Biology subjects

Neta, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Neta, M..

10 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Concussion decreases brain signal variability

Sports-related concussion represents a major public health concern, with millions of cases diagnosed annually. Despite significant methodological advances in functional brain imaging, a clinically meaningful neuroimaging biomarker of concussion has yet to be established. This may be due in part to a reliance on traditional measures. For example, approaches examining mean activation across trials reduce responses to a single measure of central tendency and therefore fail to capture important individual differences. In contrast, blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) variability offers a promising new approach to measuring brain function, Specifically, it captures individual differences in the temporal variability in the BOLD signal over time. Further, it is sensitive to neural, vascular, and neurovascular coupling changes that accompany concussion. We collected baseline (prior to injury) and post-concussion (within 48 hours of injury) neuroimaging data in 56 collegiate athletes. Within this longitudinal dataset, we investigated changes in BOLD variability across multiple spatial scales. In addition, we examined their relationships with self-reported symptoms and cognitive performance. As expected, symptoms increased following concussion while computerized cognitive performance declined. BOLD variability decreased from baseline to post-concussion, particularly in the somatomotor and language networks. Moreover, changes in BOLD variability were related to changes in symptom reporting and cognitive performance. Together, these findings advance our understanding of how concussion affects brain function and highlight BOLD signal variability as a promising biomarker to aid ongoing efforts to improve the diagnosis and treatment of sports-related concussion.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Functional brain organization is stable within individuals across years

Brain regions exhibit dynamic yet highly coordinated activity patterns that form large-scale functional networks measurable through resting-state correlations. While their association with fluctuating activity may intuitively suggest functional networks to be temporally transient and dependent on state, a growing body of literature suggests that they are person-specific and stable across days. If truly person-specific, then functional networks should preserve unique characteristics over extended periods. To test this hypothesis, we collected longitudinal precision fMRI data ([≥]60 minutes per participant per time point) from 10 healthy young adults across 1-3 year intervals, as well as three adults over 8-13 years. We further replicated findings in the MyConnectome dataset and its 10-year follow-up. Functional network organization--when sufficient per-participant data were collected-- remained largely stable within individuals over prolonged periods of up to 13 years, suggesting that individualized brain organization constitutes persistent features of personal identity that may be supported by homeostatic mechanisms. SIGNIFICANCEWhile many aspects of brain function are portrayed as dynamic and malleable, our study provides evidence for the long-term preservation of functional organization of the healthy young adult brain. Whole-brain functional organization exhibited unique individual characteristics that were preserved for years, even over a decade. The stability of such individualized neural architecture suggests that the brain encodes features of personhood that may be invariant across contexts and temporal fluctuations. This observation reframes our understanding of brain resilience and plasticity by offering new insights into the extent that homeostatic mechanisms of brain organization can withstand stressors and environmental changes through time to maintain a constant functional organization. These insights pave the way for a more comprehensive understanding of the neural mechanisms behind this stability, with the possibility of pinpointing critical markers of healthy brain function and its disruptions.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Cognitive reappraisal of food and emotion cues involves common and unique neural contributions

Obesity is a growing public health concern with more than 40% of adults meeting criteria for obesity in the United States. Although many treatments seek to lower individuals weight, few treatments have focused on cognitive strategies to change the way individuals think about food, therefore, decreasing consumption of non-nutrient-dense foods. Cognitive reappraisal is one strategy that involves changing the way one thinks about a situation and can be used to downregulate responses to those stimuli. Leveraging this intuitive, cost-effective strategy to decrease ones desire to eat unhealthy food and therefore, decrease overeating, could improve physical and mental health. The present study identified brain regions that are differentially activated when using cognitive reappraisal to downregulate responses to food (FR) versus when using the same strategy to downregulate negative emotions (ER). We collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data in 63 undergraduate students while participants completed both tasks. There was increased reappraisal-related activation in widespread regions across both tasks, including in expected subcortical (i.e., striatum) and cortical areas (i.e., visual, frontoparietal). We also found domain-specific activity, with greater insula activation in the FR than the ER task and greater hippocampal activation in the ER than the FR task. These results reveal domain-general and domain-specific effects of cognitive reappraisal in FR and ER tasks that inform future work examining eating behavior. Taken together, a better explication of the overlapping and discrete processes of food regulation, as it compares to other applications of this regulatory strategy can inform new intervention targets.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

The elusive neural signature of emotion regulation capabilities: evidence from a large-scale consortium

