Joy Hirsch

Yale University | YU · Department of Psychiatry

A “Test, Agy, Viselkedés: Három Nézet és Beszélgetések” című könyv a legmagasabb szinten végzett agykutatásról szól, különös tekintettel az agy fejlődésére, evolúciójára, perifériás szervekkel való kapcsolatára valamint agy és agy közötti kommunikációra. A könyv e tudományágak integrációjának szemléltetésével bővíti az idegtudomány jelenlegi nézete...

Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder associated with a wide range of cognitive and neurophysiological dysfunctions and long-term social difficulties. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that integration of multiple simultaneous acquisitions of neuroimaging, behavioral, and clinical information will be better for prediction of early psyc...

Social difficulties during interactions with others are central to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Understanding the links between these social difficulties and their underlying neural processes is a primary aim focused on improved diagnosis and treatment. In keeping with this goal, we have developed a multivariate classification method based on ne...

It has long been understood that the ventral visual stream of the human brain processes features of simulated human faces. Recently, specificity for real and interactive faces has been reported in lateral and dorsal visual streams, raising new questions regarding neural coding of interactive faces and lateral and dorsal face-processing mechanisms....

The implementation of noninvasive, functional imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) offers an unprecedented view of the complexities of the intact working human brain, including local neural circuits (cortical columns), regions, and large-scale systems of interconnected regions. Functional imaging provides a unique...

Viewing a live facial expression typically elicits a similar expression by the observer (facial mimicry) that is associated with a concordant emotional experience (emotional contagion). The model of embodied emotion proposes that emotional contagion and facial mimicry are functionally linked although the neural underpinnings are not known. To addre...

Unlabelled: Atypical eye gaze in joint attention is a clinical characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Despite this documented symptom, neural processing of joint attention tasks in real-life social interactions is not understood. To address this knowledge gap, functional-near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and eye-tracking data were acqu...

Background Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by an elevated distress response to social exclusion (i.e., rejection distress), whose neural mechanisms remain unclear. fMRI studies of social exclusion have relied on the classic version of the Cyberball task, which is not optimized for fMRI. Our goal was to clarify the neural subs...

Reluctance to make eye contact during natural interactions is a central diagnostic criterion for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the underlying neural correlates for eye contacts in ASD are unknown, and diagnostic biomarkers are active areas of investigation. Here, neuroimaging, eye-tracking, and pupillometry data were acquired simultaneou...

This report is the second part of a comprehensive two-part series aimed at reviewing an extensive and diverse toolkit of novel methods to explore brain health and function. While the first report focused on neurophotonic tools mostly applicable to animal studies, here, we highlight optical spectroscopy and imaging methods relevant to noninvasive hu...

People who stutter learn to anticipate many of their overt stuttering events. Despite the critical role of anticipation, particularly how responses to anticipation shape stuttering behaviors, the neural bases associated with anticipation are unknown. We used a novel approach to identify anticipated and unanticipated words in 22 adult stutterers, wh...

Significance There is a longstanding recommendation within the field of fNIRS to use oxygenated (HbO2) and deoxygenated (HHb) hemoglobin when analyzing and interpreting results. Despite this, many fNIRS studies do focus on HbO2 only. Previous work has shown that HbO2 on its own is susceptible to systemic interference and results may mostly reflect...

People with a depressed mood tend to perform poorly on executive function tasks, which require much of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), an area of the brain which has also been shown to be hypo-active in this population. Recent research has suggested that these aspects of cognition might be improved through physical activity and cognitive training. How...

Background Conventional paradigms in clinical neuroscience tend to be constrained in terms of ecological validity, raising several challenges to studying the mechanisms mediating treatments and outcomes in clinical settings. Addressing these issues requires real-world neuroimaging techniques that are capable of continuously collecting data during f...

Body, Brain, Behavior: Three Views and a Conversation describes brain research on the frontiers, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between the brain and its development and evolution, peripheral organs, and other brains in communication. The book expands current views of neuroscience by illustrating the integration of these disciplines...

