Poster No:
1074
Submission Type:
Late-Breaking Abstract Submission
Authors:
Leah Hudson1, Christopher Davey1, Trevor Steward1, Po-Han Kung1, Yingliang Dai1, Lee Unsworth1, Alec Jamieson1, Bradford Moffat1, Rebecca Glarin1, Ben Harrison1
Institutions:
1University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria
First Author:
Leah Hudson
University of Melbourne
Melbourne, Victoria
Co-Author(s):
Po-Han Kung
University of Melbourne
Melbourne, Victoria
Introduction:
The habenula (Hb) is a highly conserved epithalamic region that is integrated within dopaminergic and serotonergic circuits (Proulx, 2014). It has a key hypothesised role in the encoding of negative reward prediction error (RPE) and has been shown in animal studies to be bidirectionally modulated by aversive vs appetitive stimuli: the former increasing and the latter decreasing its activity (Groos, 2024). Despite growing interest in understanding Hb function in humans, there have been few direct neuroimaging studies that have addressed the 'bidirectional modulation' hypothesis.
Methods:
Sixty-six healthy volunteers (mean age ± standard deviation = 29.4 ± 9.1; 37 females) were scanned using a Siemens 7-Tesla research scanner. Participants completed two tasks that were purposefully designed to model Hb responses to both negative and positive feedback: a deterministic reward-punishment reversal learning (RL) task and a dynamically adaptive motion prediction (DAMP) task. We used conventional fMRI general linear models to first assess whether both tasks evoked common activation (PFDR <0.05) of the habenula when directly comparing negative and positive feedback conditions. We then used a validated Hb anatomical parcellation (Pauli, 2018) to confirm the specific nature of Hb activity changes in response to the feedback types as compared to non-task (i.e., resting) baseline.
Results:
For both tasks, we observed robust activation of the Hb and extended regions (including the ventral tegmental area, dorsal raphe nucleus, anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex) when comparing the negative vs positive feedback conditions. Our post-hoc 'region of interest' analyses indicated that these differential effects for both tasks were driven by greater Hb responses to the negative feedback condition. The Hb was also positively modulated during positive feedback.
Conclusions:
Contrary to prevailing evidence from animal studies, we observed unidirectional responses of the Hb to both negative and positive feedback, both in the context of expected and unexpected feedback conditions. Consistent with these models, the Hb was more prominently engaged during negative feedback. How these dynamics influence the Hb's broader circuity function will be important to clarify in ongoing work.
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Reward and Punishment
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Activation (eg. BOLD task-fMRI) 1
Neuroanatomy, Physiology, Metabolism and Neurotransmission:
Subcortical Structures 2
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
BOLD fMRI
Keywords:
Data analysis
Experimental Design
HIGH FIELD MR
NORMAL HUMAN
Sub-Cortical
Other - Habenula; Reward
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Please indicate below if your study was a "resting state" or "task-activation” study.
Task-activation
Healthy subjects only or patients (note that patient studies may also involve healthy subjects):
Healthy subjects
Was this research conducted in the United States?
No
Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel?
NOTE: Any human subjects studies without IRB approval will be automatically rejected.
Yes
Were any animal research approved by the relevant IACUC or other animal research panel?
NOTE: Any animal studies without IACUC approval will be automatically rejected.
Not applicable
Please indicate which methods were used in your research:
Functional MRI
Behavior
For human MRI, what field strength scanner do you use?
7T
Which processing packages did you use for your study?
SPM
Provide references using APA citation style.
Groos, D. (2024). The lateral habenula: A hub for value-guided behavior. Cell Reports, 43(4), 113968. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2024.113968
Pauli, W. M. (2018). A high-resolution probabilistic in vivo atlas of human subcortical brain nuclei. Scientific Data, 5(1), 180063. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2018.63
Proulx, C. D. (2014). Reward processing by the lateral habenula in normal and depressive behaviors. Nature Neuroscience, 17(9), 1146-1152. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3779
No