PFC-AMY · Functional networks underlying emotion processing
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-09-03 → 2020-09-02
- EU contribution
- €166,157
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Functional networks underlying emotion processing
Experiencing emotions is part of our daily life. Sometimes, these emotions can be intense, and we need to control them. Emotion regulation (ER) describes our ability to effectively manage emotional experiences. It increases our general well-being, performance at work and personal and professional relationships. Impairments in self-regulation of emotions are a substantial aspect of neuropsychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorder, major depression, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder. These disorders account for up to 40% of years lived with disability, with depression as the main cause. Up to 50% of chronic sick leavers are due to depression, thus the cost of mood disorders and anxiety in the EU is about 170 billion Euro per year. Key characteristics of these disorders are changes in emotion processing, i.e. emotion perception, emotion reactivity and emotion regulation . From a brain network perspective, these emotion processing alterations were found to be associated with hypoactivity in the prefrontal cortex (dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, dlPFC and vlPFC), while at the same time limbic hyperactivity (i.e. in the amygdala) was observed. In this project, we aimed to indetify brain regions that are reliably activated during ER and that might consitute a biomarker for clinical research.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Impairments in self-regulation of emotions are a substantial aspect of neuropsychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorder, major depression, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder. These disorders account for up to 40% of years lived with disability, with depression as the main cause. Key characteristics of these disorders are changes in emotion processing, i.e. emotion perception, emotion reactivity and emotion regulation. From a brain network perspective, these emotion processing alterations were found to be associated with reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex (dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex), while at the same time limbic areas (particularly the amygdala) are overactivated. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a non-invasive technique for modulating brain networks, is a promising tool to cure patients suffering from affective disorders. Current approaches, however, use TMS targets based on generic anatomy coordinates from group-average studies. It is this lack of patient-specific targeting which most probably causes the modest response rates observed in TMS therapy. This project will use cutting-edge neuroscience methods to provide innovative ways for the treatment of patients with emotional dysregulation. We will systematically investigate different network properties underlying emotion perception, reactivity and regulation in healthy participants to develop a connectivity-informed process model of emotion processing that could be used for clinical research. We will use individualised brain targets based on activation and connectivity patterns obtained in the same subject to improve TMS application accuracy and achieve optimal therapeutic benefit in each and every patient. We will compare the performance of this precision-medicine approach with subject-specific stimulation targets to the current gold-standard procedure relying on group-average targets.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- MEDIZINISCHE UNIVERSITAET WIEN · WienCoordinatorAustria
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union