Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a heterogeneous disorder with disturbances in hyper-arousal or avoidance behaviors, and intrusive or re-experiencing thoughts. The uncinate fasciculus (UF) and cingulum bundle are white matter pathways implicated in stress and trauma pathophysiology, yet their structural integrity related to PTSD symptom domains is yet to be understood. Forty-four trauma-exposed young adults […]
Category Archives: Publications
Moderating effects of harm avoidance on resting-state functional connectivity of the anterior insula.
Background: As an index of behavioral inhibition and an individual’s propensity to avoid, rather than seek, potentially dangerous situations, harm avoidance has been linked to internalizing psychopathology. Altered connectivity within intrinsic functional neural networks (i.e., default mode [DMN], central executive [CEN], and salience networks [SN]) has been related to internalizing psychopathology; however, less is known […]
Cortico-limbic connectivity changes following fear extinction and relationships with trait anxiety
Fear extinction is a powerful model of adaptive and anxiety-related maladaptive fear inhibition. This learning process is dependent upon plastic interactions between the amygdala, anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC), hippocampus, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). With regard to the amygdala, the basolateral (BLA) and centromedial amygdala (CMA) serve unique roles in fear extinction. In a […]
Neural circuitry governing anxious individuals’ mis-allocation of working memory to threat
Dispositional anxiety is a trait-like phenotype that confers increased risk for a range of debilitating neuropsychiatric disorders. Like many patients with anxiety disorders, individuals with elevated levels of dispositional anxiety are prone to intrusive and distressing thoughts in the absence of immediate threat. Recent electrophysiological research suggests that these symptoms are rooted in the mis-allocation […]
Psychopaths Show Enhanced Amygdala Activation during Fear Conditioning
ABSTRACT Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by emotional deficits and a failure to inhibit impulsive behavior and is often subdivided into “primary” and “secondary” psychopathic subtypes. The maladaptive behavior related to primary psychopathy is thought to reflect constitutional “fearlessness,” while the problematic behavior related to secondary psychopathy is motivated by other factors. The fearlessness […]
Cortical Gyrification Patterns Associated with Trait Anxiety
ABSTRACT Dispositional anxiety is a stable personality trait that is a key risk factor for internalizing disorders, and understanding the neural correlates of trait anxiety may help us better understand the development of these disorders. Abnormal cortical folding is thought to reflect differences in cortical connectivity occurring during brain development. Therefore, assessing gyrification may advance […]
State Anxiety Carried Over From Prior Threat Increases Late Positive Potential Amplitude During an Instructed Emotion Regulation Task
ABSTRACT Emotion regulation has important consequences for emotional and mental health (Saxena, Dubey & Pandey, 2011) and is dependent on executive function (Eisenberg, Smith & Spinrad, 2011). Because state anxiety disrupts executive function (Robinson, Vytal, Cornwell & Grillon, 2013), we tested whether state anxiety disrupts emotion regulation by having participants complete an instructed emotion regulation […]
Imbalance of Default Mode and Regulatory Networks during Externally-Focused Processing in Depression
abstract A core cognitive vulnerability in major depressive disorder (MDD) is the tendency to ruminate. Attentional control difficulties likely underlie this maladaptive thinking style. Previous studies suggest that abnormalities in the default mode, executive, and salience networks are implicated in both rumination and attentional control difficulties in MDD. In the current study, individuals with MDD […]
BAS Reward Responsiveness: A unique predictor of positive psychological functioning
Abstract Previous research on Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory has well-characterized the Behavioral Inhibition System in terms of its behavioral and emotional manifestations, but the Behavioral Approach System (BAS) is less well-defined, particularly regarding the prominence of reward sensitivity versus impulsivity. Furthermore, few researchers evaluate both systems in one model. We evaluated the relationship between Carver and […]
State rumination enhances elaborative processing of negative material as evidenced by the late positive potential.
Abstract Rumination has been shown to increase negative affect and is highly associated with increased duration of depressive episodes. Previous research has shown that enhanced elaborative processing of negative stimuli is often associated with depression and trait rumination. We hypothesized that engaging in rumination would result in sustained elaborative processing of negative information, as measured […]