Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Neural Correlates Of Fear Extinction: Investing The Impact Of Puberty And Sex In Children And Adolescents Through Neuroimaging, Sneha Bhargava, Clara Zundel, Samantha Ely, Carmen Carpenter, Reem Tamimi, Leah Gowatch, Mackenna Shampine, Emilie-Clare O'Mara, Jovan Jande, Shravya Chanamolu, Ahmad Almaat, Hilary Marusak

Medical Student Research Symposium

Fear-based disorders, including anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder, are more prevalent in females than males. Steroid hormones (e.g., estradiol) are involved in fear extinction learning and later recall—a process implicated in the pathophysiology of fear-based disorders. Fear-based disorders commonly emerge during the transition from childhood to adolescence, a period marked by the onset of puberty and a natural increase of steroid hormones. Here, we examined the effects of puberty, sex, and their interaction on extinction recall and underlying neural circuitry in youth. Eighty-five youth (6-17 years, 46% female) completed a two-day Pavlovian fear extinction paradigm while undergoing functional magnetic resonance …

Investigating Bone Cement Susceptibility Related Artifacts And Adhesion, Eric Kuindersma

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) utilizes pulse sequences sensitive to changes in concentration of deoxyhemoglobin to indirectly measure neural activity. Sequences used for BOLD are sensitive to magnetic susceptibility differences that may cause signal voids. Our lab has designed an awake marmoset head coil that eliminates confounds associated with imaging an animal under anesthesia. This design requires a head chamber attached to an animal’s skull with a cement that may cause a susceptibility artifact. Motivation behind this project was to find an MRI compatible cement that remains secure to the skull with minimal artifacts. Four …

Multimodal Neuroimaging Of Hiv And Aging, Brandon Lew

Theses & Dissertations

HIV infection remains a significant contributor to disease burden, and with the success of antiretroviral therapies, the population of people with HIV is aging. A growing literature suggests a relationship between HIV-infection and a profile of age advancement, most notably in molecular studies of epigenetics. However, despite the widely-known high prevalence of HIV-related brain atrophy, functional deficits, and HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND), epigenetic age advancement has not been linked to HIV-related changes in neuroimaging metrics.

We applied three neuroimaging methods, structural MRI, resting state functional MRI, and resting state MEG, to study the brain structure and function of 121 virally-suppressed …

Evaluating Anesthetic Protocols For Non-Human Primate Functional Neuroimaging, Megha Verma

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive technique that can be used to measure a proxy of neural activity in vivo with high spatial specificity. One subject can be followed for a long period of time to assess changes in functional brain organization. However, fMRI is extremely sensitive to motion. The challenges of training non-human primates to reduce motion in an MRI scanner motivate the study of anesthesia which is commonly used to substitute for this training. In this thesis, I compare three different commonly used anesthetic protocols: isoflurane, propofol-fentanyl in combination, and fentanyl alone, to test which of …

Sharing Voxelwise Neuroimaging Results From Rhesus Monkeys And Other Species With Neurovault, Andrew S. Fox, Daniel Holley, Peter Christiaan Klink, Spencer A. Arbuckle, Carol A. Barnes, Jörn Diedrichsen, Sze Chai Kwok, Colin Kyle, J. Andrew Pruszynski, Jakob Seidlitz, Xu Feng Zhou, Russell A. Poldrack, Krzysztof J. Gorgolewski

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2020 The Authors Animal neuroimaging studies can provide unique insights into brain structure and function, and can be leveraged to bridge the gap between animal and human neuroscience. In part, this power comes from the ability to combine mechanistic interventions with brain-wide neuroimaging. Due to their phylogenetic proximity to humans, nonhuman primate neuroimaging holds particular promise. Because nonhuman primate neuroimaging studies are often underpowered, there is a great need to share data amongst translational researchers. Data sharing efforts have been limited, however, by the lack of standardized tools and repositories through which nonhuman neuroimaging data can easily be archived …

