Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons^™

Mapping Specific Mental Content During Musical Imagery, Mor Regev, Andrea R. Halpern, Adrian Owen, Aniruddh Patel, Robert J. Zatorre

Faculty Journal Articles

Humans can mentally represent auditory information without an external stimulus, but the specificity of these internal representations remains unclear. Here, we asked how similar the temporally unfolding neural representations of imagined music are compared to those during the original perceived experience. We also tested whether rhythmic motion can influence the neural representation of music during imagery as during perception. Participants first memorized six 1-min-long instrumental musical pieces with high accuracy. Functional MRI data were collected during: 1) silent imagery of melodies to the beat of a visual metronome; 2) same but while tapping to the beat; and 3) passive listening. …

Network-Level Mechanisms Underlying Effects Of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (Tdcs) On Visuomotor Learning, Pejman Sehatpour, Clément Dondé, Matthew J. Hoptman, Johanna Kreither, Devin Adair, Elisa Dias, Blair Vail, Stephanie Rohrig, Gail Silipo, Javier Lopez-Calderon, Antigona Martinez, Daniel C. Javitt

Publications and Research

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation approach in which low level currents are administered over the scalp to influence underlying brain function. Prevailing theories of tDCS focus on modulation of excitation-inhibition balance at the local stimulation location. However, network level effects are reported as well, and appear to depend upon differential underlying mechanisms. Here, we evaluated potential network-level effects of tDCS during the Serial Reaction Time Task (SRTT) using convergent EEG- and fMRI-based connectivity approaches. Motor learning manifested as a significant (p <.0001) shift from slow to fast responses and corresponded to a significant increase in beta-coherence (p <.0001) and fMRI connectivity (p <.01) particularly within the visual-motor pathway. Differential patterns of tDCS effect were observed within different parametric task versions, consistent with network models. Overall, these findings demonstrate objective physiological effects of tDCS at the network level that result in effective behavioral modulation when tDCS parameters are matched to network-level requirements of the underlying task.

Multimodal Computational Modeling Of Visual Object Recognition Deficits But Intact Repetition Priming In Schizophrenia, Pejman Sehatpour, Anahita Bassir Nia, Devin Adair, Zhishun Wang, Heloise M. Debaun, Gail Silipo, Antigona Martinez, Daniel C. Javitt

Publications and Research

The term perceptual closure refers to the neural processes responsible for “filling-in” missing information in the visual image under highly adverse viewing conditions such as fog or camouflage. Here we used a closure task that required the participants to identify barely recognizable fragmented line-drawings of common objects. Patients with schizophrenia have been shown to perform poorly on this task. Following priming, controls and importantly patients can complete the line-drawings at greater levels of fragmentation behaviorally, suggesting an improvement in their ability to performthe task. Closure phenomena have been shown to involve a distributed network of cortical regions, notably the lateral …

Neurodevelopmental Mechanisms Of Adverse Trauma Outcomes In Emerging Adulthood, Olena Kleshchova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Exposure to traumatic stress and adversity during the formative years of development can have adverse effects on mental health, neuroendocrine stress system function, and the brain, that persist into adulthood. One candidate mechanism that might confer vulnerability to enduring adverse outcomes of early life trauma is disruption of normal brain maturation. As the brain matures, functional interactions among brain regions change until the functional brain architecture (i.e., the functional connectome) reaches a mature state in adulthood. Given that different neural circuits have distinct developmental trajectories and sensitive periods, traumatic stress at a given point in development might have …

The Temporal Dynamics Of Ensemble Perception, Michael L. Epstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The striking disparity between the subjective richness of experience and the considerable limitations of perceptual processing has emerged as an essential, enduring question in both vision science and philosophy of mind. A potential solution to this issue is ensemble perception: the ability for the visual system to compute the statistical summaries of object groups, effectively compressing an otherwise overwhelming amount of information. Previous work has supported that ensemble statistics can be perceived quickly and accurately for a wide range of object features. This has motivated models of ensemble perception as an early process in vision, providing an initial sense of …

Neural Bases Of Phonological And Semantic Processing In Early Childhood, Avantika Mathur, Douglas H. Schultz, Yingying Wang Dr.

