Human brain mapping
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Human brain mapping · Oct 2009
Genetic variation in the schizophrenia-risk gene neuregulin 1 correlates with brain activation and impaired speech production in a verbal fluency task in healthy individuals.
Impaired performance in verbal fluency tasks is an often replicated finding in schizophrenia. In functional neuroimaging studies, this dysfunction has been linked to signal changes in prefrontal and temporal areas. Since schizophrenia has a high heritability, it is of interest whether susceptibility genes for the disorder, such as NRG1, modulate verbal fluency performance and its neural correlates. ⋯ NRG1 genotype does influence language production on a semantic level in conjunction with the underlying neural systems. These findings are in line with results of studies in schizophrenia and may explain some of the cognitive and brain activation variation found in the disorder. More generally, NRG1 might be one of several genes that influence semantic language capacities.
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Human brain mapping · Oct 2009
Functionally linked resting-state networks reflect the underlying structural connectivity architecture of the human brain.
During rest, multiple cortical brain regions are functionally linked forming resting-state networks. This high level of functional connectivity within resting-state networks suggests the existence of direct neuroanatomical connections between these functionally linked brain regions to facilitate the ongoing interregional neuronal communication. White matter tracts are the structural highways of our brain, enabling information to travel quickly from one brain region to another region. ⋯ The diffusion tensor imaging scans were used to reconstruct the white matter pathways between the functionally linked brain areas of these resting-state networks. Our results show that well-known anatomical white matter tracts interconnect at least eight of the nine commonly found resting-state networks, including the default mode network, the core network, primary motor and visual network, and two lateralized parietal-frontal networks. Our results suggest that the functionally linked resting-state networks reflect the underlying structural connectivity architecture of the human brain.
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Human brain mapping · Oct 2009
Empathic neural responses to others' pain are modulated by emotional contexts.
Recent brain imaging studies indicate that empathy for pain relies upon both the affective and/or the sensorimotor nodes of the pain matrix, and empathic neural responses are modulated by stimulus reality, personal experience, and affective link with others. The current work investigated whether and how empathic neural responses are modulated by emotional contexts in which painful stimulations are perceived. ⋯ Moreover, the secondary somatosensory activity associated with the painful stimulation decreased when the painful stimulation was applied to faces with happy and painful expressions. The findings suggest that observing painful stimuli in an emotional context weakens affective responses but increases sensory responses to perceived pain and implies possible interactions between the affective and sensory components of the pain matrix during empathy for pain.