CNS Drugs
May 2024
Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Background: Disordered autonomic nervous system regulation and supraspinal pain inhibition have been repeatedly described in chronic pain. We aimed to explore the effects of δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), an emerging treatment option, on autonomic nervous system and central pain modulation measures in patients with chronic pain.
Methods: Twelve male patients with chronic radicular neuropathic pain participated in a randomized, double-blind, crossover, placebo-controlled, single-administration trial.
BMJ Support Palliat Care
August 2024
Institute of Pain Medicine, Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel
Background And Objectives: Cancer-related pain management in advanced stages presents a significant challenge that often requires a multidisciplinary approach. Although advancements in pharmacological and interventional therapies, a considerable number of patients still suffer from refractory pain, leading to unmet clinical needs. This study shares our experience with medical cannabis (MC) as a potential therapy for this specific population of patients with cancer-related refractory pain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurosci Biobehav Rev
March 2024
Neuroqualia (NGO), Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada. Electronic address:
Psychiatry Clin Neurosci
January 2024
Womens' Reproductive Mental Health research Unit, Psychiatric Department, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Aim: Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) among women is an alarmingly prevalent traumatic experience that often leads to debilitating and treatment-refractory posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), raising the need for novel adjunctive therapies. Neuroimaging investigations systematically report that amygdala hyperactivity is the most consistent and reliable neural abnormality in PTSD and following childhood abuse, raising the potential of implementing volitional neural modulation using neurofeedback (NF) aimed at down-regulating amygdala activity. This study aimed to reliably probe limbic activity but overcome the limited applicability of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) NF by using a scalable electroencephalogram NF probe of amygdala-related activity, termed amygdala electrical-finger-print (amyg-EFP) in a randomized controlled trial.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging
January 2024
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Texas A&M University Health Science Center, Bryan, Texas; Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas; Texas A&M Institute for Neuroscience, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. Electronic address:
Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been associated with altered emotion processing and modulation in specific brain regions, i.e., the amygdala, insula, and medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychol Med
May 2023
Faculty of Social Sciences, School of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Background: Contemporary views of emotion dysregulation in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) highlight reduced ability to flexibly select regulatory strategies according to differing situational demands. However, empirical evidence of reduced regulatory selection flexibility in PTSD is lacking. Multiple studies show that healthy individuals demonstrate regulatory selection flexibility manifested in selecting attentional disengagement regulatory strategies (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychiatry Clin Neurosci
October 2023
Department of Psychiatry and Sagol Brain Institute, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Aim: To assess the efficacy of a novel neurofeedback (NF) method, targeting limbic activity, to treat emotional dysregulation related to premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD).
Methods: We applied a NF probe targeting limbic activity using a functional magnetic resonance imaging-inspired electroencephalogram model (termed Amyg-EFP-NF) in a double-blind randomized controlled trial. A frontal alpha asymmetry probe (AAS-NF), served as active control.
BMC Neurol
June 2023
Cognitive Neurology Unit, Neurological Institute, Tel-Aviv Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Eur J Psychotraumatol
May 2023
Sagol Brain Institute Tel-Aviv, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Guilt and Shame, two core self-related emotions, often emerge following trauma and play an important role in the development and maintenance of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Importantly, Guilt and Shame exhibit specific focal and non-specific global impacts of trauma on self-perception, respectively. Integrating psychological theories with neuroscientific knowledge, we suggest a scheme of two diverging clinical phenotypes of PTSD, associated with distinct self-related processes and differential functionality of relevant neural networks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Neurol
April 2023
Cognitive Neurology Unit, Neurological Institute, Tel-Aviv Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Background: Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) is the most common prion disease in humans causing a rapidly progressive neurological decline and dementia and is invariably fatal. The familial forms (genetic CJD, gCJD) are caused by mutations in the PRNP gene encoding for the prion protein (PrP). In Israel, there is a large cluster of gCJD cases, carriers of an E200K mutation in the PRNP gene, and therefore the largest population of at-risk individuals in the world.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFiScience
April 2023
Sagol Brain Institute, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv 6423906, Israel.
Linking scalp electroencephalography (EEG) signals and spontaneous firing activity from deep nuclei in humans is not trivial. To examine this, we analyzed simultaneous recordings of scalp EEG and unit activity in deeply located sites recorded overnight from patients undergoing pre-surgical invasive monitoring. We focused on modeling the within-subject average unit activity of two medial temporal lobe areas: amygdala and hippocampus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Psychiatry
March 2023
Psychiatry Department, Hadassah Medical Center, Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Introduction: Episodes of eating great quantities of extremely sweet and often aversive tasting food are a hallmark of bulimia nervosa. This unique eating pattern led researchers to seek and find differences in taste perception between patients and healthy control subjects. However, it is currently not known if these originate from central or peripheral impairment in the taste perception system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Psychiatry
February 2023
Yale School of Medicine (Ben-Zion, Spiller, Levy, Harpaz-Rotem) and Wu Tsai Institute and Department of Psychology (Levy, Harpaz-Rotem), Yale University, New Haven; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD Clinical Neuroscience Division, VA Connecticut Healthcare System, West Haven (Ben-Zion, Spiller, Harpaz-Rotem); Sagol Brain Institute, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ben-Zion, Shalev, Hendler), Sagol School of Neuroscience (Ben-Zion, Hendler), and Faculty of Social Sciences and Sackler Faculty of Medicine (Hendler), Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel; Department of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine, University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich (Spiller); Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford (Keynan); School of Psychological Sciences and Integrated Brain and Behavior Research Center, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel (Admon); Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, Texas A&M University, College Station (Liberzon); Department of Psychiatry, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York (Shalev).
