The functional connectome of 3,4-methyldioxymethamphetamine-related declarative memory impairments.

The chronic intake of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "ecstasy") bears a strong risk for sustained declarative memory impairments. Although such memory deficits have been repeatedly reported, their neurofunctional origin remains elusive. Therefore, we here investigate the neuronal basis of altered declarative memory in recurrent MDMA users at the level of brain connectivity. We examined a group of 44 chronic MDMA users and 41 demographically matched controls. Declarative memory performance was assessed by the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and a visual associative learning test. To uncover alterations in the whole brain connectome between groups, we employed a data-driven multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) approach on participants' resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Recent MDMA use was confirmed by hair analyses. MDMA users showed lower performance in delayed recall across tasks compared to well-matched controls with moderate-to-strong effect sizes. MVPA revealed a large cluster located in the left postcentral gyrus of global connectivity differences between groups. Post hoc seed-based connectivity analyses with this cluster unraveled hypoconnectivity to temporal areas belonging to the auditory network and hyperconnectivity to dorsal parietal regions belonging to the dorsal attention network in MDMA users. Seed-based connectivity strength was associated with verbal memory performance in the whole sample as well as with MDMA intake patterns in the user group. Our findings suggest that functional underpinnings of MDMA-related memory impairments encompass altered patterns of multimodal sensory integration within auditory processing regions to a functional heteromodal connector hub, the left postcentral gyrus. In addition, hyperconnectivity in regions of a cognitive control network might indicate compensation for degraded sensory processing.

Thalamic volume and functional connectivity are associated with nicotine dependence severity and craving.

Tobacco smoking is associated with deleterious health outcomes. Most smokers want to quit smoking, yet relapse rates are high. Understanding neural differences associated with tobacco use may help generate novel treatment options. Several animal studies have recently highlighted the central role of the thalamus in substance use disorders, but this research focus has been understudied in human smokers. Here, we investigated associations between structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging measures of the thalamus and its subnuclei to distinct smoking characteristics. We acquired anatomical scans of 32 smokers as well as functional resting-state scans before and after a cue-reactivity task. Thalamic functional connectivity was associated with craving and dependence severity, whereas the volume of the thalamus was associated with dependence severity only. Craving, which fluctuates rapidly, was best characterized by differences in brain function, whereas the rather persistent syndrome of dependence severity was associated with both brain structural differences and function. Our study supports the notion that functional versus structural measures tend to be associated with behavioural measures that evolve at faster versus slower temporal scales, respectively. It confirms the importance of the thalamus to understand mechanisms of addiction and highlights it as a potential target for brain-based interventions to support smoking cessation, such as brain stimulation and neurofeedback.

Disentangling craving- and valence-related brain responses to smoking cues in individuals with nicotine use disorder.

Tobacco smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death and disease worldwide. Most smokers want to quit, but relapse rates are high. To improve current smoking cessation treatments, a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of nicotine dependence and related craving behaviour is needed. Studies on cue-driven cigarette craving have been a particularly useful tool for investigating the neural mechanisms of drug craving. Here, functional neuroimaging studies in humans have identified a core network of craving-related brain responses to smoking cues that comprises of amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex and ventral striatum. However, most functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) cue-reactivity studies do not adjust their stimuli for emotional valence, a factor assumed to confound craving-related brain responses to smoking cues. Here, we investigated the influence of emotional valence on key addiction brain areas by disentangling craving- and valence-related brain responses with parametric modulators in 32 smokers. For one of the suggested key regions for addiction, the amygdala, we observed significantly stronger brain responses to the valence aspect of the presented images than to the craving aspect. Our results emphasize the need for carefully selecting stimulus material for cue-reactivity paradigms, in particular with respect to emotional valence. Further, they can help designing future research on teasing apart the diverse psychological dimensions that comprise nicotine dependence and, therefore, can lead to a more precise mapping of craving-associated brain areas, an important step towards more tailored smoking cessation treatments.

