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Background: Adolescent electronic (e-)cigarette use intentions are related to initiation. Low self-control is also a risk factor for early stages of substance use. Yet, the impact of low self-control on use through intentions may vary across individuals; depression and anxiety may affect this association. Methods: A sample of 200 adolescents who completed waves 1 and 2 of an ongoing longitudinal study were assessed. We hypothesized that high internalizing symptoms would moderate the indirect effect of low self-control on actual e-cigarette use through e-cigarette use intentions. Results: The mediation pathway was significant at high levels of internalizing symptoms, but not at low or moderate levels. Conclusion: Specifically, those with low self-control and high internalizing symptomatology endorsed the highest e-cigarette use intentions and were more likely to subsequently use e-cigarettes. Youth low in self-control and high in depression and anxiety might be at increased risk to initiate e-cigarette use compared to youth high in self-control and high in internalizing symptomatology.

The ability to present natural and interactive audiovisual stimuli is changing how some researchers approach experimental design in fMRI. The use of video games, film clips, and virtual reality (VR) environments has brought increased ecological validity, allowing researchers to study brain activity during tasks more representative of real-life scenarios [1, 2]. Although these three types of stimuli are treated relatively independently in the literature, additional insight may be provided their collective evaluation. Here, we assessed the activation patterns underlying complex, realistic human behavior using a coordinate-based meta-analytic approach. Though distinct, video games, film clips, and VR environments require integrating dynamic streams of information to form appropriate responses in real time. We hypothesized that these task domains rely heavily on cognitive maintenance and spatiotemporal processing associated with the demands of real-world information processing.We performed coordinate-based meta-analysis using the activation likelihood estimate (ALE) algorithm [3,4], focusing on three task domains: video games, film clips, and VR environments. Literature search was performed for studies of healthy, adult participants; peak activation coordinates were extracted and converted to Talairach space. ALE was applied to generate a whole-brain statistical map of convergent activations, which was tested against a null distribution over 1000 permutations (pvoxelcluster). We performed three additional ALE meta-analyses within the contributing task domains to further elucidate the task-specific patterns. Lastly, we performed functional decoding of the resultant ALE clusters in NeuroSynth using the reverse inference approach by computing the conditional probability of a term being used in a study conditional on activation being present at a given brain location [5,6]. ALE meta-analysis of the three domains of naturalistic paradigms (31 contrasts) revealed clusters in the middle and superior frontal gyri, as well as a cluster in the middle occipital gyrus, representing consistent recruitment of these regions collectively across stimulus categories. NeuroSynth reverse inference was performed on each of these three regions. For the middle frontal cluster, NeuroSynth terms of “(dorsal) premotor”, “movements”, and “eye fields” were observed. For the superior middle cluster, “load”, “working memory”, “visuospatial”, and “navigation” were observed. For the middle occipital cluster, “objects”, “visual”, “environments”, “scene”, “remembered”, and “spatial” were observed. We performed three additional ALE meta-analyses of the contributing task domains: video games (11 contrasts), film clips (8 contrasts), and VR environments (12 contrasts). While low in power, these analyses confirmed the domain specificity of each task: postcentral gyrus, insula, putamen, and posterior parietal cortex for video games (reflecting motor, reward, and spatial processing); parahippocampus, superior temporal sulcus, fusiform gyrus for film clips (reflecting facial stimuli in tasks with a strong social context); and posterior cingulate, posterior parietal, and parahippocampus for VR (reflecting spatial memory processing during navigation tasks). Our meta-analysis of naturalistic paradigms in fMRI included three task domains: video games, film clips, and VR environments. Contrasts from these domains consistently identified dorsal premotor cortex and extrastriate cortex. Functional decoding using NeuroSynth provided support for our hypothesis that immersive audiovisual stimulus environments consistently recruit regions strongly associated with spatiotemporal processing, memory, visual attention, and motor planning. Our results suggest that engaging and responding to complex, naturalistic stimuli requires the integration of timing and visuospatial synthesis demands, which is necessary to guide behavior in dynamic, real-world settings. References Zaki, J., & Ochsner, K. (2009). The Need for a Cognitive Neuroscience of Naturalistic Social Cognition. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1167(1), 16–30. Maguire, E. (2012). Studying the freely-behaving brain with fMRI. NeuroImage, 62(2), 1170–1176. Eickhoff SB, Laird AR, Grefkes C, Wang LE, Zilles K, Fox PT. Coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of neuroimaging data: A random-effects approach based on empirical estimates of spatial uncertainty. Hum Brain Mapp 30, 2907-2926, 2009. Eickhoff SB, Bzdok D, Laird AR, Kurth F, Fox PT. Activation likelihood estimation revisited. Neuroimage 59, 2349-2361, 2012. Yarkoni, T., Poldrack, R. A., Nichols, T. E., Van Essen, D. C., & Wager, T. D. (2011). Large-scale automated synthesis of human functional neuroimaging data. Nature Methods, 8(8), 665–70.

