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Background Overgeneralised self-blame and worthlessness are key symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD) and have previously been associated with self-blame-selective changes in connectivity between right superior anterior temporal lobe (rSATL) and subgenual frontal cortices. Another study showed that remitted MDD patients were able to modulate this neural signature using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neurofeedback training, thereby increasing their self-esteem. The feasibility and potential of using this approach in symptomatic MDD were unknown. Method This single-blind pre-registered randomised controlled pilot trial probed a novel self-guided psychological intervention with and without additional rSATL-posterior subgenual cortex (BA25) fMRI neurofeedback, targeting self-blaming emotions in people with insufficiently recovered MDD and early treatment-resistance (n = 43, n = 35 completers). Participants completed three weekly self-guided sessions to rebalance self-blaming biases. Results As predicted, neurofeedback led to a training-induced reduction in rSATL-BA25 connectivity for self-blame v. other-blame. Both interventions were safe and resulted in a 46% reduction on the Beck Depression Inventory-II, our primary outcome, with no group differences. Secondary analyses, however, revealed that patients without DSM-5-defined anxious distress showed a superior response to neurofeedback compared with the psychological intervention, and the opposite pattern in anxious MDD. As predicted, symptom remission was associated with increases in self-esteem and this correlated with the frequency with which participants employed the psychological strategies in daily life. Conclusions These findings suggest that self-blame-rebalance neurofeedback may be superior over a solely psychological intervention in non-anxious MDD, although further confirmatory studies are needed. Simple self-guided strategies tackling self-blame were beneficial, but need to be compared against treatment-as-usual in further trials. https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN10526888

Desde o surgimento do homem suas primeiras atividades como caca, pesca e consequentemente necessidade de proteger-se e sobrevivencia o planeta vem passando por constantes modificacoes ate os dias de hoje. Essas mudancas resultaram em diversos avancos como aumento da populacao mundial, avancos tecnologicos da medicina, inclusive aplicacao de novas tecnologias para suprir as necessidades de producao quando diz respeito a energia eletrica, levando em consideracao uma fonte de energia limpa e renovavel. Pensando nisso, o artigo em questao tem como objetivo apresentar os conceitos e principios de funcionamento do sistema de geracao eletrica, utilizando paineis fotovoltaicos e apresentar o estacionameto solar fotovoltaico do Centro Educacional UniEVANGELICA. Para tal, foi feito inicialmente um levantamento do material teorico para descrever sobre os conceitos e principios de funcionamento de um sistema de geracao eletrica atraves de energia solar fotovoltaica, e posteriormente apresentar e discorrer sobre o estacionamento solar fotovoltaico do Centro Universitario UniEVANGELICA situado na cidade de Anapolis GO.

Humans are intrinsically motivated to bond with others. The ability to experience affiliative emotions (such as affection/tenderness, sexual attraction, and admiration/awe) may incentivize and promote these affiliative bonds. Here, we interrogate the role of the critical reward circuitry, especially the Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc) and the septo-hypothalamic region, in the anticipation of and response to affiliative rewards using a novel incentive delay task. During Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI), participants (n = 23 healthy humans; 14 female) anticipated and watched videos involving affiliative (tenderness, erotic desire, and awe) and nonaffiliative (i.e., food) rewards, as well as neutral scenes. On the one hand, anticipation of both affiliative and nonaffiliative rewards increased activity in the NAcc, anterior insula, and supplementary motor cortex, but activity in the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) increased in response to reward outcomes. On the other hand, affiliative rewards more specifically increased activity in the septo-hypothalamic area. Moreover, NAcc activity during anticipation correlated with positive arousal for all rewards, whereas septo-hypothalamic activity during the outcome correlated with positive arousal and motivation for subsequent re-exposure only for affiliative rewards. Together, these findings implicate a general appetitive response in the NAcc to different types of rewards but suggests a more specific response in the septo-hypothalamic region in response to affiliative rewards outcomes. This work also presents a new task for distinguishing between neural responses to affiliative and non-affiliative rewards.