Cognitive reappraisal is a fundamental emotion regulation strategy for mental and physical well-being, but how its neural mechanisms relate to individual differences remains poorly understood. In a consortium effort analyzing 40 fMRI datasets (N=2,175), we examined the relationship between neural activation during reappraisal tasks and three core individual difference indices of reappraisal capabilities: (1) trait questionnaires, (2) task-based affective ratings, and (3) amygdala down-regulation. Strikingly, there was no shared overlap across these three common indices. Only a very weak correlation emerged between amygdala down-regulation and task-based affective ratings. Whole-brain analyses revealed no reliable neural associations with trait questionnaires, and associations with task-based affective ratings fell outside canonical emotion regulation networks (e.g., prefrontal circuitry). Moreover, amygdala down-regulation, often interpreted as a stable individual marker, was confounded by person-specific whole-brain responses -- a limitation extending to fMRI research beyond the emotion regulation domain. These findings challenge the assumption that an individuals prefrontal activity is a valid indicator of their reappraisal capabilities and suggest that common trait, behavioral, and neural measures might capture distinct facets of emotion regulation. More broadly, our results highlight concrete methodological challenges for fMRI research on individual differences, with implications extending beyond emotion regulation to the neuroscience of personality, psychopathology, and general well-being.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Concussion-related disruptions to hub connectivity in the default mode network are related to symptoms and cognition

Concussions present with a myriad of symptomatic and cognitive concerns; however, the relationship between these functional disruptions and the underlying changes in the brain are not yet well understood. Hubs, or brain regions that are connected to many different functional networks, may be specifically disrupted after concussion. Given the implications in concussion research, we quantified hub disruption within the default mode network (DMN) and between the DMN and other brain networks. We collected resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from collegiate student-athletes (n = 44) at three timepoints: baseline (prior to beginning their athletic season), acute post-injury (approximately 48 hours after a diagnosed concussion), and recovery (after starting return-to-play progression, but prior to returning to contact). We used self-reported symptoms and computerized cognitive assessments collected across similar timepoints to link these functional connectivity changes to clinical outcomes. Concussion resulted in increased connectivity between regions within the DMN compared to baseline and recovery, and this post-injury connectivity was more positively related to symptoms and more negatively related to visual memory performance compared to baseline and recovery. Further, concussion led to decreased connectivity between DMN hubs and visual network non-hubs relative to baseline and recovery, and this post-injury connectivity was more negatively related to somatic symptoms and more positively related to visual memory performance compared to baseline and recovery. Relationships between functional connectivity, symptoms, and cognition were not significantly different at baseline versus recovery. These results highlight a unique relationship between self-reported symptoms, visual memory performance and acute functional connectivity changes involving DMN hubs after concussion in athletes. This may provide evidence for a disrupted balance of within- and between-network communication highlighting possible network inefficiencies after concussion. These results aid in our understanding of the pathophysiological disruptions after concussion and inform our understanding of the associations between disruptions in brain connectivity and specific clinical presentations acutely post-injury.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Specialized cingulo-opercular network activation in judging ambiguity of facial expressions in a slow reveal fMRI paradigm

Cortical task control networks, including the cingulo-opercular (CO) network play a key role in decision-making across a variety of functional domains. In particular, the CO network functions in a performance reporting capacity that supports successful task performance, especially in response to errors and ambiguity. In two studies testing the contribution of the CO network to ambiguity processing, we presented a valence bias task in which masked clearly and ambiguously valenced emotional expressions were slowly revealed over several seconds. This slow reveal task design provides a window into the decision-making mechanisms as they unfold over the course of a trial. In the main study, the slow reveal task was administered to 32 young adults in the fMRI environment and BOLD time courses were extracted from regions of interest in three control networks. In a follow-up study, the task was administered to a larger, online sample (n = 81) using a more extended slow reveal design with additional unmasking frames. Positive judgments of surprised faces were uniquely accompanied by slower response times and strong, late activation in the CO network. These results support the initial negativity hypothesis, which posits that the default response to ambiguity is negative and positive judgments are associated with a more effortful controlled process, and additionally suggests that this controlled process is mediated by the CO network. Moreover, ambiguous trials were characterized by a second CO response at the end of the trial, firmly placing CO function late in the decision-making process.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

