A deep learning quantification of patient specificity as a predictor of session attendance and treatment response to internet-enabled cognitive behavioural therapy for common mental health disorders.

Background: Increasing an individual's ability to focus on concrete, specific detail, thus reducing the tendency toward overly broad, decontextualised generalisations about the self and world, is a target within cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). However, empirical investigation of the impact of within-treatment specificity on treatment outcomes is scarce. We evaluated whether the specificity of patient dialogue predicted a) end-of-treatment symptoms and b) session completion for CBT for common mental health issues.

Refining our understanding of depressive states and state transitions in response to cognitive behavioural therapy using latent Markov modelling.

Background: It is increasingly recognized that existing diagnostic approaches do not capture the underlying heterogeneity and complexity of psychiatric disorders such as depression. This study uses a data-driven approach to define fluid depressive states and explore how patients transition between these states in response to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

Methods: Item-level Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) data were collected from 9891 patients with a diagnosis of depression, at each CBT treatment session.

The effects of transcranial direct current stimulation on within- and cross-paradigm transfer following multi-session backward recall training.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been shown to enhance the efficacy and generalisation of working memory (WM) training, but there has been little systematic investigation into how coupling task-specific WM training with stimulation impacts more specifically on transfer to untrained tasks. This randomised controlled trial investigated the boundary conditions to transfer by testing firstly whether the benefits of training on backward digit recall (BDR) extend to untrained backward recall tasks and n-back tasks with different materials, and secondly which, if any, form of transfer is enhanced by tDCS. Forty-eight participants were allocated to one of three conditions: BDR training with anodal (10 min, 1 mA) or sham tDCS, or visual search training with sham tDCS, applied over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Quantifying the Association Between Psychotherapy Content and Clinical Outcomes Using Deep Learning.

Importance: Compared with the treatment of physical conditions, the quality of care of mental health disorders remains poor and the rate of improvement in treatment is slow, a primary reason being the lack of objective and systematic methods for measuring the delivery of psychotherapy.

Objective: To use a deep learning model applied to a large-scale clinical data set of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) session transcripts to generate a quantifiable measure of treatment delivered and to determine the association between the quantity of each aspect of therapy delivered and clinical outcomes.

Design, Setting, And Participants: All data were obtained from patients receiving internet-enabled CBT for the treatment of a mental health disorder between June 2012 and March 2018 in England.

Psychopathic traits influence amygdala-anterior cingulate cortex connectivity during facial emotion processing.

There is accumulating evidence that youths with antisocial behavior or psychopathic traits show deficits in facial emotion recognition, but little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying these impairments. A number of neuroimaging studies have investigated brain activity during facial emotion processing in youths with Conduct Disorder (CD) and adults with psychopathy, but few of these studies tested for group differences in effective connectivity-i.e.

Repetition Suppression and Memory for Faces is Reduced in Adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions.

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are associated with a number of atypicalities in face processing, including difficulties in face memory. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this difficulty are unclear. In neurotypical individuals, repeated presentation of the same face is associated with a reduction in activity, known as repetition suppression (RS), in the fusiform face area (FFA).

Intact priors for gaze direction in adults with high-functioning autism spectrum conditions.

Background: Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) are associated with a range of perceptual atypicalities, including abnormalities in gaze processing. Pellicano and Burr (Trends Cogn Sci 16(10):504-10, 2012) have argued that these atypicalities might be explained within a Bayesian framework, in which perception represents the combination of sensory information with prior knowledge. They propose that the Bayesian priors of individuals with ASC might be attenuated, such that their perception is less reliant on prior knowledge than neurotypical individuals.

Threat visibility modulates the defensive brain circuit underlying fear and anxiety.

Recent theories distinguish anxiety from fear in the brain. Anxiety is associated with activation in ventromedial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, while fear is associated with activation in periaqueductal gray, with amygdala involved in processing aspects of both emotional responses. These theories propose that the amount of information available about threat determines which of the two defensive responses is elicited, with fear and anxiety associated with well-defined and uncertain threats respectively.

The effect of perceptual expectation on repetition suppression to faces is not modulated by variation in autistic traits.

There is substantial variation in the magnitude of the repetition suppression (RS) effects across individuals; however the causes of this variation remain unclear. In a recent study, we found that RS in occipitotemporal cortex was negatively related to individual variation in autistic traits in a neurotypical population. Recent proposals have considered autistic behaviours within a Bayesian framework, suggesting that individuals with autism may have 'attenuated priors' (i.

Repetition Suppression in Ventral Visual Cortex Is Diminished as a Function of Increasing Autistic Traits.

Repeated viewing of a stimulus causes a change in perceptual sensitivity, known as a visual aftereffect. Similarly, in neuroimaging, repetitions of the same stimulus result in a reduction in the neural response, known as repetition suppression (RS). Previous research shows that aftereffects for faces are reduced in both children with autism and in first-degree relatives.

Facial expressions of threat influence perceived gaze direction in 8 year-olds.

Adults show reciprocal influences between the perception of gaze direction and emotional expression. These facilitate the understanding of facial signals, because the meaning of one cue can vary considerably depending on the value of the other. Here we ask whether children show similar reciprocal influences in the perception of gaze and expression.

