Scholars@Duke
Ahmad Hariri

Ahmad Hariri

Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Psychology & Neuroscience
ahmad.hariri@duke.edu
2020 W Main Street Suite 30, Box 104151, Durham, NC 27708
2020 W Main Street Suite 30, Box 104151, Durham, NC 27708

Scholarly Works - Journal articles

Plasma pTau181 is associated with subjective cognitive concerns but not objective cognitive decline or structural brain integrity measures in midlife.

Journal article GeroScience · May 2026 Although plasma pTau181 has been shown to accurately discriminate patients with Alzheimer's disease from healthy older adults, there are few studies of plasma biomarkers among middle-aged populations. Given the potential utility of plasma AD biomarkers suc ... Full text Cite

Replicated evidence for an accelerated rate of whole-body aging in schizophrenia.

Journal article Psychological medicine · February 2026 BackgroundPeople with schizophrenia develop more chronic diseases at a younger age and die younger than people in the general population. It has been hypothesized that this excess morbidity and mortality could be partially due to accelerated aging ... Full text Cite

Early-life blood pressure and midlife brain and cognitive health: tests in two birth cohorts.

Journal article Brain communications · January 2026 Elevated blood pressure (BP) in midlife is a well-established risk factor for impaired brain health and cognitive ability in old age. We hypothesized that exposure to elevated BP within the first five decades of life may contribute to this risk through imp ... Full text Cite

Biomarkers.

Journal article Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · December 2025 BackgroundAlthough plasma pTau181 has been shown to accurately identify patients with AD in case-control studies, its utility as a preclinical biomarker in middle-aged community-based cohorts is unclear. Our objective was to investigate whether pl ... Full text Cite

Public Health.

Journal article Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · December 2025 BackgroundElevated blood pressure (BP) in midlife is a well-established risk factor for impaired brain health and cognitive ability in old age. We hypothesised that exposure to elevated BP within the first five decades of life may contribute to th ... Full text Cite

DunedinPACNI estimates the longitudinal Pace of Aging from a single brain image to track health and disease.

Journal article Nature aging · August 2025 To understand how aging affects functional decline and increases disease risk, it is necessary to develop measures of how fast a person is aging. Using data from the Dunedin Study, we introduce an accurate and reliable measure for the rate of longitudinal ... Full text Cite

Improving predictability, reliability, and generalizability of brain-wide associations for cognitive abilities via multimodal stacking.

Journal article PNAS nexus · June 2025 Brain-wide association studies (BWASs) have attempted to relate cognitive abilities with brain phenotypes, but have been challenged by issues such as predictability, test-retest reliability, and cross-cohort generalizability. To tackle these challenges, we ... Full text Cite

Enhancing the quality and reproducibility of research: Preferred Evaluation of Cognitive and Neuropsychological Studies - The PECANS statement for human studies.

Journal article Behavior research methods · May 2025 Are scientific papers providing all essential details necessary to ensure the replicability of study protocols? Are authors effectively conveying study design, data analysis, and the process of drawing inferences from their results? These represent only a ... Full text Cite

Differential Mapping of Psychopathic Traits and General Psychopathology in a Large Young Adult Sample.

Journal article Journal of personality disorders · December 2024 Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by affective-interpersonal features and an impulsive-antisocial lifestyle. Psychopathy commonly co-occurs with other forms of psychopathology, but current understanding of how behavioral features of psych ... Full text Cite

Leveraging normative personality data and machine learning to examine the brain structure correlates of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder traits.

Journal article Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · November 2024 Brain structure correlates of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) remain poorly understood as limited OCPD assessment has precluded well-powered studies. Here, we tested whether machine learning (ML; elastic net regression, gradient boosting m ... Full text Cite

Childhood blood-lead level predicts lower general, non-selective hippocampal subfield volumes in midlife.

Journal article Ecotoxicology and environmental safety · August 2024 Millions of adults and children are exposed to high levels of lead, a neurotoxicant, each year. Recent evidence suggests that lead exposure may precipitate neurodegeneration, particularly if the exposure occurs early or late in life, with unique alteration ... Full text Cite

Dementia, dementia's risk factors and premorbid brain structure are concentrated in disadvantaged areas: National register and birth-cohort geographic analyses.

Journal article Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · May 2024 IntroductionDementia risk may be elevated in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Reasons for this remain unclear, and this elevation has yet to be shown at a national population level.MethodsWe tested whether dementia was more ... Full text Cite

Intrinsic functional connectivity of motor and heteromodal association cortex predicts individual differences in regulatory focus.

Journal article PNAS nexus · May 2024 Regulatory focus theory (RFT) describes two cognitive-motivational systems for goal pursuit-the promotion and prevention systems-important for self-regulation and previously implicated in vulnerability to psychopathology. According to RFT, the promotion sy ... Full text Open Access Cite

A blood biomarker of the pace of aging is associated with brain structure: replication across three cohorts.

Journal article Neurobiology of aging · April 2024 Biological aging is the correlated decline of multi-organ system integrity central to the etiology of many age-related diseases. A novel epigenetic measure of biological aging, DunedinPACE, is associated with cognitive dysfunction, incident dementia, and m ... Full text Cite

Social isolation from childhood to mid-adulthood: is there an association with older brain age?

Journal article Psychological medicine · December 2023 BackgroundOlder brain age - as estimated from structural MRI data - is known to be associated with detrimental mental and physical health outcomes in older adults. Social isolation, which has similar detrimental effects on health, may be associate ... Full text Cite

Test-retest reliability and predictive utility of a macroscale principal functional connectivity gradient.

Journal article Human brain mapping · December 2023 Mapping individual differences in brain function has been hampered by poor reliability as well as limited interpretability. Leveraging patterns of brain-wide functional connectivity (FC) offers some promise in this endeavor. In particular, a macroscale pri ... Full text Cite

Revising a Self-Regulation Phenotype for Depression Through Individual Differences in Macroscale Brain Organization.

Journal article Current directions in psychological science · August 2023 Self-regulation denotes the processes by which people initiate, maintain, and control their own thoughts, behaviors, or emotions to produce a desired outcome or avoid an undesired outcome. Self-regulation brings the influence of distal factors such ... Full text Open Access Cite

Functional topography of the neocortex predicts covariation in complex cognitive and basic motor abilities.

Journal article Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · June 2023 Although higher-order cognitive and lower-order sensorimotor abilities are generally regarded as distinct and studied separately, there is evidence that they not only covary but also that this covariation increases across the lifespan. This pattern has bee ... Full text Cite

Hippocampal volume and volume asymmetry prospectively predict PTSD symptom emergence among Iraq-deployed soldiers.

Journal article Psychological medicine · April 2023 BackgroundEvidence suggests a link between smaller hippocampal volume (HV) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, there has been little prospective research testing this question directly and it remains unclear whether smaller HV conf ... Full text Cite

Associations Between Thinner Retinal Neuronal Layers and Suboptimal Brain Structural Integrity in a Middle-Aged Cohort.

Journal article Eye and brain · January 2023 PurposeThe retina has potential as a biomarker of brain health and Alzheimer's disease (AD) because it is the only part of the central nervous system which can be easily imaged and has advantages over brain imaging technologies. Few studies have c ... Full text Cite

Association of subcortical gray-matter volumes with life-course-persistent antisocial behavior in a population-representative longitudinal birth cohort.

Journal article Development and psychopathology · December 2022 Neuropsychological evidence supports the developmental taxonomy theory of antisocial behavior, suggesting that abnormal brain development distinguishes life-course-persistent from adolescence-limited antisocial behavior. Recent neuroimaging work confirmed ... Full text Cite

Diminished Structural Brain Integrity in Long-term Cannabis Users Reflects a History of Polysubstance Use.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · December 2022 BackgroundCannabis legalization and use are outpacing our understanding of its long-term effects on brain and behavior, which is fundamental for effective policy and health practices. Existing studies are limited by small samples, cross-sectional ... Full text Cite

Preparedness for healthy ageing and polysubstance use in long-term cannabis users: a population-representative longitudinal study.

Journal article The lancet. Healthy longevity · October 2022 BackgroundCannabis is often characterised as a young person's drug. However, people who began consuming cannabis in the 1970s and 1980s are no longer young and some have consumed it for many years. This study tested the preregistered hypothesis th ... Full text Cite

Meta-analytic activation maps can help identify affective processes captured by contrast-based task fMRI: the case of threat-related facial expressions.

Journal article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · September 2022 Meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data is an effective method for capturing the distributed patterns of brain activity supporting discrete cognitive and affective processes. One opportunity presented by the resulting meta-analys ... Full text Cite

Association of Pace of Aging Measured by Blood-Based DNA Methylation With Age-Related Cognitive Impairment and Dementia.

Journal article Neurology · September 2022 Background and objectivesDNA methylation algorithms are increasingly used to estimate biological aging; however, how these proposed measures of whole-organism biological aging relate to aging in the brain is not known. We used data from the Alzhei ... Full text Cite

Normative range parenting and the developing brain: A scoping review and recommendations for future research.

Journal article The European journal of neuroscience · May 2022 Studies of early adversity such as trauma, abuse, and neglect highlight the critical importance of quality caregiving in brain development and mental health. However, the impact of normative range variability in caregiving on such biobehavioral processes r ... Full text Cite

A Connectome-wide Functional Signature of Trait Anger.

Journal article Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · May 2022 Past research on the brain correlates of trait anger has been limited by small sample sizes, a focus on relatively few regions-of-interest, and poor test-retest reliability of functional brain measures. To address these limitations, we conducted a data-dri ... Full text Cite

Long-Term Cannabis Use and Cognitive Reserves and Hippocampal Volume in Midlife.

Journal article The American journal of psychiatry · May 2022 ObjectiveCannabis use is increasing among midlife and older adults. This study tested the hypotheses that long-term cannabis use is associated with cognitive deficits and smaller hippocampal volume in midlife, which is important because midlife co ... Full text Cite

Association of Treatable Health Conditions During Adolescence With Accelerated Aging at Midlife.

Journal article JAMA pediatrics · April 2022 ImportanceBiological aging is a distinct construct from health; however, people who age quickly are more likely to experience poor health. Identifying pediatric health conditions associated with accelerated aging could help develop treatment appro ... Full text Cite

The Temporal Dynamics of Spontaneous Emotional Brain States and Their Implications for Mental Health.

Journal article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · March 2022 Temporal processes play an important role in elaborating and regulating emotional responding during routine mind wandering. However, it is unknown whether the human brain reliably transitions among multiple emotional states at rest and how psychopathology ... Full text Cite

Improving risk indexes for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias for use in midlife.

Journal article Brain communications · January 2022 Knowledge of a person's risk for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRDs) is required to triage candidates for preventive interventions, surveillance, and treatment trials. ADRD risk indexes exist for this purpose, but each includes only a subset ... Full text Cite

Transcriptome-based polygenic score links depression-related corticolimbic gene expression changes to sex-specific brain morphology and depression risk.

Journal article Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · December 2021 Studies in post-mortem human brain tissue have associated major depressive disorder (MDD) with cortical transcriptomic changes, whose potential in vivo impact remains unexplored. To address this translational gap, we recently developed a transcriptome-base ... Full text Cite

Identifying nootropic drug targets via large-scale cognitive GWAS and transcriptomics.

Journal article Neuropsychopharmacology · September 2021 Broad-based cognitive deficits are an enduring and disabling symptom for many patients with severe mental illness, and these impairments are inadequately addressed by current medications. While novel drug targets for schizophrenia and depression have emerg ... Full text Link to item Cite

Striving toward translation: strategies for reliable fMRI measurement.

