Cerebral cortexPub Date : 2025-01-08DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae455
Megan A K Peters
{"title":"Introspective psychophysics for the study of subjective experience.","authors":"Megan A K Peters","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae455","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhae455","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Studying subjective experience is hard. We believe that pain is not identical to nociception, nor pleasure a computational reward signal, nor fear the activation of \"threat circuitry\". Unfortunately, introspective self-reports offer our best bet for accessing subjective experience, but many still believe that introspection is \"unreliable\" and \"unverifiable\". But which of introspection's faults do we find most damning? Is it that introspection provides imperfect access to brain processes (e.g. perception, memory)? That subjective experience is not objectively verifiable? That it is hard to isolate from non-subjective processing capacity? Here, I argue none of these prevents us from building a meaningful, impactful psychophysical research program that treats subjective experience as a valid empirical target through precisely characterizing relationships among environmental variables, brain processes and behavior, and self-reported phenomenology. Following recent similar calls by Peters (Towards characterizing the canonical computations generating phenomenal experience. 2022. Neurosci Biobehav Rev: 142, 104903), Kammerer and Frankish (What forms could introspective systems take? A research programme. 2023. J Conscious Stud 30:13-48), and Fleming (Metacognitive psychophysics in humans, animals, and AI. 2023. J Conscious Stud 30:113-128), \"introspective psychophysics\" thus treats introspection's apparent faults as features, not bugs-just as the noise and distortions linking environment to behavior inspired Fechner's psychophysics over 150 years ago. This next generation of psychophysics will establish a powerful tool for building and testing precise explanatory models of phenomenology across many dimensions-urgency, emotion, clarity, vividness, confidence, and more.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":" ","pages":"49-57"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142680885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cerebral cortexPub Date : 2025-01-08DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae449
B J Casey, Yen-Chu Lin, Heidi C Meyer
{"title":"Examining threat responses through a developmental lens.","authors":"B J Casey, Yen-Chu Lin, Heidi C Meyer","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae449","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhae449","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Adolescence has been characterized by risk taking and fearlessness. Yet, the emergence of anxiety disorders that are associated with fear peaks during this developmental period. Moreover, adolescents show heightened sensitivity to stress relative to children and adults. To address inconsistencies between the common characterization of adolescents as fearless and the evidence of heightened anxiety and stress during this time, we build upon foundational discoveries of threat-related circuitry and behavior in adult rodents by Joseph LeDoux and colleagues. Specifically, the conservation of this circuitry across species has provided opportunities for identifying mechanisms underlying threat responses that we have extended to developing humans and rodents. We elucidate situations in which adolescents show heightened threat responses and others where they appear fearless and link them to developmental changes of threat circuitry during this period. We discuss the potential adaptiveness of these threat responses for survival of the individual and species but also the potential risks for anxiety and stress. We end by offering potential new ways in which behavioral treatments for youth with anxiety and stress-related disorders may be optimized to target the developing vs developed brain.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":" ","pages":"19-33"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142675292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cerebral cortexPub Date : 2025-01-08DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae458
Marlon Westhoff, Christoph Vogelbacher, Verena Schuster, Stefan G Hofmann
{"title":"Individual differences in functional connectivity during suppression of imagined threat.","authors":"Marlon Westhoff, Christoph Vogelbacher, Verena Schuster, Stefan G Hofmann","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae458","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhae458","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies typically rely on between-person analyses. To examine individual differences in functional connectivity, we used Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation and its subgrouping function to analyze functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 54 participants who were suppressing imagined future threat. A two-stage random-effects meta-analytic approach was employed to examine individual differences. In addition to generalizable connections between brain regions, we identified individual differences in personalized models suggesting different pathways through which individuals suppress future threat. Two subgroups with distinct connectivity patterns emerged: One subgroup (n = 29; 53.70%), characterized by an additional lagged connection from the right to the left posterior cingulate cortex, exhibited comparatively higher anxiety and less brain connectivity, whereas the other subgroup (n = 25; 46.30%), showing an additional connection from the left posterior cingulate cortex to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, was associated with lower anxiety levels and greater connectivity. This study points to individual differences in functional connectivity during emotion regulation.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":" ","pages":"65-76"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142692783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cerebral cortexPub Date : 2025-01-08DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae408
