Author name cluster

Viola Borchardt

Possible papers associated with this exact author name in Arrow. This page groups case-insensitive exact name matches and is not a full identity disambiguation profile.

3 papers

1 author row

YNICL Journal 2019 Journal Article

Expectation of sexual images of adults and children elicits differential dorsal anterior cingulate cortex activation in pedophilic sexual offenders and healthy controls

Inka Ristow
Jens Foell
Christian Kärgel
Viola Borchardt
Shijia Li
Dominik Denzel
Joachim Witzel
Krasimira Drumkova

BACKGROUND: Pedophilic disorder is characterized by increased sexual interest towards children, with comparatively lesser interest towards adults. In real life, the behavior of subjects with pedophilic disorder is shaped by evaluative processes in response to sexually relevant cues. Therefore, brain activation during anticipation of sexually relevant cues is of potential interest. Whereas previous research demonstrated reduced activation when viewing adult (non-preferred) sexual stimuli in pedophilic sex offenders (PSOs), it is not known if anticipation of preferred versus unpreferred stimuli will elicit differential brain activation. METHODS: Two fMRI studies (1.5 and 7 Tesla) were conducted in separate samples, each with 26 subjects (13/13 PSOs/controls) to assess brain activity during expectancy of subsequent adult (non-preferred) sexual stimuli. In the second study (7 Tesla) additionally child (preferred) cues were presented. RESULTS: As predicted, expectancy of adult sexual stimuli generated smaller dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activation in PSOs in both studies, driven by stronger activation during expectancy of adult erotic stimuli in non-pedophilic controls (HCs). In the second study, PSOs showed significantly increased activations in dACC during expectancy of child stimuli compared with expectancy of adult stimuli. This difference was significantly greater compared to the same contrast in HCs, thus demonstrating preference specificity of dACC activation. CONCLUSION: Our findings support the notion of decreased brain activation to adult cues in PSOs and preference specificity in neural response during expectancy of erotic stimuli. The localization of these cue reactivity differences in the salience network supports the interpretation that PSOs show abnormally increased preparatory activation even before relevant sexual stimuli are actually presented.

Details DOI

YNIMG Journal 2019 Journal Article

The anterior insula channels prefrontal expectancy signals during affective processing

Vanessa Teckentrup
Johan N. van der Meer
Viola Borchardt
Yan Fan
Monja P. Neuser
Claus Tempelmann
Luisa Herrmann
Martin Walter

Expectancy shapes our perception of impending events. Although such an interplay between cognitive and affective processes is often impaired in mental disorders, it is not well understood how top-down expectancy signals modulate future affect. We therefore track the information flow in the brain during cognitive and affective processing segregated in time using task-specific cross-correlations. Participants in two independent fMRI studies (N1 = 37 & N2 = 55) were instructed to imagine a situation with affective content as indicated by a cue, which was then followed by an emotional picture congruent with expectancy. To correct for intrinsic covariance of brain function, we calculate resting-state cross-correlations analogous to the task. First, using factorial modeling of delta cross-correlations (task-rest) of the first study, we find that the magnitude of expectancy signals in the anterior insula cortex (AIC) modulates the BOLD response to emotional pictures in the anterior cingulate and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in opposite directions. Second, using hierarchical linear modeling of lagged connectivity, we demonstrate that expectancy signals in the AIC indeed foreshadow this opposing pattern in the prefrontal cortex. Third, we replicate the results in the second study using a higher temporal resolution, showing that our task-specific cross-correlation approach robustly uncovers the dynamics of information flow. We conclude that the AIC arbitrates the recruitment of distinct prefrontal networks during cued picture processing according to triggered expectations. Taken together, our study provides new insights into neuronal pathways channeling cognition and affect within well-defined brain networks. Better understanding of such dynamics could lead to new applications tracking aberrant information processing in mental disorders.

Details DOI

YNICL Journal 2017 Journal Article

Multicenter stability of resting state fMRI in the detection of Alzheimer's disease and amnestic MCI

Stefan J. Teipel
Alexandra Wohlert
Coraline Metzger
Timo Grimmer
Christian Sorg
Michael Ewers
Eva Meisenzahl
Stefan Klöppel

BACKGROUND: In monocentric studies, patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia exhibited alterations of functional cortical connectivity in resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) analyses. Multicenter studies provide access to large sample sizes, but rs-fMRI may be particularly sensitive to multiscanner effects. METHODS: We used data from five centers of the "German resting-state initiative for diagnostic biomarkers" (psymri.org), comprising 367 cases, including AD patients, MCI patients and healthy older controls, to assess the influence of the distributed acquisition on the group effects. We calculated accuracy of group discrimination based on whole brain functional connectivity of the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) using pooled samples as well as second-level analyses across site-specific group contrast maps. RESULTS: We found decreased functional connectivity in AD patients vs. controls, including clusters in the precuneus, inferior parietal cortex, lateral temporal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex. MCI subjects showed spatially similar, but less pronounced, differences in PCC connectivity when compared to controls. Group discrimination accuracy for AD vs. controls (MCI vs. controls) in the test data was below 76% (72%) based on the pooled analysis, and even lower based on the second level analysis stratified according to scanner. Only a subset of quality measures was useful to detect relevant scanner effects. CONCLUSIONS: Multicenter rs-fMRI analysis needs to employ strict quality measures, including visual inspection of all the data, to avoid seriously confounded group effects. While pending further confirmation in biomarker stratified samples, these findings suggest that multicenter acquisition limits the use of rs-fMRI in AD and MCI diagnosis.

Details DOI