Impairment of unconscious emotional processing after unilateral medial temporal structure resection.

The role of the amygdala in unconscious emotional processing remains a topic of debate. Past lesion studies have indicated that amygdala damage leads to impaired electrodermal activity in response to subliminally presented emotional stimuli. However, electrodermal activity can reflect both emotional and nonemotional processes. To provide behavioral evidence highlighting the critical role of the amygdala in unconscious emotional processing, we examined patients (n = 16) who had undergone unilateral resection of medial temporal lobe structures, including the amygdala. We utilized the subliminal affective priming paradigm in conjunction with unilateral visual presentation. Fearful or happy dynamic facial expressions were presented in unilateral visual fields for 30 ms, serving as negative or positive primes. Subsequently, neutral target faces were displayed, and participants were tasked with rating the valence of these targets. Positive primes, compared to negative ones, enhanced valence ratings of the target to a greater extent when they stimulated the intact hemisphere (i.e., were presented in the contralateral visual field of the intact hemisphere) than when they stimulated the resected hemisphere (i.e., were presented in the contralateral visual field of the resected hemisphere). These results suggest that the amygdala is causally involved in unconscious emotional processing.

Self-referential and social saliency information influences memory following attention orienting.

Self-referential information is a processing priority in individuals. Whether or how self-referential information plays a role in attention orienting by modulating memory encoding during attention orienting is presently unknown. First, we investigated this role with self-referential processing for words. Participants were trained to associate two cues (red and green arrows) with social labels (the words "self" and "other" in Experiment 1). Then, participants performed a cueing task to determine whether various targets were presented at a right or left location. Finally, a recognition task of target items was implemented to examine the influence of arrow cues on memory. Second, given that the difference in social salience also exists between self-and other-referential processing, we investigate whether the same effect as the self-referential processing of words exists for emotional faces with high social salience and regardless of emotional valence (a high and a low social salience in Experiment 2A; and a positive and a negative emotional face in Experiment 2B). The results showed that self-referential and emotional cues, irrespective of their emotional valence, enhance memory for the indicated target objects across experiments. This suggests that automatic prioritization of social salience for self-referential words or emotional faces plays an important role in subsequent cognitive processing through attention orienting to influence memory.

Atypical Physiological Response to Less Controllable Sensory Stimulation in Children with ASD.

Atypical sensory features are frequently observed in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as uncontrollable and less predictable sensory stimuli are thought to be stressful for them. To quantify distal indicators of cardiac vagus nerve activity, which is associated with top-down self-regulatory capacity, during sensory tasks as a stress state in children with ASD, we conducted an exploratory study to measure phasic high-frequency components of heart rate variability (phasic HF-HRV) during less controllable tactile/auditory sensory tasks in 37 children with ASD (aged 6-12 years) and 37 typically developing (TD) children. Only children with ASD showed increased HF-HRV values from the resting state to the task (i.e., phasic HF-HRV augmentation) during both less controllable tactile/auditory sensory tasks. In TD children, decreased phasic HF-HRV values were observed to cope with the task demand during the less-controllable-tactile task. These findings suggest that increased phasic HF-HRV values in response to less controllable sensory stimuli may reflect atypical physiological regulation during sensory stimulation in children with ASD.

The structural neural correlates of atypical facial expression recognition in autism spectrum disorder.

Previous studies have demonstrated that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are worse at recognizing facial expressions than are typically developing (TD) individuals. The present study investigated the differences in structural neural correlates of emotion recognition between individuals with and without ASD using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). We acquired structural MRI data from 27 high-functioning adults with ASD and 27 age- and sex-matched TD individuals. The ability to recognize facial expressions was measured using a label-matching paradigm featuring six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise). The behavioural task did not find deficits of emotion recognition in ASD after controlling for intellectual ability. However, the VBM analysis for the region of interest showed a positive correlation between the averaged percent accuracy across six basic emotions and the grey matter volume of the right inferior frontal gyrus in TD individuals, but not in individuals with ASD. The VBM for the whole brain region under each emotion condition revealed a positive correlation between the percent accuracy for disgusted faces and the grey matter volume of the left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in individuals with ASD, but not in TD individuals. The different pattern of correlations suggests that individuals with and without ASD use different processing mechanisms for recognizing others' facial expressions.

