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Adolescents' experiences with social media are complex and can impact their mental well-being differently. Our study aimed to understand how neurobiological sensitivities may moderate the association between different social media experiences and depressive symptoms. In a multiwave study, 80 adolescents (Mage = 13.06, SD = 0.58) took part in an functional magnetic resonance imaging task designed to gauge the neural responses when viewing accepted and rejected peers within their own social networks (Wave 1). We also collected self-reported measures of positive (digital social connection) and negative (digital pressure) experiences on social media and depressive symptoms (Waves 2 and 3). Our findings revealed that there were no significant associations between digital social connection, digital pressure, and depressive symptoms 1 year later. However, the association between digital social connection and depressive symptoms was moderated by neural responsivity. Specifically, for adolescents with reduced sensitivity to their rejected peers in the ventral striatum, right temporoparietal junction, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, digital social connection was associated with reduced depressive symptoms 1 year later. These results emphasize the importance of individual differences in how adolescents' brains respond to rejected peers in shaping the impact of online experiences on their mental well-being., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press.)

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is typically characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication, which may be associated with a failure to naturally orient to social stimuli, particularly in recognizing and responding to facial emotions. As most previous studies have used nonsocial stimuli to investigate inhibitory control in children and adults with ASD, little is known about the behavioral and neural activation patterns of emotional inhibitory control in adolescent with ASD. Functional neuroimaging studies have underscored the key role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in inhibitory control and emotional face processing. Thus, this study aimed to examine whether adolescent with ASD exhibited altered PFC processing during an emotional Flanker task by using non-invasive functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Twenty-one adolescents with high-functioning ASD and 26 typically developing (TD) adolescents aged 13-16 years were recruited. All participants underwent an emotional Flanker task, which required to decide whether the centrally positioned facial emotion is consistent with the laterally positioned facial emotion. TD adolescents exhibited larger RT and mean O 2 Hb level in the incongruent condition than the congruent condition, evoking cortical activations primarily in right PFC regions in response to the emotional Flanker effect. In contrast, ASD adolescents failed to exhibit the processing advantage for congruent versus incongruent emotional face in terms of RT, but showed cortical activations primarily in left PFC regions in response to the emotional Flanker effect. These findings suggest that adolescents with ASD rely on different neural strategies to mobilize PFC neural resources to address the difficulties they experience when inhibiting the emotional face., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

One of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders is major depressive disorder (MDD), which increases the probability of suicidal ideation or untimely demise. Abnormal frontal hemodynamic changes detected by functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) during verbal fluency task (VFT) have the potential to be used as an objective indicator for assessing clinical symptoms. However, comprehensive quantitative and objective assessment instruments for individuals who exhibit symptoms suggestive of depression remain undeveloped. Drawing from a total of 467 samples in a large-scale dataset comprising 289 MDD patients and 178 healthy controls, fNIRS measurements were obtained throughout the VFT. To identify unique MDD biomarkers, this research introduced a data representation approach for extracting spatiotemporal features from fNIRS signals, which were subsequently utilized as potential predictors. Machine learning classifiers (e.g., Gradient Boosted Decision Trees (GBDT) and Multilayer Perceptron) were implemented to assess the ability to predict selected features. The mean and standard deviation of the cross-validation indicated that the GBDT model, when combined with the 180-feature pattern, distinguishes patients with MDD from healthy controls in the most effective manner. The accuracy of correct classification for the test set was 0.829 ± 0.053, with an AUC of 0.895 (95 % CI: 0.864-0.925) and a sensitivity of 0.914 ± 0.051. Channels that made the most important contribution to the identification of MDD were identified using Shapley Additive Explanations method, located in the frontopolar area and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, as well as pars triangularis Broca's area. Assessment of abnormal prefrontal activity during the VFT in MDD serves as an objectively measurable biomarker that could be utilized to evaluate cognitive deficits and facilitate early screening for MDD. The model suggested in this research could be applied to large-scale case-control fNIRS datasets to detect unique characteristics of MDD and offer clinicians an objective biomarker-based analytical instrument to assist in the evaluation of suspicious cases., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest 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 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Depression is a significant public health concern. Identifying biopsychosocial risk factors for depression is important for developing targeted prevention. Studies have demonstrated that blunted striatal activation during reward processing is a risk factor for depression; however, few have prospectively examined whether adolescent reward-related resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) predicts depression symptoms in adulthood and how this relates to known risk factors (e.g., childhood trauma)., Methods: At baseline, 66 adolescents (mean age = 14.7, SD = 1.4, 68 % female) underwent rsFC magnetic resonance imaging and completed the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI). At follow-up (mean time between adolescent scan and adult follow-up = 10.1 years, SD = 1.6, mean adult age = 24.8 years, SD = 1.7), participants completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and Beck Depression Inventory- Second Edition (BDI-2). Average rsFC was calculated between nodes in mesocorticolimbic reward circuitry: ventral striatum (VS), rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), medial orbitofrontal cortex, and ventral tegmental area. Linear regressions assessed associations between rsFC, BDI-2, and CTQ, controlling for adolescent CDI, sex assigned at birth, and scan age (Bonferroni corrected)., Results: Greater childhood trauma was associated with higher adulthood depression symptoms. Stronger VS-rACC rsFC during adolescence was associated with greater depression symptoms in adulthood and greater childhood trauma., Limitations: The small sample size, limited depression severity, and seed-based approach are limitations., Conclusions: The associations between adolescent striatal-cingulate rsFC and childhood trauma and adult depression symptoms suggest this connectivity may be an early neurobiological risk factor for depression and that early life experience plays an important role. Increased VS-rACC connectivity may represent an over-regulatory response on the striatum, commonly reported in depression, and warrants further investigation., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Parenting styles encompass negative and positive approaches, potentially affecting adolescents' brain reward and emotion regulation systems. However, the association between parenting style and brain networks remains unknown. This study investigates the link between parenting style and functional connectivity (FC) within the reward and emotion regulation brain networks, using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). A total of forty-two middle-aged adolescents (26 males; 16 females) with no neurological or psychiatric symptoms participated in this study. We assessed parenting behaviors and extracted reward/emotion regulation FC from rs-fMRI. We examined the association between FC and parenting style, identified through principal component analysis. Correlation analysis investigated these links while controlling for sex. We delineated both positive (love-autonomy) and negative (hostility-control) parenting styles, accounting for 79 % of the explained variance in parenting behaviors. The negative parenting style displayed connections with FC within the reward system, particularly in the left nucleus accumbens (NAc), showcasing links to multiple frontal regions. Furthermore, it correlated with the social reward network, specifically the insula-NAc FC in bilateral hemispheres. Conversely, the positive parenting style exhibited an association with FC between the hippocampus and right lateral prefrontal cortex. Our findings support negative parenting's association with an immature reward system and suggest positive parenting's potential to enhance emotion regulation in brain function. These observations highlight two distinct parenting styles, including single-parenting behaviors. Thus, we advance understanding of each style's unique contributions to adolescent reward- and emotion regulation-related brain network development., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest All authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to this research and the publication of this article., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Adapting our behavior to environmental demands relies on our capacity to perceive and manage potential conflicts within our surroundings. While evidence implicates the involvement of the lateral prefrontal cortex and theta oscillations in detecting conflict stimuli, their causal role in conflict expectation remains elusive. Consequently, the exact computations and neural mechanisms underlying these cognitive processes still need to be determined. We employed an integrative approach involving cognitive computational modeling, fMRI, TMS, and EEG to establish a causal link between oscillatory brain function, its neurocomputational role, and the resulting conflict processing and adaptation behavior. Our results reveal a computational process underlying conflict expectation, which correlates with BOLD-fMRI and theta activity in the superior frontal gyrus (SFG). Modulation of theta activity via rhythmic TMS applied over the SFG induces endogenous theta activity, which in turn enhances computations associated with conflict expectation. These findings provide evidence for the causal involvement of SFG theta activity in learning and allocating cognitive resources to address forthcoming conflict stimuli., Competing Interests: Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) might modulate neural activity and promote neural plasticity in patients with fibromyalgia (FM). This multi-group randomized clinical trial compared home-based active tDCS (HB-a-tDCS) on the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (l-DLPFC) or home-based sham tDCS (HB-s-tDCS), and HB-a-tDCS or HB-s-tDCS on the primary motor cortex (M1) in the connectivity analyses in eight regions of interest (ROIs) across eight resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) frequencies., Methods: We included 48 women with FM, aged 30 to 65, randomly assigned to 2:1:2:1 to receive 20 sessions during 20 minutes of HB-a-tDCS 2mA or HB-s-tDCS, over l-DLPFC or M1, respectively. EEG recordings were obtained before and after treatment with eyes open (EO) and eyes closed (EC)., Results: In the EC condition, comparing pre to post-treatment, the HB-a-tDCS on l-DLPFC decreased the lagged coherence connectivity in the delta frequency band between the right insula and left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) (t = -3.542, p = .048). The l-DLPFC HB-a-tDCS compared to HB-s-tDCS decreased the lagged coherence connectivity in the delta frequency band between the right insula and left ACC (t = -4.000, p = .017). In the EO condition, the l-DLPFC HB-a-tDCS compared to M1 HB-s-tDCS increased the lagged coherence connectivity between the l-DLPFC and left ACC in the theta band (t = -4.059, p = .048). Regression analysis demonstrated that the HB-a-tDCS effect on the l-DLPFC was positively correlated with sleep quality. On the other hand, the HB-a-tDCS on l-DLPFC and HB-s-tDCS on M1 were positively correlated with pain catastrophizing., Conclusions: These results show that HB-a-tDCS affects the neural connectivity between parts of the brain that control pain's emotional and attentional aspects, which are most noticeable at lower EEG frequencies in a rest state. This effect on neural oscillations could serve as a neural marker associated with its efficacy in alleviating fibromyalgia symptoms., Clinical Trial Registration: identifier [NCT03843203]., Competing Interests: WC, National Council for Scientific and Technological Development - (CNPq), Brazil, ILST reported grants from National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, and Fundación de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul during the conduct of the study and PRSS grants from National Council for Scientific and Technological Development during the conduct of the study. PRSS reported grants from Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos during the conduct of the study; in addition, WC, ILST, PRSS had a patent for BR 20 2015 016450 0 licensed to Quark Medical. The tDCS device used in this study was developed and patented by PRSS, DPSJ, ILST, and WC, and these authors received royalties from Quark Medical (patent for BR 20 2015 016450 0 licensed to Quark Medical). DPSJ reported grants from Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos during the conduct of the study. No other competing interests were reported. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials., (Copyright: © 2024 Lopes Alves et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Introduction: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common mental disorder that is characterised by high morbidity, high rates of relapse, high rates of disability and, in severe cases, suicide ideas or even behaviour causing significant distress and burden. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique widely used in the clinical treatment of MDD. Nevertheless, due to the imprecise selection and positioning of stimulation targets, their response rate is not as satisfactory. This trial was designed to treat MDD based on functional connectivity with individual target-TMS (IT-TMS) to stimulate the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) where it correlates most negatively with the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC). We will validate the safety and efficacy of IT-TMS for MDD using pgACC as an effector target, analyse the underlying antidepressant mechanism of the DLPFC-ACC brain network and search for neuroimaging markers that predict the efficacy of TMS., Methods and Analysis: This is a single-centre, randomised, double-blind and sham-stimulation-controlled clinical trial. We aim to recruit approximately 68 depressed patients with MDD aged 18-60 years. Eligible participants will be randomised into the DLPFC-pgACC localisation and sham stimulation groups. The IT-TMS treatment will last 10 days and will be combined with antidepressant medication. Assessments will be confirmed at baseline, on day 5 of treatment and at the end of treatment with follow-up at weeks 2, 4 and 8 after the end of treatment. The primary outcome measure is the difference in the Hamilton Depression Scale score between baseline and end of treatment., Ethics and Dissemination: The Ethics Committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of the Air Force Medical University has approved this clinical trial (project code: XJLL-KY20222111). The trial's results will be published in international peer-reviewed journals and presented at academic conferences., Trial Registration Number: ClinicalTrials.gov PRS (ID: NCT05577481)., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

Due to the similarities in behavioral characteristics between romantic love and addictive disorders, the concept of being "addicted to someone" transcends mere literary metaphor, expanding perspectives on the study of romantic love and inspiring interventions for addiction. However, there has been a lack of studies systematically exploring the similarities and differences between romantic love and addiction at the neural level. In this study, we conducted an extensive literature search, incorporating 21 studies on romantic love and 28 on addictive disorders, focusing on fMRI research utilizing the cue reactivity paradigm. Using Activation Likelihood Estimation, we examined the similarities and differences in the neural mechanisms underlying love and addiction. The results showed that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) exhibited both shared and distinct activation clusters between romantic love and addictive disorders. Furthermore, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) was more frequently activated in romantic love than in addictive disorders, while greater activation within the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) was found in addictive disorder compared with romantic love. We discussed that the activation of ACC and VMPFC may symbolize self-expansion, a process that characterizes the development of romantic love, contributing to a more enriched self. Our study suggests that while romantic love and addictive disorders share a common neural foundation, the discernible differences in their neural representations distinguish them as joyful growth versus compulsive hedonism., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Anhedonia emerges during adolescence and is characteristic of severe mental illness (SMI). To understand how anhedonia emerges, changes with time, and relates with other symptoms, there is a need to understand patterns of this symptom's course reflecting change or stability-and associations with clinical symptoms and neural reward circuitry in adolescents at risk of SMI. In total, 113 adolescents at low or high familial risk of developing SMI completed clinical measures at up to five time points across 2 years and functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning during a guessing reward task at baseline. Growth curve analysis was used to determine the trajectory of anhedonia across 2 years, including different phases (consummatory and anticipatory) and their association with clinical features (risk status, average suicidal ideation, and average depression across time) and neural activation in response to rewards (ventral striatum and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex). The findings revealed anhedonia decreased across 2 years. Furthermore, lower depression severity was associated with decreases in anhedonia across 2 years. There were no interactions between neural reward activation and anhedonia slopes in predicting clinical features. Exploratory analyses examining latent classes revealed three trajectory classes of anhedonia across phases. While preliminary, in the low and decreasing consummatory anhedonia trajectory class, there was a positive association between neural activation of the right ventral striatum in response to rewards and depression. Certain patterns of anhedonia development could confer risk or resilience for specific types of psychopathologies. The results are preliminary but do highlight the complexity and heterogeneity in anhedonia development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Methamphetamine (MA) use disorder is a chronic neurotoxic brain disease characterized by a high risk of relapse driven by intense cravings. However, the neurobiological signatures of cravings remain unclear, limiting the effectiveness of various treatment methods. Diffusion MRI (dMRI) scans from 62 MA users and 57 healthy controls (HC) were used in this study. The MA users were longitudinally followed up during their period of long-term abstinence (duration of long-term abstinence: 347.52±99.25 days). We systematically quantified the control ability of each brain region for craving-associated state transitions using network control theory from a causal perspective. Craving-associated structural alterations (CSA) were investigated through multivariate group comparisons and biological relevance analysis. The neural mechanisms underlying CSA were elucidated using transcriptomic and neurochemical analyses. We observed that long-term abstinence-induced structural alterations significantly influenced the state transition energy involved in the cognitive control response to external information, which correlated with changes in craving scores (r ∼ 0.35, P <0.01). Our causal network analysis further supported the crucial role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in craving mechanisms. Notably, while the PFC is central to the craving, the CSAs were distributed widely across multiple brain regions (P FDR <0.05), with strong alterations in somatomotor regions (P FDR <0.05) and moderate alterations in high-level association networks (P FDR <0.05). Additionally, transcriptomic, chemical compounds, cell-type analyses, and molecular imaging collectively highlight the influence of neuro-immune communication on human craving modulation. Our results offer an integrative, multi-scale perspective on unraveling the neural underpinnings of craving and suggest that neuro-immune signaling may be a promising target for future human addiction therapeutics., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) plays a crucial role in social cognitive functions, including perspective-taking. Although perspective-taking has been linked to self-control, the mechanism by which the dmPFC might facilitate self-control remains unclear. Using the multimodal neuroimaging dataset from the Human Connectome Project (Study 1, N =978 adults), we established a reliable association between the dmPFC and self-control, as measured by discounting rate-the tendency to prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed ones. Experiments (Study 2, N = 36 adults) involving high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation showed that anodal stimulation of the dmPFC reduces the discounting of delayed rewards and decreases the congruency effect in egocentric but not allocentric perspective in the visual perspective-taking tasks. These findings suggest that the dmPFC promotes self-control by inhibiting the egocentric perspective, offering new insights into the neural underpinnings of self-control and perspective-taking, and opening new avenues for interventions targeting disorders characterized by impaired self-regulation., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Objective: This study aims to explores the physiological and psychological mechanisms of exercise-induced hypoalgesia (EIH) by combining the behavioral results with neuroimaging data on changes oxy-hemoglobin (HbO) in prefrontal cortex (PFC)., Methods: A total of 97 healthy participants were recruited and randomly divided into three groups: a single dance movement therapy (DMT) group, a double DMT group, and control group. Evaluation indicators included the pressure pain threshold (PPT) test, the color-word stroop task (CWST) for wearing functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and the self-assessment manikin (SAM). The testing time is before intervention, after intervention, and one hour of sit rest after intervention., Results: 1) Repeated measures ANOVA revealed that, there is a time * group effect on the PPT values of the three groups of participants at three time points. After 30 min of acute dance intervention, an increase in the PPT values of 10 test points occurred in the entire body of the participants in the experimental group with a significant difference than the control group. 