Neuroimaging databases for neuro-psychiatric disorders enable researchers to implement data-driven research approaches by providing access to rich data that can be used to study disease, build and validate machine learning models, and even redefine disease spectra. The importance of sharing large, multi-center, multi-disorder databases has gradually been recognized in order to truly translate brain imaging knowledge into real-world clinical practice. Here, we review MRI databases that share data globally to serve multiple psychiatric or neurological disorders. We found 42 datasets consisting of 23,293 samples from patients with psychiatry and neurological disorders and healthy controls; 1245 samples from mood disorders (major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder), 2015 samples from developmental disorders (autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder), 675 samples from schizophrenia, 1194 samples from Parkinson's disease, 5865 samples from dementia (including Alzheimer's disease), We recognize that large, multi-center databases should include governance processes that allow data to be shared across national boundaries. Addressing technical and regulatory issues of existing databases can lead to better design and implementation and improve data access for the research community. The current trend toward the development of shareable MRI databases will contribute to a better understanding of the pathophysiology, diagnosis and assessment, and development of early interventions for neuropsychiatric disorders.

Neuroimaging data analysis often requires purpose-built software, which can be challenging to install and may produce different results across computing environments. Beyond being a roadblock to neuroscientists, these issues of accessibility and portability can hamper the reproducibility of neuroimaging data analysis pipelines. Here, we introduce the Neurodesk platform, which harnesses software containers to support a comprehensive and growing suite of neuroimaging software (https://www.neurodesk.org/). Neurodesk includes a browser-accessible virtual desktop environment and a command line interface, mediating access to containerized neuroimaging software libraries on various computing platforms, including personal and high-performance computers, cloud computing and Jupyter Notebooks. This community-oriented, open-source platform enables a paradigm shift for neuroimaging data analysis, allowing for accessible, flexible, fully reproducible, and portable data analysis pipelines.

The faces of our friends and loved ones are among the most pervasive and important social stimuli we encounter in our everyday lives. We employed electroencephalography to investigate the time line of personally relevant face processing and potential interactions with emotional facial expressions by presenting female participants with photographs of their romantic partner, a close friend and a stranger, displaying fearful, happy and neutral facial expressions. Our results revealed elevated activity to the partner's face from 100 ms after stimulus onset as evident in increased amplitudes of P1, early posterior negativity, P3 and late positive component, while there were no effects of emotional expressions and no interactions. Our findings indicate the prominent role of personal relevance in face processing; the time course of effects further suggests that it might not rely solely on the core face processing network but might start even before the stage of structural face encoding. Our results suggest a new direction of research in which face processing models should be expanded to adequately capture the dynamics of the processing of real-life, personally relevant faces.

Data analysis workflows in many scientific domains have become increasingly complex and flexible. Here we assess the effect of this flexibility on the results of functional magnetic resonance imaging by asking 70 independent teams to analyse the same dataset, testing the same 9 ex-ante hypotheses1. The flexibility of analytical approaches is exemplified by the fact that no two teams chose identical workflows to analyse the data. This flexibility resulted in sizeable variation in the results of hypothesis tests, even for teams whose statistical maps were highly correlated at intermediate stages of the analysis pipeline. Variation in reported results was related to several aspects of analysis methodology. Notably, a meta-analytical approach that aggregated information across teams yielded a significant consensus in activated regions. Furthermore, prediction markets of researchers in the field revealed an overestimation of the likelihood of significant findings, even by researchers with direct knowledge of the dataset2–5. Our findings show that analytical flexibility can have substantial effects on scientific conclusions, and identify factors that may be related to variability in the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results emphasize the importance of validating and sharing complex analysis workflows, and demonstrate the need for performing and reporting multiple analyses of the same data. Potential approaches that could be used to mitigate issues related to analytical variability are discussed. The results obtained by seventy different teams analysing the same functional magnetic resonance imaging dataset show substantial variation, highlighting the influence of analytical choices and the importance of sharing workflows publicly and performing multiple analyses.

