Common and Dissociable Contributions of Alexithymia and Autism to Domain-Specific Interoceptive Dysregulations: A Dimensional Neuroimaging Approach

Li, Jialin; Lei, Xu; Zheng, Xiaoxiao; Fu, Meina; Zhou, Feng; Xu, Xiaoling; Ma, Xiaole; Li, Keshuang; Kendrick, Keith M.; Becker, Benjamin

doi:10.1159/000495122

Cited by 36 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 10 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…Given the existence of high levels of comorbidity between depressive disorder and autism spectrum disorder in disordered gaming (e.g. Li et al, 2019;Xu et al, 2020), the potential confounding effects for these two psychopathologies were controlled in the present study using the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and the Autism-spectrum Quotient (ASQ) ( Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Skinner, Martin, & Clubley, 2001;Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996). Subjects meeting the clinical cut-off criteria were excluded and symptom severities in both dimensions were additionally included as covariates in the analyses.…”

Section: Methods Participants and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Higher levels of (Internet) Gaming Disorder symptoms according to the WHO and APA frameworks associate with lower striatal volume

Zhou

Liu

et al. 2020

JBA

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Background and aimsGrowing concerns about the addictive nature of Internet and computer games led to the preliminary recognition of Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) as an emerging disorder by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the official recognition of Gaming Disorder (GD) as a new diagnosis by the World Health Organization (WHO). While the definition of clear diagnostic criteria for (I) GD represents an important step for diagnosis and treatment of the disorder, potential neurobiological correlates of the criteria remain to be explored.MethodsThe present study employed a dimensional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) approach to determine associations between (I)GD symptom-load according to the APA and WHO diagnostic frameworks and brain structure in a comparably large sample of n = 82 healthy subjects.ResultsHigher symptom-load on both, the APA and WHO diagnostic frameworks convergently associated with lower volumes of the striatum.DiscussionThe results from this exploratory study provide the first initial evidence for a neurobiological foundation of the proposed diagnostic criteria for (I)GD according to both diagnostic classification systems and suggest that the transition from non-disordered to disordered gaming may be accompanied by progressive neuroplastic changes in the striatum, thus resembling progressive changes in other addictive disorders.ConclusionsThe proposed (I)GD criteria in both diagnostic systems were associated with neurostructural alterations in the striatum, suggesting an association with progressive changes in the motivational systems of the brain.

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Section: Methods Participants and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Higher levels of (Internet) Gaming Disorder symptoms according to the WHO and APA frameworks associate with lower striatal volume

Zhou

Liu

et al. 2020

JBA

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“…Consequently, 238 participants (120 males; 17-29 years old, mean age = 21.58 ± 2.32 years) remained in the final analysis. These data have been previously published in a study examining the common and specific associations of autistic traits and alexithymia with neural reactivity (Li et al, 2019). Importantly, the previous study employed a mass-univariate GLM approach, and the focus of the previous study was independent from the aim of the present study.…”

Section: Participants and Task Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…If the affective pain stimuli induced highly variable responses across subjects, this inter-subject variability would reduce inter-subject synchronization during this condition. Previous studies suggest that dimensional variables such as trait alexithymia and autism (Li et al, 2019) as well as categorical variables including sex and genotype (Warrier et al, 2018) modulate neural affective pain processing and may have specifically affected processing of painful faces. Finally, the affective pain pictures can be considered as the most ambiguous in the paradigm -the other stimuli are pretty easily identifiable to the observer, however the interpretation of the painful faces (without displaying a noxious agent in difference to the limb pain pictures) may need more interpretation and may additionally vary as a function of previous experience of the participants.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Together, the present results further demonstrate that the ISPS approach may represent a valuable exploratory analysis method that can reveal network synchronization in the context of task-based fMRI analyses and can separate networks that support complex social emotional processes such as empathy. In the context of growing evidence for dysregulations in pain empathic processes in subjects with high levels of pathologyrelevant traits such as alexithymia or autism (Bird & Viding, 2014;Li et al, 2019) as well as in patient populations with depression or schizophrenia (Vistoli, Lavoie, Sutliff, Jackson, & Achim, 2017) the ISPS method may furthermore allow to dissect impaired network-level integration underlying social cognitive deficits.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The pain empathy paradigm (see also Li et al, 2019) employed a blocked design including four experimental conditions (physical pain, affective pain, physical control, affective control). The physical stimuli showed a person's hand or foot in painful or non-painful everyday situations from a first-person perspective (see Meng et al, 2012) and the affective stimuli consisted of painful and neutral facial expressions from 16 Chinese subjects (8 males) (see Sheng & Han, 2012).…”

