Digital Commons Network^™

Girls' Internalizing Symptoms And White Matter Tracts In Cortico-Limbic Circuitry, Ola Mohamed Ali, Matthew R.J. Vandermeer, Haroon I. Sheikh, Marc F. Joanisse, Elizabeth P. Hayden

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2019 The Authors Dysfunction in cortico-limbic circuitry is implicated in internalizing disorders (i.e., depressive and anxious disorders), but less is known about whether structural variations precede frank disorder and thus potentially mark risk. We therefore examined associations between white matter (WM) tract microstructure in cortico-limbic circuitry at age 7 and concurrent and longitudinal patterns of internalizing symptoms in 42 typically developing girls using Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). Girls' internalizing symptoms were concurrently associated with reduced fractional anisotropy (FA) in segments of the cingulum bundle (CB) and the uncinate fasciculus (UF), bilaterally. Moreover, latent profile analysis showed that girls with …

The Benefit To Speech Intelligibility Of Hearing A Familiar Voice, Ysabel Domingo, Emma Holmes, Ingrid S. Johnsrude

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2019 American Psychological Association. Previous experience with a voice can help listeners understand speech when a competing talker is present. Using the coordinate-response measure task (Bolia, Nelson, Ericson, & Simpson, 2000), Johnsrude et al. (2013) demonstrated that speech is more intelligible when either the target or competing (masking) talker is a long-term spouse than when both talkers are unfamiliar (termed familiar-target and familiar-masker benefits, respectively). To better understand how familiarity improves intelligibility, we measured the familiar-target and familiar-masker benefits in older and younger spouses using a more challenging matrix task, and compared the benefits listeners gain from spouses' and …

Biomarkers Of Parkinson's Disease: Striatal Sub-Regional Structural Morphometry And Diffusion Mri, Ali R. Khan, Nole M. Hiebert, Andrew Vo, Brian T. Wang, Adrian M. Owen, Ken N. Seergobin, Penny A. Macdonald

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2018 The Authors Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disorder that has no reliable biomarkers. The aim of this study was to explore the potential of semi-automated sub-regional analysis of the striatum with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to distinguish PD patients from controls (i.e., as a diagnostic biomarker) and to compare PD patients at different stages of disease. With 3 Tesla MRI, diffusion- and T1-weighted scans were obtained on two occasions in 24 PD patients and 18 age-matched, healthy controls. PD patients completed one session on and the other session off dopaminergic medication. The striatum was parcellated into …

Linked Mri Signatures Of The Brain's Acute And Persistent Response To Concussion In Female Varsity Rugby Players, Kathryn Y. Manning, Alberto Llera, Gregory A. Dekaban, Robert Bartha, Christy Barreira, Arthur Brown, Lisa Fischer, Tatiana Jevremovic, Kevin Blackney, Timothy J. Doherty, Douglas D. Fraser, Jeff Holmes, Christian F. Beckmann, Ravi S. Menon

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Acute brain changes are expected after concussion, yet there is growing evidence of persistent abnormalities well beyond clinical recovery and clearance to return to play. Multiparametric MRI is a powerful approach to non-invasively study structure-function relationships in the brain, however it remains challenging to interpret the complex and heterogeneous cascade of brain changes that manifest after concussion. Emerging conjunctive, data-driven analysis approaches like linked independent component analysis can integrate structural and functional imaging data to produce linked components that describe the shared inter-subject variance across images. These linked components not only offer the potential of a more comprehensive understanding of …

Brain Activation Time-Locked To Sleep Spindles Associated With Human Cognitive Abilities, Zhuo Fang, Laura B. Ray, Adrian M. Owen, Stuart M. Fogel

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Simultaneous electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging (EEG-fMRI) studies have revealed brain activations time-locked to spindles. Yet, the functional significance of these spindle-related brain activations is not understood. EEG studies have shown that inter-individual differences in the electrophysiological characteristics of spindles (e.g., density, amplitude, duration) are highly correlated with "Reasoning" abilities (i.e., "fluid intelligence"; problem solving skills, the ability to employ logic, identify complex patterns), but not short-term memory (STM) or verbal abilities. Spindle-dependent reactivation of brain areas recruited during new learning suggests night-to-night variations reflect offline memory processing. However, the functional significance of stable, trait-like inter-individual differences in brain …

Alive Inside, Andrew Peterson, Adrian M. Owen, Jason Karlawish

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

This article provides an ethical analysis of the U.S. practice guideline update on disorders of consciousness. Our analysis focuses on the guideline’s recommendations regarding the use of investigational neuroimaging methods to assess brain-injured patients. Complex and multifaceted ethical issues have emerged because these methods alter the clinical understanding of consciousness. We address issues of false hope, patient suffering, and cost. We argue that, in spite of these concerns, there is significant benefit to using neuroimaging to assess brain-injured patients in most cases.

