Biology subjects

Morgenroth, E.

Publications and source records attributed to Morgenroth, E..

6 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Higher-order topology uncovers the multidimensional dynamics of naturalistic emotion

Emotions are thought to emerge from co-activation among distributed brain systems, yet traditional fMRI analyses typically examine localized responses and pairwise connections, potentially overlooking interactions among groups of regions. Here, we use time-resolved higher-order topology to characterize these group interactions during naturalistic viewing of 14 films totaling over 2.5 h, continuously annotated across 50 affective features. The homological scaffold, representing evolving group-level topology, most closely tracks recurrent emotional states and best predicts fine-grained affective profiles. This sensitivity diminishes when emotion is compressed into dimensions of valence, arousal, and power, where pairwise connectivity captures the dominant arousal signal. Across three independent datasets, arousal predictions transfer most robustly through pairwise connectivity, while the relative geometry of broad affective states remains conserved across film narratives despite poor valence generalization. These findings reveal complementary neural representations of emotion: higher-order topology captures fine-grained affective structure, whereas pairwise connectivity provides a portable readout of broad arousal.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Individual differences of cortical and subcortical emotion-informed functional gradients

The complex interplay between brain regions that support emotional experience and their link to individual differences is a topic of active research. Additionally, there has been growing interest in using functional gradients to investigate human cortical organization during both rest and film fMRI. Among these, several studies demonstrated improved brain fingerprinting performance, reflecting greater neural identification capability of film fMRI against rest fMRI despite higher subject synchronization during film-watching than in rest. Comparably, in this work we study the relation between individual differences, in particular, state anxiety and openness scores, and brain activity during the processing of various emotional scenes in films, through functional gradients. Next to including subcortical areas, we also propose a new approach of computing functional gradients based on a subset of frames selected using emotional annotation data of films, resulting in emotion-informed functional gradients. Then we evaluate the variance in emotion-informed gradients across subjects and employ these same gradients in the prediction of individual differences. For emotion-informed functional gradients, the highest predictability of state anxiety was found for scenes of negative valence and medium-high arousal, corresponding to the typical location of anxiety within the valence-arousal-power emotional space. Additionally, predictability of state anxiety was negatively correlated to inter-subject variability. In contrast, predictability of openness was found to be highest during scenes with low arousal and positively correlated to inter-subject variability. In essence, our results first show that macroscale brain organization is affected by emotional experience, and that frame selection based on the latter can be useful to remove non-subject-specific variability while extracting subject-specific information related to the emotion experience. It also demonstrates that frame selection increases inter-subject variability allowing the extraction of more subject-specific information. Thus, expanding on the idea of brain fingerprint in film fMRI, we argue that emotional experiences enhance disentanglement of various domain of individual differences. Moreover, depending on the individual difference of interest, fMRI acquired during more or less constrained paradigms would be more suitable to reveal different properties of brain function.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Emo-FilM: A multimodal dataset for affective neuroscience using naturalistic stimuli

The extensive Emo-FilM dataset stands for Emotion research using Films and fMRI in healthy participants. This dataset includes detailed emotion annotations by 44 raters for 14 short films with a combined duration of over 2[1/2] hours, as well as recordings of respiration, heart rate, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) from a different sample of 30 individuals watching the same films. The detailed annotations of experienced emotion evaluated 50 items including ratings of discrete emotions and emotion components from the domains of appraisal, motivation, motor expression, physiological response, and feeling. Quality assessment for the behavioural data shows a mean inter-rater agreement of 0.38. The parallel fMRI data was acquired at 3 Tesla in four sessions, accompanied with a high-resolution structural (T1) and resting state fMRI scans for each participant. Physiological recordings during fMRI included heart rate, respiration, and electrodermal activity (EDA). Quality assessment indicators confirm acceptable quality of the MRI data. This dataset is designed, but not limited, to studying the dynamic neural processes involved in emotion experience. A particular strength of this data is the high temporal resolution of behavioural annotations, as well as the inclusion of a validation study in the fMRI sample. This high-quality behavioural data in combination with continuous physiological and MRI measurements makes this dataset a treasure trove for researching human emotion in response to naturalistic stimulation in a multimodal framework.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Daily and Intermittent Smoking Decrease Gray Matter Volume and Concentrations of Glutamate, Creatine, Myo-Inositol and N-acetylaspartate in the Prefrontal Cortex

Cigarette smoking is still the largest contributor to disease and death worldwide. Successful cessation is hindered by decreases in prefrontal glutamate concentrations and gray matter volume due to daily smoking. Because non-daily, intermittent smoking also contributes greatly to disease and death, understanding whether infrequent tobacco use is associated with reductions in prefrontal glutamate concentrations and gray matter volume may aid public health. Eighty-five young participants (41 non-smokers, 24 intermittent smokers, 20 daily smokers, mean age ~23 years old), underwent 1H-magnetic resonance spectroscopy of the medial prefrontal cortex, as well as structural MRI to determine whole-brain gray matter volume. Compared to non-smokers, both daily and intermittent smokers exhibited lower concentrations of glutamate, creatine, N-acetylaspartate and myo-inositol in the medial prefrontal cortex, and lower gray matter volume in the right inferior frontal gyrus; these measures of prefrontal metabolites and structure did not differ between daily and intermittent smokers. Finally, medial prefrontal metabolite concentrations and right inferior frontal gray matter volume were positively correlated, but these relationships were not influenced by smoking status. This study provides the first evidence that both daily and intermittent smoking are associated with low concentrations of glutamate, creatine, N-acetylaspartate and myo-inositol, and low gray matter volume in the prefrontal cortex. Future tobacco cessation efforts should not ignore potential deleterious effects of intermittent smoking by considering only daily smokers. Finally, because low glutamate concentrations hinder cessation, treatments that can normalize tonic levels of prefrontal glutamate, such as N-acetylcysteine, may help intermittent and daily smokers to quit.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Did I imagine that? The functional role of paracingulate cortex in reality monitoring