Section: Participants and Task Paradigmmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Inter-subject phase synchronization differentiates neural networks underlying physical pain empathy

Lei

Bolt

Nomi

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Recent approaches for understanding the neural basis of pain empathy emphasize the dynamic construction of neural networks underlying this multifaceted social cognitive process. Inter-subject phase synchronization (ISPS)is an approach for exploratory analysis of task-based fMRI data that reveals brain networks dynamically synchronized to task-features across subjects. We applied ISPS to task-fMRI data assessing vicarious pain empathy in healthy subjects (n=238). The task employed physical (limb) and affective (faces) painful and corresponding non-painful visual stimuli. ISPS revealed two distinct networks synchronized during physical pain observation, one encompassing anterior insula and midcingulate regions strongly engaged in (vicarious) pain, and another encompassing parietal and inferior frontal regions associated with social cognitive processes which may further modulate and support the pain empathic response. No robust network synchronization was observed while processing facial expressions of pain, possibly reflecting high inter-individual variation in response to socially transmitted pain experience. ISPS also revealed networks related to task onset or general processing of physical (limb) or affective (face) stimuli which encompassed networks engaged in object manipulation or face processing, respectively. Together, the ISPS approach permits segregation of networks engaged in different psychological processes, providing additional insight into shared neural mechanisms of empathy for physical pain across individuals.

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Dysregulated anterior insula reactivity as robust functional biomarker for chronic pain—Meta‐analytic evidence from neuroimaging studies

Ferraro

Klugah‐Brown

Tench

et al. 2021

Human Brain Mapping

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Neurobiological pain models propose that chronic pain is accompanied by neurofunctional changes that mediate pain processing dysfunctions. In contrast, meta‐analyses of neuroimaging studies in chronic pain conditions have not revealed convergent evidence for robust alterations during experimental pain induction. Against this background, the present neuroimaging meta‐analysis combined three different meta‐analytic approaches with stringent study selection criteria for case–control functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments during acute pain processing with a focus on chronic pain disorders. Convergent neurofunctional dysregulations in chronic pain patients were observed in the left anterior insula cortex. Seed‐based resting‐state functional connectivity based on a large publicly available dataset combined with a meta‐analytic task‐based approach identified the anterior insular region as a key node of an extended bilateral insula‐fronto‐cingular network, resembling the salience network. Moreover, the meta‐analytic decoding showed that this region presents a high probability to be specifically activated during pain‐related processes, although we cannot exclude an involvement in autonomic processes. Together, the present findings indicate that dysregulated left anterior insular activity represents a robust neurofunctional maladaptation and potential treatment target in chronic pain disorders.

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Common and Dissociable Contributions of Alexithymia and Autism to Domain-Specific Interoceptive Dysregulations: A Dimensional Neuroimaging Approach

Cited by 36 publications

References 10 publications

Higher levels of (Internet) Gaming Disorder symptoms according to the WHO and APA frameworks associate with lower striatal volume

Higher levels of (Internet) Gaming Disorder symptoms according to the WHO and APA frameworks associate with lower striatal volume

Inter-subject phase synchronization differentiates neural networks underlying physical pain empathy

Dysregulated anterior insula reactivity as robust functional biomarker for chronic pain—Meta‐analytic evidence from neuroimaging studies

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