Association among SNAP-25 gene DdeI and MnlI polymorphisms and hemodynamic changes during methylphenidate use: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

Objective: To investigate the interaction of treatment-related hemodynamic changes with genotype status for Synaptosomal associated protein 25 (SNAP-25) gene in participants with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on and off single dose short-acting methylphenidate treatment with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Method: A total of 15 right-handed adults and 16 right-handed children with DSM-IV diagnosis of ADHD were evaluated. Ten milligrams of short-acting methylphenidate was administered in a crossover design. Results: Participants with SNAP-25 DdeI T/T genotype had decreased right deoxyhemoglobin ([HHb]) with treatment. SNAP-25 MnlI genotype was also associated with right deoxyhemoglobin ([HbO2]) and [HHb] changes as well as left [HHb] change. When the combinations of these genotypes were taken into account, the participants with [DdeI C/C or T/C and MnlI G/G or T/G] genotype had increased right [HHb] with MPH use whereas the participants with [DdeI T/T and MnlI T/T] or [DdeI T/T and MnlI G/G or T/G] genotypes had decreased right prefrontal [HHb]. Conclusions: These results suggested that SNAP-25 polymorphism might be associated with methylphenidate induced brain hemodynamic changes in ADHD participants. © 2011 SAGE Publications

The pill and the will : pharmacological and psychological modulation of cognitive and affective processes

Background: Impairments in cognition are components of practically all psychiatric disorders and in that sense transdiagnostic factors. In both clinical and non-clinical populations, ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ cognitive control, i.e., in emotional context and non-emotional context, is strongly associated with daily functioning and physical and mental well-being. The paradigm shift that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Research Domain Criteria initiative (RDoC) has introduced, signifies that targeting the underlying biological and behavioural endophenotypes that determine mental health and illness might be more fruitful than simply focusing on symptom based diagnostic categories. Yet, little is known on how pharmacological interventions such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) and psychostimulants (CS), that are routinely used in everyday clinical praxis, affect cognitive and emotional processes beyond the symptoms they are supposed to treat. Aim: The aim of this thesis was to compare induction and regulation of fear and disgust in healthy subjects, and to investigate how SSRI affect these processes. This basic design was expanded to also include the effect of stimulant medication on the induction and regulation of negative emotions in healthy controls and patients with ADHD. A parallel aim was to compare pharmacological emotion regulation (SSRI and CS) with psychological emotion regulation (reappraisal) and emotion regulation with skills training/ exposure (task repetition). Methods: A multimodal approach was used to explore (i) subjective rating of emotion intensity and objective measures of performance at the behavioural level, (ii) neural underpinnings in the CNS with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and (iii) physiological components of the sympathetic nervous system (electrodermal activity), which were all evaluated in the absence and presence of pharmacological and psychological interventions, during emotion induction, emotion regulation, cognitive Stroop and emotional Stroop paradigms. Results: Study I and IV demonstrated that emotion regulation with reappraisal is an effective strategy with robust effects on subjective emotional experience and electrodermal activity. Study II and III showed that task repetition improved performance during both cognitive and emotional Stroop tasks, and reduced electrodermal activity during cognitive Stroop, without significantly modifying emotion induction or emotion regulation. Study II and III showed significant effects of single dose escitalopram in reducing subjective emotional experience, improving task performance during affective interference of an ongoing cognitive process, altering prefrontal activity in a task-specific manner, and blurring the differences in the electrodermal activity between fear and disgust seen at baseline. Study IV showed that single dose CS reduced emotion induction, and that emotion regulation with reappraisal was significantly more effective in reducing subjective emotional experience compared to pharmacological emotion regulation with CS. Lastly, Study IV revealed aberrant emotion processing in patients with ADHD both at the behavioural and CNS levels, with patients reporting lower emotion induction and regulation scores, accompanied by less activation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, less deactivation of the default mode network and instead greater deactivation of the dorsal attention network, during emotion regulation compared to healthy controls. Structurally (VBM), less gray matter volume was found in limbic and paralimbic areas in patients with ADHD compared to healthy controls. Conclusions and implications: Dimensional approach using behavioural endophenotypes is a fruitful framework for studying normal physiology and diagnostic and treatment aspects of psychiatric disorders. In this thesis, it is demonstrated that emotional and non-emotional cognitive processes, although part of a continuum, likely respond differentially to psychological and pharmacological interventions and skills training with task repetition. Ultimately, improved knowledge in this field will help formulate hypothesisdriven and science-informed frameworks that will guide diagnosis and treatment plans, and usher a shift in psychiatric praxis

