Drug-related cues induce craving, which may perpetuate drug use or trigger relapse in addicted individuals. Craving is also under the influence of other factors in daily life, such as drug availability and self-control. Neuroimaging studies using drug cue paradigms have shown frontal lobe involvement in this contextual influence on cue reactivity, but have not clarified how and which frontal ar...

Previous correlational imaging studies have implicated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in decision making. Using High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (HD-tDCS), the present study directly investigated the causal role of the DLPFC in performing the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Inter-Temporal Choice (ITC) task. Three experiments were conducted: Experiment 1 (N = ...

Reappraisal, the cognitive reevaluation of a potentially emotionally arousing event, has been proposed to be based upon top-down appraisal systems within the prefrontal cortex (PFC). It still remains unclear, however, how different prefrontal regions interact to control and regulate emotional responses. We used fMRI and dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to characterize the functional interrelations...

How does the brain translate information signaling potential rewards into motivation to get them? Motivation to obtain reward is thought to depend on the midbrain [particularly the ventral tegmental area (VTA)], the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), but it is not clear how the interactions among these regions relate to reward-motivated behavior. To study ...

Previous studies have suggested that patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls exhibit differential activation of and connectivity involving the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during working memory tasks, though their findings remain inconsistent. The functional integration perspective further suggests that working memory performance also modulates differences in functional inter...

OBJECTIVE Evidence of the brain network involved in cognitive dysfunction has been inconsistent for major depressive disorder (MDD), especially during early stage of MDD. This study seeks to examine abnormal cognition connectivity network (CCN) in MDD within the whole brain. METHODS Sixteen patients with MDD and 16 health controls were scanned during resting-state using 3.0 T functional magne...

Current theories of cognitive aging emphasize that the prefrontal cortex might not only be a major source of dysfunction but also a source of compensation. We evaluated neural activity associated with retrieval monitoring--or the selection and evaluation of recollected information during memory retrieval--for evidence of dysfunction or compensation. Younger and older adults studied pictures and...

BACKGROUND Major depressive disorder is characterized by increased and sustained emotional reactivity, which has been linked to sustained amygdala activity. It is also characterized by disruptions in executive control, linked to abnormal dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) function. These mechanisms have been hypothesized to interact in depression. This study explored relationships between a...

The neural processes underlying the ability to divide attention between multiple sensory modalities remain poorly understood. To investigate the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in bimodal divided attention, we completed two repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) studies. We tested the hypothesis that the DLPFC is necessary in the ability to divide attention acros...