Lizabeth M Romanski
{"title":"Gateway to the study of the amygdala and emotion.","authors":"Lizabeth M Romanski","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae408","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhae408","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The study of the amygdala and its role in the processing of emotions has become a common focus in neuroscience. The modern expansion of research in this area is partly due to the discovery of a subcortical pathway for the transmission of emotional information and the experimental paradigm that was developed to study it. Groundbreaking experiments during the 90s utilized anatomical, neurophysiological, and behavioral lesion studies in a rodent animal model to uncover the neural circuitry of a simple emotional memory. These studies demonstrated the essential role of a specific monosynaptic pathway in emotional memory, using traditional tools and behavioral methods. The development of an animal model with a simple and appropriate classical conditioning paradigm made experimental investigations into the neural basis of emotion tenable and available to a generation of neuroscientists. These tools and a focus on the amygdala's neural connections and their essential role in emotional memory were a driving force in the explosion of research regarding the amygdala and emotion.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":" ","pages":"3-4"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142399506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cerebral cortexPub Date : 2024-12-03DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae475
Rashi I Mehta, Cierra M Keith, Camila Vieira Ligo Teixeira, Patrick D Worhunsky, Holly E Phelps, Melanie Ward, Mark Miller, R Osvaldo Navia, Stephanie Pockl, Nafiisah Rajabalee, Michelle M Coleman, Pierre-François D'Haese, Ali R Rezai, Kirk C Wilhelmsen, Marc W Haut
{"title":"The early-onset Alzheimer's disease MRI signature: a replication and extension analysis in early-stage AD.","authors":"Rashi I Mehta, Cierra M Keith, Camila Vieira Ligo Teixeira, Patrick D Worhunsky, Holly E Phelps, Melanie Ward, Mark Miller, R Osvaldo Navia, Stephanie Pockl, Nafiisah Rajabalee, Michelle M Coleman, Pierre-François D'Haese, Ali R Rezai, Kirk C Wilhelmsen, Marc W Haut","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae475","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhae475","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Early-onset Alzheimer's disease (EOAD) is less investigated than the more common late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) despite its more aggressive course. A cortical signature of EOAD was recently proposed and may facilitate EOAD investigation. Here, we aimed to validate this proposed MRI biomarker of EOAD neurodegeneration in an Appalachian clinical cohort. We also compared differences in EOAD signature atrophy in participants with biomarker-positive EOAD, LOAD, early-onset non-AD pathologies, and cognitively normal individuals. Cortical thinning was reliably detected in eight of nine signature areas of persons with EOAD relative to cognitively normal individuals despite very early disease stage. Additionally, individuals with EOAD showed thinner cortex in most signature regions relative to those with early-onset non-AD pathologies. EOAD and LOAD showed similar cortical atrophy within most EOAD signature regions. Whole-brain vertex-wise cortical analyses supported these findings. Furthermore, signature cortical atrophy showed expected relationships with measures of global and specific cognitive and functional status. This investigation further validates and expands upon the recently defined EOAD signature and suggests its robustness within a rural population, even at early disease stage. Larger scale and longitudinal studies employing this marker of EOAD neurodegeneration are needed to further understand clinical effects and appropriate management of persons with EOAD.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"34 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11664631/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142876265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cerebral cortexPub Date : 2024-12-03DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae487
Shuchen Liu, Moritz F Wurm, Alfonso Caramazza
{"title":"Dissociating goal from outcome during action observation.","authors":"Shuchen Liu, Moritz F Wurm, Alfonso Caramazza","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae487","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhae487","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Understanding the goal of an observed action requires computing representations that are invariant to specific instantiations of the action. For example, we can accurately infer the goal of an action even when the agent's desired outcome is not achieved. Observing actions consistently recruits a set of frontoparietal and posterior temporal regions, often labeled the \"action observation network.\" While progress has been made in charting which regions of the action observation network are involved in understanding goals of observed actions, it is not clear where goals are represented independently of outcomes. We used functional magnetic resonance-based multivariate pattern analysis to identify such regions. Human participants (20 females, 12 males) watched videos of successful and failed attempts of actions with different goals involving two different object types. We found that the bilateral anterior inferior parietal lobe and the right ventral premotor cortex distinguished between object-specific action goals regardless of outcomes. The left anterior inferior parietal lobe encodes action goals regardless of both outcomes and object types. Our results provide insights into the neural basis of representing action goals and the different roles of frontoparietal and posterior temporal regions in action understanding.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"34 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11666468/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142881288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cerebral cortexPub Date : 2024-12-03DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae480