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty Publications

During the early period of reading development, children gain phonological (letter-to-sound mapping) and semantic knowledge (storage and retrieval of word meaning). Their reading ability changes rapidly, accompanied by learning-induced brain plasticity as they learn to read. This study aims at identifying the neural bases of phonological and semantic processing in early childhood by using a combination of univariate and multivariate pattern analysis. Nineteen typically developing children between the age of five and seven performed visual word-level phonological (rhyming) and semantic (related meaning) judgment tasks during functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. Our multivariate analysis showed that young children with good reading …

Changes In Hemodynamic Response To Faces, Scenes, And Objects In A Visual Statistical Learning Task: An Fmri Analysis, Aaron T. Halvorsen

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Learning causes changes in brain activity and neural connections. Statistical learning is an implicit learning process that involves extracting regularities from the environment and finding patterns in stimuli based on their transitional probabilities. The following study describes an attempt to elucidate temporal changes in hemodynamic activity for three category-specific brain areas using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Blood oxygen-level dependent signal (BOLD) responses were collected while subjects viewed faces, scenes, and objects with high and low transitional probabilities in an fMRI scanner. We expected brain activity to show a temporal shift in timing of activation when comparing BOLD signal responses …

Variance Partitioning Reveals Consistent Representation Of Object Boundary Contours In Lo Across Different Datasets, Mark D. Lescroart, Utkarsh Singhal

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Approaches To Understanding The Function Of Intrinsic Activity And Its Relationship To Task-Evoked Activity In The Human Brain, Dohyun Kim

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Traditionally neuroscience research has focused on characterizing the topography and patterns of brain activation evoked by specific cognitive or behavioral tasks to understand human brain functions. This activation-based paradigm treated underlying spontaneous brain activity, a.k.a. intrinsic activity, as noise hence irrelevant to cognitive or behavioral functions. This view, however, has been profoundly modified by the discovery that intrinsic activity is not random, but temporally correlated at rest in widely distributed spatiotemporal patterns, so called resting state networks (RSN). Studies of temporal correlation of spontaneous activity among brain regions, or functional connectivity (FC), have yielded important insights into the network organization …

The Generalization Of Fear Condition Between Viewed And Imagined Percepts, Lauryn Michelle Burleigh

LSU Master's Theses

Mental images can provoke intense emotional states (Holmes & Matthews, 2010). Imagery and perception have common neural and physiological mechanisms, including activation of the early visual areas (Albers et al., 2013). We tested the prediction that individuals can acquire fear to imagined percepts and if this fear transfers to viewing percepts, using fMRI and self-reported measures to determine participants’ fear. The participants completed a task in which they viewed and imagined two stimuli, and were fear conditioned when imagining the CS+. Participants are only told that mild electrical stimulation will be paired with one of the stimuli, but not which …

Validations Of Apomorphine-Induced Bold Activation Correlations In Hemiparkinsonian Rhesus Macaques, Jorge E. Quintero, Yi Ai, Anders H. Andersen, Peter A. Hardy, Richard Grondin, Zain Guduru, Don M. Gash, Greg A. Gerhardt, Zhiming Zhang

Neuroscience Faculty Publications

Identification of Parkinson's disease at the earliest possible stage of the disease may provide the best opportunity for the use of disease modifying treatments. However, diagnosing the disease during the pre-symptomatic period remains an unmet goal. To that end, we used pharmacological MRI (phMRI) to assess the function of the cortico-basal ganglia circuit in a non-human primate model of dopamine deficiency to determine the possible relationships between phMRI signals with behavioral, neurochemical, and histological measurements. Animals with unilateral treatments with the neurotoxin, 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP), that expressed stable, long-term hemiparkinsonism were challenged with the dopaminergic receptor agonist, apomorphine, and structure-specific phMRI …

Potential Applications Of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (Fmri) To Organizational Research: A Primer And Sample Study, Allen I. Huffcutt, Wen-Ching Liu, Lori A. Russell-Chapin

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

The first purpose of this manuscript is to provide a primer for organizational researchers on both fMRI and brain physiology because few are likely to have encountered an in-depth treatment of either previously. The second purpose is to present the results of an actual fMRI study on an organizational topic (structured employment interviews) as a sample to help illustrate the potential of this type of research. Results of the sample study enhanced understanding of the brain processes behind responding to situational (SI) and behavior description (BDI) interviews, and offered several promising directions for follow-up research. To illustrate the latter, there …