Journal article Trends in cognitive sciences · September 2021 fMRI has considerable potential as a translational tool for understanding risk, prioritizing interventions, and improving the treatment of brain disorders. However, recent studies have found that many of the most widely used fMRI measures have low reliabil ... Full text Cite

Replicability of structural brain alterations associated with general psychopathology: evidence from a population-representative birth cohort.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · August 2021 Transdiagnostic research has identified a general psychopathology factor-often called the 'p' factor-that accounts for shared variation across internalizing, externalizing, and thought disorders in diverse samples. It has been argued that the p factor may ... Full text Cite

Brain-age in midlife is associated with accelerated biological aging and cognitive decline in a longitudinal birth cohort.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · August 2021 An individual's brainAGE is the difference between chronological age and age predicted from machine-learning models of brain-imaging data. BrainAGE has been proposed as a biomarker of age-related deterioration of the brain. Having an older brainAGE has bee ... Full text Cite

Long-term Neural Embedding of Childhood Adversity in a Population-Representative Birth Cohort Followed for 5 Decades.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · August 2021 BackgroundChildhood adversity has been previously associated with alterations in brain structure, but heterogeneous designs, methods, and measures have contributed to mixed results and have impeded progress in mapping the biological embedding of c ... Full text Cite

Regulatory focus and the p factor: Evidence for self-regulatory dysfunction as a transdiagnostic feature of general psychopathology.

Journal article Journal of psychiatric research · May 2021 A general psychopathology ('p') factor captures transdiagnostic features of mental illness; however, the meaning of the p factor remains unclear. Regulatory focus theory postulates that individuals regulate goal pursuit either by maximizing gains (promotio ... Full text Open Access Cite

Disparities in the pace of biological aging among midlife adults of the same chronological age have implications for future frailty risk and policy.

Journal article Nature aging · March 2021 Some humans age faster than others. Variation in biological aging can be measured in midlife, but the implications of this variation are poorly understood. We tested associations between midlife biological aging and indicators of future frailty-risk in the ... Full text Cite

Associations between childhood family emotional health, fronto-limbic grey matter volume, and saliva 5mC in young adulthood.

Journal article Clinical epigenetics · March 2021 BackgroundPoor family emotional health (FEH) during childhood is prevalent and impactful, and likely confers similar neurodevelopmental risks as other adverse social environments. Pointed FEH study efforts are underdeveloped, and the mechanisms by ... Full text Cite

Pervasively Thinner Neocortex as a Transdiagnostic Feature of General Psychopathology.

Journal article The American journal of psychiatry · February 2021 ObjectiveNeuroimaging research has revealed that structural brain alterations are common across broad diagnostic families of disorders rather than specific to a single psychiatric disorder. Such overlap in the structural brain correlates of mental ... Full text Cite

Association Between Elevated suPAR, a New Biomarker of Inflammation, and Accelerated Aging.

Journal article The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · January 2021 BackgroundTo understand and measure the association between chronic inflammation, aging, and age-related diseases, broadly applicable standard biomarkers of systemic chronic inflammation are needed. We tested whether elevated blood levels of the e ... Full text Cite

Childhood self-control forecasts the pace of midlife aging and preparedness for old age.

Journal article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · January 2021 The ability to control one's own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in early life predicts a range of positive outcomes in later life, including longevity. Does it also predict how well people age? We studied the association between self-control and midlife ... Full text Cite

Midlife Cardiovascular Fitness Is Reflected in the Brain's White Matter.

Journal article Frontiers in aging neuroscience · January 2021 Disappointing results from clinical trials designed to delay structural brain decline and the accompanying increase in risk for dementia in older adults have precipitated a shift in testing promising interventions from late in life toward midlife before ir ... Full text Cite

Association of Childhood Lead Exposure With MRI Measurements of Structural Brain Integrity in Midlife.

Journal article JAMA · November 2020 ImportanceChildhood lead exposure has been linked to disrupted brain development, but long-term consequences for structural brain integrity are unknown.ObjectiveTo test the hypothesis that childhood lead exposure is associated with magnet ... Full text Cite

Affective brain patterns as multivariate neural correlates of cardiovascular disease risk.

Journal article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · November 2020 This study tested whether brain activity patterns evoked by affective stimuli relate to individual differences in an indicator of pre-clinical atherosclerosis: carotid artery intima-media thickness (CA-IMT). Adults (aged 30-54 years) completed functional m ... Full text Cite

Novel polygenic risk score as a translational tool linking depression-related changes in the corticolimbic transcriptome with neural face processing and anhedonic symptoms.

Journal article Translational psychiatry · November 2020 Convergent data from imaging and postmortem brain transcriptome studies implicate corticolimbic circuit (CLC) dysregulation in the pathophysiology of depression. To more directly bridge these lines of work, we generated a novel transcriptome-based polygeni ... Full text Cite

Is cardiovascular fitness associated with structural brain integrity in midlife? Evidence from a population-representative birth cohort study.

Journal article Aging · October 2020 Improving cardiovascular fitness may buffer against age-related cognitive decline and mitigate dementia risk by staving off brain atrophy. However, it is unclear if such effects reflect factors operating in childhood (neuroselection) or adulthood (neuropro ... Full text Cite

Little evidence for associations between the Big Five personality traits and variability in brain gray or white matter.

Journal article NeuroImage · October 2020 Attempts to link the Big Five personality traits of Openness-to-Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism with variability in trait-like features of brain structure have produced inconsistent results. Small sample sizes an ... Full text Cite

What Is the Test-Retest Reliability of Common Task-Functional MRI Measures? New Empirical Evidence and a Meta-Analysis.

Journal article Psychological science · July 2020 Identifying brain biomarkers of disease risk is a growing priority in neuroscience. The ability to identify meaningful biomarkers is limited by measurement reliability; unreliable measures are unsuitable for predicting clinical outcomes. Measuring brain ac ... Full text Open Access Cite

Borderline Personality Traits Are Not Correlated With Brain Structure in Two Large Samples.

Journal article Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · July 2020 BackgroundBorderline personality disorder is associated with severe psychiatric presentations and has been linked to variability in brain structure. Dimensional models of borderline personality traits (BPTs) have become influential; however, assoc ... Full text Cite

Investigating patterns of neural response associated with childhood abuse v. childhood neglect.

Journal article Psychological medicine · June 2020 BackgroundChildhood maltreatment is robustly associated with increased risk of poor mental health outcome and changes in brain function. The authors investigated whether childhood experience of abuse (e.g. physical, emotional and sexual abuse) and ... Full text Cite

Subclinical eating disorder traits are correlated with cortical thickness in regions associated with food reward and perception.

Journal article Brain imaging and behavior · April 2020 Behavioral traits associated with various forms of psychopathology are conceptualized as dimensional, varying from those present in a frank disorder to subclinical expression. Demonstrating links between these behavioral traits and neurobiological indicato ... Full text Cite

Convergent Evidence for Predispositional Effects of Brain Gray Matter Volume on Alcohol Consumption.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · April 2020 BackgroundAlcohol use has been reliably associated with smaller subcortical and cortical regional gray matter volumes (GMVs). Whether these associations reflect shared predisposing risk factors or causal consequences of alcohol use remains poorly ... Full text Cite

Longitudinal Assessment of Mental Health Disorders and Comorbidities Across 4 Decades Among Participants in the Dunedin Birth Cohort Study.

Journal article JAMA network open · April 2020 ImportanceMental health professionals typically encounter patients at 1 point in patients' lives. This cross-sectional window understandably fosters focus on the current presenting diagnosis. Research programs, treatment protocols, specialist clin ... Full text Cite

Divergence of an association between depressive symptoms and a dopamine polygenic score in Caucasians and Asians.

Journal article European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · March 2020 A recent study reported a negative association between a putatively functional dopamine (DA) polygenic score, indexing higher levels of DA signaling, and depressive symptoms. We attempted to replicate this association using data from the Duke Neurogenetics ... Full text Cite

Associations between life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour and brain structure in a population-representative longitudinal birth cohort.

Journal article The lancet. Psychiatry · March 2020 BackgroundStudies with behavioural and neuropsychological tests have supported the developmental taxonomy theory of antisocial behaviour, which specifies abnormal brain development as a fundamental aspect of life-course-persistent antisocial behav ... Full text Cite

Functional connectivity predicts the dispositional use of expressive suppression but not cognitive reappraisal.

Journal article Brain and behavior · February 2020 IntroductionPrevious research has identified specific brain regions associated with regulating emotion using common strategies such as expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal. However, most research focuses on a priori regions and directs ... Full text Open Access Cite

Neural signatures of promotion versus prevention goal priming: fMRI evidence for distinct cognitive-motivational systems.

Journal article Personality neuroscience · February 2020 Regulatory focus theory (RFT) postulates two cognitive-motivational systems for personal goal pursuit: the promotion system, which is associated with ideal goals (an individual's hopes, dreams, and aspirations), and the prevention system, which is associat ... Full text Open Access Cite

A role for the <i>CD38</i> rs3796863 polymorphism in alcohol and monetary reward: evidence from CD38 knockout mice and alcohol self-administration, [11C]-raclopride binding, and functional MRI in humans.

Journal article The American journal of drug and alcohol abuse · January 2020 Background: Cluster of differentiation 38 (CD38) is a transmembrane protein expressed in dopaminergic reward pathways in the brain, including the nucleus accumbens (NAc). The GG genotype of a common single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) within CD3 ... Full text Cite

Maternal overprotection in childhood is associated with amygdala reactivity and structural connectivity in adulthood.

Journal article Developmental cognitive neuroscience · December 2019 Recently, we reported that variability in early-life caregiving experiences maps onto individual differences in threat-related brain function. Here, we extend this work to provide further evidence that subtle variability in specific features of early careg ... Full text Cite

A polygenic score for body mass index is associated with depressive symptoms via early life stress: Evidence for gene-environment correlation.

Journal article Journal of psychiatric research · November 2019 Increasing childhood obesity rates are associated with not only adverse physical, but also mental health outcomes, including depression. These negative outcomes may be caused and/or exacerbated by the bullying and shaming overweight individuals experience. ... Full text Cite

Association of Neurocognitive and Physical Function With Gait Speed in Midlife.

Journal article JAMA Netw Open · October 2, 2019 IMPORTANCE: Gait speed is a well-known indicator of risk of functional decline and mortality in older adults, but little is known about the factors associated with gait speed earlier in life. OBJECTIVES: To test the hypothesis that slow gait speed reflects ... Full text Link to item Cite

A genome-wide association study-derived polygenic score for interleukin-1β is associated with hippocampal volume in two samples.

Journal article Human brain mapping · September 2019 Accumulating research suggests that the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-1β (IL-1β) has a modulatory effect on the hippocampus, a brain structure important for learning and memory as well as linked with both psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders ... Full text Cite

Pleiotropic Meta-Analysis of Cognition, Education, and Schizophrenia Differentiates Roles of Early Neurodevelopmental and Adult Synaptic Pathways.

Journal article Am J Hum Genet · August 1, 2019 Susceptibility to schizophrenia is inversely correlated with general cognitive ability at both the phenotypic and the genetic level. Paradoxically, a modest but consistent positive genetic correlation has been reported between schizophrenia and educational ... Full text Link to item Cite

A Polygenic Score for Higher Educational Attainment is Associated with Larger Brains.

Journal article Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · July 2019 People who score higher on intelligence tests tend to have larger brains. Twin studies suggest the same genetic factors influence both brain size and intelligence. This has led to the hypothesis that genetics influence intelligence partly by contributing t ... Full text Cite

Genome-wide association studies of alcohol dependence, DSM-IV criterion count and individual criteria.

Journal article Genes, brain, and behavior · July 2019 Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of alcohol dependence (AD) have reliably identified variation within alcohol metabolizing genes (eg, ADH1B) but have inconsistently located other signals, which may be partially attributable to symptom heterogeneity u ... Full text Cite

Genome-wide association study identifies loci associated with liability to alcohol and drug dependence that is associated with variability in reward-related ventral striatum activity in African- and European-Americans.

Journal article Genes, brain, and behavior · July 2019 Genetic influences on alcohol and drug dependence partially overlap, however, specific loci underlying this overlap remain unclear. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of a phenotype representing alcohol or illicit drug dependence (ANYDEP) ... Full text Cite

Heightened amygdala reactivity and increased stress generation predict internalizing symptoms in adults following childhood maltreatment.

Journal article Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · July 2019 BackgroundChildhood maltreatment is one of the most potent predictors of future psychopathology, including internalizing disorders. It remains unclear whether heightened amygdala reactivity to threat and elevated stress exposure may be implicated ... Full text Cite

Genetic Risk for Rheumatoid Arthritis is Associated with Increased Striatal Volume in Healthy Young Adults.

