Humans are endowed with a natural sense of fairness that permeates social perceptions and interactions. This moral stance is so ubiquitous that we may not notice it as a fundamental component of daily decision making and in the workings of many legal, political, and social systems. Emotion plays a pivotal role in moral experience by assigning human values to events, objects, and actions. Although the brain correlates of basic emotions have been explored, the neural organization of “moral emotions” in the human brain remains poorly understood. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a passive visual task, we show that both basic and moral emotions activate the amygdala, thalamus, and upper midbrain. The orbital and medial prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus are also recruited by viewing scenes evocative of moral emotions. Our results indicate that the orbital and medial sectors of the prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus region, which are critical regions for social beha...

In this study we were interested in the hypothesis that different task sets would influence both behavior and prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation during performance of a memory task. Specifically, participants were asked to remember a list of words over a short delay, and then respond to a probe word, indicating whether or not the probe was present in the list of words. In one condition, participants were encouraged to use an active maintenance strategy by presenting short lists of words (1 to 6 words per list). In the other condition, participants were encouraged to use a retrieval-based strategy by presenting long lists of words (6 to 11 words per list). The critical comparison is between the 6-word trials, since the memory load, trial duration, and perceptual input are identical across the two conditions. To test our hypothesis that activation in PFC would correlate with task set, we conducted an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study on 25 younger adults. Behavioral results con...

Although transient airway constrictions occur during sleep both in normal and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) subjects, neural mechanisms that maintain upper airway patency appear not to be activated, or are recruited with sufficient delay to be ineffective in OSA patients. To evaluate these mechanisms, a series of 20 image slices (25 repetitions, Echo Planar technique) through the entire brain was collected during 1 min baseline and 1.5 min expiratory (8 controls, 12 OSA) and inspiratory (10 Controls, 6 OSA) loading challenges in a GE 1.5T Signa scanner. Ages of Controls were 29-62; OSA ages were 29-66. Images were subjected to fixed effects analysis using the SPM imaging package. Areas recruited in both control and patient groups included deep cerebellar nuclei, putamen, and hippocampus. The OSA group showed significantly more dispersion of areas with signal changes, including the orbital frontal cortex, multiple cerebellar regions, and widespread diencephalic sites. In certain forebrain areas, a delayed o...

Twelve normal subjects viewed alternating sequences of unfamiliar faces, unpronounceable nonword letterstrings, and textures while echoplanar functional magnetic resonance images were acquired in seven slices extending from the posterior margin of the splenium to near the occipital pole. These stimuli were chosen to elicit initial category-specific processing in extrastriate cortex while minimizing semantic processing. Overall, faces evoked more activation than did letterstrings. Comparing hemispheres, faces evoked greater activation in the right than the left hemisphere, whereas letterstrings evoked greater activation in the left than the right hemisphere. Faces primarily activated the fusiform gyrus bilaterally, and also activated the right occipitotemporal and inferior occipital sulci and a region of lateral cortex centered in the middle temporal gyrus. Letterstrings primarily activated the left occipitotemporal and inferior occipital sulci. Textures primarily activated portions of the collateral sulcus...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to monitor spinal cord mediated activation of sensory motor cortex by measuring changes of blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) contrast during electric stimulation of forepaw, hindpaw or tail. Single or multi-slice gradient echo images were collected using gradient echo fast imaging or spiral gradient imaging. Stimulation of fore- or hindpaws repeatedly lead to robust activation of contralateral sensorimotor cortex. The center of the main cortical representation was situated 3.4 mm lateral to the midline and 5 mm posterior to the rhinal fissure (prf) for the forepaw and 2.0 mm lateral to the midline and 6 mm prf for the hindpaw. Tail stimulation gave rise to an extended bilateral cortical activation, along the midline in medial frontal and cingulate gyrus 4 and 5 mm prf. Axonal regeneration in peripheral nerves has been obtained using degradable tubes made of polyglycolic acid (PGA) and collagen (Kiyotani et al., 1996 Brain Res, 740:66-74). To obta...

