Evaluating brain mechanisms of combined vagus nerve stimulation and mindfulness training for migraine: A randomized 2 × 2 factorial clinical trial protocol.

Background: Migraine is a major cause of disability and efficacious interventions are needed. In this mechanistic study, we investigate the combined, and potentially synergistic, effects of a multimodal intervention combining Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and transcutaneous auricular Vagal Nerve Stimulation (taVNS) for migraine.

Methods: We utilize a modified double-blinded, placebo-controlled, 2 × 2 factorial randomized longitudinal design to assess the effects of an 8-week MBSR intervention with concomitant Respiratory-gated Auricular Vagal Afferent Nerve Stimulation (RAVANS) taVNS on migraine pathophysiology primary outcomes.

Neural correlates of reduction in self-judgment after mindful self-compassion training: A pilot study with resting state fMRI.

Self-judgment is a trans-diagnostic symptom among various psychological disorders, therefore can be a therapeutic target for many common psychiatric conditions. Self-judgment often arises among those who experienced childhood maltreatment, which increases the risk for developing comorbid psychiatric disorders that are resistant to traditional pharmacological and psychological interventions. Understanding the neural correlates of the therapeutic effect of behavioral interventions for reducing self-judgment is key for developing and refining evidence-based intervention programs.

Trigeminal nerve microstructure is linked with neuroinflammation and brainstem activity in migraine.

Although the pathophysiology of migraine involves a complex ensemble of peripheral and CNS changes that remain incompletely understood, the activation and sensitization of the trigeminovascular system are believed to play a major role. However, non-invasive, in vivo neuroimaging studies investigating the underlying neural mechanisms of trigeminal system abnormalities in human migraine patients are limited. Here, we studied 60 patients with migraine (55 females, mean ± standard deviation age: 36.

Neural regulation of pain anticipation is associated with mindful behavior change in patients with anxiety or depression: A pilot study.

Behavior change often requires overcoming discomfort or difficult emotions. Emotional dysregulation associated with anxiety or depression may prevent behavior change initiation among people managing chronic illness. Mindfulness training may catalyze chronic disease self-management by reducing experiential avoidance of aversive experiences that act as barriers to change initiation.

Dysbindin-1 Mutation Alters Prefrontal Cortex Extracellular Glutamate and Dopamine In Vivo.

Elevated risk for schizophrenia is associated with a variation in the gene encoding dysbindin-1, which may underpin cognitive impairments in this prevalent neuropsychiatric disorder. The cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia involve anomalies in glutamate and dopamine signaling, particularly within the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Indeed, mice with mutations exhibit spatial and working memory deficits that are associated with deficits in glutamate release and NMDA receptor function as determined by slice electrophysiology.

Differences in regional brain structure in toddlers with autism are related to future language outcomes.

Language and social symptoms improve with age in some autistic toddlers, but not in others, and such outcome differences are not clearly predictable from clinical scores alone. Here we aim to identify early-age brain alterations in autism that are prognostic of future language ability. Leveraging 372 longitudinal structural MRI scans from 166 autistic toddlers and 109 typical toddlers and controlling for brain size, we find that, compared to typical toddlers, autistic toddlers show differentially larger or thicker temporal and fusiform regions; smaller or thinner inferior frontal lobe and midline structures; larger callosal subregion volume; and smaller cerebellum.

Language, Social, and Face Regions Are Affected in Toddlers with Autism and Predictive of Language Outcome.

Identifying prognostic early brain alterations is crucial for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Leveraging structural MRI data from 166 ASD and 109 typical developing (TD) toddlers and controlling for brain size, we found that, compared to TD, ASD toddlers showed larger or thicker lateral temporal regions; smaller or thinner frontal lobe and midline structures; larger callosal subregion volume; and smaller cerebellum. Most of these differences were replicated in an independent cohort of 38 ASD and 37 TD toddlers.

Increased insula response to interoceptive attention following mindfulness training is associated with increased body trusting among patients with depression.

Interoceptive dysfunction is often present in anxiety and depression. We investigated the effects of an 8-week intervention, Mindfulness Training for Primary Care (MTPC), on brain mechanisms of interoceptive attention among patients with anxiety and/or depression. We hypothesized that fMRI brain response to interoception in the insula, a region known for interoceptive processing, would increase following the MTPC intervention, and that such increases would be associated with post-intervention changes in self-reported measures of interoceptive awareness.

The Effects of Combined Respiratory-Gated Auricular Vagal Afferent Nerve Stimulation and Mindfulness Meditation for Chronic Low Back Pain: A Pilot Study.

Objective: Respiratory-gated Auricular Vagal Afferent Nerve stimulation (RAVANS) is a safe nonpharmacological approach to managing chronic pain. The purpose of the current study was to examine (1) the feasibility and acceptability of RAVANS, combined with mindful meditation (MM) for chronic low back pain (CLBP), (2) the potential synergy of MM+RAVANS on improving pain, and (3) possible moderators of the influence of MM+RAVANS on pain.

Design: Pilot feasibility and acceptability study.

Default mode-visual network hypoconnectivity in an autism subtype with pronounced social visual engagement difficulties.

Social visual engagement difficulties are hallmark early signs of autism (ASD) and are easily quantified using eye tracking methods. However, it is unclear how these difficulties are linked to atypical early functional brain organization in ASD. With resting state fMRI data in a large sample of ASD toddlers and other non-ASD comparison groups, we find ASD-related functional hypoconnnectivity between 'social brain' circuitry such as the default mode network (DMN) and visual and attention networks.

Quitting starts in the brain: a randomized controlled trial of app-based mindfulness shows decreases in neural responses to smoking cues that predict reductions in smoking.

