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Emotional disorders inflict an enormous burden on society. Research on brain abnormalities implicated in emotional disorders has witnessed great progress over the past decades. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and its analytic approaches have been applied to characterize the local properties of patients with emotional disorders. Additionally, brain activity alterations of emotional disorders have shown frequency-specific. Despite the gains in understanding the roles of brain abnormalities in emotional disorders, the limitation of the small sample size needs to be highlighted. Lastly, we proposed that evidence from the positive psychology research stream presents it as a viable discipline, whose suggestions could be developed in future emotional disorders research. Such interdisciplinary research may produce novel treatments and intervention options. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Brain Function and Dysfunction., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Background: Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is becoming highly prevalent among female and is characterized by emotional, physical and behavior symptoms. Previous evidence suggested functional dysregulation of female brain was expected to be involved in the etiology of PMS. The aim of present study was to evaluate the alterations of spontaneous brain activity in PMS patients based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)., Methods: 20 PMS patients and 21 healthy controls underwent resting-state fMRI scanning during luteal phase. All participants were asked to complete a prospective daily record of severity of problems (DRSP) questionnaire., Results: Compared with healthy controls, the results showed that PMS patients had increased fALFF in bilateral precuneus, left hippocampus and left inferior temporal cortex, and decreased fALFF in bilateral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and cerebellum at luteal phase. Moreover, the DRSP scores of PMS patients were negatively correlated with the mean fALFF in ACC and positively correlated with the fALFF in precuneus., Limitations: (1) the study did not investigate whether or not abnormal brain activity differences between groups in mid-follicular phase, and within-group changes. between phases.(2) it was relatively limited sample size and the participants were young; (3) fALFF could not provide us with more holistic information of brain network;(4) the comparisons of PMS and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) were not involved in the study., Conclusions: The present study shows abnormal spontaneous brain activity in PMS patients revealed by fALFF, which could provide neuroimaging evidence to further improve our understanding of the underlying neural mechanism of PMS., (Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

In light of future pharmacological interventions, neuroimaging markers able to assess the response to treatment would be crucial. In Granulin (GRN) disease, preclinical data will prompt pharmacological trials in the future. Two main points need to be assessed: (1) to identify target regions in different disease stages and (2) to determine the most accurate functional and structural neuroimaging index to be used. To this aim, we have taken advantage of the multivariate approach of multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to explore the information of brain activity patterns in a cohort of GRN Thr272fs carriers at different disease stages (14 frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients and 17 asymptomatic carriers) and a group of 33 healthy controls. We studied structural changes by voxel-based morphometry (VBM), functional connectivity by assessing salience, default mode, fronto-parietal, dorsal attentional, executive networks, and local connectivity by regional homogeneity, amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (ALFF), fractional ALFF (fALFF), degree centrality, and voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity. In FTD patients with GRN mutation, the most predictive measure was VBM structural analysis, while in asymptomatic carriers the best predictor marker was the local connectivity measure (fALFF). Altogether, all indexes demonstrated fronto-temporo-parietal damage in GRN pathology, with widespread structural damage of fronto-parietal and temporal regions when disease is overt. MVPA could be of aid in identifying the most accurate neuroimaging marker for clinical trials. This approach was able to identify both the target region and the best neuroimaging approach, which would be specific in the different disease stages. Further studies are needed to simultaneously integrate multimodal indexes in a classifier able to trace the disease progression moving from preclinical to clinical stage of the disease.

Objective: The motivation of this study is to evaluate the possible alteration of regional resting state brain activity induced by the acute radiofrequency electromagnetic field (RF-EMF) exposure (30min) of Long Term Evolution (LTE) signal., Methods: We designed a controllable near-field LTE RF-EMF exposure environment. Eighteen subjects participated in a double-blind, crossover, randomized and counterbalanced experiment including two sessions (real and sham exposure). The radiation source was close to the right ear. Then the resting state fMRI signals of human brain were collected before and after the exposure in both sessions. We measured the amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) and fractional ALFF (fALFF) to characterize the spontaneous brain activity., Results: We found the decreased ALFF value around in left superior temporal gyrus, left middle temporal gyrus, right superior temporal gyrus, right medial frontal gyrus and right paracentral lobule after the real exposure. And the decreased fALFF value was also detected in right medial frontal gyrus and right paracentral lobule., Conclusions: The study provided the evidences that 30min LTE RF-EMF exposure modulated the spontaneous low frequency fluctuations in some brain regions., Significance: With resting state fMRI, we found the alteration of spontaneous low frequency fluctuations induced by the acute LTE RF-EMF exposure., (Copyright © 2013 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: We aimed to identify the aberrant functional hubs in patients with acute severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI) and investigate whether they could help inform prognosis. Methods: Twenty-eight sTBI patients and health controls underwent imaging scanning. The graph-theoretical measure of degree centrality (DC) was applied to identify the abnormal brain functional hubs and conjoined with regions of interest-based analysis to investigate their interaction and impact on whole-brain. We further split sTBI patients into two subgroups according to their recovery to explore whether the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) roles in functional connectivity (FC) differential areas to help inform the patients' long-term prognosis. Results: We identified the part of prefrontal cortex (PFC), precentral and postcentral gyrus (Pre-/Post-CG), cingulate gyrus (CgG), posterior medial cortex (PMC), and brainstem that could be core hubs whose DC was significantly increased in patients with acute sTBI. The interaction strength of the paired hubs could be enhanced (CG-PFC, CgG-PFC, CG-brainstem, CgG-brainstem, PMC-brainstem, and PFC-brainstem) and weakened (CG-CgG, CG-PMC, CgG-PMC, and PMC-PFC), compared with healthy controls. We also found abnormal FC in 5 hubs to whole-brain. The spontaneous brain activities in the FC differential regions [e.g., the fALFF and mean fALFF value] were valid to predict outcome at 6-month in patients with sTBI. Conclusion: We demonstrated a compensatory mechanism that part of brain regions will converge into abnormal functional hubs in patients with acute sTBI, which provides a potential approach to objectively predicting patients' long-term outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tobacco use during later adolescence and young adulthood may cause serious neurophysiological changes; rationally, it is extremely important to study the relationship between brain dysfunction and behavioral performances in young adult smokers. Previous resting state studies investigated the neural mechanisms in smokers. Unfortunately, few studies focused on spontaneous activity differences between young adult smokers and nonsmokers from both intra-regional and inter-regional levels, less is known about the association between resting state abnormalities and behavioral deficits. Therefore, we used fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (fALFF) and resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) to investigate the resting state spontaneous activity differences between young adult smokers and nonsmokers. A correlation analysis was carried out to assess the relationship between neuroimaging findings and clinical information (pack-years, cigarette dependence, age of onset and craving score) as well as cognitive control deficits measured by the Stroop task. Consistent with previous addiction findings, our results revealed the resting state abnormalities within frontostriatal circuits, i.e., enhanced spontaneous activity of the caudate and reduced functional strength between the caudate and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in young adult smokers. Moreover, the fALFF values of the caudate were correlated with craving and RSFC strength between the caudate and ACC was associated with the cognitive control impairments in young adult smokers. Our findings could lead to a better understanding of intrinsic functional architecture of baseline brain activity in young smokers by providing regional and brain circuit spontaneous neuronal activity properties as well as their association with cognitive control impairments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]