Background Social symptomatology quantified by clinical interview (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, ADOS) and self-report (Social Responsiveness Scale, SRS) indicate symptom severity in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Reluctance to engage in interpersonal eye contact is a frequently observed behavioral hallmark, though neural bases for these...

Reluctant eye contact and reduced social interactions characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are consistent with deficits in oculomotor and face processing systems. We test the hypothesis that these deficits are interrelated ASD. Eye-tracking and hyperscanning with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) were used to acquire neuroim...

The nexus model of social processing proposes that the right temporal parietal junction (rTPJ) serves as a neural hub for cognitive social functions. We test the hypothesis that the rTPJ is a domain general region including somatosensory social functions. Neuroimaging findings and cross-brain coherence for right- and left-hand handclasps with real...

Aim: This investigation aims to advance understanding of the neural dynamics that underlie live and natural interactions during spoken dialogue between two-individuals. Introduction: The underlying hypothesis is that functional connectivity between canonical speech areas in the human brain will be modulated by social interaction. Methods: Gran...

Significance: With the increasing popularity of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), the need to determine localization of the source and nature of the signals has grown. Aim: We compare strategies for removal of non-neural signals for a finger-thumb tapping task, which shows responses in contralateral motor cortex and a visual checkerboa...

Pairs of participants mutually communicated (or not) biographical information to each other. By combining simultaneous eye-tracking, face-tracking and functional near-infrared spectroscopy, we examined how this mutual sharing of information modulates social signalling and brain activity. When biographical information was disclosed, participants dir...

Robot design to simulate interpersonal social interaction is an active area of research with applications in therapy and companionship. Neural responses to eye-to-eye contact in humans have recently been employed to determine the neural systems that are active during social interactions. Whether eye-contact with a social robot engages the same neur...

Although the neural systems that underlie spoken language are well-known, how they adapt to evolving social cues during natural conversations remains an unanswered question. In this work we investigate the neural correlates of face-to-face conversations between two individuals using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and acoustical analy...

An emerging theoretical framework suggests that neural functions associated with stereotyping and prejudice are associated with frontal lobe networks. Using a novel neuroimaging technique, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), during a face-to-face live communication paradigm, we explore an extension of this model to include live dynamic i...

Eye-to-eye contact is a spontaneous behavior between interacting partners that occurs naturally during social interactions. However, individuals differ with respect to eye gaze behaviors such as frequency of eye-to-eye contacts, and these variations may reflect underlying differences in social behavior in the population. While the use of eye signal...

Significance: The expanding field of human social interaction is enabled by functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) that acquires hemodynamic signals during live two-person interactions. These advances call for development of methods to quantify interactive processes. Aim: Wavelet coherence analysis has been applied to cross-brain neural coup...

Direct eye contact between two individuals is a salient social behavior known to initiate and promote interpersonal interaction. However, the neural processes that underlie these live interactive behaviors and eye-to-eye contact are not well understood. The Dynamic Neural Coupling Hypothesis presents a general theoretical framework proposing that s...

Near infrared spectroscopy enables neuroimaging of two simultaneously interacting individuals (hyperscanning) in natural conditions. Two-person paradigms interrogate inter and intra-brain neural systems associated with shared social signals during face processing, eye-to-eye contact, and spoken dialogue. Comments and questions should be directed to...

Face-specific neural processes in the human brain have been localized to multiple anatomical structures and associated with diverse and dynamic social functions. The question of how various face-related systems and functions may be bound together remains an active area of investigation. We hypothesize that face processing may be associated with spe...

A novel photonic method for remote monitoring of task‐related hemodynamic changes in human brain activation is presented. Physiological processes associated with neural activity, such as nano‐vibrations due to blood flow and tissue oxygenation in the brain, are detected by remote sensing of nano acoustic vibrations using temporal spatial analysis o...