Embracing diversity and inclusivity in an academic setting: Insights from the Organization for Human Brain Mapping.

Scientific research aims to bring forward innovative ideas and constantly challenges existing knowledge structures and stereotypes. However, women, ethnic and cultural minorities, as well as individuals with disabilities, are systematically discriminated against or even excluded from promotions, publications, and general visibility. A more diverse workforce is more productive, and thus discrimination has a negative impact on science and the wider society, as well as on the education, careers, and well-being of individuals who are discriminated against. Moreover, the lack of diversity at scientific gatherings can lead to micro-aggressions or harassment, making such meetings unpleasant, or even unsafe environments for early career and underrepresented scientists. At the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM), we recognized the need for promoting underrepresented scientists and creating diverse role models in the field of neuroimaging. To foster this, the OHBM has created a Diversity and Inclusivity Committee (DIC). In this article, we review the composition and activities of the DIC that have promoted diversity within OHBM, in order to inspire other organizations to implement similar initiatives. Activities of the committee over the past four years have included (a) creating a code of conduct, (b) providing diversity and inclusivity education for OHBM members, (c) organizing interviews and symposia on diversity issues, and (d) organizing family-friendly activities and providing childcare grants during the OHBM annual meetings. We strongly believe that these activities have brought positive change within the wider OHBM community, improving inclusivity and fostering diversity while promoting rigorous, ground-breaking science. These positive changes could not have been so rapidly implemented without the enthusiastic support from the leadership, including OHBM Council and Program Committee, and the OHBM Special Interest Groups (SIGs), namely the Open Science, Student and Postdoc, and Brain-Art SIGs. Nevertheless, there remains ample room for improvement, in all areas, and even more so in the area of targeted attempts to increase inclusivity for women, individuals with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, racial/ethnic minorities, and individuals of lower socioeconomic status or from low and middle-income countries. Here, we present an overview of the DIC's composition, its activities, future directions and challenges. Our goal is to share our experiences with a wider audience to provide information to other organizations and institutions wishing to implement similar comprehensive diversity initiatives. We propose that scientific organizations can push the boundaries of scientific progress only by moving beyond existing power structures and by integrating principles of equity and inclusivity in their core values.

Predictors of real-time fMRI neurofeedback performance and improvement - A machine learning mega-analysis.

Real-time fMRI neurofeedback is an increasingly popular neuroimaging technique that allows an individual to gain control over his/her own brain signals, which can lead to improvements in behavior in healthy participants as well as to improvements of clinical symptoms in patient populations. However, a considerably large ratio of participants undergoing neurofeedback training do not learn to control their own brain signals and, consequently, do not benefit from neurofeedback interventions, which limits clinical efficacy of neurofeedback interventions. As neurofeedback success varies between studies and participants, it is important to identify factors that might influence neurofeedback success. Here, for the first time, we employed a big data machine learning approach to investigate the influence of 20 different design-specific (e.g. activity vs. connectivity feedback), region of interest-specific (e.g. cortical vs. subcortical) and subject-specific factors (e.g. age) on neurofeedback performance and improvement in 608 participants from 28 independent experiments. With a classification accuracy of 60% (considerably different from chance level), we identified two factors that significantly influenced neurofeedback performance: Both the inclusion of a pre-training no-feedback run before neurofeedback training and neurofeedback training of patients as compared to healthy participants were associated with better neurofeedback performance. The positive effect of pre-training no-feedback runs on neurofeedback performance might be due to the familiarization of participants with the neurofeedback setup and the mental imagery task before neurofeedback training runs. Better performance of patients as compared to healthy participants might be driven by higher motivation of patients, higher ranges for the regulation of dysfunctional brain signals, or a more extensive piloting of clinical experimental paradigms. Due to the large heterogeneity of our dataset, these findings likely generalize across neurofeedback studies, thus providing guidance for designing more efficient neurofeedback studies specifically for improving clinical neurofeedback-based interventions. To facilitate the development of data-driven recommendations for specific design details and subpopulations the field would benefit from stronger engagement in open science research practices and data sharing.