Childhood sexual abuse is a major public health problem, however little is known about the effects of abuse on brain structure or function. Animal studies have shown that stressors similar to childhood abuse result in damage to the hippocampus, a brain area involved in learning and memory, and our group and others have reported smaller hippocampal volume measured with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and deficits in hippocampal-based verbal declarative memory (recall of a paragraph) in patients with abuse-related PTSD. The purpose of this study was to compare hippocampal volume measured with MRI and hippocampal function during declarative memory tasks (encoding of a paragraph) measured with positron emission tomography (PET), in 33 women, including women with early childhood sexual abuse and PTSD, women with early abuse without PTSD, and women without early abuse or PTSD. A failure of left hippocampal activation during memory tasks was seen in PTSD relative to abused non-PTSD women (F=14.94; df=1,20; p<.00...

Noninvasively mapping the layout of cortical areas in humans is a continuing challenge for neuroscience. We present a new method of mapping cortical areas based on myelin content as revealed by T1-weighted (T1w) and T2-weighted (T2w) MRI. The method is generalizable across different 3T scanners and pulse sequences. We use the ratio of T1w/T2w image intensities to eliminate the MR-related image intensity bias and enhance the contrast to noise ratio for myelin. Data from each subject were mapped to the cortical surface and aligned across individuals using surface-based registration. The spatial gradient of the group average myelin map provides an observer-independent measure of sharp transitions in myelin content across the surface—i.e., putative cortical areal borders. We found excellent agreement between the gradients of the myelin maps and the gradients of published probabilistic cytoarchitectonically defined cortical areas that were registered to the same surface-based atlas. For other cortical regions, ...

In a series of human functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments, we systematically manipulated point-light stimuli to identify the contributions of the various areas implicated in biological motion processing (for review, see [Giese and Poggio, 2003][1]). The first experiment consisted of a 2 × 2 factorial design with global shape and kinematics as factors. In two additional experiments, we investigated the contributions of local opponent motion, the complexity of the portrayed movement and a one-back task to the activation pattern. Experiment 1 revealed a clear separation between shape and motion processing, resulting in two branches of activation. A ventral region, extending from the lateral occipital sulcus to the posterior inferior temporal gyrus, showed a main effect of shape and its extension into the fusiform gyrus also an interaction. The dorsal region, including the posterior inferior temporal sulcus and the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), showed a main effect of kinematics toget...

The failure of the remyelination processes in multiple sclerosis contributes to the formation of chronic demyelinated plaques that lead to severe neurological deficits. Long-term cuprizone treatment of C57BL/6 mice resulted in pronounced white matter pathology characterized by oligodendrocyte depletion, irreversible demyelination and persistent functional deficits after cuprizone withdrawal. The use of a combination of in vivo diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI) and histological analyses allowed for an accurate longitudinal assessment of demyelination. Injection of triiodothyronine (T3) hormone over a 3 week interval after cuprizone withdrawal progressively restored the normal DT-MRI phenotype accompanied by an improvement of clinical signs and remyelination. The effects of T3 were not restricted to the later stages of remyelination but increased the expression of sonic hedgehog and the numbers of Olig2+ and PSA-NCAM+ precursors and proliferative cells. Our findings establish a role for T3...

Studies of circumscribed amnesia have been a useful source of information about the organization of human memory functions. In an effort to obtain neuroanatomical information about the patients being studied, we have used 2 high-resolution protocols for imaging the human brain with magnetic resonance (MR). One provides images of the hippocampus, permitting visualization of the hippocampal formation in considerable detail. The second provides images of the mammillary nuclei. Four amnesic patients with alcoholic Korsakoff's syndrome had abnormally small mammillary nuclei that were barely detectable by MR in most cases. The temporal lobe, hippocampal formation, and parahippocampal gyrus were of normal size. In a second group of 4 (non- Korsakoff) amnesic patients, the opposite findings were obtained. The hippocampal formation was markedly reduced in size in the absence of a detectable change in the size of the temporal lobe. By contrast, the mammillary nuclei, though somewhat reduced in volume, were considera...