Publications by authors named "Aileen Chau"
Neuroimaging studies have reported a large network of brain regions involved in altruism. However, these studies are unable to determine if these regions are necessary for altruistic attitudes. Here, we examined the brain-basis of everyday altruistic attitudes ([Self-Report Altruism Scale]; e.
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- Alexithymia is a condition where individuals struggle to identify and describe their emotions, and it's increasingly linked to various psychiatric and neurological disorders.
- Individuals with alexithymia often show poorer emotional regulation and treatment outcomes, placing a greater burden on caregivers.
- The study found that language impairments following brain injuries, particularly in a specific brain area (inferior frontal gyrus), are associated with challenges in identifying emotions, suggesting that both interoceptive and language processes are involved in acquired alexithymia.
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- - Machiavellianism is a personality trait involving distrust and manipulation of others, with research highlighting the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) in shaping these tendencies.
- - A study measuring Machiavellian traits in brain-injured patients found that damage to the left dlPFC increased Machiavellian views but not the tactics used to implement them.
- - The results suggest that the left dlPFC is causally linked to how one perceives Machiavellianism, indicating that people can adopt Machiavellian beliefs without necessarily acting on them.
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- * A voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) analysis revealed that damage to several brain areas, particularly in the prefrontal cortex and left temporal regions, is linked to increased impulsivity.
- * The findings highlight the role of both bilateral prefrontal cortex and left-sided brain structures in impulsivity, suggesting a more detailed and complex representation of impulsivity in the brain, especially regarding motor impulsivity.
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- Increased aggression is a common outcome of traumatic brain injuries, often persisting even after cognitive recovery, and is linked to dysfunction in brain regions like the prefrontal and temporal cortex.
- The study utilized the Implicit Association Task (IAT) with Vietnam War veterans to explore how lesions in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) affect implicit attitudes toward aggression.
- Results showed that individuals with dlPFC and inferior posterior temporal cortex (ipTC) lesions displayed more positive implicit attitudes toward aggression, emphasizing the role of these brain areas in regulating aggressive behaviors.
Apathy is defined by reduced goal-directed behavior, and is common in patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Separately, in neuroeconomics research, the vmPFC has been shown to play a role in reward processing-namely, in "stimulus valuation," or the computation of the subjective reward value of a stimulus. Here, we used a sample of patients with focal brain lesions (N = 93) and matched healthy controls (N = 21) to determine whether the association between vmPFC damage and increased apathy is driven by impaired valuation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCrick and Koch proposed that the claustrum plays a crucial role in consciousness. Their proposal was based on the structure and connectivity of the claustrum that suggested it had a role in coordinating a set of diverse brain functions. Given the few human studies investigating this claim, we decided to study the effects of claustrum lesions on consciousness in 171 combat veterans with penetrating traumatic brain injuries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: We investigated the association between regional white and gray matter volume loss and performance on executive functions (EFs) in patients with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI).
Methods: We studied 164 pTBI patients and 43 healthy controls from the Vietnam Head Injury Study. We acquired CT scans for pTBI patients and divided them according to lesion localization (left and right prefrontal cortex [PFC]).
Given the determinant role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in valuation, we examined whether vmPFC lesions also modulate how people scale political beliefs. Patients with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI; N = 102) and healthy controls (HCs; N = 31) were tested on the political belief task, where they rated 75 statements expressing political opinions concerned with welfare, economy, political involvement, civil rights, war and security. Each statement was rated for level of agreement and scaled along three dimensions: radicalism, individualism and conservatism.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAccumulating neuroscience evidence indicates that human intelligence is supported by a distributed network of frontal and parietal regions that enable complex, goal-directed behaviour. However, the contributions of this network to social aspects of intellectual function remain to be well characterized. Here, we report a human lesion study (n = 144) that investigates the neural bases of social problem solving (measured by the Everyday Problem Solving Inventory) and examine the degree to which individual differences in performance are predicted by a broad spectrum of psychological variables, including psychometric intelligence (measured by the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale), emotional intelligence (measured by the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test), and personality traits (measured by the Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness Personality Inventory).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTraumatic brain injury (TBI) is an important public health problem with potentially serious long-term neurobehavioural sequelae. There is evidence to suggest that a history of TBI can increase a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. However, individuals with dementia do not usually have a history of TBI, and survivors of TBI do not invariably acquire dementia later in life.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecovery after Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is variable, even for patients with similar severity of brain injury. Recent research has highlighted the contribution that genetic predisposition plays in determining TBI outcome. This review considers the potential for genetic polymorphisms to influence recovery of cognitive and social processes following TBI.
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- Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a significant health issue affecting both civilians and military personnel.
- Recent genetic studies suggest that individual genetic differences, known as polymorphisms, may play a role in recovery outcomes after TBI.
- The review discusses how these polymorphisms could impact key cognitive and social functions like memory, decision-making, aggression, and emotional regulation, potentially leading to personalized treatment approaches for TBI patients.