Matthew T Sutherland

Florida International University | FIU · Department of Psychology

Importance: Withdrawal from nicotine is an important contributor to smoking relapse. Understanding how reward-based decision making is affected by abstinence and by pharmacotherapies such as nicotine replacement therapy and varenicline tartrate may aid cessation treatment. Objective: To independently assess the effects of nicotine dependence and...

Background: Although the amygdala and insula are regarded as critical neural substrates perpetuating cigarette smoking, little is known about their circuit-level interactions with interconnected regions during nicotine withdrawal or following pharmacotherapy administration. To elucidate neurocircuitry associated with early smoking abstinence, we e...

Background: Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) agonists augment cognition among cigarette smokers and nonsmokers, yet the systems-level neurobiological mechanisms underlying such improvements are not fully understood. Aggregating neuroimaging results regarding nAChR agonists provides a means to identify common functional brain changes that m...

Rationale Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulty indentifying and describing subjective emotional experiences. Decreased aptitude in the perception, evaluation, and communication of affectively laden mental states has been associated with reduced emotion regulation, more severe drug craving in addicts, and structural/functio...

Neuroscientists have sought to identify the underlying neural systems supporting social processing that allow interaction and communication, forming social relationships, and navigating the social world. Through the use of NIMH’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework, we evaluated consensus among studies that examined brain activity during soci...

Attentional control theory (ACT) posits that elevated anxiety increases the probability of re-allocating cognitive resources needed to complete a task to processing anxiety-related stimuli. This process impairs processing efficiency and can lead to reduced performance effectiveness. Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students frequen...

Background Neuroimaging studies often consider brain alterations linked with substance abuse within the context of individual drugs (e.g., nicotine), while neurobiological theories of addiction emphasize common brain network-level alterations across drug classes. Using emergent meta-analytic techniques, we identified common structural brain alterat...

Background: Adolescent electronic (e-)cigarette use intentions are related to initiation. Low self-control is also a risk factor for early stages of substance use. Yet, the impact of low self-control on use through intentions may vary across individuals; depression and anxiety may affect this association. Methods: A sample of 200 adolescents who co...

Background Adolescent electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use remains high. Elucidating contributing factors may enhance prevention strategies. Neurobiologically, amygdala-insula resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) has been linked with aspects of sleep, affect, and substance use (SU). As such, we hypothesized that amygdala’s rsFC with the i...

Background Population-based neuroscience offers opportunities to examine important but understudied sociocultural factors, such as acculturation. Acculturation refers to the extent to which an individual retains their cultural heritage and/or adopts the receiving society’s culture and is particularly salient among Hispanic/Latinx immigrants. Specif...

Given the salience of socialization factors on adolescence and their role in vulnerability to disasters and trauma, this study examined whether COVID-19-associated fears and impacted quality of life mediated associations between pandemic-focused family conversations and media exposure and subsequent youth mental health. A primarily Latinx sample of...

Background Adolescent electronic cigarette use (e-cigarette) is a public health concern and factors associated with vaping remain to be understood. Childhood emotional abuse/neglect is a risk factor for e-cigarettes. Yet, pathways by which trauma impacts use remain unclear. Alexithymia (i.e., difficulties identifying and describing feelings) is one...

Background Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating disorder defined by the onset of intrusive, avoidant, negative cognitive or affective, and/or hyperarousal symptoms after witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. Previous voxel-based morphometry studies have provided insight into structural brain alterations associated with PT...

Objective Neuroscientists have sought to identify the underlying neural systems supporting mental processes involved in social cognition. These processes allow us to interact and communicate with others, form social relationships, and navigate the social world. Through the use of NIMH’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework, we evaluated consen...

Lower financial savings among individuals experiencing adverse social determinants of health (SDoH) increases vulnerabilities during times of crisis. SDoH including low socioeconomic status (low-SES) influence cognitive abilities as well as health and life outcomes that may perpetuate poverty and disparities. Despite evidence suggesting a role for...

Altered activity within and between large-scale brain networks has been implicated across various neuropsychiatric conditions. However, patterns of network dysregulation associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and further impacted by cannabis (CB) use, remain to be delineated. We examined the impact of HIV and CB on resting-state functi...

Background: Waterpipe tobacco (WPT) smoking has increased among the young population in the United States (US). This study assessed the extent and predictors of WPT smoking initiation and progression among US adolescents (12-17 years) and young adults (18-24 years) longitudinally. Methods: We analyzed data from 4 waves (2013-2018) of the Populatio...

Background: Waterpipe tobacco (WPT) smoking has increased among the young population in the United States (US). This study assessed the extent and predictors of WPT smoking initiation and progression among US adolescents (12-17 years) and young adults (18-24 years) longitudinally. Methods: We analyzed data from 4 waves (2013-2018) of the Populat...

The E-Cigarette Assessment for Youth Revised (EAsY-R) is a comprehensive tool for the assessment of quantity and frequency of youth vaping behaviors. The original EAsY (developed by a subset of the current authorship) was revised through the use of cognitive interviews with youth who use vaping devices.

Electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) use has dramatically increased in the US. This study aimed to characterize changes in ENDS harm perception over time and associated predictors among US adolescents. Data from the 2013–2018 Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study (PATH) for adolescents (12–17 years) were utilized. Trend analyses...

Adolescent e-cigarette use has been labeled an epidemic and alcohol use during this developmental period is associated with deleterious outcomes. Though specific temperamental dimensions have been shown to predict substance use, profiles of temperament have rarely been examined as predictors. This study examines dimensions and profiles of adolescen...

Neuroticism has been linked to an increased likelihood of cognitive failures, including episodes of inattentiveness, forgetfulness, or accidents causing difficulties in successfully executing everyday tasks and impacting health and quality of life. Cognitive failures associated with trait neuroticism can prompt some negative psychological outcomes...

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has helped expose and exacerbate individuals’ and households’ financial vulnerability worldwide. Meanwhile, behavioral elements affecting low-income populations’ ability to save and become more financially resilient have yet to receive sufficient academic attention. This exploratory study aims at the...

The human toll of disasters extends beyond death, injury and loss. Post-traumatic stress (PTS) can be common among directly exposed individuals, and children are particularly vulnerable. Even children far removed from harm’s way report PTS, and media-based exposure may partially account for this phenomenon. In this study, we examine this issue usin...

Etiological models highlight reduced punishment sensitivity as a core risk factor for disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) and callous-unemotional (CU) traits. The current study examined neural sensitivity to the anticipation and receipt of loss, one key aspect of punishment sensitivity, among youth with DBD, comparing those with and without CU trai...

Chronic inflammation in the central nervous system is one mechanism through which human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) may lead to progressive cognitive decline. Given cannabis’s (CB’s) anti-inflammatory properties, use prevalence among people living with HIV (PLWH), and evidence implicating the insula in both, we examined independent and interactive...

The cue-reactivity paradigm is a widely adopted neuroimaging probe engendering brain activity linked with attentional, affective, and reward processes following presentation of appetitive stimuli. Given the multiple mental operations invoked, we sought to decompose cue-related brain activity into constituent components employing emergent meta-analy...

Objective: Brain activity linked with error processing has rarely been examined among persons living with HIV (PLWH) despite importance for monitoring and modifying behaviors that could lead to adverse health outcomes (e.g., medication non-adherence, drug use, risky sexual practices). Given that cannabis (CB) use is prevalent among PLWH and impact...

Background The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development ™ Study (ABCD StudyⓇ) is an open-science, multi-site, prospective, longitudinal study following over 11,800 9- and 10-year-old youth into early adulthood. The ABCD Study aims to prospectively examine the impact of substance use (SU) on neurocognitive and health outcomes. Although SU initiation t...

A full list of affiliations appears at the end of the paper. T he ABCD Study ® aims to characterize adolescent development and evaluate many influences that might shape developmental trajectories. While numerous factors are plausibly associated with neurodevelopment (for example, nutrition, sleep, exercise, head injuries and substance use), we have...

Objective: Brain activity linked with error processing has rarely been examined among persons living with HIV (PLWH) despite importance for monitoring and modifying behaviors that could lead to adverse health outcomes (e.g., medication non-adherence, drug use, risky sexual practices). Given that cannabis (CB) use is prevalent among PLWH and impacts...

Collecting physiological data during fMRI experiments can improve fMRI data cleaning and contribute to our understanding of psychophysiological processes; however, these recordings are frequently fraught with artifacts from the MRI pulse sequence. Here, we look at manufacturer recommendations for filtering such artifacts from physiological data col...