In this study we trialled a novel paradigm that aims to bridge the gap between the research into the extinction of conditioned responses and the instructed regulation of emotion via a prescribed strategy. This was done through a process we called Selective Extinction through Cognitive Evaluation (SECE). Participants were conditioned to associate a previously neutral stimulus (letter, CS+) with an aversive burst of white noise (US) and another letter with no aversive event (CS-). In a second phase, the same letters were presented within words belonging to two distinct categories. One group did not receive any more noise bursts during this phase which lead to the extinction of the conditioned responses (extinction group). The other group (SECE group) was told that the CS+ now only carried a risk of the noise occurring when it was presented in one (dangerous), but not the other word category (safe). Affective responses were assessed using skin conductance responses (SCR). We found overall increased SCR’s in response to CS+ (safe and dangerous) compared to CS- trials in the SECE group, and also increased SCR’s in response to dangerous compared to safe CS+ trials. This suggests that the conditioned response (CR) can be reduced through the cognitive evaluation of additional information and it is possible that extinction mechanisms are involved in this process. We did not find any effects in the extinction group. It is possible that extinction was completed too quickly so that any differences between conditions could not be captured. We therefore conducted a second study to pilot an improved paradigm. We visually amended the trials, amended the reinforcement schedule, and changed to a fully within-subjects design. Here we once again found significantly reduced SCR to safe compared to dangerous CS+ trials. Future experiments will use these results as a basis for an improved paradigm to better capture changes in SCR as well as BOLD fMRI in future experiments.

The neural circuitry associated with threat regulation in the absence of other people is well established. An examination of threat regulatory processes with people from different domains of an individual's social world is key to understanding social emotion regulation and personality functioning conceptualised as social domain organisation. In this study, 42 healthy female participants completed functional magnetic imaging sessions in which they underwent a scan in the presence of a romantic partner or friend, whilst completing a threat of shock task. In the presence of a romantic partner vs. friend, we found a reduction in amygdala activation to threat vs. safe trials over time. Furthermore, in the presence of a romantic partner vs. friend we observed greater subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex activation to threat vs. safe trials overall. The results support the hypothesis that recruitment of threat regulation circuitry is modulated by romantic partner relative to another person well-known to the individual. Future work needs to examine neural responses to a wider range of stimuli across more social domains, and implications of failures of this neural organisation for psychopathology.

Absolutist thinking is considered a cognitive distortion by most cognitive therapies for anxiety and depression. Yet, there is little empirical evidence of its prevalence or specificity. Across three studies, we conducted a text analysis of 63 Internet forums (over 6,400 members) using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software to examine absolutism at the linguistic level. We predicted and found that anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation forums contained more absolutist words than control forums (ds > 3.14). Suicidal ideation forums also contained more absolutist words than anxiety and depression forums (ds > 1.71). We show that these differences are more reflective of absolutist thinking than psychological distress. It is interesting that absolutist words tracked the severity of affective disorder forums more faithfully than negative emotion words. Finally, we found elevated levels of absolutist words in depression recovery forums. This suggests that absolutist thinking may be a vulnerability factor.

It has been proposed that the extinction of conditioned fear and the instructed regulation of emotion engage common ventromedial prefrontal (vmPFC) circuitry, indicating common underlying processes. Here we report an fMRI study using a novel task designed to investigate the neural overlap between cognitive emotion regulation and extinction of conditioned fear in a simple and controlled way. Participants were conditioned to expect an electric shock during the presentation of one of two letters (CS+ and CS-). In a second phase, the same letters were presented within words belonging to two distinct semantic categories. Participants were told that one of these categories would indicate safety from shock. We hypothesised that cognitive processing of words from the safety category would lead participants to engage neural circuitry involved in extinction and learned safety, and lead to reduced conditioned responses in limbic circuitry. The contrast between safe and dangerous CS+ trials revealed activation in a network of brain regions including left inferior frontal gyrus, as well as bilateral temporal and parietal cortices, though no activation in vmPFC was observed. Clusters in bilateral insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), part of the network typically associated with anticipation and experience of pain, showed activation for dangerous CS+ trials that was reduced for safe CS+ trials. These results suggest that the task elicited the expected aversive conditioned response during trials that remained dangerous, whereas a semantically based cognitive control mechanism down-regulated this response during safe trials. Results from this task were also compared with those from a modified version of an instructed emotion regulation task using negative IAPS images as affective stimuli. A voxelwise conjunction analysis showed no significant overlap between the two tasks, suggesting that the neural mechanisms involved in both types of emotion regulation may be largely distinct.

The speed of visual processing is central to our understanding of face perception. Yet the extent to which early visual processing influences later processing in distributed face processing networks, and the top-down modulation of such bottom-up effects, remains unclear. We used simultaneous EEG-fMRI to investigate cortical activity that showed unique covariation with ERP components of face processing (C1, P1, N170, P3), while manipulating sustained attention and transient cognitive conflict employing an emotional face-word Stroop task. ERP markers of visual processing within 100 ms after stimulus onset showed covariation with brain activation in precuneous, posterior cingulate gyrus, left middle temporal gyrus, left inferior frontal gyrus and frontal operculum, and a left lateral parietal-occipital cluster, illustrating the impact of early stage processing on higher-order mechanisms. Crucially, this covariation depended on sustained attentional focus and was absent for incongruent trials, suggesting flexible top-down gating of bottom-up processing.