2) In terms of fNIRS signals, bilateral DLPFC and left VLPFC channels were significantly activated in the experimental group. 3) DMT significantly awakened participants and brought about pleasant emotions, but cognitive improvement was insignificant. 4) Mediation effect analysis found that the change in HbO concentration in DLPFC may be a mediator in predicting the degree of improvement in pressure pain threshold through dance intervention (total effect β = 0.7140)., Conclusion: In healthy adults, DMT can produce a diffuse EIH effect on improving pressure pain threshold, emotional experience but only showing an improvement trend in cognitive performance. Dance intervention significantly activates the left ventrolateral and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This study explores the central nervous system mechanism of EIH from a physiological and psychological perspective., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest There are no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Pain catastrophizing is a prominent psychological factor that is strongly correlated with pain. Although the complex properties of pain catastrophizing vary across different pain phases, the contribution of chronic pain to its progression from a general trait to a higher state remains unclear. This study aimed to examine the neural mechanisms and degree to which pain catastrophizing is reinforced in the context of primary dysmenorrhea (PDM), one of the most prevalent gynaecological complaints experienced by women of reproductive age. Altogether, 29 women with moderate-to-severe PDM were included in this study. Arterial spin labelling was used to quantify the cerebral blood flow (CBF) in each participant in both the pain-free and painful phases. The pain catastrophizing scale (PCS) was completed in two phases, and the Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire was completed in the painful phase. Compared with pain catastrophizing in the pain-free phase (PCS pf ), pain catastrophizing in the painful phase (PCS p ) is higher and positively correlated with the composite factor of menstrual pain. CBF analysis indicated that the PCS p is positively associated with CBF in the frontal cortex, hippocampus and amygdala. The reinforcement of pain catastrophizing correlates with CBF in the prefrontal cortex. Specifically, the medial prefrontal cortex, which correlates with pain state, plays a crucial role in mediating the reinforcing effect of pain in the PCS p . These results promote the mechanical comprehension of pain catastrophizing management in individuals with chronic pain., (© 2024 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Background: Patients with chronic insomnia exhibit varying degrees of cognitive dysfunction. Functional connectivity of different brain regions contributes to the understanding of underlying cognitive processes in the cerebral cortex. However, this has not yet been studied in patients with chronic insomnia. This study aimed to elucidate the differences between brain activity patterns in patients with chronic insomnia and healthy controls (HCs) using a verbal fluency task (VFT)., Methods: We recruited 84 patients with chronic insomnia and 81 HCs. Oxy-haemoglobin (Oxy-Hb) concentrations in the brains of the participants were monitored using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while performing the VFT., Results: During the task period, no significant difference was observed between the VFT results of the two groups; patients with chronic insomnia showed significantly less cortical activation in haemodynamic responses of oxy-Hb at channels and brain regions mainly located in the prefrontal cortex compared to HCs (FDR-corrected p < 0.05). Moreover, the average channel-to-channel connectivity strength of patients in the chronic insomnia group was lower than that of those in the HC group (t = -6.717, p < 0.001)., Conclusion: Our study provides neurological evidence for the dynamic detection of executive function in patients with chronic insomnia. Compared to HCs, patients with chronic insomnia exhibit weaker levels of brain activity and reduced task-related functional connectivity., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None reported., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Corticostriatal connections are essential for motivation, cognition, and behavioral flexibility. There is broad interest in using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) to link circuit dysfunction in these connections with neuropsychiatric disorders. In this paper, we used tract-tracing data from non-human primates (NHPs) to assess the likelihood of monosynaptic connections being represented in rs-fMRI data of NHPs and humans. We also demonstrated that existing hub locations in the anatomical data can be identified in the rs-fMRI data from both species. To characterize this in detail, we mapped the complete striatal projection zones from 27 tract-tracer injections located in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), ventrolateral PFC (vlPFC), and dorsal PFC (dPFC) of macaque monkeys. Rs-fMRI seeds at the same regions of NHP and homologous regions of human brains showed connectivity maps in the striatum mostly consistent with those observed in the tracer data. We then examined the location of overlap in striatal projection zones. The medial rostral dorsal caudate connected with all five frontocortical regions evaluated in this study in both modalities (tract-tracing and rs-fMRI) and species (NHP and human). Other locations in the caudate also presented an overlap of four frontocortical regions, suggesting the existence of different locations with lower levels of input diversity. Small retrograde tracer injections and rs-fMRI seeds in the striatum confirmed these cortical input patterns. This study sets the ground for future studies evaluating rs-fMRI in clinical samples to measure anatomical corticostriatal circuit dysfunction and identify connectional hubs to provide more specific treatment targets for neurological and psychiatric disorders., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors have nothing to disclose., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Background: Olfactory deterioration is suggested to be a predictor of some neurodegenerative diseases. Recent studies indicate that physical exercise has a positive relationship with olfactory performance, and a subregion in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) may play an important role in olfactory processing. The PFC is not only related to olfactory function but it also engages in complex functions such as cognition and emotional processing. Methodology: Our study compared the functional connectivity between the olfactory cortex and the PFC in healthy individuals who exercised regularly and healthy persons who did not. Those who exercised more than three times/week for at least 30 min each time were considered the exercise group, and those who did not meet this exercise criteria were considered the nonexercise group. We also assessed their odor threshold. Participants were aged 55 years or older, and the two groups were balanced for age, sex, body mass index, and educational level. Results: We found that compared with individuals who did not exercise, exercisers had a significantly lower threshold for detecting odors. In addition, the olfactory cortex had stronger connectivity with the PFC in exercisers than in nonexercisers. More specifically, when the PFC was grouped into three subregions, namely, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and frontopolar cortex (FPA), Pearson correlation analysis revealed stronger connectivity between the VLPFC and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), between the OFC and the FPA, and between the left and right OFC hemispheres in the exercisers. In addition, Granger causality indicated higher directional connectivity from the DLPFC to the OFC in exercisers than in nonexercisers. Conclusion: Our findings indicated that the exercise group not only had better olfactory performance but also had stronger functional connectivity between the olfactory cortex and the PFC than nonexercise group.

Background: Freezing of gait is one of the most disturbing motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the effective connectivity between key brain hubs that are associated with the pathophysiological mechanism of freezing of gait remains elusive., Objective: The aim of this study was to identify effective connectivity underlying freezing of gait., Methods: This study applied spectral dynamic causal modeling (DCM) of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging in dedicated regions of interest determined using a data-driven approach., Results: Abnormally increased functional connectivity between the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the bilateral mesencephalic locomotor region (MLR) was identified in freezers compared with nonfreezers. Subsequently, spectral DCM analysis revealed that increased top-down excitatory effective connectivity from the left DLPFC to bilateral MLR and an independent self-inhibitory connectivity within the left DLPFC in freezers versus nonfreezers (>99% posterior probability) were inversely associated with the severity of freezing of gait. The lateralization of these effective connectivity patterns was not attributable to the initial dopaminergic deficit nor to structural changes in these regions., Conclusions: We have identified novel effective connectivity and an independent self-inhibitory connectivity underlying freezing of gait. Our findings imply that modulating the effective connectivity between the left DLPFC and MLR through neurostimulation or other interventions could be a target for reducing freezing of gait in PD. © 2024 The Author(s). Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society., (© 2024 The Author(s). Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.)