Importance Incidental findings (IFs) are unexpected abnormalities discovered during imaging and can range from normal anatomic variants to findings requiring urgent medical intervention. In the case of brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), reliable data about the prevalence and significance of IFs in the general population are limited, making it...

Aim To examine individual variability between perceived physical features and hormones of pubertal maturation in 9–10-year-old children as a function of sociodemographic characteristics. Methods Cross-sectional metrics of puberty were utilized from the baseline assessment of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study—a multi-site samp...

Academic performance relies, in part, on intelligence; however, intelligence quotient (IQ) is limited in predicting academic success. Furthermore, while the search for the biological seat of intelligence predates neuroscience itself, its findings remain conflicting. Here, we assess the interplay between IQ, academic performance, and brain connectiv...

Purpose Vaping among adolescents has reached epidemic levels. Identifying factors associated with electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use initiation could inform prevention programming. This study examined whether parental attitudes toward e-cigarettes impacted adolescent e-cigarette use intentions, positive expectancies of use, and actual use when...

Hurricane Irma was the most powerful Atlantic hurricane in recorded history, displacing 6 million and killing over 120 people in the state of Florida alone. Unpredictable disasters like Irma are associated with poor cognitive and health outcomes that can disproportionately impact children. This study examined the effects of Hurricane Irma on the hi...

Objective: Identifying the factors associated with nicotine dependence (ND) is essential to prevent initiation and continued use, and to promote cessation among youth. This study aims to document the predictors of the appearance of initial ND symptoms and full ND syndrome among adolescent waterpipe (WP) and cigarette smokers. Methods: A 6-year long...

As natural disasters increase in frequency and severity (1,2), mounting evidence reveals that their human toll extends beyond death, injury, and loss. Posttraumatic stress (PTS) can be common among exposed individuals, and children are particularly vulnerable (3,4). Curiously, PTS can even be found among youth far removed from harm's way, and media...

Objective: Disrupted reward processing is implicated in the etiology of disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs) and callous-unemotional traits. However, neuroimaging investigations of reward processing underlying these phenotypes remain sparse. The authors examined neural sensitivity in response to reward anticipation and receipt among youths with DB...

Introduction Given the recent dramatic increase among adolescents in the use of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) or electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), there is a growing need to identify outcome expectancies that influence the initiation or continued use of e-cigarettes. While a self-report measure exists for assessing adolescent outc...

Background The cue-reactivity paradigm is a widely adopted neuroimaging probe assessing brain activity linked to attention, memory, emotion, and reward processing associated with the presentation of appetitive stimuli. Lacking, is the apperception of more precise brain regions, neurocircuits, and mental operations comprising cue-reactivity’s multi-...

Two often-studied forms of uncertain decision-making (DM) are risky-DM (outcome probabilities known) and ambiguous-DM (outcome probabilities unknown). While DM in general is associated with activation of several brain regions, previous neuroimaging efforts suggest a dissociation between activity linked with risky and ambiguous choices. However, the...

Cognitive deficits during nicotine withdrawal may contribute to smoking relapse. However, interacting effects of chronic nicotine dependence and acute nicotine withdrawal on cognitive control are poorly understood. Here we examine the effects of nicotine dependence (trait; smokers (n = 24) vs. non-smoking controls; n = 20) and acute nicotinic stimu...

Background Neurobiological differences linked to socioemotional and cognitive processing are well-documented in youth with disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs), especially youth with callous-unemotional (CU) traits. The current study expanded this literature by examining gray matter volume (GMV) differences among DBD youth with CU traits (DBDCU+),...

Two often-studied forms of uncertain decision-making (DM) are risky-DM (outcome probabilities known) and ambiguous-DM (outcome probabilities unknown). While DM in general is associated with activation of several brain regions, previous neuroimaging efforts suggest a dissociation between activity linked with risky and ambiguous choices. However, the...

Reward learning is a ubiquitous cognitive mechanism guiding adaptive choices and behaviors, and when impaired, can lead to considerable mental health consequences. Reward-related functional neuroimaging studies have begun to implicate networks of brain regions essential for processing various peripheral influences (e.g., risk, subjective preference...

Anxiety is known to dysregulate the salience, default mode, and central executive networks of the human brain, yet this phenomenon has not been fully explored across the STEM learning experience, where anxiety can impact negatively academic performance. Here, we evaluated anxiety and large-scale brain connectivity in 101 undergraduate physics stude...

