates of emotional processing. Hum Brain Mapp 2021; 42:3077-3087. [PMID: 33739540 PMCID: PMC8193512 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.25417] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/15/2020] [Revised: 03/04/2021] [Accepted: 03/08/2021] [Indexed: 12/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Social-emotional processing difficulties have been reported in Anorexia Nervosa (AN), yet the neural correlates remain unclear. Previous neuroimaging work is sparse and has not used functional connectivity paradigms to more fully explore the neural correlates of emotional difficulties. Fifty-seven acutely unwell AN (AAN) women, 60 weight-recovered AN (WR) women and 69 healthy control (HC) women categorised the gender of a series of emotional faces while undergoing Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The mean age of the AAN group was 19.40 (2.83), WR 18.37 (3.59) and HC 19.37 (3.36). A whole brain and psychophysical interaction connectivity approach was used. Parameter estimates from significant clusters were extracted and correlated with clinical symptoms. Whilst no group level differences in whole brain activation were demonstrated, significant group level functional connectivity differences emerged. WR participants showed increased connectivity between the bilateral occipital face area and the cingulate, precentral gyri, superior, middle, medial and inferior frontal gyri compared to AAN and HC when viewing happy valenced faces. Eating disorder symptoms and parameter estimates were positively correlated. Our findings characterise the neural basis of social-emotional processing in a large sample of individuals with AN.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel Halls
- Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), Psychological Medicine, King's College London (KCL), London, UK
| | - Monica Leslie
- Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), Psychological Medicine, King's College London (KCL), London, UK.,Centre for Contextual Behavioural Science, University of Chester, Chester, UK
| | - Jenni Leppanen
- Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Felicity Sedgewick
- Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), Psychological Medicine, King's College London (KCL), London, UK.,School of Education, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
| | - Simon Surguladze
- Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), Psychological Medicine, King's College London (KCL), London, UK
| | - Leon Fonville
- Division of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, UK
| | - Katie Lang
- King's College London (KCL), Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), Department of Psychology, London, UK
| | - Mima Simic
- South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK
| | - Dasha Nicholls
- Division of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, UK
| | - Steven Williams
- Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Kate Tchanturia
- Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), Psychological Medicine, King's College London (KCL), London, UK.,South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.,Psychology Department, Illia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
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Elbich DB, Molenaar PCM, Scherf KS. Evaluating the organizational structure and specificity of network topology within the face processing system. Hum Brain Mapp 2019; 40:2581-2595. [PMID: 30779256 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.24546] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2018] [Revised: 12/03/2018] [Accepted: 02/04/2019] [Indexed: 01/20/2023] Open
Abstract
There is increasing appreciation that network-level interactions among regions produce components of face processing previously ascribed to individual regions. Our goals were to use an exhaustive data-driven approach to derive and quantify the topology of directed functional connections within a priori defined nodes of the face processing network and evaluate whether the topology is category-specific. Young adults were scanned with fMRI as they viewed movies of faces, objects, and scenes. We employed GIMME to model effective connectivity among core and extended face processing regions, which allowed us to evaluate all possible directional connections, under each viewing condition (face, object, place). During face processing, we observed directional connections from the right posterior superior temporal sulcus to both the right occipital face area and right fusiform face area (FFA), which does not reflect the topology reported in prior studies. We observed connectivity between core and extended regions during face processing, but this limited to a feed-forward connection from the FFA to the amygdala. Finally, the topology of connections was unique to face processing. These findings suggest that the pattern of directed functional connections within the face processing network, particularly in the right core regions, may not be as hierarchical and feed-forward as described previously. Our findings support the notion that topologies of network connections are specialized, emergent, and dynamically responsive to task demands.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel B Elbich
- Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania
| | - Peter C M Molenaar
- Department of Health & Human Development, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania
| | - K Suzanne Scherf
- Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania
