NeuroImage
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Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) is a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique in which the magnetic susceptibility characteristic of molecular and cellular components, including iron and myelin, is quantified. Rapid iron accumulation in subcortical nuclei and myelination of the white matter tracts are two important developmental processes that contribute to cognitive functions. Both also contribute to the magnetic susceptibility of the brain tissues. ⋯ Moreover, working memory performance correlated significantly with the magnetic susceptibility in caudate nucleus in both children and adults, while the correlation was not significant for gray matter density. QSM of white matter in the caudo-frontal tract also differed between children and adults, but did not correlate with working memory scores. These results indicate that QSM is a feasible technique to measure developmental aspects of changes in the striatum, possibly related to iron content that is relevant to cognition.
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Human amygdalae are involved in various behavioral functions such as affective and stress processing. For these behavioral functions, as well as for psychophysiological arousal including cortisol release, sex differences are reported. Here, we assessed cortisol levels and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of left and right amygdalae in 81 healthy participants (42 women) to investigate potential modulation of amygdala rsFC by sex and cortisol concentration. ⋯ Our results suggest that functional connectivity of the amygdalae as well as the regulatory effect of cortisol on brain networks differs between women and men. These sex-differences and the mediating and sex-dependent effect of cortisol on brain communication systems should be taken into account in affective and stress-related neuroimaging research. Thus, more studies including both sexes are required.
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The oxytocin system is involved in human social behavior and social cognition such as attachment, emotion recognition and mentalizing (i.e. the ability to represent mental states of oneself and others). It is shaped by social experiences in early life, especially by parent-infant interactions. The single nucleotid polymorphism rs53576 in the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene has been linked to social behavioral phenotypes. ⋯ The interaction of OXTR genotype and CAS modulates adult personality as well as brain structure and function of areas implicated in salience processing and mentalizing. Rs53576 GG-homozygotes are partially more susceptible to childhood attachment experiences than A-allele carriers.
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Compared to peripheral pain, trigeminal pain elicits higher levels of fear, which is assumed to enhance the interruptive effects of pain on concomitant cognitive processes. In this fMRI study we examined the behavioral and neural effects of trigeminal (forehead) and peripheral (hand) pain on visual processing and memory encoding. Cerebral activity was measured in 23 healthy subjects performing a visual categorization task that was immediately followed by a surprise recognition task. ⋯ Further, individual differences in neural activation between the trigeminal and the peripheral condition were positively related to differences in fear ratings between both conditions. Functional connectivity between amygdala and LOC was increased during trigeminal compared to peripheral painful stimulation. Fear-driven compensatory resource activation seems to be enhanced for trigeminal stimuli, presumably due to their exceptional biological relevance.
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The neural mechanisms of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness have yet to be fully elucidated, in part because of the diverse molecular targets of anesthetic agents. We demonstrate, using intracortical recordings in macaque monkeys, that information transfer between structurally connected cortical regions is disrupted during ketamine anesthesia, despite preserved primary sensory representation. ⋯ This is the first direct demonstration of a general anesthetic disrupting corticocortical information transfer in the primate brain. Given past studies showing that more commonly used GABAergic drugs inhibit surrogate measures of cortical communication, this finding suggests the potential for a common network-level mechanism of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness.