NeuroImage. Clinical
January 1, 2021
Eva Blondiaux, Lukas Heydrich, Olaf Blanke
33 citations
Autoscopic phenomena—the illusion of seeing a second own body in external space—take three forms: autoscopic hallucination, heautoscopy, and out-of-body experience. Using lesion network mapping in 26 neurological patients, all three forms localized to a common brain network centered on the bilateral temporo-parietal junction. Each type also showed distinct functional connectivity patterns: out-of-body experiences connected to the angular gyrus, precuneus, and inferior frontal gyrus; autoscopic hallucinations to the precuneus, inferior temporal gyrus, and cerebellum; heautoscopy to the left inferior frontal gyrus, insula, and parahippocampus. The temporo-parietal junction is the core region for all autoscopic phenomena, with each form recruiting additional sensorimotor and self-related subnetworks.
NeuroImage. Clinical
January 1, 2023
Hendrik Laicher, Isabell Int-Veen, Leonie Woloszyn et al.
9 citations
Mindfulness-based Emotion Regulation Training (MBERT) reduces depressive symptoms and rumination in people with major depressive disorder. During emotion regulation exercises, brain activity increased in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, key regions of the cognitive control network. Across training sessions, oxygenation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex decreased, suggesting neural adaptation. The study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to measure brain activity during therapy sessions in 42 participants.
NeuroImage. Clinical
January 1, 2025
Zhenyu Liu, Shanshan Wu, Shuwei Wang et al.
7 citations
Patients with disorders of consciousness who received high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, in addition to conventional therapy, were three times more likely to show improvement in consciousness level compared to those receiving only conventional therapy. The trial included 48 patients in a randomized controlled design. The stimulated group also showed better scores on a clinical global improvement scale and a reduction in a specific brain microstate (microstate E), suggesting the treatment may help restore balance among cerebral functional networks.
NeuroImage. Clinical
January 1, 2024
Antje Opitz, Josua Zimmermann, David M. Cole et al.
2 citations
Chronic users of methamphetamine and MDMA show similar deficits in conflict control and emotional processing, rather than substance-specific differences. In an emotional face-word Stroop task with anger and happy faces, both user groups exhibited smaller behavioral effects of cognitive-emotional conflict and selective impairments in processing anger, compared to amphetamine-naïve controls. These deficits were accompanied by stronger P3 event-related potential modulations, indicating altered stimulus-response mapping and decision-making. The findings suggest that chronic use of substituted amphetamines may affect noradrenergic systems, which could underlie the observed similarities. Understanding noradrenaline's role in these processes is an important direction for future research.
NeuroImage. Clinical
January 1, 2022
Tamás Bogdány, Pandelis Perakakis, Róbert Bódizs et al.
Frequent nightmares are common and linked to mental health problems, but their biological basis is poorly understood. A small 2019 study reported that the heartbeat evoked potential (HEP) measured during REM sleep differed markedly between 11 nightmare sufferers and 11 controls, and correlated with depression in the nightmare group, suggesting HEP could be a biomarker. This replication attempt analyzed HEPs in two larger databases (39 and 41 participants each) using the same methods. No significant HEP differences between groups were found in either database, nor any association with depression scores. These results cast doubt on HEP as a reliable biomarker for nightmare disorder and indicate that interpreting HEP as a marker of impaired arousal and emotional processing during REM sleep is premature.
NeuroImage. Clinical
January 1, 2019
Lampros Perogamvros, Hyeong-Dong Park, Laurence Bayer et al.
Patients with nightmare disorder show heightened heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEPs) during REM sleep compared to healthy controls, indicating increased emotional arousal and brain-body interaction specifically in REM sleep. No differences were found in cardiac control measures like heart rate variability. These findings suggest that nightmares are primarily a REM sleep pathology and that elevated emotional arousal during REM, as indexed by HEP, may underlie frequent nightmares. HEP could serve as a biomarker for increased emotional and sensory processing during REM sleep in these patients.