Background: Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is associated with sensitivity to signals of interpersonal threats and misplaced trust in others. The amygdala, an integral part of the threat evaluation and response network, responds to both fear- and trust-related stimuli in non-clinical samples, and is more sensitive to emotional stimuli in BPD...

Previous studies in animals and humans suggest the periaqueductal grey region (PAG) is a final integration station between the brain and laryngeal musculature during phonation. To date, a limited number of functional magnetic neuroimaging (fMRI) studies have examined the functional connectivity of the PAG during volitional human phonation. An event...

Nonverbal communication of emotion is essential to human interaction and relevant to many clinical applications, yet it is an understudied topic in social neuroscience. Drumming is an ancient nonverbal communication modality for expression of emotion that has not been previously investigated in this context. We investigate the neural response to li...

Neural mechanisms that mediate dynamic social interactions remain understudied despite their evolutionary significance. The Interactive Brain Hypothesis proposes that interactive social cues are processed by dedicated brain substrates and provides a general theoretical framework for investigating the underlying neural mechanisms of social interacti...

The past few decades have seen a rapid increase in the use of functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in cognitive neuroscience. This fast growth is due to the several advances that fNIRS offers over the other neuroimaging modalities such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography/magnetoencephalography. In particular...

The development of novel miniaturized wireless and wearable functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) devices has paved the way for new functional brain imaging that could revolutionize the cognitive research fields. Over the past few decades, several studies have been conducted with conventional fNIRS systems that have demonstrated the suitabi...

Interpersonal interaction is the essence of human social behavior. However, conventional neuroimaging techniques have tended to focus on social cognition in single individuals rather than on dyads or groups. As a result, relatively little is understood about the neural events that underlie face-to-face interaction. We resolved some of the technical...

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) could be well suited for clinical use, such as measuring neural activity before and after treatment; however, reliability and specificity of fNIRS signals must be ensured so that differences can be attributed to the intervention. This study compared the test-retest and longitudinal reliability of oxyhem...

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) offers an advantage over traditional functional imaging methods [such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)] by allowing participants to move and speak relatively freely. However, neuroimaging while actively speaking has proven to be particularly challenging due to the systemic artifacts that...

Neurofeedback is a method for using neural activity displayed on a computer to regulate one's own brain function and has been shown to be a promising technique for training individuals to interact with brain-machine interface applications such as neuroprosthetic limbs. The goal of this study was to develop a user-friendly functional near-infrared s...

Human eye-to-eye contact is a primary source of social cues and communication. In spite of the biological significance of this interpersonal interaction, the underlying neural processes are not well-understood. This knowledge gap, in part, reflects limitations of conventional neuroimaging methods, including solitary confinement in the bore of a sca...

The interpretation of social cues is a fundamental function of human social behavior, and resolution of inconsistencies between spoken and gestural cues plays an important role in successful interactions. To gain insight into these underlying neural processes, we compared neural responses in a traditional color/word conflict task and to a gesture/w...

Channels, group-averaged coordinates, anatomical regions, and atlas-based probabilities. (PDF)

Global systemic effects not specific to a task can be prominent in functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) signals and the separation of task-specific fNIRS signals and global nonspecific effects is challenging due to waveform correlations. We describe a principal component spatial filter algorithm for separation of the global and local effec...

Objective. Prefrontal hemodynamic responses are observed during performance of motor tasks. Using a dance video game (DVG), a complex motor task that requires temporally accurate footsteps with given visual and auditory cues, we investigated whether 20 h of DVG training modified hemodynamic responses of the prefrontal cortex in six healthy young ad...

Obese individuals show altered neural responses to high-calorie food cues. Individuals with binge eating [BE], who exhibit heightened impulsivity and emotionality, may show a related but distinct pattern of irregular neural responses. However, few neuroimaging studies have compared BE and non-BE groups. To examine neural responses to food cues in B...