Maternal Hpa Axis Function During Parenting Is Associated With Reduced Brain Activation To Infant Cry And More Intrusive Parenting Behavior, Andrew Erhart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Previous research indicated that maternal cortisol function and maternal brain response to infant stimuli are separately related to differences in parenting behavior. Evidence from animal models have demonstrated that chronically high cortisol concentration alters brain structure and function, suggesting that studying these two mechanisms together may further improve understanding of parental behavior in human mothers. First time mothers of infants aged 1-7 months old (M age = 3 months) were recruited to participate. Mother’s cortisol concentration was measured during a naturalistic interaction with their infant and their behavior was coded for maternal sensitivity and nonintrusiveness. In a separate session using …

Symbols Are Special: An Fmri Adaptation Study Of Symbolic, Nonsymbolic, And Non-Numerical Magnitude Processing In The Human Brain, H Moriah Sokolowski, Zachary Hawes, Lien Peters, Daniel Ansari

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

How are different formats of magnitudes represented in the human brain? We used functional magnetic resonance imaging adaptation to isolate representations of symbols, quantities, and physical size in 45 adults. Results indicate that the neural correlates supporting the passive processing of number symbols are largely dissociable from those supporting quantities and physical size, anatomically and representationally. Anatomically, passive processing of quantities and size correlate with activation in the right intraparietal sulcus, whereas symbolic number processing, compared with quantity processing, correlates with activation in the left inferior parietal lobule. Representationally, neural patterns of activation supporting symbols are dissimilar from neural activation …

Combining Meg And Fmri To Examine Dynamic Task-Related Brain Activity With High Spatio-Temporal Resolution, Sangeeta Nair

All ETDs from UAB

The characterization of brain networks contributing to healthy learning and memory can inform abnormalities and treatment approaches among clinical populations. A recent shift from lesion-based to network-based approaches of studying healthy and atypical brain development highlights the need for a more comprehensive understanding across spatiotemporal domains, particularly in the case of high-level cognitive processes. Both, associative learning and working memory involve distributed and interconnected networks of specialized brain regions. Dynamic communication within- and betweensuch systems are unable to be fully resolved by individual non-invasive imaging techniques such as fMRI or MEG. While fMRI serves as an ideal tool to investigate …

Experience-Dependent Plasticitiy Of Functional Connectivity In Human Visual Cortex Following Central Vision Loss, Leland Lanelle Fleming

All ETDs from UAB

The human brain is shaped by a dynamic interplay between innate factors and life experiences. Neuroscience has long grappled with understanding this relationship, particularly with regard to how changes in experience impact the brain during adulthood. This question is especially important in the context of macular degeneration, a disease that causes significant visual impairment and drastically alters day-to-day visual experiences for individuals afflicted by the disease. Specifically, people with macular degeneration lose the ability to use vision in the center of the visual field, the region of the retina with the highest spatial resolution. Subsequently, these individuals must rely on …

Structure Of Population Activity In Primary Motor Cortex For Single Finger Flexion And Extension, Spencer A. Arbuckle, Jeff Weiler, Eric A. Kirk, Charles L. Rice, Marc Schieber, J. Andrew Pruszynski, Naveed Ejaz, Jörn Diedrichsen

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Copyright © 2020 the authors How is the primary motor cortex (M1) organized to control fine finger movements? We investigated the population activity in M1 for single finger flexion and extension, using 7T functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in female and male human participants and compared these results to the neural spiking patterns recorded in two male monkeys performing the identical task. fMRI activity patterns were distinct for movements of different fingers, but were quite similar for flexion and extension of the same finger. In contrast, spiking patterns in monkeys were quite distinct for both fingers and directions, which is …

The Neural Basis Of Metacognitive Monitoring During Arithmetic In The Developing Brain, Elien Bellon, Wim Fias, Daniel Ansari, Bert De Smedt

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

In contrast to a substantial body of research on the neural basis of cognitive performance in several academic domains, less is known about how the brain generates metacognitive (MC) awareness of such performance. The existing work on the neurobiological underpinnings of metacognition has almost exclusively been done in adults and has largely focused on lower level cognitive processing domains, such as perceptual decision-making. Extending this body of evidence, we investigated MC monitoring by asking children to solve arithmetic problems, an educationally relevant higher-order process, while providing concurrent MC reports during fMRI acquisition. Results are reported on 50 primary school children …