The cingulo-opercular network is composed of two distinct sub-systems

The cingulo-opercular (CO) network and its two best studied regions - the dorsal anterior cingulate and anterior insula - have been linked to task control, but also implicated in many additional processes across cognitive, social, and emotional domains. However, most prior work investigating the CO network has used a group-average approach, which may mix signals across nearby regions that vary across individuals. Here, we reevaluate the CO networks role in task control with both task and rest fMRI, using regions with a high probability of CO network agreement across individuals. Hierarchical clustering analyses suggest heterogeneity in the CO networks task response properties, with one sub-system (CO1) showing consistency with prior task control characterizations while another sub-system (CO2) has weak task control responses, but preserved ties to pain and motor functions. Resting-state connectivity confirms subtle differences in the architecture of these two sub-systems. This evidence suggests that, when individual variation in network locations is addressed, the CO network includes (at least) two linked sub-systems with differential roles in task control and other cognitive/motor/interoceptive responses, which may help explain varied accounts of its functions. We propose that this fractionation may reflect expansion of primary CO body-oriented control functions to broader domain-general contexts.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Probabilistic mapping of human functional brain networks identifies regions of high group consensus

Many recent developments surrounding the functional network organization of the human brain have focused on data that have been averaged across groups of individuals. While such group-level approaches have shed considerable light on the brains large-scale distributed systems, they conceal individual differences in network organization, which recent work has demonstrated to be common and widespread. This individual variability produces noise in group analyses, which may average together regions that are part of different functional systems across participants, limiting interpretability. However, cost and feasibility constraints may limit the possibility for individual-level mapping within studies. Here our goal was to leverage information about individual-level brain organization to probabilistically map common functional systems and identify locations of high inter-subject consensus for use in future group analyses. We probabilistically mapped 14 functional networks in multiple datasets with relatively high amounts of data. All networks show "core" (high-probability) regions, but differ from one another in the extent of their higher-variability components. These patterns replicate well across four datasets with different participants and scanning parameters. We produced a set of high-probability regions of interest (ROIs) from these probabilistic maps; these and the probabilistic maps are made publicly available, together with a tool for querying the network membership probabilities associated with any given cortical location. These quantitative estimates and public tools may allow researchers to apply information about inter-subject consensus to their own fMRI studies, improving inferences about systems and their functional specializations.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Positivity effect in aging: Evidence for the primacy of positive responses to emotional ambiguity

Older compared to younger adults show greater amygdala activity to positive emotions, and are more likely to interpret emotionally ambiguous stimuli (e.g., surprised faces) as positive. While some evidence suggests this positivity effect results from a relatively slow, top-down mechanism, others suggest it emerges from early, bottom-up processing. The amygdala is a key node in rapid, bottom-up processing and patterns of amygdala activity over time (e.g., habituation) can shed light on the mechanisms underlying the positivity effect. Younger and older adults passively viewed neutral and surprised faces in an MRI. Only in older adults, we found that amygdala habituation was associated with the tendency to interpret surprised faces as positive or negative (valence bias), where a more positive bias was associated with greater habituation. Interestingly, although a positive bias in younger adults was associated with slower reaction times, consistent with an initial negativity hypothesis in younger adults, older adults showed faster ratings of positivity. Together, we propose that there may be a switch to a primacy of positivity in aging.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Positive valence bias is associated with inverse frontoamygdalar connectivity and less depressive symptoms in developmentally mature children

Negativity bias is a core feature of depression that is associated with dysfunctional frontoamygdalar connectivity; this pathway is associated with emotion regulation and sensitive to neurobiological change during puberty. We used a valence bias task (ratings of emotional ambiguity) as a potential early indicator of depression risk and differences in frontoamygdalar connectivity. Previous work using this task demonstrated that children normatively have a negative bias that attenuates with maturation. Here, we test the hypothesis that persistence of this negativity bias as manturation ensues may reveal differences in emotion regulation development, and may be associated with increased risk for depression. Within a restricted age range (6-13 years), we tested the moderating role of puberty on relationships between valence bias, depressive symptoms, and frontoamygdalar connectivity. A negative bias was associated with increased depressive symptoms for those at more advanced pubertal stages (within this sample) and less regulatory frontoamygdalar connectivity, whereas a more positive bias was associated with more regulatory connectivity patterns. These data suggest that with maturation, individual differences in positivity biases and associated emotion regulation circuitry confer a differential risk for depression. Longitudinal work is necessary to determine the directionality of these effects and explore the influence of early life events.

neuroscience↗