Cory Burghy

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Michael Boyd

University of Cambridge

Alexandra Chavarria Arnau

Università degli Studi di Padova

Marie Louise Stig Sørensen

University of Cambridge

Viktória Kiss

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Warren Woodfin

Queens College of the City University of New York

Giuliano Volpe

Università degli Studi di Bari

Dr. Yves LASSARD

Université Grenoble Alpes

Michel Kazanski

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / French National Centre for Scientific Research

Viacheslav Kuleshov

Stockholm University

Miljenko Jurkovic

University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences [Filozofski fakultet]

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Papers by Cory Burghy

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doi: 10.3389/fnins.2012.00166 Robust automated amygdala segmentation via multi-atlas diffeomorphi... more

NeuroImage 61 (2012) 1059–1066 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ynimg Evidence for coordinated functional activity with... more

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Family environmental risk, frontal brain asymmetry, and social-emotional functioning for children living in poverty

Mindfulness video game improves connectivity of the fronto-parietal attentional network in adolescents: A multi-modal imaging study

Scientific Reports, 2019

Mindfulness training has been shown to improve attention and change the underlying brain substrat... more Mindfulness training has been shown to improve attention and change the underlying brain substrates in adults. Most mindfulness training programs involve a myriad of techniques, and it is difficult to attribute changes to any particular aspect of the program. Here, we created a video game, Tenacity, which models a specific mindfulness technique – focused attention on one’s breathing – and assessed its potential to train an attentional network in adolescents. A combined analysis of resting state functional connectivity (rs-FC) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) yielded convergent results – change in communication within the left fronto-parietal network after two weeks of playing Tenacity compared to a control game. Rs-FC analysis showed greater connectivity between left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and left inferior parietal cortex (IPC) in the Tenacity group. Importantly, changes in left dlPFC – IPC rs-FC and changes in structural connectivity of the white matter tract tha...

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Association of Prenatal Maternal Depression and Anxiety Symptoms With Infant White Matter Microstructure

JAMA pediatrics, Jan 27, 2018

Maternal depression and anxiety can have deleterious and lifelong consequences on child developme... more Maternal depression and anxiety can have deleterious and lifelong consequences on child development. However, many aspects of the association of early brain development with maternal symptoms remain unclear. Understanding the timing of potential neurobiological alterations holds inherent value for the development and evaluation of future therapies and interventions. To examine the association between exposure to prenatal maternal depression and anxiety symptoms and offspring white matter microstructure at 1 month of age. This cohort study of 101 mother-infant dyads used a composite of depression and anxiety symptoms measured in mothers during the third trimester of pregnancy and measures of white matter microstructure characterized in the mothers' 1-month offspring using diffusion tensor imaging and neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging performed from October 1, 2014, to November 30, 2016. Magnetic resonance imaging was performed at an academic research facility dur...

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Experience-Driven Differences in Childhood Cortisol Predict Affect-Relevant Brain Function and Coping in Adolescent Monozygotic Twins

Scientific reports, Nov 22, 2016

Stress and emotion involve diverse developmental and individual differences. Partially attributed... more Stress and emotion involve diverse developmental and individual differences. Partially attributed to the development of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the amygdala, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the precise genetic and experiential contributions remain unknown. In previous work, childhood basal cortisol function predicted adolescent resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) and psychopathology. To parse experience-driven (non-genetic) contributions, we investigated these relations with a monozygotic (MZ) twin design. Specifically, we examined whether intrapair differences in childhood afternoon cortisol levels predicted cotwin differences in adolescent brain function and coping. As expected, intrapair differences in childhood cortisol forecast amygdala-perigenual PFC rs-FC (R(2) = 0.84, FWE-corrected p = 0.01), and amygdala recovery following unpleasant images (R(2) = 0.40, FWE-corrected p < 0.05), such that the cotwin with higher childhood cortisol evinced relativel...

