Abstract Although research concerning the effects of traumatic and stressful life events on an individual’s mental health has been plentiful in the past several decades, research aimed at understanding the nature of resilience and its role in this process has been less plentiful. The present study examined the relationship between a commonly used measure of […]
Category Archives: Publications
Imbalance of default mode and regulatory networks during externally focused processing in depression
Abstract Attentional control difficulties likely underlie rumination, a core cognitive vulnerability in major depressive disorder (MDD). 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 (n =16) and healthy controls (n = 16) completed tasks designed to […]
Brain, body, and cognition: Neural, physiological, and self-report correlates of phobic and normative fear
The phobic fear response appears to resemble an intense form of normal threat responding that can be induced in a nonthreatening situation. However, normative and phobic fear are rarely contrasted directly, thus the degree to which these two types of fear elicit similar neural and bodily responses is not well understood. To examine biological correlates […]
An examination of the representativeness assumption for twin studies of eating pathology and internalizing symptoms.
Little research has investigated whether the twin representativeness assumption (that results from twin research generalize to singletons) holds for eating pathology and internalizing symptoms. This study compared disordered eating, depression, and anxiety among young adult female twins versus singletons. Participants included 292 twins and 997 singletons in three samples. Questionnaires included the Minnesota Eating Behavior […]
The interplay of attention and emotion: Top-down attention modulates amygdala activation in psychopathy
Psychopathic behavior has long been attributed to a fundamental deficit in fear that arises from impaired amygdala function. Growing evidence demonstrates that fear potentiated startle (FPS) and other psychopathy-related deficits are moderated by focus of attention but, to date, no work on adult psychopathy has examined attentional modulation of the amygdala, or concomitant recruitment of […]
Relations between PET-derived measures of thalamic glucose metabolism and EEG alpha power.
Abstract Electroencephalogram (EEG) alpha power has been demonstrated to be inversely related to mental activity and has subsequently been used as an indirect measure of brain activation. The thalamus has been proposed as an important site for modulation of rhythmic alpha activity. Studies in animals have suggested that cortical alpha rhythms are correlated with alpha […]
Asymmetric frontal brain activity, cortisol, and behavior associated with fearful temperament in rhesus monkeys.
Abstract The authors examined the hypothesis that rhesus monkeys with extreme fight frontal electroencephalographic activity would have higher cortisol levels and would be more fearful compared with monkeys with extreme left frontal activity. The authors first showed that individual differences in asymmetric frontal electrical activity are a stable characteristic. Next, the authors demonstrated that relative […]
Metabolic rate in the right amygdala predicts negative affect in depressed patients.
Abstract THE role of the amygdala in major depression was investigated. Resting regional cerebral metabolic rate (rCMRglu) was measured with [18F] fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (PET) in two samples of subjects using two different PET cameras. The samples consisted of 10 and 17 medication-free depressives and 11 and 13 controls, respectively. Using coregistration of PET […]
EEG alpha power and alpha power asymmetry in sleep and wakefulness.
Abstract Asymmetry of waking electroencephalography ~EEG! alpha power in frontal regions has been correlated with waking emotional reactivity and the emotional content of dream reports. Little is known regarding alpha asymmetry during sleep. The present study was performed to compare alpha power and alpha power asymmetry in various brain regions across states of sleep and […]
Thalamic metabolic rate predicts EEG alpha power in healthy control subjects but not in depressed patients
Abstract Background: EEG alpha power has been demonstrated to be inversely related to mental activity and has subsequently been used as an indirect measure of brain activation. The hypothesis that the thalamus serves as a neuronal oscillator of alpha rhythms has been supported by studies in animals, but only minimally by studies in humans. Methods: […]