Brain Health Across the Life Span Proceedings of a Workshop (2020) / Chapter Skim
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4 Behavioral and Biological Convergence
4 Behavioral and Biological Convergence
Pages 39-64
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From page 39... ...
• From a research perspective, predictive modeling approaches will help to move functional magnetic resonance imaging from a science of group averages -- meaning, elucidating what happens in the brain on average when people pay attention -- toward a science of individual differences. (Mon ica Rosenberg)
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From page 40... ...
A person experiencing bad stress may feel overwhelmed and lacking in the resources to cope, while a person experiencing good stress believes they have the resources to cope with it. Resilience could thus be defined by a person's belief in his or her abil ity to cope and succeed in the face of stress without negative mental or physical health outcomes.
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From page 41... ...
NEURAL CORRELATES OF ATTENTION AND COGNITION Rosenberg explored the neural correlates of attention and cognition by describing how attentional and cognitive processes can be characterized using predictive models based on brain data. She described the concept of brain health as generally involving our ability to safely and successfully navigate the world around us.
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From page 42... ...
Rosenberg explained that the lines in between the nodes are statistical interactions -- specifically, they are correlation coefficients -- that do not necessarily represent structural connections between brain regions. Functional connectivity is the measure being focused on because evidence suggests that every person has a unique pattern of functional brain connectivity, a "functional connectivity fingerprint," that is relatively s table over time and contains information about cognitive abilities (Finn et al., 2015; Miranda-Dominguez et al., 2014)
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From page 43... ...
. Connectome-based predictive modeling was used to capture individual differences in sustained attention in adulthood and to capture real-world attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
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From page 44... ...
In addition to measures of whole-brain functional connectivity, task performance was also measured for each subject. The aim was to use the functional connectivity patterns to predict task performance using connectome-based predictive modeling (Rosenberg et al., 2016a; Shen et al., 2017)
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From page 45... ...
. Predicting Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms in Children and Adolescents To capture a broader concept of sustained attention, rather than focusing on predicting performance on an idiosyncratic lab-based task, the researchers applied the model to data collected in a very different FIGURE 4-2 Predicting task performance based on functional connectivity patterns.
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From page 46... ...
; the predictions were not related to IQ scores when controlling for ADHD scores. These predictions are general, in that they are generalizing across datasets and across measures of sustained attention and across age groups.
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From page 47... ...
She emphasized that when predicting differences in attention, the functional connectivity measure is particularly important -- it is not the individual brain regions per se that matter, but rather the statistical interactions between the activity time courses of pairs of brain regions. Data-driven techniques like this one can serve as hypothesis generators by suggesting regions or connections that were not previously known to be related to attention.
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From page 48... ...
Beyond characterizing individual differences in sustained attention, these functional connectivity patterns and predictive modeling methods can also be used to capture individual differences in a number of different abilities, behaviors, or clinical symptoms (Shen et al., 2017)
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From page 49... ...
to characterize individual differences in working memory. Activation in frontoparietal regions during a challenging working- emory task m (e.g., a two-back task)
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Evidence suggests that this functional connectivity fingerprint is relatively stable across development and over time, but it can be altered to some degree by task states, cognitive states, and pharmacological states. Akil added that this raises ethical questions related to publicly available brain signatures.
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From page 51... ...
Rosenberg noted that sustained attention is not always a positive quality -- it is important to pay attention, but not to the extent that it prevents response to other cues in the environment. Going forward, it will be important to characterize the brain signatures of different types of attention without assuming that "more is always better." ROLE OF MEDITATION IN IMPROVING BRAIN HEALTH AND RESILIENCE Elizabeth Hoge discussed brain health and resilience in the context of research on meditation, a practice that is becoming increasingly popular and which is thought to confer health benefits.
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From page 52... ...
The prefrontal cortex is associated with working memory, executive function, selective attention, and fluid intelligence. Plotting the age of the study participants revealed that control subjects had a standard decline in cortical thickness that would be expected with aging; however, the meditators did not show that decline.
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From page 53... ...
neuroimaging findings during an emotional face task. The researchers chose to measure resilience in terms of emotional reactivity to stress in a laboratory setting using the Trier Social Stress Test.6 Participants completed the Trier Social 6 The Trier Social Stress Test uses public speaking to induce stress in study participants by asking them to deliver an impromptu 8-minute speech in front of an audience of "evalu
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From page 54... ...
Because they reported having less anxiety during the second test, it could mean that they are more resilient to stress after the mindfulness-based stress reduction class. Both before and after the intervention, participants also completed a questionnaire composed of self-statements during public speaking; they were asked the extent to which they agreed with different positive and negative statements about their speeches during the Trier test7 (Hofmann and Dibartolo, 2000)
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From page 55... ...
However, psychotherapy can improve emotion regulation ability, which is thought to result from the involvement of the prefrontal cortex when the amygdala is hyperreactive. Study participants with generalized anxiety disorder were randomized to receive either mindfulness-based stress reduction or the control training.
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From page 56... ...
SOURCES: As presented by Elizabeth Hoge at the workshop Brain Health Across the Life Span on September 24, 2019; adapted from Hölzel et al., 2013.
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From page 57... ...
Panel C indicates that the same area of the cortex is associated with two different -- but perhaps related -- phenomena: it was involved when people with generalized anxiety disorders learned meditation, and was also found to be of greater thickness in experienced meditators. Next, investigators correlated the participants' Beck Anxiety Inventory scores after the intervention with their functional connectivity to evaluate the effect of these observed changes on clinical anxiety symptoms.
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From page 58... ...
Participants included people with depression, people with anxiety and depression, and healthy controls. They administered the Trier Social Stress Test and measured neuroendocrine markers, including ACTH, then did a follow-up study 1 or 2 weeks later to ask participants what they remembered about the experience.
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From page 59... ...
Resilience could thus be defined by a person's belief in his or her ability to cope and succeed in the face of stress without negative mental or physical health outcomes. Within this paradigm, it could be useful to help people transform bad stress into good stress so they feel more confident and capable without being preoccupied by their past mistakes.
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From page 60... ...
Akil remarked that gene expression profiling over multiple brain regions in people with severe depression reveals a host of changes all throughout the brain -- not just in one place. In those brains, the correlation of gene expression between regions has completely shifted, connections between reward circuits in the prefrontal cortex are altered, the balance of brain circuits has become tilted, and there is degradation of the support system at the biological level.
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From page 61... ...
Brain Imaging Signatures of Attention Akil asked Rosenberg if the "healthy" style of attention has a particular brain imaging signature. She replied that there is no single signature for attention overall, nor is there a single ideal marker of the best kind of attention in every context.
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From page 62... ...
" Rosenberg suggested that an interesting approach would be to try to predict individual differences in emotional processing or emotional resilience, to explore whether there are networks that predict those processes, and, if so, to look at the degree to which they overlap with networks involved in cognitive and attentional processes. Measuring Resilience Akil asked the panelists to comment on executive function -- or the ability to "shift gears" -- in terms of resilience.
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From page 63... ...
Hoge noted that a very persistent finding in meditation treatment research is that it has a bigger effect in women, although it is not clear why. Akil said that an important research question is to better understand the sex or other types of individual differences in the effect of brain diseases, in resilience, in coping styles, and in different affective patterns, cognitive patterns, and attentional patterns.
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