Schizotypy is associated with difficulties detecting emotional facial expressions.

People with schizophrenia or subclinical schizotypal traits exhibit impaired recognition of facial expressions. However, it remains unclear whether the detection of emotional facial expressions is impaired in people with schizophrenia or high levels of schizotypy. The present study examined whether the detection of emotional facial expressions would be associated with schizotypy in a non-clinical population after controlling for the effects of IQ, age, and sex. Participants were asked to respond to whether all faces were the same as quickly and as accurately as possible following the presentation of angry or happy faces or their anti-expressions among crowds of neutral faces. Anti-expressions contain a degree of visual change that is equivalent to that of normal emotional facial expressions relative to neutral facial expressions and are recognized as neutral expressions. Normal expressions of anger and happiness were detected more rapidly and accurately than their anti-expressions. Additionally, the degree of overall schizotypy was negatively correlated with the effectiveness of detecting normal expressions versus anti-expressions. An emotion-recognition task revealed that the degree of positive schizotypy was negatively correlated with the accuracy of facial expression recognition. These results suggest that people with high levels of schizotypy experienced difficulties detecting and recognizing emotional facial expressions.

Impairment of emotional expression detection after unilateral medial temporal structure resection.

Detecting emotional facial expressions is an initial and indispensable component of face-to-face communication. Neuropsychological studies on the neural substrates of this process have shown that bilateral amygdala lesions impaired the detection of emotional facial expressions. However, the findings were inconsistent, possibly due to the limited number of patients examined. Furthermore, whether this processing is based on emotional or visual factors of facial expressions remains unknown. To investigate this issue, we tested a group of patients (n = 23) with unilateral resection of medial temporal lobe structures, including the amygdala, and compared their performance under resected- and intact-hemisphere stimulation conditions. The participants were asked to detect normal facial expressions of anger and happiness, and artificially created anti-expressions, among a crowd with neutral expressions. Reaction times for the detection of normal expressions versus anti-expressions were shorter when the target faces were presented to the visual field contralateral to the intact hemisphere (i.e., stimulation of the intact hemisphere; e.g., right visual field for patients with right hemispheric resection) compared with the visual field contralateral to the resected hemisphere (i.e., stimulation of the resected hemisphere). Our findings imply that the medial temporal lobe structures, including the amygdala, play an essential role in the detection of emotional facial expressions, according to the emotional significance of the expressions.

Rich-Club Analysis in Adults With ADHD Connectomes Reveals an Abnormal Structural Core Network.

Objective: Whether the abnormal connectome of brain's rich-club structure in adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) remains unclear. Method: The current study used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the performance of 42 adults with ADHD and 59 typical development (TD) adults. Results: A reduced density of rich-clubs among structural hub nodes, including the bilateral precuneus, the insula, the caudate nucleus, the left putamen, and the right calcarine, was found in adults with ADHD. Moreover, lower global efficiency was found in adults with ADHD than in TD, which might be caused by a reduced density of rich-club connections in ADHD patients. Conclusion: Given that adults with ADHD have greater coupling strength between structural and functional connectivity than TD adults, connectome abnormalities with a reduced rich-club connectivity density might be accompanied by altered functional brain dynamics in ADHD patients.

Eye contact perception in high-functioning adults with autism spectrum disorder.

LAY ABSTRACT: The detection of a self-directed gaze is often the starting point for social interactions and a person who feels as if they are being watched can prepare to respond to others' actions irrespective of the real gaze direction because the other person may likely be motivated to approach. Although many studies demonstrated that individuals with autism spectrum disorder have difficulty discriminating gaze direction, it remains unclear how the perception of self-directed gaze by individuals with autism spectrum disorder differs from that of age-, sex-, and IQ-matched typically developing individuals. Participants observed faces with various gaze directions and answered whether the person in the photograph was looking at them or not. Individuals with and without autism spectrum disorder were just as likely to perceive subtle averted gazes as self-directed gazes. The frequency of perceiving a self-directed gaze decreased as gaze aversion increased in both groups and, in general, individuals with autism spectrum disorder showed a comparable ability to perceive a self-directed gaze as that of typically developing individuals. Interestingly, considering face membership of photographs (ingroup or outgroup faces), typically developing individuals, but not individuals with autism spectrum disorder, were more likely to perceive self-directed gazes from ingroup faces than from outgroup faces. However, individuals with autism spectrum disorder had different affective experiences in response to ingroup and outgroup faces. These results suggest that individuals with autism spectrum disorder did not show an ingroup bias for the perception of a self-directed gaze, and raise a possibility that an atypical emotional experience contributes to the diminished ingroup bias.