Background: High psychological stress has been associated with several brain functional changes, including functional connectivity (FC) alterations in regions such as the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. This study explored FC alterations associated with high perceived stress, and also investigated whether these neuroimaging features were correlated with low levels of mindfulness., Methods: This study included 29 adults (12 males and 17 females; mean age: 27.6 ± 3.2) who complained of moderate or higher perceived stress and 31 adults (17 males and 14 females; mean age: 29.2 ± 7.2) who complained of low-level stress on the questionnaire scale. Seed-based resting-state FC analysis was conducted to compare between high and low stress groups. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and the amygdala were selected as seeds., Results: High stress group showed weaker left amygdala-based FC in the left cerebellum crus II and the left orbitofrontal cortex compared with low stress group. High stress group had weaker FC between the left DLPFC and the left inferior parietal lobule. On the contrary, high stress group had stronger FC between the left VMPFC and the left caudate compared with low stress group. Weaker FC between the amygdala and the cerebellum crus II was correlated with lower level of awareness facet of mindfulness., Conclusions: Those with high perceived stress showed low levels of mindfulness and several FC alterations centered on the prefrontal cortex and amygdala. Our findings also suggest that weak amygdala-based FC alterations associated with high psychological stress are related to low-level awareness facet of mindfulness., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objective: We examined whether brain hemodynamic responses, gait, and cognitive performances under single- and dual-task conditions predict falls during longitudinal follow-up in older adults with multiple sclerosis (OAMS) with relapsing-remitting and progressive subtypes., Methods: Participants with relapsing-remitting ( n = 53, mean age = 65.02 ± 4.17 years, %female = 75.5) and progressive ( n = 28, mean age = 64.64 ± 4.31 years, %female = 50) multiple sclerosis (MS) subtypes completed a dual-task-walking paradigm and reported falls during longitudinal follow-up using a monthly structured telephone interview. We used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to assess oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO) in the prefrontal cortex during active walking and while performing a cognitive test under single- and dual-task conditions., Results: Adjusted general estimating equations models indicated that higher HbO under dual-task walking was significantly associated with a reduction in the odds of reporting falls among participants with relapsing-remitting (odds ratio (OR) = 0.472, p = 0.004, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.284-0.785), but not progressive (OR = 1.056, p = 0.792, 95% CI = 0.703-1.588) MS. In contrast, faster stride velocity under dual-task walking was significantly associated with a reduction in the odds of reporting falls among progressive (OR = 0.658, p = 0.004, 95% CI = 0.495-0.874), but not relapsing-remitting (OR = 0.998, p = 0.995, 95% CI = 0.523-1.905) MS., Conclusion: Findings suggest that higher prefrontal cortex activation levels during dual-task walking, which may represent compensatory reallocation of brain resources, provide protection against falls for OAMS with relapsing-remitting subtype., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: M.I. has a minor share in fNIRS device. All other authors have no conflicts of interest to report in relation to the current article. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder with lifelong impairments. ADHD-related behaviors have been observed as early as toddlerhood for children who later develop ADHD. Children with ADHD have disrupted connectivity in neural circuitry involved in executive control of attention, including the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and dorsal attention network (DAN). It is not known if these alterations in connectivity can be identified before the onset of ADHD. Children (N = 51) 1.5-3 years old were assessed using functional near-infrared spectroscopy while engaging with a book. The relation between mother-reported ADHD-related behaviors and neural connectivity, computed using robust innovation-based correlation, was examined. Task engagement was high across the sample and unrelated to ADHD-related behaviors. Observed attention was associated with greater connectivity between the right lateral PFC and the right temporal parietal junction (TPJ). Children with greater ADHD-related behaviors had greater frontoparietal connectivity, particularly between the PFC bilaterally and the right TPJ. Toddlers at risk for developing ADHD may require increased frontoparietal connectivity to sustain attention. Future work is needed to examine early interventions that enhance developing attention and their effect on neural connectivity between the PFC and attention networks., (© 2024 The Author(s). Developmental Psychobiology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Normal aging is accompanied by changes in brain structure and function associated with cognitive decline. Structural and functional abnormalities, particularly the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and subcortical regions, contributed to cognitive aging. However, it remains unclear how the synchronized changes in structure and function of individual brain regions affect the cognition in aging. Using 3D T1-weighted structural data and movie watching functional magnetic resonance imaging data in a sample of 422 healthy individuals (ages from 18 to 87 years), we constructed regional structure-function coupling (SFC) of cortical and subcortical regions by quantifying the distribution similarity of gray matter volume (GMV) and amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF). Further, we investigated age-related changes in SFC and its relationship with cognition. With aging, increased SFC localized in PFC, thalamus and caudate nucleus, decreased SFC in temporal cortex, lateral occipital cortex and putamen. Moreover, the SFC in the PFC was associated with executive function and thalamus was associated with the fluid intelligence, and partially mediated age-related cognitive decline. Collectively, our results highlight that tighter structure-function synchron of the PFC and thalamus might contribute to age-related cognitive decline, and provide insight into the substrate of the thalamo-prefrontal pathway with cognitive aging., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 International Brain Research Organization (IBRO). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Adolescent food insecurity is a salient adversity hypothesized to affect neural systems associated with increased impulsive behavior. Family environments shape how adverse experiences influence development. In this study, hypotheses were tested regarding the conjoint effects of food insecurity and family flexibility on impulsivity via alterations in connectivity between regions within the salience and central executive networks. Such alterations are reflected in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) metrics between the anterior insula (AI) and the middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Hypotheses were tested in a longitudinal moderated mediation model with two waves of data from 142 adolescents (Time 1 [T1] M age = 12.89, SD = 0.85; Time 2 [T2] M age = 15.01, SD = 1.07). Data on past-year household food insecurity, family flexibility, and rsFC were obtained at T1. Impulsivity was self-reported by the adolescent at T1 and T2. Findings revealed that high T1 left-to-left rsFC between the AI and MFG was associated with increased impulsivity at T2. The interaction of family flexibility and food insecurity was associated with AI and MFG rsFC. In the context of low family flexibility, food insecurity was linked to high levels of AI and MFG rsFC. Conversely, in the context of optimal family flexibility, food insecurity was associated with low levels of AI and MFG rsFC. Conditional indirect analysis suggests that the links among food insecurity, rsFC, and impulsive behavior depend on family flexibility. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Adolescent food insecurity was associated with anterior insula and middle frontal gyrus connectivity only at certain levels of family flexibility. High family flexibility attenuated the link between food insecurity and neural connectivity, while low levels of family flexibility increased this risk. High left anterior insula and left middle frontal gyrus connectivity was associated with increased impulsivity 1 year later., (© 2024 The Author(s). Developmental Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused some individuals to experience vicarious traumatization (VT), an adverse psychological reaction to those who are primarily traumatized, which may negatively impact one's mental health and well-being and has been demonstrated to vary with personal trauma history. The neural mechanism of VT and how past trauma history affects current VT remain largely unknown. This study aimed to identify neurobiological markers that track individual differences in VT and reveal the neural link between childhood cumulative trauma (CCT) and VT., Methods: We used structural and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging before the pandemic to identify prospective brain markers for COVID-related VT by correlating individuals' VT levels during the pandemic with the gray matter volume (GMV) and seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and examined how these brain markers linked CCT to VT in a sample of general young adults (N = 115/100)., Results: Whole-brain GMV-behavior correlation analysis showed that VT was positively associated with GMV in the right dorsolateral prefrontal gyrus (DLPFC). Using the cluster derived from the GMV-behavior correlation analysis as the seed region, we further revealed that the RSFC between the right DLPFC and right precuneus was negatively associated with VT. Importantly, the right DLPFC volume and DLPFC-precuneus RSFC mediated the effect of CCT on VT. These findings remained unaffected by factors such as family socioeconomic status, other stressful life events, and general mental health., Conclusions: Overall, our study presents structural and functional brain markers for VT and highlights these brain-based markers as a potential neural mechanism linking CCT to COVID-related VT, which has implications for treating and preventing the development of trauma-related mental disorders., (© 2024 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.)