Investigating Multiple Streams Of Consciousness: Using Descriptive Experience Sampling To Explore Internally And Externally Directed Streams Of Thought, Charles Fernyhough, Ben Alderson-Day, Russel T. Hurlburt, Simone Kühn

Psychology Faculty Research

Research into resting-state cognition has often struggled with the challenge of assessing inner experience in the resting state. We employed Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES), a method aimed at generating detailed and high-fidelity descriptions of experience, to investigate how experience in the resting state can vary between internal, external, and multiple simultaneous streams. Using a large body of experiential and brain activation data acquired from five DES participants, independent raters classified sampled moments of experience according to whether they were internally directed, externally directed, or contained elements of both at the same time. In line with existing models, comparison of internal …

The Relationship Between Cognitive And Neural Bases Of Metamemory Judgments, Alexandra M. Gaynor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Metamemory monitoring, the process of making subjective assessments of the status of one’s own memory, is crucial to guiding behavior and effective learning. Past cognitive research has shown that subjective confidence judgments are inferential in nature, and based on cues available at the time of the judgment. When confidence is based on cues that are related to objective memory performance, metamemory accuracy is high. However, past studies have shown that metamemory monitoring tends to be inaccurate because individuals base their confidence on information that is not predictive of memory success, such as the fluency with which items were encoded during …

Neural Correlates Of Polysubstance Use: Differential And Interactive Effects Of Alcohol And Cannabis On The Adolescent Brain, Joseph Aloi

Theses & Dissertations

Two of the most commonly used and abused substances by adolescents in the United States are alcohol and cannabis, which are associated with adverse medical and psychiatric outcomes. Alcohol use and cannabis use during adolescence is also associated with an increased risk of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and/or cannabis use disorder (CUD) in adulthood as well as increased likelihood of relapse after successful treatment. Despite this, much of the previous work on the neurobiology of substance use disorders has focused on adult substance use. This work has shown that individuals with AUD and/or CUD show dysfunction within reward processing, emotion …

When Less Is More: Mindfulness Predicts Adaptive Affective Responding To Rejection Via Reduced Prefrontal Recruitment, Alexandra M. Martelli, David S. Chester, Kirk Warren Brown, Naomi I. Eisenberger, C. Nathan Dewall

Psychology Faculty Publications

Social rejection is a distressing and painful event that many people must cope with on a frequent basis. Mindfulness—defined here as a mental state of receptive attentiveness to internal and external stimuli as they arise, moment-to-moment—may buffer such social distress. However, little research indicates whether mindful individuals adaptively regulate the distress of rejection—or the neural mechanisms underlying this potential capacity. To fill these gaps in the literature, participants reported their trait mindfulness and then completed a social rejection paradigm (Cyberball) while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Approximately 1 hour after the rejection incident, participants reported their level of distress during …

Deep Learning-Based Framework For Autism Functional Mri Image Classification, Xin Yang, Saman Sarraf, Ning Zhang

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

The purpose of this paper is to introduce deep learning-based framework LeNet-5 architecture and implement the experiments for functional MRI image classification of Autism spectrum disorder. We implement our experiments under the NVIDIA deep learning GPU Training Systems (DIGITS). By using the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) LeNet-5 architecture, we successfully classified functional MRI image of Autism spectrum disorder from normal controls. The results show that we obtained satisfactory results for both sensitivity and specificity.

Jealousy, Competition, Or A Contextual Cue For Reward?, Thomas R. Zentall

Animal Sentience

Emotions are difficult to assess, even in humans. The attribution of jealousy in an animal like a dog is especially difficult because performance of a particular behavior in the context of another animal receiving a reward may not be easily distinguishable from intra-species competition or simply a response to a contextual cue for the availability of reward. The authors provide distinguishing evidence in the form of fMRI data to show that in the presence of a “fake” dog being fed, there is bilateral activation in the amygdala, an area associated with anxiety, anger, fear, and even jealousy in humans.

