Structural Brain Changes Related to Disease Duration in Patients with Asthma

Dyspnea is the impairing, cardinal symptom patients with asthma repeatedly experience over the course of the disease. However, its accurate perception is also crucial for timely initiation of treatment. Reduced perception of dyspnea is associated with negative treatment outcome, but the underlying brain mechanisms of perceived dyspnea in patients with asthma remain poorly understood. We examined whether increasing disease duration in fourteen patients with mild-to-moderate asthma is related to structural brain changes in the insular cortex and brainstem periaqueductal grey (PAG). In addition, the association between structural brain changes and perceived dyspnea were studied. By using magnetic resonance imaging in combination with voxel-based morphometry, gray matter volumes of the insular cortex and the PAG were analysed and correlated with asthma duration and perceived affective unpleasantness of resistive load induced dyspnea. Whereas no associations were observed for the insular cortex, longer duration of asthma was associated with increased gray matter volume in the PAG. Moreover, increased PAG gray matter volume was related to reduced ratings of dyspnea unpleasantness. Our results demonstrate that increasing disease duration is associated with increased gray matter volume in the brainstem PAG in patients with mild-to-moderate asthma. This structural brain change might contribute to the reduced perception of dyspnea in some patients with asthma and negatively impact the treatment outcome

behavioral and fmri data Rauh et al.

behavioral and fmri data reported in Rauh et al.</p

Brooding is Related to Neural Alterations during Autobiographical Memory Retrieval in Aging

Brooding rumination is considered a central aspect of depression in midlife. As older people tend to review their past, rumination tendency might be particularly crucial in late life since it might hinder older adults to adequately evaluate previous events. We scanned 22 non-depressed older adults with varying degrees of brooding tendency with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed the construction and elaboration of autobiographical memories. Behavioral findings demonstrate that brooders reported lower mood states, needed more time for memory construction and rated their memories as less detailed and less positive. On the neural level, brooding tendency was related to increased amygdala activation during the search for specific memories and reduced engagement of cortical networks during elaboration. Moreover, coupling patterns of the subgenual cingulate cortex with the hippocampus and the amygdala predicted details and less positive valence of memories in brooders. Our findings support the hypothesis that ruminative thinking interferes with the search for specific memories while facilitating the uncontrolled retrieval of negatively biased self-schemes. The observed neurobehavioral dysfunctions might put older people with brooding tendency at high risk for becoming depressed when reviewing their past. Training of autobiographical memory ability might therefore be a promising approach to increase resilience against depression in late-life

The need to change: Is there a critical role of midlife adaptation in mental health later in life?

Although late-life depression (LLD) is a serious health problem and more common than dementia in people over 60, it is underdiagnosed and undertreated. The cognitive-emotional etiology of LLD is particularly poorly understood. This is in contrast to the now extensive literature from psychology and cognitive neuroscience on the characteristics of emotionally healthy aging. This research consistently shows a change in emotional processing in older adults that is modulated by prefrontal regulation. Lifespan theories explain this change in terms of neurocognitive adaptation to limited opportunities and resources that typically occur in the second half of life. Epidemiological data on an increase in well-being after a low point around age 50 suggest that the majority of people seem quite capable of making this adaptation, even though empirical evidence for a causal modulation of this so called ‘paradox of aging’ and for the role of the midlife dip is still lacking. Intriguingly, LLD is associated with deficits in emotional, cognitive, and prefrontal functions similar to those shown to be crucial for healthy adaptation. Suspected causes of these deficits, such as white matter lesions or affective instability, become apparent as early as midlife when internal and external changes as well as daily challenges set in. Based on these findings, we propose that some individuals who develop depression at older ages may not have been able to successfully implement self-regulatory adaptation at midlife. Here, we review the current evidence and theories on successful aging, the neurobiology of LLD, and well-being across the lifespan. Drawing on recent advances in lifespan theories, emotion regulation research, and cognitive neuroscience, we propose a model of successful versus unsuccessful adaptation that emphasizes the increasing need for implicit habitual control and resource-based regulatory choice during midlife

Don't look back in anger! Responsiveness to missed chances in successful and nonsuccessful aging

Life-span theories explain successful aging with an adaptive management of emotional experiences like regret. As opportunities to undo regrettable situations decline with age, a reduced engagement into these situations represents a potentially protective strategy to maintain well-being in older age. Yet, little is known about the underlying neurobiological mechanisms supporting this claim. We used a multimodal psychophysiological approach in combination with a sequential risk-taking task that induces the feeling of regret and investigated young as well as emotionally successfully and unsuccessfully (i.e., late-life depressed) aged participants. Responsiveness to regret was specifically reduced in successful aging paralleled by autonomic and frontostriatal characteristics indicating adaptive shifts in emotion regulation. Our results suggest that disengagement from regret reflects a critical resilience factor for emotional health in older age

Post-hoc eyetracking results of emotion and emotion x group effects.

<p>Proportions of fixations (A) and fixation durations (B) on positive, negative and neutral stimuli aggregated across own-age and other-age stimuli, plotted separately for each age-group; Error bars represent standard errors of the mean. * <i>p</i><.05, ** <i>p</i><.01, *** <i>p</i><.01, <i>n.s.</i> = not significant.</p

Data for article "Selective Control of Attention Supports the Positivity Effect in Aging"

<p>Data for article "Selective Control of Attention Supports the Positivity Effect in Aging" in PLOS ONE (under review).</p> <p>In this study, 25 younger and 25 older adults’ eye movements were tracked while they viewed 40 triads of one positive, one negative and one neutral social scenario. The 3 scenarios were either all own-age relevant or other-age relevant (e.g. wedding versus playing with grandchildren). The data revealed a significant positivity effect (PE): Older adults devoted significantly more fixations to positive over negative stimuli than younger adults and this was enhanced for own-age stimuli. Moreover, the PE was correlated  with the elderlies' specific ability to adaptively control attention over salient visual distraction, measured in a visual search (singleton) task. On the following day, recognition memory was assessed for all stimuli. The results indicated that again, a positivity preference (positive>neutral) was significantly more affected by own-age relevance in older than in young age.</p> <p>The data includes the relative amount of the number of fixations (fixN) as well as the relative durations of fixations (fixD) to positive, negative and neutral own-age and other-age stimuli. In addition, the file contains a column for the singleton score measuring visual top-down control (higher values indicate lower performance). The singleton_filter variable indentifies the subject who's score is missing due to technical recording problems. Finally, the file includes the corrected hitrates from the recognition memory test (hitrate-false alarms; corHit).</p> <p>The group variable is coded as 1 for the young and 2 for the older participants.</p

Memory data.

<p>Corrected hit rates for positive, negative and neutral own-age and other-age stimuli, plotted separately for each age-group. Error bars represent standard errors of the mean.</p

Post-hoc test results for interactions with image category.

<p>Difference between proportions of fixations for positive minus negative images in the two image categories (own-age vs. other-age), plotted separately for each age-group. Error bars represent standard errors of the mean. * <i>p</i><.05, <i>n.s.</i> = not significant.</p