Purpose: The study aims to analyze alterations in dynamic functional connectivity density (dFCD) and effective connectivity (dEC) patterns using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), hypothesizing that overactive bladder (OAB) patients will exhibit distinct dFCD and dEC patterns, reflecting altered neural communication underlying the OAB., Methods: Forty-three female OAB patients and 40 female healthy controls (HC) underwent resting-state fMRI. Sliding window correlation was used to calculate the variability of the dFCD. The changes in dFCD-based dEC between the two groups were examined using Granger causal analysis. To describe the time-varying Granger causality, a sliding-window approach was utilized to divide time courses into a group of windows. We adopted a k-means clustering method to cluster all matrices into discrete connectivity states., Results: Compared with HC, OAB females consistently had a dFCD (decreased) in the left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and left medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) (p < 0.05, GRF corrected). In state 1, OAB patients had excitatory effective connections from bilateral ACC to left mPFC in comparison to HC. In state 2, there was an increase in dEC from the SMA to the mPFC. Participants with OAB showed significantly more inhibitory dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) connections between the left ACC and the right ACC in state 4, as well as an excitatory dEC connection between the right dlPFC and the left ACC in state 2 (p < 0.05, GRF corrected)., Conclusion: OAB patients demonstrate significant alterations in dFCD and dEC patterns, which may be indicative of the neural mechanisms involved in OAB pathophysiology., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

The subdivisions of the extended cingulate cortex of the human brain are implicated in a number of high-level behaviors and affected by a range of neuropsychiatric disorders. Its anatomy, function, and response to therapeutics are often studied using non-human animals, including the mouse. However, the similarity of human and mouse frontal cortex, including cingulate areas, is still not fully understood. Some accounts emphasize resemblances between mouse cingulate cortex and human cingulate cortex while others emphasize similarities with human granular prefrontal cortex. We use comparative neuroimaging to study the connectivity of the cingulate cortex in the mouse and human, allowing comparisons between mouse 'gold standard' tracer and imaging data, and, in addition, comparison between the mouse and the human using comparable imaging data. We find overall similarities in organization of the cingulate between species, including anterior and midcingulate areas and a retrosplenial area. However, human cingulate contains subareas with a more fine-grained organization than is apparent in the mouse and it has connections to prefrontal areas not present in the mouse. Results such as these help formally address between-species brain organization and aim to improve the translation from preclinical to human results., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe mental illness, with high rates of co-morbid depression and suicidality. Despite the importance of optimizing treatment in BPD, little is known about how neural processes relate to individual treatment response. This study examines how baseline regional brain blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) activation during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task of emotion regulation is related to treatment response following a six-month randomized clinical trial of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) or Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) treatment., Methods: Unmedicated females with BPD (N = 37), with recent suicidal behavior or self-injury, underwent an fMRI task in which negative personal memories were presented and they were asked to distance (i.e., downregulate their emotional response) or immerse (i.e., experience emotions freely). Patients were then randomized to DBT (N = 16) or SSRI (N = 21) treatment, with baseline and post-treatment depression and BPD severity assessed., Results: BOLD activity in prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, and insula was associated with distancing. Baseline BOLD during distancing in dorsolateral, ventrolateral, and orbital prefrontal cortex (dlPFC, vlPFC, OFC) differentially predicted depression response across treatment groups, with higher activity predicting better response in the SSRI group, and lower activity predicting better response in the DBT group., Limitations: All female samples., Discussion: Findings indicate that greater prefrontal engagement during emotion regulation may predict more antidepressant benefit from SSRIs, whereas lower engagement may predict better response to DBT. These results suggest different mechanisms of action for SSRI and DBT treatment, and this may allow fMRI to guide individualized treatment selection., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest JJM and BHS receive royalties from the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene for commercial use of the C-SSRS. CAM, NS, BSB, and KNO have no conflicts to report. The design, preparation, review, and approval of the manuscript as well as the decision to submit the manuscript for publication was entirely done by the authors CAM, NS, BSB, KNO, JJM, and BHS., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Infancy is a sensitive period of development, during which experiences of parental care are particularly important for shaping the developing brain. In a longitudinal study of N = 95 mothers and infants, we examined links between caregiving behavior (maternal sensitivity observed during a mother-infant free-play) and infants' neural response to emotion (happy, angry, and fearful faces) at 5 and 7 months of age. Neural activity was assessed using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), a region involved in cognitive control and emotion regulation. Maternal sensitivity was positively correlated with infants' neural responses to happy faces in the bilateral dlPFC and was associated with relative increases in such responses from 5 to 7 months. Multilevel analyses revealed caregiving-related individual differences in infants' neural responses to happy compared to fearful faces in the bilateral dlPFC, as well as other brain regions. We suggest that variability in dlPFC responses to emotion in the developing brain may be one correlate of early experiences of caregiving, with implications for social-emotional functioning and self-regulation. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Infancy is a sensitive period of brain development, during which experiences with caregivers are especially important. This study examined links between sensitive maternal care and infants' neural responses to emotion at 5-7 months of age, using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Experiences of sensitive care were associated with infants' neural responses to emotion-particularly happy faces-in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex., (© 2024 The Authors. Developmental Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Background: Depression is closely related to suicidal ideation (SI); however, it is unclear who is most vulnerable to SI within the context of depression. Research suggests that individual differences in emotion reactivity and regulation may be potential moderators of the link between depression and SI. Therefore, the current study tested this hypothesis using objective markers of emotion reactivity and volitional cognitive regulation capacity during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)., Methods: Adults (n = 91) with active SI completed validated self-report measures of current depressive symptoms and SI severity. Participants completed an fMRI task designed to probe neural response to aversive stimuli and during cognitive reappraisal - a form of volitional emotion regulation. Activation of the amygdala during aversive emotion reactivity was measured. Activation of ventrolateral, dorsolateral, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (vlPFC, dlPFC, and dmPFC) during cognitive reappraisal were also measured. A series of hierarchical linear regressions testing the unique and interactive effects of depression symptoms and neural activation on severity of SI were conducted., Results: Analyses revealed a depression x amygdala activation interaction. The positive association between depression and SI severity was more robust in the context of high amygdala reactivity than low amygdala reactivity. Analyses also indicated there was no PFC activity (neural cognitive reappraisal) by depression interaction., Limitations: Psychoactive medications were allowed and all participants endorsed suicidal intent., Conclusion: Strategies aimed at targeting exaggerated emotion reactivity within the context of depression may be beneficial., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest All authors declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

After traumatic events, simple cue-threat associative memories strengthen while episodic memories become incoherent. However, how the brain prioritises cue associations over episodic coding of traumatic events remains unclear. Here, we developed an original episodic threat conditioning paradigm in which participants concurrently form two memory representations: cue associations and episodic cue sequence. We discovered that these two distinct memories compete for physiological fear expression, reorganising overnight from an overgeneralised cue-based to a precise sequence-based expression. With multivariate fMRI, we track inter-area communication of the memory representations to reveal that a rebalancing between hippocampal- and prefrontal control of the fear regulatory circuit governs this memory maturation. Critically, this overnight re-organisation is altered with heightened trait anxiety. Together, we show the brain prioritises generalisable associative memories under recent traumatic stress but resorts to selective episodic memories 24 h later. Time-dependent memory competition may provide a unifying account for memory dysfunctions in post-traumatic stress disorders., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Individuals suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia (SCZ) frequently exhibit symptoms of cognitive disassociations, which are linked to poor functional integration among brain regions. The loss of functional integration can be assessed using graph metrics computed from functional connectivity matrices (FCMs) derived from neuroimaging data. A healthy brain at rest is known to exhibit small-world features with high clustering coefficients and shorter path lengths in contrast to random networks. The aim of this study was to compare the small-world properties of prefrontal cortical functional networks of healthy subjects with OCD and SCZ patient groups by use of hemodynamic data obtained with functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). 