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-prx-10.1177_00332941211048467 for The Link Between Neuroticism and Everyday Cognitive Failures is Mediated by Self-Reported Mindfulness Among College Students by Anthony J. Kondracki, Michael C. Riedel, Katharine Crooks, Patricio Viera Perez, Jessica S. Flannery, Angela R. Laird and Matthew T. Sutherland in Psychological Reports

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-prx-10.1177_00332941211048467 for The Link Between Neuroticism and Everyday Cognitive Failures is Mediated by Self-Reported Mindfulness Among College Students by Anthony J. Kondracki, Michael C. Riedel, Katharine Crooks, Patricio Viera Perez, Jessica S. Flannery, Angela R. Laird and Matthew T. Sutherland in Psychological Reports

Neurobiological differences linked to socioemotional and cognitive processing are well documented in youths with disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs), especially youths with callous-unemotional (CU) traits. The current study expanded this literature by examining gray matter volume (GMV) differences among youths with DBD with CU traits (DBDCU+), youths with DBD without CU traits (DBD-only), and youths that were typically developing (TD).Data were from the first full sample release of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study (mean age = 9.49 years; 49% female). We tested whether the GMVs of 11 regions of interest selected a priori differentiated between our 3 groups: DBDCU+ (n = 288), DBD-only (n = 362), and TD (n = 915). Models accounted for demographic confounders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and intracranial volume. We examined two potential moderators of the relationship between GMVs and group membership: sex and clinically significant anxiety (i.e., primary vs. secondary CU traits subtype).Youths in the DBDCU+ group had lower right amygdala GMV, and youths in the DBD-only group had lower bilateral amygdala GMV relative to TD youths. Youths in the DBDCU+ group had lower bilateral hippocampal GMV, and youths in the DBD-only group had lower left hippocampal GMV relative to TD youths. Youths in the DBDCU+ group evidenced lower left insula GMV relative to TD youths. Finally, youths in the DBD-only group had lower left superior frontal gyrus and lower right caudal anterior cingulate cortex GMVs relative to TD youths. There was no moderation of associations between GMV and group membership by sex.Our findings implicate structural aberrations in both the amygdala and hippocampus in the etiology of DBDs, with minimal evidence for differences based on the presence or absence of CU traits.

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is an ongoing, nationwide study of the effects of environmental influences on behavioral and brain development in adolescents. The main objective of the study is to recruit and assess over eleven thousand 9-10-year-olds and follow them over the course of 10 years to characterize normative brain and cognitive development, the many factors that influence brain development, and the effects of those factors on mental health and other outcomes. The study employs state-of-the-art multimodal brain imaging, cognitive and clinical assessments, bioassays, and careful assessment of substance use, environment, psychopathological symptoms, and social functioning. The data is a resource of unprecedented scale and depth for studying typical and atypical development. The aim of this manuscript is to describe the baseline neuroimaging processing and subject-level analysis methods used by ABCD. Processing and analyses include modality-specific corrections for distortions and motion, brain segmentation and cortical surface reconstruction derived from structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI), analysis of brain microstructure using diffusion MRI (dMRI), task-related analysis of functional MRI (fMRI), and functional connectivity analysis of resting-state fMRI. This manuscript serves as a methodological reference for users of publicly shared neuroimaging data from the ABCD Study.

The ABCD study is recruiting and following the brain development and health of over 10,000 9-10 year olds through adolescence. The imaging component of the study was developed by the ABCD Data Analysis and Informatics Center (DAIC) and the ABCD Imaging Acquisition Workgroup. Imaging methods and assessments were selected, optimized and harmonized across all 21 sites to measure brain structure and function relevant to adolescent development and addiction. This article provides an overview of the imaging procedures of the ABCD study, the basis for their selection and preliminary quality assurance and results that provide evidence for the feasibility and age-appropriateness of procedures and generalizability of findings to the existent literature.

