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Background: Psychological science aims at understanding general human mind and behaviours, yet most published studies used data from a very narrow slice of the human population, i.e., samples from Western, Education, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) regions, especially from North America. This creates the generalizability crisis in psychological science. To alleviate this problem, researchers are trying to collect more data from “non-WEIRD” regions. Large-scale international collaborative projects were initiated to increase the diversity of human subjects. However, it is unknown whether human subjects from “non-WEIRD” regions can represent their local population. Methods: We plan to conduct a meta-research to survey the sample characteristics of Chinese participants reported in empirical studies published in 5 mainstream Chinese psychological journals and in large-scale international collaborations. We will first extract information about Chinese subjects reported in these journals and in those projects. Then, we will use these data to answer the following questions: (1) Whether the Chinese participants reported in large-scale international collaboration are from the same (narrow) population as those reported in Chinese psychological journals? (2) To what extent these Chinese participants represent the Chinese population, as compared with the official census data and from a large-scale social science survey, Chinese Family Panel Study (CFPS)? (3) What are the share and distinct characteristics between Chinese participants and participants from other regions. Hypothesis: We expect that (1) There is no difference between Chinese participants reported in Chinese journals and in large-scale international collaboration; (2) As WEIRD sample only represents a narrow slice of human population, the Chinese participants are also from a very narrow slice of Chinese population; (3) Given that most psychological researchers around the world use convenient sampling methods, Chinese human subjects share many characteristics with participants from other regions (e.g., most of them are young college students who take psychological courses). Discussion: If our hypotheses are confirmed, we probably discuss the mindset of using convenient sampling approach in psychological science and how this mindset spread from Western to all psychological science and how the current publishing system reinforced such mindset/practices.

© 2021 American Neurological Association, Objective: Knowing explicitly where we are is an interpretation of our spatial representations. Reduplicative paramnesia is a disrupting syndrome in which patients present a firm belief of spatial mislocation. Here, we studied the largest sample of patients with delusional misidentifications of space (i.e. reduplicative paramnesia) after stroke to shed light on their neurobiology. Methods: In a prospective, cumulative, case-control study, we screened 400 patients with acute right-hemispheric stroke. We included 64 cases and 233 controls. First, lesions were delimited and normalized. Then, we computed structural and functional disconnection maps using methods of lesion-track and network-mapping. The maps were compared, controlling for confounders. Second, we built a multivariate logistic model including clinical, behavioural and neuroimaging data. Finally, we performed a nested cross-validation of the model with a support-vector machine analysis. Results: The most frequent misidentification subtype was confabulatory mislocation (56%), followed by place reduplication (19%) and chimeric assimilation (13%). Our results indicate that structural disconnection is the strongest predictor of the syndrome and included two distinct streams, connecting right fronto-thalamic and right occipito-temporal structures. In the multivariate model, the independent predictors of reduplicative paramnesia were the structural disconnection map, lesion sparing of right dorsal fronto-parietal regions, age and anosognosia. Good discrimination accuracy was demonstrated (area under the curve = 0.80[0.75-0.85]). Interpretation: Our results localize the anatomical circuits that may have a role in the abnormal spatial-emotional binding and in the defective updating of spatial representations underlying reduplicative paramnesia. This novel data may contribute to better understand the pathophysiology of delusional syndromes after stroke., The authors acknowledge our colleagues from the Department of Neurology and from the Language Research Laboratory for their contribution to patient screening. This work received funding from “PRÉMIO JOÃO LOBO ANTUNES” – SCML (grant to P.N.A.), from “Bolsa de Investigação em Doenças Vasculares Cerebrais 2017”–SPAVC (grant to P.N.A.) and from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 818521 to M.T.S.).“Data were provided in part bythe Human Connectome Project, WU-Minn Consortium(Principal Investigators: David Van Essen and KamilUgurbil; 1U54 MH091657) funded by the 16 NIH Institutes and Centers that support the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research; and by the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University.