13 healthy subjects and 47 patients who were clinically diagnosed with either OCD (N = 21) or SCZ (N = 26) completed a Stroop test while their prefrontal cortex (PFC) hemodynamics were monitored with fNIRS. The Stroop test had a block design consisting of neutral, congruent and incongruent stimuli. For each subject and stimuli type, FCMs were derived separately which were then used to compute small world features that included (i) global efficiency (GE), (ii) clustering coefficient (CC), (iii) modularity (Q), and (iv) small-world parameter ( σ ). Small-world features of patients exhibited random networks which were indicated by higher GE and lower CC values when compared to healthy controls, implying a higher neuronal operational cost., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) is a crucial ability for effectively recovering from negative emotions through social interaction. It has been emphasized that the empathy network, cognitive control network, and affective generation network sustain the deployment of IER. However, the temporal dynamics of functional connectivity among these networks of IER remains unclear. This study utilized IER task-fMRI and sliding window approach to examine both the stationary and dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) of IER. Fifty-five healthy participants were recruited for the present study. Through clustering analysis, four distinct brain states were identified in dFC. State 1 demonstrated situation modification stage of IER, with strong connectivity between affective generation and visual networks. State 2 exhibited pronounced connectivity between empathy network and both cognitive control and affective generation networks, reflecting the empathy stage of IER. Next, a 'top-down' pattern is observed between the connectivity of cognitive control and affective generation networks during the cognitive control stage of state 3. The affective response modulation stage of state 4 mainly involved connections between empathy and affective generation networks. Specifically, the degree centrality of the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) mediated the association between one's IER tendency and the regulatory effects in state 2. The betweenness centrality of the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) mediated the association between one's IER efficiency and the regulatory effects in state 3. Altogether, these findings revealed that dynamic connectivity transitions among empathy, cognitive control, and affective generation networks, with the left VLPFC and MTG playing dominant roles, evident across the IER processing., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors have declared that there are no conflicts of interest in relation to the subject of this study., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Researchers implementing non-invasive neuroimaging have reported distinct load-dependent brain activity patterns in older adults compared with younger adults. Although findings are mixed, these age-related patterns are often associated with compensatory mechanisms of cognitive decline even in the absence of direct comparisons between brain activity and cognitive performance. This study investigated the effects of cognitive load on brain-behavior relationships in younger and older adults using a data-driven, multivariate partial least squares (PLS) analysis of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data. We measured bilateral prefrontal brain activity in 31 older and 27 younger adults while they performed single and dual 2-back tasks. Behavioral PLS analysis was used to determine relationships between performance metrics (reaction time and error rate) and brain oxygenation (HbO) and deoxygenation (HbR) patterns across groups and task loads. Results revealed significant age-group differences in brain-behavior relationships. In younger adults, increased brain activity (i.e., increased HbO and decreased HbR) was associated with faster reaction times and better accuracy in the single task, indicating sufficient neural capacity. Conversely, older adults showed a negative correlation between HbR and error rates in the single task; however, in the dual task, they demonstrated a positive relationship between HbO and performance, indicative of compensatory mechanisms under the higher cognitive load. Overall, older adults' showed relationships with either HbR or HbO, but not both, indicating that the robustness of the relationship between brain activity and behavior varies across task load conditions. Our PLS approach revealed distinct load-dependent brain activity between age groups, providing further insight into neurocognitive aging patterns, such as compensatory mechanisms, by emphasizing the variability and complexity of brain-behavior relationships. Our findings also highlight the importance of considering task complexity and cognitive demands in interpreting age-related brain activity patterns., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Gonzalez et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a psychiatric disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors. There are two prominent features: Harm Avoidance (HA) and Incompleteness (INC). Previous resting-state studies reported abnormally elevated connectivity between prefrontal cortical (PFC) and subcortical regions (thalamus, striatum) in OCD participants. Yet, little is known about the white matter (WM) structural abnormalities in these connections. Using brain parcellation and segmentation, whole brain tractography, and Neurite Orientation Dispersion and Density Imaging (NODDI), we aimed to characterize WM structural abnormalities in OCD vs. healthy controls and determine the extent to which NODDI indices of these connections were associated with subthreshold-threshold HA, INC and overall OCD symptom severity across all participants. Four PFC regions were segmented: ventral medial (vmPFC), ventrolateral (vlPFC), dorsomedial (dmPFC), and dorsolateral (dlPFC). NODDI Neurite Density (NDI) and Orientation Dispersion (ODI) indices of WM structure were extracted from connections between these PFC regions and the thalamus (42 OCD, 44 healthy controls, mean age[SD] = 23.65[4.25]y, 63.9% female) and striatum (38 OCD, 41 healthy controls, mean age[SD] = 23.59[4.27]y, 64.5% female). Multivariate analyses of covariance revealed no between-group differences in these indices. Multivariate regression models revealed that greater NDI in vmPFC-thalamus, greater NDI and ODI in vmPFC-striatum, and greater NDI in dmPFC-thalamus connections were associated with greater INC severity (Q ≤ 0.032). These findings highlight the utility of NODDI in the examination of WM structure in OCD, provide valuable insights into specific WM alterations underlying dimensional INC, and can facilitate the development of customized treatments for OCD individuals with treatment-resistant symptoms., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Aim: This cross-sectional study aims to identify the characteristic changes of prefrontal and motor areas during a tai chi chuan task in patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and major depressive disorder (MDD) using wearable functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)., Methods: Three parallel groups (T2DM with DD group, T2DM group, and healthy group) were recruited from December 10, 2022, to May 31, 2023. Participants in three groups conducted a motor task of tai chi chuan designed by Eprime 3.0, and fNIRS was used to monitor the brain activation, functional connectivity (FC), and lateralization of prefrontal and motor areas. Correlation analyses were performed to examine the relationship between depressive symptoms and the function of prefrontal and motor areas., Results: Ninety elder adults (aged ≥ 60), including 30 patients with T2DM and MDD, 30 patients with T2DM, and 30 healthy subjects, were enrolled. In contrast with the patients with T2DM and healthy subjects, the patients with T2DM and MDD had decreased activation and abnormal lateralization in prefrontal and motor areas and decreased FC among supplementary motor area, motor area, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Furthermore, the oxyhemoglobin (HbO 2 ) concentration value of DLPFC in patients with T2DM and MDD was negatively associated with scores of Hamilton Depression Scale-24 (HAMD-24)., Conclusions: Patients with T2DM and MDD had characteristic functional changes in prefrontal and motor areas. DLPFC may be a potential target of diagnosis and intervention for patients with T2DM and MDD., (© 2024 The Author(s). Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Background: Metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGlu5) dysregulation has been implicated in the pathophysiology of trauma-related psychopathology, and there are direct interactions between the endocannabinoid and glutamatergic systems. However, relationships between cannabis use (CU) and mGlu5 have not been directly investigated in trauma-related psychopathology., Methods: Using positron emission tomography with [18F]FPEB, we examined relationships between CU status and mGlu5 availability in vivo in a cross-diagnostic sample of individuals with trauma-related psychopathology (n = 55). Specifically, we tested whether mGlu5 availability in frontolimbic regions of interest (ROIs; dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus) differed as a function of CU status., Results: Past-year CU (n = 22) was associated with 18.62%-19.12% higher mGlu5 availability in frontal and 14.24%-16.55% higher mGlu5 in limbic ROIs relative to participants with no recent CU. Similarly, past-month or monthly CU (n = 16) was associated with higher mGlu5 availability in frontal (18.05%-20.62%) and limbic (15.53%-16.83%) ROIs. mGlu5 availability in the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala was negatively associated with depressive symptoms in the past-year CU group. In both CU groups, exploratory analyses showed negative correlations between mGlu5 availability and sadness across all ROIs and with perceptions of worthlessness and past failures (r's = -.47 to .66, P's = .006-.033) in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Participants with CU reported lower mean depressive symptoms (P's = .006-.037) relative to those without CU., Conclusions: These findings have substantial implications for our understanding of interactions between CU and glutamatergic neurotransmission in trauma-related psychopathology, underscoring the need for treatment development efforts to consider the effects of CU in this population., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of CINP.)

