Nicolette Siep

Fighting food temptations: The modulating effects of short-term cognitive reappraisal, suppression and up-regulation on mesocorticolimbic activity related to appetitive motivation

The premise of cognitive therapy is that one can overcome the irresistible temptation of highly palatable foods by actively restructuring the way one thinks about food. Testing this idea, participants in the present study were instructed to passively view foods, up-regulate food palatability thoughts, apply cognitive reappraisal (e.g., thinking about health consequences), or suppress food palatability thoughts and cravings. We examined whether these strategies affect self-reported food craving and mesocorticolimbic activity as assessed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. It was hypothesized that cognitive reappraisal would most effectively inhibit the mesocorticolimbic activity and associated food craving as compared to suppression. In addition, it was hypothesized that suppression would lead to more prefrontal cortex activity, reflecting the use of more control resources, as compared to cognitive reappraisal. Self-report results indicated that up-regulation increased food craving compared to the other two conditions, but that there was no difference in craving between the suppression and cognitive reappraisal strategy. Corroborating self-report results, the neuroimaging results showed that up-regulation increased activity in important regions of the mesocorticolimbic circuitry, including the ventral tegmental area, ventral striatum, operculum, posterior insular gyrus, medial orbitofrontal cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Contrary to our hypothesis, suppression more effectively decreased activity in the core of the mesocorticolimbic circuitry (i.e., ventral tegmental area and ventral striatum) compared to cognitive reappraisal. Overall, the results support the contention that appetitive motivation can be modulated by the application of short-term cognitive control strategies.

Emotional sensitivity, emotion regulation and impulsivity in borderline personality disorder: a critical review of fMRI studies.

Emotional sensitivity, emotion regulation and impulsivity are fundamental topics in research of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Studies using fMRI examining the neural correlates concerning these topics is growing and has just begun understanding the underlying neural correlates in BPD. However, there are strong similarities but also important differences in results of different studies. It is therefore important to know in more detail what these differences are and how we should interpret these. In present review a critical light is shed on the fMRI studies examining emotional sensitivity, emotion regulation and impulsivity in BPD patients. First an outline of the methodology and the results of the studies will be given. Thereafter important issues that remained unanswered and topics to improve future research are discussed. Future research should take into account the limited power of previous studies and focus more on BPD specificity with regard to time course responses, different regulation strategies, manipulation of self-regulation, medication use, a wider range of stimuli, gender effects and the inclusion of a clinical control group.

Reward activity in satiated overweight women is decreased during unbiased viewing but increased when imagining taste: an event-related fMRI study

Objective:The aim of this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was to investigate reward-related brain activity in satiated overweight and healthy-weight participants in response to high-calorie palatable food pictures, when viewing the pictures without prior instructions (called unbiased viewing) versus imagining the taste of the shown pictures (called taste imagination). We predicted that neural activation in brain reward regions would be greater in overweight participants than in healthy-weight ones and that this difference between groups would be strongest during unbiased viewing.Method:Neural activation was measured using fMRI in 14 overweight (mean body mass index (BMI): 29.8 kg m−2) and 15 healthy-weight (mean BMI: 21.1 kg m−2) participants who were satiated, in response to palatable and unpalatable high-calorie and low-calorie food pictures, presented in an event-related design during two conditions: unbiased viewing (no prior instructions) versus taste imagination.Results:A group × condition interaction was found in 14 brain regions involved in food reward processing during the presentation of high-calorie palatable food stimuli. During the taste imagination condition, neural activation in these regions was greater in the overweight participants than in the healthy-weight ones. Contrary to our expectations, the opposite pattern was observed during unbiased viewing: activation in reward regions in the overweight participants was reduced compared with the healthy-weight ones. In all brain reward regions except for the left amygdala, the group × condition interaction was specific to high-calorie palatable food stimuli.Conclusion:Greater reward activity in the overweight participants compared with the control group when imagining taste may represent an increased reward response induced by high-calorie palatable food. During unbiased viewing, reduced reward activation in the overweight participants compared with those with a healthy weight may reflect avoidance of high-calorie palatable food stimuli. Taken together, this pattern of activation may reflect ambivalence in the overweight group between desire for (in the taste imagination condition) and avoidance of (in the unbiased viewing condition) high-calorie palatable food stimuli.