Journal article Scientific reports · July 2019 Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune disease, has recently been associated with increased striatal volume and decreased intracranial volume (ICV) in longstanding patients. As inflammation has been shown to precede the clinical diagnosis of RA and it is ... Full text Cite

Paradoxical associations between familial affective responsiveness, stress, and amygdala reactivity.

Journal article Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · June 2019 Studies of early life extremes such as trauma, abuse, and neglect highlight the critical importance of quality caregiving in the development of brain circuits supporting emotional behavior and mental health. The impact of normative variability in caregivin ... Full text Cite

Microstructural integrity of white matter moderates an association between childhood adversity and adult trait anger.

Journal article Aggressive behavior · May 2019 Amongst a number of negative life sequelae associated with childhood adversity is the later expression of a higher dispositional tendency to experience anger and frustration to a wide range of situations (i.e., trait anger). We recently reported that an as ... Full text Cite

General functional connectivity: Shared features of resting-state and task fMRI drive reliable and heritable individual differences in functional brain networks.

Journal article NeuroImage · April 2019 Intrinsic connectivity, measured using resting-state fMRI, has emerged as a fundamental tool in the study of the human brain. However, due to practical limitations, many studies do not collect enough resting-state data to generate reliable measures of intr ... Full text Open Access Cite

The Emerging Importance of the Cerebellum in Broad Risk for Psychopathology.

Journal article Neuron · April 2019 Recent research has identified a single factor accounting for broad risk to experience common forms of psychopathology. Structural alterations of cerebellar circuitry have emerged as a neural nexus of this broad risk, highlighting the cerebellum's importan ... Full text Cite

Dopamine genetic risk is related to food addiction and body mass through reduced reward-related ventral striatum activity.

Journal article Appetite · February 2019 The prevalence rate of obesity continues to rise in the U.S., but effective treatment options remain elusive resulting in increased emphasis on prevention. One such area of prevention research capitalizes on the relatively novel behavioral construct of foo ... Full text Cite

Effects of pioglitazone on mnemonic hippocampal function: A blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging study in elderly adults.

Journal article Alzheimers Dement (N Y) · 2019 INTRODUCTION: Mitochondrial dysfunction is implicated in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Accordingly, drugs that positively influence mitochondrial function are being evaluated in delay-of-onset clinical trials with at-risk individuals. Su ... Full text Link to item Cite

Corticolimbic circuit structure moderates an association between early life stress and later trait anxiety.

Journal article NeuroImage. Clinical · January 2019 Childhood adversity is associated with a wide range of negative behavioral and neurodevelopmental consequences. However, individuals vary substantially in their sensitivity to such adversity. Here, we examined how individual variability in structural featu ... Full text Cite

White matter hyperintensities are common in midlife and already associated with cognitive decline.

Journal article Brain communications · January 2019 White matter hyperintensities proliferate as the brain ages and are associated with increased risk for cognitive decline as well as Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. As such, white matter hyperintensities have been targeted as a surrogate biomarke ... Full text Cite

Primary and Secondary Variants of Psychopathy in a Volunteer Sample Are Associated With Different Neurocognitive Mechanisms.

Journal article Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · December 2018 BackgroundRecent work has indicated that there at least two distinct subtypes of psychopathy. Primary psychopathy is characterized by low anxiety and thought to result from a genetic predisposition, whereas secondary psychopathy is characterized b ... Full text Cite

Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS and Biological Insights Into Cognition: A Response to Hill (2018).

Journal article Twin Res Hum Genet · October 2018 Hill (Twin Research and Human Genetics, Vol. 21, 2018, 84-88) presented a critique of our recently published paper in Cell Reports entitled 'Large-Scale Cognitive GWAS Meta-Analysis Reveals Tissue-Specific Neural Expression and Potential Nootropic Drug Tar ... Full text Link to item Cite

Microstructural integrity of a pathway connecting the prefrontal cortex and amygdala moderates the association between cognitive reappraisal and negative emotions.

Journal article Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · September 2018 Cognitive reappraisal is a commonly used form of emotion regulation that utilizes frontal-executive control to reframe an approaching emotional event to moderate its potential psychological impact. Use of cognitive reappraisal has been associated with dimi ... Full text Cite

Heightened connectivity between the ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex as a biomarker for stress-related psychopathology: understanding interactive effects of early and more recent stress.

Journal article Psychological medicine · August 2018 BackgroundThe experience of childhood maltreatment is a significant risk factor for the development of depression. This risk is particularly heightened after exposure to additional, more contemporaneous stress. While behavioral evidence exists for ... Full text Cite

Trajectories of Alcohol Initiation and Use During Adolescence: The Role of Stress and Amygdala Reactivity.

Journal article Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · August 2018 ObjectiveEarly alcohol use initiation predicts onset of alcohol use disorders in adulthood. However, little is known about developmental trajectories of alcohol use initiation and their putative biological and environmental correlates.Method Full text Cite

Replication in Imaging Genetics: The Case of Threat-Related Amygdala Reactivity.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · July 2018 BackgroundLow replication rates are a concern in most, if not all, scientific disciplines. In psychiatric genetics specifically, targeting intermediate brain phenotypes, which are more closely associated with putative genetic effects, was touted a ... Full text Cite

A Link Between Childhood Adversity and Trait Anger Reflects Relative Activity of the Amygdala and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex.

Journal article Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · July 2018 BackgroundTrait anger, or the dispositional tendency to experience a wide range of situations as annoying or frustrating, is associated with negative mental and physical health outcomes. The experience of adversity during childhood is one risk fac ... Full text Cite

Genome-wide association meta-analysis in 269,867 individuals identifies new genetic and functional links to intelligence.

Journal article Nat Genet · July 2018 Intelligence is highly heritable1 and a major determinant of human health and well-being2. Recent genome-wide meta-analyses have identified 24 genomic loci linked to variation in intelligence3-7, but much about its genetic underpinnings remains to be disco ... Full text Link to item Cite

Effects of Schizophrenia Polygenic Risk Scores on Brain Activity and Performance During Working Memory Subprocesses in Healthy Young Adults.

Journal article Schizophrenia bulletin · June 2018 Recent work has begun to shed light on the neural correlates and possible mechanisms of polygenic risk for schizophrenia. Here, we map a schizophrenia polygenic risk profile score (PRS) based on genome-wide association study significant loci onto variabili ... Full text Cite

Study of 300,486 individuals identifies 148 independent genetic loci influencing general cognitive function.

Journal article Nat Commun · May 29, 2018 General cognitive function is a prominent and relatively stable human trait that is associated with many important life outcomes. We combine cognitive and genetic data from the CHARGE and COGENT consortia, and UK Biobank (total N = 300,486; age 16-102) and ... Full text Link to item Cite

Genome-wide association study identifies a novel locus for cannabis dependence.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · May 2018 Despite moderate heritability, only one study has identified genome-wide significant loci for cannabis-related phenotypes. We conducted meta-analyses of genome-wide association study data on 2080 cannabis-dependent cases and 6435 cannabis-exposed controls ... Full text Cite

A Connectome Wide Functional Signature of Transdiagnostic Risk for Mental Illness

Journal article Biological Psychiatry · April 10, 2018 Background High rates of comorbidity, shared risk, and overlapping therapeutic mechanisms have led psychopathology research towards transdiagnostic dimensional investigations of clustered symptoms. One influential framework accounts for these transdiagnost ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Structural alterations within cerebellar circuitry are associated with general liability for common mental disorders.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · April 2018 Accumulating mental-health research encourages a shift in focus toward transdiagnostic dimensional features that are shared across categorical disorders. In support of this shift, recent studies have identified a general liability factor for psychopatholog ... Full text Cite

Schizophrenia polygenic risk score predicts mnemonic hippocampal activity.

Journal article Brain : a journal of neurology · April 2018 The use of polygenic risk scores has become a practical translational approach to investigating the complex genetic architecture of schizophrenia, but the link between polygenic risk scores and pathophysiological components of this disorder has been the su ... Full text Cite

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE NEUROGENETICS OF COGNITION-EMOTION INTERACTIONS.

Journal article Current opinion in behavioral sciences · February 2018 Neuroscience research has demonstrated that cognition, emotion, and their dynamic interactions emerge from complex and flexible patterns of activity across distributed neural circuits. A parallel branch of research in genetics has begun to identify common ... Full text Cite

Post-secondary maternal education buffers against neural risk for psychological vulnerability to future life stress.

Journal article Neuropsychologia · January 2018 We have previously reported that threat-related amygdala activity measured during a baseline fMRI scan predicts the experience of depression and anxiety associated with stressful life events years later. Here, we examine whether two broad measures of child ... Full text Cite

Shifting priorities: highly conserved behavioral and brain network adaptations to chronic stress across species.

Journal article Translational psychiatry · January 2018 Parallel clinical and preclinical research have begun to illuminate the biological basis of stress-related disorders, including major depression, but translational bridges informing discrete mechanistic targets for intervention are missing. To address this ... Full text Cite

Emotion Regulation and the Experience of Future Negative Mood: The Importance of Assessing Social Support.

Journal article Frontiers in psychology · January 2018 Emotion regulation refers to the use of various strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, to help manage our negative experiences, emotions, and thoughts. Although such emotion regulation often occurs within broader social dynam ... Full text Open Access Cite

Examining the Factor Structure of the Self-Report of Psychopathy Short-Form Across Four Young Adult Samples.

Journal article Assessment · December 2017 Psychopathy refers to a range of complex behaviors and personality traits, including callousness and antisocial behavior, typically studied in criminal populations. Recent studies have used self-reports to examine psychopathic traits among noncriminal samp ... Full text Cite

Large-Scale Cognitive GWAS Meta-Analysis Reveals Tissue-Specific Neural Expression and Potential Nootropic Drug Targets.

Journal article Cell Rep · November 28, 2017 Here, we present a large (n = 107,207) genome-wide association study (GWAS) of general cognitive ability ("g"), further enhanced by combining results with a large-scale GWAS of educational attainment. We identified 70 independent genomic loci associated wi ... Full text Link to item Cite

Prefrontal Executive Control Rescues Risk for Anxiety Associated with High Threat and Low Reward Brain Function

Journal article Cerebral Cortex · November 17, 2017 Compared with neural biomarkers of risk for mental illness, little is known about biomarkers of resilience. We explore if greater executive control-related prefrontal activity may function as a resilience biomarker by “rescuing” risk associated with higher ... Full text Link to item Cite

Is low cognitive functioning a predictor or consequence of major depressive disorder? A test in two longitudinal birth cohorts.

Journal article Development and psychopathology · November 2017 Cognitive impairment has been identified as an important aspect of major depressive disorder (MDD). We tested two theories regarding the association between MDD and cognitive functioning using data from longitudinal cohort studies. One theory, the cognitiv ... Full text Cite

Building Bridges through Science.

Journal article Neuron · November 2017 Science is ideally suited to connect people from different cultures and thereby foster mutual understanding. To promote international life science collaboration, we have launched "The Science Bridge" initiative. Our current project focuses on partnership b ... Full text Cite

The long reach of early adversity: Parenting, stress, and neural pathways to antisocial behavior in adulthood.

Journal article Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · October 2017 BackgroundEarly life adversities including harsh parenting, maternal depression, neighborhood deprivation, and low family economic resources are more prevalent in low-income urban environments and are potent predictors of psychopathology, includin ... Full text Cite

Reward-Related Ventral Striatum Activity Buffers against the Experience of Depressive Symptoms Associated with Sleep Disturbances.

Journal article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · October 2017 Sleep disturbances represent one risk factor for depression. Reward-related brain function, particularly the activity of the ventral striatum (VS), has been identified as a potential buffer against stress-related depression. We were therefore interested in ... Full text Cite

Neurogenetic plasticity and sex influence the link between corticolimbic structural connectivity and trait anxiety.

Journal article Scientific reports · September 2017 Corticolimbic pathways connecting the amygdala and ventral prefrontal cortex (vPFC) are linked with trait anxiety, but it remains unclear what potential genetic moderators contribute to this association. We sought to address this by examining the inter-ind ... Full text Cite

Individual differences in regulatory focus predict neural response to reward.