From adolescence, women become more likely to experience fear dysregulation. Oral contraceptives (OCs) can modulate the brain regions involved in fear processes. OCs are generally used for years and often initiated during adolescence, a sensitive period where certain brain regions involved in the fear circuitry are still undergoing important reorganization. It remains unknown whether OC use during adolescence may induce long-lasting changes in the fear circuitry. This study aimed to examine whether age of onset moderated the relationship between duration of use and fear-related brain structures. We collected structural MRI data in 98 healthy adult women (61 current users, 37 past users) and extracted grey matter volumes (GMV) and cortical thickness (CT) of key regions of the fear circuitry. Non-linear multiple regressions revealed interaction effects between age of onset and quadratic duration of use on GMV of the right hippocampus and right ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Among women who initiated OCs earlier in adolescence, a short duration of use was associated with smaller hippocampal GMV and thicker vmPFC compared to a longer duration of use. For both GMV and CT of the right vmPFC, women with an early OC onset had more grey matter at a short duration of use than those with a later onset. Our results suggest that OC use earlier in adolescence may induce lasting effects on structural correlates of fear learning and its regulation. These findings support further investigation into the timing of OC use to better comprehend how OCs could disrupt normal brain development processes., (© 2024 The Author(s). European Journal of Neuroscience published by Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Background: Current models of major depressive disorder (MDD) primarily focus on the structural and functional changes in key prefrontal areas responsible for emotional regulation. Among these regions some sections such as the dorsal prefrontal area, has received limited attention regarding its structural abnormalities in MDD. This study aims to evaluate volumetric abnormalities in brain regions associated with markers of depression severity and episode frequency., Methods: The study included 33 MDD patients and 33 healthy subjects. Using an atlas-based method, we measured the volumes of several key brain regions based on MRI data. The regions of interest included prefrontal and posterior sections of the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and superior frontal gyrus (SFG). Additionally, we evaluated the volumes of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), perigenual (rostral) anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC), subgenual cingulate cortex (sgACC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), hippocampus (HPC), and parahippocampus (paraHPC). Hamilton Depression Scale (HAM-D) scores and count of the depressive episodes of patients were also obtained. A regression analysis with sex as the confounding factor has been made., Results: Analysis of covariances, controlling for sex, showed significant atrophy in the sgACC in the depression group: F(1, 63) = 4.013, p = 0.049 (left) and F(1, 63) = 8.786, p < 0.004 (right). Poisson regression, also controlling for sex, found that each additional depressive episode was associated with a significant reduction in left posterior MFG volume (0.952 times, 95 % CI, 0.906 to 1.000; p = 0.049)., Conclusions: Findings in this study highlight the structural abnormalities in MDD patients in correlation to either current depression severity or chronicity of the disease., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Individuals with depressive tendencies are considered to be at high risk for the onset of depressive disorders. Currently, most research focuses on the impairment of working memory in patients with depression, while there is less attention paid to the WM of individuals with depressive tendencies, and their neural mechanisms underlying it are poorly understood. Therefore, this study focuses on the characteristics and neural mechanisms of WM in individuals with depressive tendencies. This study uses functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to monitor the concentration of Oxy-Hb in the prefrontal cortex and employs the n-back paradigm, designing three levels of load: 0, 1, and 2, to examine the characteristics of WM and its neural mechanisms in individuals with depressive tendencies. Behavioral results show that the accuracy rates of individuals with depressive tendencies is significantly lower than that of healthy individuals, and under the 0-back condition, the reaction time of individuals with depressive tendencies is significantly higher than that of healthy control individuals. Near-infrared results indicate that the activation level in the frontal pole and the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex of individuals with depressive tendencies is significantly lower than that of healthy control individuals. The β values of channels 2, 7, and 9 are significantly negatively correlated with the Beck Depression Inventory scores of the participants. The results suggest that the reduced activation of the frontal pole and dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex in individuals with depressive tendencies leads to poorer WM performance compared to healthy control individuals. This is a rare brain evidence of the characteristics of WM in individuals with depressive tendencies, which can provide a deeper understanding of the WM characteristics of individuals with depressive tendencies., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The value associated with reward is sensitive to external factors, such as the time between the choice and reward delivery as classically manipulated in temporal discounting tasks. Subjective preference for two reward options is dependent on objective variables of reward magnitude and reward delay. Single neuron correlates of reward value have been observed in regions, including ventral striatum, orbital, and medial prefrontal cortex. Brain imaging studies show cortico-striatal-limbic network activity related to subjective preferences. To explore how oscillatory dynamics represent reward processing across brain regions, we measured local field potentials of rats performing a temporal discounting task. Our goal was to use a data-driven approach to identify an electrophysiological marker that correlates with reward preference. We found that reward-locked oscillations at beta frequencies signaled the magnitude of reward and decayed with longer temporal delays. Electrodes in orbitofrontal/medial prefrontal cortex, anterior insula, ventral striatum, and amygdala individually increased power and were functionally connected at beta frequencies during reward outcome. Beta power during reward outcome correlated with subjective value as defined by a computational model fit to the discounting behavior. These data suggest that cortico-striatal beta oscillations are a reward signal correlated, which may represent subjective value and hold potential to serve as a biomarker and potential therapeutic target., (© 2024. This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply.)

Objective: Elevated pediatric irritability is a transdiagnostic symptom that predicts multiple mental health problems in adolescence and adulthood. Altered top-down regulatory networks, such as inhibitory control networks that suppress an impulse in favor of goal-directed behavior, are thought to contribute to high levels of youth irritability. Nevertheless, little work has examined links between youth irritability and neural processes supporting inhibitory control in large diverse samples, nor have they focused on the key period ramping up to adolescence (i.e., preadolescence)., Method: Functional MRI data from 5380 preadolescents (age M=9.97 years, SD=0.62) in the baseline Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study were analyzed. Parents reported on their preadolescent's irritability. The stop signal task (SST) was leveraged to probe successful and failed inhibitory control. Activation and functional connectivity with amygdala, ventral striatum, and prefrontal seed regions were calculated during the SST and used in whole brain and region of interest (ROI) group-level analyses evaluating irritability effects., Results: Preadolescents with higher levels of irritability displayed decreases in functional connectivity among amygdala, ventral striatum, and prefrontal cortex regions during both successful and failed inhibitory control conditions. These results remained after adjusting for co-occurring anxiety, depression, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity symptoms., Conclusions: Findings suggest neural aberrations in inhibitory control play a role in the pathophysiology of preadolescent irritability and associations are not merely due to co-occurring symptoms. Neural mechanisms of inhibitory control associated with irritability may provide novel intervention targets., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors have no conflicts of interest to report., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: There is an imbalance between goal-directed and habitual-learning system in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). At present, the relationship between cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) as a first-line therapy and goal-directed and habitual-learning disorder is still unclear. We attempted to discuss the effect of CBT treatment in patients with OCD, using abnormalities in goal-directed and habitual-learning-related brain regions at baseline as predictive factors., Methods: A total of 71 subjects, including 35 OCD patients and 36 healthy controls, were recruited. The OCD patients underwent 8 weeks of CBT. These patients were divided into two groups based on treatment response (N responders  = 18, N nonresponders  = 17). Further subgroup analysis was conducted based on disease duration (N short  = 17, N long  = 18) and age of onset (N early  = 14, N late  = 21). We collected resting-state ROI-ROI functional connectivity data and apply repeated-measures linear mixed-effects models to investigate the differences of different subgroups., Results: CBT led to symptom improvement in OCD patients, with varying degrees of effectiveness across subgroups. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and insula, key regions for goal-directed behavior and habitual-learning, respectively, showed significant impacts on CBT efficacy in subgroups with different disease durations and ages of onset., Conclusion: The findings suggest that the goal-directed system may influence the efficacy of CBT through goal selection, maintenance, and emotion regulation. Furthermore, we found that disease duration and age of onset may affect treatment outcomes by modulating functional connectivity between goal-directed and habitual-learning brain regions., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest There is no conflict of interest in this study., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) is an emerging neuromodulation technology that has been reported to be beneficial in the treatment of diseases by several studies, but its exact mechanism of action is still unclear. It has been demonstrated that taVNS can influence interoceptive signals. Notably, the processing of interoceptive signals is directly related to many diseases, such as depression, anxiety, and insomnia. The insula and the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) communicate during the bottom-up transmission of taVNS-induced signals, and both play a role in interoceptive signal processing. By focusing on the insula and MPFC, our research pioneers detail the potential interactions between interoceptive signal processing and the neuromodulation effects of taVNS, providing novel insights into the neurobiological mechanisms of taVNS. Two functional connectivity (FC) analyses (region of interest-based and seed-based) were used in this study. We observed that negative connectivity between the insula and the MPFC was significantly weakened following taVNS, while there were no statistical changes in the sham group. Our findings elucidate potential mechanisms linking vagal activity with intrinsic FC among specific brain regions and networks. Specifically, our results indicate that taVNS may enhance the ability to flexibly balance interoceptive awareness and cognitive experiences by modulating the FC between the insula and MPFC. The modulation effects may impact body-brain interactions, suggesting the mechanism of taVNS in therapeutic applications.

