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Frinsel FF, Christiansen MH. Capturing individual differences in sentence processing: How reliable is the self-paced reading task? Behav Res Methods 2024; 56:6248-6257. [PMID: 38379113 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-024-02355-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 02/02/2024] [Indexed: 02/22/2024]
Abstract
Advances in research on language processing have originally come from group-level comparisons, but there is now a growing interest in individual differences. To investigate individual differences, tasks that have shown robust group-level differences are often used with the implicit assumption that they will also be reliable when used as an individual differences measure. Here, we examined whether one of the primary tasks used in psycholinguistic research on language processing, the self-paced reading task, can reliably measure individual differences in relative clause processing. We replicated the well-established effects of relative clauses at the group level, with object relative clauses being more difficult to process than subject relative clauses. However, when using difference scores, the reliability of the size of the relative clause effect was close to zero because the self-paced reading times for the different relative clause types were highly correlated within individuals. Nonetheless, we found that the self-paced reading task can be used to reliably capture individual differences in overall reading speed as well as key sentence regions when the two types of relative clause sentences are considered separately. Our results indicate that both the reliability and validity of different sentence regions need to be assessed to determine whether and when self-paced reading can be used to examine individual differences in language processing.
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Grogans SE, Hur J, Barstead MG, Anderson AS, Islam S, Kim HC, Kuhn M, Tillman RM, Fox AS, Smith JF, DeYoung KA, Shackman AJ. Neuroticism/Negative Emotionality Is Associated with Increased Reactivity to Uncertain Threat in the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis, Not the Amygdala. J Neurosci 2024; 44:e1868232024. [PMID: 39009438 PMCID: PMC11308352 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1868-23.2024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2023] [Revised: 06/01/2024] [Accepted: 06/03/2024] [Indexed: 07/17/2024] Open
Abstract
Neuroticism/negative emotionality (N/NE)-the tendency to experience anxiety, fear, and other negative emotions-is a fundamental dimension of temperament with profound consequences for health, wealth, and well-being. Elevated N/NE is associated with a panoply of adverse outcomes, from reduced socioeconomic attainment to psychiatric illness. Animal research suggests that N/NE reflects heightened reactivity to uncertain threat in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) and central nucleus of the amygdala (Ce), but the relevance of these discoveries to humans has remained unclear. Here we used a novel combination of psychometric, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging approaches to test this hypothesis in an ethnoracially diverse, sex-balanced sample of 220 emerging adults selectively recruited to encompass a broad spectrum of N/NE. Cross-validated robust-regression analyses demonstrated that N/NE is preferentially associated with heightened BST activation during the uncertain anticipation of a genuinely distressing threat (aversive multimodal stimulation), whereas N/NE was unrelated to BST activation during certain-threat anticipation, Ce activation during either type of threat anticipation, or BST/Ce reactivity to threat-related faces. It is often assumed that different threat paradigms are interchangeable assays of individual differences in brain function, yet this has rarely been tested. Our results revealed negligible associations between BST/Ce reactivity to the anticipation of threat and the presentation of threat-related faces, indicating that the two tasks are nonfungible. These observations provide a framework for conceptualizing emotional traits and disorders; for guiding the design and interpretation of biobank and other neuroimaging studies of psychiatric risk, disease, and treatment; and for refining mechanistic research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shannon E Grogans
- Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
| | - Juyoen Hur
- Department of Psychology, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Republic of Korea
| | | | - Allegra S Anderson
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37240
| | - Samiha Islam
- Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
| | - Hyung Cho Kim
- Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
- Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
| | - Manuel Kuhn
- Center for Depression, Anxiety and Stress Research, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, Massachusetts 02478
| | | | - Andrew S Fox
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, California 95616
- California National Primate Research Center, University of California, Davis, California 95616
| | - Jason F Smith
- Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
| | - Kathryn A DeYoung
- Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
| | - Alexander J Shackman
- Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
- Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
- Maryland Neuroimaging Center, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
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Crombie KM, Azar A, Botsford C, Heilicher M, Jaeb M, Gruichich TS, Schomaker CM, Williams R, Stowe ZN, Dunsmoor JE, Cisler JM. Decoding context memories for threat in large-scale neural networks. Cereb Cortex 2024; 34:bhae018. [PMID: 38300181 PMCID: PMC10839849 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2023] [Revised: 01/08/2024] [Accepted: 01/10/2024] [Indexed: 02/02/2024] Open
Abstract
Humans are often tasked with determining the degree to which a given situation poses threat. Salient cues present during prior events help bring online memories for context, which plays an informative role in this process. However, it is relatively unknown whether and how individuals use features of the environment to retrieve context memories for threat, enabling accurate inferences about the current level of danger/threat (i.e. retrieve appropriate memory) when there is a degree of ambiguity surrounding the present context. We leveraged computational neuroscience approaches (i.e. independent component analysis and multivariate pattern analyses) to decode large-scale neural network activity patterns engaged during learning and inferring threat context during a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging task. Here, we report that individuals accurately infer threat contexts under ambiguous conditions through neural reinstatement of large-scale network activity patterns (specifically striatum, salience, and frontoparietal networks) that track the signal value of environmental cues, which, in turn, allows reinstatement of a mental representation, primarily within a ventral visual network, of the previously learned threat context. These results provide novel insight into distinct, but overlapping, neural mechanisms by which individuals may utilize prior learning to effectively make decisions about ambiguous threat-related contexts as they navigate the environment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kevin M Crombie
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 1601 Trinity Street, Building B, Austin, TX 78712, United States
- Department of Kinesiology, The University of Alabama, 620 Judy Bonner Drive, Box 870312, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, United States
| | - Ameera Azar
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 1601 Trinity Street, Building B, Austin, TX 78712, United States
| | - Chloe Botsford
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 6001 Research Park Boulevard, Madison, WI 53719, United States
| | - Mickela Heilicher
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 6001 Research Park Boulevard, Madison, WI 53719, United States
| | - Michael Jaeb
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 6001 Research Park Boulevard, Madison, WI 53719, United States
| | - Tijana Sagorac Gruichich
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 6001 Research Park Boulevard, Madison, WI 53719, United States
| | - Chloe M Schomaker
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 1601 Trinity Street, Building B, Austin, TX 78712, United States
| | - Rachel Williams
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 6001 Research Park Boulevard, Madison, WI 53719, United States
| | - Zachary N Stowe
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 6001 Research Park Boulevard, Madison, WI 53719, United States
| | - Joseph E Dunsmoor
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 1601 Trinity Street, Building B, Austin, TX 78712, United States
- Institute for Neuroscience, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, United States
- Department of Neuroscience, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, Stop C7000, Austin, TX 78712, United States
| | - Josh M Cisler
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, 1601 Trinity Street, Building B, Austin, TX 78712, United States
- Institute for Early Life Adversity Research, The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, 1601 Trinity Street, Building B, Austin, TX 78712, United States
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Pirastru A, Di Tella S, Cazzoli M, Esposito F, Baselli G, Baglio F, Blasi V. The impact of emotional valence and stimulus habituation on fMRI signal reliability during emotion generation. Neuroimage 2023; 284:120457. [PMID: 37977407 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120457] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2023] [Revised: 11/09/2023] [Accepted: 11/13/2023] [Indexed: 11/19/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND The emotional domain is often impaired across many neurological diseases, for this reason it represents a relevant target of rehabilitation interventions. Functional changes in neural activity related to treatment can be assessed with functional MRI (fMRI) using emotion-generation tasks in longitudinal settings. Previous studies demonstrated that within-subject fMRI signal reliability can be affected by several factors such as repetition suppression, type of task and brain anatomy. However, the differential role of repetition suppression and emotional valence of the stimuli on the fMRI signal reliability and reproducibility during an emotion-generation task involving the vision of emotional pictures is yet to be determined. METHODS Sixty-two healthy subjects were enrolled and split into two groups: group A (21 subjects, test-retest reliability on same-day and with same-task-form), group B (30 subjects, test-retest reproducibility with 4-month-interval using two equivalent-parallel forms of the task). Test-retest reliability and reproducibility of fMRI responses and patterns were evaluated separately for positive and negative emotional valence conditions in both groups. The analyses were performed voxel-wise, using the general linear model (GLM), and via a region-of-interest (ROI)-based approach, by computing the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) on the obtained contrasts. RESULTS The voxel-wise GLM test yielded no significant differences for both conditions in reliability and reproducibility analyses. As to the ROI-based approach, across all areas with significant main effects of the stimuli, the reliability, as measured with ICC, was poor (<0.4) for the positive condition and ranged from poor to excellent (0.4-0.75) for the negative condition. The ICC-based reproducibility analysis, related to the comparison of two different parallel forms, yielded similar results. DISCUSSION The voxel-wise GLM analysis failed to capture the poor reliability of fMRI signal which was instead highlighted using the ROI-based ICC analysis. The latter showed higher signal reliability for negative valence stimuli with respect to positive ones. The implementation of two parallel forms allowed to exclude neural suppression as the predominant effect causing low signal reliability, which could be instead ascribed to the employment of different neural strategies to cope with emotional stimuli over time. This is an invaluable information for a better assessment of treatment and rehabilitation effects in longitudinal studies of emotional neural processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alice Pirastru
- IRCCS Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi, ONLUS, Milan, Italy; Department of Electronics, Information, and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
| | - Sonia Di Tella
- IRCCS Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi, ONLUS, Milan, Italy; Department of Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy
| | - Marta Cazzoli
- IRCCS Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi, ONLUS, Milan, Italy
| | - Fabrizio Esposito
- Department of Advanced Medical and Surgical Sciences, University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Naples, Italy
| | - Giuseppe Baselli
- Department of Electronics, Information, and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
| | | | - Valeria Blasi
- IRCCS Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi, ONLUS, Milan, Italy
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Sosanya ME, Beamon I, Muhammad R, Freeland-Graves JH. Development and validation of the Teen Moms Child Feeding Questionnaire for Sub-Saharan Africa. BMC Public Health 2023; 23:1487. [PMID: 37542311 PMCID: PMC10401754 DOI: 10.1186/s12889-023-16365-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/20/2023] [Accepted: 07/21/2023] [Indexed: 08/06/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND In Sub-Saharan Africa, the nutritional status of children born to teenage mothers deserves critical attention. Maternal knowledge and attitudes concerning infant and young child feeding (IYCF) may predict actual practices and child nutritional status. This study created and validated the Teen Moms Child Feeding Questionnaire for Sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS A literature search on IYCF knowledge and attitude gaps in teenage mothers generated scale items. Ten nutrition experts and six teenage mothers assessed content validity and comprehensibility, respectively. Construct validation was conducted by item response theory (IRT) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), in 150 teenage mothers in rural communities of Abuja, Nigeria. Model fit parameters were estimated by standardized chi-square tests. Internal consistency reliability was determined by marginal reliability and Cronbach's alpha. In a sub-sample of 40 women who completed the questionnaire two weeks later, test-retest reliability was assessed via intraclass correlations. RESULTS The IRT analysis retained 23 knowledge items on infant food type, breastfeeding and complementary feeding, with acceptable discrimination and difficulty. CFA produced a six-factor solution (exclusive breastfeeding, breast milk expression, meal frequency, responsive feeding, dietary diversity, and barriers) with 17 attitude items. Confirmatory fit and Tucker Lewis indices > 0.9; Root Mean Square Errors of Approximation and Standardized Root Mean Square Residuals < 0.08, showed good model fit. Overall Cronbach's alpha of the attitude scale (0.843), subscales (≥ 0.6) and high intraclass correlation coefficients (> 0.75) indicated reliability. CONCLUSION The Teen Moms Child Feeding Questionnaire for Sub-Saharan Africa is a valid assessment tool for IYCF knowledge and attitudes of teenage mothers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mercy E Sosanya
- Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA.
- Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, The Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi, Bauchi, Nigeria.
| | - Isaiah Beamon
- Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA
| | - Raza Muhammad
- Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA
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Rapid Interactions of Widespread Brain Networks Characterize Semantic Cognition. J Neurosci 2023; 43:142-154. [PMID: 36384679 PMCID: PMC9838707 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.0529-21.2022] [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: 03/12/2021] [Revised: 10/25/2022] [Accepted: 10/31/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Language comprehension requires the rapid retrieval and integration of contextually appropriate concepts ("semantic cognition"). Current neurobiological models of semantic cognition are limited by the spatial and temporal restrictions of single-modality neuroimaging and lesion approaches. This is a major impediment given the rapid sequence of processing steps that have to be coordinated to accurately comprehend language. Through the use of fused functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography analysis in humans (n = 26 adults; 15 females), we elucidate a temporally and spatially specific neurobiological model for real-time semantic cognition. We find that semantic cognition in the context of language comprehension is supported by trade-offs between widespread neural networks over the course of milliseconds. Incorporation of spatial and temporal characteristics, as well as behavioral measures, provide convergent evidence for the following progression: a hippocampal/anterior temporal phonological semantic retrieval network (peaking at ∼300 ms after the sentence final word); a frontotemporal thematic semantic network (∼400 ms); a hippocampal memory update network (∼500 ms); an inferior frontal semantic syntactic reappraisal network (∼600 ms); and nodes of the default mode network associated with conceptual coherence (∼750 ms). Additionally, in typical adults, mediatory relationships among these networks are significantly predictive of language comprehension ability. These findings provide a conceptual and methodological framework for the examination of speech and language disorders, with additional implications for the characterization of cognitive processes and clinical populations in other cognitive domains.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The present study identifies a real-time neurobiological model of the meaning processes required during language comprehension (i.e., "semantic cognition"). Using a novel application of fused magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography in humans, we found that semantic cognition during language comprehension is supported by a rapid progression of widespread neural networks related to meaning, meaning integration, memory, reappraisal, and conceptual cohesion. Relationships among these systems were predictive of individuals' language comprehension efficiency. Our findings are the first to use fused neuroimaging analysis to elucidate language processes. In so doing, this study provides a new conceptual and methodological framework in which to characterize language processes and guide the treatment of speech and language deficits/disorders.
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