Summary: The biology of widely shared and unusual features of human pain is informed by functional and mechanistic comparisons of nociception and pain-like aversive states across vertebrate and invert...

The functional organization of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) for guiding eye movements has remained unknown. Here, the authors use functional ultrasound neuroimaging to reveal small, tuned clust...

New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London and the social enterprise Breathe Arts Health Research has shown that a specially designed gro...

Lego's MRI scanner play sets, which launched in 2023, are significantly reducing anxiety and the use of sedation in children, according to new research.

As Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is diagnosed more frequently in women, understanding the role of sex has become a key priority in AD research. However,...

In psychology and neuroscience, scientific questions are often framed in terms of mental activity (e.g., cognition, emotion, and perception); however,…

Men-led papers receive more media coverage than women’s, new study finds

Recent evidence from two independent meta-analyses reveals that subjective time is processed in the insular cortex alongside the supplementary motor a…

Spontaneous thoughts, occupying much of one’s awake time in daily life, are often colored by emotional qualities. While spontaneous thoughts have been associated with various neural correlates, the re...

Researchers hope the finding could point to new therapeutic approaches for the disease

The flagship journal of the Schizophrenia Bulletin family. Reviews recent developments and empirically based hypotheses regarding the etiology and treatment of schizophrenia, ranging from the molecula...

Psychometric network models have become increasingly popular in psychology and the social sciences. Huth et al. show that a large proportion of reported network findings are based on weak or inconclusive evidence inviting caution when interpreting results.

In a recent study, Goueytes and colleagues combined computational modeling with intracranial recordings to dissect the neural basis of confidence and changes of mind. They reveal a temporally organize...

Post-menopausal females (> 64 years) have an increase in frequency of inflammatory monocyte populations with defective phagocytosis as compared to pre-menopausal (< 40 years) females. Hormone Replace....

This report analyzes changes in cannabis-use patterns associated with recreational cannabis legalization in adults with psychosis.

Previous research has shown subcortical aberrations in individuals with psychosis (probands) and their unaffected first-degree relatives. However, few…

Background Auditory verbal hallucinations (‘voices’) in clinical psychosis are associated with significant distress and disability, but the efficacy of CBT for voices is modest. Greater phenomenolog.....

To keep the mind young, dance the tango.

Abstract. Ketamine produces fast-acting antidepressant effects in treatment resistant depression (TRD). Prior studies have shown altered functional dynamics between brain networks in major depression. We thus sought to determine whether functional brain network dynamics are modulated by ketamine therapy in TRD. Participants with TRD (n=58, mean age=40.7 years, female=48.3%) completed resting-state fMRI scans and clinical assessments (mood and rumination) at baseline and 24 h after receiving four ketamine infusions (0.5mg/kg) over two weeks. Healthy controls (HC) (n=56, mean age=32.8 years, female=57.1%) received the same assessments at baseline and after two weeks in a subsample without treatment. A co-activation pattern (CAP) analysis identified recurring patterns of brain activity across all subjects using k-means clustering. Statistical analyses compared CAP metrics including the fraction of time (FT) spent in a brain state, and the transition probability (TP) from one state to another over time and associations with clinical improvement. Follow-up analyses compared HC and TRD at baseline. Six brain state clusters were identified, including patterns resembling the salience (SN), central executive (CEN), visual (VN), default mode (DMN), and somatomotor (SMN) networks. Following ketamine, TRD patients showed decreased FT for the VN (p=7.4E-04) and increased FT for the CEN state (p=1.9E-03). For TP metrics, SN-CEN increased (p=5.8E-04) and SN-VN decreased (p=3.6E-03). Decreased FT for the SN associated with improved rumination (p=1.9E-03). At baseline, lower FT for CEN (p=5.70E-04) and TP for SN-CEN (p=0.016) and higher TP for SN-VN (p=2.60E-03) distinguished TRD from HCs. CAP metrics remained stable over time in a subsample of HCs (n=18). These findings suggest ketamine modulates brain network dynamics between SN, CEN and VN in TRD, which may normalize dynamic patterns seen in TRD at baseline towards patterns seen in controls. Changes in SN state dynamics may correspond to improvements in ruminative symptoms following ketamine therapy.

When faced with many options to choose from, humans typically need to explore the utility of new choice options. People with an autism diagnosis or elevated autism traits are thought to avoid exploring such unknown options, but it remains unclear how autism affects exploration in decision spaces with many options. In a large online sample (N = 588), we investigated the impact of autism diagnosis or elevated autism traits on exploration behavior during value-based decision-making in vast decision spaces. We used a 121-armed bandit with spatially correlated choice options, and a dedicated computational model to disentangle generalization, uncertainty-guided exploration, and random exploration strategies. Our findings show that participants with a self-reported autism diagnosis were less likely to explore novel choice options and more likely to exploit known high-value options. Computational modeling suggests they engaged in less uncertainty-driven exploration but exhibited equal random exploration and generalization strategies. Interestingly, among non-diagnosed participants, people with elevated autism traits did not explore less. This study relies on self-reported autism diagnoses and trait measures collected online. This may limit the generalizability of the findings to clinically verified or more diverse autism populations. Our findings highlight important differences in exploration strategies between clinical and subclinical populations and emphasize the importance of cognitive modeling and using vast decision spaces to better understand autism.

At the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, we often hear questions like, “What research is done here?” or, “What is the research about?”. Our answer is that the […]