Somatotopic organization of brainstem analgesic circuitry.

The lateral periaqueductal gray (lPAG) evokes somatotopically appropriate defensive behaviors, including an analgesia that allows the animal to escape or fight unimpeded. Whether the lPAG and its descending targets are also able to drive somatotopically specific analgesic responses is not known. In this work, we performed ultrahigh-field functional magnetic resonance imaging of the lPAG in 93 participants during a placebo analgesia paradigm performed at different body locations.

Spacetop: A multimodal fMRI dataset unifying naturalistic processes with a rich array of experimental tasks.

Cognitive neuroscience has advanced significantly due to the availability of openly shared datasets. Large sample sizes, large amounts of data per person, and diversity in tasks and data types are all desirable, but are difficult to achieve in a single dataset. Here, we present an open dataset with N = 101 participants and 6 hours of scanning per participant, including 6 multifaceted functional tasks, 2 hours of naturalistic movie viewing, structural T1 images and multi-shell diffusion imaging as well as autonomic physiological data.

Comparing the neural bases of self- and social-reappraisal.

To manage life's stressors, we can self-regulate our emotions or seek social regulatory support. One such strategy is reappraisal, where individuals reframe their own negative emotions (ie self-reappraisal) or help others reframe their negative emotions (ie social-reappraisal). Here, we compared the neural mechanisms underlying self- and social-reappraisal of negative autobiographical memories using standard univariate contrasts, Bayes factor, and multivariate classifier approaches.

Neurophysiological encoding of aversive prediction errors.

Aversive prediction error (PE) brain signals generated by unexpected pain or pain absence are crucial for learning to avoid future pain. Yet, the detailed neurophysiological origins of PE signaling remain unclear. In this study, we combined an instrumental pain avoidance task with computational modeling and magnetoencephalography to detect time-resolved activations underlying pain expectations and aversive PE signals in the human brain.

Unintended bias in the pursuit of collinearity solutions in fMRI analysis.

In task functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), collinearity between task regressors in time series models may impact power. When collinearity is identified after data collection, researchers often modify the model in an effort to reduce collinearity. However, some model adjustments are suboptimal and may introduce bias into parameter estimates.

Mitochondrial Energy Transformation Capacity Influences Brain Activation During Sensory, Affective, and Cognitive Tasks.

Brain function relies on energy supplied by mitochondrial energy transformation, but how cellular energetics constrains neurological function and cognition remains poorly understood. Genetic defects in mitochondrial DNA cause rare mitochondrial diseases (MitoD) that offer a unique window to examine how mitochondria affects the brain and cognition, and the possibility to identify neural processes that are most energetically constrained. In this study, we assessed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on 29 participants with MitoD and 62 matched controls during resting state and tasks probing cognitive (N-back task), affective (cold pain), and sensory (multisensory visual and auditory perception) functions.

Neural signatures of emotional intent and inference align during social consensus.

Humans effortlessly transform dynamic social signals into inferences about other people's internal states. Here we investigate the neural basis of this process by collecting fMRI data from 100 participants as they rate the emotional intensity of people (targets) describing significant life events. Targets provide self-ratings on the same scale.

Functional Architecture of the Human Hypothalamus: Cortical Coupling and Subregional Organization Using 7-Tesla fMRI.

The hypothalamus plays an important role in the regulation of the body's metabolic state and behaviors related to survival. Despite its importance however, many questions exist regarding the intrinsic and extrinsic connections of the hypothalamus in humans, especially its relationship with the cerebral cortex. As a heterogeneous structure, it is possible that the hypothalamus is composed of different subregions, which have their own distinct relationships with the cerebral cortex.

The brain bases of emotion generation and emotion regulation.

Emotion generation and emotion regulation are widely seen as functionally distinct. This distinction has inspired efforts to define separable brain bases of each, with emotion generation thought to involve mainly subcortical structures such as the amygdala, and emotion regulation thought to involve mainly cortical regions such as fronto-parietal cortices. However, emerging findings challenge strong neural separability accounts, revealing substantial overlap between brain systems underlying emotion generation and emotion regulation.

Expectation generation and its effect on subsequent pain and visual perception.

Bayesian accounts of perception, such as predictive processing, suggest that perceptions integrate expectations and sensory experience, and thus assimilate to expected values. Furthermore, more precise expectations should have stronger influences on perception. We tested these hypotheses using a within-subject paradigm with social cues consisting of what participants were told were ratings from 10 prior participants, but which were actually constructed to independently manipulate the cue mean, variance (precision), and skewness independent of the actual stimulus intensity delivered.