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Enhanced Prefrontal-Amygdala Connectivity Following Childhood Adversity as a Protective Mechanism Against Internalizing in Adolescence

Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 2016

BACKGROUND: Much research has focused on the deleterious neurobiological effects of childhood adv... more BACKGROUND: Much research has focused on the deleterious neurobiological effects of childhood adversity that may underlie internalizing disorders. Although most youth show emotional adaptation following adversity, the corresponding neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. METHODS: In this longitudinal community study, we examined the associations among childhood family adversity, adolescent internalizing symptoms, and their interaction on regional brain activation and amygdala/hippocampus functional connectivity during emotion processing in 132 adolescents. RESULTS: Consistent with prior work, childhood adversity predicted heightened amygdala reactivity to negative, but not positive, images in adolescence. However, amygdala reactivity was not related to internalizing symptoms. Furthermore, childhood adversity predicted increased prefrontal-amygdala connectivity to negative, but not positive, images, yet only in lower internalizing adolescents. Childhood adversity also predicted increased prefrontal-hippocampus connectivity to negative images but was not moderated by internalizing. These findings were unrelated to adolescent adversity or externalizing symptoms, suggesting specificity to childhood adversity and adolescent internalizing. CONCLUSIONS: Together, these findings suggest that adaptation to childhood adversity is associated with augmentation of prefrontal-subcortical circuits specifically for negative emotional stimuli. Conversely, insufficient enhancement of prefrontal-amygdala connectivity, with increasing amygdala reactivity, may represent a neural signature of vulnerability for internalizing by late adolescence. These findings implicate early childhood as a critical period in determining the brain's adaptation to adversity and suggest that even normative adverse experiences can have a significant impact on neurodevelopment and functioning. These results offer potential neural mechanisms of adaptation and vulnerability that could be used in the prediction of risk for psychopathology following childhood adversity.

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Resting frontal and anterior temporal EEG asymmetry predicts ability to regulate negative emotion

Temporal dynamics of emotional responding: amygdala recovery predicts emotional traits

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2012

An individuals affective style is influenced by many things, including the manner in which an ind... more An individuals affective style is influenced by many things, including the manner in which an individual responds to an emotional challenge. Emotional response is composed of a number of factors, two of which are the initial reactivity to an emotional stimulus and the subsequent recovery once the stimulus terminates or ceases to be relevant. However, most neuroimaging studies examining emotional processing in humans focus on the magnitude of initial reactivity to a stimulus rather than the prolonged response. In this study, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the time course of amygdala activity in healthy adults in response to presentation of negative images. We split the amygdala time course into an initial reactivity period and a recovery period beginning after the offset of the stimulus. We find that initial reactivity in the amygdala does not predict trait measures of affective style. Conversely, amygdala recovery shows predictive power such that slower amygdala recovery from negative images predicts greater trait neuroticism, in addition to lower levels of likability of a set of social stimuli (neutral faces). These data underscore the importance of taking into account temporal dynamics when studying affective processing using neuroimaging.

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Childhood maltreatment is associated with altered fear circuitry and increased internalizing symptoms by late adolescence

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013

Significance Childhood maltreatment is a major risk factor for internalizing disorders including ... more Significance Childhood maltreatment is a major risk factor for internalizing disorders including depression and anxiety, which cause significant disability. Altered connectivity of the brain’s fear circuitry represents an important candidate mechanism linking maltreatment and these disorders, but this relationship has not been directly explored. Using resting-state functional brain connectivity in adolescents, we show that maltreatment predicts lower prefrontal–hippocampal connectivity in females and males but lower prefrontal–amygdala connectivity only in females. Altered connectivity, in turn, mediated the development of internalizing symptoms. These results highlight the importance of fronto–hippocampal connectivity for both sexes in internalizing symptoms following maltreatment. The additional impact on fronto–amygdala connectivity in females may help explain their higher risk for anxiety and depression.

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Evidence for coordinated functional activity within the extended amygdala of non-human and human primates

NeuroImage, 2012

Neuroanatomists posit that the central nucleus of the amygdala (Ce) and bed nucleus of the stria ... more Neuroanatomists posit that the central nucleus of the amygdala (Ce) and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) comprise two major nodes of a macrostructural forebrain entity termed the extended amygdala. The extended amygdala is thought to play a critical role in adaptive motivational behavior and is implicated in the pathophysiology of maladaptive fear and anxiety. Resting functional connectivity of the Ce was examined in 107 young anesthetized rhesus monkeys and 105 young humans using standard resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methods to assess temporal correlations across the brain. The data expand the neuroanatomical concept of the extended amygdala by finding, in both species, highly significant functional coupling between the Ce and the BST. These results support the use of in vivo functional imaging methods in nonhuman and human primates to probe the functional anatomy of major brain networks such as the extended amygdala.