Time For A Change? Brain Activity And Behavioral Performance Reveal Different Dynamics At Short, Intermediate, And Long Delay Intervals During A Delay Discounting Task, Conrad A. Mohr-Eymer

Honors Thesis

In our day to day lives, the ability to make goal-oriented decisions plays a crucial role in both our work and social lives. Therefore, researchers have examined how factors such as a varying reward or delay may affect decision making. One’s performance when making intertemporal choices, decisions made between a smaller and sooner (SS) reward and a larger and later (LL) reward, are often examined to study these factors. Although time and reward magnitude are important dimensions when individuals make decisions during delay discounting, little is known about the relationship between time perception, reward magnitude, and underlying neural mechanisms. To …

Sign And Speech Share Partially Overlapping Conceptual Representations, Samuel Evans, Cathy J. Price, Jörn Diedrichsen, Eva Gutierrez-Sigut, Mairéad Macsweeney

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2019 The Author(s) Conceptual knowledge is fundamental to human cognition. Yet, the extent to which it is influenced by language is unclear. Studies of semantic processing show that similar neural patterns are evoked by the same concepts presented in different modalities (e.g., spoken words and pictures or text) [1–3]. This suggests that conceptual representations are “modality independent.” However, an alternative possibility is that the similarity reflects retrieval of common spoken language representations. Indeed, in hearing spoken language users, text and spoken language are co-dependent [4, 5], and pictures are encoded via visual and verbal routes [6]. A parallel approach …

Inference Of Language Functional Network In Healthy, Cancerous And Bilingual Brains By Fmri And Network Modeling, Qiongge Li

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We study the underlying mechanism by which language processing occurs in the human brain using inference methods on functional magnetic resonance imaging data. The data analyzed stems from several cohorts of subjects; a monolingual group, a bilingual group, a healthy control group and one diseased case. We applied a complex statistical inference pipeline to determine the network structure of brain components involved with language. This healthy network reveals a fully connected triangular relationship between the pre-Supplementary Motor Area (pre-SMA), the Broca's Area (BA), and the ventral Pre-Motor Area (PreMA) in the left hemisphere. This "triangle'' shows consistently in all the …

Binding During Sequence Learning Does Not Alter Cortical Representations Of Individual Actions, Patrick Beukema, Jörn Diedrichsen, Timothy D. Verstynen

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Copyright © 2019 the authors. As a sequence of movements is learned, serially ordered actions get bound together into sets to reduce computational complexity during planning and execution. Here, we investigated how actions become naturally bound over the course of learning and how this learning affects cortical representations of individual actions. Across 5 weeks of practice, neurologically healthy human subjects learned either a complex 32-item sequence of finger movements (trained group, n = 9; 3 female) or randomly ordered actions (control group, n = 9; 3 female). Over the course of practice, responses during sequence production in the trained group …

Understanding The Neural Bases Of Implicit And Statistical Learning, Laura J. Batterink, Ken A. Paller, Paul J. Reber

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2019 Cognitive Science Society, Inc. Both implicit learning and statistical learning focus on the ability of learners to pick up on patterns in the environment. It has been suggested that these two lines of research may be combined into a single construct of “implicit statistical learning.” However, by comparing the neural processes that give rise to implicit versus statistical learning, we may determine the extent to which these two learning paradigms do indeed describe the same core mechanisms. In this review, we describe current knowledge about neural mechanisms underlying both implicit learning and statistical learning, highlighting converging findings between …

The Neural Association Between Arithmetic And Basic Numerical Processing Depends On Arithmetic Problem Size And Not Chronological Age, Anna A. Matejko, Daniel Ansari

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2019 The Authors The intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is thought to be an important region for basic number processing (e.g. symbol-quantity associations) and arithmetic (e.g. addition). Evidence for shared circuitry within the IPS is largely based on comparisons across studies, and little research has investigated number processing and arithmetic in the same individuals. It is also unclear how the neural overlap between number processing and arithmetic is influenced by age and arithmetic problem difficulty. This study investigated these unresolved questions by examining basic number processing (symbol-quantity matching) and arithmetic (addition) networks in 26 adults and 42 children. Number processing and …

The Search For Consciousness, Adrian Owen

BrainsCAN Publications

In recent years, rapid technological developments in the field of neuroimaging have provided new methods for assessing residual cognition, detecting consciousness, and even communicating with patients who clinically appear to be in a vegetative state. Here, I highlight some of the major implications of these developments, discuss their scientific, clinical, legal, and ethical relevance, and make my own recommendations for future directions in this field.