We evaluated whether sliding-window analysis can reveal functionally relevant brain network dynamics during a well-established fear conditioning paradigm. To this end, we tested if fMRI fluctuations in amygdala functional connectivity (FC) can be related to task-induced changes in physiological arousal and vigilance, as reflected in the skin conductance level (SCL). Thirty-two healthy individuals participated in the study. For the sliding-window analysis we used windows that were shifted by one volume at a time. Amygdala FC was calculated for each of these windows. Simultaneously acquired SCL time series were averaged over time frames that corresponded to the sliding-window FC analysis, which were subsequently regressed against the whole-brain seed-based amygdala sliding-window FC using the GLM. Surrogate time series were generated to test whether connectivity dynamics could have occurred by chance. In addition, results were contrasted against static amygdala FC and sliding-window FC of the primary visual cortex, which was chosen as a control seed, while a physio-physiological interaction (PPI) was performed as cross-validation. During periods of increased SCL, the left amygdala became more strongly coupled with the bilateral insula and anterior cingulate cortex, core areas of the salience network. The sliding-window analysis yielded a connectivity pattern that was unlikely to have occurred by chance, was spatially distinct from static amygdala FC and from sliding-window FC of the primary visual cortex, but was highly comparable to that of the PPI analysis. We conclude that sliding-window analysis can reveal functionally relevant fluctuations in connectivity in the context of an externally cued task.

Epidemiological, clinical, and laboratory studies show sex differences in pain responses, with women more sensitive to nociceptive stimulation and more vulnerable to long-term pain conditions than men. Because of evidence that men are culturally reinforced for the ability to endure (or under-report) pain, some of these findings might be explained by sociocultural beliefs about gender-appropriate behavior. One potential manifestation of these effects might be differential participation in pain studies, with men adhering to stereotypical masculine roles viewing participation as a way to demonstrate their masculinity. To test this possibility, we assessed gender identification in 137 healthy participants. At the end of the assessment, they were asked if they would like to participate in other research studies. Interested participants were then asked to participate in a study involving administration of pain-evoking stimulation. We compared individuals who agreed to participate in the pain study with those who declined. We observed a significant Sex × Participation interaction in masculine gender identification, such that men (but not women) who agreed to participate identified significantly more with masculine gender. Among masculine gender traits examined, we found that high levels of aggression and competitiveness were the strongest predictors of pain study participation. Our results suggest that men in pain studies might have higher levels of masculine gender identification than the wider male population. Taken together with previous findings of lower levels of pain sensitivity (or reporting) in masculine-identifying male participants, these results suggest an explanation for some of the sex-related differences observed in pain responses. Perspective To examine whether sex and gender affect willingness to participate in pain studies, we assessed gender identification in men and women, then attempted to recruit them to participate in a pain study. Men who agree to participate in pain studies are significantly higher in masculine gender identification than men who decline to participate or women who agree to participate. Men who agreed to participate were rated particularly high in aggressiveness and competitiveness.

Recent behavioural evidence from second language (L2) learners has suggested native-like processing of syntactic structures, such as long-distance wh-dependencies in L2. The underlying processes are still largely debated, while the available neuroimaging evidence has been restricted to native (L1) processing. Here we test highly proficient L2 learners of English in an fMRI experiment incorporating a sentence reading task with long-distance wh-dependencies, including abstract syntactic categories (empty traces of wh-movement). Our results suggest that long-distance wh-dependencies impose increased working memory (WM) demands, compared to control sentences of equal length, demonstrated as increased activation of the superior and middle temporal gyri bilaterally. Additionally, our results suggest abstract syntactic processing by the most immersed L2 learners, manifested as comparable left temporal activity for sentences with wh-traces and sentences with no wh-movement. These findings are discussed against current theoretical proposals about L2 syntactic processing.

