Introduction: The Human Brain

Philippe Goldin

Clinically Applied Affective Neuroscience

Mentors

James Gross Gary Glover

Stanford University

UC San Diego

Murray Stein Greg Brown John McQuaid

Marsha Bates

Rutgers University

Brenna Bry

Motivation

The beginning

Visualize Brain - Heart - Mind

• Most complex organ in the

human body

• Produces every thought,

action, memory, feeling

and experience of the

world

• 1.4 kilograms

• 2% of body weight, 20% of

metabolic load

Neuron

100 billion neurons Basic unit of information flow

Firing neuron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIGqp6_PG6k

Complexity of connectivity

• Each neuron can connect up to 10,000 other neurons

• Our brains form a million new connections every second of our lives

• Patterns and strength of the connections are constantly changing

• It is in these changing connections that memories are stored, habits learned and personalities shaped, by reinforcing certain patterns of brain activity, and losing others

Complexity of connectivity

Cortical mantle

Brain Lobes

Anterior

Brain: Lateral View

Anterior

Brain: Medial View

High-Resolution Parcellation

Lateral Medial

Functional Connectivity: Connectome

Diffusion Tensor Imaging

Brain Size

Average brain size relative to percentage of body mass.

Curvature and connectivity

Development

Maturation of the “baby connectome:” examples of brain networks at four different ages. (A) Anatomic T2-weighted MRI images. (B) Tractograms reconstructed based on the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data. (C) Template-free brain networks consisting of 100 nodes, represented as weighted graphs. (D) Template-free brain networks represented as binary connectivity matrices. Note: the 6 days and 6 months networks were mapped in the same infant longitudinally.

Paradoxically, the thinning of gray matter that starts around puberty corresponds to increasing cognitive abilities. This probably reflects improved neural organization, as the brain pares redundant connections and benefits from increases in the white matter that helps brain cells communicate.

Functional Neuroanatomy

Functional Imaging Modalities

computed axial tomography (CT), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission tomography (SPECT), electroencephalography (EEG), and magnetoencephalography (EMG),

Cognitive & Attention

Regulation

Emotion

Higher Order Psychological Functions Embedded in Brain Networks

Self Language Body

Reward

Inhibitory

Salience

Memory

Is the middle arrow pointing to the left or right?

Get ready

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Alerting or vigilance of attention network

Fan et al., 2005 Neuroimage

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>>>>>

Fan et al., 2005 Neuroimage

Orienting of attention network

+

<<><<

Fan et al., 2005 Neuroimage

Executive attention network

• Alerting (vigilance)

• Re-orienting (shifting of attention)

• Executive control of attention (goal-oriented, top-down cognitive control of attention)

Ready

Classical View of Fear

Emotion, Arousal, Memory

Quantitative analysis of brain cortical

connectivity of amygdala

Amygdala is hypothesized to be a strong candidate for integrating cognitive

and emotional information. Pessoa, 2008, Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Eyes on - Body Sensations

Nummenmaa et al, 2014, PNAS

Bodily Sensations

Somatosensory

cortex

Insular cortex

Language network: Perisylvian pathways in

the left hemisphere

Adapted from Catani et al. (2005)

Self-views now

Meta-Analysis of

Self-Referential Processing

Cortical midline structures: ventromedial prefrontal,

dorsomedial prefrontal, posterior cingulate/precuneus

Northoff et al. 2006, NeuroImage

Cognitive Control of Emotion: Neural Systems

Ochsner et al., NYAS, 2012

Cognitive processes that

regulate emotion

Cognitive processes that

generate emotion

Brain as a network

The basic strategy of intrinsic functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI)

Buckner et al., Nature Neuroscience 16, 832–837 (2013)

Red/yellow = spontaneous activity fluctuations measured at rest are correlated between brain regions

Green = motor cortex seed region

Large-scale cerebral networks identified by intrinsic functional connectivity

Buckner et al., Nature Neuroscience 16, 832–837 (2013)

Brain Predicting Emotion State

Wager et al., 2015, PLOS Computational Biology

Analyzed human brain activity patterns from 148 studies of emotion categories (2159 participants)

Each emotion category is associated with unique, prototypical patterns of activity across multiple brain networks. Emotions are differentiated by a combination of perceptual, mnemonic, prospective, and motivational elements

Artist: Bruno Vergauwen