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Namik Kirlic

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4 papers

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YNICL Journal 2022 Journal Article

Behavioral and neural responses during fear conditioning and extinction in a large transdiagnostic sample

Namik Kirlic
Rayus Kuplicki
James Touthang
Zsofia P. Cohen
Jennifer L. Stewart
Martin P. Paulus
Robin L. Aupperle

BACKGROUND: Dysregulation of fear learning has been associated with psychiatric disorders that have altered positive and negative valence domain function. While amygdala-insula-prefrontal circuitry is considered important for fear learning, there have been inconsistencies in neural findings in healthy and clinical human samples. This study aimed to delineate the neural substrates and behavioral responses during fear learning in a large, transdiagnostic sample with predominantly depressive and/or anxious dysfunction. METHODS: Two-hundred and eighty-two individuals (52 healthy participants; 230 participants with depression and/or anxiety-related problems) from the Tulsa 1000 study, an ongoing, naturalistic longitudinal study based on a dimensional psychopathological framework, completed a Pavlovian fear learning task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Linear mixed-effects analyses examined condition-by-time effects on brain activation (CS+, CS- across familiarization, conditioning, and extinction trials). A data-driven latent profile analysis (LPA) examined distinct patterns of behavioral and neural responses to threat across fear conditioning and extinction, while logistic regression analyses evaluated cognitive-affective predictors of latent profiles. RESULTS: Whole-brain analyses revealed a condition-by-time interaction in the anterior insula, postcentral gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, and cerebellum but not amygdala. The LPA identified distinct latent profiles across subjective and neural levels of measurement. Anterior insula profiles were characterized by marginal differences in age and state anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings demonstrate that human fear learning recruits a distributed network of regions involved in interoceptive, cognitive, motivational, and psychomotor processes. Data-driven analyses identified distinct profiles of subjective and neural responses during fear learning that transcended clinical diagnoses, but no robust relationships to demographic or cognitive-affective variable were identified.

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YNIMG Journal 2021 Journal Article

Latent variables for region of interest activation during the monetary incentive delay task

Evan J. White
Rayus Kuplicki
Jennifer L. Stewart
Namik Kirlic
Hung-wen Yeh
Martin P. Paulus
Robin L. Aupperle

BACKGROUND: The Monetary Incentive Delay task (MID) has been used extensively to probe anticipatory reward processes. However, individual differences evident during this task may relate to other constructs such as general arousal or valence processing (i.e., anticipation of negative versus positive outcomes). This investigation used a latent variable approach to parse activation patterns during the MID within a transdiagnostic clinical sample. METHODS: Participants were drawn from the first 500 individuals recruited for the Tulsa-1000 (T1000), a naturalistic longitudinal study of 1000 participants aged 18-55 (n = 476 with MID data). We employed a multiview latent analysis method, group factor analysis, to characterize factors within and across variable sets consisting of: (1) region of interest (ROI)-based blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) contrasts during reward and loss anticipation; and (2) self-report measures of positive and negative valence and related constructs. RESULTS: Three factors comprised of ROI indicators emerged to accounted for >43% of variance and loaded on variables representing: (1) general arousal or general activation; (2) valence, with dissociable responses to anticipation of win versus loss; and (3) region-specific activation, with dissociable activation in salience versus perceptual brain networks. Two additional factors were comprised of self-report variables, which appeared to represent arousal and valence. CONCLUSIONS: Results indicate that multiview techniques to identify latent variables offer a novel approach for differentiating brain activation patterns during task engagement. Such approaches may offer insight into neural processing patterns through dimension reduction, be useful for probing individual differences, and aid in the development of optimal explanatory or predictive frameworks.

