Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging最新文献

Rationale and objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Approximately 7–10% of people experiencing bereavement following a death develop prolonged grief disorder, a psychiatric disorder included in the DSM-5-TR. Prolonged grief disorder encompasses core symptoms of intense yearning/longing for and preoccupation with thoughts or memories of the deceased person experienced to a clinically significant degree for at least the last month, other key associated symptoms (e.g., avoidance, emotional pain), and the death must have occurred at least one year prior to diagnosis. Extant research has shown a relationship between activation in the reward pathway (e.g., nucleus accumbens) and grief severity. To date, functional MRI studies have primarily utilized the Emotional Counting Stroop task (ecStroop) and the Grief Elicitation task to explore these relationships. However, these prior studies are not without limitations, including small sample sizes and absence of a unified task protocol, hindering meaningful comparisons between studies. This protocol paper describes the ecStroop task and the Grief Elicitation task, which will be vital for facilitating multisite studies and enabling comparisons across studies. This will aid to advance the field by identifying neurophysiological measures that may, in the future, serve as potential biomarkers of prolonged grief disorder.

Substance use is a chronic and recurrent public healthcare concern increasing in the world, causing negative outcomes. Two or more substance use is common among people who have substance use disorders and who receive treatment. For this reason, the present study aimed to measure Retinal Nerve Fiber Layer (RNFL), Mean Macular Thickness (MMT), Central Macular Thickness (CMT) in patients who have Multiple substance use disorder (MSUD) using Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), considering that it will contribute to the literature. Among the inpatients who were rehabilitated in Elazig Mental Hospital Alcohol and Substance Addiction Treatment Center, 75 people who were diagnosed with MSUD according to DSM-5 and met the criteria, and 51 control groups were included in the study. RNFL, MMT and CMT measurements of both eyes of all participants were made by using the OCT. Total RNFL measurement were significantly thicker than the control group (p < 0.001). MMT and CMT of the eyes of the patient were thinner than the control group (p = 0.009, p < 0.001). The findings provide important contributions to the literature data and in light of these findings, it can be recommended to consider visual findings and possible neurodegeneration when evaluating patients in the addiction group and planning their treatment.

Background

Emotional dysregulation is a serious and impairing mental health problem. We examined functional activity and connectivity of neural networks involved in emotional dysregulation at baseline and following a pilot neurostimulation-enhanced cognitive restructuring intervention in a transdiagnostic clinical adult sample.

Methods

Neuroimaging data were analyzed from adults who scored 89 or higher on the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation (DERS) scale and had at least one DSM-5 diagnosis. These participants were part of a pilot randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial combining a single therapeutic session of cognitive restructuring with active or sham transcranial magnetic stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. During the study, participants engaged in an emotional regulation task using personalized autobiographical stressors while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after the pilot intervention. The fMRI task required participants to either experience the emotions associated with the memories or apply cognitive restructuring strategies to reduce their distress.

Results

Whole-brain fMRI results during regulation at baseline revealed increased activation in the dorsal frontoparietal network but decreased activation in the supplementary motor area, cingulate cortex, insula, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC). Emotion dysregulation was associated with greater vmPFC and amygdala activation and functional connectivity between these regions. The strength of functional connectivity between the dlPFC and other frontal regions was also a marker of emotional dysregulation. Preliminary findings from a subset of participants who completed the follow-up fMRI scan showed that active neurostimulation improved behavioral indices of emotion regulation more than sham stimulation. A whole-brain generalized psychophysiological interaction analysis indicated that active neurostimulation selectively increased occipital cortex connectivity with both the insula and the dlPFC. Region-of-interest functional connectivity analyses showed that active neurostimulation selectively increased dlPFC connectivity with the insula and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC).

Conclusion

Insufficient neural specificity during the emotion regulation process and over-involvement of frontal regions may be a marker of emotional dysregulation across disorders. OFC, vlPFC, insula activity, and connectivity are associated with improved emotion regulation in transdiagnostic adults. In this pilot study, active neurostimulation led to neural changes in the emotion regulation network after a single session; however, the intervention findings are preliminary, given the small sample size. These functional network properties can inform future neuroscience-driven interventions and larger-scale studies.

Background

Individuals with borderline personality traits are known to have disturbed representations of self and others. Specifically, an unstable self-identity and difficulties distinguishing between self and others can impair their mentalizing abilities in interpersonal situations. However, it is unclear whether these traits are linked to differences in neural representation of self and others.

Methods

In this study involving 156 young adults, changes in neural function during self-other processing were measured using a Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) task and a self-report survey. During the fNIRS task, participants were asked about their own traits, others' traits, how they believed others perceived them, and the basic meaning of words. The study aimed to determine whether the degree of neural differentiation between the task conditions was related to borderline personality traits.

Result

The study found that traits indicative of identity instability could be predicted by similarities in task-dependent connectivity. Specifically, the neural patterns when individuals estimated how others perceived them were more similar to the patterns when they judged their own traits.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that borderline personality traits related to identity issues may reflect difficulties in distinguishing between neural patterns when processing self and other information.

Background

Schizophrenia patients frequently present with structural and functional abnormalities of the ventral striatum (VS).

Methods

we examined basal activation state and functional connectivity (FC) in four subregions of the bilateral ventral striatum: left inferior ventral striatum (VSi_L), left superior ventral striatum(VSs_L), right inferior ventral striatum(VSi_R), and right superior ventral striatum(VSs_R). Resting-state functional magnetic resonance images were obtained from 62 schizophrenia patients (SCH), 57 bipolar disorder (BD) patients, and 26 healthy controls (HCs).

Results

The schizophrenia group exhibited greater fALFF in bilateral VS subregions compared to BD and HC groups as well as greater FC between the bilateral VSi and multiple brain regions, including the thalamus, putamen, posterior cingulate gyrus (PCC), frontal cortex and caudate. Moreover, the fALFF values of the bilateral ventral striatum were positively correlated with the severity of positive symptoms. We also found the functional connectivity between the bilateral inferior ventral striatum and some brain regions aforementioned were positively correlated with the severity of negative symptoms.

Conclusion

These findings confirm a crucial contribution of ventral striatum dysfunction, especially of the bilateral VSi in schizophrenia. Functionally dissociated regions of the ventral striatum are differentially disturbed in schizophrenia.