Neurofeedback With Fmri: A Critical Systematic Review, Robert T. Thibault, Amanda Macpherson, Michael Lifshitz, Raquel R. Roth, Amir Raz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Neurofeedback relying on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI-nf) heralds new prospects for self-regulating brain and behavior. Here we provide the first comprehensive review of the fMRI-nf literature and the first systematic database of fMRI-nf findings. We synthesize information from 99 fMRI-nf experiments—the bulk of currently available data. The vast majority of fMRI-nf findings suggest that self-regulation of specific brain signatures seems viable; however, replication of concomitant behavioral outcomes remains sparse. To disentangle placebo influences and establish the specific effects of neurofeedback, we highlight the need for double-blind placebo-controlled studies alongside rigorous and standardized statistical analyses. Before fMRI-nf can join the …

Dynamic Range Of Frontoparietal Functional Modulation Is Associated With Working Memory Capacity Limitations In Older Adults, Jonathan G. Hakun, Nathan F. Johnson

Physical Therapy Faculty Publications

Older adults tend to over-activate regions throughout frontoparietal cortices and exhibit a reduced range of functional modulation during WM task performance compared to younger adults. While recent evidence suggests that reduced functional modulation is associated with poorer task performance, it remains unclear whether reduced range of modulation is indicative of general WM capacity-limitations. In the current study, we examined whether the range of functional modulation observed over multiple levels of WM task difficulty (N-Back) predicts in-scanner task performance and out-of-scanner psychometric estimates of WM capacity. Within our sample (60–77 years of age), age was negatively associated with frontoparietal modulation range. …

Combined Mnemonic Strategy Training And High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation For Memory Deficits In Mild Cognitive Impairment, Benjamin M. Hampstead, Krishnankutty Sathian, Marom Bikson, Anthony Y. Stringer

Publications and Research

Introduction: Memory deficits characterize Alzheimer’s dementia and the clinical precursor stage known as mild cognitive impairment. Nonpharmacologic interventions hold promise for enhancing functioning in these patients, potentially delaying functional impairment that denotes transition to dementia. Previous findings revealed that mnemonic strategy training (MST) enhances long-term retention of trained stimuli and is accompanied by increased blood oxygen level–dependent signal in the lateral frontal and parietal cortices as well as in the hippocampus. The present study was designed to enhance MST generalization, and the range of patients who benefit, via concurrent delivery of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).

Methods: This protocol describes …

Predictive Power And Validity Of Connectome Predictive Modeling: A Replication And Extension, Michael Wang, Joaquin Goni, Enrico Amico

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Neuroimaging, particularly functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), is a rapidly growing research area and has applications ranging from disease classification to understanding neural development. With new advancements in imaging technology, researchers must employ new techniques to accommodate the influx of high resolution data sets. Here, we replicate a new technique: connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM), which constructs a linear predictive model of brain connectivity and behavior. CPM’s advantages over classic machine learning techniques include its relative ease of implementation and transparency compared to “black box” opaqueness and complexity. Is this method efficient, powerful, and reliable in the prediction of behavioral measures …

Mapping The Spatio-Temporal Dynamics Of Vision In The Human Brain, Aude Oliva

MODVIS Workshop

Recognition of objects and scenes is a fundamental function of the human brain, necessitating a complex neural machinery that transforms low level visual information into semantic content. Despite significant advances in characterizing the locus and function of key visual areas, integrating the temporal and spatial dynamics of this processing stream has posed a decades-long challenge to human neuroscience. In this talk I will describe a brain mapping approach to combine magnetoencephalography (MEG), functional MRI (fMRI) measurements, and convolutional neural networks (CNN) by representational similarity analysis to yield a spatially and temporally integrated characterization of neuronal representations when observers perceive visual …

Fixation-Related Fmri And Syntactic Networks In The Brain, Brent Foster, Ben Carter, Steven Luke

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Humans comprehend language at varying levels of complexity. Syntax, in particular, deals with the arrangement of words and phrases into meaningful sentences. For instance, in English we expect most sentences to follow some variation of the order "Subject-Verb-Object: such as "The boy (Subject) ate (Verb) cake (Object)." On the surface, such grammatical rules seem simple. However, our understanding of how the brain implements these rules to understand sentences is incomplete.

