Emmanuelle Volle

YNICL Journal 2022 Journal Article

An ecological approach to identify distinct neural correlates of disinhibition in frontotemporal dementia

• Delphine Tanguy
• Bénédicte Batrancourt
• Alfonso Estudillo-Romero
• John S.H. Baxter
• Isabelle Le Ber
• Arabella Bouzigues
• Valérie Godefroy
• Aurélie Funkiewiez

Disinhibition is a core symptom of many neurodegenerative diseases, particularly frontotemporal dementia, and is a major cause of stress for caregivers. While a distinction between behavioural and cognitive disinhibition is common, an operational definition of behavioural disinhibition is still missing. Furthermore, conventional assessment of behavioural disinhibition, based on questionnaires completed by the caregivers, often lacks ecological validity. Therefore, their neuroanatomical correlates are non-univocal. In the present work, we used an original behavioural approach in a semi-ecological situation to assess two specific dimensions of behavioural disinhibition: compulsivity and social disinhibition. First, we investigated disinhibition profile in patients compared to controls. Then, to validate our approach, compulsivity and social disinhibition scores were correlated with classic cognitive tests measuring disinhibition (Hayling Test) and social cognition (mini-Social cognition & Emotional Assessment). Finally, we disentangled the anatomical networks underlying these two subtypes of behavioural disinhibition, taking in account the grey (voxel-based morphometry) and white matter (diffusion tensor imaging tractography). We included 17 behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia patients and 18 healthy controls. We identified patients as more compulsive and socially disinhibited than controls. We found that behavioural metrics in the semi-ecological task were related to cognitive performance: compulsivity correlated with the Hayling test and both compulsivity and social disinhibition were associated with the emotion recognition test. Based on voxel-based morphometry and tractography, compulsivity correlated with atrophy in the bilateral orbitofrontal cortex, the right temporal region and subcortical structures, as well as with alterations of the bilateral cingulum and uncinate fasciculus, the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus and the right arcuate fasciculus. Thus, the network of regions related to compulsivity matched the "semantic appraisal" network. Social disinhibition was associated with bilateral frontal atrophy and impairments in the forceps minor, the bilateral cingulum and the left uncinate fasciculus, regions corresponding to the frontal component of the "salience" network. Summarizing, this study validates our semi-ecological approach, through the identification of two subtypes of behavioural disinhibition, and highlights different neural networks underlying compulsivity and social disinhibition. Taken together, these findings are promising for clinical practice by providing a better characterisation of inhibition disorders, promoting their detection and consequently a more adapted management of patients.

YNIMG Journal 2021 Journal Article

Creativity and the brain: An editorial introduction to the special issue on the neuroscience of creativity

• Manish Saggar
• Emmanuelle Volle
• Lucina Q. Uddin
• Evangelia G. Chrysikou
• Adam E. Green

YNIMG Journal 2010 Journal Article

Distinct functional connectivity associated with lateral versus medial rostral prefrontal cortex: A meta-analysis

• Sam J. Gilbert
• Gil Gonen-Yaacovi
• Roland G. Benoit
• Emmanuelle Volle
• Paul W. Burgess

Recent studies have shown that functional connectivity in the human brain may be detected by analyzing the likelihood with which different brain regions are simultaneously activated, or “co-activated”, across multiple neuroimaging experiments. We applied this technique to investigate whether distinct subregions within rostral prefrontal cortex (RoPFC) tend to co-activate with distinct sets of brain regions outside RoPFC, in a meta-analysis of 200 activation peaks within RoPFC (approximating Brodmann Area 10) and 1712 co-activations outside this region, drawn from 162 studies. There was little evidence for distinct connectivity between hemispheres or along rostral/caudal or superior/inferior axes. However, there was a clear difference between lateral and medial RoPFC: activation in lateral RoPFC was particularly associated with co-activation in dorsal anterior cingulate, dorsolateral PFC, anterior insula and lateral parietal cortex; medial RoPFC activation was particularly associated with co-activation in posterior cingulate, posterior superior temporal sulcus and temporal pole. These findings are consistent with anatomical studies of connectivity in non-human primates, despite strong cross-species differences in RoPFC. Furthermore, associations between brain regions inside and outside RoPFC were in some cases strongly influenced by the type of task being performed. For example, dorsolateral PFC, anterior cingulate and lateral parietal cortex tended to co-activate with lateral RoPFC in most tasks but with medial RoPFC in tasks involving mentalizing. These results suggest the importance of changes in effective connectivity in the performance of cognitive tasks.

YNIMG Journal 2010 Journal Article

When I think about me and simulate you: Medial rostral prefrontal cortex and self-referential processes

• Roland G. Benoit
• Sam J. Gilbert
• Emmanuelle Volle
• Paul W. Burgess

While neuroimaging studies implicate medial rostral prefrontal cortex (mrPFC) in self-referential processing, simulation accounts of social cognition suggest that this region also supports thinking about other people. This study tested the prediction that mrPFC might be involved in appraising the personality traits of another person to the degree that this person is perceived as similar to oneself. We also examined whether recruiting common processes for thinking about oneself and others might impact on subsequent memory for those judgments. Functional MRI was used while two factors were crossed: (i) the requirement to engage in personality trait or episodic source memory judgments and (ii) the reference for these judgments (i. e. , oneself or a friend). The results link haemodynamic changes in mrPFC to both personality judgments about oneself and subsequent episodic memory retrieval of these judgments. The degree to which BOLD signal in this region was also associated with thinking about others correlated with perceived similarity in both tasks, thus corroborating simulation accounts. Moreover, participants who perceived themselves as having similar traits to their friends tended to be poorer at remembering whether they had made trait judgments in reference to themselves or their friend. This behavioral effect was reflected in the BOLD signal in mrPFC: there was a positive correlation between signal change for self versus friend judgments and subsequent memory for the reference of such judgments. The results suggest that investigations of mrPFC activity in the context of self/other judgments should take into account this psychological similarity effect.

YNIMG Journal 2007 Journal Article

A novel approach to clinical–radiological correlations: Anatomo-Clinical Overlapping Maps (AnaCOM): Method and validation

• Serge Kinkingnéhun
• Emmanuelle Volle
• Mélanie Pélégrini-Issac
• Jean-Louis Golmard
• Stéphane Lehéricy
• Foucaud du Boisguéheneuc
• Sandy Zhang-Nunes
• Danielle Sosson

We present a new clinical–radiological correlation method (AnaCOM) that aims at establishing structure–function relationships. We validated AnaCOM by assessing the location of lesions that are associated with altered performances in a well-studied task: the verbal fluency task. We retrospectively reviewed 64 brain-damaged patients who had focal lesions in a variety of cortical sites due to stroke, hemorrhage or tumor surgery. All patients were tested for verbal fluency at the time of the MRI examination. MRI volumes were normalized using a mask covering brain lesions and artifacts. The brain lesions were then segmented using the normalized MRI. In each patient, a verbal fluency score was assigned to each voxel in the segmented area. Subsequently, segmentations were superimposed and voxels were gathered in clusters defined by the overlap of the patients' lesion. For each cluster, the scores were statistically compared to those obtained by controls for the same task. This process allowed the construction of cluster-by-cluster statistical maps of anatomo-clinical correlations. As expected, the statistical map indicated that two regions were significantly associated with a deficit in the fluency task: one located in Broca's area and the other in the preSMA. AnaCOM does not require a priori selection of the location of lesions or task scores. The method complements the functional imaging techniques, as it tells which regions are necessary for a given function and it explores cortical regions as well as the white matter.