Unlike the strategy of cognitive regulation that relies heavily on the top-down control function ... more Unlike the strategy of cognitive regulation that relies heavily on the top-down control function of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which was recently found may be critically impaired in stressful situations, traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine views different types of emotionality as having mutual promotion and counteraction (MPMC) relationships, implying a novel approach that requires less cognition to emotional regulation. Actually, our previous studies have indicated that anger responses could be successfully regulated via the induction of sadness, and this efficiency could not be influenced by stress, thus providing evidences for the hypothesis of "sadness counteracts anger" (SCA) proposed by the MPMC theory of emotionality (Zhan et al., 2015, 2017). In this study, we experimentally examined the MPMC hypothesis that "anger counteracts rumination" (ACR) which postulates that rumination may be alleviated by the anger emotion. In Study 1, all participants ...
In contrast to cognitive emotion regulation theories that emphasize top-down control of prefronta... more In contrast to cognitive emotion regulation theories that emphasize top-down control of prefrontal-mediated regulation of emotion, in traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine, different emotions are considered to have mutual promotion and counteraction relationships. Our previous studies have provided behavioral evidence supporting the hypotheses that "fear promotes anger" and "sadness counteracts anger"; this study further investigated the corresponding neural correlates. A basic hypothesis we made is the "internal versus external orientation" assumption proposing that fear could promote anger as its external orientation associated with motivated action, whereas sadness could counteract anger as its internal or homeostatic orientation to somatic or visceral experience. A way to test this assumption is to examine the selective involvement of the posterior insula (PI) and the anterior insula (AI) in sadness and fear because the posterior-to-anterior p...
The insula is thought to be involved in disgust. However, the roles of the posterior insula (PI) ... more The insula is thought to be involved in disgust. However, the roles of the posterior insula (PI) and anterior insula (AI) in moral disgust have not been clearly dissociated in previous studies. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, the participants evaluated the degree of disgust using sentences related to mild moral violations with different types of behavioral agents (mother and stranger). The activation of the PI in response to the stranger agent was significantly higher than that in response to the mother agent. In contrast, the activation of the AI in response to the mother agent was significantly higher than that in response to the stranger agent. These data suggest a clear functional dissociation between the PI and AI in which the PI is more involved in the primary level of moral disgust than is the AI, and the AI is more involved in the secondary level of moral disgust than is the PI. Our results provide key evidence for understanding the principle of embodied...
Insomnia is one of the main symptom correlates of major depressive disorder (MDD), but the neural... more Insomnia is one of the main symptom correlates of major depressive disorder (MDD), but the neural mechanisms underlying the multifaceted interplay between insomnia and depression are not fully understood. Patients with MDD and high insomnia (MDD-HI,  = 24), patients with MDD and low insomnia (MDD-LI,  = 37), and healthy controls (HCs,  = 51) were recruited to participate in the present study. The amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) during the resting state were compared among the three groups. We observed ALFF differences between the three groups in the right inferior frontal gyrus/anterior insula (IFG/AI), right middle temporal gyrus, left calcarine, and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Further region of interest (ROI) comparisons showed that the increases in the right IFG/AI reflected an abnormality specific to insomnia in MDD, while increases in the bilateral dlPFC reflected an abnormality specific to MDD generally. Increased ALFF in the right IFG/AI w...
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2017
Methylphenidate has prominent effects in the dopamine-rich striatum that are absent for the selec... more Methylphenidate has prominent effects in the dopamine-rich striatum that are absent for the selective norepinephrine transporter inhibitor atomoxetine. This study tested whether baseline striatal activation would predict differential response to the two medications in youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A total of 36 youth with ADHD performed a Go/No-Go test during functional magnetic resonance imaging at baseline and were treated with methylphenidate and atomoxetine using a randomized cross-over design. Whole-brain task-related activation was regressed on clinical response. Task-related activation in right caudate nucleus was predicted by an interaction of clinical responses to methylphenidate and atomoxetine (F1,30 = 17.00; p < .001). Elevated caudate activation was associated with robust improvement for methylphenidate and little improvement for atomoxetine. The rate of robust response was higher for methylphenidate than for atomoxetine in youth with hi...