O presente trabalho tem como objeto de estudo testemunhos de presos políticos da ditadura militar (1964-1985), colhidos por meio de entrevistas em audiovisual, entre 2002 e 2010, no escopo do projeto \"Intolerância e Resistência: Testemunhos da repressão política no Brasil\". Os testemunhos apresentam elaborações de vítimas da repressão e relatam suas trajetórias de vida. No momento da gravação das entrevistas, uma série de revisionismos e disputas políticas tensionavam as memórias sociais acerca do passado da ditadura militar. Buscamos analisar os testemunhos de 8 ex-militantes de organizações de luta armada tendo como referência metodológica a História Oral. Buscamos compreender de que forma as memórias desses sujeitos se relacionam com três memórias sociais sobre o período, marcadas pela conciliação política. Esta reflexão ocorre a partir de três objetivos centrais: ao elaborarem suas memórias, esses sujeitos encaram sua experiência como \"idealismo juvenil\"? Definem sua luta política como \"resistência democrática\"? Enxergam-se como \"vitoriosos politicamente\", apesar da derrota nas armas? Essas perguntas visam respondem à seguinte hipótese: o processo de redemocratização cobriu a Nova República com um manto de silêncio acerca do passado - materializado na Lei de Anistia - constituindo para os ex-presos políticos uma espécie \"não-lugar\", dificultando a elaboração de suas memórias, fazendo com que, muitas vezes, assimilem as memórias sociais hegemônicas, quando elaboram suas memórias individuais. A memória dos presos políticos da luta armada pode nos iluminar algumas contradições do processo de redemocratização e da própria Nova República, evidenciando o silêncio sobre o passado como chave para a manutenção de violências. This study examines the testimonies of political prisoners of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985), collected by audiovisual interviews, between 2002 and 2010, for the Project \'Intolerance and Resistance: Testimonies of political repression in Brazil\". The testimonies present elaborations of victims of repression and narrate their life trajectories. During the collection of the interviews, a series of revisionisms and political disputes were tensioning the social memories regarding the military dictatorship\'s past. We analyzed the testimonies of eight former members of armed fighting organizations, with Oral History as the methodological reference. We seek understanding of how these subjects memories can be related to three social memories of the period, marked by political conciliation. This reflection has three central goals: when elaborating these memories, do the subjects face their experiences as \"juvenile idealism\"? Do they characterize their political struggle as \"democratic resistance\"? Do they see themselves as \"politically victorious\", in spite of the lost armed combat? These questions aim to respond to the following hypothesis: the process of re-democratization covered the New Republic in silencing regarding the past - materialized in the Amnesty Law - creating for the former political prisoners a \"non-place\", leading the elaboration of their own individual memories towards assimilating the hegemonic social memories. The memory of the political prisoners from armed fighting may shed light on some contradictions in the process of re-democratization and the New Republic itself, evidencing the silence about the past as the key to the maintenance of violence.

BackgroundOvergeneralised self-blame and worthlessness are key symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD) and were previously associated with self-blame-selective changes in connectivity between right superior anterior temporal lobe (rSATL) and subgenual frontal areas. In a previous study, remitted MDD patients successfully modulated guilt-selective rSATL-subgenual cingulate connectivity using real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rtfMRI) neurofeedback training, thereby increasing their self-esteem. The feasibility and potential of using this approach in symptomatic MDD were unknown.MethodsThis single-blind pre-registered randomised controlled pilot trial tested the clinical potential of a novel self-guided psychological intervention with and without additional rSATL-posterior subgenual cortex (SC) rtfMRI neurofeedback, targeting self-blaming emotions in insufficiently recovered people with MDD and early treatment-resistance (n=43, n=35 completers). Following a diagnostic baseline assessment, patients completed three self-guided sessions to rebalance self-blaming biases and a post-treatment assessment. The fMRI neurofeedback software FRIEND was used to measure rSATL-posterior SC connectivity, while the BDI-II was administered to assess depressive symptom severity as a primary outcome measure.ResultsBoth interventions were demonstrated to be safe and beneficial, resulting in a mean reduction of MDD symptom severity by 46% and response rates of more than 55%, with no group difference. Secondary analyses, however, revealed a differential response on our primary outcome measure between MDD patients with and without DSM-5 defined anxious distress. Stratifying by anxious distress features was investigated, because this was found to be the most common subtype in our sample. MDD patients without anxious distress showed a higher response to rtfMRI neurofeedback training compared to the psychological intervention, with the opposite pattern found in anxious MDD. We explored potentially confounding clinical differences between subgroups and found that anxious MDD patients were much more likely to experience anger towards others as measured on our psychopathological interview which might play a role in their poorer response to neurofeedback. In keeping with the hypothesis that self-worth plays a key role in MDD, improvement on our primary outcome measure was correlated with increases in self-esteem after the intervention and this correlated with the frequency with which participants employed the strategies to tackle self-blame outside of the treatment sessions.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that self-blame-selective rtfMRI neurofeedback training may be superior over a solely psychological intervention in non-anxious MDD, although further confirmatory studies are needed. The self-guided psychological intervention showed a surprisingly high clinical potential in the anxious MDD group which needs further confirmation compared versus treatment-as-usual. Future studies need to investigate whether self-blame-selective rSATL-SC connectivity changes are irrelevant in anxious MDD, which could explain their response being better to the psychological intervention without interfering neurofeedback.https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN10526888