5-HTTLPR-environment interplay and its effects on neural reactivity in adolescents.

It is not known how 5-HTTLPR genotype x childhood adversity (CA) interactions that are associated with an increased risk for affective disorders in population studies operate at the neural systems level. We hypothesized that healthy adolescents at increased genetic and environmental risk for developing mood disorders (depression and anxiety) would demonstrate increased amygdala reactivity to emotional stimuli compared to those with only one such risk factor or those with none. Participants (n=67) were classified into one of 4 groups dependent on being homozygous for the long or short alleles within the serotonin-transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) of the SLC6A4 gene and exposure to CA in the first 11 years of life (present or absent).

Explaining away repetition effects via predictive coding.

Abstract Gotts, Chow and Martin summarize Predictive Coding models in which repetition-related decreases in neural activity reflect an "Explaining Away" of stimulus-driven neural activity. Here we elaborate the subtleties of testing such models, particularly with fMRI.

Emotion and personality factors influence the neural response to emotional stimuli.

Lindquist et al. assess the neural evidence for locationist versus psychological construction accounts of human emotion. A wealth of experimental and clinical investigations show that individual differences in emotion and personality influence emotion processing.

Different neural mechanisms within occipitotemporal cortex underlie repetition suppression across same and different-size faces.

Repetition suppression (RS) (or functional magnetic resonance imaging adaptation) refers to the reduction in blood oxygen level-dependent signal following repeated presentation of a stimulus. RS is frequently used to investigate the role of face-selective regions in human visual cortex and is commonly thought to be a "localized" effect, reflecting fatigue of a neuronal population representing a given stimulus. In contrast, predictive coding theories characterize RS as a consequence of "top-down" changes in between-region modulation.

Adaptation studies suggest interactive feedback shapes responses in occipitotemporal regions.

Abstract Downing and Peelen portray the EBA and FBA as a largely impenetrable system, passing on visual signals to other cortical areas where high-level information is extracted. They suggest that the influence of other regions on EBA and FBA is primarily limited to changes in attentional modulation. In the following commentary, this proposal is evaluated within the context of a predictive coding framework.

Personality influences the neural responses to viewing facial expressions of emotion.

Cognitive research has long been aware of the relationship between individual differences in personality and performance on behavioural tasks. However, within the field of cognitive neuroscience, the way in which such differences manifest at a neural level has received relatively little attention. We review recent research addressing the relationship between personality traits and the neural response to viewing facial signals of emotion.

Changes in "top-down" connectivity underlie repetition suppression in the ventral visual pathway.

Repetition of the same stimulus leads to a reduction in neural activity known as repetition suppression (RS). In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), RS is found for multiple object categories. One proposal is that RS reflects locally based "within-region" changes, such as neural fatigue.

"You talkin' to me?" Self-relevant auditory signals influence perception of gaze direction.

In humans, direct gaze typically signals a deliberate attempt to communicate with an observer. An auditory signal with similar signal value is calling someone's name. We investigated whether the presence of this personally relevant signal in the auditory modality would influence perception of another individual's gaze.

The Interaction Between Gaze and Facial Expression in the Amygdala and Extended Amygdala is Modulated by Anxiety.

Behavioral evidence indicates that angry faces are seen as more threatening, and elicit greater anxiety, when directed at the observer, whereas the influence of gaze on the processing of fearful faces is less consistent. Recent research has also found inconsistent effects of expression and gaze direction on the amygdala response to facial signals of threat. However, such studies have failed to consider the important influence of anxiety on the response to signals of threat; an influence that is well established in behavioral research and recent neuroimaging studies.

Autism spectrum traits in the typical population predict structure and function in the posterior superior temporal sulcus.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are typically characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, narrow interests, and repetitive behaviors. The heterogeneity in the severity of these characteristics across individuals with ASD has led some researchers to suggest that these disorders form a continuum which extends into the general, or "typical," population, and there is growing evidence that the extent to which typical adults display autistic traits, as measured using the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ), predicts performance on behavioral tasks that are impaired in ASD. Here, we show that variation in autism spectrum traits is related to cortical structure and function within the typical population.

Why are you angry with me? Facial expressions of threat influence perception of gaze direction.

Gaze direction can influence the processing of facial expressions. Angry faces are judged more angry when displaying a direct gaze compared to an averted gaze. We investigated whether facial expressions have a reciprocal influence on the perception of gaze.

Leaving a bad taste in your mouth but not in my insula.

Previous research has implicated regions of anterior insula/frontal operculum in processing conspecific facial expressions of disgust. It has been suggested however that there are a variety of disgust facial expression components which relate to the disgust-eliciting stimulus. The nose wrinkle is predominantly associated with irritating or offensive smells, the mouth gape and tongue extrusion with distaste and oral irritation, while a broader range of disgust elicitors including aversive interpersonal contacts and certain moral offenses are associated primarily with the upper lip curl.

The amygdala response to images with impact.

Effective photojournalism provokes an emotional reaction and leaves a lasting impression upon the viewer. Striking and memorable images are often said to possess 'impact'. Within cognitive neuroscience memorable emotional images evoke a greater amygdala response.