Journal article Soc Neurosci · August 2017 Although goal pursuit is related to both functioning of the brain's reward circuits and psychological factors, the literatures surrounding these concepts have often been separate. Here, we use the psychological construct of regulatory focus to investigate ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Imaging Genetics and Genomics in Psychiatry: A Critical Review of Progress and Potential.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · August 2017 Imaging genetics and genomics research has begun to provide insight into the molecular and genetic architecture of neural phenotypes and the neural mechanisms through which genetic risk for psychopathology may emerge. As it approaches its third decade, ima ... Full text Cite

An earlier time of scan is associated with greater threat-related amygdala reactivity.

Journal article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · August 2017 Time-dependent variability in mood and anxiety suggest that related neural phenotypes, such as threat-related amygdala reactivity, may also follow a diurnal pattern. Here, using data from 1,043 young adult volunteers, we found that threat-related amygdala ... Full text Cite

Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis genetic variation and early stress moderates amygdala function.

Journal article Psychoneuroendocrinology · June 2017 Early life stress may precipitate psychopathology, at least in part, by influencing amygdala function. Converging evidence across species suggests that links between childhood stress and amygdala function may be dependent upon hypothalamic-pituitary-adrena ... Full text Cite

Threat-related amygdala activity is associated with peripheral CRP concentrations in men but not women.

Journal article Psychoneuroendocrinology · April 2017 Increased levels of peripheral inflammatory markers, including C-Reactive Protein (CRP), are associated with increased risk for depression, anxiety, and suicidality. The brain mechanisms that may underlie the association between peripheral inflammation and ... Full text Cite

Amygdala reactivity predicts adolescent antisocial behavior but not callous-unemotional traits.

Journal article Developmental cognitive neuroscience · April 2017 Recent neuroimaging studies have suggested divergent relationships between antisocial behavior (AB) and callous-unemotional (CU) traits and amygdala reactivity to fearful and angry facial expressions in adolescents. However, little work has examined if the ... Full text Cite

Reward-related ventral striatum activity links polygenic risk for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to problematic alcohol use in young adulthood.

Journal article Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · March 2017 BackgroundProblematic alcohol use in adolescence and adulthood is a common and often debilitating correlate of childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Converging evidence suggests that ADHD and problematic alcohol use share a co ... Full text Cite

GWAS meta-analysis reveals novel loci and genetic correlates for general cognitive function: a report from the COGENT consortium.

Journal article Mol Psychiatry · March 2017 The complex nature of human cognition has resulted in cognitive genomics lagging behind many other fields in terms of gene discovery using genome-wide association study (GWAS) methods. In an attempt to overcome these barriers, the current study utilized GW ... Full text Link to item Cite

An epigenetic mechanism links socioeconomic status to changes in depression-related brain function in high-risk adolescents.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · February 2017 Identifying biological mechanisms through which the experience of adversity emerges as individual risk for mental illness is an important step toward developing strategies for personalized treatment and, ultimately, prevention. Preclinical studies have ide ... Full text Cite

Peering into the brain to predict behavior: Peer-reported, but not self-reported, conscientiousness links threat-related amygdala activity to future problem drinking.

Journal article NeuroImage · February 2017 Personality traits such as conscientiousness as self-reported by individuals can help predict a range of outcomes, from job performance to longevity. Asking others to rate the personality of their acquaintances often provides even better predictive power t ... Full text Cite

A Common Polymorphism in a Williams Syndrome Gene Predicts Amygdala Reactivity and Extraversion in Healthy Adults.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · February 2017 BackgroundWilliams syndrome (WS), a genetic disorder resulting from hemizygous microdeletion of chromosome 7q11.23, has emerged as a model for identifying the genetic architecture of socioemotional behavior. Common polymorphisms in GTF2I, which is ... Full text Cite

A Functional Interleukin-18 Haplotype Predicts Depression and Anxiety through Increased Threat-Related Amygdala Reactivity in Women but Not Men.

Journal article Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · January 2017 Common functional polymorphisms in the gene encoding interleukin-18 (IL18), a cytokine belonging to the IL-1 superfamily that can induce synthesis of several other cytokines, have been associated with major depressive episodes following the experience of s ... Full text Cite

The association between cognitive function and subsequent depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Journal article Psychol Med · January 2017 Despite a growing interest in understanding the cognitive deficits associated with major depressive disorder (MDD), it is largely unknown whether such deficits exist before disorder onset or how they might influence the severity of subsequent illness. The ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Thinking and Feeling: Individual Differences in Habitual Emotion Regulation and Stress-Related Mood are Associated with Prefrontal Executive Control.

Journal article Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · January 2017 Calculating math problems from memory may seem unrelated to everyday processing of emotions, but they have more in common than one might think. Prior research highlights the importance of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) in executive control, int ... Full text Cite

Cultural influences on neural basis of inhibitory control.

Journal article NeuroImage · October 2016 Research on neural basis of inhibitory control has been extensively conducted in various parts of the world. It is often implicitly assumed that neural basis of inhibitory control is universally similar across cultures. Here, we investigated the extent to ... Full text Cite

Decoding Spontaneous Emotional States in the Human Brain

Journal article PLoS Biol · September 14, 2016 Author SummaryFunctional brain imaging techniques provide a window into neural activity underpinning diverse cognitive processes, including visual perception, decision-making, and memory, among many others. By treating functional imaging ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Interactions Between Anandamide and Corticotropin-Releasing Factor Signaling Modulate Human Amygdala Function and Risk for Anxiety Disorders: An Imaging Genetics Strategy for Modeling Molecular Interactions.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · September 2016 BackgroundPreclinical models reveal that stress-induced amygdala activity and impairment in fear extinction reflect reductions in anandamide driven by corticotropin-releasing factor receptor type 1 (CRF1) potentiation of the anandamide catabolic e ... Full text Cite

An oxytocin receptor polymorphism predicts amygdala reactivity and antisocial behavior in men.

Journal article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · August 2016 Variability in oxytocin (OXT) signaling is associated with individual differences in sex-specific social behavior across species. The effects of OXT signaling on social behavior are, in part, mediated through its modulation of amygdala function. Here, we u ... Full text Cite

COMT Val(158) Met genotype is associated with reward learning: a replication study and meta-analysis.

Journal article Genes, brain, and behavior · June 2016 Identifying mechanisms through which individual differences in reward learning emerge offers an opportunity to understand both a fundamental form of adaptive responding as well as etiological pathways through which aberrant reward learning may contribute t ... Full text Cite

Evidence of CNIH3 involvement in opioid dependence.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · May 2016 Opioid dependence, a severe addictive disorder and major societal problem, has been demonstrated to be moderately heritable. We conducted a genome-wide association study in Comorbidity and Trauma Study data comparing opioid-dependent daily injectors (N=116 ... Full text Cite

Variability in emotional responsiveness and coping style during active avoidance as a window onto psychological vulnerability to stress.

Journal article Physiology & behavior · May 2016 Individual differences in coping styles are associated with psychological vulnerability to stress. Recent animal research suggests that coping styles reflect trade-offs between proactive and reactive threat responses during active avoidance paradigms, with ... Full text Cite

A neuroscience perspective on sexual risk behavior in adolescence and emerging adulthood.

Journal article Development and psychopathology · May 2016 Late adolescence and emerging adulthood (specifically ages 15-24) represent a period of heightened sexual risk taking resulting in the greatest annual rates of sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies in the US population. Ongoing efforts ... Full text Cite

Divergent responses of the amygdala and ventral striatum predict stress-related problem drinking in young adults: possible differential markers of affective and impulsive pathways of risk for alcohol use disorder.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · March 2016 Prior work suggests that there may be two distinct pathways of alcohol use disorder (AUD) risk: one associated with positive emotion enhancement and behavioral impulsivity, and another associated with negative emotion relief and coping. We sought to map th ... Full text Cite

Genetic Moderation of Stress Effects on Corticolimbic Circuitry.

Journal article Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · January 2016 Stress exposure is associated with individual differences in corticolimbic structure and function that often mirror patterns observed in psychopathology. Gene x environment interaction research suggests that genetic variation moderates the impact of stress ... Full text Cite

PER1 rs3027172 Genotype Interacts with Early Life Stress to Predict Problematic Alcohol Use, but Not Reward-Related Ventral Striatum Activity.

Journal article Frontiers in psychology · January 2016 Increasing evidence suggests that the circadian and stress regulatory systems contribute to alcohol use disorder (AUD) risk, which may partially arise through effects on reward-related neural function. The C allele of the PER1 rs3027172 single nucleotide p ... Full text Cite

Dissecting the Role of Amygdala Reactivity in Antisocial Behavior in a Sample of Young, Low-Income, Urban Men

Journal article Clinical Psychological Science · January 1, 2016 Neuroimaging has suggested that amygdala reactivity to emotional facial expressions is associated with antisocial behavior (AB), particularly among those high on callous–unemotional (CU) traits. To investigate this association and potential moderators of t ... Full text Cite

Blunted Ventral Striatum Development in Adolescence Reflects Emotional Neglect and Predicts Depressive Symptoms.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · November 2015 BackgroundEmotional neglect is associated with multiple negative outcomes, particularly increased risk for depression. Motivated by increasing evidence of reward-related ventral striatum (VS) dysfunction in depression, we investigated the role of ... Full text Cite

Lower structural integrity of the uncinate fasciculus is associated with a history of child maltreatment and future psychological vulnerability to stress.

Journal article Development and psychopathology · November 2015 The experience of child maltreatment is a significant risk factor for the development of later internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety. This risk is particularly heightened after exposure to additional, more contemporaneous stress. While beh ... Full text Cite

Monoacylglycerol lipase (MGLL) polymorphism rs604300 interacts with childhood adversity to predict cannabis dependence symptoms and amygdala habituation: Evidence from an endocannabinoid system-level analysis.

Journal article Journal of abnormal psychology · November 2015 Despite evidence for heritable variation in cannabis involvement and the discovery of cannabinoid receptors and their endogenous ligands, no consistent patterns have emerged from candidate endocannabinoid (eCB) genetic association studies of cannabis invol ... Full text Cite

Cumulative Stress In Childhood is Associated with Blunted Reward-Related Brain Activity In Adulthood

Journal article Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience · October 5, 2015 Early life stress (ELS) is strongly associated with negative outcomes in adulthood, including reduced motivation and increased negative mood. The mechanisms mediating these relations, however, are poorly understood. We examined the relation between exposur ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Finding translation in stress research.

Journal article Nature neuroscience · October 2015 In our ongoing efforts to advance understanding of human diseases, translational research across rodents and humans on stress-related mental disorders stands out as a field that is producing discoveries that illuminate mechanisms of risk and pathophysiolog ... Full text Cite

A Common Polymorphism in SCN2A Predicts General Cognitive Ability through Effects on PFC Physiology.

Journal article Journal of cognitive neuroscience · September 2015 Here we provide novel convergent evidence across three independent cohorts of healthy adults (n = 531), demonstrating that a common polymorphism in the gene encoding the α2 subunit of neuronal voltage-gated type II sodium channels (SCN2A) predicts human ge ... Full text Cite

Independent evidence for an association between general cognitive ability and a genetic locus for educational attainment.

Journal article American journal of medical genetics. Part B, Neuropsychiatric genetics : the official publication of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics · July 2015 Cognitive deficits and reduced educational achievement are common in psychiatric illness; understanding the genetic basis of cognitive and educational deficits may be informative about the etiology of psychiatric disorders. A recent, large genome-wide asso ... Full text Cite

Can we observe epigenetic effects on human brain function?

Journal article Trends in cognitive sciences · July 2015 Imaging genetics has identified many contributions of DNA sequence variation to individual differences in brain function, behavior, and risk for psychopathology. Recent studies have extended this work beyond the genome by mapping epigenetic differences, sp ... Full text Cite

Anterior cingulate cortex gray matter volume mediates an association between 2D:4D ratio and trait aggression in women but not men.

