Decoding sounds depicting hand-object interactions in primary somatosensory cortex.

Neurons, even in the earliest sensory regions of cortex, are subject to a great deal of contextual influences from both within and across modality connections. Recent work has shown that primary sensory areas can respond to and, in some cases, discriminate stimuli that are not of their target modality: for example, primary somatosensory cortex (SI) discriminates visual images of graspable objects. In the present work, we investigated whether SI would discriminate sounds depicting hand-object interactions (e.

Individual Patterns and Temporal Trajectories of Changes in Fear and Pain during Exposure In Vivo: A Multiple Single-Case Experimental Design in Patients with Chronic Pain.

Exposure in vivo (EXP) is an effective treatment to reduce pain-related fear and disability in chronic pain populations. Yet, it remains unclear how reductions in fear and pain relate to each other. This single-case experimental design study attempted to identify patterns in the individual responses to EXP and to unravel temporal trajectories of fear and pain.

Validating layer-specific VASO across species.

Cerebral blood volume (CBV) has been shown to be a robust and important physiological parameter for quantitative interpretation of functional (f)MRI, capable of delivering highly localized mapping of neural activity. Indeed, with recent advances in ultra-high-field (≥7T) MRI hardware and associated sequence libraries, it has become possible to capture non-invasive CBV weighted fMRI signals across cortical layers. One of the most widely used approaches to achieve this (in humans) is through vascular-space-occupancy (VASO) fMRI.

Corticolimbic Circuitry in Chronic Pain Tracks Pain Intensity Relief Following Exposure In Vivo.

Background: A subset of patients with chronic pain who receive exposure in vivo (EXP) treatment experience clinically relevant relief of pain intensity. Although pain relief is not an explicit therapeutic target, it is important to understand how and why this concomitant effect occurs in some patients but not others. This longitudinal study therefore aimed to characterize brain plasticity as well as to explore pretreatment factors related to pain relief.

The neural correlates of pain-related fear: A meta-analysis comparing fear conditioning studies using painful and non-painful stimuli.

Compared to the field of anxiety research, the use of fear conditioning paradigms for studying chronic pain is relatively novel. Developments in identifying the neural correlates of pain-related fear are important for understanding the mechanisms underlying chronic pain and warrant synthesis to establish the state-of-the-art. Using effect-size signed differential mapping, this meta-analysis combined nine MRI studies and compared the overlap in these correlates of pain-related fear to those of other non-pain-related conditioned fears (55 studies).

The acquisition and generalization of fear of touch.

Objectives Contemporary fear-avoidance models of chronic pain posit that fear of pain, and overgeneralization of fear to non-threatening stimuli is a potential pathway to chronic pain. While increasing experimental evidence supports this hypothesis, a comprehensive investigation requires testing in multiple modalities due to the diversity of symptomatology among individuals with chronic pain. In the present study we used an established tactile fear conditioning paradigm as an experimental model of allodynia and spontaneous pain fluctuations, to investigate whether stimulus generalization occurs resulting in fear of touch spreading to new locations.

Exposure Induced Changes in Neural Circuitry for Pain-Related Fear: A Longitudinal fMRI Study in Chronic Low Back Pain.

Exposure (EXP) is a cognitive-behavioral treatment aimed at reducing pain-related fear in chronic pain, and has proven successful in reducing pain-related disability in patients with chronic low back pain (cLBP). The current longitudinal study aimed to reveal the neural correlates of changes in pain-related fear as a result of EXP. Twenty-three patients with cLBP were included in this study.

Optimizing fMRI experimental design for MVPA-based BCI control: Combining the strengths of block and event-related designs.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) has been successfully used for Brain Computer Interfacing (BCI) to classify (imagined) movements of different limbs. However, reliable classification of more subtle signals originating from co-localized neural networks in the sensorimotor cortex, e.g.

The Acquisition and Extinction of Fear of Painful Touch: A Novel Tactile Fear Conditioning Paradigm.

Unlabelled: Fear of touch, due to allodynia and spontaneous pain, is not well understood. Experimental methods to advance this topic are lacking, and therefore we propose a novel tactile conditioning paradigm. Seventy-six pain-free participants underwent acquisition in a predictable as well as an unpredictable pain context.

Generalization on the Basis of Prior Experience Is Predicted by Individual Differences in Working Memory.

Generalization on the basis of prior experience is a central feature of human and nonhuman behavior, and anomalies in generalization can give rise to a wide array of problems. For instance, elevated levels of generalization have been shown in individuals suffering from an anxiety disorder. Identifying the individual difference variables that influence the extent to which behavior generalizes to novel stimuli may help our understanding of generalization and its potential maladaptive consequences.

The Effect of Task Instruction on Haptic Texture Processing: The Neural Underpinning of Roughness and Spatial Density Perception.

Perceived roughness is associated with a variety of physical factors and multiple peripheral afferent types. The current study investigated whether this complexity of the mapping between physical and perceptual space is reflected at the cortical level. In an integrative psychophysical and imaging approach, we used dot pattern stimuli for which previous studies reported a simple linear relationship of interdot spacing and perceived spatial density and a more complex function of perceived roughness.

Crossmodal interactions of haptic and visual texture information in early sensory cortex.

Both visual and haptic information add to the perception of surface texture. While prior studies have reported crossmodal interactions of both sensory modalities at the behavioral level, neuroimaging studies primarily investigated texture perception in separate visual and haptic paradigms. These experimental designs, however, only allowed to identify overlap in both sensory processing streams but no interaction of visual and haptic texture processing.

Roughness perception of unfamiliar dot pattern textures.

Both vision and touch yield comparable results in terms of roughness estimation of familiar textures as was shown in earlier studies. To our knowledge, no research has been conducted on the effect of sensory familiarity with the stimulus material on roughness estimation of unfamiliar textures. The influence of sensory modality and familiarity on roughness perception of dot pattern textures was investigated in a series of five experiments.

Tactile perceptual learning: learning curves and transfer to the contralateral finger.

Tactile perceptual learning has been shown to improve performance on tactile tasks, but there is no agreement about the extent of transfer to untrained skin locations. The lack of such transfer is often seen as a behavioral index of the contribution of early somatosensory brain regions. Moreover, the time course of improvements has never been described explicitly.

The neural substrate for working memory of tactile surface texture.

Fine surface texture is best discriminated by touch, in contrast to macro geometric features like shape. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and a delayed match-to-sample task to investigate the neural substrate for working memory of tactile surface texture. Blindfolded right-handed males encoded the texture or location of up to four sandpaper stimuli using the dominant or non-dominant hand.

The effect of visuo-haptic congruency on haptic spatial matching.

Eye-hand coordination is crucial for everyday visuo-haptic object-manipulation. Noninformative vision has been reported to improve haptic spatial tasks relying on world-based reference frames. The current study investigated whether the degree of visuo-haptic congruity systematically affects haptic task performance.

The neural correlates of human working memory for haptically explored object orientations.

Skillful object manipulation requires that haptically explored spatial object characteristics like orientation be adequately represented in working memory. In the current functional magnetic resonance imaging study, healthy right-handed participants explored a bar-shaped reference object with the left hand, memorizing its orientation. After a variable delay (0.

Haptic spatial matching in near peripersonal space.

Research has shown that haptic spatial matching at intermanual distances over 60 cm is prone to large systematic errors. The error pattern has been explained by the use of reference frames intermediate between egocentric and allocentric coding. This study investigated haptic performance in near peripersonal space, i.