One component of mindfulness training (MT) is the development of interoceptive attention (IA) to visceral bodily sensations, facilitated through daily practices such as breath monitoring. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined experience-dependent functional plasticity in accessing interoceptive representations by comparing graduates of a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduct...

Although the insula and temporal pole (TP) of paralimbic regions are important in both affective and cognitive processing, it is not well known whether gray matter volume (GMV) abnormalities in these regions show post-onset progression and differentially affect first-episode schizophrenia (FESZ) and first-episode affective psychosis (FEAFF) patients. To determine whether there are initial and p...

Gambling is a naturalistic example of risky decision-making. During gambling, players typically display an array of cognitive biases that create a distorted expectancy of winning. This study investigated brain regions underpinning gambling-related cognitive distortions, contrasting patients with focal brain lesions to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), insula, or amygdala ("target pati...

Emotion-regulation strategies are understood to influence food intake. This study examined the neurophysiological underpinnings of negative emotion processing and emotion regulation in individuals with excess weight compared to normal-weight controls. Fifteen participants with excess-weight (body mass index >25) and sixteen normal-weight controls (body mass index 18-25) performed an emotion-reg...

BACKGROUND Extreme shyness in childhood arising from behavioral inhibition (BI) is among the strongest risk factors for developing social anxiety. Although no imaging studies of intrinsic brain networks in children with BI have been reported, adults with a history of BI exhibit altered functioning of frontolimbic circuits and enhanced processing of salient, personally relevant information. BI i...

Alterations within mesocorticolimbic terminal regions commonly occur with alcohol use disorder (AUD). As pathological drug-seeking behavior may arise as a consequence of alcohol-induced neuroadaptations, it is critical to understand how such changes increase the likelihood of relapse. This report examined resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) using both a seed-based and model-free approa...

Active avoidance involving controlling and modifying threatening situations characterizes many forms of clinical pathology, particularly childhood anxiety. Presently our understanding of the neural systems supporting human avoidance is largely based on nonhuman research. Establishing the generality of nonhuman findings to healthy children is a needed first step towards advancing developmental a...

Individuals who perform optimally in extreme conditions, such as elite military warriors, can provide valuable insight into the neurobehavioral mechanisms underlying extraordinary performance. In the current study, we examined the degree to which Navy SEALs, when compared with healthy volunteers, could show more right anterior insula activation when shifting from anticipating one emotion to ano...

Self-esteem is shaped by the appraisals we receive from others. Here, we characterize neural and computational mechanisms underlying this form of social influence. We introduce a computational model that captures fluctuations in self-esteem engendered by prediction errors that quantify the difference between expected and received social feedback. Using functional MRI, we show these social predi...

HIV is most prevalent among men who have sex with men (MSM), and although most MSM use condoms consistently during casual sex, some take risks. To better understand the psychology of those risky decisions, we examined neural correlates of playing a virtual sexual 'hook up' game in an functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner in MSM who had, in the past 90 days, been sexually risky (N = 76) ...