The Neural Basis Of External Responsiveness In Prolonged Disorders Of Consciousness, Clara A. Stafford, Adrian M. Owen, Davinia Fernández-Espejo

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Objective: To investigate the structural integrity of fibre tracts underlying overt motor behaviour in PDOC. Methods: This cross-sectional study examined 15 PDOC patients and 22 healthy participants. Eight PDOC patients met the criteria for the vegetative state, 5 met the criteria for the minimally conscious state and 2 met the criteria for emerging from the minimally conscious state. We used fibre tractography to reconstruct the white matter fibres known to be involved in voluntary motor execution (i.e., those connecting thalamus with M1, M1 with cerebellum, and cerebellum with thalamus) and used fractional anisotropy (FA) as a measure of their integrity. …

Developing And Validating Tools To Assess Higher Level Cognition In Children And Adolescents, Brainscan, Western University, Bobby Stojanoski, Marc Joanisse, Ryan Stevenson, Cambridge Brain Sciences Inc.

Project Summaries

Collaborating with CBS, we will create a unique platform for understanding, detecting and predicting delays in cognition during the formative period from childhood to adolescence. The aim of this project is to develop and validate a battery of tests specifically for children and adolescents between the ages of 7 and 15 to measure various aspects of higher-level cognitive abilities. These include short-term and episodic memory, planning, reasoning, verbal abilities and executive functioning (those processes necessary to control behaviour, such as controlling attention and inhibition, working memory, reasoning and problem solving).

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.

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.

Disinformation And Misinformation Triangle: A Conceptual Model For ‘Fake News’ Epidemic, Causal Factors And Interventions, Victoria Rubin

Data and Test Instruments

Purpose (mandatory) This position paper treats disinformation and misinformation (intentionally deceptive and unintentionally inaccurate misleading information, respectively) as a socio-cultural technology-enabled epidemic in digital news, propagated via social media.Design/methodology/approach (mandatory) The proposed Disinformation and Misinformation Triangle is a conceptual model that identifies the three minimal causal factors occurring simultaneously to facilitate the spread of the epidemic at the societal level.Findings (mandatory) Following the epidemiological Disease Triangle model, the three interacting causal factors are translated into the digital news context: (1) the virulent pathogens are falsifications, clickbait, satirical ‘fakes’ and other deceptive or misleading news content; (2) the susceptible hosts are …

The Gothic Body Before And After Freud, Steven Bruhm

Data and Test Instruments

This essay reads Freud's relatively overlooked essay, "A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis" (1923), to consider how psychoanalysis received the Gothic trope of demoniacal possession and made of it an intra-psychic, rather than a religiously spiritual affair. I trace Freud's construction of the demoniacal from the Medieval-metaphysical to the empiricist psychological, and then into the metapsychological, to consider how the demoniacal that Freud wanted to tame always exceeded his disciplining of it. By considering the historical slippage between “possession” and “obsession,” the essay charts the rich but uneasy relation between demonism as an attack on the soul versus demonism as an attack …

Teachers` Dual Commitment To The Organization And Occupation: A Person-Centered Investigation, John P. Meyer, Alexandre J. S. Morin, Laura J. Stanley, Elyse R. Maltin

Psychology Publications

This study extends previous commitment research by applying person-centered analytic techniques to identify and compare profiles of affective, normative, and continuance commitment to the organization and occupation. Latent profile analyses applied to data from 336 Canadian teachers revealed five profiles with unique combinations of the three commitment mindsets across the two targets. Differences observed across profiles in teachers’ turnover intention and physical and psychological well-being are used to illustrate the benefits of taking a more holistic approach to the investigation of commitment compared to analyses involving individual targets and/or mindsets. Implications for commitment theory, future research, and practice are discussed.

