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Neural Correlates of Three Neurocognitive Intervention Strategies: A Preliminary Step Towards Personalized Treatment for Psychological Disorders

Cognitive Therapy and Research volume 37, pages 657–672 (2013)Cite this article

Abstract

Brain-based behavioral interventions targeting specific neurocognitive mechanisms show initial promise in the treatment of emotional disorders, but personalization of such approaches will be facilitated if brain targets are empirically established. As a preliminary step, we conducted a proof-of-concept study to test whether particular emotion regulatory neural circuitry can be differentially targeted by specific neurocognitive tasks, and whether these tasks effectively inhibit amygdala activity. Eleven healthy individuals underwent an idiographic sadness and guilt induction. Brain response was measured via fMRI during 4 subsequent emotion regulation conditions: fixation, cognitive reappraisal (selected to target the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex), working memory practice (selected to target the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), and visual distraction (Tetris; selected to target occipital cortex). In whole-brain comparisons to fixation, hypotheses were upheld. Reappraisal uniquely activated left venrolateral prefrontal cortex, working memory practice uniquely activated left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and Tetris uniquely activated bilateral occipitoparietal cortex, activations that were largely robust at the single-subject level. All tasks inhibited amygdala activity relative to fixation. Data support examining whether repeated exposure to these tasks in psychiatric patients affects neural abnormalities implicated in emotional disorders. Ideally, psychiatric treatment will be accelerated by matching specific treatments to patients with specific neural profiles.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) N00014-05-1-0881 and NIH MH082998 & MH018269-25.

Conflict of interest

Greg Siegle is an unpaid consultant for TrialIQ. No other authors have conflicts of interest to declare.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Rebecca B. Price & Greg J. Siegle

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Ben Paul & Walt Schneider

  3. Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, 3811 O’Hara St., Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    Rebecca B. Price

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  1. Rebecca B. Price
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  2. Ben Paul
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Price, R.B., Paul, B., Schneider, W. et al. Neural Correlates of Three Neurocognitive Intervention Strategies: A Preliminary Step Towards Personalized Treatment for Psychological Disorders. Cogn Ther Res 37, 657–672 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-012-9508-x

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Keywords

  • Emotion regulation
  • Personalized medicine
  • FMRI
  • Prefrontal cortex
  • Amygdala