Developing A Mechanistic Understanding Of Crossmodal Reorganization Following Sensory Loss, Brainscan, Western University, Blake E. Butler, Brian Allman, Ravi Menon

Project Summaries

Our long-term goal is to understand how plasticity reshapes circuits in the brain in response to atypical early experiences. This will allow us to better understand how the Deaf brain processes the world around us, and will make clear the challenges that must be overcome to optimize the function of cochlear implants and prostheses designed to restore sensory functions more broadly.

Can Self-Efficacy Training Improve Memory And Functional Activation In Older Adults With Mild Cognitive Impairment? A Proof-Of-Concept Intervention Study, Brainscan, Western University, Lindsay Nagamatsu, Derek Mitchell, Paul Minda, Amer Burhan, Becky Horst

Project Summaries

The goal of this study is to examine the changes in brain activity after a memory self-efficacy training program to better understand the mechanisms of memory self-efficacy. We will conduct a proof-of-concept six-week memory self-efficacy intervention in older adults with MCI, in order to demonstrate that self-efficacy impacts brain function. This will allow us to determine whether self-efficacy interventions may be a potential strategy for combating AD in the future.

Detecting Fine-Grained Population Codes In Human Prefrontal Cortex, Brainscan, Western University, Marieke Mur, Julio Martinez-Trujillo, Ravi Menon, Joe Gati

Project Summaries

In this project, we will develop techniques for improving our measurement resolution so that we can gain access to prefrontal population codes. We will combine high-field fMRI with pattern analysis techniques to unlock population coding in the prefrontal cortex. This is essential for understanding how the brain supports higher-order cognition, and ultimately, for treating dysfunctions of cognitive flexibility in the clinic.

Characterizing The Development Of Episodic Memory And Assessing The Reliability Of Fmri Measures, Lingfei Tang

Wayne State University Dissertations

The ability to remember past events is critical for everyday life and showed robust improvement over development from childhood to adulthood. With advances in noninvasive neuroimaging methods such as functional MRI in recent years, research efforts have been focused on identifying neural correlates underpinning developmental gains in memory performance. In my dissertation work, using a widely-validated subsequent memory paradigm, I aim to characterize functional MRI correlates of memory development. Specifically, I focused my investigation on identifying age differences in the functional patterns of two brain regions critical for memory, the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. Focusing on the prefrontal cortex …

Exploring The Neural Mechanisms Of Physics Learning, Jessica E. Bartley

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents a series of neuroimaging investigations and achievements that strive to deepen and broaden our understanding of human problem solving and physics learning. Neuroscience conceives of dynamic relationships between behavior, experience, and brain structure and function, but how neural changes enable human learning across classroom instruction remains an open question. At the same time, physics is a challenging area of study in which introductory students regularly struggle to achieve success across university instruction. Research and initiatives in neuroeducation promise a new understanding into the interactions between biology and education, including the neural mechanisms of learning and development. These …

A Meta-Analysis: A Functional Neuroanatomical Comparison Of Self-Esteem-Related And Postpartum Depression-Related Processing, Meghana Damaraju

Honors Theses

Background: Postpartum depression (PPD) is a psychiatric mood disorder that effects 1 in 10 women in the United States. There are relatively few behavioral studies looking at the association between PPD and self-esteem. There are even fewer studies looking at neuroimaging comparisons between PPD and self-esteem.. The goal of this study was to look at the neuroanatomical overlap of activated brain regions involved in both self-esteem and PPD processing. We hypothesized that the right amygdala, PCC, and insula would be involved in both processes.

