Publications by authors named "Lauri Nummenmaa"

Humans navigate the social world by rapidly perceiving social features from other people and their interaction. Recently, large-language models (LLMs) have achieved high-level visual capabilities for detailed object and scene content recognition and description. This raises the question whether LLMs can infer complex social information from images and videos, and whether the high-dimensional structure of the feature annotations aligns with that of humans.

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Emotions modulate behavioral priorities based on exteroceptive and interoceptive inputs, and the related central and peripheral changes may be experienced subjectively. Yet, it remains unresolved whether the perceptual and subjectively felt components of the emotion processes rely on shared brain mechanisms. We applied functional magnetic resonance imaging, a rich set of emotional movies, and high-dimensional, continuous ratings of perceived and felt emotions in the movies to investigate their cerebral organization.

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The brain is the most energy-demanding organ, yet whether cerebral energy homeostasis exhibits seasonal rhythmicity remains unclear. In this study, 432 healthy men underwent a health checkup program with fasting-state brain [F]fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (PET) scanning twice: first at the baseline and then at the 5-year follow-up. We analyzed the effect of day length on brain glucose uptake separately for both time points.

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Physical exercise is a strong physiological and mechanical stimulus that elicits various bodily sensations. They shape the emotional experience and contribute to the psychological benefits of exercise. Despite the centrality of subjective sensations stemming from altering bodily states during physical exercise, there is a paucity of data on bodily experiences and sensations evoked by physical exercise.

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Background: Abnormal striatal cue reactivity is one of the neurobiological hallmarks of substance use disorders (SUDs). Cue reactivity is associated with relapse, prompting efforts to target its underlying mechanisms with therapeutic interventions. However, the neural correlates of cue reactivity in behavioral addictions, such as gambling disorder (GD), remain poorly understood.

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Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder defined by social communication deficits, repetitive behaviors and restricted interests. Studies have reported aberrant sensory responses, including altered experiences of social touch, in individuals with ASD. However, the relationship between atypical social touch and social networks in ASD remains poorly understood.

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Purpose: The μ-opioid receptor (MOR) system mediates incentive motivation and the hedonic component of primary rewards such as food and sex. However, there is no direct in vivo evidence for the involvement of the MOR system in pleasure derived from aesthetic rewards such as music.  METHODS: We measured MOR availability with positron emission tomography (PET) and the agonist radioligand [C]carfentanil with high affinity for MORs during the listening of pleasurable music and neutral baseline condition.

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Eating is inherently social for humans. Yet, most neuroimaging studies of appetite and food-induced reward have focused on studying brain responses to food intake or viewing pictures of food alone. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure haemodynamic responses to "vicarious" feeding.

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Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a severe psychiatric disorder, characterized by restricted eating, fear to gain weight, and a distorted body image. Mu-opioid receptor (MOR) functions as a part of complex opioid system and supports both homeostatic and hedonic control of eating behavior. Thirteen patients with AN and thirteen healthy controls (HC) were included in this study.

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Emotions are associated with subjective emotion-specific bodily sensations. Here, we utilized this relationship and computational linguistic methods to map a representation of emotions in ancient texts. We analyzed Neo-Assyrian texts from 934-612 BCE to discern consistent relationships between linguistic expressions related to both emotions and bodily sensations.

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Article Synopsis
  • Functional neuroimaging reveals that observing others' pain activates a brain network linked to empathetic responses, potentially affecting how people decide to help others.
  • The study explored the influence of the μ-opioid receptor (MOR) system on altruistic behavior by measuring MOR levels and examining brain activity during a helping task.
  • Results indicated that while lower MOR availability was linked to responses in emotional brain areas, higher MOR levels correlated with activity in regions associated with decision-making and memory during altruistic acts.
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Every day, humans encounter complex social situations that need to be encoded effectively to allow interaction with others. Yet, principles for organizing the perception of social features from the external world remain poorly characterized. In this large-scale study, we investigated the principles of social perception in dynamic scenes.

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Objective: F-Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) allows noninvasive assessment of glucose metabolism and radiodensity in visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT). We aimed to address the effects of ageing and metabolic factors on abdominal adipose tissue.

Design, Patients And Measurements: We retrospectively analyzed data from 435 healthy men (mean 42.

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Psychopathy is characterized by antisocial behavior, poor behavioral control and lacking empathy, and structural alterations in the corresponding neural circuits. Molecular brain basis of psychopathy remains poorly characterized. Here we studied type 2 dopamine receptor (D2R) and mu-opioid receptor (MOR) availability in convicted violent offenders with high psychopathic traits (n = 11) and healthy matched controls (n = 17) using positron emission tomography (PET).

