Biology subjects

Ocklenburg, S.

Publications and source records attributed to Ocklenburg, S..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

Investigating real-life emotions in romantic couples: a mobile EEG study

The neural basis of emotional processing has been largely investigated in constrained spatial environments such as stationary EEGs or fMRI scanners using highly artificial stimuli like standardized pictures depicting emotional scenes. Typically, such standardized experiments have low ecological validity and it remains unclear whether their results reflect neuronal processing in real-life affective situations at all. Critically, emotional situations do not only encompass the perception of emotions, but also behavioral components associated with them. In this study, we aimed to investigate real-life emotions by recording couples in their homes using mobile EEG technology during embracing, kissing and emotional speech. We focused on asymmetries in affective processing as emotions have been demonstrated to be strongly lateralized in the brain. We found higher alpha and beta power asymmetry during kissing and embracing on frontal electrodes during emotional kisses and speech compared to a neutral control condition indicative of stronger left-hemispheric activation. In contrast, we found lower alpha power asymmetry at parieto-occipital electrode sites in the emotional compared to the neutral condition indicative of stronger right-hemispheric activation. Our findings are in line with models of emotional lateralization that postulate a valence-specific processing over frontal cortices and right-hemispheric dominance in emotional processing in parieto-occipital regions. Overall, we could thus support theories of emotional asymmetries which suggest that affective processing is not uniformly lateralized across the brain using a highly ecologically valid paradigm.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Polygenic Scores for Cognitive Abilities and their Association with Different Aspects of General Intelligence - a Deep Phenotyping Approach

Intelligence is a highly polygenic trait and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified thousands of DNA variants contributing with small effects. Polygenic scores (PGS) can aggregate those effects for trait prediction in independent samples. As large-scale light-phenotyping GWAS operationalized intelligence as performance in rather superficial tests, the question arises which intelligence facets are actually captured. We used deep-phenotyping to investigate the molecular determinants of individual differences in cognitive ability. We therefore studied the association between PGS of intelligence (IQ-PGS), cognitive performance (CP-PGS) and educational attainment (EA-PGS) with a wide range of intelligence facets in a sample of 557 healthy adults. IQ-PGS, CP-PGS and EA-PGS had the highest incremental R2s for general (2.71%; 4.27%; 2.06%), verbal (3.30%; 4.64%; 1.61%) and numerical intelligence (3.06%; 3.24%; 1.26%) and the weakest for non-verbal intelligence (0.89%; 1.47%; 0.70%) and memory (0.80%; 1.06%; 0.67%). These results indicate that PGS derived from light-phenotyping GWAS do not reflect different facets of intelligence equally well, and thus should not be interpreted as genetic indicators of intelligence per se. The findings refine our understanding of how PGS are related to other traits or life outcomes.

genetics↗

bioRxiv2020

Fear learning sculpts functional brain connectivity at rest beyond the traditional fear network in humans

Neuroscientific research has identified specific brain networks involved in the acquisition of fear memories. Using fMRI to assess changes in resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) induced by fear acquisition, single brain regions from these networks have also been linked to fear memory consolidation. However, previous studies only examined RSFC changes within restricted sets of brain regions or without a proper control group, leaving our knowledge about fear consolidation outside of traditional fear networks incomplete. Here, we tested a group of 84 healthy participants in a differential fear conditioning paradigm and quantified RSFC changes between 358 cortical and 16 subcortical brain areas. Subsequent to fear learning, 21 functional connections exhibited significant RSFC changes. Importantly, these connections were not restricted to the traditional fear networks but also comprised various frontal and visual areas. Our findings indicate that fear memory consolidation is a complex process that integrates relevant information across the entire brain.

neuroscience↗