In functional neuroimaging studies, the inter-subject alignment of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data is a necessary precursor to improve functional consistency across subjects. Traditional structural MRI based registration methods cannot achieve accurate inter-subject functional consistency in that functional units are not necessarily consistently located relative to anatomical ...

Prior work has shown that functional connectivity between the midbrain and putamen is altered in patients with impairments in the dopamine system. This study examines whether individual differences in midbrain-striatal connectivity are proportional to the integrity of the dopamine system in patients with nigrostriatal dopamine loss (Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies). We assesse...

A leading hypothesis for the neural basis of autism postulates globally abnormal brain connectivity, yet the majority of studies report effects that are either very weak, inconsistent across studies, or explain results incompletely. Here we apply multiple analytical approaches to resting-state BOLD-fMRI data at the whole-brain level. Neurotypical and high-functioning adults with autism displaye...

A selective distribution of Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathological lesions in specific cortical layers isolates the hippocampus from the rest of the brain. However, functional connectivity between the hippocampus and other brain regions remains unclear in AD. Here, we employ a resting state functional MRI (fMRI) to examine changes in hippocampal connectivity comparing 13 patients with mild AD ve...

Context-sensitive and activity-dependent fluctuations in connectivity underlie functional integration in the brain and have been studied widely in terms of synaptic plasticity, learning and condition-specific (e.g., attentional) modulations of synaptic efficacy. This dynamic aspect of brain connectivity has recently attracted a lot of attention in the resting state fMRI community. To explain dy...

Whether glucocorticoids mediate medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) regulation of the amygdala in humans remains unclear. In the current study we investigated whether cortisol levels under relatively stress-free circumstances are related to amygdala resting-state functional connectivity with the mPFC. Resting-state fMRI data were acquired from 20 healthy male participants. Salivary cortisol was sam...

Synchronized oscillations in resting state timecourses have been detected in recent fMRI studies. These oscillations are low frequency in nature (< 0.08 Hz), and seem to be a property of symmetric cortices. These fluctuations are important as a potential signal of interest, which could indicate connectivity between functionally related areas of the brain. It has also been shown that the synchro...

We investigated differences in the intrinsic functional brain organization (functional connectivity) of the human reward system between healthy control participants and patients with social anxiety disorder. Functional connectivity was measured in the resting-state via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). 53 patients with social anxiety disorder and 33 healthy control participants unde...