Cerebral Cortex

Speech brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) translate brain signals into words or audio outputs, enabling communication for people having lost their speech abilities due to diseases or injury. While important advances in vocalized, attempted, and mimed speech decoding have been achieved, results for internal speech decoding are sparse, and have yet to achieve high functionality. Notably, it is still unclear from which brain areas internal speech can be decoded. In this work, a tetraplegic participant...

IntroductionThe primary psychoactive component in marijuana is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which acts on receptors, such as cannabinoid 1 (CB1), that are distributed broadly throughout the brain. THC interferes with synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis and impacts the brains macrostructure, specifically white matter where CB1 receptors are abundant. The current study aims to investigate whether callosal morphology differs depending on how much experience individuals have with marijuana. Methods...

BackgroundPrevious studies have shown that brain volume is negatively associated with cigarette smoking, but there is an ongoing debate whether smoking causes lowered brain volume or a lower brain volume is a risk factor for smoking. We address this debate through multiple methods that evaluate causality: Bradford Hills Criteria to understand a causal relationship in epidemiological studies, mediation analysis, and Mendelian Randomization. MethodsIn 28,404 participants of European descent from ...

Haptic feedback can play a useful role in rehabilitation and brain-computer interface applications by providing users with information about their system or performance. One challenge delivering tactile stimulation is not knowing how the haptic sensation is actually perceived, irrespective of the stimulation amplitude, during real-world use and beyond controlled psychophysical experiments. In a participant with chronically implanted electrocorticography arrays, we observed that perceived intensi...

The analysis of EEG microstates is a useful method for exploring large-scale networks and brain dynamics. In addition to the often-reported microstates, or so-called "canonical microstates", another topography has been reported in the literature - topography with a prominent straight line separating positive and negative values that extends from the nasion to the inion (vertical topography - VT). This topography was also revealed in our simultaneous EEG/fMRI and shielded cabin EEG data collected...

The present study aimed to characterize microstate dynamics induced by non-reactive attention underlying mindfulness. Electroencephalogram signals from eighteen trained meditators and a matched non-meditators group were recorded before, during, and after a non-reactive attention meditation or during three resting periods respectively, while they were passively exposed to auditory stimulation. In a multimodal approach, microstate cluster decompositions, personality trait questionnaires, phenomeno...

Tobacco smoking is a major modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular and lung diseases. A better understanding of its neurobiological underpinnings will benefit the prevention of smoking-related illnesses and mortality. Recent neuroimaging studies have identified a correlation between smoking and iron concentration in the brains striatum, a subcortical region involved in habit formation and compulsive behaviour, and a central node of dopamine activity. Moreover, iron accumulation in the striatum...

BackgroundStuttering is a speech disorder that affects more than 70 million people worldwide, limiting their ability to communicate and socialize. In recent decades, several studies have demonstrated a link between stuttering and a deficit of {beta} electroencephalographic (EEG) power. Aim and MethodsThis study investigates the efficacy of a novel auditory neuro modulating technology that leverages euphonic music tracks with broad-spectrum binaural beats to induce selective EEG spectral power c...

Although animal research and some rare human case reports suggest that lesions of the dorsal pons yield saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movement deficits, little is known about the functional topology of the human pontine nuclei (PN) and whether limb movements are similarly affected as eye movements. Saccadic as well as SP eye and pointing movements were measured in six patients with lesions in the PN region. Five patients of the six exhibited dysmetric saccades, whilst smooth pursuit gain was r...

Problem StatementPain has a crucial function in the human body acting as an early warning signal to protect against tissue damage. However, both assessment of pain experience and its clinical diagnosis rely on highly subjective methods. Objective evaluation of the presence of pain under analgesic drug administrations becomes even more complicated. ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to propose a transfer learning (TL) based deep learning (DL) methodology for accurate detection and objective cla...