Estrogens And Androgens In The Prefrontal Cortex: Relevance For Cognition And Decision-Making, Elizabeth Hampson

Psychology Publications

Organizational and activational effects of reproductive steroids regulate many aspects of brain function in nonhuman species, including certain cognitive functions. These actions are often exerted in a region- or pathway-specific manner in the CNS to promote reproductive objectives. Similar effects are thought to occur in human brains. Growing evidence suggests that 2 major families of hormones, estrogens and androgens, may influence cognitive and motivational processes. This chapter will briefly review findings from humans and nonhuman primates suggesting that the prefrontal cortex is an important target for estrogens and androgens. Hormonal regulation in the frontal cortex is discussed in terms of …

Sequential Congruency Effects In Monolingual And Bilingual Adults: A Failure To Replicate Grundy Et Al. (2017), Samantha F. Goldsmith, J. Bruce Morton

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Previous research suggests bilingual adults show smaller sequential congruency effects than monolingual adults. Here we re-examined these findings by administering an Eriksen flanker task to monolingual and bilingual adults. The task produced robust conventional and sequential congruency effects. Neither effect differed for monolingual and bilingual adults. Results are discussed in terms of current debates concerning differences in cognitive control between monolingual and bilingual adults.

Assessment Of Interprofessional Team Collaboration Scale (Aitcs): Further Testing And Instrument Revision., Carole Orchard, Linda L Pederson, Emily Read, Cornelia Mahler, Heather Laschinger

Nursing Publications

INTRODUCTION: The need to be able to assess collaborative practice in health care teams has been recognized in response to the direction for team-based care in a number of policy documents. The purpose of this study is to report on further refinement of such a measurement instrument, the Assessment of Interprofessional Team Collaboration Scale (AITCS) first published in 2012. To support this refinement, two objectives were set: Objective 1: to determine whether the items from the data collected in 2016 load on the same factors as found for the 2012 version of the 37-item AITCS. Objective 2: to determine whether …

Impaired Object-Location Learning And Recognition Memory But Enhanced Sustained Attention In M2 Muscarinic Receptor-Deficient Mice, Carola Romberg, Susan Bartko, Jürgen Wess, Lisa M. Saksida, Timothy J. Bussey

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2018, The Author(s). Rationale: Muscarinic acetylcholine receptors are known to play key roles in mediating cognitive processes, and impaired muscarinic cholinergic neurotransmission is associated with normal ageing processes and Alzheimer’s disease. However, the specific contributions of the individual muscarinic receptor subtypes (M1–M5) to cognition are presently not well understood. Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the contribution of M2-type muscarinic receptor signalling to sustained attention, executive control and learning and memory. Methods: M2 receptor-deficient (M2−/−) mice were tested on a touchscreen-operated task battery testing visual discrimination, behavioural flexibility, object-location associative learning, attention and response control. Spontaneous …

The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology Through A Distributed Collaborative Network, Hannah Moshontz, Lorne Campbell, Charles R. Ebersole, Hans Ijzerman, Heather L. Urry, Patrick S. Forscher, Jon E. Grahe, Randy J. Mccarthy, Erica D. Musser, Jan Antfolk, Christopher M. Castille, Thomas Rhys Evans, Susann Fiedler, Jessica Kay Flake, Diego A. Forero, Steve M. Janssen, Justin Robert Keene, John Protzko, Balazs Aczel, Sara Álvarez Solas, Daniel Ansari, Dana Awlia, Ernest Baskin, Carlota Batres, Martha Lucia Borras-Guevara, Cameron Brick, Priyanka Chandel, Armand Chatard, William J. Chopik, David Clarance, Nicholas A. Coles, Katherine S. Corker

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological research. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions, or attempt to replicate prior …

Postpartum Quality Of Life In Indian Women After Vaginal Birth And Cesarean Section: A Pilot Study Using The Eq-5d-5l Descriptive System, Stefan Köhler

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

There has been little evaluation of the postpartum quality of life (QOL) of women in India and its association with the mode of birth. This study piloted the use of the generic EQ-5D-5L questionnaire to assess postpartum QOL experienced by rural Indian women.

