Frontale Funktionen depressiver Patienten im ereigniskorrelierten funktionellen MRT in Abhängigkeit von Psychopathologie und Therapie

In der Absicht herauszufinden, ob es bei depressiven Störungen Defizite im Bereich der Kognition gibt, und welche funktionellen Veränderungen diesen zu Grunde liegen, wurde in dieser Arbeit eine kognitive Funktion, nämlich das Arbeitsgedächtnis, bei einem Kollektiv depressiver Patienten (n = 12) im Vergleich zu einer nach Alter, Geschlecht, Ausbildung und Händigkeit gleich zusammengesetzten Kontrollgruppe (n = 17) mittels fMRT (funktionelle Magnetresonanztomographie) untersucht. Hierfür wurde ein entsprechendes Arbeitsgedächtnisparadigma entwickelt, das in sich nicht nur die Aufgabe der Aufrechterhaltung, sondern auch die der Manipulation des mentalen Inhalts (in unserem Fall Buchstaben des Alphabets) beinhaltet. Parallel dazu wurden sowohl Patienten- als auch Probandengruppe einer umfangreichen neuropsychologischen Begleittestung unterzogen. Bei Patienten wurde zusätzlich mit Hilfe einiger standardisierter Skalen der psychopathologische Befund erhoben und registriert. Die Patientengruppe zeigte eine signifikant schlechtere Leistung im gesamten neuropsychologischen Bereich, also sowohl in der fMRT-Aufgabe als auch in den neuropsychologischen Verhaltensuntersuchungen. Somit konnte die These bestätigt werden, dass depressive Störungen mit einer Reihe kognitiver Defizite einhergehen. Die Probanden zeigten im fMRT eine Mehraktivierung im Gyrus frontalis re. (BA - "Broadmann areal" 10,46), Gyrus postcentralis re. (BA 1,2) und Gyrus occipitalis inf. li. (BA 18,19). Dies wird als ein weiterer Beweis für das seit einigen Jahren bestehende Konzept der "Hypofrontalität" als Teil der dysfunktionellen Netzwerke bei depressiver Störung gedeutet. Unter vielen intermittierenden Variablen (Auswahl der Gruppe, Medikation, Hospitalisation usw.) hat in der Diskussion funktioneller Ergebnisse ("in Abhängigkeit von Psychopathologie und Therapie") besondere Beachtung der leichte bis mittelschwere Erkrankungsgrad der untersuchten Patienten gefunden

The association between parenting behavior and executive functioning in children and young adolescents

Executive functioning (EF) is associated with various aspects of school achievement and cognitive development in children and adolescents. There has been substantial research investigating associations between EF and other factors in young children, such as support processes and parenting, but less research has been conducted about external factors relating to EF in older children and adolescents. Therefore, the present study investigates one possible factor that could correlate with EF in school-age children and adolescents: parenting behavior. The cross-sectional study design gathered data from 169 children in primary schools, middle-schools, and Gymnasien, and their corresponding parents. All children underwent a standardized task to measure EF, the computer-based Erikson Flanker task, which evaluates EF as a function of error rates and response time. A self-report questionnaire was used to assess parenting behavior. Multilevel analysis was implemented to test the effects of parenting behavior on EF in school-age children. The results show significant associations between various parenting behaviors and children's EF: High scores on parental involvement or parental responsibility are associated with low error rates on the Erikson Flanker task, whereas high parental scores on inconsistent discipline are associated with high error rates. These correlations between parenting behavior and EF remained significant despite controlling for child age, maternal education, family income, and baseline performance (i.e., congruent trials on the Erikson Flanker task). No associations were found between parental behavior and reaction time on the Erikson Flanker task. These results indicate the important association between parenting behaviors and EF skills in school-age children, and foster the necessity to inform parents about ways in which they can optimally support their children's cognitive development

The modulating effect of personality traits on neural error monitoring: evidence from event-related FMRI.

The present study investigated the association between traits of the Five Factor Model of Personality (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness for Experiences, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) and neural correlates of error monitoring obtained from a combined Eriksen-Flanker-Go/NoGo task during event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging in 27 healthy subjects. Individual expressions of personality traits were measured using the NEO-PI-R questionnaire. Conscientiousness correlated positively with error signaling in the left inferior frontal gyrus and adjacent anterior insula (IFG/aI). A second strong positive correlation was observed in the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC). Neuroticism was negatively correlated with error signaling in the inferior frontal cortex possibly reflecting the negative inter-correlation between both scales observed on the behavioral level. Under present statistical thresholds no significant results were obtained for remaining scales. Aligning the personality trait of Conscientiousness with task accomplishment striving behavior the correlation in the left IFG/aI possibly reflects an inter-individually different involvement whenever task-set related memory representations are violated by the occurrence of errors. The strong correlations in the ACC may indicate that more conscientious subjects were stronger affected by these violations of a given task-set expressed by individually different, negatively valenced signals conveyed by the ACC upon occurrence of an error. Present results illustrate that for predicting individual responses to errors underlying personality traits should be taken into account and also lend external validity to the personality trait approach suggesting that personality constructs do reflect more than mere descriptive taxonomies

Main effects of error signaling for incongruent NoGo trials.

<p>Main effects are reported at a level of <i>p</i><0.025 to account for the one-sidedness of the directed t-contrast, and family-wise (FWE) corrected at the voxel level to control for multiple comparisons (see also <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0042930#pone-0042930-t003" target="_blank">Table 3</a>).</p

Combined Eriksen Flanker and GoNoGo fMRI paradigm, exemplary shown for all four incongruent trials.

<p>After the fixation period, one of eight possible letter strings, either congruent or incongruent, appeared on a black screen. Subjects were instructed to give a right hand index finger response, if the target letter was a “R”, to give a right hand middle finger response, if the target letter was an “U”, or to withhold response in case of appearance of target letters “P” or “V”. One of three possible feedbacks (“correct”, “wrong”, “faster”) about the subjects' response was given after a defined delay following response (in this example “correct”). <i>Upper panel</i>: Go trials. <i>Lower panel</i>: NoGo trials.</p

Summary of significant positive and negative correlations between NoGo error signaling and NEO-PI-R major domain scores obtained from the reduced model after excluding scales Agreeableness, Extraversion and Openness not showing any significant correlations in the full model.

<p>Correlation coefficients were computed within an inclusive mask consisting of voxels with significant (p<0.025, family-wise corrected) error signaling during incongruent NoGo trials; x,/y/z: MNI-coordinates of the significant peak voxel in correlation analyses; Pv(FEW) indicates family-wise corrected significance of peak voxel; extent: number of significant (p<0.05, FWE) voxels; Pc(FWE): associated family-wise corrected p-value at the cluster-level; Partial R²: cluster averaged partial determination coefficient.</p

Main effects of error signaling for incongruent NoGo trials.

<p>Main effects are reported at a level of <i>p</i><0.025 to account for the one-sidedness of the directed t-contrast, and family-wise (FWE) corrected at the voxel level to control for multiple comparisons. x, y and z are MNI coordinates of the peak voxel within a cluster. Z: z-value of standard normal distribution; BA = Brodmann area; c: activation cluster sizes, in voxels.</p