Cortical activation during menopausal hot flashes.

OBJECTIVE: To determine regions of brain activation associated with menopausal hot flashes and sweating. DESIGN: Controlled laboratory study. SETTING: University medical center. PATIENT(S): Symptomatic postmenopausal women and asymptomatic eumenorrheic women. INTERVENTION(S): None. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Brain activation measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. RESULT(S): Significant (P<.001) areas of activation during hot flashes in symptomatic women included the insula and anterior cingulate cortex. Sweating in the eumenorrheic women was associated (P<.001) with activity in the anterior cingulate and superior frontal gyrus. CONCLUSION(S): Activation of the insular cortex is associated with the "rush of heat" described during menopausal hot flashes. Thermoregulation in humans appears to be represented in a distributed cortico-subcortical network rather than in a single localized structure.

Cognitive avionics and watching spaceflight crews think: generation-after-next research tools in functional neuroimaging.

Confinement and isolation have always confounded the extraordinary endeavor of human spaceflight. Psychosocial health is at the forefront in considering risk factors that imperil missions of 1- to 2-yr duration. Current crewmember selection metrics restricted to behavioral observation by definition observe rather than prevent performance degradation and are thus inadequate when preflight training cannot simulate an entire journey. Nascent techniques to monitor functional and task-related cortical neural activity show promise and can be extended to include whole-brain monitoring. Watching spaceflight crews think can reveal the efficiency of training procedures. Moreover, observing subcortical emotion centers may provide early detection of developing neuropsychiatric disorders. The non-invasive functional neuroimaging modalities electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), and highlights of how they may be engineered for spacecraft are detailed. Preflight and in-flight applications to crewmember behavioral health from current generation, next generation, and generation-after-next neuroscience research studies are also described. The emphasis is on preventing the onset of neuropsychiatric dysfunctions, thus reducing the risk of mission failure due to human error.

Learning-related fMRI activation associated with a rotational visuo-motor transformation.

The unique ability to learn transformed or altered visuo-motor relationships during motor learning (visuo-motor transformation learning) has engaged researchers for over a century. Compared to other forms of motor learning (e.g., sequence learning), little is known about plasticity in the cortical and/or subcortical systems involved. We used fMRI to isolate region-specific activation changes during the learning of a visuo-motor (joystick) task under a simple transformation (90 degree rotation of visual feedback). Distributed brain systems were engaged in the learning process. In particular, we found evidence of a learning-dependent transition from early activation of the posterior parietal cortex to later distributed cortico-subcortical-cerebellar responses (in the temporal and occipital cortices, basal ganglia, cerebellum and thalamus). The role of the posterior parietal cortex may relate specifically to the acquisition of the transformation, while that of the fusiform and superior temporal gyri may reflect higher level visual and visuo-spatial processing underlying consolidation. Learning-related increases in cerebellar responses are consistent with its proposed role in the acquisition of internal models of the motor apparatus. These learning-related changes suggest a role for interacting neural systems involving the co-operation of cortico-cortico, cortico-cerebellar and cortico-basal ganglia loops during visuo-motor transformation learning.