The Effect of Music Intervention on Attention in Children: Experimental Evidence.

Although music has been utilized as a therapeutic tool for children with cognitive impairments, how it improves children's cognitive function remains poorly understood. As a first step toward understanding music's effectiveness and as a means of assessing cognitive function improvement, we focused on attention, which plays an important role in cognitive development, and examined the effect of a music intervention on children's attention. Thirty-five children, aged 6 to 9 years, participated in this study, with data from 29 of the children being included in the analysis. A single 30-minute interactive music intervention was compared with a single 30-minute interactive video game intervention accompanied by computer-generated background music using a within-subjects repeated-measures design. Each intervention was implemented individually. Participants completed a standardized attention assessment, the Test of Everyday Attention for Children, before and after both interventions to assess changes in their attentional skills. The results indicated significant improvement in attention control/switching following the music intervention after controlling for the children's intellectual abilities, while no such changes were observed following the video game intervention. This study provides the first evidence that music interventions may be more effective than video game interventions to improve attention control in children, and furthers our understanding of the importance of music interventions for children with attention control problems.

Atypical Multisensory Integration and the Temporal Binding Window in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The present study examined the relationship between multisensory integration and the temporal binding window (TBW) for multisensory processing in adults with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The ASD group was less likely than the typically developing group to perceive an illusory flash induced by multisensory integration during a sound-induced flash illusion (SIFI) task. Although both groups showed comparable TBWs during the multisensory temporal order judgment task, correlation analyses and Bayes factors provided moderate evidence that the reduced SIFI susceptibility was associated with the narrow TBW in the ASD group. These results suggest that the individuals with ASD exhibited atypical multisensory integration and that individual differences in the efficacy of this process might be affected by the temporal processing of multisensory information.

Clinical characteristics of participants enrolled in an early identification and healthcare management program for dementia based on cluster analysis and the effectiveness of associated support efforts.

OBJECTIVE: Although early identification and management services for dementia have become more widespread, their efficacy and the clinical characteristics of service have yet to be fully evaluated. Therefore, the objective of this study is to clarify these issues. MEASUREMENTS: The subjects were 164 Japanese users of an early identification and management program for dementia, known as the Initial-phase Intensive Support Team (IPIST), between 2013 and 2015. Nonhierarchical cluster analysis was used to derive subgroups based on cognitive status and ability in activities of daily living (ADL) and behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). One-way analysis of variance was performed to evaluate differences among the groups derived by the cluster analysis. A paired t test was used to assess how the clinical status of the groups changed between baseline and follow-up. RESULTS: Four groups were identified by cluster analysis, i.e. a mild group, a moderate group, a BPSD group with moderate cognitive impairment and severe BPSD, and a severe group with severe cognitive impairment and severe BPSD. Although there were no significant improvements in cognitive impairment or ADL in any group, significant improvements were found in BPSD in the BPSD and severe BPSD groups. Caregiver burden was significantly lessened in all groups. Clinical diagnosis and long-term care insurance service utilization rates were significantly improved overall. CONCLUSION: The users of IPIST were classified into four subgroups based on their clinical characteristics. The IPIST program could improve the quality of life of people with dementia and their caregivers.

Changes in Electroencephalography and Cardiac Autonomic Function During Craft Activities: Experimental Evidence for the Effectiveness of Occupational Therapy.

Occupational therapy often uses craft activities as therapeutic tools, but their therapeutic effectiveness has not yet been adequately demonstrated. The aim of this study was to examine changes in frontal midline theta rhythm (Fmθ) and autonomic nervous responses during craft activities, and to explore the physiological mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effectiveness of occupational therapy. To achieve this, we employed a simple craft activity as a task to induce Fmθ and performed simultaneous EEG and ECG recordings. For participants in which Fmθ activities were provoked, parasympathetic and sympathetic activities were evaluated during the appearance of Fmθ and rest periods using the Lorenz plot analysis. Both parasympathetic and sympathetic indices increased with the appearance of Fmθ compared to during resting periods. This suggests that a relaxed-concentration state is achieved by concentrating on craft activities. Furthermore, the appearance of Fmθ positively correlated with parasympathetic activity, and theta band activity in the frontal area were associated with sympathetic activity. This suggests that there is a close relationship between cardiac autonomic function and Fmθ activity.