Temporal Dynamics of Stress-Induced Alternations of Intrinsic Amygdala Connectivity and Neuroendocrine Levels

Stress-induced changes in functional brain connectivity have been linked to the etiology of stress-related disorders. Resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) is especially informative in characterizing the temporal trajectory of glucocorticoids during stress adaptation. Using the imaging Maastricht Acute Stress Test (iMAST), we induced acute stress in 39 healthy volunteers and monitored the neuroendocrine stress levels during three runs of resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI): before (run 1), immediately following (run 2), and 30min after acute stress (run 3). The iMAST resulted in strong increases in cortisol levels. Whole-brain analysis revealed that acute stress (run 2 - 1) was characterized by changes in connectivity of the amygdala with the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC), ventral posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), cuneus, parahippocampal gyrus, and culmen. Additionally, cortisol responders were characterized by enhanced amygdala - medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) connectivity. Stress recovery (run 3 - 2) was characterized by altered amygdala connectivity with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), ventral and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), anterior hippocampal complex, cuneus, and presupplementary motor area (preSMA). Opposite to non-responders, cortisol responders were characterized by enhanced amygdala connectivity with the anterior hippocampal complex and parahippocampal gyrus, and reduced connectivity with left dlPFC, dACC, and culmen during early recovery. Acute stress responding and recovery are thus associated with changes in the functional connectivity of the amygdala network. Our findings show that these changes may be regulated via stress-induced neuroendocrine levels. Defining stress-induced neuronal network changes is pertinent to developing treatments that target abnormal neuronal activity.

The Craving Stops Before You Feel It: Neural Correlates of Chocolate Craving During Cue Exposure with Response Prevention

Cue reactivity and craving can be influenced by cue exposure with response prevention (CERP). This study investigated the neural correlates of CERP using functional magnetic resonance imaging, while participants smelled chocolate (17 participants) or a control object (17 participants). CERP was interrupted by 7 scanning sequences measuring the brain response to neutral and chocolate pictures. Chocolate craving was hypothesized to be mirrored by activation in brain reward regions. As expected, control group craving remained similar throughout the session. A short exposure (30 min) increased chocolate craving in the experimental group, which was mirrored by significant group differences in activation in brain reward regions. Unexpectedly, a long exposure (60 min) did not lead to craving extinction in the experimental group, although craving started to decrease at this point. On a neural level, however, activation in regions of interest in the experimental group seemed to have extinguished after the long exposure, as activation levels returned to or fell below control group levels. These results indicate that brain reward activation during CERP is linked to craving, at least for a short exposure. Regarding a longer exposure, the decline in brain reward activation in the experimental group may be a precursor of a decrease in craving.

Negative mood-induction modulates default mode network resting-state functional connectivity in chronic depression

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of sad mood on default mode network (DMN) resting-state connectivity in persons with chronic major depressive disorder (cMDD). METHODS Participants with a diagnosis of cMDD (n=18) and age, gender and education level matched participants without a diagnosis of depression (n=18) underwent a resting-state fMRI scan, before and after a sad mood induction. The posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) was used as a seed for DMN functional connectivity across the two resting-state measurements. RESULTS Mood ratings decreased in both groups following the sad mood induction procedure. PCC connectivity with the parahippocampal gyrus, the superior temporal gyrus and the anterior inferior temporal cortex increased in cMDD patients following the sad mood induction, whereas it decreased in non-patient controls. PCC connectivity with the anterior prefrontal cortex and the precuneus decreased in cMDD patients following the sad mood induction, whereas it increased in non-patient controls. LIMITATIONS Limitations of this study include the relatively small sample size and lack of a clinical control group. CONCLUSIONS These findings are in line with neurobiological models of depression suggesting that the observed changes in DMN connectivity following the sad mood induction might reflect a failure to exert cognitive control over negative memory retrieval in patients with cMDD.