Journal article Psychoneuroendocrinology · June 2015 Previous research demonstrates that prenatal testosterone exposure increases aggression, possibly through its effects on the structure and function of neural circuits supporting threat detection and emotion regulation. Here we examined associations between ... Full text Cite

Differential patterns of amygdala and ventral striatum activation predict gender-specific changes in sexual risk behavior.

Journal article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · June 2015 Although the initiation of sexual behavior is common among adolescents and young adults, some individuals express this behavior in a manner that significantly increases their risk for negative outcomes including sexually transmitted infections. Based on ac ... Full text Cite

Genetic Differences in the Immediate Transcriptome Response to Stress Predict Risk-Related Brain Function and Psychiatric Disorders.

Journal article Neuron · June 2015 Depression risk is exacerbated by genetic factors and stress exposure; however, the biological mechanisms through which these factors interact to confer depression risk are poorly understood. One putative biological mechanism implicates variability in the ... Full text Cite

5-HTTLPR genotype potentiates the effects of war zone stressors on the emergence of PTSD, depressive and anxiety symptoms in soldiers deployed to iraq.

Journal article World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · June 2015 Exposure to war zone stressors is common, yet only a minority of soldiers experience clinically meaningful disturbance in psychological function. Identification of biomarkers that predict vulnerability to war zone stressors is critical for developing more ... Full text Cite

Heritability of fractional anisotropy in human white matter: a comparison of Human Connectome Project and ENIGMA-DTI data.

Journal article NeuroImage · May 2015 The degree to which genetic factors influence brain connectivity is beginning to be understood. Large-scale efforts are underway to map the profile of genetic effects in various brain regions. The NIH-funded Human Connectome Project (HCP) is providing data ... Full text Cite

Basal forebrain moderates the magnitude of task-dependent amygdala functional connectivity.

Journal article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · April 2015 Animal studies reveal that the amygdala promotes attention and emotional memory, in part, by driving activity in downstream target regions including the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus. Prior work has demonstrated that the amygdala influences these ... Full text Cite

Developmental change in amygdala reactivity during adolescence: effects of family history of depression and stressful life events.

Journal article The American journal of psychiatry · March 2015 ObjectiveAlthough heightened amygdala reactivity is observed in patients with major depression, two critical gaps in our knowledge remain. First, it is unclear whether heightened amygdala reactivity is a premorbid vulnerability or a consequence of ... Full text Cite

Stress-related anhedonia is associated with ventral striatum reactivity to reward and transdiagnostic psychiatric symptomatology.

Journal article Psychological medicine · January 2015 BackgroundEarly life stress (ELS) is consistently associated with increased risk for subsequent psychopathology. Individual differences in neural response to reward may confer vulnerability to stress-related psychopathology. Using data from the on ... Full text Cite

FRAS1-related extracellular matrix 3 (FREM3) single-nucleotide polymorphism effects on gene expression, amygdala reactivity and perceptual processing speed: An accelerated aging pathway of depression risk.

Journal article Frontiers in psychology · January 2015 The A allele of the FRAS1-related extracellular matrix protein 3 (FREM3) rs7676614 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was linked to major depressive disorder (MDD) in an early genome-wide association study (GWAS), and to symptoms of psychomotor retardati ... Full text Cite

Testosterone responses to competition predict decreased trust ratings of emotionally neutral faces.

Journal article Psychoneuroendocrinology · November 2014 A wealth of evidence has linked individual differences in testosterone (T) to social, cognitive, and behavioral processes related to human dominance. Moreover, recent evidence indicates that a single administration of T reduces interpersonal trust in healt ... Full text Cite

Beyond genotype: serotonin transporter epigenetic modification predicts human brain function.

Journal article Nature neuroscience · September 2014 We examined epigenetic regulation in regards to behaviorally and clinically relevant human brain function. Specifically, we found that increased promoter methylation of the serotonin transporter gene predicted increased threat-related amygdala reactivity a ... Full text Cite

Feature-based representations of emotional facial expressions in the human amygdala.

Journal article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · September 2014 The amygdala plays a central role in processing facial affect, responding to diverse expressions and features shared between expressions. Although speculation exists regarding the nature of relationships between expression- and feature-specific amygdala re ... Full text Cite

Testosterone rapidly increases neural reactivity to threat in healthy men: a novel two-step pharmacological challenge paradigm.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · August 2014 BackgroundPrevious research suggests that testosterone (T) plays a key role in shaping competitive and aggressive behavior in humans, possibly by modulating threat-related neural circuitry. However, this research has been limited by the use of T a ... Full text Cite

Association between amygdala reactivity and a dopamine transporter gene polymorphism.

Journal article Translational psychiatry · August 2014 Essential for detection of relevant external stimuli and for fear processing, the amygdala is under modulatory influence of dopamine (DA). The DA transporter (DAT) is of fundamental importance for the regulation of DA transmission by mediating reuptake ina ... Full text Cite

An inflammatory pathway links atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk to neural activity evoked by the cognitive regulation of emotion.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · May 2014 BackgroundCognitive reappraisal is a form of emotion regulation that alters emotional responding by changing the meaning of emotional stimuli. Reappraisal engages regions of the prefrontal cortex that support multiple functions, including visceral ... Full text Cite

Testosterone reactivity to provocation mediates the effect of early intervention on aggressive behavior.

Journal article Psychological science · May 2014 We tested the hypotheses that the Fast Track intervention program for high-risk children would reduce adult aggressive behavior and that this effect would be mediated by decreased testosterone responses to social provocation. Participants were a subsample ... Full text Cite

PhenX RISING: real world implementation and sharing of PhenX measures.

Journal article BMC Med Genomics · March 20, 2014 BACKGROUND: The purpose of this manuscript is to describe the PhenX RISING network and the site experiences in the implementation of PhenX measures into ongoing population-based genomic studies. METHODS: Eighty PhenX measures were implemented across the se ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

New applications of disease genetics and pharmacogenetics to drug development.

Journal article Curr Opin Pharmacol · February 2014 TOMMORROW is a Phase III delay of onset clinical trial to determine whether low doses of pioglitazone, a molecule that induces mitochondrial doubling, delays the onset of MCI-AD in normal subjects treated with low dose compared to placebo. BOLD imaging stu ... Full text Link to item Cite

Amygdala reactivity and negative emotionality: divergent correlates of antisocial personality and psychopathy traits in a community sample.

Journal article Journal of abnormal psychology · February 2014 Previous studies have emphasized that antisocial personality disorder (APD) and psychopathy overlap highly but differ critically in several features, notably negative emotionality (NEM) and possibly amygdala reactivity to social signals of threat and distr ... Full text Cite

Functional genetic variants in the vesicular monoamine transporter 1 modulate emotion processing

Journal article Molecular Psychiatry · January 1, 2014 Emotional behavior is in part heritable and often disrupted in psychopathology. Identification of specific genetic variants that drive this heritability may provide important new insight into molecular and neurobiological mechanisms involved in emotionalit ... Full text Cite

Reduced hippocampal and medial prefrontal gray matter mediate the association between reported childhood maltreatment and trait anxiety in adulthood and predict sensitivity to future life stress

Journal article Biology of Mood and Anxiety Disorders · January 1, 2014 Background: The experience of early life stress is a consistently identified risk factor for the development of mood and anxiety disorders. Preclinical research employing animal models of early life stress has made inroads in understanding this association ... Full text Cite

Functional genetic variants in the vesicular monoamine transporter 1 modulate emotion processing.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · January 2014 Emotional behavior is in part heritable and often disrupted in psychopathology. Identification of specific genetic variants that drive this heritability may provide important new insight into molecular and neurobiological mechanisms involved in emotionalit ... Full text Cite

Convergent effects of mouse Pet-1 deletion and human PET-1 variation on amygdala fear and threat processing.

Journal article Experimental neurology · December 2013 Serotonin is critical for shaping the development of neural circuits regulating emotion. Pet-1 (FEV-1) is an ETS-domain transcription factor essential for differentiation and forebrain targeting of serotonin neurons. Constitutive Pet-1 knockout (KO) causes ... Full text Cite

War zone stress interacts with the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism to predict the development of sustained attention for negative emotion stimuli in soldiers returning from Iraq

Journal article Clinical Psychological Science · October 1, 2013 Biased attention toward negative stimuli is a known vulnerability for affective psychopathology. However, factors that contribute to the development of this cognitive bias are largely unknown. Variation within the serotonin transporter gene (i.e., 5-HTTLPR ... Full text Cite

Understanding Youth Antisocial Behavior Using Neuroscience through a Developmental Psychopathology Lens: Review, Integration, and Directions for Research.

Journal article Developmental review : DR · September 2013 Youth antisocial behavior (AB) is an important public health concern impacting perpetrators, victims, and society. Functional neuroimaging is becoming a more common and useful modality for understanding neural correlates of youth AB. Although there has bee ... Full text Cite

Reward-related ventral striatum reactivity mediates gender-specific effects of a galanin remote enhancer haplotype on problem drinking.

Journal article Genes, brain, and behavior · July 2013 The neuropeptide galanin has been implicated in the regulation of appetitive and consummatory behaviors. Prior studies have shown that direct injection of galanin into the hypothalamus results in increased release of dopamine (DA) in the nucleus accumbens ... Full text Cite

Dopamine-modulated aversive emotion processing fails in alcohol-dependent patients.

Journal article Pharmacopsychiatry · June 2013 Negative mood states after alcohol detoxification may enhance the relapse risk. As recently shown in healthy volunteers, dopamine storage capacity (V d) in the left amygdala was positively correlated with functional activation in the left amygdala and ante ... Full text Cite

Uncinate fasciculus fractional anisotropy correlates with typical use of reappraisal in women but not men.

Journal article Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · June 2013 Emotion regulation refers to strategies through which individuals influence their experience and expression of emotions. Two typical strategies are reappraisal, a cognitive strategy for reframing the context of an emotional experience, and suppression, a b ... Full text Cite

Impact of sleep quality on amygdala reactivity, negative affect, and perceived stress.

Journal article Psychosomatic medicine · May 2013 ObjectiveResearch demonstrates a negative impact of sleep disturbance on mood and affect; however, the biological mechanisms mediating these links are poorly understood. Amygdala reactivity to negative stimuli has emerged as one potential pathway. ... Full text Cite

A neurogenetics approach to understanding individual differences in brain, behavior, and risk for psychopathology.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · March 2013 Neurogenetics research has begun to advance our understanding of how genetic variation gives rise to individual differences in brain function, which, in turn, shapes behavior and risk for psychopathology. Despite these advancements, neurogenetics research ... Full text Cite

Exploring the mind: Integrating questionnaires and fMRI

Journal article 30th International Conference on Machine Learning Icml 2013 · January 1, 2013 A new model is developed for joint analysis of ordered, categorical, real and count data. The ordered and categorical data are answers to questionnaires, the (word) count data correspond to the text questions from the questionnaires, and the real data corr ... Cite

Identifying serotonergic mechanisms underlying the corticolimbic response to threat in humans.

Journal article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · January 2013 A corticolimbic circuit including the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) plays an important role in regulating sensitivity to threat, which is heightened in mood and anxiety disorders. Serotonin is a potent neuromodulator of this circuit; however ... Full text Cite

Neural embedding of stress reactivity.

Journal article Nature neuroscience · December 2012 Full text Cite

FKBP5 and emotional neglect interact to predict individual differences in amygdala reactivity.

Journal article Genes, brain, and behavior · October 2012 Individual variation in physiological responsiveness to stress mediates risk for mental illness and is influenced by both experiential and genetic factors. Common polymorphisms in the human gene for FK506 binding protein 5 (FKBP5), which is involved in tra ... Full text Cite

The highs and lows of amygdala reactivity in bipolar disorders.

Journal article The American journal of psychiatry · August 2012 Full text Cite

Linking variability in brain chemistry and circuit function through multimodal human neuroimaging.

Journal article Genes, brain, and behavior · August 2012 Identifying neurobiological mechanisms mediating the emergence of individual differences in behavior is critical for advancing our understanding of relative risk for psychopathology. Neuroreceptor positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic ... Full text Cite

Ventral striatum reactivity to reward and recent life stress interact to predict positive affect.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · July 2012 BackgroundStressful life events are among the most reliable precipitants of major depressive disorder; yet, not everyone exposed to stress develops depression. It has been hypothesized that robust neural reactivity to reward and associated stable ... Full text Cite

Genetic variants affecting the neural processing of human facial expressions: evidence using a genome-wide functional imaging approach.