Shinjini Basu, Lena Mautner, Kae Whiting, Kerstin Hasenpusch-Theil, Malgorzata Borkowska, Thomas Theil
{"title":"Identification of Pappa and Sall3 as Gli3 direct target genes acting downstream of cilia signaling in corticogenesis.","authors":"Shinjini Basu, Lena Mautner, Kae Whiting, Kerstin Hasenpusch-Theil, Malgorzata Borkowska, Thomas Theil","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae480","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhae480","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The cerebral cortex is critical for advanced cognitive functions and relies on a vast network of neurons to carry out its highly intricate neural tasks. Generating cortical neurons in accurate numbers hinges on cell signaling orchestrated by primary cilia to coordinate the proliferation and differentiation of cortical stem cells. While recent research has shed light on multiple ciliary roles in corticogenesis, specific mechanisms downstream of cilia signaling remain largely unexplored. We previously showed that an excess of early-born cortical neurons in mice mutant for the ciliary gene Inpp5e was rescued by re-introducing Gli3 repressor. By comparing expression profiles between Inpp5e and Gli3 mutants, we here identified novel Gli3 target genes. This approach highlighted the transcription factor gene Sall3 and Pappalysin1 (Pappa), a metalloproteinase involved in IGF signaling, as upregulated genes in both mutants. Further examination revealed that Gli3 directly binds to Sall3 and Pappa enhancers and suppresses their activity in the dorsal telencephalon. Collectively, our analyses provide important mechanistic insights into how primary cilia govern the behavior of neural stem cells, ultimately ensuring the production of adequate numbers of neurons during corticogenesis.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"34 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11666469/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142881292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cerebral cortexPub Date : 2024-12-03DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae473
Shashank A Anand, Fatih Sogukpinar, Ilya E Monosov
{"title":"Arousal effects on oscillatory dynamics in the non-human primate brain.","authors":"Shashank A Anand, Fatih Sogukpinar, Ilya E Monosov","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae473","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhae473","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Arousal states are thought to influence many aspects of cognition and behavior by broadly modulating neural activity. Many studies have observed arousal-related modulations of alpha (~8 to 15 Hz) and gamma (~30 to 50 Hz) power and coherence in local field potentials across relatively small groups of brain regions. However, the global pattern of arousal-related oscillatory modulation in local field potentials is yet to be fully elucidated. We simultaneously recorded local field potentials in numerous cortical and subcortical regions in the primate brain and assessed oscillatory activity and inter-regional coherence associated with arousal state. In high arousal states, we found a uniquely strong and coherent gamma oscillation between the amygdala and basal forebrain. In low arousal rest-like states, a relative increase in coherence at alpha frequencies was present across sampled brain regions, with the notable exception of the medial temporal lobe. We consider how these patterns of activity may index arousal-related brain states that support the processing of incoming sensory stimuli during high arousal states and memory-related functions during rest.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"34 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11659775/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142863060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cerebral cortexPub Date : 2024-12-03DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae464
Bradley R Buchsbaum, Morris Moscovitch, Kevin Tang, Marilyne Ziegler, Fergus I M Craik
{"title":"The interactive effects of divided attention and semantic elaboration on associative recognition memory: an fMRI study.","authors":"Bradley R Buchsbaum, Morris Moscovitch, Kevin Tang, Marilyne Ziegler, Fergus I M Craik","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae464","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhae464","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The present study explored the opposing effects on memory of semantic elaboration and division of attention on learning and recognition of verbal paired associates. Previous work had found that levels of recollection were reduced under divided attention conditions, even after equating expressed elaboration levels between full and divided attention. The present experiments not only confirmed this finding but also found that participants based their expressed levels of elaboration largely on normative values rather than on subjectively achieved levels of elaboration. In terms of related brain processes, experiment 2 used functional magnetic resonance to show that division of attention was associated with reduced levels of both prefrontal and hippocampal activity and with a reduction in connectivity between the anterior hippocampus and medial-orbital regions of the prefrontal cortex. Increased levels of elaboration were associated with increased activity in prefrontal regions immediately after stimulus presentation. Additionally, connectivity between the hippocampus and medial-prefrontal cortex was enhanced by increases in elaboration under full attention but reduced by increases in elaboration under conditions of divided attention. Our results therefore show that two factors influencing memory-elaboration and attention-are mediated largely by processes in the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the functional connectivity between these two structures.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":"34 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11878383/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143556002","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}