Understanding how students learn is crucial for helping them succeed. We examined brain function in 107 undergraduate students during a task known to be challenging for many students—physics problem solving—to characterize the underlying neural mechanisms and determine how these support comprehension and proficiency. Further, we applied module anal...

Reward learning is a ubiquitous cognitive mechanism guiding adaptive choices and behaviors, and when impaired, can lead to considerable mental health consequences. Reward-related functional neuroimaging studies have begun to implicate networks of brain regions essential for processing various peripheral influences (e.g., risk, subjective preference...

Physics is a challenging academic pursuit in which university students regularly struggle to achieve success. Female students tend to perform negatively on introductory physics conceptual assessments compared to their male peers; however, active-learning classroom curricula are known to broadly improve performance on these tests. Here, we used fMRI...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

The habenula, an epithalamic nucleus involved in reward and aversive processing, may contribute to negative reinforcement mechanisms maintaining nicotine use. We used a performance feedback task that differentially activates the striatum and habenula and administered nicotine and varenicline (versus placebos) to overnight-abstinent smokers and nons...

A BSTRACT Cognitive deficits during nicotine withdrawal may contribute to smoking relapse. However, interacting effects of chronic nicotine dependence and acute nicotine withdrawal on cognitive control are poorly understood. Here, we examine the effects of nicotine dependence (trait; smokers versus non-smoking controls), and acute nicotinic stimula...

Although tobacco use disorder is linked with functional alterations in the striatum, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and insula, preclinical evidence also implicates the habenula as a contributor to negative reinforcement mechanisms maintaining nicotine use. The habenula is a small and understudied epithalamic nucleus involved in reward and aversi...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is an ongoing, nationwide study of the effects of environmental influences on behavioral and brain development in adolescents. The main objective of the study is to recruit and assess over eleven thousand 9-10-year-olds and follow them over the course of 10 years to characterize normative brai...

Learning a second language in childhood is inherently advantageous for communication. However, parents, educators and scientists have been interested in determining whether there are additional cognitive advantages. One of the most exciting yet controversial¹ findings about bilinguals is a reported advantage for executive function. That is, several...

Chronic pain states have resulted in an overreliance on opioid pain relievers, which can carry significant risks when used long term. As such, alternative pain treatments are increasingly desired. Although emerging research suggests that cannabinoids have therapeutic potential regarding pain, results from studies across pain populations have been i...

Neuroimaging research is growing rapidly, providing expansive resources for synthesizing data. However, navigating these dense resources is complicated by the volume of research articles and variety of experimental designs implemented across studies. The advent of machine learning algorithms and text-mining techniques has advanced automated labelin...

Understanding how students learn is crucial for helping them succeed. We examined brain function in 107 undergraduate students during a task known to be challenging for many students - physics problem solving - to characterize underlying neural mechanisms and determine how these support comprehension and proficiency. Further, we applied module anal...

Anxiety is known to dysregulate the salience, default mode, and central executive networks of the human brain, yet this phenomenon has not been fully explored across the STEM learning experience, where anxiety can impact negatively academic performance. Here, we evaluated anxiety and large-scale brain connectivity in 101 undergraduate physics stude...

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is an ongoing, nationwide study of the effects of environmental influences on behavioral and brain development in adolescents. The ABCD Study is a collaborative effort, including a Coordinating Center, 21 data acquisition sites across the United States, and a Data Analysis and Informatics Cent...

Modeling Instruction (MI) for University Physics is a curricular and pedagogical approach to active learning in introductory physics. A basic tenet of science is that it is a model-driven endeavor that involves building models, then validating, deploying, and ultimately revising them in an iterative fashion. MI was developed to provide students a f...

Cognitive processes do not occur by pure insertion and instead depend on the full complement of co-occurring mental processes, including perceptual and motor functions. As such, there is limited ecological validity to human neuroimaging experiments that use highly controlled tasks to isolate mental processes of interest. However, a growing literatu...

Naturalistic fMRI paradigms offer increased ecological validity over traditional paradigms, addressing the gap left by studying highly interactive cognitive processes as isolated neural phenomena. This study identifies the connectional architecture supporting dynamic cognition in naturalistic fMRI paradigms, the first meta-analysis of a wide range...