No Self Without Salience:Affective and Self-relevance Ratings of 552 Emotionally Valenced and Neutral Dutch Words

It is unknown how self-relevance is dependent on emotional salience. Emotional salience encompasses an individual's degree of attraction or aversion to emotionally-valenced information. The current study investigated the interconnection between self and salience through the evaluation of emotional valence and self-relevance. 56 native Dutch participants completed a questionnaire assessing valence, intensity, and self-relevance of 552 Dutch nouns and verbs. One-way repeated-measures ANCOVA investigated the relationship between valence and self, age and gender. Repeated-measures ANCOVA also tested the relationship between valence and self with intensity ratings and effects of gender and age. Results showed a significant main effect of valence for self-relevant words. Intensity analyses showed a main effect of valence but not of self-relevance. There were no significant effects of gender and age. The most important finding presents that self-relevance is dependent on valence. These findings concerning the relationship between self and salience opens avenues to study an individual's self-definition

The Psychobiology of Authentic and Simulated Dissociative Personality States:The Full Monty

The etiology of dissociative identity disorder (DID) remains a topic of debate. Proponents of the fantasy model and the trauma model of DID have both called for more empirical research. To this end, the current study presents new and extended data analyses of a previously published (H2O)-O-15 positron emission tomography imaging study. This study included 29 subjects: 11 patients with DID and 10 high- and 8 low-fantasy-prone DID-simulating mentally healthy control subjects. All subjects underwent an autobiographical memory script-driven (neutral and trauma related) imagery paradigm in 2 (simulated) dissociative personality states (neutral and trauma related). Psychobiological and psychophysiological data were obtained. Results of the new post-hoc tests on the psychophysiological responses support the trauma model. New results of the brain imaging data did not support the fantasy model. This study extends previously published results by offering important new supporting data for the trauma model of DID.</p

Estimating multivariate similarity between neuroimaging datasets with sparse canonical correlation analysis:an application to perfusion imaging

An increasing number of neuroimaging studies are based on either combining more than one data modality (inter-modal) or combining more than one measurement from the same modality (intra-modal). To date, most intra-modal studies using multivariate statistics have focused on differences between datasets, for instance relying on classifiers to differentiate between effects in the data. However, to fully characterize these effects, multivariate methods able to measure similarities between datasets are needed. One classical technique for estimating the relationship between two datasets is canonical correlation analysis (CCA). However, in the context of high-dimensional data the application of CCA is extremely challenging. A recent extension of CCA, sparse CCA (SCCA), overcomes this limitation, by regularizing the model parameters while yielding a sparse solution. In this work, we modify SCCA with the aim of facilitating its application to high-dimensional neuroimaging data and finding meaningful multivariate image-to-image correspondences in intra-modal studies. In particular, we show how the optimal subset of variables can be estimated independently and we look at the information encoded in more than one set of SCCA transformations. We illustrate our framework using Arterial Spin Labeling data to investigate multivariate similarities between the effects of two antipsychotic drugs on cerebral blood flow

A neurostructural biomarker of dissociative amnesia: a hippocampal study in dissociative identity disorder

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the neural correlates of dissociative amnesia, a transdiagnostic symptom mostly present in the dissociative disorders and core characteristic of dissociative identity disorder (DID). Given the vital role of the hippocampus in memory, a prime candidate for investigation is whether total and/or subfield hippocampal volume can serve as biological markers of dissociative amnesia. METHODS: A total of 75 women, 32 with DID and 43 matched healthy controls (HC), underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Using Freesurfer (version 6.0), volumes were extracted for bilateral global hippocampus, cornu ammonis (CA) 1-4, the granule cell molecular layer of the dentate gyrus (GC-ML-DG), fimbria, hippocampal-amygdaloid transition area (HATA), parasubiculum, presubiculum and subiculum. Analyses of covariance showed volumetric differences between DID and HC. Partial correlations exhibited relationships between the three factors of the dissociative experience scale scores (dissociative amnesia, absorption, depersonalisation/derealisation) and traumatisation measures with hippocampal global and subfield volumes. RESULTS: Hippocampal volumes were found to be smaller in DID as compared with HC in bilateral global hippocampus and bilateral CA1, right CA4, right GC-ML-DG, and left presubiculum. Dissociative amnesia was the only dissociative symptom that correlated uniquely and significantly with reduced bilateral hippocampal CA1 subfield volumes. Regarding traumatisation, only emotional neglect correlated negatively with bilateral global hippocampus, bilateral CA1, CA4 and GC-ML-DG, and right CA3. CONCLUSION: We propose decreased CA1 volume as a biomarker for dissociative amnesia. We also propose that traumatisation, specifically emotional neglect, is interlinked with dissociative amnesia in having a detrimental effect on hippocampal volume

Interoception in functional motor symptoms and functional seizures: Preliminary evidence of intact accuracy alongside reduced insight and altered sensibility

Altered interoception may be a pathophysiological mechanism in functional neurological disorder (FND). However, findings have been inconsistent across interoceptive dimensions in FND including functional motor symptoms (FMS) and seizures (FS). Here, individuals with FMS/FS (n = 17) and healthy controls (HC, n = 17) completed measures of interoceptive accuracy and insight (adapted heartbeat tracking task [HTT] with confidence ratings), a time estimation control task (TET) and the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness-2 (MAIA-2) to assess interoceptive sensibility. The groups did not differ in interoceptive accuracy (p = 1.00, g = 0.00) or confidence (p = .99, g = 0.004), although the FMS/FS group displayed lower scores on the "Not-Distracting" (p < .001, g = 1.42) and "Trusting" (p = .005, g = 1.17) MAIA-2 subscales, relative to HCs. The groups did not differ in TET performance (p = .82, g = 0.08). There was a positive relationship between HTT accuracy and confidence (insight) in HCs (r = .61, p = .016) but not in FMS/FS (r = 0.11, p = .69). HTT confidence was positively correlated with MAIA-2 "Self-Regulation" (r = 0.77, p = .002) and negatively correlated with FND symptom severity (r = -0.84, p < .001) and impact (r = -0.86, p < .001) in FMS/FS. Impaired interoceptive accuracy may not be a core feature in FMS/FS, but reduced insight and altered sensibility may be relevant. Reduced certainty in self-evaluations of bodily experiences may contribute to the pathogenesis of FND symptoms

Objective and subjective neurocognitive functioning in functional motor symptoms and functional seizures: preliminary findings

INTRODUCTION: This study aimed to provide a preliminary assessment of objective and subjective neurocognitive functioning in individuals with functional motor symptoms (FMS) and/or functional seizures (FS). We tested the hypotheses that the FMS/FS group would display poorer objective attentional and executive functioning, altered social cognition, and reduced metacognitive accuracy. METHOD: Individuals with FMS/FS (n = 16) and healthy controls (HCs, n = 17) completed an abbreviated CANTAB battery, and measures of intellectual functioning, subjective cognitive complaints, performance validity, and comorbid symptoms. Subjective performance ratings were obtained to assess local metacognitive accuracy. RESULTS: The groups were comparable in age (p = 0.45), sex (p = 0.62), IQ (p = 0.57), and performance validity (p-values = 0.10-0.91). We observed no impairment on any CANTAB test in this FMS/FS sample compared to HCs, although the FMS/FS group displayed shorter reaction times on the Emotional Bias task (anger) (p = 0.01, np2 = 0.20). The groups did not differ in subjective performance ratings (p-values 0.15). Whilst CANTAB attentional set-shifting performance (total trials/errors) correlated with subjective performance ratings in HCs (p-values<0.005, rs = -0.85), these correlations were non-significant in the FMS/FS sample (p-values = 0.10-0.13, rs-values = -0.46-0.50). The FMS/FS group reported more daily cognitive complaints than HCs (p = 0.006, g = 0.92), which were associated with subjective performance ratings on CANTAB sustained attention (p = 0.001, rs = -0.74) and working memory tests (p < 0.001, rs = -0.75), and with depression (p = 0.003, rs = 0.70), and somatoform (p = 0.003, rs = 0.70) and psychological dissociation (p-values<0.005, rs-values = 0.67-0.85). CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest a discordance between objective and subjective neurocognitive functioning in this FMS/FS sample, reflecting intact test performance alongside poorer subjective cognitive functioning. Further investigation of neurocognitive functioning in FND subgroups is necessary