Syntax appears to be associated with Broca's area in the frontal lobe and various regions of the left temporal lobe. However, recent research has provided controversial data suggesting that the …

Functional Neural Connectivity Associated With Moral Processing In Healthy And Antisocial Samples, Samantha Jean Fede

Psychology ETDs

Although research finds that brain abnormalities during moral decisions underlie traits that lead to crime, understanding of these neural dynamics is limited. Here we use two samples to explore the role network engagement and components during moral processing. We used independent component analysis and functional network connectivity analysis to examine hemodynamic response during an fMRI task of moral processing. Eighty-four community and 539 incarcerated adult men and women participated; MANCOVA and machine learning algorithms were used to identify individual and group differences in both samples. We found patterns of neural engagement and connectivity consistent with proposed models of moral cognition …

Relationship Between Structure And Functional Connectivity Within The Default Mode Network, Andrei A. Vakhtin

Psychology ETDs

We proposed a novel measure of conceptualizing dynamic functional network connectivity (FNC) in the human brain using flexibility of functional connectivity (fFC), which captures the variance of functional connectivity across time. In task-free fMRI scans (N = 122), this measure was demonstrated to correspond to the underlying structural connectivity (SC) within the default mode network (DMN), while static functional connectivity (sFC) did so to a relatively low degree. As SC likely does not develop to facilitate task-free brain function, but rather to integrate information during cognitive engagement, we argue that fFC can estimate the potential functional connectivity exhibited outside of …

At Risk Of Being Risky: The Relationship Between “Brain Age” Under Emotional States And Risk Preference, Marc D. Rudolph, Oscar Miranda-Domínguez, Alexandra O. Cohen, Kaitlyn Breiner, Laurence Steinberg, Richard J. Bonnie, Elizabeth S. Scott, Jason Chein, Kim Taylor-Thompson, Karla C. Fettich, Jennifer A. Richeson, Danielle V. Dellarco, Adriana Galván, B.J. Casey, Damien A. Fair

Faculty Scholarship

Developmental differences regarding decision making are often reported in the absence of emotional stimuli and without context, failing to explain why some individuals are more likely to have a greater inclination toward risk. The current study (N = 212; 10–25y) examined the influence of emotional context on underlying functional brain connectivity over development and its impact on risk preference. Using functional imaging data in a neutral brain-state we first identify the “brain age” of a given individual then validate it with an independent measure of cortical thickness. We then show, on average, that “brain age” across the group during the …

Encoding Of Saltatory Tactile Velocity In The Adult Orofacial Somatosensory System, Rebecca Custead

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Processing dynamic tactile inputs is a key function of somatosensory systems. Spatial velocity encoding mechanisms by the nervous system are important for skilled movement production and may play a role in recovery of motor function following neurological insult. Little is known about tactile velocity encoding in trigeminal networks associated with mechanosensory inputs to the face, or the consequences of movement.

High resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the neural substrates of velocity encoding in the human orofacial somatosensory system during unilateral saltatory pneumotactile inputs to perioral hairy skin in 20 healthy adults. A custom multichannel, scalable …

Does The Pain Of Rejection Promote The Pleasure Of Revenge? A Neural Investigation Of Cingulo-Striatal Contributions To Violence, David Chester

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Aggression is a dynamic and costly feature of human behavior. One reliable cause of aggression is social rejection, though the underlying mechanisms of this effect remain to be fully understood. Previous research has identified two psychological processes that are independently linked to aggressive retaliation: pain and pleasure. Given recent findings that pain magnifies the experience of pleasure, I predicted that the pain of rejection would promote the pleasure of aggression and thus, aggression itself. I also expected that this indirect effect of aggressive pleasure would only be observed among individuals with weaker self-regulatory abilities that are necessary to cope with …

White Matter Microstructure Contributes To Age-Related Declines In Task-Induced Deactivation Of The Default Mode Network, Christopher A. Brown, Jonathan G. Hakun, Zude Zhu, Nathan F. Johnson, Brian T. Gold

Neuroscience Faculty Publications

Task-induced deactivations within the brain’s default mode network (DMN) are thought to reflect suppression of endogenous thought processes to support exogenous goal-directed task processes. Older adults are known to show reductions in deactivation of the DMN compared to younger adults. However, little is understood about the mechanisms contributing to functional dysregulation of the DMN in aging. Here, we explored the relationships between functional modulation of the DMN and age, task performance and white matter (WM) microstructure. Participants were 117 adults ranging from 25 to 83 years old who completed an fMRI task switching paradigm, including easy (single) and difficult (mixed) …