Opportunities for chronic pain self-management: core psychological principles and neurobiological underpinnings.

One in five of the population lives with chronic pain. Psychological interventions for pain reveal core principles that can be used to create opportunities for chronic pain self-management in primary practice, across health-care settings, and at home. We highlight the different types of chronic pain and illustrate the psychoneurobiological mechanisms involved.

Brain neuromarkers predict self- and other-related mentalizing across adult, clinical, and developmental samples.

Human social interactions rely on the ability to reflect on one's own and others' internal states and traits-a psychological process known as mentalizing. Impaired or altered self- and other-related mentalizing is a hallmark of multiple psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions. Yet, replicable and easily testable brain markers of mentalizing have so far been lacking.

Default Mode Network Functional Connectivity As a Transdiagnostic Biomarker of Cognitive Function.

The default mode network (DMN) is intricately linked with processes such as self-referential thinking, episodic memory recall, goal-directed cognition, self-projection, and theory of mind. In recent years, there has been a surge in the number of studies examining its functional connectivity, particularly its relationship with frontoparietal networks involved in top-down attention, executive function, and cognitive control. The fluidity in switching between these internal and external modes of processing, which is highlighted by anticorrelated functional connectivity, has been proposed as an indicator of cognitive health.

COMMON AND DISTINCT NEURAL CORRELATES OF SOCIAL INTERACTION PERCEPTION AND THEORY OF MIND.

Social interaction perception and theory of mind (ToM) frequently co-occur, but their commonalities and distinctions at behavioral and neural levels remain unclear. Participants ( = 231) provided moment-by-moment ratings of four text and four audio narratives on social interactions and ToM engagement, which were reliable (split-half = .98 and .

Decoding Mindfulness With Multivariate Predictive Models.

Identifying the brain mechanisms that underlie the salutary effects of mindfulness meditation and related practices is a critical goal of contemplative neuroscience. Here, we suggest that the use of multivariate predictive models represents a promising and powerful methodology that could be better leveraged to pursue this goal. This approach incorporates key principles of multivariate decoding, predictive classification, and model-based analyses, all of which represent a strong departure from conventional brain mapping approaches.

A distributed brain response predicting the facial expression of acute nociceptive pain.

Pain is a private experience observable through various verbal and non-verbal behavioural manifestations, each of which may relate to different pain-related functions. Despite the importance of understanding the cerebral mechanisms underlying those manifestations, there is currently limited knowledge of the neural correlates of the facial expression of pain. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, noxious heat stimulation was applied in healthy volunteers and we tested if previously published brain signatures of pain were sensitive to pain expression.

Expectation generation and its effect on subsequent pain and visual perception.

Bayesian accounts of perception, such as predictive processing, suggest that perceptions integrate expectations and sensory experience, and thus assimilate to expected values. Furthermore, more precise expectations should have stronger influences on perception. We tested these hypotheses in a paradigm that manipulates both the mean value and the precision of cues within-person.

Open-Label Placebo Injection for Chronic Back Pain With Functional Neuroimaging: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Chronic back pain (CBP) is a leading cause of disability. Placebo treatments often provide as much pain relief as bona fide treatments, such as steroid injections. Open-label (honestly prescribed) placebos (OLPs) may relieve CBP without deception, but OLP mechanisms remain poorly understood.

Effects of connectivity hyperalignment (CHA) on estimated brain network properties: from coarse-scale to fine-scale.

Recent gains in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have been driven by increasingly sophisticated statistical and computational techniques and the ability to capture brain data at finer spatial and temporal resolution. These advances allow researchers to develop population-level models of the functional brain representations underlying behavior, performance, clinical status, and prognosis. However, even following conventional preprocessing pipelines, considerable inter-individual disparities in functional localization persist, posing a hurdle to performing compelling population-level inference.

Mindfulness Meditation and Placebo Modulate Distinct Multivariate Neural Signatures to Reduce Pain.

Background: Rather than a passive reflection of nociception, pain is shaped by the interplay between one's experiences, current cognitive-affective states, and expectations. The placebo response, a paradoxical yet reliable phenomenon, is postulated to reduce pain by engaging mechanisms shared with active therapies. It has been assumed that mindfulness meditation, practiced by sustaining nonjudgmental awareness of arising sensory events, merely reflects mechanisms evoked by placebo.