Factors Mediating The Impacts Of Child Abuse And Intimate Partner Violence On Chronic Pain: A Cross-Sectional Study 11 Medical And Health Sciences 1117 Public Health And Health Services 17 Psychology And Cognitive Sciences 1701 Psychology, Eman Alhalal, Marilyn Ford-Gilboe, Carol Wong, Fadia Albuhairan

Paediatrics Publications

Background: Most research on the health impacts of intimate partner violence (IPV) and child abuse has been conducted in Western countries and may not be generalizable to women living in different contexts, such as Saudi Arabia. Chronic pain, a disabling health issue associated with experiences of both child abuse and IPV among women, negatively impacts women's well-being, quality of life, and level of functioning. Yet, the psychosocial mechanisms that explain how abuse relates to chronic pain are poorly understood. We developed and tested a theoretical model that explains how both IPV and child abuse are related to chronic pain. Methods: …

A Review Of The Pharmacological And Clinical Profile Of Newer Atypical Antipsychotics As Treatments For Bipolar Disorder: Considerations For Use In Older Patients., Akshya Vasudev, Sumit Chaudhari, Rickinder Sethi, Rachel Fu, Rachel M Sandieson, Brent P Forester

Psychiatry Publications

Bipolar disorder prevalence rates vary in the older adult population (defined as age ≥ 65 years), ranging from 1% in community dwellers to as high as 8-10% in hospital inpatients. Although older agents, including lithium and valproic acid, offer significant antimanic efficacy, as supported by a recent randomized controlled trial (RCT), there is growing interest in using atypical antipsychotics to treat bipolar disorder in older adults. Newer atypical antipsychotics are of interest based on their tolerability and efficacy in the general adult bipolar population. The aim of this review was to systematically examine efficacy and tolerability of newer atypical antipsychotics …

The Role Of Emotions In The Characters Of Pedro Calderón De La Barca’S Autos Sacramentales, Javier De La Rosa, Adriana Soto Corominas, Juan Luis Suárez

CulturePlex Lab Publications

In this study, we have researched the extent of the presence of emotions in the text of Calderón’s autos sacramentales with the help of a massive yet detailed study of the sentiments expressed by the characters that Calderón created. We have also delved into the distribution of these emotions by studying the occurrence of positive and negative sentiments among different typologies of characters, in order to offer a more nuanced view of the psychology of these characters, even those that are of an allegorical nature.

Validation And Optimisation Of A Touchscreen Progressive Ratio Test Of Motivation In Male Rats, Jonathan M. Hailwood, Christopher J. Heath, Trevor W. Robbins, Lisa M. Saksida, Timothy J. Bussey

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2018, The Author(s). Rationale: Across species, effort-related motivation can be assessed by testing behaviour under a progressive ratio (PR) schedule of reinforcement. However, to date, PR tasks for rodents have been available using traditional operant response systems only. Objectives: Touchscreen operant response systems allow the assessment of behaviour in laboratory rodents, using tasks that share high face validity with the computerised assessments used in humans. Here, we sought to optimise a rat touchscreen variant of PR and validate it by assessing the effects of a number of manipulations known to affect PR performance in non-touchscreen paradigms. Methods: Separate groups …

Animacy And Real-World Size Shape Object Representations In The Human Medial Temporal Lobes, Anna Blumenthal, Bobby Stojanoski, Chris B. Martin, Rhodri Cusack, Stefan Köhler

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Identifying what an object is, and whether an object has been encountered before, is a crucial aspect of human behavior. Despite this importance, we do not yet have a complete understanding of the neural basis of these abilities. Investigations into the neural organization of human object representations have revealed category specific organization in the ventral visual stream in perceptual tasks. Interestingly, these categories fall within broader domains of organization, with reported distinctions between animate, inanimate large, and inanimate small objects. While there is some evidence for category specific effects in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), in particular in perirhinal and …

A Novel Approach To Dream Content Analysis Reveals Links Between Learning-Related Dream Incorporation And Cognitive Abilities, Stuart M. Fogel, Laura B. Ray, Valya Sergeeva, Joseph De Koninck, Adrian M. Owen

BrainsCAN Publications

© 2018 Fogel, Ray, Sergeeva, De Koninck and Owen. Can dreams reveal insight into our cognitive abilities and aptitudes (i.e., "human intelligence")? The relationship between dream production and trait-like cognitive abilities is the foundation of several long-standing theories on the neurocognitive and cognitive-psychological basis of dreaming. However, direct experimental evidence is sparse and remains contentious. On the other hand, recent research has provided compelling evidence demonstrating a link between dream content and new learning, suggesting that dreams reflect memory processing during sleep. It remains to be investigated whether the extent of learning-related dream incorporation (i.e., the semantic similarity between waking …

Immature Auditory Evoked Potentials In Children With Moderate-Severe Developmental Language Disorder., Elaine Yuen Ling Kwok, Marc F Joanisse, Lisa Archibald, Janis Oram Cardy

Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Publications

Purpose: Immature auditory processing has been proposed to underlie language impairments in children with developmental language disorder (DLD; also known as specific language impairment). Using newly available normative auditory evoked potential (AEP) waveforms, we estimated AEP maturity in individual children with DLD and explored whether this maturational index was related to their language abilities.