Best practices for fNIRS publications

The application of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in the neurosciences has been expanding over the last 40 years. Today, it is addressing a wide range of applications within different populations and utilizes a great variety of experimental paradigms. With the rapid growth and the diversification of research methods, some inconsistencies are appearing in the way in which methods are presented, which can make the interpretation and replication of studies unnecessarily challenging. The Society for Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy has thus been motivated to organize a representative (but not exhaustive) group of leaders in the field to build a consensus on the best practices for describing the methods utilized in fNIRS studies. Our paper has been designed to provide guidelines to help enhance the reliability, repeatability, and traceability of reported fNIRS studies and encourage best practices throughout the community. A checklist is provided to guide authors in the preparation of their manuscripts and to assist reviewers when evaluating fNIRS papers

The role of cognitive control in prosocial behavior – Investigating the neural foundations of retribution and forgiveness

Forgiveness is a highly relevant ability for a satisfied life with long-lasting relationships. It is hypothesized that cognitive control enables forgiveness through the inhibition of baser revenge seeking feelings. For investigating the exact underlying mechanisms, a set of four studies was run. In order to study the ability to forgive, the participants first played an ultimatum game, in which they learned that some opponents are fair and some are unfair. Following this implicit learning experience the roles were changed and in a subsequent dictator game the participants had to split up money between themselves and the opponents of the previous game. Regarding the previously unfair opponents they had to decide if they wanted to forgive (with allocating a fair amount of money) or to take revenge (with allocating an unfair amount of money). This paradigm sequence was combined in a first study with inhibitory theta-burst stimulation of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), resulting in the causal conclusion that cognitive control is needed for forgiveness processes as after the stimulation the participants were significantly more revenge seeking. In another study, participants with high and low cognitive control were compared. Participants with low cognitive control were significantly more revenge seeking, whereas, participants with high cognitive control were less revenge seeking. Concluding from the results of a regression analysis this difference was (partly) caused by different emotional foundations of the behavior, with sympathy as a relevant factor in the high cognitive control group and revenge in the low cognitive control group. In a third study the gaming paradigms (ultimatum game and dictator game) were used in combination with activating theta-burst stimulation of the right DLPFC in a highly impulsive group which is known to be more revenge seeking than the average. With higher activation in the right DLPFC it was not possible to increase the forgiveness behavior towards the unfair opponents. Surprisingly, the activating neuromodulation increased the generosity towards fair opponents. In an additional study with a different paradigm the ability of emotion regulation (which is assumed to be a key player in forgiveness processes) in participants with low vs. high cognitive control was measured. It was shown that participants with low cognitive control failed, especially in implicit emotion regulation which is essential for daily life forgiveness processes. Based on these results a forgiveness model is proposed. According to this model the probability to forgive a wrongdoer is influenced by cultural/cognitive response tendencies and state/trait emotional tendencies. Cognitive control especially, but also the experienced emotions play a crucial role in forgiveness processes according to this model