Modern scientific discovery depends on collecting large heterogeneous datasets with many sources of variability, and applying domain-specific pipelines from which one can draw insight or clinical utility. For example, macroscale connectomics studies require complex pipelines to process raw functional or diffusion data and estimate connectomes. Individual studies tend to customize pipelines to their needs, raising concerns about their reproducibility, which add to a longer list of factors that may differ across studies and result in failures to replicate (including sampling, experimental design, and data acquisition protocols). Mitigating these issues requires multi-study datasets and the development of pipelines that can be applied across them. We developed NeuroData’s MRI to Graphs (NDMG) pipeline using several functional and diffusion studies, including the Consortium for Reliability and Reproducability, to estimate connectomes. Without any manual intervention or parameter tuning, NDMG ran on 25 different studies (≈6,000 scans) from 19 sites, with each scan resulting in a biologically plausible connectome (as assessed by multiple quality assurance metrics at each processing stage). For each study, the connectomes from NDMG are more similar within than across individuals, indicating that NDMG is preserving biological variability. Moreover, the connectomes exhibit near perfect consistency for certain connectional properties across every scan, individual, study, site and modality; these include stronger ipsilateral than contralateral connections and stronger homotopic than heterotopic connections. Yet, the magnitude of the differences varied across individuals and studies—much more so when pooling data across sites, even after controlling for study, site, and basic demographic variables (i.e., age, sex, and ethnicity). This indicates that other experimental variables (possibly those not measured or reported) are contributing to this variability, which if not accounted for can limit the value of aggregate datasets, as well as expectations regarding the accuracy of findings and likelihood of replication. We therefore provide a set of principles to guide the development of pipelines capable of pooling data across studies while maintaining biological variability and minimizing measurement error. This open science approach provides us with an opportunity to understand and eventually mitigate spurious results for both past and future studies.

Background The ability to recognize, understand and interpret other’s actions and emotions has been linked to the mirror system or action-observation-network (AON). Although variations in these abilities are prevalent in the neuro-typical population, persons diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have deficits in the social domain and exhibit alterations in this neural network. Method Here, we examined functional network properties of the AON using graph theory measures and region-to-region functional connectivity analyses of resting-state fMRI-data from adolescents and young adults with ASD and typical controls (TC). Results Overall, our graph theory analyses provided convergent evidence that the network integrity of the AON is altered in ASD, and that reductions in network efficiency relate to reductions in overall network density (i.e., decreased overall connection strength). Compared to TC, individuals with ASD showed significant reductions in network efficiency and increased shortest path lengths and centrality. Importantly, when adjusting for overall differences in network density between ASD and TC groups, participants with ASD continued to display reductions in network integrity, suggesting that also network-level organizational properties of the AON are altered in ASD. Conclusion While differences in empirical connectivity contributed to reductions in network integrity, graph theoretical analyses provided indications that also changes in the high-level network organization reduced integrity of the AON., PLoS ONE, 10 (8), ISSN:1932-6203

© 2015 Chen et al. Sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) is an intrinsic personality trait whose genetic and neural bases have recently been studied. The current study used a neural mediation model to explore whether resting-state brain functions mediated the effects of dopamine-related genes on SPS. 298 healthy Chinese college students (96 males, mean age = 20.42 years, SD = 0.89) were scanned with magnetic resonance imaging during resting state, genotyped for 98 loci within the dopamine system, and administered the Highly Sensitive Person Scale. We extracted a "gene score" that summarized the genetic variations representing the 10 loci that were significantly linked to SPS, and then used path analysis to search for brain regions whose resting-state data would help explain the gene-behavior association. Mediation analysis revealed that temporal homogeneity of regional spontaneous activity (ReHo) in the precuneus actually suppressed the effect of dopamine-related genes on SPS. The path model explained 16% of the variance of SPS. This study represents the first attempt at using a multi-gene voxel-based neural mediation model to explore the complex relations among genes, brain, and personality.