Self-Referential Processing and Resting-State Functional MRI Connectivity of Cortical Midline Structures in Glioma Patients

Abstract

Metacognition has only scarcely been investigated in brain tumor patients. It is unclear if and how the tumor-lesioned brain might be able to maintain an adequate sense-of-self. As cortical midline structures (CMS) are regarded as essential for self-referential mental activity, we investigated resting-state fMRI connectivity (FC) of CMS to the default-mode network (DMN) and to the whole brain, comparing glioma patients and matched controls. Subjects furthermore performed a trait judgement (TJ), a trait recall task (TR), and neuropsychological testing. In the TJ, adjectives had to be ascribed as self- or non-self-describing, assessing the self-serving effect (SSE), a normally observed bias for positive traits. In the TR, the mnemic neglect effect (MNE), a memory advantage for positive traits, was tested. The groups were compared and partial correlations between FC and test metrics were analyzed. Although patients were significantly impaired in terms of verbal memory, groups did not differ in the SSE or the MNE results, showing preserved metacognitive abilities in patients. FC of CMS to the DMN was maintained, but was significantly decreased to whole brain in the patients. FC of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) to whole brain was correlated with the MNE in patients. Preserving the DMPFC in therapeutic interventions might be relevant for maintaining self-related verbal information processing in the memory domain in glioma patients.

The Activity of the Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex Promotes the Top–down Regulation of Sensorimotor Synchronization

“…Further, creative thinking is accomplished via motor outcomes, regulated by the mPFC and presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA), part of the cortico-basal ganglia thalamo-cortical (CBGTC) motor control network [31][32][33][34]. The mPFC forms a default mode network (DMN) with the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), connected with the hippocampus [35][36][37][38][39], and allows divergent thinking based on an episodic memory databank accumulated from experience. This divergent thinking shapes internal models.…”