Cerebral cortexPub Date : 2025-01-08DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae388
Daniel L Schacter, Sarah E Kalinowski, Jenna M Wilson
{"title":"Emotional future simulations: neural and cognitive perspectives.","authors":"Daniel L Schacter, Sarah E Kalinowski, Jenna M Wilson","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae388","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhae388","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>LeDoux's work on the emotional brain has had broad impact in neuroscience and psychology. Here, we discuss an aspect of the emotional brain that we have examined in our laboratory during the past two decades: emotional future simulations or constructed mental representations of positive and negative future experiences. Specifically, we consider research concerning (i) neural correlates of emotional future simulations, (ii) how emotional future simulations impact subsequent cognition and memory, (iii) the role of emotional future simulations in worry and anxiety, and (iv) individual differences in emotional future simulation related to narcissistic grandiosity. The intersection of emotion and future simulation is closely linked to some of LeDoux's primary scientific concerns.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":" ","pages":"77-83"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11712269/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142388349","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 : 2025-01-08DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae456
Beatrice de Gelder, Nicholas Humphrey, Alan J Pegna
{"title":"On the bright side of blindsight. Considerations from new observations of awareness in a blindsight patient.","authors":"Beatrice de Gelder, Nicholas Humphrey, Alan J Pegna","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae456","DOIUrl":"10.1093/cercor/bhae456","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Blindsight refers to the ability to make accurate visual discriminations without conscious awareness of the stimuli. In this study, we present new evidence from naturalistic observations of a patient with bilateral damage to the striate cortex, who surprisingly demonstrated the ability to detect colored objects, particularly red ones. Despite the slow and effortful process, the patient reported full awareness of the color aspect of the stimuli. These observations cannot be explained by traditional concepts of type 1 or type 2 blindsight, raising intriguing questions about the boundaries between objective and subjective blindness, as well as the nature of visual experience and epistemic agency. Moreover, these findings underscore the significant role that blindsight could play in future research, especially in understanding how higher cortical functions are involved in emotions and feelings. This highlights the necessity for further exploration to better understand the visual features that contribute to the phenomenon of affective blindsight.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":" ","pages":"42-48"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11712267/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142738481","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 : 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 : 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 : 2025-01-05DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae481
Goran Papenberg, Nina Karalija, Alireza Salami, Jarkko Johansson, Anders Wåhlin, Micael Andersson, Jan Axelsson, Douglas D Garrett, Katrine Riklund, Ulman Lindenberger, Lars Nyberg, Lars Bäckman
{"title":"Aging-related losses in dopamine D2/3 receptor availability are linked to working-memory decline across five years.","authors":"Goran Papenberg, Nina Karalija, Alireza Salami, Jarkko Johansson, Anders Wåhlin, Micael Andersson, Jan Axelsson, Douglas D Garrett, Katrine Riklund, Ulman Lindenberger, Lars Nyberg, Lars Bäckman","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae481","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae481","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Although age differences in the dopamine system have been suggested to contribute to age-related cognitive decline based on cross-sectional data, recent large-scale cross-sectional studies reported only weak evidence for a correlation among aging, dopamine receptor availability, and cognition. Regardless, longitudinal data remain essential to make robust statements about dopamine losses as a basis for cognitive aging. We present correlations between changes in D2/3 dopamine receptor availability and changes in working memory measured over 5 yr in healthy, older adults (n = 128, ages 64 to 68 yr at baseline). Greater decline in D2/3 dopamine receptor availability in working memory-relevant regions (caudate, middle frontal cortex, hippocampus) was related to greater decline in working memory performance in individuals who exhibited working memory reductions across time (n = 43; caudate: rs = 0.494; middle frontal cortex: rs = 0.506; hippocampus; rs = 0.423), but not in individuals who maintained performance (n = 41; caudate: rs = 0.052; middle frontal cortex: rs = 0.198; hippocampus; rs = 0.076). The dopamine-working memory link in decliners was not observed in the orbitofrontal cortex, which does not belong to the core working memory network. Our longitudinal analyses support the notion that aging-related changes in the dopamine system contribute to working memory decline in aging.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142930777","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 : 2025-01-05DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae493