Objectives/Aims FMRI-neurofeedback for major depressive disorder (MDD) is of great interest to clinicians and neuroscientists. Here, the aim was to review the current clinical trials evidence. Methods We undertook a systematic literature search of fMRI-neurofeedback trials in MDD, including our unpublished results. Results fMRI-neurofeedback was effective in current MDD when reinforcing brain responses to positive pictures,1 but was not superior to a control neurofeedback intervention in a recent randomised controlled trial2 (RCT). Another RCT showed that reinforcing amygdala responses to positive autobiographical memories3 was superior versus a control neurofeedback intervention4. We have developed neurofeedback of self-blame-selective functional connectivity between right superior anterior temporal (AT) and subgenual frontal regions. In remitted MDD, we demonstrated that self-esteem can be increased using this approach in a double-blind RCT. In a recently completed RCT in early treatment-resistant MDD, the majority of patients responded to guilt-related AT-subgenual connectivity neurofeedback. Surprisingly, a self-guided matched psychological intervention tackling self-blame without neurofeedback showed comparable levels of response. Secondary analyses, however, showed that neurofeedback was superior for those patients without anxious distress features. Conclusions This calls for longer-term studies to reproduce previous results and stratified trials to combine psychological and neurofeedback interventions. As a research tool, neurofeedback uncovers causal relationships between functions and anatomical subdivisions. References D. E. Linden, et al., PloS one 2012;7:e38115. D. M. A. Mehler, et al., Neuropsychopharmacology, (2018). K. D. Young, et al., PloS one 2014;9:e88785. K. D. Young, et al., Am. J. Psychiatry 2017;174:748–755.

Studies on the neural underpinnings of generosity and selfishness typically use healthy volunteers. Mollet al. report the effect of cortical injuries on the willingness of Vietnam War veterans to spend their own money to reward or punish societal organizations. Injury location helps determine whether decisions are altruistic versus selfish., The cerebral correlates of altruistic decisions have increasingly attracted the interest of neuroscientists. To date, investigations on the neural underpinnings of altruistic decisions have primarily been conducted in healthy adults undergoing functional neuroimaging as they engaged in decisions to punish third parties. The chief purpose of the present study was to investigate altruistic decisions following focal brain damage with a novel altruistic decision task. In contrast to studies that have focused either on altruistic punishment or donation, the Altruistic Decision Task allows players to anonymously punish or donate to 30 charitable organizations involved with salient societal issues such as abortion, nuclear energy and civil rights. Ninety-four Vietnam War veterans with variable patterns of penetrating traumatic brain injury and 28 healthy veterans who also served in combat participated in the study as normal controls. Participants were asked to invest $1 to punish or reward real societal organizations, or keep the money for themselves. Associations between lesion distribution and performance on the task were analysed with multivariate support vector regression, which enables the assessment of the joint contribution of multiple regions in the determination of a given behaviour of interest. Our main findings were: (i) bilateral dorsomedial prefrontal lesions increased altruistic punishment, whereas lesions of the right perisylvian region and left temporo-insular cortex decreased punishment; (ii) altruistic donations were increased by bilateral lesions of the dorsomedial parietal cortex, whereas lesions of the right posterior superior temporal sulcus and middle temporal gyri decreased donations; (iii) altruistic punishment and donation were only weakly correlated, emphasizing their dissociable neuroanatomical associations; and (iv) altruistic decisions were not related to post-traumatic personality changes. These findings indicate that altruistic punishment and donation are determined by largely non-overlapping cerebral regions, which have previously been implicated in social cognition and moral experience such as evaluations of intentionality and intuitions of justice and morality.

Encoding models can reveal and decode neural representations in the visual and semantic domains. However, a thorough understanding of how distributed information in auditory cortices and temporal evolution of music contribute to model performance is still lacking in the musical domain. We measured fMRI responses during naturalistic music listening and constructed a two-stage approach that first mapped musical features in auditory cortices and then decoded novel musical pieces. We then probed the influence of stimuli duration (number of time points) and spatial extent (number of voxels) on decoding accuracy. Our approach revealed a linear increase in accuracy with duration and a point of optimal model performance for the spatial extent. We further showed that Shannon entropy is a driving factor, boosting accuracy up to 95% for music with highest information content. These findings provide key insights for future decoding and reconstruction algorithms and open new venues for possible clinical applications.