The amygdala plays a central role in emotional processing and has an activating influence on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Structural changes in the amygdala have been associated with early adversity and, in principle, may contribute to the later emergence of emotional pathologies by influencing the way that the brain responds to stress provocation. The present study examined the relationship between amygdala volumes and cortisol secretion in response to a social stressor among young adults who were or were not exposed to maternal postnatal depression (PND) early in development (referred to as PND offspring and controls, respectively). Hierarchical Linear Modelling (HLM) revealed that, on a sample-wide level, there was no evidence of a relationship between total amygdala volume, or the volume of the right or left hemisphere amygdala taken separately, and cortisol reactivity. Unexpectedly, for PND offspring, larger right hemisphere amygdala volume was associated with lower cortisol reactivity in response to stress, an effect that was not apparent in control offspring. We conclude that the relationship between amygdala volumes and stress reactivity may not be as clear as previous models suggested.

The study of emotional expression in the voice has typically relied on acted portrayals of emotions, with the majority of studies focussing on the perception of emotion in such portrayals. The acoustic characteristics of natural, often involuntary encoding of emotion in the voice, and the mechanisms responsible for such vocal modulation, have received little attention from researchers. The small number of studies on natural or induced emotional speech have failed to identify acoustic patterns specific to different emotions. Instead, most acoustic changes measured have been explainable as resulting from the level of physiological arousal characteristic of different emotions. Thus measurements of the acoustic properties of angry, happy and fearful speech have been similar, corresponding to their similar elevated arousal levels. An opposing view, the most elaborate description of which was given by Scherer (1986), is that emotions affect the acoustic characteristics of speech along a number of dimensions, not only arousal. The lack of empirical data supporting such a theory has been blamed on the lack of sophistication of acoustic analyses in the little research that has been done.By inducing real emotional states in the laboratory, using a variety of computer administered induction methods, this thesis aimed to test the two opposing accounts of how emotion affects the voice. The induction methods were designed to manipulate some of the principal dimensions along which, according to multidimensional theories, emotional speech is expected to vary. A set of acoustic parameters selected to capture temporal, fundamental frequency (F0), intensity and spectral vocal characteristics of the voice was extracted from speech recordings. In addition, electroglottal and physiological measurements were made in parallel with speech recordings, in an effort to determine the mechanisms underlying the measured acoustic changes.The results indicate that a single arousal dimension cannot adequately describe a range of emotional vocal changes, and lend weight to a theory of multidimensional emotional response patterning as suggested by Scherer and others. The correlations between physiological and acoustic measures, although small, indicate that variations in sympathetic autonomic arousal do correspond to changes to F0 level and vocal fold dynamics as indicated by electroglottography. Changes to spectral properties, speech fluency, and F0 dynamics, however, can not be fully explained in terms of sympathetic arousal, and are probably related as well to cognitive processes involved in speech planning.

Background: Whether sliding-window analyses are truly able to capture functionally relevant time-varying FC is still a topic of debate. Here, we aimed to test whether fluctuations in amygdala FC during a well-established fear conditioning paradigm, using sliding-window analysis, can be related to changes in physiological arousal and vigilance induced by the task, as assessed by the level of skin conductance.

BACKGROUND:Rodent models highlight the key role of μ-opioid receptor (MOR) signaling in palatable food consumption. In humans, however, the effects of MOR stimulation on eating and food liking remain unclear.OBJECTIVES:Here, we tested sweet pleasantness experience in humans following MOR drug manipulations. We hypothesized that behaviors regulated by the endogenous MOR system would be enhanced by MOR agonism and decreased by antagonism. In line with rodent findings, we expected the strongest drug effects for the sweetest (high-calorie) sucrose stimuli. As very sweet stimuli are considered aversive by many people (called sweet dislikers), we also assessed whether MOR manipulations affect pleasantness ratings of sucrose-water stimuli differently depending on subjective and objective value.METHODS:In a bidirectional psychopharmacological cross-over study, 49 healthy men underwent a sweet taste paradigm following double-blind administration of the MOR agonist morphine, placebo, and the opioid antagonist naltrexone.RESULTS:As hypothesized, MOR stimulation with morphine increased pleasantness of the sweetest of five sucrose solutions, without enhancing pleasantness of the lower-sucrose solutions. For opioid antagonism, an opposite pattern was observed for the sweetest drink only. The observed drug effects on pleasantness of the sweetest drink did not differ between sweet likers and dislikers.CONCLUSIONS:The bidirectional effect of agonist and antagonist treatment aligns with rodent findings showing that MOR manipulations most strongly affect the highest-calorie foods. We speculate that the MOR system promotes survival in part by increasing concordance between the objective (caloric) and subjective (hedonic) value of food stimuli, so that feeding behavior becomes more focused on the richest food available.