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Writer's pictureEdward Justin Modestino, Ph.D.
Aug 267 min read

August 2024: A Month in Review of Neuroscience News Articles Referring to Original Research


Over the last month, many online news articles have drawn our attention to neuroscience-related topics and research. If it exists, I prefer to refer to the original research to interpret such news articles' real significance and claims. The themes for this month appear to be mindfulness, developmental disorders (ADHD, ASD), and personality disorders.


Mindfulness/Buddhism

            The first news article linked masculinity and mindfulness to reduced distress from social and psychological adversities in gay men in China (Dolan, 2024a).  In reading the original study, they enrolled 210 gay men to participate via online questionnaires which included demographic variables (Li et al., 2024). The analysis revealed that mindfulness modulated the interaction between stress and masculinity, specifically with awareness mediating ‘mental distress’ (Li et al., 2024).  Perhaps practicing mindfulness can assist those who are oppressed to regulate their emotions more successfully.  Following along with this theme, a news article related that neuroscience is catching up with Buddhist philosophy in realizing there is no constant self (Staff, 2024).  This news article provides links to various other news articles of this discovery.  After trudging through layers, this writer was finally able to get to the original study which is behind a paywall in Trends in Cognitive Sciences for an issue in 2015.  Although the title of the article included reconstructing and deconstructing the self in relation to meditation, nothing is mentioned in the highlight (in lieu of an abstract) about this topic (Dahl et al., 2015).  Thus, this appears to have been a wild goose chase from the news article. 

 

  ADHD

            This month in ADHD-related research, the first news story to catch my eye was a news article suggesting unique brain signatures as endophenotypes for ADHD and autism (Dolan, 2024b).  Referring to the original meta-analysis abstract, they pooled data across 243 studies, 3,084 participants with ADHD, and 2,654 with ASD, revealed increased brain activation in the rectal (frontal lobe) and lingual (occipital lobe) gyri and lower brain activation in the insula, parahippocampal and frontal gyri (Tamon et al., 2024).  For ASD, there was greater activation in left middle temporal gyrus, and decreased activation in the left middle frontal gyrus (Tamon et al., 2024).  For ADHD, the was greater activation in the amydala (no mention if left or right or bilateral) and decreased activation in the globus pallidus (Tamon et al., 2024).  What is most concerning to this neuroscientist with a background in neuroimaging was that there was no mention of this being task-related, state-related (e.g., default mode network), etc., as this could not be accessed as it was behind another paywall.  It would nice if just a little more details could have been given in the abstract. 

            The next ADHD-related news article explained how medications to treat ADHD, specifically stimulants, normalized the brain structure in children (Dolan, 2024c).  Referring to the original cross-sectional study, a mixed-effects analysis including stimulant use as a regressor with MRI data from a database was performed across 273 children ages 9-11 with ADHD versus a control group of 5,378 neurotypical controls (Wu et al., 2024).  Those with ADHD who had never taken stimulants had significant brain regional differences not seen in the controls or those who had been treated with stimulants (Wu et al., 2024).  These differences included lower cortical thickness in the right insula region and left nucleus accumbens volume (Wu et al., 2024).  So, it appears that treating ADHD can normalize brain structures over the course of development.  This suggests that treatment for ADHD could be a benefit to those with developing brains.  Thus, avoiding medication might not be a good idea for those with diagnosed ADHD. 

 

 

Personality disorders

            Bridging across the divide from ADHD is an article suggesting comorbidity. The final news article related to ADHD suggested that narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) was prevalent in ADHD, specifically related to the hyperactive/impulsive symptoms (Dolan, 2024d).  The original study examined what they termed pathological narcissism (with or without NPD) and NPD in 164 adults with ADHD diagnoses (Duarte et al., 2024). The results revealed that a significant number of those with ADHD had ADHD associated with the hyperactive/impulsive symptom cluster (Duarte et al., 2024). What is important to note is that this clinic from where the population was drawn specializes in NPD and BPD.  It could be that this sample is not representative of the larger adult ADHD population, but only those with severe comorbidities that would bring them to such a clinic.  In fact, the authors mention ‘selection bias’ might be an important factor (Duarte et al., 2024).  Most certainly, we know there are many adults with ADHD without personality disorders.  We have seen this in our own research in our lab examining RSD in ADHD which cannot be attributed to a personality disorder. 

