Female Cerebellum Seems Sociable; An iTBS Investigation.

The cerebellum has been shown to be engaged in tasks other than motor control, including cognitive and affective functions. Prior neuroimaging studies have documented the role of this area in social cognition and despite these findings, no studies have yet examined the causal relationship between the cerebellum and social cognition. This study aimed to investigate the role of the cerebellum in empathy and theory of mind (ToM) in a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, parallel study.

Targeting the insula with transcranial direct current stimulation; A simulation study.

Insula is considered an important region of the brain in the generation and maintenance of a wide range of psychiatric symptoms, possibly due to being key in fundamental functions such as interoception and cognition in general. Investigating the possibility of targeting this area using non-invasive brain stimulation techniques can open new possibilities to probe the normal and abnormal functioning of the brain and potentially new treatment protocols to alleviate symptoms of different psychiatric disorders. In the current study, COMETS2, a MATLAB based toolbox was used to simulate the magnitude of the current density and electric field in the brain caused by different transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) protocols to find an optimum montage to target the insula and its 6 subregions for three different current intensities, namely 2, 3, and 4 mA.

The Role of Serotonin in Fear Learning and Memory: A Systematic Review of Human Studies.

Fear is characterized by distinct behavioral and physiological responses that are essential for the survival of the human species. Fear conditioning (FC) serves as a valuable model for studying the acquisition, extinction, and expression of fear. The serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) system is known to play a significant role in emotional and motivational aspects of human behavior, including fear learning and expression.

Remember NIBS? tACS improves memory performance in elders with subjective memory complaints.

Subjective memory complaints (SMC), the main cognitive component of which is event memory, is a predictor of Alzheimer's disease in elderly people. The purpose of this trial was to investigate the effect of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) with theta frequency (6 Hz) on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in the improvement of episodic memory in individuals with SMC in a double blind, randomized, and sham-controlled parallel study. Sixteen participants with SMC received either active or sham theta tACS on the mPFC.

Electrophysiological and behavioral effects of unilateral and bilateral rTMS; A randomized clinical trial on rumination and depression.

Background: Rumination is significantly frequent in major depressive disorder (MDD). However, not a lot of studies have investigated the effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on rumination.

Methods: 61 participants with a minimum Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) score of 20 were randomly assigned to sham, bilateral stimulation (BS) or unilateral stimulation (US) groups.

Cold Cognition as Predictor of Treatment Response to rTMS; A Retrospective Study on Patients With Unipolar and Bipolar Depression.

Background: Cognitive impairments are prevalent in patients with unipolar and bipolar depressive disorder (UDD and BDD, respectively). Considering the fact assessing cognitive functions is increasingly feasible for clinicians and researchers, targeting these problems in treatment and using them at baseline as predictors of response to treatment can be very informative.

Method: In a naturalistic, retrospective study, data from 120 patients (Mean age: 33.

Transdiagnostic role of glutamate and white matter damage in neuropsychiatric disorders: A Systematic Review.

Neuropsychiatric disorders including generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar disorder (BD), and schizophrenia (SZ) have been considered distinct categories of diseases despite their overlapping characteristics and symptomatology. We aimed to provide an in-depth review elucidating the role of glutamate/Glx and white matter (WM) abnormalities in these disorders from a transdiagnostic perspective. The PubMed online database was searched for studies published between 2010 and 2021.

6 Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation of mPFC improves sustained attention and modulates alpha phase synchronization and power in dorsal attention network.

Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is a noninvasive brain stimulation tool appropriate to modulate cortical oscillations and activity via the application of weak currents. The major goal of this study was to investigate the effects of medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC) stimulation on sustained attention task performance measured by Rapid Visual Information Processing (RVIP) task and the brain networks assumed to be critical to sustained attention. mPFC has been shown to be involved in sustained attention performance and as a main hub in default mode network (DMN).

Alpha frequency rTMS modulates theta lagged nonlinear connectivity in dorsal attention network.

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is a key structure in dorsal attention network (DAN) that facilitates sustained attention by modulating activity in task related and unrelated regions of the brain. Alpha and theta frequency bands enhance connectivity among different parts of the attention network and these connections are facilitated by long-range nonlinear connectivity in theta and alpha frequency bands. This study is an investigation of the behavioral and electrophysiological effects of alpha and theta frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over RDLPFC.