Contributions of Human Prefrontal Cortex to the Recogitation of Thought

Human beings have a unique ability to not only verbally articulate past and present experiences, as well as potential future ones, but also evaluate the mental representations of such things. Some evaluations do little good, in that they poorly reflect facts, create needless emotional distress, and contribute to the obstruction of personal goals, whereas some evaluations are the converse: They are grounded in logic, empiricism, and pragmatism and, therefore, are functional rather than dysfunctional. The aim of non-pharmacological mental health interventions is to revise dysfunctional thoughts into more adaptive, healthier ones; however, the neurocognitive mechanisms driving cognitive change have hitherto remained unclear. Therefore, this thesis examines the role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in this aspect of human higher cognition using the relatively new method of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Chapter 1 advances recogitation as the mental ability on which cognitive restructuring largely depends, concluding that, as a cognitive task, it is a form of open-ended human problem-solving that uses metacognitive and reasoning faculties. Because these faculties share similar executive resources, Chapter 2 discusses the systems in the brain involved in controlled information processing, specifically the nature of executive functions and their neural bases. Chapter 3 builds on these ideas to propose an information-processing model of recogitation, which predicts the roles of different subsystems localized within the PFC and elsewhere in the context of emotion regulation. This chapter also highlights several theoretical and empirical challenges to investigating this neurocognitive theory and proposes some solutions, such as to use experimental designs that are more ecologically valid. Chapter 4 focuses on a neuroimaging method that is best suited to investigating questions of spatial localization in ecological experiments, namely functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Chapter 5 then demonstrates a novel approach to investigating the neural bases of interpersonal interactions in clinical settings using fNIRS. Chapter 6 explores physical activity as a ‘bottom-up’ approach to upregulating the PFC, in that it might help clinical populations with executive deficits to regulate their mental health from the ‘top-down’. Chapter 7 addresses some of the methodological issues of investigating clinical interactions and physical activity in more naturalistic settings by assessing an approach to recovering functional events from observed brain data. Chapter 8 draws several conclusions about the role of the PFC in improving psychological as well as physiological well-being, particularly that rostral PFC is inextricably involved in the cognitive effort to modulate dysfunctional thoughts, and proposes some important future directions for ecological research in cognitive neuroscience; for example, psychotherapy is perhaps too physically stagnant, so integrating exercise into treatment environments might boost the effectiveness of intervention strategies

Cognitive load, working memory capacity and driving performance: A preliminary fNIRS and eye tracking study

Data availability: Data will be made available on request.Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. A common cause of road traffic incidents is driver distraction, which can occur when the driver’s attention is engaged in a concurrent secondary task. However, the relationship between cognitive demands, individual differences in working memory capacity and driving performance has received little research attention. Using a fixed-base driving simulator, the aim of this study was to use a combination of self-report, functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and mobile eye tracking data to investigate the impact of cognitive load on drivers’ gaze behaviour and driving performance, as well as explore the relationship between working memory capacity and driving performance under increased cognitive load. Twenty-one participants with a range of driving experiences (e.g., 0–14 h per week) completed a simulated driving task in a simple environment (i.e., country highway) under single-task (driving only) and dual-task (driving + modified 2-back task) conditions. Cognitive load was assessed via fNIRS data that manifested as changes in regional oxygen saturation (rSO2) in prefrontal cortex as well as self-report data of perceived mental effort. Participants’ working memory capacity was assessed using the Operation Span Task. Findings showed that prefrontal rSO2 and perceived mental effort was significantly greater under dual-task conditions compared to the single-task condition. In the dual-task condition, participants’ gaze dwelled for longer on the road and they made fewer fixations, of longer durations. Participants were able to maintain driving performance in this condition, although this was at the expense of secondary task performance. Interestingly, driving infractions under dual-task conditions were negatively correlated with participants’ working memory capacity. The findings suggest that engaging with distracting secondary tasks while driving may increase drivers’ cognitive load and change their gaze behaviour. Driving performance can seemingly be maintained under such conditions, but this may be partly determined by the driver’s working memory capacity

Cognitive Style, Laterality, And Executive Functioning

Researchers have long linked creativity to psychopathology. In particular, everyday creativity is positively associated with schizotypy, a personality style with a possible relationship with schizophrenia that is associated with cognitive dysfunction. Genetic, biological, cognitive, and behavioral studies show connections between schizotypy and creativity, but the strength and mechanisms of these connections remain inconsistent or unclear. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the relationship between these constructs from a neuropsychological perspective. In part one, a large non-clinical sample completed several questionnaires to consider the relationship between the constructs and related aspects of personality. A small indirect relationship was found between schizotypy and creativity, which explained by openness to experience. Part two examined the association between these constructs and performance on measures of executive functioning. A performance-based measure of creativity was also included. Creativity was positively associated with monitoring, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility aspects of executive functioning, whereas schizotypy only showed relationships with cognitive flexibility. Part three focused on patterns of hemispheric bias and inter-hemispheric interaction associated with schizotypy and creativity while concurrently testing a model developed with the lab of lateralized brain functioning. This model proposes a continuous interaction between the two cerebral hemispheres that occurs over time, contrasting and integrating the right-hemisphere broad organization and the left-hemisphere narrow organization. Following this model, it was predicted that both constructs would be positively associated with greater right-hemisphere activity and greater interhemispheric communication. Hypotheses were tested using a lateralized semantic priming task. Analysis showed several trends supporting this model.These laterality patterns may underlie the shared vulnerabilities between schizotypy and creativity