            Continuing with personality disorders, another news article related that exhibiting politically offensive products was associated with an increase in a measure of psychopathy (Dolan, 2024e). I know that notable psychopathy, as measured on a psychopathic deviant scale, is nearly synonymous with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD).  Delving into the original research, I discovered that this consisted of two separate studies (Mackin & Roese, 2024).  The first study consisted of a cohort of 299 paid participants in the US with 48% Republicans and 45% Democrats asking them how likely they would be to have provocative bumper stickers from a selection in combination of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen scale.  This scale measures psychopathy and Machiavellianism, both of which were higher in those who preferred provocative political statements on bumper stickers (Mackin & Roese, 2024).  The second study was planned as an expanded replication which included 200 participants (50% each of Democrats and Republicans) with a selection of various politically charged products with statements and improved measures of psychopathy and Machiavellianism with similar results to the first study (Mackin & Roese, 2024). None of the results were presented with reference to political affiliation and provocativeness, which made measuring such a demographic pointless.  Does this mean that those at either left or right extremes both did this? I do not feel comfortable making such an assumption, however. It would be nice if this was addressed.

            The final new article about personality disorders suggested that ‘brain connectivity patterns’ were correlated with BPD (Dolan, 2024f). The original study used rs-fcMRI data from different connectome databases and included nearly 1,100 adolescents and adults ranging in age from 16-37 years of age (Shafiei et al., 2024).  A BPD score was derived from a measure of the Big Five personality dimensions and a regression model and permutation testing to see if functional connectivity across regions varied with BPD (Shafiei et al., 2024).  The results revealed functional connectivity differences in brain regions associated with executive functioning, which includes areas associated with emotional regulation and the ‘ventral attention network’(Shafiei et al., 2024).  What is unclear to this reader (a neuroscientist with a neuroimaging background including rs-fcMRI studies) is if the functional connectivity was less across these areas for those with greater scores indicative of BPD.  Again, this would be an assumption that is not clearly and directly stated even after reading the entire paper.  Directly stating this would be helpful to avoid making assumptions.  This is a serious concern for this neuroscientist. 


Abbreviations in this blog:

ADHD: Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

ASD: Autism Spectrum Disorder

ASPD: antisocial personality disorder

BPD: borderline personality disorder

NPD: narcissistic personality disorder

RSD: Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (a manifestation of ADHD)

rs-fcMRI: resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging 

 


References

 

  • Dahl, C. J., Lutz, A., & Davidson, R. J. (2015). Reconstructing and deconstructing the self: Cognitive mechanisms in meditation practice. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19(9), 515–523. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.07.001

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Duarte, M., Blay, M., Hasler, R., Pham, E., Nicastro, R., Jan, M., Debbané, M., & Perroud, N. (2024). Adult ADHD and pathological narcissism: A retrospective-analysis. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 174, 245–253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2024.04.032

     

  • Li, H., Yang, Y., Li, Y., & Zeng, Y. (2024). How does masculinity play a protective role

    for gay men? the mediation effect of mindfulness between gender role and mental distress.  International Journal of Sexual Health, 36(3), 317–328. https://doi.org/10.1080/19317611.2024.2360739

 

  

 

  • Shafiei, G., Keller, A. S., Bertolero, M., Shanmugan, S., Bassett, D. S., Chen, A. A., Covitz, S., Houghton, A., Luo, A., Mehta, K., Salo, T., Shinohara, R. T., Fair, D., Hallquist, M. N., & Satterthwaite, T. D. (2024). Generalizable links between borderline personality traits and functional connectivity. Biological Psychiatry, 96(6), 486–494. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2024.02.1016

 

  • Tamon, H., Fujino, J., Itahashi, T., Frahm, L., Parlatini, V., Aoki, Y. Y., Castellanos, F. X., Eickhoff, S. B., & Cortese, S. (2024). Shared and specific neural correlates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder: A meta-analysis of 243 task-based functional MRI studies. American Journal of Psychiatry, 181(6), 541–552. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.20230270

 

  • Wu, F., Zhang, W., Ji, W., Zhang, Y., Jiang, F., Li, G., Hu, Y., Wei, X., Wang, H., Wang, S.-Y., Manza, P., Tomasi, D., Volkow, N. D., Gao, X., Wang, G.-J., & Zhang, Y. (2024). Stimulant medications in children with ADHD normalize the structure of brain regions associated with attention and reward. Neuropsychopharmacology, 49(8), 1330–1340. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-024-01831-4

 

 

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