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Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor dapagliflozin on tissue fatty acid (FA) uptake in the skeletal muscle, brain, small intestine, and subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue of individuals with type 2 diabetes by using positron emission tomography (PET).

Research Design And Methods: In a 6-week randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial, 53 patients with type 2 diabetes treated with metformin received either 10 mg dapagliflozin or placebo daily. Tissue FA uptake was quantified at baseline and end of treatment with PET and the long-chain FA analog radiotracer 14(R,S)-[18F]fluoro-6-thia-heptadecanoic acid.

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Purpose: Brain functional and physiological plasticity is essential to combat dynamic environmental challenges. The rhythmic dopamine signaling pathway, which regulates emotion, reward and learning, shows seasonal patterns with higher capacity of dopamine synthesis and lower number of dopamine transporters during dark seasons. However, seasonal variation of the dopamine receptor signaling remains to be characterized.

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Background: Emotions are reflected in bodily sensations, and these reflections are abnormal in psychiatric conditions. However, emotion-related bodily sensations have not been studied in neurological disorders.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate whether Parkinson's disease (PD) is associated with altered bodily representations of emotions.

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Purpose: Aberrant dopaminergic function is linked with motor, psychotic, and affective symptoms, but studies have typically compared a single patient group with healthy controls.

Methods: Here, we investigated the variation in striatal (caudate nucleus, nucleus accumbens, and putamen) and thalamic type 2 dopamine receptor (DR) availability using [C]raclopride positron emission tomography (PET) data from a large sample of 437 humans including healthy controls, and subjects with Parkinson's disease (PD), antipsychotic-naïve schizophrenia, severe violent behavior, pathological gambling, depression, and overweight. We analyzed regional group differences in DR availability.

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Accurate positron emission tomography (PET) data quantification relies on high-quality input plasma curves, but venous blood sampling may yield poor-quality data, jeopardizing modeling outcomes. In this study, we aimed to recover sub-optimal input functions by using information from the tail (5th-100th min) of curves obtained through the frequent sampling protocol and an input recovery (IR) model trained with reference curves of optimal shape. Initially, we included 170 plasma input curves from eight published studies with clamp [F]-fluorodeoxyglucose PET exams.

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Emotions, bodily sensations and movement are integral parts of musical experiences. Yet, it remains unknown i) whether emotional connotations and structural features of music elicit discrete bodily sensations and ii) whether these sensations are culturally consistent. We addressed these questions in a cross-cultural study with Western (European and North American, n = 903) and East Asian (Chinese, n = 1035).

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Feeding induces dopamine release in the striatum, and a dysfunction of the dopaminergic reward system can lead to overeating, and obesity. Studies have reported inconsistent findings of dopamine receptor (DR) positron emission tomography scans in obesity. Here we investigated the association between DR availability and overweight/obesity using Bayesian and frequentist meta-analysis.

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Recently, PET systems with a long axial field of view have become the current state of the art. Total-body PET scanners enable unique possibilities for scientific research and clinical diagnostics, but this new technology also raises numerous challenges. A key advantage of total-body imaging is that having all the organs in the field of view allows studying biologic interaction of all organs simultaneously.

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The human brain undergoes metabolic adaptations in obesity, but the underlying mechanisms have remained largely unknown. We compared concentrations of often reported brain metabolites measured with magnetic resonance spectroscopy (H-MRS, 3 T MRI) in the occipital lobe in subjects with obesity and lean controls under different metabolic conditions (fasting, insulin clamp, following weight loss). Brain glucose uptake (BGU) quantified with F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (F-FDG-PET)) was also performed in a subset of subjects during clamp.

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Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience. Both pain and emotions are warning signals against outside harm. Interoception, bodily sensations of emotions can be assessed with the emBODY tool where participants colour the body parts where they feel different emotions.

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The COVID-19 pandemic presents challenges to psychological well-being, but how can we predict when people suffer or cope during sustained stress? Here, we test the prediction that specific types of momentary emotional experiences are differently linked to psychological well-being during the pandemic. Study 1 used survey data collected from 24,221 participants in 51 countries during the COVID-19 outbreak. We show that, across countries, well-being is linked to individuals' recent emotional experiences, including calm, hope, anxiety, loneliness, and sadness.

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