Objective: The weak link between subjective symptom-based diagnostic methods for posttraumatic psychopathology and objectively measured neurobiological indices forms a barrier to the development of effective personalized treatments. To overcome this problem, recent studies have aimed to stratify psychiatric disorders by identifying consistent subgroups based on objective neural markers. Along these lines, a promising 2021 study by Stevens et al.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeuroimage
February 2023
Sagol Brain Institute, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel; Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel; Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel; School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. Electronic address:
The right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) is a region involved in the neural underpinning of cognitive control across several domains such as inhibitory control and attentional allocation process. Therefore, it constitutes a desirable neural target for brain-guided interventions such as neurofeedback (NF). To date, rIFG-NF has shown beneficial ability to rehabilitate or enhance cognitive functions using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI-NF).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBrain
May 2023
Department of Neurosurgery, Tel Aviv Medical Center, Tel Aviv 6423906, Israel.
Human pain is a salient stimulus composed of two main components: a sensory/somatic component, carrying peripheral nociceptive sensation via the spinothalamic tract and brainstem nuclei to the thalamus and then to sensory cortical regions, and an affective (suffering) component, where information from central thalamic nuclei is carried to the anterior insula, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and other regions. While the sensory component processes information about stimulus location and intensity, the affective component processes information regarding pain-related expectations, motivation to reduce pain and pain unpleasantness. Unlike investigations of acute pain that are based on the introduction of real-time stimulus during brain recordings, chronic pain investigations are usually based on longitudinal and case-control studies, which are limited in their ability to infer the functional network topology of chronic pain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMol Psychiatry
February 2023
Sagol Brain Institute Tel Aviv, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Commun Biol
October 2022
Sagol Brain Institute Tel Aviv, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Passive listening to music, without sound production or evident movement, is long known to activate motor control regions. Nevertheless, the exact neuroanatomical correlates of the auditory-motor association and its underlying neural mechanisms have not been fully determined. Here, based on a NeuroSynth meta-analysis and three original fMRI paradigms of music perception, we show that the long-ignored pre-motor region, area 55b, an anatomically unique and functionally intriguing region, is a core hub of music perception.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPain Res Manag
October 2022
Institute of Pain Medicine, Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Background: Chronic pain (CP) prevalence in different studies has been inconsistent, ranging from 12% in Spain to 42% in the UK.
Purpose: We conducted an internet-based survey in a representative cohort of Israeli adults assembled by a large professional survey company in order to probe the prevalence of CP in Israel.
Methods: 8,300 Israeli adults comprising a representative cohort of the Israeli population were asked whether they were suffering from pain lasting over 3 months.
Front Behav Neurosci
August 2022
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
Predicting the consequences of one's own decisions is crucial for organizing future behavior. However, when reward contingencies vary frequently, flexible adaptation of decisions is likely to depend on the situation. We examined the effects of an instructed threat context on choice behavior (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurosci Biobehav Rev
July 2022
Sagol Brain Institute, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Centre, Tel-Aviv, Israel; Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel; School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel; Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel. Electronic address:
Amygdala NeuroFeedback (NF) have the potential of being a valuable non-invasive intervention tool in many psychiatric disporders. However, the feasibility and best practices of this method have not been systematically examined. The current article presents a review of amygdala-NF studies, an analytic summary of study design parameters, and examination of brain mechanisms related to successful amygdala-NF performance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Behav Neurosci
May 2022
Sagol Brain Institute, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Centre, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel.
Background: Chronic pain disorders are often associated with cognitive-emotional dysregulation. However, the relations between such dysregulation, underlying brain processes, and clinical symptom constellations, remain unclear. Here, we aimed to characterize the abnormalities in cognitive-emotional processing involved in fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) and their relation to disease severity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeuroimage
August 2022
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim, Medical Faculty Mannheim / Heidelberg University, Germany.
Replicability and reproducibility of scientific findings is paramount for sustainable progress in neuroscience. Preregistration of the hypotheses and methods of an empirical study before analysis, the sharing of primary research data, and compliance with data standards such as the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS), are considered effective practices to secure progress and to substantiate quality of research. We investigated the current level of adoption of open science practices in neuroimaging and the difficulties that prevent researchers from using them.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrends Neurosci
August 2022
School of Psychological Sciences, Gershon H. Gordon Faculty of Social Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel; Sagol Brain Institute, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel; Sagol school of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel; Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. Electronic address:
Despite decades of experimental and clinical practice, the neuropsychological mechanisms underlying neurofeedback (NF) training remain obscure. NF is a unique form of reinforcement learning (RL) task, during which participants are provided with rewarding feedback regarding desired changes in neural patterns. However, key RL considerations - including choices during practice, prediction errors, credit-assignment problems, or the exploration-exploitation tradeoff - have infrequently been considered in the context of NF.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Psychiatry
February 2022
Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a severe psychiatric disorder with profound public health impact due to its high prevalence, chronic nature, accompanying functional impairment, and frequently occurring comorbidities. Early PTSD symptoms, often observed shortly after trauma exposure, abate with time in the majority of those who initially express them, yet leave a significant minority with chronic PTSD. While the past several decades of PTSD research have produced substantial knowledge regarding the mechanisms and consequences of this debilitating disorder, the diagnosis of and available treatments for PTSD still face significant challenges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMol Psychiatry
April 2022
Department of Psychiatry, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
© LitMetric 2025. All rights reserved.