Journal article Translational psychiatry · July 2012 Human faces present crucial visual information for social interaction. Specialized brain regions are involved in the perception of faces, with the fusiform face area (FFA) a key neuronal substrate. Face processing is genetically controlled, but by which sp ... Full text Cite

Genetic and hormonal sensitivity to threat: testing a serotonin transporter genotype Ă— testosterone interaction.

Journal article Psychoneuroendocrinology · June 2012 BackgroundStriking parallels are observed when comparing the literature on the 5-HTTLPR of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) to the testosterone (T) literature on measures of stress reactivity and neural activity. Short (S) allele carriers a ... Full text Cite

Associations between variants near a monoaminergic pathways gene (PHOX2B) and amygdala reactivity: a genome-wide functional imaging study.

Journal article Twin research and human genetics : the official journal of the International Society for Twin Studies · June 2012 As the amygdala is part of the phylogenetic old brain, and its anatomical and functional properties are conserved across species, it is reasonable to assume genetic influence on its activity. A large corpus of candidate gene studies indicate that individua ... Full text Cite

Imaging genetics and the neurobiological basis of individual differences in vulnerability to addiction.

Journal article Drug Alcohol Depend · June 2012 BACKGROUND: Addictive disorders are heritable, but the search for candidate functional polymorphisms playing an etiological role in addiction is hindered by complexity of the phenotype and the variety of factors interacting to impact behavior. Advances in ... Full text Link to item Cite

Hypervigilance for fear after basolateral amygdala damage in humans.

Journal article Translational psychiatry · May 2012 Recent rodent research has shown that the basolateral amygdala (BLA) inhibits unconditioned, or innate, fear. It is, however, unknown whether the BLA acts in similar ways in humans. In a group of five subjects with a rare genetic syndrome, that is, Urbach- ... Full text Cite

Using confirmatory factor analysis to measure contemporaneous activation of defined neuronal networks in functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Journal article NeuroImage · May 2012 Functional neuroimaging often generates large amounts of data on regions of interest. Such data can be addressed effectively with a widely-used statistical technique based on measurement theory that has not yet been applied to neuroimaging. Confirmatory fa ... Full text Cite

Mineralocorticoid receptor Iso/Val (rs5522) genotype moderates the association between previous childhood emotional neglect and amygdala reactivity.

Journal article The American journal of psychiatry · May 2012 ObjectiveThe amygdala is especially reactive to threatening stimuli, and the degree of reactivity predicts individual differences in the expression of depression and anxiety. Emerging research suggests that emotional neglect during childhood as we ... Full text Cite

Neural mechanisms underlying 5-HTTLPR-related sensitivity to acute stress.

Journal article The American journal of psychiatry · April 2012 ObjectiveMany studies have shown that 5-HTTLPR genotype interacts with exposure to stress in conferring risk for psychopathology. However, the specific neural mechanisms through which this gene-by-environment interaction confers risk remain largel ... Full text Cite

Adenylate cyclase 7 is implicated in the biology of depression and modulation of affective neural circuitry.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · April 2012 BackgroundEvolutionarily conserved genes and their associated molecular pathways can serve as a translational bridge between human and mouse research, extending our understanding of biological pathways mediating individual differences in behavior ... Full text Cite

Interaction between trait anxiety and trait anger predict amygdala reactivity to angry facial expressions in men but not women.

Journal article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · February 2012 The amygdala is critically involved in mediating physiological and behavioral responses to threat. In particular, neuroimaging research indicates that the amygdala is highly responsive to facial signals of threat such as fearful and angry expressions. Howe ... Full text Cite

Is there a general factor of prevalent psychopathology during adulthood?

Journal article Journal of abnormal psychology · 2012 The patterns of comorbidity among prevalent mental disorders in adults lead them to load on ``externalizing,'' ``distress,'' and ``fears'' factors. These factors are themselves robustly correlated, but little attention has been paid to this fact. As a firs ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neural responses to threat and reward interact to predict stress-related problem drinking: A novel protective role of the amygdala

Journal article Biology of mood \& anxiety disorders · 2012 ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Research into neural mechanisms of drug abuse risk has focused on the role of dysfunction in neural circuits for reward. In contrast, few studies have examined the role of dysfunction in neural circuits of threat in mediating drug abu ... Full text Link to item Cite

The neural signatures of distinct psychopathic traits

Journal article Social neuroscience · 2012 Recent studies suggest that psychopathy may be associated with dysfunction in the neural circuitry supporting both threat- and reward-related processes. However, these studies have involved small samples and often focused on extreme groups. Thus, it is unc ... Full text Link to item Cite

Convergent translational evidence of a role for anandamide in amygdala-mediated fear extinction, threat processing and stress-reactivity

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · 2012 Endocannabinoids are released 'on-demand' on the basis of physiological need, and can be pharmacologically augmented by inhibiting their catabolic degradation. The endocannabinoid anandamide is degraded by the catabolic enzyme fatty acid amide hydrolase (F ... Full text Link to item Cite

Sleep quality and neural circuit function supporting emotion regulation

Journal article Biology of mood \& anxiety disorders · 2012 ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Recent laboratory studies employing an extended sleep deprivation model have mapped sleep-related changes in behavior onto functional alterations in specific brain regions supporting emotion, suggesting possible biological mechanisms ... Full text Link to item Cite

Toward a mechanistic understanding of how variability in neurobiology shapes individual differences in behavior

Journal article Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2012 Research has begun to identify how variability in brain function contributes to individual differences in complex behavioral traits. Examining variability in molecular signaling pathways with emerging and established methodologies such as pharmacologic fMR ... Full text Link to item Cite

Impulsivity and the Modular Organization of Resting-State Neural Networks

Journal article Cerebral cortex · 2012 Impulsivity is a complex trait associated with a range of maladaptive behaviors, including many forms of psychopathology. Previous research has implicated multiple neural circuits and neurotransmitter systems in impulsive behavior, but the relationship bet ... Full text Link to item Cite

Understanding risk for psychopathology through imaging gene-environment interactions.

Journal article Trends in cognitive sciences · September 2011 Examining the interplay of genes, experience and the brain is crucial to understanding psychopathology. We review the recent gene-environment interaction (GĂ—E) and imaging genetics literature with the goal of developing models to bridge these approaches wi ... Full text Cite

The what, where, and when of catechol-O-methyltransferase.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · August 2011 Full text Cite

The social neuroendocrinology of human aggression.

Journal article Psychoneuroendocrinology · August 2011 Testosterone concentrations fluctuate rapidly in response to competitive and aggressive interactions, suggesting that changes in testosterone rather than baseline differences shape ongoing and/or future competitive and aggressive behaviors. Although recent ... Full text Cite

Multilocus genetic profile for dopamine signaling predicts ventral striatum reactivity.

Journal article Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · August 2011 Research integrating neuroimaging and molecular genetics has yielded important insights into how variability in brain chemistry predicts individual differences in brain function, behavior and related risk for psychopathology. However, existing studies have ... Full text Cite

Serotonin transporter gene polymorphisms and brain function during emotional distraction from cognitive processing in posttraumatic stress disorder.

Journal article BMC Psychiatry · May 5, 2011 BACKGROUND: Serotonergic system dysfunction has been implicated in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Genetic polymorphisms associated with serotonin signaling may predict differences in brain circuitry involved in emotion processing and deficits associ ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Parental education predicts corticostriatal functionality in adulthood.

Journal article Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · April 2011 Socioeconomic disadvantage experienced in early development predicts ill health in adulthood. However, the neurobiological pathways linking early disadvantage to adult health remain unclear. Lower parental education-a presumptive indicator of early socioec ... Full text Cite

Perceived social support moderates the link between threat-related amygdala reactivity and trait anxiety.

Journal article Neuropsychologia · March 2011 Several lines of research have illustrated that negative environments can precipitate psychopathology, particularly in the context of relatively increased biological risk, while social resources can buffer the effects of these environments. However, little ... Full text Cite

Experiential, autonomic, and neural responses during threat anticipation vary as a function of threat intensity and neuroticism.

Journal article NeuroImage · March 2011 Anticipatory emotional responses play a crucial role in preparing individuals for impending challenges. They do this by triggering a coordinated set of changes in behavioral, autonomic, and neural response systems. In the present study, we examined the bio ... Full text Cite

The amygdala: Inside and out

Journal article F1000 Biology Reports · February 3, 2011 Research at the interface of psychology, neuroscience, molecular biology, and genetics, focusing on the amygdala, has begun to reveal a rule book for emotional reactions. Variations in intrinsic and extrinsic factors tweak the sensitivity of the amygdala, ... Full text Cite

Associations between serotonin transporter gene promoter region (5-HTTLPR) polymorphism and gaze bias for emotional information.

Journal article Journal of abnormal psychology · February 2011 The serotonin transporter promoter region polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) is associated with neural response to negative images in brain regions involved in the experience of emotion. However, the behavioral implications of this sensitivity have been studied far l ... Full text Cite

Face to face with the emotional brain

Journal article Scientist · February 1, 2011 Cite

Medial prefrontal cortex serotonin 1A and 2A receptor binding interacts to predict threat-related amygdala reactivity

Journal article Biology of mood \& anxiety disorders · 2011 BACKGROUND: The amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) comprise a key corticolimbic circuit that helps shape individual differences in sensitivity to threat and the related risk for psychopathology. Although serotonin (5-HT) is known to be a key modu ... Full text Link to item Cite

What lies beneath the face of aggression?

Journal article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2011 Recent evidence indicates that a sexually dimorphic feature of humans, the facial width-to-height ratio (FWHR), is positively correlated with reactive aggression, particularly in men. Also, predictions about the aggressive tendencies of others faithfully m ... Full text Link to item Cite

Welcome to biology of mood \& anxiety disorders

Journal article Biology of mood \& anxiety disorders · 2011 Full text Link to item Cite

Theory and methods in cultural neuroscience.

Journal article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · June 2010 Cultural neuroscience is an emerging research discipline that investigates cultural variation in psychological, neural and genomic processes as a means of articulating the bidirectional relationship of these processes and their emergent properties. Researc ... Full text Cite

Amygdala reactivity is inversely related to level of cannabis use in individuals with comorbid cannabis dependence and major depression.

Journal article Addictive behaviors · June 2010 Phan et al. (2008) recently reported that an acute dose of oral THC is associated with a decrease in threat-related amygdala reactivity during a social threat stimulus task. However, to date, those findings have not been replicated, and have not been exten ... Full text Cite

Genetic sensitivity to the environment: the case of the serotonin transporter gene and its implications for studying complex diseases and traits.

Journal article The American journal of psychiatry · May 2010 Evidence of marked variability in response among people exposed to the same environmental risk implies that individual differences in genetic susceptibility might be at work. The study of such Gene-by-Environment (GxE) interactions has gained momentum. In ... Full text Cite

Cognitive impact of genetic variation of the serotonin transporter in primates is associated with differences in brain morphology rather than serotonin neurotransmission.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · May 2010 A powerful convergence of genetics, neuroimaging and epidemiological research has identified the biological pathways mediating individual differences in complex behavioral processes and the related risk for disease. Orthologous genetic variation in non-hum ... Full text Cite

Abnormalities in neural processing of emotional stimuli in Williams syndrome vary according to social vs. non-social content.

Journal article NeuroImage · March 2010 Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder caused by the deletion of approximately 25 genes on chromosome 7q11.23 and is characterized by both hypersociability and increases in specific phobia and anticipatory anxiety regarding non-social entities o ... Full text Cite

Genetic polymorphisms: a cornerstone of translational biobehavioral research.

Journal article Science translational medicine · February 2010 A new generation of interdisciplinary research seeks to use common functional genetic polymorphisms to model emergent variability in brain chemistry that regulates behaviorally relevant brain structure and function. This genetically mediated variability is ... Full text Cite

Differential patterns of initial and sustained responses in amygdala and cortical regions to emotional stimuli in schizophrenia patients and healthy participants.