Method: AEPs were elicited by 225 trials of a 490-Hz pure tone. Using intraclass correlation and our previously established normative AEP waveforms of 7- to 10-year-old children with typical development, we estimated the age equivalent of the AEPs (AEP-age) from 21 children with DLD. The relation …

Universal Features In Phonological Neighbor Networks, Kevin S. Brown, Paul D. Allopenna, William R. Hunt, Rachael Steiner, Elliot Saltzman, Ken Mcrae, James S. Magnuson

Psychology Publications

Human speech perception involves transforming a countinuous acoustic signal into discrete linguistically meaningful units (phonemes) while simultaneously causing a listener to activate words that are similar to the spoken utterance and to each other. The Neighborhood Activation Model posits that phonological neighbors (two forms [words] that differ by one phoneme) compete significantly for recognition as a spoken word is heard. This definition of phonological similarity can be extended to an entire corpus of forms to produce a phonological neighbor network (PNN). We study PNNs for five languages: English, Spanish, French, Dutch, and German. Consistent with previous work, we find that …

Longitudinal Alzheimer's Degeneration Reflects The Spatial Topography Of Cholinergic Basal Forebrain Projections, Taylor W. Schmitz, Marieke Mur, Meghmik Aghourian, Marc Andre Bedard, R. Nathan Spreng

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2018 The Author(s) The cholinergic neurons of the basal forebrain (BF) provide virtually all of the brain's cortical and amygdalar cholinergic input. They are particularly vulnerable to neuropathology in early Alzheimer's disease (AD) and may trigger the emergence of neuropathology in their cortico-amygdalar projection system through cholinergic denervation and trans-synaptic spreading of misfolded proteins. We examined whether longitudinal degeneration within the BF can explain longitudinal cortico-amygdalar degeneration in older human adults with abnormal cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of AD neuropathology. We focused on two BF subregions, which are known to innervate cortico-amygdalar regions via two distinct macroscopic cholinergic projections. To …

Physical Activity Self-Management Interventions For Adults With Spinal Cord Injury: Part 2 – Exploring The Generalizability Of Findings From Research To Practice, Shauna M. Burke, Jennifer R. Tomasone, Natalie V. Scime, Jasmin K. Ma, Samantha M. Harden, Dalton L. Wolfe

Paediatrics Publications

Despite the benefits associated with regular participation in physical activity, individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) remain insufficiently active. The ability to self-manage participation may increase physical activity levels, but only if self-management interventions can be implemented in the ‘real world’. The purpose of this review was to examine the degree to which authors of published studies of LTPA self-management interventions for individuals with SCI have reported on factors that could increase the likelihood of translating this research into practice. A systematic search of five databases was conducted, yielding 33 eligible studies representing 31 interventions. Each intervention was assessed using …

Physical Activity Self-Management Interventions For Adults With Spinal Cord Injury: Part 1–A Systematic Review Of The Use And Effectiveness Of Behavior Change Techniques, Jennifer R. Tomasone, Stephanie M. Flood, Jasmin K. Ma, Natalie V. Scime, Shauna M. Burke, Lindsay Sleeth, Stephanie Marrocco

Paediatrics Publications

Objectives: To determine which behavior change techniques (BCTs) have been used within leisure time physical activity (LTPA) self-management interventions for persons with spinal cord injury (SCI), and which BCTs were effective for improving LTPA behavior and/or its antecedents. Design: Systematic review informed by the PRISMA guidelines. Methods: A comprehensive literature search was conducted using five databases. Study characteristics were extracted from included articles and intervention descriptions were coded using the BCT Taxonomy V.1. Effectiveness and maintenance of BCTs as well as the level of behavior change theory use in the design of interventions were examined within experimental studies. Results: Thirty-one …