Anticipating control over aversive stimuli is mediated by the medial prefrontal cortex: An fMRI study with healthy adults.

The anticipation of control over aversive events in life is relevant for our mental health. Insights on the underlying neural mechanisms remain limited. We developed a new functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task that uses auditory stimuli to explore the neural correlates of (1) the anticipation of control over aversion and (2) the processing of aversion. In a sample of 25 healthy adults, we observed increased neural activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (ventromedial prefrontal cortex and rostral anterior cingulate cortex), other brain areas relevant for reward anticipation (ventral striatum, brainstem [ventral tegmental area], midcingulate cortex), and the posterior cingulate cortex when they anticipated control over aversion compared with anticipating no control (1). The processing of aversive sounds compared to neutral sounds (2) was associated with increased neural activation in the bilateral posterior insula. Our findings provide evidence for the important role of medial prefrontal regions in control anticipation and highlight the relevance of conceiving the neural mechanisms involved within a reward-based framework.

Targeting hippocampal hyperactivity with real-time fMRI neurofeedback: protocol of a single-blind randomized controlled trial in mild cognitive impairment.

BACKGROUND: Several fMRI studies found hyperactivity in the hippocampus during pattern separation tasks in patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI; a prodromal stage of Alzheimer's disease). This was associated with memory deficits, subsequent cognitive decline, and faster clinical progression. A reduction of hippocampal hyperactivity with an antiepileptic drug improved memory performance. Pharmacological interventions, however, entail the risk of side effects. An alternative approach may be real-time fMRI neurofeedback, during which individuals learn to control region-specific brain activity. In the current project we aim to test the potential of neurofeedback to reduce hippocampal hyperactivity and thereby improve memory performance. METHODS: In a single-blind parallel-group study, we will randomize n = 84 individuals (n = 42 patients with MCI, n = 42 healthy elderly volunteers) to one of two groups receiving feedback from either the hippocampus or a functionally independent region. Percent signal change of the hemodynamic response within the respective target region will be displayed to the participant with a thermometer icon. We hypothesize that only feedback from the hippocampus will decrease hippocampal hyperactivity during pattern separation and thereby improve memory performance. DISCUSSION: Results of this study will reveal whether real-time fMRI neurofeedback is able to reduce hippocampal hyperactivity and thereby improve memory performance. In addition, the results of this study may identify predictors of successful neurofeedback as well as the most successful regulation strategies. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study has been registered with clinicaltrials.gov on the 16th of July 2019 (trial identifier: NCT04020744 ).

SmoCuDa: A Validated Smoking Cue Database to Reliably Induce Craving in Tobacco Use Disorder.

BACKGROUND: Cue-reactivity paradigms provide valuable insights into the underlying mechanisms of nicotine craving in nicotine-dependent subjects. In order to study cue-driven nicotine craving, robust and validated stimulus datasets are essential. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to generate and validate a large set of individually rated smoking-related cues that allow for assessment of different stimulus intensities along the dimensions craving, valence, and arousal. METHODS: The image database consisted of 330 visual cues. Two hundred fifty smoking-associated pictures (Creative Commons license) were chosen from online databases and showed a widespread variety of smoking-associated content. Eighty pictures from previously published databases were included for cross-validation. Forty volunteers with tobacco use disorder rated "urge-to-smoke," "valence," and "arousal" for all images on a 100-point visual analogue scale. Pictures were also labelled according to 18 categories such as lit/unlit cigarettes in mouth, cigarette end, and cigarette in ashtray. RESULTS: Ratings (mean ± SD) were as follows: urge to smoke, 44.9 ± 13.2; valence, 51.2 ± 7.6; and arousal, 54.6 ± 7.1. All ratings, particularly "urge to smoke," were widely distributed along the whole scale spectrum. CONCLUSIONS: We present a novel image library of well-described smoking-related cues, which were rated on a continuous scale along the dimensions craving, valence, and arousal that accounts for inter-individual differences. The rating software, image database, and their ratings are publicly available at https://smocuda.github.io.