Journal article Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN · January 2010 BackgroundWe sought to investigate the altered brain responses to emotional stimuli in patients with schizophrenia.MethodsWe analyzed data from 14 patients with schizophrenia and 14 healthy controls who performed an emotional face matchin ... Full text Cite

Salivary testosterone and a trinucleotide (CAG) length polymorphism in the androgen receptor gene predict amygdala reactivity in men.

Journal article Psychoneuroendocrinology · January 2010 In studies employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), reactivity of the amygdala to threat-related sensory cues (viz., facial displays of negative emotion) has been found to correlate positively with interindividual variability in testosterone ... Full text Cite

Medial prefrontal cortex 5-HT(2A) density is correlated with amygdala reactivity, response habituation, and functional coupling.

Journal article Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · November 2009 Feedback inhibition of the amygdala via medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is an important component in the regulation of complex emotional behaviors. The functional dynamics of this corticolimbic circuitry are, in part, modulated by serotonin (5-HT). Seroton ... Full text Cite

Preferential amygdala reactivity to the negative assessment of neutral faces.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · November 2009 BackgroundPrior studies suggest that the amygdala shapes complex behavioral responses to socially ambiguous cues. We explored human amygdala function during explicit behavioral decision making about discrete emotional facial expressions that can r ... Full text Cite

Genetic vulnerability to affective psychopathology in childhood: a combined voxel-based morphometry and functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · August 2009 BackgroundThe majority of affective psychopathology is rooted early in life and first emerges during childhood and adolescence. However, little is known about how genetic vulnerability affects brain structure and function in childhood since the va ... Full text Cite

Divergent effects of genetic variation in endocannabinoid signaling on human threat- and reward-related brain function.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · July 2009 BackgroundFatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) is a key enzyme in regulating endocannabinoid (eCB) signaling. A common single nucleotide polymorphism (C385A) in the human FAAH gene has been associated with increased risk for addiction and obesity. Full text Cite

Preclinical atherosclerosis covaries with individual differences in reactivity and functional connectivity of the amygdala.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · June 2009 BackgroundCardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major source of medical comorbidity for patients with mood and anxiety disorders, and it remains the leading public health burden for the general population in industrialized nations. Indirect neurobiolo ... Full text Cite

Zhou et al. reply

Journal article Nature · April 2, 2009 Full text Cite

Imaging genetics.

Journal article Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · April 2009 Full text Cite

Individual differences in typical reappraisal use predict amygdala and prefrontal responses.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · March 2009 BackgroundParticipants who are instructed to use reappraisal to downregulate negative emotion show decreased amygdala responses and increased prefrontal responses. However, it is not known whether individual differences in the tendency to use reap ... Full text Cite

Evidence that altered amygdala activity in schizophrenia is related to clinical state and not genetic risk.

Journal article The American journal of psychiatry · February 2009 ObjectiveAlthough amygdala dysfunction is reported in schizophrenia, it is unknown whether this deficit represents a heritable phenotype that is related to risk for schizophrenia or whether it is related to disease state. The purpose of the presen ... Full text Cite

The neurobiology of individual differences in complex behavioral traits.

Journal article Annual review of neuroscience · January 2009 Neuroimaging, especially BOLD fMRI, has begun to identify how variability in brain function contributes to individual differences in complex behavioral traits. In parallel, pharmacological fMRI and multimodal PET/fMRI are identifying how variability in mol ... Full text Cite

Effects of HTR1A C(-1019)G on amygdala reactivity and trait anxiety.

Journal article Archives of general psychiatry · January 2009 ContextSerotonin 1A (5-hydroxytryptamine 1A [5-HT(1A)]) autoreceptors mediate negative feedback inhibition of serotonergic neurons and play a critical role in regulating serotonin signaling involved in shaping the functional response of major fore ... Full text Cite

Altered striatal activation predicting real-world positive affect in adolescent major depressive disorder.

Journal article The American journal of psychiatry · January 2009 ObjectiveAlterations in reward-related brain function and phenomenological aspects of positive affect are increasingly examined in the development of major depressive disorder. The authors tested differences in reward-related brain function in hea ... Full text Cite

Genetic variation in components of dopamine neurotransmission impacts ventral striatal reactivity associated with impulsivity.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · January 2009 Individual differences in traits such as impulsivity involve high reward sensitivity and are associated with risk for substance use disorders. The ventral striatum (VS) has been widely implicated in reward processing, and individual differences in its func ... Full text Cite

Genetics of Human Anxiety and Its Disorders

Journal article · January 1, 2009 Normal variation in human emotionality, in temperament and risk for affective disorders, is explained to a large degree by genetic variation. The sequencing of the human genome has made it possible to test the role of specific genes on measures of human em ... Full text Cite

Acute 5-HT reuptake blockade potentiates human amygdala reactivity.

Journal article Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · December 2008 Variability in serotonin (5-HT) function is associated with individual differences in normal mood and temperament, as well as psychiatric illnesses, all of which are influenced by amygdala function. This study evaluated the acute effects of 5-HT reuptake b ... Full text Cite

New perspectives on techniques for the clinical psychiatrist: Brain stimulation, chronobiology and psychiatric brain imaging.

Journal article Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences · December 2008 This review summarizes a scientific dialogue between representatives in non-pharmacological treatment options of affective disorders. Among the recently introduced somatic treatments for depression those with most evidenced efficacy will be discussed. The ... Full text Cite

Dopamine in amygdala gates limbic processing of aversive stimuli in humans.

Journal article Nature neuroscience · December 2008 Dopamine is released under stress and modulates processing of aversive stimuli. We found that dopamine storage capacity in human amygdala, measured with 6-[(18)F]fluoro-L-DOPA positron emission tomography, was positively correlated with functional magnetic ... Full text Cite

The human amygdala is involved in general behavioral relevance detection: evidence from an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging Go-NoGo task.

Journal article Neuroscience · October 2008 The amygdala is classically regarded as a detector of potential threat and as a critical component of the neural circuitry mediating conditioned fear responses. However, it has been reported that the human amygdala responds to multiple expressions of emoti ... Full text Cite

Interleukin-6 covaries inversely with hippocampal grey matter volume in middle-aged adults.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · September 2008 BackgroundConverging animal findings suggest that higher peripheral levels of inflammation are associated with activation of central inflammatory mechanisms that result in hippocampal neurodegeneration and related impairment of memory function. We ... Full text Cite

Evidence of biologic epistasis between BDNF and SLC6A4 and implications for depression.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · July 2008 Complex genetic disorders such as depression likely exhibit epistasis, but neural mechanisms of such gene-gene interactions are incompletely understood. 5-HTTLPR and BDNF VAL66MET, functional polymorphisms of the serotonin (5-HT) transporter (SLC6A4) and b ... Full text Cite

MET BDNF protects against morphological S allele effects of 5-HTTLPR

Journal article Molecular Psychiatry · July 1, 2008 Full text Cite

Potential neural embedding of parental social standing.

Journal article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · June 2008 Socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood and adolescence predicts poor mental and physical health and premature death by major medical diseases in adulthood. However, the neural pathways through which socioeconomic factors may exert a developmental infl ... Full text Cite

Serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) genotype and amygdala activation: a meta-analysis.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · May 2008 BackgroundWe evaluated the magnitude of the reported associations between amygdala activation and the serotonin transporter gene linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) and the likely effect size of this relationship.MethodsWe used meta-anal ... Full text Cite

Identification of neurogenetic pathways of risk for psychopathology.

Journal article American journal of medical genetics. Part C, Seminars in medical genetics · May 2008 Imaging genetics has been a highly effective and increasingly applied strategy for identifying the impact of genetic polymorphisms on individual differences in neural circuitry supporting complex behaviors. The application of imaging genetics towards furth ... Full text Cite

Genetic variation in human NPY expression affects stress response and emotion.

Journal article Nature · April 2008 Understanding inter-individual differences in stress response requires the explanation of genetic influences at multiple phenotypic levels, including complex behaviours and the metabolic responses of brain regions to emotional stimuli. Neuropeptide Y (NPY) ... Full text Cite

Genetic variation in MAOA modulates ventromedial prefrontal circuitry mediating individual differences in human personality.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · March 2008 Little is known about neural mechanisms underlying human personality and temperament, despite their considerable importance as highly heritable risk mediators for somatic and psychiatric disorders. To identify these circuits, we used a combined genetic and ... Full text Cite

Neural bases of different cognitive strategies for facial affect processing in schizophrenia.

Journal article Schizophrenia research · March 2008 ObjectiveTo examine the neural basis and dynamics of facial affect processing in schizophrenic patients as compared to healthy controls.MethodFourteen schizophrenic patients and fourteen matched controls performed a facial affect identifi ... Full text Cite

Individual differences in stressor-evoked blood pressure reactivity vary with activation, volume, and functional connectivity of the amygdala.

Journal article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · January 2008 Individuals who exhibit exaggerated blood pressure reactions to psychological stressors are at risk for hypertension, ventricular hypertrophy, and premature atherosclerosis; however, the neural systems mediating exaggerated blood pressure reactivity and as ... Full text Cite

Neuroimaging: technologies at the interface of genes, brain, and behavior.

Journal article Neuroimaging clinics of North America · November 2007 Neuroimaging technologies provide a powerful approach to exploring the genetic basis of individual differences in complex behaviors and vulnerability to neuropsychiatric illness. Functional MRI studies have established important physiologic links between g ... Full text Cite

Temporal stability of individual differences in amygdala reactivity.

Journal article The American journal of psychiatry · October 2007 Full text Cite

Perigenual anterior cingulate morphology covaries with perceived social standing.

Journal article Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · September 2007 Low socioeconomic status (SES) increases the risk for developing psychiatric and chronic medical disorders. A stress-related pathway by which low SES may affect mental and physical health is through the perception of holding a low social standing, termed l ... Full text Cite

Activity in medial prefrontal cortex during cognitive evaluation of threatening stimuli as a function of personality style.

Journal article Brain research bulletin · September 2007 Cognitive evaluation of emotional stimuli involves a network of brain regions including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). However, threatening stimuli may be perceived with differential salience in different individuals. The goal of our study was to eva ... Full text Cite

Long-chain omega-3 fatty acid intake is associated positively with corticolimbic gray matter volume in healthy adults.

Journal article Neuroscience letters · June 2007 BackgroundIn animals, dendritic arborization and levels of brain derived neurotrophic factor are positively associated with intake of the omega-3 fatty acids. Here, we test whether omega-3 fatty acid intake in humans varies with individual differe ... Full text Cite

Serotonin transporter genotype (5-HTTLPR): effects of neutral and undefined conditions on amygdala activation.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · April 2007 BackgroundA polymorphism of the human serotonin transporter gene (SCL6A4) has been associated with serotonin transporter expression and with processing of aversive stimuli in the amygdala. Functional imaging studies show that during the presentati ... Full text Cite

Facial expressions of emotion reveal neuroendocrine and cardiovascular stress responses.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · January 2007 BackgroundThe classic conception of stress involves undifferentiated negative affect and corresponding biological reactivity. The present study hypothesized a new conception, disaggregating stress into emotion-specific, contrasting patterns of bio ... Full text Cite

Preference for immediate over delayed rewards is associated with magnitude of ventral striatal activity.

Journal article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · December 2006 Discounting future outcomes as a function of their deferred availability underlies much of human decision making. Discounting, or preference for immediate over delayed rewards of larger value, is often associated with impulsivity and is a risk factor for a ... Full text Cite

Catechol O-methyltransferase val158met genotype and neural mechanisms related to affective arousal and regulation.

Journal article Archives of general psychiatry · December 2006 ContextCatechol O-methyltransferase (COMT), the major enzyme determining cortical dopamine flux, has a common functional polymorphism (val(158)met) that affects prefrontal function and working memory capacity and has also been associated with anxi ... Full text Cite

Prefrontal-hippocampal coupling during memory processing is modulated by COMT val158met genotype.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · December 2006 BackgroundStudies in humans and in animals have demonstrated that a network of brain regions is involved in performance of declarative and recognition memory tasks. This network includes the hippocampal formation (HF) as well as the ventrolateral ... Full text Cite

Capacity for 5-HT1A-mediated autoregulation predicts amygdala reactivity.