Everything has Its Time: Narrow Temporal Windows are Associated with High Levels of Autistic Traits Via Weaknesses in Multisensory Integration.

The present study examined whether fundamental sensory functions such as temporal processing and multisensory integration are related to autistic traits in the general population. Both a narrower temporal window (TW) for simultaneous perception, as measured by a temporal order judgement task, and a reduced ability to engage in multisensory integration during the sound-induced flash illusion task were related to higher levels of autistic traits. Additionally, a narrow TW is associated with high levels of autistic traits due to a deficiency in multisensory integration. Taken together, these findings suggest that alterations in fundamental functions produce a cascading effect on higher-order social and cognitive functions, such as those experienced by people with autism spectrum disorder.

Development of Episodic Memory and Foresight in High-Functioning Preschoolers with ASD.

To investigate the early development of episodic memory and future thinking in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), we selected 94 participants each from a group of ASD and typically developing (TD) preschoolers. They were required to remember newly-acquired knowledge sources and anticipate action timings necessary for future events. Five-year-old children with ASD remembered their knowledge sources similar to TD children; however, the 6-year-old children performed more poorly than their TD counterparts. ASD children failed to anticipate future action timings in comparison with TD children. Although source memory and future thinking were related in TD children, they were unrelated in children with ASD. The results suggest that episodic memory and foresight are deficient and unintegrated in ASD children during the preschool years.

Atypical Amygdala-Neocortex Interaction During Dynamic Facial Expression Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Atypical reciprocal social interactions involving emotional facial expressions are a core clinical feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have demonstrated that some social brain regions, including subcortical (e.g., amygdala) and neocortical regions (e.g., fusiform gyrus, FG) are less activated during the processing of facial expression stimuli in individuals with ASD. However, the functional networking patterns between the subcortical and cortical regions in processing emotional facial expressions remain unclear. We investigated this issue in ASD (n = 31) and typically developing (TD; n = 31) individuals using fMRI. Participants viewed dynamic facial expressions of anger and happiness and their corresponding mosaic images. Regional brain activity analysis revealed reduced activation of several social brain regions, including the amygdala, in the ASD group compared with the TD group in response to dynamic facial expressions vs. dynamic mosaics (p < 0.05, η p 2 = 0.19). Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) analyses were then used to compare models with forward, backward, and bi-directional effective connectivity between the amygdala and neocortical networks. The results revealed that: (1) the model with effective connectivity from the amygdala to the neocortex best fit the data of both groups; and (2) the same model best accounted for group differences. Coupling parameter (i.e., effective connectivity) analyses showed that the modulatory effects of dynamic facial processing were substantially weaker in the ASD group than in the TD group. These findings suggest that atypical modulation from the amygdala to the neocortex underlies impairment in social interaction involving dynamic facial expressions in individuals with ASD.

Resting-state neural activity and connectivity associated with subjective happiness.

The majority of people throughout the world rate subjective happiness as the top of the important thing in life. A recent structural neuroimaging study exploring neurocognitive mechanisms underlying subjective happiness has suggested that the gray matter volume of the right precuneus is associated with Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) scores. However, how the neural activity in this region, as well as the neural functional coupling between this and other regions, could be related to SHS scores remains unclear. To investigate these issues, we performed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and analyzed the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) in participants, whose subjective happiness was evaluated using the SHS. Lower fALFF values in the right precuneus were associated with higher SHS scores. Furthermore, functional connectivity and spectral dynamic causal modeling analyses showed that both functional and effective connectivity of the right precuneus with the right amygdala were positively associated with SHS scores. These findings, together with other evidence on the information-processing functions of these brain regions, suggest the possibility that subjective happiness is associated with a reduction in self-referential mental processes, which are well integrated with emotional processing.

Electrophysiological correlates of the processing of different self-aspects of handwritten names.

Humans recognize the self in various visual domains, such as faces, names, and motions, as well as in products, such as handwritten letters. Previous studies have indicated that these various domains of self are represented differently in the brain, i.e., domain-specific self-representation. However, it remains unclear whether these differences in brain activation are due to the processing of different visual features or to differential self-processing among the domains, because the studies used different types of visual stimuli. The present study evaluated event-related potentials (ERPs) while participants were presented with their own and others' names generated by the participants themselves or someone else. Therefore, the visual stimuli included two domains of self-related information, name and motor agent, but only one type of stimulus (handwritten names). The ERP results show that the amplitudes of the P250 component (250-330 ms) in the posterior regions were smaller for self-generated handwritten names than for non-self-generated handwritten names. The results also show that the amplitudes of the P300 component (350-500 ms) were larger for the self-name than for the non-self-name. These results suggest domain-specific processing of self-related information regarding the name and agent of handwritten stimuli.

Widespread and lateralized social brain activity for processing dynamic facial expressions.

Dynamic facial expressions of emotions constitute natural and powerful means of social communication in daily life. A number of previous neuroimaging studies have explored the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of dynamic facial expressions, and indicated the activation of certain social brain regions (e.g., the amygdala) during such tasks. However, the activated brain regions were inconsistent across studies, and their laterality was rarely evaluated. To investigate these issues, we measured brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging in a relatively large sample (n = 51) during the observation of dynamic facial expressions of anger and happiness and their corresponding dynamic mosaic images. The observation of dynamic facial expressions, compared with dynamic mosaics, elicited stronger activity in the bilateral posterior cortices, including the inferior occipital gyri, fusiform gyri, and superior temporal sulci. The dynamic facial expressions also activated bilateral limbic regions, including the amygdalae and ventromedial prefrontal cortices, more strongly versus mosaics. In the same manner, activation was found in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left cerebellum. Laterality analyses comparing original and flipped images revealed right hemispheric dominance in the superior temporal sulcus and IFG and left hemispheric dominance in the cerebellum. These results indicated that the neural mechanisms underlying processing of dynamic facial expressions include widespread social brain regions associated with perceptual, emotional, and motor functions, and include a clearly lateralized (right cortical and left cerebellar) network like that involved in language processing.

Corticostriatal-limbic correlates of sub-clinical obsessive-compulsive traits.

Obsessive-compulsive (OC) traits such as intrusive worrisome ideas or excessive concerns for threats are frequent in general population (5%-13%). However, the structural neural correlates of the sub-clinical OC traits remain largely unknown. Based on the data of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), we hypothesized that the subcortical and cortical structures, constituting the cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical circuit (CSTC) and the limbic system, could be associated with OC traits. Here we conducted voxel-based morphometry (VBM) in order to investigate fine grained volume changes of these structures in 49 non-clinical subjects. Analysis of structural covariances of these structures was also conducted. We identified volume changes associated with OC traits in the left putamen and the left amygdala. The results of structural covariance analysis revealed increased covariances in relation to the heightened OC traits between the left putamen to bilateral medial prefrontal cortex and to the left cerebellum, and between the left globus pallidus to the bilateral anterior cingulate cortices. The present finding of volume changes of the corticostriatal-limbic structures may reflect neuroplasticity associated with OC traits. Since the abnormality of these structures were also observed in the clinical OCD, the subclinical subjects with OC traits shared "neuronal obsessive traits" that might precondition OCD at the network level.

Analyzing Neural Activity and Connectivity Using Intracranial EEG Data with SPM Software.

Measuring neural activity and connectivity associated with cognitive functions at high spatial and temporal resolutions is an important goal in cognitive neuroscience. Intracranial electroencephalography (EEG) can directly record electrical neural activity and has the unique potential to accomplish this goal. Traditionally, averaging analysis has been applied to analyze intracranial EEG data; however, several new techniques are available for depicting neural activity and intra- and inter-regional connectivity. Here, we introduce two analytical protocols we recently applied to analyze intracranial EEG data using the Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) software: time-frequency SPM analysis for neural activity and dynamic causal modeling of induced responses for intra- and inter-regional connectivity. We report our analysis of intracranial EEG data during the observation of faces as representative results. The results revealed that the inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) showed gamma-band activity at very early stages (110 ms) in response to faces, and both the IOG and amygdala showed rapid intra- and inter-regional connectivity using various types of oscillations. These analytical protocols have the potential to identify the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive functions with high spatial and temporal profiles.