Previously, using fMRI, we demonstrated lower connectivity between right anterior superior temporal (ATL) and anterior subgenual cingulate (SCC) regions while patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) experience guilt. This neural signature was detected despite symptomatic remission which suggested a putative role in vulnerability. This randomised controlled double-blind parallel group clinical trial investigated whether patients with MDD are able to voluntarily modulate this neural signature. To this end, we developed a fMRI neurofeedback software (FRIEND), which measures ATL-SCC coupling and displays its levels in real time. Twenty-eight patients with remitted MDD were randomised to two groups, each receiving one session of fMRI neurofeedback whilst retrieving guilt and indignation/anger-related autobiographical memories. They were instructed to feel the emotion whilst trying to increase the level of a thermometer-like display on a screen. Active intervention group: The thermometer levels increased with increasing levels of ATL-SCC correlations in the guilt condition. Control intervention group: The thermometer levels decreased when correlation levels deviated from the previous baseline level in the guilt condition, thus reinforcing stable correlations. Both groups also received feedback during the indignation condition reinforcing stable correlations. We confirmed our predictions that patients in the active intervention group were indeed able to increase levels of ATL-SCC correlations for guilt vs. indignation and their self-esteem after training compared to before training and that this differed significantly from the control intervention group. These data provide proof-of-concept for a novel treatment target for MDD patients and are in keeping with the hypothesis that ATL-SCC connectivity plays a key role in self-worth. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/results/NCT01920490, Highlights • Employs real-time fMRI of anterior temporal –subgenual cingulate connectivity • Previously decreased for guilt in major depressive disorder (MDD) beyond remission • This RCT shows MDD patients can increase connectivity in one neurofeedback session. • Active neurofeedback group increase self-esteem vs control neurofeedback group • Training-induced self-esteem increases correlate with connectivity increases

Objective Using fMRI, we have identified lower coupling between anterior temporal (AT) and subgenual cingulate (SC) cortex while patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) experience guilt. This neural signature was detected despite symptom remission which suggests its role in MDD vulnerability. This double-blind, controlled, randomised and pre-registered clinical trial aimed at determining whether patients with MDD are able to voluntarily modulate this neural signature. To this end we developed an fMRI neurofeedback software tool (FRIEND), which measures AT-SC coupling and displays its levels to patients during fMRI in real time. Method Twenty-eight patients with remitted MDD were randomised to two groups each receiving one session of fMRI neurofeedback whilst retrieving guilt and indignation-related autobiographical memories. They were instructed to feel the emotion whilst trying to increase the level of a thermometer-like display on a screen. Active intervention group: The thermometer levels increased with increasing levels of AT-SC correlations in the guilt condition. Control intervention group: The thermometer levels decreased when correlation levels deviated from the previous baseline level in the guilt condition thus reinforcing stable correlations. Both groups also received feedback during the indignation condition reinforcing stable correlations. Results We confirmed our predictions that patients in the active intervention group are indeed able to increase the level of their AT-SC correlation for guilt vs. indignation after training compared to before training and that this differed significantly from the control intervention group. Conclusion This provides the proof-of-concept for a novel MDD treatment approach. Future studies need to probe its efficacy when applied repeatedly.

Humans spend a substantial share of their lives mind-wandering. This spontaneous thinking activity usually comprises autobiographical recall, emotional, and self-referential components. While neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that a specific brain “default mode network” (DMN) is consistently engaged by the “resting state” of the mind, the relative contribution of key cognitive components to DMN activity is still poorly understood. Here we used fMRI to investigate whether activity in neural components of the DMN can be differentially explained by active recall of relevant emotional autobiographical memories as compared with the resting state. Our study design combined emotional autobiographical memory, neutral memory and resting state conditions, separated by a serial subtraction control task. Shared patterns of activation in the DMN were observed in both emotional autobiographical and resting conditions, when compared with serial subtraction. Directly contrasting autobiographical and resting conditions demonstrated a striking dissociation within the DMN in that emotional autobiographical retrieval led to stronger activation of the dorsomedial core regions (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex), whereas the resting state condition engaged a ventral frontal network (ventral striatum, subgenual and ventral anterior cingulate cortices) in addition to the IPL. Our results reveal an as yet unreported dissociation within the DMN. Whereas the dorsomedial component can be explained by emotional autobiographical memory, the ventral frontal one is predominantly associated with the resting state proper, possibly underlying fundamental motivational mechanisms engaged during spontaneous unconstrained ideation. Hum Brain Mapp 35:3302–3313, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In Ridley Scott’s film “Blade Runner”, empathy-detection devices are employed to measure affiliative emotions. Despite recent neurocomputational advances, it is unknown whether brain signatures of affiliative emotions, such as tenderness/affection, can be decoded and voluntarily modulated. Here, we employed multivariate voxel pattern analysis and real-time fMRI to address this question. We found that participants were able to use visual feedback based on decoded fMRI patterns as a neurofeedback signal to increase brain activation characteristic of tenderness/affection relative to pride, an equally complex control emotion. Such improvement was not observed in a control group performing the same fMRI task without neurofeedback. Furthermore, the neurofeedback-driven enhancement of tenderness/affection-related distributed patterns was associated with local fMRI responses in the septohypothalamic area and frontopolar cortex, regions previously implicated in affiliative emotion. This demonstrates that humans can voluntarily enhance brain signatures of tenderness/affection, unlocking new possibilities for promoting prosocial emotions and countering antisocial behavior.

The demonstration that humans can learn to modulate their own brain activity based on feedback of neurophysiological signals opened up exciting opportunities for fundamental and applied neuroscience. Although EEG-based neurofeedback has been long employed both in experimental and clinical investigation, functional MRI (fMRI)-based neurofeedback emerged as a promising method, given its superior spatial resolution and ability to gauge deep cortical and subcortical brain regions. In combination with improved computational approaches, such as pattern recognition analysis (e.g., Support Vector Machines, SVM), fMRI neurofeedback and brain decoding represent key innovations in the field of neuromodulation and functional plasticity. Expansion in this field and its applications critically depend on the existence of freely available, integrated and user-friendly tools for the neuroimaging research community. Here, we introduce FRIEND, a graphic-oriented user-friendly interface package for fMRI neurofeedback and real-time multivoxel pattern decoding. The package integrates routines for image preprocessing in real-time, ROI-based feedback (single-ROI BOLD level and functional connectivity) and brain decoding-based feedback using SVM. FRIEND delivers an intuitive graphic interface with flexible processing pipelines involving optimized procedures embedding widely validated packages, such as FSL and libSVM. In addition, a user-defined visual neurofeedback module allows users to easily design and run fMRI neurofeedback experiments using ROI-based or multivariate classification approaches. FRIEND is open-source and free for non-commercial use. Processing tutorials and extensive documentation are available.

Psychopathy is a disorder of personality characterized by severe impairments of social conduct, emotional experience, and interpersonal behavior. Psychopaths consistently violate social norms and bring considerable financial, emotional, or physical harm to others and to society as a whole. Recent developments in analysis methods of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), such as voxel-based-morphometry (VBM), have become major tools to understand the anatomical correlates of this disorder. Nevertheless, the identification of psychopathy by neuroimaging or other neurobiological tools (e.g., genetic testing) remains elusive.The main aim of this study was to develop an approach to distinguish psychopaths from healthy controls, based on the integration between pattern recognition methods and gray matter quantification. We employed support vector machines (SVM) and maximum uncertainty linear discrimination analysis (MLDA), with a feature-selection algorithm. Imaging data from 15 healthy controls and 15 psychopathic individuals (7 women in each group) were analyzed with SPM2 and the optimized VBM preprocessing routines. Participants were scanned with a 1.5 Tesla MRI system. Both SVM and MLDA achieved an overall leave-one-out accuracy of 80%, but SVM mapping was sparser than using MLDA. The superior temporal sulcus/gyrus (bilaterally) was identified as a region containing the most relevant information to separate the two groups.These results indicate that gray matter quantitative measures contain robust information to predict high psychopathy scores in individual subjects. The methods employed herein might prove useful as an adjunct to the established clinical and neuropsychological measures in patient screening and diagnostic accuracy.

First-order theory refinement using neural networks is still an open problem. Towards a solution to this problem, we use inductive logic programming techniques to introduce FOCA, a First-Order extension of the Cascade ARTMAP system. To present such a first-order extension of Cascade ARTMAP, we: a) modify the network structure to handle first-order objects; b) define first-order versions of the main functions that guide all Cascade ARTMAP dynamics, the choice and match functions; c) define a first-order version of the propositional learning algorithm to approximate Plotkin's least general generalization. Preliminary results indicate that our initial goal of learning logic programs using neural networks can be achieved.