We present a method to compare brain activity recorded with near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in a dance video game task to that recorded in a reduced version of the task using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). Recently, it has been shown that fNIRS can accurately record functional brain activities equivalent to those concurrently reco...

Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) is very sensitive to subject motion. This can result in artifacts which are especially severe in DTI data of infants, children, and clinical populations, such as those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The detection and correction of motion is therefore important for DTI studies of these populations, in o...

Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) is a useful tool for noninvasive study of white matter properties and structural connectivity in the living brain, by measuring the anisotropic diffusion of water in white matter tract, such as fractional anisotropy (FA). However, DTI data often suffer from noise and artifacts caused by thermal radio frequency noise a...

The aim of this study was to investigate the white matter abnormalities in adolescents with a familial history of substance use disorders (SUD) compared to those without this family history using diffusion tensor-imaging data obtained from a larger study of familial patterns of psychiatric and behavioral problems.

We aimed to uncover differences in brain circuits of adolescents with parental positive or negative histories of substance use disorders (SUD), when performing a task that elicits emotional conflict, testing whether the brain circuits could serve as endophenotype markers to distinguish these adolescents. We acquired functional magnetic resonance im...

Neural mechanisms that underlie language disability in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been associated with reduced excitatory processes observed as positive blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) responses. However, negative BOLD responses (NBR) associated with language and inhibitory processes have been less studied in ASD. In this study, functi...

Speech comprehension studies have generally focused on the isolation and function of regions with positive blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals with respect to a resting baseline. Although regions with negative BOLD signals in comparison to a resting baseline have been reported in language-related tasks, their relationship to regions of posi...

Current models of cognitive control have argued that the frontal cortex dynamically allocates attentional resources during perceptual decisions. Specifically, momentary changes in sensory or response interference may result in top-down modulations of sensory input. To test this hypothesis, we performed fMRI using a visual motion interference task i...

Objective The obesogenic environment is pervasive, yet only some people become obese. The aim was to investigate whether obese individuals show differential neural responses to visual and auditory food cues, independent of cue modality.Methods Obese (BMI 29-41, n = 10) and lean (BMI 20-24, n = 10) females underwent fMRI scanning during presentation...

Cerebral blood flow (CBF) is a physiological correlate of brain function and metabolism and as such an essential parameter for investigating how aging and disease affect the brain. Arterial spin labeling (ASL) is an fMRI method that provides absolute measurement of CBF non-invasively and with higher spatial resolution than non-MRI methods. However,...

The aim of this study was to examine the cortical thickness of drug-naive adolescents with a positive familial history of Substance Use Disorders.

The aim of this study was to examine the cortical thickness of drug-naive adolescents with a positive familial history of Substance Use Disorders.

The aim of this study was to investigate neural activity pattern when performing a task with emotional conflict in adolescents with positive and negative history of SUD and to test whether the functional brain activity can manifest and classify the family history of SUD that has been positive or negative and thus predict familial transmission risk...

The aim of this study was to examine the cortical thickness of drug-naive adolescents with a positive familial history of Substance Use Disorders.

The aim of this study was to investigate neural activity and structural integrity in drug-naive adolescents who have a positive familial history of Substance Use Disorders (SUD), and to reveal circuit-based neural mechanisms that govern familial transmission of SUD.

The aim of this study was to examine the subcortical brain structure of drug-naive adolescents who have a familial history of substance use disorders.

Historically, both clinicians and cognitive scientists have used visual object naming measures to study naming, and lesion-type studies have implicated the left posterior, temporo-parietal region as a critical component of naming circuitry. However, recent results from behavioral and cortical stimulation studies using auditory description naming as...

Introduction: Neurological responses to food stimuli are complex and differ between lean, obese, and post-obese (weight-reduced) individuals. However, the neurological systems that regulate feeding in relation to weight status are not understood. The purpose of this study was to compare satiety mechanisms (fed>fasted) in obese and lean women. Hypot...