Preparatory control in task-switching has been suggested to rely upon a set of distributed regions within a frontoparietal network, with frontal and parietal cortical areas cooperating to implement switch-specific preparation processes. Although recent causal evidence using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) have generally supported this model, alternative results from both functional neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies have questioned the switch-specific role of both frontal and parietal cortices. The aim of the present study was to clarify the involvement of prefrontal and parietal areas in preparatory cognitive control. With this purpose, an fMRI study was conducted to identify the brain areas activated during cue events in a task-switching paradigm, indicating whether to switch or to repeat among numerical tasks. Then, TMS was applied over the specific coordinates previously identified through fMRI, that is, the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and right intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Results revealed that TMS over the right IFG disrupted performance in both switch and repeat trails in terms of delayed responses as compared to Sham condition. In contrast, TMS over the right IPS selectively interfered performance in switch trials. These findings support a multi-component model of executive control with the IFG being involved in more general switch-unspecific process such as the episodic retrieval of goals, and the IPS being related to the implementation of switch-specific preparation mechanisms for activating stimulus-response mappings. The results are discussed within the framework of contemporary hierarchical models of prefrontal cortex organization, suggesting that distinct prefrontal areas may carry out coordinated functions in preparatory control., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest CA has been a consultant to or has received honoraria or grants from Acadia, Angelini, Boehringer, Gedeon Richter, Janssen Cilag, Lundbeck, Minerva, Otsuka, Pfizer, Roche, Sage, Servier, Shire, Schering Plough, Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma, Sunovion and Takeda. The remaining authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: Localized shimming in single-voxel MRS often results in large B 0 inhomogeneity outside the volume-of-interest. This causes unacceptable degradation in motion navigator images. Switching back and forth between whole-brain shim and localized shim is possible for linear shims, but not for higher-order shims. Here we propose motion navigators largely insensitive to B 0 inhomogeneity for prospective motion-corrected MRS with localized higher-order shimming., Methods: A recent fast high-resolution motion navigator based on spiral-in/out k-space trajectories and multislice-to-volume registration was modified by splitting the readout into multiple shot interleaves which shortened the echo time and reduced the effect of B 0 inhomogeneity. The performance of motion correction was assessed in healthy subjects in the prefrontal cortex using a sLASER sequence at 3T (N = 5) and 7T (N = 5)., Results: With multiple spatial interleaves, excellent quality navigator images were acquired in the whole brain in spite of large B 0 inhomogeneity outside the MRS voxel. The total duration of the navigator in sLASER remained relatively short even with multiple shots (3T: 10 spatial interleaves 94 ms per slice; 7T: 15 spatial interleaves 103 ms per slice). Prospective motion correction using the multi-shot navigators yielded comparable spectral quality (water linewidth and metabolite SNR) with and without subject motion., Conclusion: B 0 -insensitive motion navigators enable prospective motion correction for MRS with all first- and second-order shims adjusted in the MRS voxel, providing optimal spectral linewidth., (© 2024 The Authors. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.)

Background: Previous research has revealed that patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) have negative biases in various aspects of information processing, and these biases are mainly manifested in recognizing facial expressions. However, the link between this emotional cognitive inhibition and neural activation mechanisms in cortical brain regions remains poorly understood. Therefore, this study employed functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to explore the potential impaired regions and neural mechanisms associated with facial emotion cognition in MDD patients., Methods: 37 MDD patients and 34 healthy controls (HC) were recruited to participate in three sets of cognitive tasks for emotion recognition, and the cortical activation in the brain was synchronously recorded using multi-channel fNIRS., Results: During tasks requiring the motions identification of sad versus happy emotional states, MDD patients exhibit altered activation in both the left frontopolar cortex (FPC) and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Notably, the FPC demonstrates a higher level of internal coherence and broader correlation with other cortical areas. Moreover, MDD patients showed lower accuracy in distinguishing emotional cues associated with sadness versus those associated with neutral and happy emotions., Limitations: The study had a relatively small sample size, and it specifically examined only three prevalent facial expressions., Conclusion: Facial expression recognition in MDD patients is characterized by negative cognitive interpretation of expressions, which are associated with various cortical altered activations. Neuroimaging further suggests that the cognitive inhibition of emotion signal recognition in everyday interpersonal interactions in MDD patients may primarily be influenced by activation in the left FPC., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest 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 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Chronic pain and depression share common neural mechanisms, but their impacts on empathy are different. It is unclear how comorbid depressive symptoms affect empathy-related brain function in patients with chronic pain., Methods: A total of 29 healthy participants and 107 patients with chronic back pain (CBP) were included in this study. All subjects underwent a functional MRI scan with concurrent empathic stimulation. Multiple linear regression, moderation analysis, and mediation analysis were used to explore the impacts of chronic pain and comorbid depression on empathy., Results: The interaction between the pain intensity and the depressive symptoms affected the functional connectivity (FC) of the insula-middle frontal gyrus (MFG), and the severity of the self-rating depression scale (SDS) scores moderated the effect of the pain on the left insula-left MFG FC. Within the CBP group, the emotional contagion (EC) scores served as a mediator in the association between the SDS scores and the FC of the left middle cingulate cortex (MCC)-inferior temporal gyrus (ITG), and the level of cognitive empathy (CE) moderated the effect of the SDS scores on the left MCC-ITG FC., Limitations: There is a lack of research on the effects of depressive symptoms on empathy in individuals with different types of chronic pain., Conclusion: Depressive symptoms were strongly associated with the emotional contagion in patients with chronic back pain. Furthermore, the emotional contagion and the cognitive empathy regulated the effect of the comorbid depressive symptoms on the MCC-ITG connectivity in patients with chronic back pain., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None of the authors has potential conflicts of interest to be disclosed., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Objective: Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) previous studies have found that activation differences in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during an autobiographical memory task (AMT) under the condition of different emotional valences may be neurophysiological markers of depression and different depression subtypes. Additionally, compared with non-anxious depression, anxious depression presents abnormal hemodynamic activation in the DLPFC. This study aimed to use fNIRS to investigate hemodynamic activation in the DLPFC of depression patients with and without anxiety during AMT triggered by different emotional valence stimuli., Methods: We recruited 194 patients with depression (91 with non-anxious depression, 103 with anxious depression) and 110 healthy controls from Chinese college students. A 53-channel fNIRS was used to detect cerebral hemodynamic differences in the three groups during AMT., Results: The results showed that: (1) the activation of oxy-Hb in the left DLPFC was significantly higher under positive emotional valence than under negative emotional valence for healthy controls and patients with non-anxious depression, while there was no significant difference between positive and negative emotional valence observed in response to anxious depression; and (2) Oxy-Hb activation under negative emotional valence was significantly higher in the anxious depression group than in the non-anxious depression group., Conclusions: This study revealed that the hemodynamic hyperactivation of negative emotional valence in the left DLPFC may be due to the neurophysiological differences between anxious and non-anxious patients with depression., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest This manuscript has not been published or presented elsewhere in part or entirety. All study participants provided informed consent and the study design was approved by the appropriate ethics review board. All the authors have approved the manuscript and agree to its submission to your esteemed journal. The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Considering the high comorbidity, shared risk factors, and genetic pathways between irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and major depressive disorder (MDD), we hypothesized that there would be both shared and disorder-specific alterations in brain function., Methods: A total of 39 IBS patients, 39 MDD patients, and 40 healthy controls (HCs) were enrolled and matched for sex, age, and educational level. All subjects underwent resting-state functional MRI. The clinical variables of anxiety, depression, gastrointestinal symptoms and alexithymia were recorded. The 12 subregions of the striatum were employed as seeds to assess their functional connectivity (FC) with every voxel throughout the whole brain., Results: Compared to HC, IBS and MDD patients exhibited aberrant frontal-striatal circuitry. We observed a common decrease in FC between the dorsal striatum and regions of the hippocampus, sensorimotor cortex, and prefrontal cortex (PFC) in both IBS and MDD patients. Patients with IBS exhibited disorder-specific decreases in FC within the striatum, along with reduced connectivity between the ventral striatum and sensorimotor cortex. In contrast, MDD patients showed disorder-specific hyperconnectivity in the medial PFC-limbic system. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed that frontal-striatal FC values could serve as transdiagnostic markers of IBS and MDD. Within the IBS group, striatal connectivity was not only negatively associated with weekly abdominal pain days but also negatively correlated with the levels of anxiety and alexithymia., Conclusions: This exploratory analysis indicated that patients with IBS and MDD exhibited both shared and disorder-specific frontal-striatal circuit impairments, potentially explaining both comorbidity and distinct phenotypes., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest 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 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Social learning is well established across species. While recent neuroimaging studies show that dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC/preSMA) activation correlates with observational learning signals, the precise computations that are implemented by DMPFC/preSMA have remained unclear. To identify whether DMPFC/preSMA supports learning from observed outcomes or observed actions, or possibly encodes even a higher order factor (such as the reliability of the demonstrator), we downregulate DMPFC/preSMA excitability with continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) and assess different forms of observational learning. Relative to a vertex-cTBS control condition, DMPFC/preSMA downregulation decreases performance during action-based learning but has no effect on outcome-based learning. Computational modeling reveals that DMPFC/preSMA cTBS disrupts learning the predictability, a proxy of reliability, of the demonstrator and modulates the rate of learning from observed actions. Thus, our results suggest that the DMPFC is causally involved in observational action learning, mainly by adjusting the speed of learning about the predictability of the demonstrator., (© 2024. The Author(s).)