Can we predict real-time fMRI neurofeedback learning success from pretraining brain activity?

Neurofeedback training has been shown to influence behavior in healthy participants as well as to alleviate clinical symptoms in neurological, psychosomatic, and psychiatric patient populations. However, many real-time fMRI neurofeedback studies report large inter-individual differences in learning success. The factors that cause this vast variability between participants remain unknown and their identification could enhance treatment success. Thus, here we employed a meta-analytic approach including data from 24 different neurofeedback studies with a total of 401 participants, including 140 patients, to determine whether levels of activity in target brain regions during pretraining functional localizer or no-feedback runs (i.e., self-regulation in the absence of neurofeedback) could predict neurofeedback learning success. We observed a slightly positive correlation between pretraining activity levels during a functional localizer run and neurofeedback learning success, but we were not able to identify common brain-based success predictors across our diverse cohort of studies. Therefore, advances need to be made in finding robust models and measures of general neurofeedback learning, and in increasing the current study database to allow for investigating further factors that might influence neurofeedback learning.

Deficits in context-dependent adaptive coding in early psychosis and healthy individuals with schizotypal personality traits.

Adaptive coding of information is a fundamental principle of brain functioning. It allows for efficient representation over a large range of inputs and thereby alleviates the limited coding range of neurons. In the present study, we investigated for the first time potential alterations in context-dependent reward adaptation and its association with symptom dimensions in the schizophrenia spectrum. We studied 27 patients with first-episode psychosis, 26 individuals with schizotypal personality traits and 25 healthy controls. We used functional MRI in combination with a variant of the monetary incentive delay task and assessed adaptive reward coding in two reward conditions with different reward ranges. Compared to healthy controls, patients with first-episode psychosis and healthy individuals with schizotypal personality traits showed a deficit in increasing the blood oxygen level-dependent response slope in the right caudate for the low reward range compared to the high reward range. In other words, the two groups showed inefficient neural adaptation to the current reward context. In addition, we found impaired adaptive coding of reward in the caudate nucleus and putamen to be associated with total symptom severity across the schizophrenia spectrum. Symptom severity was more strongly associated with neural deficits in adaptive coding than with the neural coding of absolute reward outcomes. Deficits in adaptive coding were prominent across the schizophrenia spectrum and even detectable in unmedicated (healthy) individuals with schizotypal personality traits. Furthermore, the association between total symptom severity and impaired adaptive coding in the right caudate and putamen suggests a dimensional mechanism underlying imprecise neural adaptation. Our findings support the idea that impaired adaptive coding may be a general information-processing deficit explaining disturbances within the schizophrenia spectrum over and above a simple model of blunted absolute reward signals.

Parameter Space and Potential for Biomarker Development in 25 Years of fMRI Drug Cue Reactivity: A Systematic Review.

Importance: In the last 25 years, functional magnetic resonance imaging drug cue reactivity (FDCR) studies have characterized some core aspects in the neurobiology of drug addiction. However, no FDCR-derived biomarkers have been approved for treatment development or clinical adoption. Traversing this translational gap requires a systematic assessment of the FDCR literature evidence, its heterogeneity, and an evaluation of possible clinical uses of FDCR-derived biomarkers. Objective: To summarize the state of the field of FDCR, assess their potential for biomarker development, and outline a clear process for biomarker qualification to guide future research and validation efforts. Evidence Review: The PubMed and Medline databases were searched for every original FDCR investigation published from database inception until December 2022. Collected data covered study design, participant characteristics, FDCR task design, and whether each study provided evidence that might potentially help develop susceptibility, diagnostic, response, prognostic, predictive, or severity biomarkers for 1 or more addictive disorders. Findings: There were 415 FDCR studies published between 1998 and 2022. Most focused on nicotine (122 [29.6%]), alcohol (120 [29.2%]), or cocaine (46 [11.1%]), and most used visual cues (354 [85.3%]). Together, these studies recruited 19 311 participants, including 13 812 individuals with past or current substance use disorders. Most studies could potentially support biomarker development, including diagnostic (143 [32.7%]), treatment response (141 [32.3%]), severity (84 [19.2%]), prognostic (30 [6.9%]), predictive (25 [5.7%]), monitoring (12 [2.7%]), and susceptibility (2 [0.5%]) biomarkers. A total of 155 interventional studies used FDCR, mostly to investigate pharmacological (67 [43.2%]) or cognitive/behavioral (51 [32.9%]) interventions; 141 studies used FDCR as a response measure, of which 125 (88.7%) reported significant interventional FDCR alterations; and 25 studies used FDCR as an intervention outcome predictor, with 24 (96%) finding significant associations between FDCR markers and treatment outcomes. Conclusions and Relevance: Based on this systematic review and the proposed biomarker development framework, there is a pathway for the development and regulatory qualification of FDCR-based biomarkers of addiction and recovery. Further validation could support the use of FDCR-derived measures, potentially accelerating treatment development and improving diagnostic, prognostic, and predictive clinical judgments.

Pre- and post-task resting-state differs in clinical populations.

Resting-state functional connectivity has generated great hopes as a potential brain biomarker for improving prevention, diagnosis, and treatment in psychiatry. This neuroimaging protocol can routinely be performed by patients and does not depend on the specificities of a task. Thus, it seems ideal for big data approaches that require aggregating data across multiple studies and sites. However, technical variability, diverging data analysis approaches, and differences in data acquisition protocols introduce heterogeneity to the aggregated data. Besides these technical aspects, a prior task that changes the psychological state of participants might also contribute to heterogeneity. In healthy participants, studies have shown that behavioral tasks can influence resting-state measures, but such effects have not yet been reported in clinical populations. Here, we fill this knowledge gap by comparing resting-state functional connectivity before and after clinically relevant tasks in two clinical conditions, namely substance use disorders and phobias. The tasks consisted of viewing craving-inducing and spider anxiety provoking pictures that are frequently used in cue-reactivity studies and exposure therapy. We found distinct pre- vs post-task resting-state connectivity differences in each group, as well as decreased thalamo-cortical and increased intra-thalamic connectivity which might be associated with decreased vigilance in both groups. Our results confirm that resting-state measures can be strongly influenced by prior emotion-inducing tasks that need to be taken into account when pooling resting-state scans for clinical biomarker detection. This demands that resting-state datasets should include a complete description of the experimental design, especially when a task preceded data collection.

Self-regulation of visual word form area activation with real-time fMRI neurofeedback.

The Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) is a key region of the brain's reading network and its activation has been shown to be strongly associated with reading skills. Here, for the first time, we investigated whether voluntary regulation of VWFA activation is feasible using real-time fMRI neurofeedback. 40 adults with typical reading skills were instructed to either upregulate (UP group, N = 20) or downregulate (DOWN group, N = 20) their own VWFA activation during six neurofeedback training runs. The VWFA target region was individually defined based on a functional localizer task. Before and after training, also regulation runs without feedback ("no-feedback runs") were performed. When comparing the two groups, we found stronger activation across the reading network for the UP than the DOWN group. Further, activation in the VWFA was significantly stronger in the UP group than the DOWN group. Crucially, we observed a significant interaction of group and time (pre, post) for the no-feedback runs: The two groups did not differ significantly in their VWFA activation before neurofeedback training, but the UP group showed significantly stronger activation than the DOWN group after neurofeedback training. Our results indicate that upregulation of VWFA activation is feasible and that, once learned, successful upregulation can even be performed in the absence of feedback. These results are a crucial first step toward the development of a potential therapeutic support to improve reading skills in individuals with reading impairments.