Reality monitoring describes our ability to distinguish between internally and externally generated experiences. Individuals show significant variation in this ability and impaired reality monitoring has been linked to the experience of hallucinations. We undertook two studies to investigate the association between reality monitoring and morphology of the paracingulate region of medial prefrontal cortex. In Study 1 we compared reality monitoring accuracy and functional connectivity within paracingulate cortex in groups of healthy controls (N=20) and patients with schizophrenia and hallucinations (N=19). Controls showed greater reality monitoring accuracy that was associated with resting-state functional connectivity between paracingulate, precuneus and occipital cortices, while reality monitoring in patients was associated with more lateral functional connectivity. In Study 2 we used real-time fMRI neurofeedback to obtain causal evidence for the role of the paracingulate cortex in reality monitoring. Healthy individuals received Active feedback from paracingulate cortex (N=21) or Sham feedback based on randomised signal (N=18). Active-group participants showed a specific behavioural effect of improved reality monitoring for Imagined items, as well as increases in both activity within the paracingulate region, and its posterior functional connectivity with precuneus and lateral parietal cortices, and occipital cortex. Our findings suggest reality monitoring in healthy individuals is causally supported by a paracingulate mediated flexible network including the precuneus. Network connectivity can be enhanced using neurofeedback and tracks with improved reality monitoring ability. In contrast, patients with schizophrenia may utilise a distinct and more lateral network which may explain observed sub-optimal reality monitoring accuracy, contributing to the experience of hallucinations. Significance StatementReality monitoring refers to our ability to distinguish imagination from our experiences in the outside world, and is linked both to hallucinations in schizophrenia as well as to the morphology of paracingulate cortex area of the brain. Here, we revealed less paracingulate involvement in the functional reality monitoring networks in patients with schizophrenia compared to healthy individuals. Thereafter, we used real-time fMRI neurofeedback to show that healthy individuals can learn to upregulate brain activity within the paracingulate cortex, with this resulting in both improved reality monitoring ability and changes in paracingulate functional connectivity. This suggests that paracingulate cortex activity and connectivity play a causal role in reality monitoring, with implications for both the understanding and treatment of hallucinations.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

Biomass segregation between biofilm and flocs improves the control of nitrite-oxidizing bacteria in mainstream partial nitritation and anammox processes

The control of nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB) challenges the implementation of partial nitritation and anammox (PN/A) processes under mainstream conditions. The aim of the present study was to understand how operating conditions impact microbial competition and the control of NOB in hybrid PN/A systems, where biofilm and flocs coexist. A hybrid PN/A moving-bed biofilm reactor (MBBR; also referred to as integrated fixed film activated sludge or IFAS) was operated at 15 {degrees}C on aerobically pre-treated municipal wastewater (23 mgNH4-N{middle dot}L-1). Ammonium-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and NOB were enriched primarily in the flocs, and anammox bacteria (AMX) in the biofilm. After decreasing the dissolved oxygen concentration (DO) from 1.2 to 0.17 mgO2{middle dot}L-1 - with all other operating conditions unchanged - washout of NOB from the flocs was observed. The activity of the minor NOB fraction remaining in the biofilm was suppressed at low DO. As a result, low effluent NO3- concentrations (0.5 mgN{middle dot}L-1) were consistently achieved at aerobic nitrogen removal rates (80 mgN{middle dot}L-1{middle dot}d-1) comparable to those of conventional treatment plants. A simple dynamic mathematical model, assuming perfect biomass segregation with AOB and NOB in the flocs and AMX in the biofilm, was able to qualitatively reproduce the selective washout of NOB from the flocs in response to the decrease in DO-setpoint. Similarly, numerical simulations indicated that flocs removal is an effective operational strategy to achieve the selective washout of NOB. The direct competition for NO2- between NOB and AMX - the latter retained in the biofilm and acting as a \"NO2-sink\" - was identified by the model as key mechanism leading to a difference in the actual growth rates of AOB and NOB (i.e., NOB < AOB in flocs) and allowing for the selective NOB washout. Experimental results and model predictions demonstrate the increased operational flexibility, in terms of variables that can be easily controlled by operators, offered by hybrid systems as compared to solely biofilm systems for the control of NOB in mainstream PN/A applications.\n\nHighlightsO_LIHybrid PN/A systems provide increased operational flexibility for NOB control\nC_LIO_LIAOB and NOB enrich primarily in the flocs, and AMX in the biofilm (\"NO2-sink\")\nC_LIO_LIAMX use NO2- allowing to differentiate AOB and NOB growth rates\nC_LIO_LIA decrease in DO or an increase in floc removal leads to selective NOB washout from flocs\nC_LIO_LIThe activity of the minor NOB fraction in the biofilm is suppressed at limiting DO\nC_LI\n\n\n\nO_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=63 SRC=\"FIGDIR/small/480780v2_ufig1.gif\" ALT=\"Figure 1\">\nView larger version (21K):\norg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@cad5deorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@9efef3org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@7409feorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@3c1043_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG

systems biology↗