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Teng C, Zhou J, Ma H, Tan Y, Wu X, Guan C, Qiao H, Li J, Zhong Y, Wang C, Zhang N. Abnormal resting state activity of left middle occipital gyrus and its functional connectivity in female patients with major depressive disorder. BMC Psychiatry 2018; 18:370. [PMID: 30477561 PMCID: PMC6258168 DOI: 10.1186/s12888-018-1955-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 66] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/22/2018] [Accepted: 11/16/2018] [Indexed: 02/03/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Women are more susceptible to major depressive disorder (MDD). A possible explanation is that women have a trait tendency to engage in a ruminative response style. Depending on cognitive model of depression, attention bias, memory bias and self-referential bias were closely related among depressed patients. Previous studies have explored the neural mechanism of the cognitive biases by using amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (ALFF) or functional connectivity (FC), and few combined these two metrics, especially focusing on female patients. METHODS We assessed 25 female patients diagnosed with MDD and 13 well matched healthy controls (HCs) using Rs-fMRI. Two metrics ALFF and FC based on abnormal ALFF were explored and made comparisons. RESULTS Compared with HCs, female patients with MDD showed that one cluster with significantly decreased ALFF in the left middle occipital gyrus(L-MOG). Furtherly we founded depressed female subjects showed significantly lower FC between the L-MOG seed and left orbitofrontal cortex, and significantly higher FC between the L-MOG seed and left medial prefrontal gyrus and left hippocampus. CONCLUSIONS Our results showed L-MOG may act as a connection, which involved in the processing of cognitive biases of MDD by connected with limbic-cortical regions in resting state. These findings may enhance the understanding of the neurobiological mechanism in female patients with MDD.
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Affiliation(s)
- Changjun Teng
- 0000 0004 1798 8369grid.452645.4Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029 People’s Republic of China
| | - Jing Zhou
- Nanjing PuKou Central Hospital, Nanjing, 211800 People’s Republic of China
| | - Hui Ma
- 0000 0004 1798 8369grid.452645.4Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029 People’s Republic of China
| | - Yarong Tan
- 0000 0004 1798 8369grid.452645.4Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029 People’s Republic of China
| | - Xin Wu
- 0000 0004 1798 8369grid.452645.4Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029 People’s Republic of China
| | - Chengbin Guan
- 0000 0004 1798 8369grid.452645.4Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029 People’s Republic of China
| | - Huifen Qiao
- 0000 0004 1798 8369grid.452645.4Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029 People’s Republic of China
| | - Jijun Li
- 0000 0004 1798 8369grid.452645.4Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029 People’s Republic of China
| | - Yuan Zhong
- 0000 0001 0089 5711grid.260474.3School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210024 People’s Republic of China
| | - Chun Wang
- Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029, People's Republic of China.
| | - Ning Zhang
- 0000 0004 1798 8369grid.452645.4Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029 People’s Republic of China
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Wessing I, Romer G, Junghöfer M. Hypervigilance-avoidance in children with anxiety disorders: magnetoencephalographic evidence. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 2017; 58:103-112. [PMID: 27605124 DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12617] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 05/27/2016] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND An altered pattern of threat processing is deemed critical for the development of anxiety disorders (AD). According to the hypervigilance-avoidance hypothesis, AD patients show hypervigilance to threat cues at early stages of processing but avoid threat cues at later stages of processing. Consistently, adults with AD show enhanced neurophysiological responses to threat in early time windows and reduced responses to threat in late time windows. The presence of such a hypervigilance-avoidance effect and its underlying neural sources remain to be determined in clinically anxious children. METHODS Twenty-three children diagnosed with an AD and 23 healthy control children aged 8-14 years saw faces with angry and neutral expressions while whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) was recorded. Neural sources were estimated based on L2-Minimum Norm inverse source modeling and analyzed in early, midlatency, and late time windows. RESULTS In visual cortical regions, early threat processing was relatively enhanced in patients compared to controls, whereas this relation was inverted in a late interval. Consistent with the idea of affective regulation, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex revealed relatively reduced inhibition of early threat processing but revealed enhanced inhibition at a late interval in patients. Both visual-sensory and prefrontal effects were correlated with individual trait anxiety. CONCLUSIONS These results support the hypothesis of early sensory hypervigilance followed by later avoidance of threat in anxiety disordered children, presumably modulated by early reduced and later enhanced prefrontal inhibition. This neuronal hypervigilance-avoidance pattern unfolds gradually with increasing trait anxiety, reflecting a progressively biased allocation of attention to threat.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ida Wessing