Rui Xue, Jiaqi Li, Haibo Yang
{"title":"The hemispheric differences in prefrontal function of Internet game disorder and non-Internet game disorder: an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis.","authors":"Rui Xue, Jiaqi Li, Haibo Yang","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae493","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae493","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study explored the differences in brain activation between individuals with and without Internet gaming disorder (IGD) through activation likelihood estimation analysis. In total, 39 studies were included based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria by searching the literature in the PubMed and Web of Science databases, as well as reading other reviews. The analysis revealed that the activated brain regions in IGD were the right inferior frontal gyrus, left cingulate gyrus, and left lentiform nucleus. In comparison, the activated brain regions in non-IGD were the left middle frontal, left inferior frontal, left anterior cingulate, left precentral, and right precentral gyri. The results of the present study on differences in activation further confirm existing theoretical hypotheses. Future studies should explore hemispheric differences in prefrontal brain function between IGD and non-IGD.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142930795","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 : 2025-01-05DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae494
Can Yang, Xianhui He, Ying Cai
{"title":"Reactivating and reorganizing activity-silent working memory: two distinct mechanisms underlying pinging the brain.","authors":"Can Yang, Xianhui He, Ying Cai","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae494","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent studies have proposed that visual information in working memory (WM) can be maintained in an activity-silent state and reactivated by task-irrelevant high-contrast visual impulses (\"ping\"). Although pinging the brain has become a popular tool for exploring activity-silent WM, its underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In the current study, we directly compared the neural reactivation effects and behavioral consequences of spatial-nonmatching and spatial-matching pings to distinguish the noise-reduction and target-interaction hypotheses of pinging the brain. Initially, in an electroencephalogram study, our neural decoding results showed that spatial-nonmatching pings reactivated activity-silent WM transiently without changing the original WM representations or recall performance. Conversely, spatial-matching pings reactivated activity-silent WM more durably and further reorganized WM information by decreasing neural representations' dynamics. Notably, only the reactivation strength of spatial-matching pings correlated with recall performance and was modulated by the location of memorized items, with neural reactivation occurring only when both items and pings were presented horizontally. Consistently, in a follow-up behavioral study, we found that only spatial-matching, horizontal pings impaired recall performance compared to no ping. Together, our results demonstrated two distinct mechanisms underlying pinging the brain, highlighting the critical role of the ping's context (i.e. spatial information) in reactivating and reorganizing activity-silent WM.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142930793","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 : 2025-01-05DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae490
Linan Liu, Yingxin Liu, Yongfeng Sun, Xian Lu, Yong Ji, Xiujuan Zhao, Jun Li, Chuncheng Liu
{"title":"The changes in the ratio of Dicer1 transcripts can participate in the neuronal hypoxic response by regulating miR-29b.","authors":"Linan Liu, Yingxin Liu, Yongfeng Sun, Xian Lu, Yong Ji, Xiujuan Zhao, Jun Li, Chuncheng Liu","doi":"10.1093/cercor/bhae490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae490","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The nervous system is highly dependent on the supply of oxygen and nutrients, so when demand for oxygen exceeds its supply, hypoxia is induced. The hippocampus is very important in the nervous system. It has the ability to control human behavior, memory, emotion, and so on. Therefore, when the hippocampus is damaged by hypoxia, it may cause nervous system diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and stroke. Alternative splicing plays an important regulatory role in the processes of growth and disease occurrence and development. However, the function of hypoxia-induced alternative splicing in neurological diseases needs to be further studied. Therefore, we performed hypoxia stress on mouse hippocampal neuron HT22 cells and then analyzed differentially expressed genes and differential alternative splicing events by next-generation sequencing. Through bioinformatics analysis and verification, it was found that hypoxia stress regulated the expression of Rbm15 and the ratio of Dicer1 transcripts in HT22 cells. The change in the ratio of Dicer1 transcripts may be related to the upregulation of miR-29b under hypoxia stress. This study can provide multiple time point sequencing results and a theoretical basis for the study of hypoxia-related gene alternative splicing.</p>","PeriodicalId":9715,"journal":{"name":"Cerebral cortex","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142930794","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}