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YNIMG Journal 2020 Journal Article

Visual cortical regions show sufficient test-retest reliability while salience regions are unreliable during emotional face processing

Timothy J. McDermott
Namik Kirlic
Elisabeth Akeman
James Touthang
Kelly T. Cosgrove
Danielle C. DeVille
Ashley N. Clausen
Evan J. White

Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies frequently use emotional face processing tasks to probe neural circuitry related to psychiatric disorders and treatments with an emphasis on regions within the salience network (e. g. , amygdala). Findings across previous test-retest reliability studies of emotional face processing have shown high variability, potentially due to differences in data analytic approaches. The present study comprehensively examined the test-retest reliability of an emotional faces task utilizing multiple approaches to region of interest (ROI) analysis and by examining voxel-wise reliability across the entire brain for both neural activation and functional connectivity. Analyses included 42 healthy adult participants who completed an fMRI scan concurrent with an emotional faces task on two separate days with an average of 25. 52 days between scans. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated for the ‘FACES-SHAPES’ and ‘FACES’ (compared to implicit baseline) contrasts across the following: anatomical ROIs identified from a publicly available brain atlas (i. e. , Brainnetome), functional ROIs consisting of 5-mm spheres centered on peak voxels from a publicly available meta-analytic database (i. e. , Neurosynth), and whole-brain, voxel-wise analysis. Whole-brain, voxel-wise analyses of functional connectivity were also conducted using both anatomical and functional seed ROIs. While group-averaged neural activation maps were consistent across time, only one anatomical ROI and two functional ROIs showed good or excellent individual-level reliability for neural activation. The anatomical ROI was the right medioventral fusiform gyrus for the FACES contrast (ICC = 0. 60). The functional ROIs were the left and the right fusiform face area (FFA) for both FACES-SHAPES and FACES (Left FFA ICCs = 0. 69 & 0. 79; Right FFA ICCs = 0. 68 & 0. 66). Poor reliability (ICCs < 0. 4) was identified for almost all other anatomical and functional ROIs, with some exceptions showing fair reliability (ICCs = 0. 4–0. 59). Whole-brain voxel-wise analysis of neural activation identified voxels with good (ICCs = 0. 6–0. 74) to excellent reliability (ICCs > 0. 75) that were primarily located in visual cortex, with several clusters in bilateral dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Whole-brain voxel-wise analyses of functional connectivity for amygdala and fusiform gyrus identified very few voxels with good to excellent reliability using both anatomical and functional seed ROIs. Exceptions included clusters in right cerebellum and right DLPFC that showed reliable connectivity with left amygdala (ICCs > 0. 6). In conclusion, results indicate that visual cortical regions demonstrate good reliability at the individual level for neural activation, but reliability is generally poor for salience regions often focused on within psychiatric research (e. g. , amygdala). Given these findings, future clinical neuroimaging studies using emotional faces tasks to examine individual differences might instead focus on visual regions and their role in psychiatric disorders.

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YNICL Journal 2016 Journal Article

Neural responses to maternal praise and criticism: Relationship to depression and anxiety symptoms in high-risk adolescent girls

Robin L. Aupperle
Amanda S. Morris
Jennifer S. Silk
Michael M. Criss
Matt R. Judah
Sally G. Eagleton
Namik Kirlic
Jennifer Byrd-Craven

BACKGROUND: The parent-child relationship may be an important factor in the development of adolescent depressive and anxious symptoms. In adults, depressive symptoms relate to increased amygdala and attenuated prefrontal activation to maternal criticism. The current pilot study examined how depressive and anxiety symptoms in a high-risk adolescent population relate to neural responses to maternal feedback. Given previous research relating oxytocin to maternal behavior, we conducted exploratory analyses using oxytocin receptor (OXTR) genotype. METHODS: Eighteen females (ages 12-16) listened to maternal praise, neutral, and critical statements during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants completed the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire and the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders. The OXTR single nucleotide polymorphism, rs53576, was genotyped. Linear mixed models were used to identify symptom or allele (GG, AA/AG) by condition (critical, neutral, praise) interaction effects on brain activation. RESULTS: Greater symptoms related to greater right amygdala activation for criticism and reduced activation to praise. For left amygdala, greater symptoms related to reduced activation to both conditions. Anxiety symptoms related to differences in superior medial PFC activation patterns. Parental OXTR AA/AG allele related to reduced activation to criticism and greater activation to praise within the right amygdala. CONCLUSIONS: Results support a relationship between anxiety and depressive symptoms and prefrontal-amygdala responses to maternal feedback. The lateralization of amygdala findings suggests separate neural targets for interventions reducing reactivity to negative feedback or increasing salience of positive feedback. Exploratory analyses suggest that parents' OXTR genetic profile influences parent-child interactions and related adolescent brain responses.

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