Journal article Nature neuroscience · November 2006 We examined the contribution of 5-HT1A autoreceptors (with [11C]WAY100635 positron emission tomography) to amygdala reactivity (with blood oxygenation level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging) in 20 healthy adult volunteers. We found a signifi ... Full text Cite

Human choline transporter gene variation is associated with corticolimbic reactivity and autonomic-cholinergic function.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · November 2006 BackgroundOur previous work has shown genetic variation in the human choline transporter gene (CHT1) to be associated with depressive symptoms and autonomic cardiac (cholinergic) dysregulation. Here, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) wa ... Full text Cite

Genetics and the future of clinical psychiatry.

Journal article The American journal of psychiatry · October 2006 Full text Cite

The G72/G30 gene complex and cognitive abnormalities in schizophrenia.

Journal article Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · September 2006 A recently discovered gene complex, G72/G30 (hereafter G72, but now termed DAOA), was found to be associated with schizophrenia and with bipolar disorder, possibly because of an indirect effect on NMDA neurotransmission. In principle, if G72 increases risk ... Full text Cite

Neural basis of individual differences in impulsivity: contributions of corticolimbic circuits for behavioral arousal and control.

Journal article Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · May 2006 The objective of the current study was to analyze the neural correlates of behavioral arousal and inhibitory control as they relate to individual differences in impulsivity via well-established functional MRI amygdala reactivity and prefrontal inhibitory c ... Full text Cite

Imaging genetics: perspectives from studies of genetically driven variation in serotonin function and corticolimbic affective processing.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · May 2006 Advances in molecular biology and neuroimaging have provided a unique opportunity to explore the relationships between genes, brain, and behavior. In this review, we will briefly outline the rationale for studying genetic effects on brain function with neu ... Full text Cite

Genetics of emotional regulation: the role of the serotonin transporter in neural function.

Journal article Trends in cognitive sciences · April 2006 Identifying biological mechanisms through which genes lead to individual differences in emotional behavior is paramount to our understanding of how such differences confer risk for neuropsychiatric illness. The emergence of techniques such as in vivo imagi ... Full text Cite

Neural mechanisms of genetic risk for impulsivity and violence in humans.

Journal article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · April 2006 Neurobiological factors contributing to violence in humans remain poorly understood. One approach to this question is examining allelic variation in the X-linked monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene, previously associated with impulsive aggression in animals an ... Full text Cite

Neuroimaging studies of serotonin gene polymorphisms: exploring the interplay of genes, brain, and behavior.

Journal article Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · March 2006 Because of the unique ability it provides to investigate information processing at the level of neural systems, functional neuroimaging is a powerful tool to explore the relationship between genes, brain, and behavior. Recently, functional neuroimaging has ... Full text Cite

Neurophysiological correlates of age-related changes in working memory capacity.

Journal article Neuroscience letters · January 2006 Cognitive abilities such as working memory (WM) capacity decrease with age. To determine the neurophysiological correlates of age-related reduction in working memory capacity, we studied 10 young subjects (<35 years of age; mean age=29) and twelve older su ... Full text Cite

Serotonin.

Journal article The American journal of psychiatry · January 2006 Full text Cite

Developmental imaging genetics: challenges and promises for translational research.

Journal article Development and psychopathology · January 2006 Advances in molecular biology, neuroimaging, genetic epidemiology, and developmental psychopathology have provided a unique opportunity to explore the interplay of genes, brain, and behavior within a translational research framework. Herein, we begin by ou ... Full text Cite

Neural mechanisms underlying probabilistic category learning in normal aging.

Journal article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · December 2005 Probabilistic category learning engages neural circuitry that includes the prefrontal cortex and caudate nucleus, two regions that show prominent changes with normal aging. However, the specific contributions of these brain regions are uncertain, and the e ... Full text Cite

Facial expressions of emotion reveal neuroendocrine and cardiovascular stress responses.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · November 2005 BackgroundThe classic conception of stress involves undifferentiated negative affect and corresponding biological reactivity. The present study hypothesized a new conception that disaggregates stress into emotion-specific, contrasting patterns of ... Full text Cite

A regulatory variant of the human tryptophan hydroxylase-2 gene biases amygdala reactivity.

Journal article Molecular psychiatry · September 2005 Recent studies have indicated that a newly identified second isoform of the tryptophan hydroxylase gene (TPH2) is preferentially involved in the rate-limiting synthesis of neuronal serotonin. Genetic variation in the human TPH2 gene (hTPH2) has been associ ... Full text Cite

Neural correlates of genetically abnormal social cognition in Williams syndrome.

Journal article Nature neuroscience · August 2005 Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS), caused by a microdeletion of approximately 21 genes on chromosome 7q11.23, is characterized by unique hypersociability combined with increased non-social anxiety. Using functional neuroimaging, we found reduced amygdala acti ... Full text Cite

Variation in DISC1 affects hippocampal structure and function and increases risk for schizophrenia.

Journal article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · June 2005 Disrupted-in-schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) is a promising schizophrenia candidate gene expressed predominantly within the hippocampus. We typed 12 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that covered the DISC1 gene. A three-SNP haplotype [hCV219779 (C)-rs821597 ( ... Full text Cite

5-HTTLPR polymorphism impacts human cingulate-amygdala interactions: a genetic susceptibility mechanism for depression.

Journal article Nature neuroscience · June 2005 Carriers of the short allele of a functional 5' promoter polymorphism of the serotonin transporter gene have increased anxiety-related temperamental traits, increased amygdala reactivity and elevated risk of depression. Here, we used multimodal neuroimagin ... Full text Cite

Variation of human amygdala response during threatening stimuli as a function of 5'HTTLPR genotype and personality style.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · June 2005 BackgroundIn the brain, processing of fearful stimuli engages the amygdala, and the variability of its activity is associated with genetic factors as well as with emotional salience. The objective of this study was to explore the relevance of pers ... Full text Cite

An fMRI investigation of race-related amygdala activity in African-American and Caucasian-American individuals.

Journal article Nature neuroscience · June 2005 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to examine the nature of amygdala sensitivity to race. Both African-American and Caucasian-American individuals showed greater amygdala activity to African-American targets than to Caucasian-American ta ... Full text Cite

Functional changes in the activity of brain regions underlying emotion processing in the elderly.

Journal article Psychiatry research · May 2005 Aging is associated with a decline in both cognitive and motor abilities that reflects deterioration of underlying brain circuitry. While age-related alterations have also been described in brain regions underlying emotional behavior (e.g., the amygdala), ... Full text Cite

A susceptibility gene for affective disorders and the response of the human amygdala.

Journal article Archives of general psychiatry · February 2005 BackgroundA common regulatory variant (5-HTTLPR) in the human serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4), resulting in altered transcription and transporter availability, has been associated with vulnerability for affective disorders, including anxiety a ... Full text Cite

Neuroimaging and human genetics.

Journal article International review of neurobiology · January 2005 Full text Cite

Variation in GRM3 affects cognition, prefrontal glutamate, and risk for schizophrenia.

Journal article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · August 2004 GRM3, a metabotropic glutamate receptor-modulating synaptic glutamate, is a promising schizophrenia candidate gene. In a family-based association study, a common GRM3 haplotype was strongly associated with schizophrenia (P = 0.0001). Within this haplotype, ... Full text Cite

Neural correlates of facial affect processing in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.

Journal article Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · April 2004 ObjectiveTo examine the neural basis of impairments in interpreting facial emotions in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).MethodTwelve children and adolescents with ASD and 12 typically developing (TD) controls ... Full text Cite

Functional neuroimaging of genetic variation in serotonergic neurotransmission.

Journal article Genes, brain, and behavior · December 2003 Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine; 5-HT) is a potent modulator of the physiology and behavior involved in generating appropriate responses to environmental cues such as danger or threat. Furthermore, genetic variation in 5-HT subsystem genes can impact upon s ... Full text Cite

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor val66met polymorphism affects human memory-related hippocampal activity and predicts memory performance.

Journal article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · July 2003 BDNF plays a critical role in activity-dependent neuroplasticity underlying learning and memory in the hippocampus. A frequent single nucleotide polymorphism in the targeting region of the human BDNF gene (val66met) has been associated with abnormal intrac ... Full text Cite

Catechol O-methyltransferase val158-met genotype and individual variation in the brain response to amphetamine.

Journal article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · May 2003 Monamines subserve many critical roles in the brain, and monoaminergic drugs such as amphetamine have a long history in the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders and also as a substance of abuse. The clinical effects of amphetamine are quite variable, fr ... Full text Cite

Neocortical modulation of the amygdala response to fearful stimuli.

Journal article Biological psychiatry · March 2003 BackgroundThe cortical circuitry involved in conscious cognitive processes and the subcortical circuitry involved in fear responses have been extensively studied with neuroimaging, but their interactions remain largely unexplored. A recent functio ... Full text Cite

Imaging genomics.

Journal article British medical bulletin · January 2003 The recent completion of a working draft of the human genome sequence promises to provide unprecedented opportunities to explore the genetic basis of individual differences in complex behaviours and vulnerability to neuropsychiatric illness. Functional neu ... Full text Cite

Dextroamphetamine modulates the response of the human amygdala.

Journal article Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · December 2002 Amphetamine, a potent monoaminergic agonist, has pronounced effects on emotional behavior in humans, including the generation of fear and anxiety. Recent animal studies have demonstrated the importance of monoamines, especially dopamine, in modulating the ... Full text Cite

Dopamine modulates the response of the human amygdala: a study in Parkinson's disease.

Journal article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · October 2002 In addition to classic motor signs and symptoms, Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by neuropsychological and emotional deficits, including a blunted emotional response. In the present study, we explored both the neural basis of abnormal emotional b ... Full text Cite

The amygdala response to emotional stimuli: a comparison of faces and scenes.

Journal article NeuroImage · September 2002 As a central fear processor of the brain, the amygdala initiates a cascade of critical physiological and behavioral responses. Neuroimaging studies have shown that the human amygdala responds not only to fearful and angry facial expressions but also to fea ... Full text Cite

Serotonin transporter genetic variation and the response of the human amygdala.

Journal article Science (New York, N.Y.) · July 2002 A functional polymorphism in the promoter region of the human serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) has been associated with several dimensions of neuroticism and psychopathology, especially anxiety traits, but the predictive value of this genotype against t ... Full text Cite

Neurophysiological correlates of age-related changes in human motor function.

Journal article Neurology · February 2002 BackgroundThere are well-defined and characteristic age-related deficits in motor abilities that may reflect structural and chemical changes in the aging brain.ObjectiveTo delineate age-related changes in the physiology of brain systems s ... Full text Cite

Modulating emotional responses: effects of a neocortical network on the limbic system.

Journal article Neuroreport · January 2000 Humans share with animals a primitive neural system for processing emotions such as fear and anger. Unlike other animals, humans have the unique ability to control and modulate instinctive emotional reactions through intellectual processes such as reasonin ... Full text Cite

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: perspectives from neuroimaging

Journal article Mental retardation and developmental disabilities research reviews · 2000 Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common childhood behavioral disorder most often characterized by inattentiveness, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. Current etiologic theories suggest that ADHD stems from abnormalities in dopaminergic and ... Full text Link to item Cite

Processing of facial affect in schizophrenics: An fMRI study

Journal article Neuroimage · December 1, 1999 Cite

Distribution and reproductive effects of Wolbachia in stalk-eyed flies (Diptera: Diopsidae)

Journal article Heredity · September 1, 1998 Wolbachia are cytoplasmically inherited bacteria capable of altering the reproductive biology of their hosts in a manner which increases their spread within a population. These microbes can cause cytoplasmic incompatibility, parthenogenesis and feminizatio ... Full text Cite

A Neural Biomarker of Psychological Vulnerability to Future Life Stress

Journal article Neuron We all experience a host of common life stressors such as the death of a family member, medical illness, and financial uncertainty. While most of us are resilient to such stressors, continuing to function normally, for a subset of individuals, experiencing ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite