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Falter-Wagner CM, Kiefer CM, Bailey AJ, Vogeley K, Dammers J. Perceptual Grouping in Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Exploratory Magnetoencephalography Study. J Autism Dev Disord 2024; 54:1101-1112. [PMID: 36512195 PMCID: PMC10907473 DOI: 10.1007/s10803-022-05844-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/21/2022] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Abstract
Visual information is organised according to visual grouping principles. In visual grouping tasks individuals with ASD have shown equivocal performance. We explored neural correlates of Gestalt grouping in individuals with and without ASD. Neuromagnetic activity of individuals with (15) and without (18) ASD was compared during a visual grouping task testing grouping by proximity versus similarity. Individuals without ASD showed stronger evoked responses with earlier peaks in response to both grouping types indicating an earlier neuronal differentiation between grouping principles in individuals without ASD. In contrast, individuals with ASD showed particularly prolonged processing of grouping by similarity suggesting a high demand of neural resources. The neuronal processing differences found could explain less efficient grouping performance observed behaviourally in ASD.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Christian M Kiefer
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, INM-4, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany
- Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Natural Sciences, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
| | - Anthony J Bailey
- UBC Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, 2255 Westbrook Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 2A1, Canada
| | - Kai Vogeley
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Cologne, Cologne, Germany
- Institute of Neurosciences and Medicine-Cognitive Neuroscience, INM-3, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany
| | - Jürgen Dammers
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, INM-4, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany.
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Sawalma AS, Kiefer CM, Boers F, Shah NJ, Khudeish N, Neuner I, Herzallah MM, Dammers J. The effects of trauma on feedback processing: an MEG study. Front Neurosci 2023; 17:1172549. [PMID: 38027493 PMCID: PMC10651751 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1172549] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/23/2023] [Accepted: 10/17/2023] [Indexed: 12/01/2023] Open
Abstract
The cognitive impact of psychological trauma can manifest as a range of post-traumatic stress symptoms that are often attributed to impairments in learning from positive and negative outcomes, aka reinforcement learning. Research on the impact of trauma on reinforcement learning has mainly been inconclusive. This study aimed to circumscribe the impact of psychological trauma on reinforcement learning in the context of neural response in time and frequency domains. Two groups of participants were tested - those who had experienced psychological trauma and a control group who had not - while they performed a probabilistic classification task that dissociates learning from positive and negative feedback during a magnetoencephalography (MEG) examination. While the exposure to trauma did not exhibit any effects on learning accuracy or response time for positive or negative feedback, MEG cortical activity was modulated in response to positive feedback. In particular, the medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortices (mOFC and lOFC) exhibited increased activity, while the insular and supramarginal cortices showed decreased activity during positive feedback presentation. Furthermore, when receiving negative feedback, the trauma group displayed higher activity in the medial portion of the superior frontal cortex. The timing of these activity changes occurred between 160 and 600 ms post feedback presentation. Analysis of the time-frequency domain revealed heightened activity in theta and alpha frequency bands (4-10 Hz) in the lOFC in the trauma group. Moreover, dividing the two groups according to their learning performance, the activity for the non-learner subgroup was found to be lower in lOFC and higher in the supramarginal cortex. These differences were found in the trauma group only. The results highlight the localization and neural dynamics of feedback processing that could be affected by exposure to psychological trauma. This approach and associated findings provide a novel framework for understanding the cognitive correlates of psychological trauma in relation to neural dynamics in the space, time, and frequency domains. Subsequent work will focus on the stratification of cognitive and neural correlates as a function of various symptoms of psychological trauma. Clinically, the study findings and approach open the possibility for neuromodulation interventions that synchronize cognitive and psychological constructs for individualized treatment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Abdulrahman S. Sawalma
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
- Palestinian Neuroscience Initiative, Al-Quds University, Abu Dis, Palestine
| | - Christian M. Kiefer
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Natural Sciences, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
| | - Frank Boers
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
| | - N. Jon Shah
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-11), Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA)-Brain – Translational Medicine, Aachen, Germany
- Department of Neurology, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
| | - Nibal Khudeish
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
| | - Irene Neuner
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA)-Brain – Translational Medicine, Aachen, Germany
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
| | - Mohammad M. Herzallah
- Palestinian Neuroscience Initiative, Al-Quds University, Abu Dis, Palestine
- Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, United States
| | - Jürgen Dammers
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
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Kampel N, Kiefer CM, Shah NJ, Neuner I, Dammers J. Neural fingerprinting on MEG time series using MiniRocket. Front Neurosci 2023; 17:1229371. [PMID: 37799343 PMCID: PMC10547883 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1229371] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/26/2023] [Accepted: 09/04/2023] [Indexed: 10/07/2023] Open
Abstract
Neural fingerprinting is the identification of individuals in a cohort based on neuroimaging recordings of brain activity. In magneto- and electroencephalography (M/EEG), it is common practice to use second-order statistical measures, such as correlation or connectivity matrices, when neural fingerprinting is performed. These measures or features typically require coupling between signal channels and often ignore the individual temporal dynamics. In this study, we show that, following recent advances in multivariate time series classification, such as the development of the RandOm Convolutional KErnel Transformation (ROCKET) classifier, it is possible to perform classification directly on short time segments from MEG resting-state recordings with remarkably high classification accuracies. In a cohort of 124 subjects, it was possible to assign windows of time series of 1 s in duration to the correct subject with above 99% accuracy. The achieved accuracies are vastly superior to those of previous methods while simultaneously requiring considerably shorter time segments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nikolas Kampel
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) – CSD – Center for Simulation and Data Science, Aachen, Germany
| | - Christian M. Kiefer
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Natural Sciences, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
| | - N. Jon Shah
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) – BRAIN – Translational Medicine, Aachen, Germany
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-11), Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Department of Neurology, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
| | - Irene Neuner
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) – CSD – Center for Simulation and Data Science, Aachen, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) – BRAIN – Translational Medicine, Aachen, Germany
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
| | - Jürgen Dammers
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) – CSD – Center for Simulation and Data Science, Aachen, Germany
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Kiefer CM, Ito J, Weidner R, Boers F, Shah NJ, Grün S, Dammers J. Revealing Whole-Brain Causality Networks During Guided Visual Searching. Front Neurosci 2022; 16:826083. [PMID: 35250461 PMCID: PMC8894880 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2022.826083] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/30/2021] [Accepted: 01/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
In our daily lives, we use eye movements to actively sample visual information from our environment ("active vision"). However, little is known about how the underlying mechanisms are affected by goal-directed behavior. In a study of 31 participants, magnetoencephalography was combined with eye-tracking technology to investigate how interregional interactions in the brain change when engaged in two distinct forms of active vision: freely viewing natural images or performing a guided visual search. Regions of interest with significant fixation-related evoked activity (FRA) were identified with spatiotemporal cluster permutation testing. Using generalized partial directed coherence, we show that, in response to fixation onset, a bilateral cluster consisting of four regions (posterior insula, transverse temporal gyri, superior temporal gyrus, and supramarginal gyrus) formed a highly connected network during free viewing. A comparable network also emerged in the right hemisphere during the search task, with the right supramarginal gyrus acting as a central node for information exchange. The results suggest that all four regions are vital to visual processing and guiding attention. Furthermore, the right supramarginal gyrus was the only region where activity during fixations on the search target was significantly negatively correlated with search response times. Based on our findings, we hypothesize that, following a fixation, the right supramarginal gyrus supplies the right supplementary eye field (SEF) with new information to update the priority map guiding the eye movements during the search task.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christian M. Kiefer
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6), Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Natural Sciences, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA)-Brain – Institute Brain Structure and Function, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-10), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
| | - Junji Ito
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6), Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA)-Brain – Institute Brain Structure and Function, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-10), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
| | - Ralph Weidner
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
| | - Frank Boers
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
| | - N. Jon Shah
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-11), Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA)-Brain – Translational Medicine, Aachen, Germany
- Department of Neurology, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
| | - Sonja Grün
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6), Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA)-Brain – Institute Brain Structure and Function, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-10), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
- Theoretical Systems Neurobiology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
| | - Jürgen Dammers
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
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