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), Jan 22, 2017
The Hick-Hyman law describes a linear increase in reaction time (RT) as a function of the informa... more The Hick-Hyman law describes a linear increase in reaction time (RT) as a function of the information entropy of response selection, which is computed as the binary logarithm of the number of response alternatives. While numerous behavioral studies have provided evidence for the Hick-Hyman law, its neural underpinnings have rarely been examined and are still unclear. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, by utilizing a choice reaction time task to manipulate the entropy of response selection, we examined brain activity mediating the input and the output, as well as the connectivity between corresponding regions in human participants. Beyond confirming the Hick-Hyman law in RT performance, we found that activation of the cognitive control network (CCN) increased and activation of the default mode network (DMN) decreased, both as a function of entropy. However, only the CCN, but not the DMN, was involved in mediating the relationship between entropy and RT. The CCN was ...
Poor sleep and insomnia have been recognized to be strongly correlated with the development of de... more Poor sleep and insomnia have been recognized to be strongly correlated with the development of depression. The exploration of the basic mechanism of sleep disturbance could provide the basis for improved understanding and treatment of insomnia and prevention of depression. In this study, 31 subjects with insomnia symptoms as measured by the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAMD-17) and 71 age- and gender-matched subjects without insomnia symptoms were recruited to participate in a clinical trial. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), we examined the alterations in spontaneous brain activity between the two groups. Correlations between the fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (fALFF) and clinical measurements (e.g., number of insomnia symptoms, insomnia severity, and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale [HAMD] scores) were also tested to determine the differences between the two groups. Compared to healthy controls, participants with inso...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive neurodevelopmental condition, affecting cognition a... more Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive neurodevelopmental condition, affecting cognition and behavior throughout the life span. With recent advances in neuroimaging techniques and analytical approaches, a considerable effort has been directed toward identifying the neuroanatomical underpinnings of ASD. While gray-matter abnormalities have been found throughout cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar regions of affected individuals, there is currently little consistency across findings, partly due to small sample-sizes and great heterogeneity among participants in previous studies. Here, we report voxel-based morphometry of structural magnetic resonance images in a relatively large sample of high-functioning adults with ASD (n = 66) and matched typically-developing controls (n = 66) drawn from multiple studies. We found decreased gray-matter volume in posterior brain regions, including the posterior hippocampus and cuneus, as well as increased gray-matter volume in frontal brain...
Unlike the strategy of cognitive regulation that relies heavily on the top-down control function ... more Unlike the strategy of cognitive regulation that relies heavily on the top-down control function of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which was recently found may be critically impaired in stressful situations, traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine views different types of emotionality as having mutual promotion and counteraction (MPMC) relationships, implying a novel approach that requires less cognition to emotional regulation. Actually, our previous studies have indicated that anger responses could be successfully regulated via the induction of sadness, and this efficiency could not be influenced by stress, thus providing evidences for the hypothesis of "sadness counteracts anger" (SCA) proposed by the MPMC theory of emotionality (Zhan et al., 2015, 2017). In this study, we experimentally examined the MPMC hypothesis that "anger counteracts rumination" (ACR) which postulates that rumination may be alleviated by the anger emotion. In Study 1, all participants ...
In contrast to cognitive emotion regulation theories that emphasize top-down control of prefronta... more In contrast to cognitive emotion regulation theories that emphasize top-down control of prefrontal-mediated regulation of emotion, in traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine, different emotions are considered to have mutual promotion and counteraction relationships. Our previous studies have provided behavioral evidence supporting the hypotheses that "fear promotes anger" and "sadness counteracts anger"; this study further investigated the corresponding neural correlates. A basic hypothesis we made is the "internal versus external orientation" assumption proposing that fear could promote anger as its external orientation associated with motivated action, whereas sadness could counteract anger as its internal or homeostatic orientation to somatic or visceral experience. A way to test this assumption is to examine the selective involvement of the posterior insula (PI) and the anterior insula (AI) in sadness and fear because the posterior-to-anterior p...
The insula is thought to be involved in disgust. However, the roles of the posterior insula (PI) ... more The insula is thought to be involved in disgust. However, the roles of the posterior insula (PI) and anterior insula (AI) in moral disgust have not been clearly dissociated in previous studies. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, the participants evaluated the degree of disgust using sentences related to mild moral violations with different types of behavioral agents (mother and stranger). The activation of the PI in response to the stranger agent was significantly higher than that in response to the mother agent. In contrast, the activation of the AI in response to the mother agent was significantly higher than that in response to the stranger agent. These data suggest a clear functional dissociation between the PI and AI in which the PI is more involved in the primary level of moral disgust than is the AI, and the AI is more involved in the secondary level of moral disgust than is the PI. Our results provide key evidence for understanding the principle of embodied...