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Developmental pathways to amygdala-prefrontal function and internalizing symptoms in adolescence

Nature Neuroscience, 2012

Previous work demonstrates that early life stress (ELS) and HPA-axis function predict later psych... more Previous work demonstrates that early life stress (ELS) and HPA-axis function predict later psychopathology. Animal work and cross-sectional human studies suggest that this process might operate through amygdala-ventromedial prefrontal cortical (vmPFC) circuitry implicated in emotion regulation. The current study prospectively investigated the roles of ELS and childhood basal cortisol in the development of adolescent resting-state functional connectivity (fcMRI) in the amygdala-PFC circuit. In females only, greater ELS predicted increased childhood cortisol levels, which, in turn, predicted decreased amygdala-vmPFC fcMRI 14 years later. Further, for females, amygdala-vmPFC fcMRI was inversely correlated with concurrent anxious symptoms, but positively associated with depressive symptoms, suggesting differing pathways from childhood cortisol function through adolescent amygdala-vmPFC functional connectivity to anxiety and depression. These data highlight that, for females, the effects of ELS and early HPA-axis function may be detected much later in the intrinsic processing of emotion-related brain circuits. Dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is related to many adverse physiologic and psychological outcomes 1 . Cortisol, a principle hormone end product of HPA-axis activity, has a direct influence on brain circuits implicated in emotion regulation, and these circuits in turn regulate HPA-axis activity. Increased cortisol levels early in life are associated with poor emotion regulation, less social competence, and later symptoms of Users may view, print, copy, download and text and data-mine the content in such documents, for the purposes of academic research, subject always to the full Conditions of use:

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Individual Differences in Amygdala and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Activity are Associated with Evaluation Speed and Psychological Well-being

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2007

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether individual differences in amygda... more Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether individual differences in amygdala activation in response to negative relative to neutral information are related to differences in the speed with which such information is evaluated, the extent to which such differences are associated with medial prefrontal cortex function, and their relationship with measures of trait anxiety and psychological well-being (PWB). Results indicated that faster judgments of negative relative to neutral information were associated with increased left and right amygdala activation. In the prefrontal cortex, faster judgment time was associated with relative decreased activation in a cluster in the ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC, BA 24). Furthermore, people who were slower to evaluate negative versus neutral information reported higher PWB. Importantly, higher PWB was strongly associated with increased activation in the ventral ACC for negative relative to neutral information. Indivi...

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Robust Automated Amygdala Segmentation via Multi-Atlas Diffeomorphic Registration

Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2012

Here, we describe a novel method for volumetric segmentation of the amygdala from MRI images coll... more Here, we describe a novel method for volumetric segmentation of the amygdala from MRI images collected from 35 human subjects.This approach is adapted from open-source techniques employed previously with the hippocampus Wang et al., 2011a,b). Using multi-atlas segmentation and machine learning-based correction, we were able to produce automated amygdala segments with high Dice (Mean = 0.918 for the left amygdala; 0.916 for the right amygdala) and Jaccard coefficients (Mean = 0.850 for the left; 0.846 for the right) compared to rigorously hand-traced volumes. This automated routine also produced amygdala segments with high intra-class correlations (consistency = 0.830, absolute agreement = 0.819 for the left; consistency = 0.786, absolute agreement = 0.783 for the right) and bivariate (r = 0.831 for the left; r = 0.797 for the right) compared to handdrawn amygdala. Our results are discussed in relation to other cutting-edge segmentation techniques, as well as commonly available approaches to amygdala segmentation (e.g., Freesurfer). We believe this new technique has broad application to research with large sample sizes for which amygdala quantification might be needed.

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Effects of electrode density and electrolyte spreading in dense array electroencephalographic recording