The habenula, a small, bilateral region posterior to the medial thalamus and dorsal to the posterior commissure, has been of interest in research on reward processing and goal-directed behavior. It receives input from the prefrontal cortex and several subcortical regions and projects to the serotonergic dorsal raphe nucleus, as well as the dopaminergic substantia nigra (SN)1. Despite the habenula’s critical involvement in reward processing and dopamine modulation, few neuroimaging studies have focused on this region. To address this discrepancy, we used complementary approaches to assess the whole brain functional connectivity of the habenula both at rest and during task to uncover how this region may be differentially engaged across cognitive states. To assess resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the habenula, data were collected from 28 healthy participants on a 7-Tesla Siemens MAGNETOM scanner at Auburn University. Structural T1 scans were acquired at a resolution of 0.63mmx0.63mmx0.60mm and 5 minutes of resting state data were acquired with an EPI sequence at a resolution of 0.85mmx0.85mmx1.5mm. Structural images were first aligned in in SPM8 and the habenula was manually defined in each subject’s native space, by a procedure described by Lawson et al.2. We then used FSL’s FEAT to regress each subject’s mean habenula time series on the voxel-wise time series across the brain. A nonparametric one-sample t-test was performed at the group-level with FSL’s randomise3. Meta-analytic coactivation modeling (MACM)4 was performed using an ROI drawn by a similar method on an MNI152 template brain, dilated to account for anatomical and data processing differences across studies. We used the BrainMap database to identify studies reporting activation in this ROI across a wide range of functional neuroimaging paradigms. ALE5,6 was used to assess coactivation across studies, thresholded at a cluster-level corrected threshold of pp7. We then performed a conjunction analysis on the results of the two analyses to determine areas in common, as well as a contrast analysis to identify regions of significant difference between rsFC and MACM. The rsFC analysis identified functional synchrony of the habenula with ventral anterior and posterior cingulate cortices (vACC, PCC), right anterior insula (AI), SN, periaqueductal gray (PAG), precuneus, and striatum (Figure 1A). MACM results identified coactivation in portions of the striatum, dorsal ACC (dACC), medial frontal gyrus, and in both left inferior frontal sulcus and posterior parietal lobule (Figure 1B). Both rsFC and MACM revealed connectivity with the nearby thalamus, ACC, SN, and PAG (Figure 1C). We demonstrate in both rsFC and MACM analyses habenula’s functional interactions with the SN, consistent with a well-documented role in modulating dopaminergic signaling associated with reward prediction error (RPE), indicating this relationship is central to habenula function, regardless of cognitive state. While we observed habenula connectivity with the ACC both at rest and during various tasks, the region of conjunction in ACC was small. The habenula’s rsFC was largely restricted to vACC, and task-based MACM, to dACC. This is an important distinction, as rsFC and MACM demonstrate differential connectivity of the habenula with respect to cognitive state. The habenula appeared to be connected with PCC, precuneus, and vACC at rest, which are medial nodes of the default mode network8. During tasks, the habenula was connected with both AI and dACC, which are key nodes of the salience network, connections that are supported by an underlying structural architecture1,9. Differential connectivity at rest and during task suggests context-specific functional roles of the habenula, potentially contributing to default mode processes at rest and likely providing RPE signaling to salience network regions during tasks. 1. Baker, P. M. et al. The Lateral Habenula Circuitry: Reward Processing and Cognitive Control. J. Neurosci. 36, (2016). 2. Lawson, R. P., Drevets, W. C. & Roiser, J. P. Defining the habenula in human neuroimaging studies. Neuroimage 64, 722–7 (2013). 3. Winkler, A. M., Ridgway, G. R., Webster, M. A., Smith, S. M. & Nichols, T. E. Permutation inference for the general linear model. Neuroimage 92, 381–397 (2014). 4. Robinson, J. L., Laird, A. R., Glahn, D. C., Lovallo, W. R. & Fox, P. T. Meta-analytic connectivity modeling: Delineating the functional connectivity of the human amygdala. Hum. Brain Mapp. 31, 173–184 (2010). 5. Turkeltaub, P. E., Eden, G. F., Jones, K. M. & Zeffiro, T. A. Meta-Analysis of the Functional Neuroanatomy of Single-Word Reading: Method and Validation. Neuroimage 16, 765–780 (2002). 6. Eickhoff, S. B. et al. Coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of neuroimaging data: A random-effects approach based on empirical estimates of spatial uncertainty. Hum. Brain Mapp. 30, 2907–2926 (2009). 7. Eickhoff, S. B., Bzdok, D., Laird, A. R., Kurth, F. & Fox, P. T. Activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis revisited. Neuroimage 59, 2349–2361 (2012). 8. Greicius, M. D., Krasnow, B., Reiss, A. L. & Menon, V. Functional connectivity in the resting brain: a network analysis of the default mode hypothesis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 100, 253–8 (2003). 9. Vadovičová, K. Affective and cognitive prefrontal cortex projections to the lateral habenula in humans. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8, 819 (2014).