Cognitions and Emotions in Eating Disorders

The cognitive model of eating disorders (EDs) states that the processing of external and internal stimuli might be biased in mental disorders. These biases, or cognitive errors, systematically distort the individuals experiences and, in that way, maintains the eating disorder. This chapter presents an updated literature review of experimental studies investigating these cognitive biases. Results indicate that ED patients show biases in attention, interpretation, and memory when it comes to the processing of food-, weight-, and body shape-related cues. Some recent studies show that they also demonstrate errors in general cognitive abilities such as set shifting, central coherence, and decision making. A future challenge is whether cognitive biases and processes can be manipulated. Few preliminary studies suggest that an attention retraining and training in the cognitive modulation of food reward processing might be effective strategies to change body satisfaction, food cravings, and eating behavior.

Sensory-specific satiety is impervious to the tasting of other foods with its assessment.

Sensory-specific satiety (SSS) refers to the reduction in pleasantness of a food with its consumption relative to other unconsumed foods. In a typical SSS paradigm, the participants receive a range of food items to taste and evaluate and then one of the foods is consumed ad libitum until satiation. After the consumption of the test food, all the foods (including the test food) are then again tasted and evaluated. If SSS is the result of habituation this evaluation of the test food after its consumption would be subject to dishabituation (i.e. recovery of SSS) if the other unconsumed foods are evaluated first. To examine whether this is the case a total of 57 participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: Test Food First (TFF; n=28) or Test Food Last (TFL; n=29). We hypothesized that group TFF would show stronger SSS than TFL. We found clear indication of SSS, but the degree of SSS did not differ between the two groups (F[1,55]<1). This finding suggests that SSS is unaffected by the sequence of tasting food items with its assessment. The potential implications for understanding SSS in terms of habituation are discussed.

Positive erotic picture stimuli for emotion research in heterosexual females

In most experimental studies, emotional pictures are widely used as stimulus material. However, there is still a lack of standardization of picture stimuli displaying erotic relationships, despite the association between a number of psychological problems and severe impairments and problems in intimate relationships. The aim of the study was to test a set of erotic stimuli, with the potential to be used in experimental studies, with heterosexual female subjects. Twenty International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures and an additional 100 pictures showing romantic but not explicitly sexual scenes and/or attractive single males were selected. All pictures were rated with respect to valence, arousal, and dominance by 41 heterosexual women and compared to pictures with negative, positive, and neutral emotional valence. Erotic IAPS pictures and our additional erotic pictures did not differ in any of the evaluation dimensions. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) for valence, arousal, and dominance comparing different picture valence categories showed strong effects for category. However, valence was not significantly different between erotic and positive pictures, while arousal and control were not significantly different between positive and neutral pictures. The pictures of our new set are as positive for heterosexual women as highly positive IAPS pictures, but higher in arousal and dominance. The picture set can be used in experimental psychiatric studies requiring high numbers of stimuli per category. Limitations are the restriction of stimuli application to heterosexual females only and to self-report data.

Deficient amygdala: prefrontal intrinsic connectivity after effortful emotion regulation in borderline personality disorder

Abstract Emotion instability in borderline personality disorder (BPD) has been associated with an impaired fronto-limbic inhibitory network. However, functional connectivity (FC) underlying altered emotion regulation in BPD has yet to be established. Here, we used resting-state fMRI to investigate enduring effects of effortful emotion regulation on the amygdala intrinsic FC in BPD. In this multicenter study, resting-state fMRI was acquired before and after an emotion regulation task in 48 BPD patients and 39 non-patient comparison individuals. The bilateral amygdalae were used as a seed in the whole-brain FC analysis and two-way mixed ANOVA to test whether BPD patients exhibited weaker post-task increase in the amygdala intrinsic FC with the prefrontal cortex (PFC), compared to non-patients. Subsequently, we explored whether the results are common for personality disorders characterized by emotional problems, using additional data of 21 cluster-C personality disorder patients. In contrast to non-patients, BPD patients failed to show increased post-task amygdala resting-state FC with the medial, dorsolateral, ventrolateral PFC, and superior temporal gyrus, but surprisingly exhibited decreased FC with the posterior cingulate cortex and increased FC with the superior parietal lobule. In BPD patients, the emotion regulation task failed to increase resting-state amygdala FC with brain regions essential for effortful emotion regulation, which suggests: (a) altered cognitive control typically used to indirectly alleviate distress by reinterpreting the meaning of emotional stimuli; (b) impaired direct regulation of emotional responses, which might be common for personality disorders; (c) avoidance of self-related appraisals induced by social emotional stimuli.