The impact of aging and language proficiency on the interhemispheric dynamics for discourse processing: a nirs study

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura CorrespondenteO estudo do cérebro bilíngüe e em fase de envelhecimento pode trazer evidências importantes para nossa compreensão da dinâmica cerebral no processamento lingüístico. Há uma necessidade de se implementarem estudos que investiguem o processamento do discurso por estas populações. Neste estudo, investigou-se o processamento de narrativas em seus níveis micro-, macro-proposicional e situacional por bilíngües de proficiência intermediária na língua estrangeira (L1 inglês e L2 francês) e por indivíduos idosos. Os participantes leram narrativas seguidas de asserções as quais contemplavam um dos três níveis do discurso e julgavam a plausibilidade da informação apresentada na asserção com referência ao texto correspondente. Os resultados trazidos pelo estudo sugerem a possibilidade da aplicação de abordagens teóricas similares para explicar o processamento lingüístico nestas duas populações. Embora originadas por diferentes razões (envelhecimento ou reduzida proficiência na segunda língua), as deficiências ou limitações trazidas à compreensão da linguagem geram padrões comparáveis nas mudanças hemodinâmicas no cérebro (por exemplo, mudanças hemodinâmicas mais significativas, difusas ou em alguns casos bilaterais), as quais parecem poder ser explicadas através do mesmo enquadramento teórico, proposto por Banich e colegas. A partir dos dados, parece plausível afirmar-se que, em ambos os grupos, os hemisférios tenderam a cooperar e dividir os custos impostos pelo processamento da tarefa, ou solicitaram uma mais prominente ativação na área recrutada para executar a tarefa. De modo semelhante ao que é postulado pelo modelo, um aumento na ativação em uma região e/ou as contribuições entre os hemisférios foram positivamente correlacionadas ao nível de complexidade da tarefa. The study of the bilingual and of the aging brain has the potential to offer important evidences for our understanding of the cerebral dynamics for language processing. There is a special need of studies to investigate discourse processing by these populations. In this study, intermediate-proficiency bilinguals (English as L1 and French as L2) and elderly individuals' narrative processing at the micro-, macro-structural and situational levels were investigated, by the application of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Participants read narratives followed by probes, which tapped one of the three levels, and judged the plausibility of their information by reference to the corresponding passage. The findings brought by the study suggest the possibility of the application of similar theoretical approaches to explain language processing in these two populations. Although emerging from different reasons (aging or low proficiency in the L2), the deficits or limitations brought to language comprehension generate some comparable inter-hemispheric patterns in brain hemodynamics (for instance that of more relevant, wider and in some cases bilateral hemodynamic changes), which are compatible with the theoretical framework proposed by Banich and colleagues. Thus, it seems to be arguable that in both populations the hemispheres tended to cooperate and share the costs for task processing, or demanded an increased activation in the recruited area in order to accomplish the task. Similarly to the assumptions made by the model, it seems to be plausible to state that the increase of activation within a region and/or the interhemispheric contributions were positively correlated to the amount of task difficulty

Issues in the processing and analysis of functional NIRS imaging and a contrast with fMRI findings in a study of sensorimotor deactivation and connectivity

Includes abstract.~Includes bibliographical references.The first part of this thesis examines issues in the processing and analysis of continuous wave functional linear infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) of the brain usung the DYNOT system. In the second part, the same sensorimotor experiment is carried out using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and near infrared spectroscopy in eleven of the same subjects, to establish whether similar results can be obtained at the group level with each modality. Various techniques for motion artefact removal in fNIRS are compared. Imaging channels with negligible distance between source and detector are used to detect subject motion, and in data sets containing deliberate motion artefacts, independent component analysis and multiple-channel regression are found to improve the signal-to-noise ratio