Methods: Maps were created using the MKDA program in MATLAB. These images were extent-based cluster-wise …

Cortical Statistical Correlation Tomography Of Eeg Resting State Networks, Chuang Li, Han Yuan, Guofa Shou, Yoon-Hee Cha, Sridhar Sunderam, Walter Besio, Lei Ding

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications

Resting state networks (RSNs) have been found in human brains during awake resting states. RSNs are composed of spatially distributed regions in which spontaneous activity fluctuations are temporally and dynamically correlated. A new computational framework for reconstructing RSNs with human EEG data has been developed in the present study. The proposed framework utilizes independent component analysis (ICA) on short-time Fourier transformed inverse source maps imaged from EEG data and statistical correlation analysis to generate cortical tomography of electrophysiological RSNs. The proposed framework was evaluated on three sets of resting-state EEG data obtained in the comparison of two conditions: (1) healthy …

Neural Responses To Naturalistic Clips Of Behaving Animals Under Two Different Task Contexts, Samuel A. Nastase, Yaroslav O. Halchenko, Andrew C. Connolly, M. Ida Gobbini, James V. Haxby

Dartmouth Scholarship

The human brain rapidly deploys semantic information during perception to facilitate our interaction with the world. These semantic representations are encoded in the activity of distributed populations of neurons (Haxby et al., 2001; McClelland and Rogers, 2003; Kriegeskorte et al., 2008b) and command widespread cortical real estate (Binder et al., 2009; Huth et al., 2012). The neural representation of a stimulus can be described as a location (i.e., response vector) in a high-dimensional neural representational space (Kriegeskorte and Kievit, 2013; Haxby et al., 2014). This resonates with behavioral and theoretical work describing mental representations of objects and actions as being …

Neural Mechanisms Of The Rejection-Aggression Link, David S. Chester, Donald R. Lynam, Richard Milich, C. Nathan Dewall

Psychology Faculty Publications

Social rejection is a painful event that often increases aggression. However, the neural mechanisms of this rejection–aggression link remain unclear. A potential clue may be that rejected people often recruit the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex’s (VLPFC) self-regulatory processes to manage the pain of rejection. Using functional MRI, we replicated previous links between rejection and activity in the brain’s mentalizing network, social pain network and VLPFC. VLPFC recruitment during rejection was associated with greater activity in the brain’s reward network (i.e. the ventral striatum) when individuals were given an opportunity to retaliate. This retaliation-related striatal response was associated with greater levels of …

Evaluating Cognitive Impairment, Imaging And Blood Biomarkers In A Pre-Clinical Model Of Concussion, Brainscan, Western University, Arthur Brown, Marco Prado, Rob Bartha, Ravi Menon, Mark Daley

Project Summaries

The foundational milestone for the research, that we are addressing in this project, is to demonstrate that cognitive impairments in mouse models and humans are similar by using touchscreen technology. We will also be applying fMRI and MRS analyses to mouse models since they are analogous to that used in human studies - it will help us establish relevant endpoints for the studies as part of understanding the underlying characteristics, pathways and effects of concussion.

Imaging Fetal Brain Connectivity In High Risk Pregnancy, Brainscan, Western University, Sandrine De Ribaupierre, Barbara De Vrijer, Charles Mckenzie, Roy Eagleson, Simon Levin, Jacqueline Olgivie

Project Summaries

Our hypothesis is that differences in the regional connectivity within the fetal brain (the structural and functional connections between regions of the brain) can be observed with fetal fMRI as early as in the second trimester of pregnancy.

If we can detect differences in an at-risk fetal brain and associate that with plancental and maternal data, we could recommend interventions, such as diet or medication changes, and then monitor the impact of treatment on the fetal brain.

Development Of Fmri Compatible Reversible Deactivation To Examine Cerebral Networks, Brainscan , Western University, Stephen Lomber, Blake Butler, Stefan Everling, Blaine Chronik

Project Summaries

This study will permit us, for the first time, to examine the effects of deactivation of one cortical site on large-scale neural networks. It will permit neural networks to be functionally disassembled and the consequences of 'reversible' lesions, strokes or tumors to be assessed and modeled before they occur.