Facing emotions: real-time fMRI-based neurofeedback using dynamic emotional faces to modulate amygdala activity.

Introduction: Maladaptive functioning of the amygdala has been associated with impaired emotion regulation in affective disorders. Recent advances in real-time fMRI neurofeedback have successfully demonstrated the modulation of amygdala activity in healthy and psychiatric populations. In contrast to an abstract feedback representation applied in standard neurofeedback designs, we proposed a novel neurofeedback paradigm using naturalistic stimuli like human emotional faces as the feedback display where change in the facial expression intensity (from neutral to happy or from fearful to neutral) was coupled with the participant's ongoing bilateral amygdala activity. Methods: The feasibility of this experimental approach was tested on 64 healthy participants who completed a single training session with four neurofeedback runs. Participants were assigned to one of the four experimental groups (n = 16 per group), i.e., happy-up, happy-down, fear-up, fear-down. Depending on the group assignment, they were either instructed to "try to make the face happier" by upregulating (happy-up) or downregulating (happy-down) the amygdala or to "try to make the face less fearful" by upregulating (fear-up) or downregulating (fear-down) the amygdala feedback signal. Results: Linear mixed effect analyses revealed significant amygdala activity changes in the fear condition, specifically in the fear-down group with significant amygdala downregulation in the last two neurofeedback runs as compared to the first run. The happy-up and happy-down groups did not show significant amygdala activity changes over four runs. We did not observe significant improvement in the questionnaire scores and subsequent behavior. Furthermore, task-dependent effective connectivity changes between the amygdala, fusiform face area (FFA), and the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) were examined using dynamic causal modeling. The effective connectivity between FFA and the amygdala was significantly increased in the happy-up group (facilitatory effect) and decreased in the fear-down group. Notably, the amygdala was downregulated through an inhibitory mechanism mediated by mOFC during the first training run. Discussion: In this feasibility study, we intended to address key neurofeedback processes like naturalistic facial stimuli, participant engagement in the task, bidirectional regulation, task congruence, and their influence on learning success. It demonstrated that such a versatile emotional face feedback paradigm can be tailored to target biased emotion processing in affective disorders.

Dopaminergic neuromodulation has no detectable effect on visual-cue induced haemodynamic response function in the visual cortex: A double-blind, placebo-controlled functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of acute dopamine agonistic and antagonistic manipulation on the visual-cue induced blood oxygen level-dependent signal response in healthy volunteers. Seventeen healthy volunteers in a double-blind placebo-controlled cross-over design received either a dopamine antagonist, agonist or placebo and underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. Using classical inference and Bayesian statistics, we found no effect of dopaminergic modulation on properties of visual-cue induced blood oxygen level-dependent signals in the visual cortex, particularly on distinct properties of the haemodynamic response function (amplitude, time-to-peak and width). Dopamine-related effects modulating the neurovascular coupling in the visual cortex might be negligible when measured via functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Effective Self-Management for Early Career Researchers in the Natural and Life Sciences.

Early career researchers (ECRs) are faced with a range of competing pressures in academia, making self-management key to building a successful career. The Organization for Human Brain Mapping undertook a group effort to gather helpful advice for ECRs in self-management.

Do Patients Thought to Lack Consciousness Retain the Capacity for Internal as Well as External Awareness?