- Department for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany.,Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany
| | - Georg Romer
- Department for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany
| | - Markus Junghöfer
- Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany
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Proverbio AM, Galli J. Women are better at seeing faces where there are none: an ERP study of face pareidolia. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2016; 11:1501-12. [PMID: 27217120 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsw064] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/20/2016] [Accepted: 04/27/2016] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in 26 right-handed students while they detected pictures of animals intermixed with those of familiar objects, faces and faces-in-things (FITs). The face-specific N170 ERP component over the right hemisphere was larger in response to faces and FITs than to objects. The vertex positive potential (VPP) showed a difference in FIT encoding processes between males and females at frontal sites; while for men, the FIT stimuli elicited a VPP of intermediate amplitude (between that for faces and objects), for women, there was no difference in VPP responses to faces or FITs, suggesting a marked anthropomorphization of objects in women. SwLORETA source reconstructions carried out to estimate the intracortical generators of ERPs in the 150-190 ms time window showed how, in the female brain, FIT perception was associated with the activation of brain areas involved in the affective processing of faces (right STS, BA22; posterior cingulate cortex, BA22; and orbitofrontal cortex, BA10) in addition to regions linked to shape processing (left cuneus, BA18/30). Conversely, in the men, the activation of occipito/parietal regions was prevalent, with a considerably smaller activation of BA10. The data suggest that the female brain is more inclined to anthropomorphize perfectly real objects compared to the male brain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alice M Proverbio
- Department Of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Jessica Galli
- Department Of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
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Geiger MJ, O'Gorman Tuura R, Klaver P. Inter-hemispheric connectivity in the fusiform gyrus supports memory consolidation for faces. Eur J Neurosci 2016; 43:1137-45. [DOI: 10.1111/ejn.13197] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/07/2015] [Revised: 12/23/2015] [Accepted: 01/22/2016] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Ruth O'Gorman Tuura
- Center for MR Research and Children's Research Center; University Children's Hospital; Zurich Switzerland
- Zurich Center for Integrative Human Physiology (ZIHP); University of Zurich; Zurich Switzerland
| | - Peter Klaver
- Center for MR Research and Children's Research Center; University Children's Hospital; Zurich Switzerland
- School of Psychology; University of Surrey; Guildford Surrey UK
- Department of Psychology; Division of Psychopathology and Clinical Intervention; University of Zurich; Zurich Switzerland
- Neuroscience Center Zurich; University of Zurich and ETH Zurich; Zurich Switzerland
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Mendrek A, Mancini-Marïe A. Sex/gender differences in the brain and cognition in schizophrenia. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2015; 67:57-78. [PMID: 26743859 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.10.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 175] [Impact Index Per Article: 19.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/30/2015] [Revised: 10/17/2015] [Accepted: 10/26/2015] [Indexed: 01/03/2023]
Abstract
The early conceptualizations of schizophrenia have noted some sex/gender differences in epidemiology and clinical expression of the disorder. Over the past few decades, the interest in differences between male and female patients has expanded to encompass brain morphology and neurocognitive function. Despite some variability and methodological shortcomings, a few patterns emerge from the available literature. Most studies of gross neuroanatomy show more enlarged ventricles and smaller frontal lobes in men than in women with schizophrenia; finding reflecting normal sexual dimorphism. In comparison, studies of brain asymmetry and specific corticolimbic structures, suggest a disturbance in normal sexual dimorphism. The neurocognitive findings are somewhat consistent with this picture. Studies of cognitive functions mediated by the lateral frontal network tend to show sex differences in patients which are in the same direction as those observed in the general population, whereas studies of processes mediated by the corticolimbic system more frequently reveal reversal of normal sexual dimorphisms. These trends are faint and future research would need to delineate neurocognitive differences between men and women with various subtypes of schizophrenia (e.g., early versus late onset), while taking into consideration hormonal status and gender of tested participants.
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Affiliation(s)
- Adrianna Mendrek
- Department of Psychology, Bishop's University, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada; Centre de recherche de l'Institut Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada.
| | - Adham Mancini-Marïe
- Department of Psychiatry, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada; Centre de recherche de l'Institut Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, Centre neuchâtelois de psychiatrie, Neuchâtel, Suisse
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