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Introduction: Mental rotation (MR) tasks of body parts involve anatomically interconnected brain systems. The systems are implicated in sensorimotor information integration and activate cortical motor-related areas, corresponding to the execution of similar motor tasks. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effect of varying the angle in the hand MR task on cerebral activation of the motor-related areas., Methods: Twenty healthy right-handed participants were recruited. We investigated cerebral activation while each participant decided whether a hand-palm image, rotated by 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°, was a right or left hand., Results and Discussion: A significant negative correlation between the angle and brain activity was observed in the right and left supplementary motor area (SMA) and right posterior anterior cingulate gyrus. The SMA was inactivated with 180°- or 270°-rotated images in the regions of interest analysis. 180°- and 270°-rotated palms would be biomechanically difficult to position; thus, SMA deactivation may be closely associated with biomechanical constraints. This study provided novel findings regarding the neurophysiological mechanisms of motor imagery and may be useful in developing treatment plans using MR tasks during patient rehabilitation., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Nomura, Koeda, Ikeda, Tateno, Arakawa and Aoyagi.)

Introduction: Humans mainly utilize visual and auditory information as a cue to infer others' emotions. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown the neural basis of memory processing based on facial expression, but few studies have examined it based on vocal cues. Thus, we aimed to investigate brain regions associated with emotional judgment based on vocal cues using an N-back task paradigm., Methods: Thirty participants performed N-back tasks requiring them to judge emotion or gender from voices that contained both emotion and gender information. During these tasks, cerebral hemodynamic response was measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)., Results: The results revealed that during the Emotion 2-back task there was significant activation in the frontal area, including the right precentral and inferior frontal gyri, possibly reflecting the function of an attentional network with auditory top-down processing. In addition, there was significant activation in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which is known to be a major part of the working memory center., Discussion: These results suggest that, compared to judging the gender of voice stimuli, when judging emotional information, attention is directed more deeply and demands for higher-order cognition, including working memory, are greater. We have revealed for the first time the specific neural basis for emotional judgments based on vocal cues compared to that for gender judgments based on vocal cues., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Ohshima, Koeda, Kawai, Saito, Niioka, Okuno, Naganawa, Hama, Kyutoku and Dan.)

We have developed a new educational/clinical ontology named the "Haghighi-Koeda Mood Disorder Ontology", which involves both medical and psychological approaches for mood disorders in order to promote the exchange of information between psychiatrists and psychologists. Data was gathered from more than 5000 articles published in journals and websites specialized in life science. We evaluated and selected articles which were related to 4 main categories of mood disorders. Using Protege 3.4 beta, information related to mood disorders was classified by class/subclass tree in an ontological structure. Then we developed a web-based interface system on the internet enabling the implementation of the ontology. In addition, we have designed an online scale for automated diagnosis of mood disorder. For evaluating experiments, we compare this ontology with "Decisionbase" of which content deals with mood disorders. Evaluation was in accordance with our selected criteria via the AHP (Analysis of Hierarchical Processing) method. The results demonstrated the noteworthy superiority of our ontology. We believe that combining knowledge of medical science with that in psychological fields is a key to improving the quality of diagnosis and promoting appropriate treaTMent in all psychiatric disorders.