Classical psychedelics have regained interest for their potential to treat psychiatric and neurological disorders, and explore neural mechanisms supporting perception, cognition, and mood. Acute psychedelic effects have been linked to increases in brain complexity and entropy, but it is unclear if these changes are specific to psychedelics or reflect more general psychoactive effects. Here, we examined whether brain complexity and entropy metrics can identify features specific to the psychedelic...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is central to studying neurobiological mechanisms, yet fMRI has limited clinical utility, highlighting the need for novel approaches. We show that a component of the fMRI signal--the systemic low-frequency oscillation (sLFO), linked to blood flow and physiological measures of arousal--indexes trait- and state-level drug use phenotypes. In individuals who chronically use nicotine, sLFO amplitude increased during abstinence and correlated with heightene...

Full abstractO_ST_ABSBackgroundC_ST_ABSPrevious studies in people with substance use disorders (SUDs) have implicated both the frontopolar cortex and amygdala in drug cue reactivity and craving, and amygdala-frontopolar coupling is considered a marker of early relapse risk. Accumulating data highlight that the frontopolar cortex can be considered a promising therapeutic target for transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in SUDs. However, one-size-fits-all approaches to TMS targets resulted in su...

BackgroundSensory tricks (SeT) are various maneuvers that can alleviate dystonic contractions and are a characteristic feature of cervical dystonia (CD). The neurophysiology underlying SeT, however, remains largely unknown. Reducing the abnormal cortical facilitation and modulating the abnormal cortical and subcortical oscillatory activity are mechanisms that have been proposed. The supplementary motor area (SMA) and primary sensorimotor cortices are thought to be relevant to this phenomenon. O...

Tobacco smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable death and disease worldwide. Most smokers want to quit, but relapse rates are high. To improve current smoking cessation treatments, a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of nicotine dependence and related craving behavior is needed. Studies on cue-driven cigarette craving have been a particularly useful tool for investigating the neural mechanisms of drug craving. Here, functional neuroimaging studies in humans have ident...

BackgroundCocaine use disorder (CUD) is a worldwide public health condition which is suggested to induce pathological changes in macro- and microstructure. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has gained attention to induce a reduction in CUD symptoms. Here, we sought to elucidate whether rTMS induces changes on white-matter (WM) microstructure in frontostriatal circuits after two weeks of therapy in patients with CUD, and to test whether baseline WM microstructure of the same cir...

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) possesses critical neurobiological and pathophysiological significance as a hub within the mesolimbic reward circuitry. Recent advances in non-invasive neuromodulation have demonstrated that temporal interference (TI) stimulation can achieve focal deep brain targeting in humans with favorable safety profiles. Therefore, TI stimulation on the NAc holds substantial promise for treating neuropsychiatric disorders. While stimulation duration represents an understudied par...

Cannabis use disorder (CUD) affects [~]22M people globally and is characterised by difficulties in cutting down and quitting use, but the underlying neurobiology remains unclear. We examined resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between regions-of-interest (ROIs) of the addiction neurocircuitry and the rest of the brain in 65 individuals with moderate-to-severe CUD who reported attempts to cut down or quit, compared to 42 controls, and explored the association between rsFC and cannabis ex...

BackgroundA common feature of Cannabis use disorder (CUD) is an intense reactivity to cannabis cues, which are becoming increasingly visible due to growth in the decriminalization, accessibility and marketing of cannabis products. The brains automatic reactivity to cannabis cues can trigger craving and subsequent use. This study aimed to test neural activity during cannabis cue-induced craving in non-treatment seeking individuals with moderate-to-severe CUD, with past attempts to cut down/quit. ...

Background and ObjectivesTactile sensations referred to body parts other than those stimulated have been repeatedly described across a wide range of deafferentation and neuropathic pain conditions, including amputation, complex regional pain syndrome, spinal cord injury, and brachial plexus avulsion. Common to all interpretations of referred sensations is the notion that they result from central nervous system (CNS) reorganisation. For example, in amputees, sensations referred to the phantom lim...