Human brain mapping
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Human brain mapping · May 2015
Meta AnalysisPain anticipation: an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of brain imaging studies.
The anticipation of pain has been investigated in a variety of brain imaging studies. Importantly, today there is no clear overall picture of the areas that are involved in different studies and the exact role of these regions in pain expectation remains especially unexploited. To address this issue, we used activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis to analyze pain anticipation in several neuroimaging studies. ⋯ The results of the meta-analytic connectivity analysis provide an overall view of the brain responses triggered by the anticipation of a noxious stimulus. Such a highly distributed perceptual set of self-regulation may prime brain regions to process information where emotion, action and perception as well as their related subcategories play a central role. Not only do these findings provide important information on the neural events when anticipating pain, but also they may give a perspective into nocebo responses, whereby negative expectations may lead to pain worsening.
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Human brain mapping · May 2015
The emergence of age-dependent social cognitive deficits after generalized insult to the developing brain: a longitudinal prospective analysis using susceptibility-weighted imaging.
Childhood and adolescence are critical periods for maturation of neurobiological processes that underlie complex social and emotional behavior including Theory of Mind (ToM). While structural correlates of ToM are well described in adults, less is known about the anatomical regions subsuming these skills in the developing brain or the impact of cerebral insult on the acquisition and establishment of high-level social cognitive skills. This study aimed to examine the differential influence of age-at-insult and brain pathology on ToM in a sample of children and adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI). ⋯ The middle childhood TBI group demonstrated performance unrelated to SWI pathology and comparable to TD controls. Findings indicate that the full extent of social cognitive deficits may not be realized until the associated skills reach maturity. Evidence for brain structure-function relationships suggests that the integrity of an anatomically distributed network of brain regions and their connections is necessary for the acquisition and establishment of high-level social cognitive skills.
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Human brain mapping · May 2015
Morphometric MRI alterations and postoperative seizure control in refractory temporal lobe epilepsy.
Refractory mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE) is a debilitating condition potentially amenable to resective surgery. However, between 40 and 50% patients continue to experience postoperative seizures. The development of imaging prognostic markers of postoperative seizure outcome is a crucial objective for epilepsy research. ⋯ Data uncorrected for multiple comparisons also revealed focal atrophy of the ipsilateral hippocampus posterior to the margins of resection in patients with persistent seizures. This data indicates that persistent postoperative seizures after temporal lobe surgery are related to localized preoperative shape alterations of the thalamus bilaterally and the hippocampus contralateral to intended resection. Imaging techniques that have the potential to unlock prognostic markers of postoperative outcome in individual patients should focus assessment on a bihemispheric thalamohippocampal network in prospective patients with refractory mTLE being considered for temporal lobe surgery.
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Human brain mapping · May 2015
Abnormal hippocampal morphology in dissociative identity disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder correlates with childhood trauma and dissociative symptoms.
Smaller hippocampal volume has been reported in individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and dissociative identity disorder (DID), but the regional specificity of hippocampal volume reductions and the association with severity of dissociative symptoms and/or childhood traumatization are still unclear. Brain structural magnetic resonance imaging scans were analyzed for 33 outpatients (17 with DID and 16 with PTSD only) and 28 healthy controls (HC), all matched for age, sex, and education. DID patients met criteria for PTSD (PTSD-DID). ⋯ PTSD-DID had abnormal shape and significantly smaller volume in the CA2-3, CA4-DG and (pre)subiculum compared with HC. In the patient groups, smaller global and subfield hippocampal volumes significantly correlated with higher severity of childhood traumatization and dissociative symptoms. These findings support a childhood trauma-related etiology for abnormal hippocampal morphology in both PTSD and DID and can further the understanding of neurobiological mechanisms involved in these disorders.
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Human brain mapping · May 2015
Disrupted resting-state functional connectivity and its changing trend in migraine suffers.
Chronic pain has been linked with learning and memory processes and functional changes in brain plasticity in its development and maintenance via neuroimaging studies. However, the principle of reorganization of the migraine brain network as the brain progresses into chronic pain remain poorly understood. Here, using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and graph theory approaches, we aimed to investigate the dynamic dysfunctional connectivity in 108 patients with migraine without aura (MWoA) and 30 gender-matched healthy controls (HC). ⋯ Moreover, these brain regions exhibited a tendency to link to each other were organized into a strongly interconnected community. These interconnected brain regions were mainly located in the sensory-discriminative brain areas. Our results exhibited a working model of the central mechanisms of migraine where the brain functional connectivity was altered from the local central nervous system to a densely interconnected center, which may extend our understanding of the role of learning mechanisms which are likely involved in maintenance of chronic pain.