The habenula is a small region immediately posterior to the medial thalamus and dorsal to the posterior commissure. This region, implicated in reward processing, receives input from several subcortical regions via the stria medullaris and projects to midbrain regions, modulating serotonin and dopamine release. In order to more broadly investigate the interactions between the habenula and the rest of the brain, we used a seed-to-voxel analysis to probe the intrinsic connectivity of the habenula. Data were collected from 22 healthy, individuals on a 7-Tesla Siemens MAGNETOM scanner housed at Auburn University’s MRI Research Center. We acquired structural and resting-state functional images with sub-millimeter resolution. The habenula was manually defined in each subject’s native space and these ROIs were then used as seed regions from which we extracted the mean BOLD signal time-course and used FSL’s FEAT to assess correlations between time-courses voxels in the rest of the brain with that time-course. Higher-level analysis was performed using FSL’s linear analysis of mixed effects. Our seed-based analysis uncovered temporal correlations (Pcorrected < 0.0001) of the habenula’s BOLD signal with regions known to be structurally connected, including the caudate and putamen (CPu), internal globus pallidus (GPi), the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), and substantia nigra (SN). Connectivity was demonstrated between the habenula and multiple midline regions, as well, including portions of the anterior, mid- and posterior cingulate cortex (ACC, MCC, and PCC), ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), thalamus, and cerebellar vermis. The cingulate clusters appear to extend into the paracingulate sulcus, supplementary motor area (SMA), and pre-SMA, as well. The correlation between habenula and ACC activity at rest suggests an integration of conflict monitoring into habenula’s negative feedback and reward prediction errors processing. Furthermore, habenular connectivity with nodes of the cortico-basal motor loop (CPu, GPi, SN, SMA, pre-SMA) supports the notion that the habenula is involved translation of negative feedback to goal-directed action (or the inhibition thereof). This, combined with implied connections to default mode network (DMN) hubs, PCC and vmPFC, indicates that the habenula might be playing a vital role in integrating the associations between actions and negative consequences into the mental rehearsal component of mind-wandering.

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) agonists augment cognition among cigarette smokers and nonsmokers, yet the systems-level neurobiological mechanisms underlying such improvements are not fully understood. Aggregating neuroimaging results regarding nAChR agonists provides a means to identify common functional brain changes that may be related to procognitive drug effects.We conducted a meta-analysis of pharmacologic neuroimaging studies within the activation likelihood estimation framework. We identified published studies contrasting a nAChR drug condition versus a baseline and coded each contrast by activity change direction (decrease or increase), participant characteristics (smokers or nonsmokers), and drug manipulation employed (pharmacologic administration or cigarette smoking).When considering all studies, nAChR agonist administration was associated with activity decreases in multiple regions, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), parahippocampus, insula, and the parietal and precentral cortices. Conversely, activity increases were observed in lateral frontoparietal cortices, the anterior cingulate cortex, thalamus, and cuneus. Exploratory analyses indicated that both smokers and nonsmokers showed activity decreases in the vmPFC and PCC, and increases in lateral frontoparietal regions. Among smokers, both pharmacologic administration and cigarette smoking were associated with activity decreases in the vmPFC, PCC, and insula and increases in the lateral PFC, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, thalamus, and cuneus.These results provide support for the systems-level perspective that nAChR agonists suppress activity in default-mode network regions and enhance activity in executive control network regions in addition to reducing activation of some task-related regions. We speculate these are potential mechanisms by which nAChR agonists enhance cognition.