Veronica Mäki-Marttunen

University of Oslo · Department of Psychology

Schizophrenia is a complex psychiatric condition in which cortical, subcortical and neuromodulatory alterations have been implicated in its symptom expression. Long standing views of schizophrenia symptoms have posed that alterations in catecholaminergic systems, which explain psychotic symptoms, may be also associated with the cognitive impairment...

Neuromodulatory nuclei that are part of the ascending arousal system (AAS) play a crucial role in regulating cortical state and optimizing task performance. Pupil diameter, under constant luminance conditions, is increasingly used as an index of activity of these AAS nuclei. Indeed, task-based functional imaging studies in humans have begun to prov...

Neuromodulatory nuclei that are part of the ascending arousal system (AAS) play a crucial role in regulating cortical state and optimizing task performance. Pupil diameter, under constant luminance conditions, is increasingly used as an index of activity of these AAS nuclei. Indeed, task-based functional imaging studies in humans have begun to prov...

Neuromodulatory nuclei that are part of the ascending arousal system (AAS) play a crucial role in regulating cortical state and optimizing task performance. Pupil diameter, under constant luminance conditions, is increasingly used as an index of activity of these AAS nuclei. Indeed, task-based functional imaging studies in humans have begun to prov...

Neuromodulatory nuclei that are part of the ascending arousal system (AAS) play a crucial role in regulating cortical state and optimizing task performance. Pupil diameter, under constant luminance conditions, is increasingly used as an index of activity of these AAS nuclei. Indeed, task-based functional imaging studies in humans have begun to prov...

Growing research has focused on how mesoscopic activity in the brain develops over time and space. Recent influential studies using functional imaging have characterized brain dynamics in terms of the spread of activation across the brain following a unimodal to transmodal axis. In parallel, a number of studies have assessed changes of brain connec...

Dendrites of cortical pyramidal cells are densely populated by hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels, a.k.a. I h channels. I h channels are targeted by multiple neuromodulatory pathways, and thus are one of the key ion-channel populations regulating the pyramidal cell activity. Previous observations and theories attribu...

Arousal is a potent mechanism that provides the brain with functional flexibility and adaptability to external conditions. Within the wake state, arousal levels driven by activity in the neuromodulatory systems are related to specific signatures of neural activation and brain synchrony. However, direct evidence is still lacking on the varying effec...

Functional neuroimaging of small brainstem structures in humans is gaining interest due to their potential importance in aging and many clinical conditions. Researchers have used different methods to measure activity in the locus coeruleus (LC), the main noradrenergic nucleus in the brain. However, the extent to which these different LC localizatio...

Several lines of evidence have suggested for decades a role for norepinephrine (NE) in the pathophysiology and treatment of schizophrenia. Recent experimental findings reveal anatomical and physiological properties of the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system and its involvement in brain function and cognition. Here, we integrate these two...

Several lines of evidence suggest a role for norepinephrine (NE) in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, and in pharmacological interventions. In the present paper, we review recent findings about the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system and its involvement in brain function and cognition to give a more integrated account of the possible...

When engaged in dynamic visuospatial tasks, the brain copes with perceptual and cognitive processing challenges. During multiple-object tracking (MOT), the number of objects to be tracked (i.e., load) imposes attentional demands, but so does spatial interference from irrelevant objects (i.e., close encounters). Presently, it is not clear whether th...

Cognitive control enables optimal biasing of attention, perception, and actions in the service of mental or be-havioral goals. To understand the variability of applied cognitive control, we need to unravel the relation between two underlying mechanisms: proactive and reactive modes. During proactive cognitive control, goal-relevant information is s...

Cognitive control is a highly dynamic process that relies on flexible engagement of prefrontal areas and neuromodulatory systems to adapt to changing demands. A range of internal and external factors come into play when individuals engage in a task requiring cognitive control. Here we investigated whether increased working memory (WM) demands woul...

When solving dynamic visuo-spatial tasks, the brain copes with perceptual and cognitive processing challenges. In the multiple-object tracking (MOT) task, the number of objects to be tracked (i.e. load) imposes attentional demands, but so does spatial interference from irrelevant objects (i.e. crowding). Presently, it is not clear whether load and...

During the execution of a cognitive task, the brain maintains contextual information to guide behavior and achieve desired goals. The AX-Continuous Performance Task is used to study proactive versus reactive cognitive control. Young adults tend to behave proactively in standard testing conditions. However, it remains unclear how interindividual var...

Injury to the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a frequent consequence of head injury and may lead to dysfunctional regulation of emotional and social behavior. Dysfunctional emotional behavior may partly be related to the role of the OFC in emotion-attention interaction, as previously reported. In order to better understand its role in emotion-attenti...

Disorders of consciousness (DOC) are related to an altered capacity of the brain to successfully integrate and segregate information. Alterations in. brain functional networks structure have been found in. fMRI studies, which could account for the incapability of the brain to efficiently manage internally and externally generated information. Here...

Mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) may be associated with compromised executive functioning and altered emotional reactivity. Despite frequent affective and cognitive symptoms in MTBI, objective evidence for brain dysfunction is often lacking. Previously we have reported compromised performance in symptomatic MTBI patients in an Executive-Reaction...

Praxis functions are predominantly processed by the left hemisphere. However, limb apraxia is found in less than 50% of patients with left hemisphere damage, and also, although infrequently, in patients with right hemisphere damage. We studied brain representation of preparation/planning of tool-use pantomime separating the gestures involving mostl...

The aim of this study was to investigate whether emotion-attention interaction depends on attentional engagement. To investigate emotional modulation of attention network activation, we used a functional MRI paradigm consisting of a visuospatial attention task with either frequent (high-engagement) or infrequent (low-engagement) targets and intermi...

Severe traumatic brain injury can lead to disorders of consciousness (DOC) characterized by deficit in conscious awareness and cognitive impairment including coma, vegetative state, minimally consciousness, and lock-in syndrome. Of crucial importance is to find objective markers that can account for the large-scale disturbances of brain function to...