Insomnia is one of the main symptom correlates of major depressive disorder (MDD), but the neural... more Insomnia is one of the main symptom correlates of major depressive disorder (MDD), but the neural mechanisms underlying the multifaceted interplay between insomnia and depression are not fully understood. Patients with MDD and high insomnia (MDD-HI,  = 24), patients with MDD and low insomnia (MDD-LI,  = 37), and healthy controls (HCs,  = 51) were recruited to participate in the present study. The amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) during the resting state were compared among the three groups. We observed ALFF differences between the three groups in the right inferior frontal gyrus/anterior insula (IFG/AI), right middle temporal gyrus, left calcarine, and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Further region of interest (ROI) comparisons showed that the increases in the right IFG/AI reflected an abnormality specific to insomnia in MDD, while increases in the bilateral dlPFC reflected an abnormality specific to MDD generally. Increased ALFF in the right IFG/AI w...
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2017
Methylphenidate has prominent effects in the dopamine-rich striatum that are absent for the selec... more Methylphenidate has prominent effects in the dopamine-rich striatum that are absent for the selective norepinephrine transporter inhibitor atomoxetine. This study tested whether baseline striatal activation would predict differential response to the two medications in youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A total of 36 youth with ADHD performed a Go/No-Go test during functional magnetic resonance imaging at baseline and were treated with methylphenidate and atomoxetine using a randomized cross-over design. Whole-brain task-related activation was regressed on clinical response. Task-related activation in right caudate nucleus was predicted by an interaction of clinical responses to methylphenidate and atomoxetine (F1,30 = 17.00; p < .001). Elevated caudate activation was associated with robust improvement for methylphenidate and little improvement for atomoxetine. The rate of robust response was higher for methylphenidate than for atomoxetine in youth with hi...
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), Jan 22, 2017
The Hick-Hyman law describes a linear increase in reaction time (RT) as a function of the informa... more The Hick-Hyman law describes a linear increase in reaction time (RT) as a function of the information entropy of response selection, which is computed as the binary logarithm of the number of response alternatives. While numerous behavioral studies have provided evidence for the Hick-Hyman law, its neural underpinnings have rarely been examined and are still unclear. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, by utilizing a choice reaction time task to manipulate the entropy of response selection, we examined brain activity mediating the input and the output, as well as the connectivity between corresponding regions in human participants. Beyond confirming the Hick-Hyman law in RT performance, we found that activation of the cognitive control network (CCN) increased and activation of the default mode network (DMN) decreased, both as a function of entropy. However, only the CCN, but not the DMN, was involved in mediating the relationship between entropy and RT. The CCN was ...
Poor sleep and insomnia have been recognized to be strongly correlated with the development of de... more Poor sleep and insomnia have been recognized to be strongly correlated with the development of depression. The exploration of the basic mechanism of sleep disturbance could provide the basis for improved understanding and treatment of insomnia and prevention of depression. In this study, 31 subjects with insomnia symptoms as measured by the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAMD-17) and 71 age- and gender-matched subjects without insomnia symptoms were recruited to participate in a clinical trial. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), we examined the alterations in spontaneous brain activity between the two groups. Correlations between the fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (fALFF) and clinical measurements (e.g., number of insomnia symptoms, insomnia severity, and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale [HAMD] scores) were also tested to determine the differences between the two groups. Compared to healthy controls, participants with inso...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive neurodevelopmental condition, affecting cognition a... more Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive neurodevelopmental condition, affecting cognition and behavior throughout the life span. With recent advances in neuroimaging techniques and analytical approaches, a considerable effort has been directed toward identifying the neuroanatomical underpinnings of ASD. While gray-matter abnormalities have been found throughout cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar regions of affected individuals, there is currently little consistency across findings, partly due to small sample-sizes and great heterogeneity among participants in previous studies. Here, we report voxel-based morphometry of structural magnetic resonance images in a relatively large sample of high-functioning adults with ASD (n = 66) and matched typically-developing controls (n = 66) drawn from multiple studies. We found decreased gray-matter volume in posterior brain regions, including the posterior hippocampus and cuneus, as well as increased gray-matter volume in frontal brain...
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