It is well established that some patients, who are deemed to have disorders of consciousness, remain entirely behaviorally non-responsive and are diagnosed as being in a vegetative state, yet can nevertheless demonstrate covert awareness of their external environment by modulating their brain activity, a phenomenon known as cognitive-motor dissociation. However, the extent to which these patients retain internal awareness remains unknown. To investigate the potential for internal and external awareness in patients with chronic disorders of consciousness (DoC), we asked whether the pattern of juxtaposition between the functional time-courses of the default mode (DMN) and fronto-parietal networks, shown in healthy individuals to mediate the naturally occurring dominance switching between internal and external aspects of consciousness, was present in these patients. We used a highly engaging movie by Alfred Hitchcock to drive the recruitment of the fronto-parietal networks, including the dorsal attention (DAN) and executive control (ECN) networks, and their maximal juxtaposition to the DMN in response to the complex stimulus, relative to rest and a scrambled, meaningless movie baseline condition. We tested a control group of healthy participants (N = 13/12) and two groups of patients with disorders of consciousness, one comprised of patients who demonstrated independent, neuroimaging-based evidence of covert external awareness (N = 8), and the other of those who did not (N = 8). Similarly to the healthy controls, only the group of patients with overt and, critically, covert external awareness showed significantly heightened differentiation between the DMN and the DAN in response to movie viewing relative to their resting state time-courses, which was driven by the movie's narrative. This result suggested the presence of functional integrity in the DMN and fronto-parietal networks and their relationship to one another in patients with covert external awareness. Similar to the effect in healthy controls, these networks became more strongly juxtaposed to one another in response to movie viewing relative to the baseline conditions, suggesting the potential for internal and external awareness during complex stimulus processing. Furthermore, our results suggest that naturalistic paradigms can dissociate between groups of DoC patients with and without covert awareness based on the functional integrity of brain networks.

Functional diversity of brain networks supports consciousness and verbal intelligence.

How are the myriad stimuli arriving at our senses transformed into conscious thought? To address this question, in a series of studies, we asked whether a common mechanism underlies loss of information processing in unconscious states across different conditions, which could shed light on the brain mechanisms of conscious cognition. With a novel approach, we brought together for the first time, data from the same paradigm-a highly engaging auditory-only narrative-in three independent domains: anesthesia-induced unconsciousness, unconsciousness after brain injury, and individual differences in intellectual abilities during conscious cognition. During external stimulation in the unconscious state, the functional differentiation between the auditory and fronto-parietal systems decreased significantly relatively to the conscious state. Conversely, we found that stronger functional differentiation between these systems in response to external stimulation predicted higher intellectual abilities during conscious cognition, in particular higher verbal acuity scores in independent cognitive testing battery. These convergent findings suggest that the responsivity of sensory and higher-order brain systems to external stimulation, especially through the diversification of their functional responses is an essential feature of conscious cognition and verbal intelligence.

Self-regulation of the dopaminergic reward circuit in cocaine users with mental imagery and neurofeedback.

BACKGROUND: Enhanced drug-related reward sensitivity accompanied by impaired sensitivity to non-drug related rewards in the mesolimbic dopamine system are thought to underlie the broad motivational deficits and dysfunctional decision-making frequently observed in cocaine use disorder (CUD). Effective approaches to modify this imbalance and reinstate non-drug reward responsiveness are urgently needed. Here, we examined whether cocaine users (CU) can use mental imagery of non-drug rewards to self-regulate the ventral tegmental area and substantia nigra (VTA/SN). We expected that obsessive and compulsive thoughts about cocaine consumption would hamper the ability to self-regulate the VTA/SN activity and tested if real-time fMRI (rtfMRI) neurofeedback (NFB) can improve self-regulation of the VTA/SN. METHODS: Twenty-two CU and 28 healthy controls (HC) were asked to voluntarily up-regulate VTA/SN activity with non-drug reward imagery alone, or combined with rtfMRI NFB. RESULTS: On a group level, HC and CU were able to activate the dopaminergic midbrain and other reward regions with reward imagery. In CU, the individual ability to self-regulate the VTA/SN was reduced in those with more severe obsessive-compulsive drug use. NFB enhanced the effect of reward imagery but did not result in transfer effects at the end of the session. CONCLUSION: CU can voluntary activate their reward system with non-drug reward imagery and improve this ability with rtfMRI NFB. Combining mental imagery and rtFMRI NFB has great potential for modifying the maladapted reward sensitivity and reinstating non-drug reward responsiveness. This motivates further work to examine the use of rtfMRI NFB in the treatment of CUD.