Clinical Neurophysiology, 2004

Objective: High-density EEG recording offers increased spatial resolution but requires careful co... more Objective: High-density EEG recording offers increased spatial resolution but requires careful consideration of how the density of electrodes affects the potentials being measured. Power differences as a function of electrode density and electrolyte spreading were examined and a method for correcting these differences was tested. Methods: Separate EEG recordings from 8 participants were made using a high-density electrode net, first with 6 of 128 electrodes active followed by recordings with all electrodes active. For a subset of 4 participants measurements were counterbalanced with recordings made in the reversed order by drying the hair after the high-density recordings and using a fresh dry electrode net of the same size for the low-density recordings. Mean power values over 6 resting eyes open/closed EEG recordings at the 6 active electrodes common to both recording conditions were compared. Evidence for possible electrolyte spreading or bridging between electrodes was acquired by computing Hjorth electrical distances. Spherical spline interpolation was tested for correcting power values at electrodes affected by electrolyte spreading for these participants and for a subset of participants from a larger previous study. Results: For both the complete set and the counterbalanced subset, significant decreases in power at the 6 common electrodes for the highdensity recordings were observed across the range of the standard EEG bands (1-44 Hz). The number of bridges or amount of electrolyte spreading towards the reference electrode as evidenced by small Hjorth electrical distances served as a predictor of this power decrease. Spherical spline interpolation increased the power values at electrodes affected by electrolyte spreading and by a significant amount for the larger number of participants in the second group. Conclusions: Understanding signal effects caused by closely spaced electrodes, detecting electrolyte spreading and correcting its effects are important considerations for high-density EEG recordings. A combination of scalp maps of power density and plots of small Hjorth electrical distances can be used to identify electrodes affected by electrolyte spreading. Interpolation using spherical splines offers a method for correcting the potentials measured at these electrodes.

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Fear Is Fast in Phobic Individuals: Amygdala Activation in Response to Fear-Relevant Stimuli

Biological Psychiatry, 2006

Background: Two core characteristics of pathologic fear are its rapid onset and resistance to cog... more Background: Two core characteristics of pathologic fear are its rapid onset and resistance to cognitive regulation. We hypothesized that activation of the amygdala early in the presentation of fear-relevant visual stimuli would distinguish phobics from nonphobics. Methods: Chronometry of amygdala activation to phobia-relevant pictures was assessed in 13 spider phobics and 14 nonphobics using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Results: Blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) responses in the amygdala early in picture processing consistently differentiated between phobic and nonphobic subjects, as well as between phobogenic and nonphobogenic stimuli among phobics. Furthermore, amygdalar BOLD responses associated with timing but not magnitude of activation predicted affective responses to phobogenic stimuli. Computational modeling procedures were used to identify patterns of neural activation in the amygdala that could yield the observed BOLD data. These data suggest that phobic responses were characterized by strong but brief amygdala responses, whereas nonphobic responses were weaker and more sustained. Conclusions: Results are discussed in the context of the amygdala's role in rapid threat detection and the vigilance-avoidance hypothesis of anxiety. These data highlight the importance of examining the neural substrates of the immediate impact of phobogenic stimuli for understanding pathological fear.

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Fear is Fast in Phobics: The Time Course of Amygdala Activation in Response to Fear-relevant Stimuli

Evolutionary fitness dictates that threat must be detected quickly (1, 2). Efficient identificati... more

Electromyographically assessed empathic concern and empathic happiness predict increased prosocial behavior in adults

Biological Psychology, 2015

The relation between empathy subtypes and prosocial behavior was investigated in a sample of heal... more The relation between empathy subtypes and prosocial behavior was investigated in a sample of healthy adults. "Empathic concern" and "empathic happiness", defined as negative and positive vicarious emotion (respectively) combined with an other-oriented feeling of "goodwill" (i.e. a thought to do good to others/see others happy), were elicited in 68 adult participants who watched video clips extracted from the television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Prosocial behavior was quantified via performance on a non-monetary altruistic decision-making task involving book selection and donation. Empathic concern and empathic happiness were measured via self-report (immediately following each video clip) and via facial electromyography recorded from corrugator (active during frowning) and zygomatic (active during smiling) facial regions. Facial electromyographic signs of (a) empathic concern (i.e. frowning) during sad video clips, and (b) empathic happiness (i.e. smiling) during happy video clips, predicted increased prosocial behavior in the form of increased goodwill-themed book selection/donation.

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Edited by

doi: 10.3389/fnins.2012.00166 Robust automated amygdala segmentation via multi-atlas diffeomorphi... more

NeuroImage 61 (2012) 1059–1066 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ynimg Evidence for coordinated functional activity with... more

Download

Family environmental risk, frontal brain asymmetry, and social-emotional functioning for children living in poverty

Mindfulness video game improves connectivity of the fronto-parietal attentional network in adolescents: A multi-modal imaging study

Scientific Reports, 2019

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Association of Prenatal Maternal Depression and Anxiety Symptoms With Infant White Matter Microstructure

JAMA pediatrics, Jan 27, 2018