Identification of gene ontologies linked to prefrontal-hippocampal functional coupling in the human brain.

Functional interactions between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampus during working memory have been studied extensively as an intermediate phenotype for schizophrenia. Coupling abnormalities have been found in patients, their unaffected siblings, and carriers of common genetic variants associated with schizophrenia, but the global genetic architecture of this imaging phenotype is unclear. To achieve genome-wide hypothesis-free identification of genes and pathways associated with prefrontal-hippocampal interactions, we combined gene set enrichment analysis with whole-genome genotyping and functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 269 healthy German volunteers.

Altered amygdala activation in schizophrenia patients during emotion processing.

Dysfunctional emotion processing in patients suffering from schizophrenia is a prominent clinical feature of great importance for social functioning and subjective well-being. The neurobiological underpinnings are still poorly understood. Here we investigated a large sample of schizophrenia patients and matched healthy controls with an event-related fMRI task during emotion processing using emotional pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS).

Identification of common variants associated with human hippocampal and intracranial volumes.

Identifying genetic variants influencing human brain structures may reveal new biological mechanisms underlying cognition and neuropsychiatric illness. The volume of the hippocampus is a biomarker of incipient Alzheimer's disease and is reduced in schizophrenia, major depression and mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. Whereas many brain imaging phenotypes are highly heritable, identifying and replicating genetic influences has been difficult, as small effects and the high costs of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have led to underpowered studies.

Test-retest reliability of resting-state connectivity network characteristics using fMRI and graph theoretical measures.

Characterizing the brain connectome using neuroimaging data and measures derived from graph theory emerged as a new approach that has been applied to brain maturation, cognitive function and neuropsychiatric disorders. For a broad application of this method especially for clinical populations and longitudinal studies, the reliability of this approach and its robustness to confounding factors need to be explored. Here we investigated test-retest reliability of graph metrics of functional networks derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recorded in 33 healthy subjects during rest.

Neural correlates of emotion recognition in schizophrenia.

The following fMRI study aimed to characterize the neural correlates of explicit emotion discrimination in 17 patients with schizophrenia and 17 matched healthy controls. In patients, emotion recognition impairments were found to be paralleled by cerebral dysfunctions in the affective division of the anterior cingulate cortex, the bilateral dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, the right superior temporal gyrus and the right fusiform gyrus. While the patients' responses to emotional faces were characterized predominantly by hypoactivations, the neutral faces elicited hyperactivations mainly in the frontal and cingulate areas, and the basal ganglia, along with misattribution errors.

The interaction of working memory and emotion in persons clinically at risk for psychosis: an fMRI pilot study.

Subtle emotional and cognitive dysfunctions may already be apparent in individuals at risk for psychosis. However, there is a paucity of research on the neural correlates of the interaction of both domains. It remains unclear whether those correlates are already dysfunctional before a transition to psychosis.

Cerebral dysfunctions of emotion-cognition interactions in adolescent-onset schizophrenia.

Objective: Schizophrenia is among the most severe of psychiatric disorders, leading to impairments of affective and cognitive abilities. These dysfunctions affect each other mutually. Adolescent-onset schizophrenia (AOS) constitutes a particularly severe form of the disorder.

Neuronal correlates of facial emotion discrimination in early onset schizophrenia.

Emotion discrimination deficits represent a well-established finding in schizophrenia. Although imaging studies addressed the cerebral dysfunctions underlying emotion perception in adult patients, the question of trait vs state characteristics is still unresolved. The investigation of juvenile patients offers the advantage of studying schizophrenia at an age where influences of illness course and long-term medication are minimized.

Increased neural response related to neutral faces in individuals at risk for psychosis.

Objective: The reliable discrimination of emotional expressions in faces is essential for adequate social interaction. Deficits in facial emotion processing are an important impairment in schizophrenia with major consequences for social functioning and subjective well-being. Whether neural circuits underlying emotion processing are already altered before illness onset is yet unclear.

Self-face recognition in schizophrenia.

Objective: Altered self-awareness might be a core feature of schizophrenia. Facial self-recognition in children and non-human primates has been linked to the emergence of self-awareness. In this study, the ability to recognize the own face as an indicator of certain aspects of self-awareness was investigated in patients with schizophrenia.

Gender differences in the cognitive control of emotion: An fMRI study.

The interaction of emotion and cognition has become a topic of major interest. However, the influence of gender on the interplay between the two processes, along with its neural correlates have not been fully analysed so far. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we induced negative emotion using negative olfactory stimulation while male (n=21) and female (n=19) participants performed an n-back verbal working memory task.

The influence of olfactory-induced negative emotion on verbal working memory: individual differences in neurobehavioral findings.

The influence of emotion on cognition plays an important role in people's everyday life as well as in psychiatric and neurological disorders. The present study used fMRI to examine the neural correlates of cognitive-emotional interactions and its inter-individual differences. Twenty-one healthy males performed a 0-back/2-back task while negative or neutral emotion was induced by negative/neutral olfactory stimulation.