ORCID Profile
0000-0002-4439-0579
Current Organisation
University of Colorado at Boulder
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2019
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 16-11-2022
Abstract: The diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been linked with changes in frontostriatal resting-state connectivity. However, replication of prior findings is lacking, and the mechanistic understanding of these effects is incomplete. To confirm and advance knowledge on changes in frontostriatal functional connectivity in OCD, participants with OCD and matched healthy controls underwent resting-state functional, structural and diffusion neuroimaging. Functional connectivity changes in frontostriatal systems were here replicated in in iduals with OCD (n = 52) compared with controls (n = 45). OCD participants showed greater functional connectivity (t = 4.3, PFWE = 0.01) between the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) but lower functional connectivity between the dorsal putamen and lateral prefrontal cortex (t = 3.8, PFWE = 0.04) relative to controls. Computational modelling suggests that NAcc-OFC connectivity changes reflect an increased influence of NAcc over OFC activity and reduced OFC influence over NAcc activity (posterior probability, Pp & 0.66). Conversely, dorsal putamen showed reduced modulation over lateral prefrontal cortex activity (Pp & 0.90). These functional deregulations emerged on top of a generally intact anatomical substrate. We provide out-of-s le replication of opposite changes in ventro-anterior and dorso-posterior frontostriatal connectivity in OCD and advance the understanding of the neural underpinnings of these functional perturbations. These findings inform the development of targeted therapies normalizing frontostriatal dynamics in OCD.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2020
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 02-09-2022
DOI: 10.1101/2022.09.01.22279518
Abstract: Current behavioural treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is informed by fear conditioning and involves iteratively re-evaluating previously threatening stimuli as safe. However, there is limited research investigating the neurobiological response to conditioning and reversal of threatening stimuli in in iduals with OCD. A clinical s le of in iduals with OCD (N=45) and matched healthy controls (N=45) underwent functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). While in the scanner, participants completed a well-validated fear reversal task and a resting-state scan. We found no evidence for group differences in task-evoked brain activation or functional connectivity in OCD. Multivariate analyses encompassing all participants in the clinical and control groups suggested that subjective appraisal of threatening and safe stimuli were associated with a larger difference in brain activity than the contribution of OCD symptoms. In particular, we observed a brain-behaviour continuum whereby heightened affective appraisal was related to increased bilateral insula activation during the task ( r = 0.39, p FWE = 0.001). These findings suggest that changes in conditioned threat-related processes may not be a core neurobiological feature of OCD and encourage further research on the role of subjective experience in fear conditioning.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 05-12-190728635
Publisher: MIT Press
Date: 2023
DOI: 10.1162/NETN_A_00295
Abstract: The dynamic integration of sensory and bodily signals is central to adaptive behaviour. Although the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the anterior insular cortex (AIC) play key roles in this process, their context-dependent dynamic interactions remain unclear. Here, we studied the spectral features and interplay of these two brain regions using high-fidelity intracranial-EEG recordings from five patients (ACC: 13 contacts, AIC: 14 contacts) acquired during movie viewing with validation analyses performed on an independent resting intracranial-EEG dataset. ACC and AIC both showed a power peak and positive functional connectivity in the gamma (30–35 Hz) frequency while this power peak was absent in the resting data. We then used a neurobiologically informed computational model investigating dynamic effective connectivity asking how it linked to the movie’s perceptual (visual, audio) features and the viewer’s heart rate variability (HRV). Exteroceptive features related to effective connectivity of ACC highlighting its crucial role in processing ongoing sensory information. AIC connectivity was related to HRV and audio emphasising its core role in dynamically linking sensory and bodily signals. Our findings provide new evidence for complementary, yet dissociable, roles of neural dynamics between the ACC and the AIC in supporting brain-body interactions during an emotional experience.
Publisher: American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Date: 03-2021
DOI: 10.1029/2020JG005891
Abstract: Hydrogen isotope ratios of sedimentary leaf waxes (δ 2 H Wax values) are increasingly used to reconstruct past hydroclimate. Here, we add δ 2 H Wax values from 19 lakes and four sw s on 15 tropical Pacific islands to an updated global compilation of published data from surface sediments and soils. Globally, there is a strong positive linear correlation between δ 2 H values of mean annual precipitation (δ 2 H P values) and the leaf waxes n ‐C 29 ‐alkane ( R 2 = 0.74, n = 665) and n ‐C 28 ‐acid ( R 2 = 0.74, n = 242). Tropical Pacific δ 2 H Wax values fall within the predicted range of values based on the global calibration, and the largest residuals from the global regression line are no greater than those observed elsewhere, despite large uncertainties in δ 2 H P values at some Pacific sites. However, tropical Pacific δ 2 H Wax values in isolation are not correlated with estimated δ 2 H P values from isoscapes or from isotope‐enabled general circulation models. Palynological analyses from these same Pacific sediment s les suggest no systematic relationship between any particular type of pollen distribution and deviations from the global calibration line. Rather, the poor correlations observed in the tropical Pacific are likely a function of the small range of δ 2 H P values relative to the typical residuals around the global calibration line. Our results suggest that δ 2 H Wax values are currently most suitable for use in detecting large changes in precipitation in the tropical Pacific and elsewhere, but that le room for improving this threshold exits in both improved understanding of δ 2 H variability in plants, as well as in precipitation.
No related grants have been discovered for Saurabh Sonkusare.