Current treatments for smoking yield suboptimal outcomes, partly because of an inability to reduce cue-induced smoking. Mindfulness training (MT) has shown preliminary efficacy for smoking cessation, yet its neurobiological target remains unknown. Our prior work with nonsmokers indicates that MT reduces posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) activity.

From research to clinic: A sensor reduction method for high-density EEG neurofeedback systems.

Objective: To accurately deliver a source-estimated neurofeedback (NF) signal developed on a 128-sensors EEG system on a reduced 32-sensors EEG system.

Methods: A linearly constrained minimum variance beamformer algorithm was used to select the 64 sensors which contributed most highly to the source signal. Monte Carlo-based sampling was then used to randomly generate a large set of reduced 32-sensors montages from the 64 beamformer-selected sensors.

Behavioral and Neurochemical Phenotyping of Mice Incapable of Homer1a Induction.

Immediate early and constitutively expressed products of the gene regulate the functional assembly of post-synaptic density proteins at glutamatergic synapses to influence excitatory neurotransmission and synaptic plasticity. Earlier studies of gene knock-out (KO) mice indicated active, but distinct, roles for IEG and constitutively expressed gene products in regulating cognitive, emotional, motivational and sensorimotor processing, as well as behavioral and neurochemical sensitivity to cocaine. More recent characterization of transgenic mice engineered to prevent generation of the IEG form (a.

Network organization is globally atypical in autism: A graph theory study of intrinsic functional connectivity.

Background: Despite abundant evidence of brain network anomalies in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), findings have varied from broad functional underconnectivity to broad overconnectivity. Rather than pursuing overly simplifying general hypotheses ('under' vs. 'over'), we tested the hypothesis of in ASD (i.

Positive effects of neurofeedback on autism symptoms correlate with brain activation during imitation and observation.

Autism has been characterized by atypical task-related brain activation and functional connections, coinciding with deficits in sociocommunicative abilities. However, evidence of the brain's experience-dependent plasticity suggests that abnormal activity patterns may be reversed with treatment. In particular, neurofeedback training (NFT), an intervention based on operant conditioning resulting in self-regulation of brain electrical oscillations, has shown increasing promise in addressing abnormalities in brain function and behavior.

Resting State Functional Connectivity MRI among Spectral MEG Current Sources in Children on the Autism Spectrum.

Social and communicative impairments are among the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and a great deal of evidence supports the notion that these impairments are associated with aberrant functioning and connectivity of various cortical networks. The present study explored the links between sources of MEG amplitude in various frequency bands and functional connectivity MRI in the resting state. The goal of combining these modalities was to use sources of neural oscillatory activity, measured with MEG, as functionally relevant seed regions for a more traditional pairwise fMRI connectivity analysis.

Underconnected, But Not Broken? Dynamic Functional Connectivity MRI Shows Underconnectivity in Autism Is Linked to Increased Intra-Individual Variability Across Time.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by core sociocommunicative impairments. Atypical intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) has been reported in numerous studies of ASD. A majority of findings has indicated long-distance underconnectivity.

Regional specificity of aberrant thalamocortical connectivity in autism.

Preliminary evidence suggests aberrant (mostly reduced) thalamocortical (TC) connectivity in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but despite the crucial role of thalamus in sensorimotor functions and its extensive connectivity with cerebral cortex, relevant evidence remains limited. We performed a comprehensive investigation of region-specific TC connectivity in ASD. Resting-state functional MRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data were acquired for 60 children and adolescents with ASD (ages 7-17 years) and 45 age, sex, and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) participants.

Reduced integration and differentiation of the imitation network in autism: A combined functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion-weighted imaging study.

Objective: Converging evidence indicates that brain abnormalities in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) involve atypical network connectivity, but few studies have integrated functional with structural connectivity measures. This multimodal investigation examined functional and structural connectivity of the imitation network in children and adolescents with ASD, and its links with clinical symptoms.

Methods: Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion-weighted imaging were performed in 35 participants with ASD and 35 typically developing controls, aged 8 to 17 years, matched for age, gender, intelligence quotient, and head motion.

Patterns of Atypical Functional Connectivity and Behavioral Links in Autism Differ Between Default, Salience, and Executive Networks.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by atypical brain network organization, but findings have been inconsistent. While methodological and maturational factors have been considered, the network specificity of connectivity abnormalities remains incompletely understood. We investigated intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) for four "core" functional networks-default-mode (DMN), salience (SN), and left (lECN) and right executive control (rECN).

Cerebro-cerebellar Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Background: The cerebellum plays important roles in sensori-motor and supramodal cognitive functions. Cellular, volumetric, and functional abnormalities of the cerebellum have been found in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), but no comprehensive investigation of cerebro-cerebellar connectivity in ASD is available.

Methods: We used resting-state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging in 56 children and adolescents (28 subjects with ASD, 28 typically developing subjects) 8-17 years old.

Impact of methodological variables on functional connectivity findings in autism spectrum disorders.

Growing evidence suggests that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) involves abnormalities of multiple functional networks. Neuroimaging studies of ASD have therefore increasingly focused on connectivity. Many functional connectivity (fcMRI) studies have reported network underconnectivity in children and adults with ASD.

A prolyl-isomerase mediates dopamine-dependent plasticity and cocaine motor sensitization.

Synaptic plasticity induced by cocaine and other drugs underlies addiction. Here we elucidate molecular events at synapses that cause this plasticity and the resulting behavioral response to cocaine in mice. In response to D1-dopamine-receptor signaling that is induced by drug administration, the glutamate-receptor protein metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) is phosphorylated by microtubule-associated protein kinase (MAPK), which we show potentiates Pin1-mediated prolyl-isomerization of mGluR5 in instances where the product of an activity-dependent gene, Homer1a, is present to enable Pin1-mGluR5 interaction.