Jessica R. Andrews-Hanna

Cortical gradients have been shown to be an effective technique to study the functional organization of the brain by capturing patterns of functional similarities. Until now, most studies have focused on analyzing cortical gradients derived from resting‐state fMRI. With recent work highlighting the changes that functional brain networks undergo during various cognitive loads, there is a need to investigate whether cortical gradients are also sensitive to different cognitive demands, and to what degree. In this context, we collected a sample of 138 healthy individuals aged 12–25, each of whom completed a resting‐state fMRI scan as well as three task fMRI scans (social prospection, spatial working memory, and verbal working memory). All data were analyzed to examine the task dependence of cortical gradients' topological properties. By employing the measures of network gradient dispersions as well as networks centroid distances, we revealed that alterations specific to each task occurred in topological properties of gradients involving both transmodal and unimodal networks, such as the executive control network varying between each task condition and the resting‐state condition. This work highlights the promise of applying cortical gradients to task‐based fMRI data, revealing the condition‐sensitive nature of certain cortical gradients' topological properties.

Maladaptive daydreaming is a form of maladaptive repetitive thought characterized by excessive, dysfunctional fantasy engagement, with notable links to psychological distress and poor well-being. Although symptoms can be reliably measured along a continuum, it remains unclear how they manifest in the phenomenological characteristics of everyday thinking, as well as which thought characteristics are unique to maladaptive daydreaming versus shared with trait rumination, a transdiagnostic manifestation of maladaptive repetitive thinking that frequently co-occurs with maladaptive daydreaming. To advance these questions, we conducted a pre-registered study using ecological momentary assessment to track the everyday thoughts of 446 young adults (aged 18 to 34) spanning a range of maladaptive daydreaming symptom severity as assessed with the 16-item Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale. Higher maladaptive daydreaming scores were associated with several poor mental health indicators, including higher trait rumination. Positive associations between maladaptive daydreaming scores and both negatively-valenced and task-unrelated thinking emerged, yet these relationships were accounted for by variance shared with rumination. Beyond rumination, higher maladaptive daydreaming scores were uniquely associated with worse mood, as well as greater internally-oriented attention, more socially-oriented thought, and greater overall thought persistence. Maladaptive daydreaming also uniquely moderated the relationship between internal orientation and social orientation, such that the positive association between internal and social thought content became stronger at higher levels of maladaptive daydreaming. Overall, these findings provide novel evidence that maladaptive daydreaming levels are linked to unique socioemotional features and restricted dynamics, beyond its overlap with general ruminative distress in everyday life. These insights suggest that clinical interventions should target immersive fantasy engagement alongside transdiagnostic maladaptive repetitive thinking.

Decades of research has established that how we think about our goals shapes psychological well-being and daily behavior, yet much of what we know derives from paradigms that deliberately prompt goal cognition. Across two studies (N = 173), we developed and applied a novel hierarchical coding scheme to Think-Aloud Protocol recordings to understand whether these same processes emerge spontaneously in the stream of consciousness, whether they carry meaningful consequences for real-world behavior, and how they change in older age. We quantified participants' spontaneous engagement in mental contrasting (MC), a self-regulatory strategy that links desired futures with present obstacles to facilitate solutions that promote effective goal pursuit, in the absence of instruction or prompting. In Study 1 (n = 77 young adults), higher depression and anxiety predicted less frequent spontaneous mental contrasting (MC3), while higher trait mindfulness predicted more frequent MC3 and less dwelling on obstacles. Study 2 (n = 95 younger and older adults) largely replicated and extended these findings, further revealing that despite a similar number of goal-related thoughts, older adults produced a higher proportion of MC3 thoughts relative to younger adults. Moreover, more frequent use of mental contrasting when spontaneously thinking about one’s goals predicted significantly greater goal progress and accomplishment over time, independent of age. These findings demonstrate that individuals spontaneously vary in the depth of goal-related elaboration during spontaneous thought, that these variations associate meaningfully with wellbeing and real-world goal success, and that spontaneous engagement in solution-focused goal elaboration seems to differ across the adult lifespan.

Empathy lies at the core of social interactions, particularly in intimate relationships, yet few laboratory tasks are designed to capture empathy in interpersonal contexts—especially those requiring individuals to simultaneously process social information directed toward both the self and a romantic partner. In this exploratory study, 131 adults (from 71 romantic couples) completed a neuroimaging paradigm that manipulated whether positive or negative partner-directed feedback was presented alone or alongside self-directed feedback. The partner-alone feedback contrasts (partner-directed feedback alone versus a neutral control condition) robustly engaged brain regions associated with empathic responding, including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction. Notably, during the incongruent feedback contrasts—simultaneous conflicting self- and partner-directed feedback versus self-directed feedback alone—participants exhibited diminished affective and brain responses but evidenced unique brain activity in frontoparietal areas frequently associated with cognitive control (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and supramarginal gyrus). Furthermore, when responding to positive partner-directed feedback in the presence of negative self-directed feedback, enhanced activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was associated with lower self-reported difficulties in emotion regulation and more partner-rated support provided in everyday life. Taken together, these findings suggest that salient self-focused information may dampen individuals’ emotional and neural responses to their partners’ uplifting and critical feedback, that emotion regulation tendencies may be an important between-subjects moderator of this effect, and that individual differences in spontaneous neural responses during this task were associated with meaningful real-world outcomes, although further validation and replication are warranted.

Empathy lies at the core of social interactions, particularly in intimate relationships, yet few laboratory tasks are designed to capture empathy in interpersonal contexts—especially those requiring individuals to simultaneously process social information directed toward both the self and a romantic partner. In this exploratory study, 131 adults (from 71 romantic couples) completed a neuroimaging paradigm that manipulated whether positive or negative partner-directed feedback was presented alone or alongside self-directed feedback. The partner-alone feedback contrasts (partner-directed feedback alone versus a neutral control condition) robustly engaged brain regions associated with empathic responding, including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction. Notably, during the incongruent feedback contrasts—simultaneous conflicting self- and partner-directed feedback versus self-directed feedback alone—participants exhibited diminished affective and brain responses but evidenced unique brain activity in frontoparietal areas frequently associated with cognitive control (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and supramarginal gyrus). Furthermore, when responding to positive partner-directed feedback in the presence of negative self-directed feedback, enhanced activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was associated with lower self-reported difficulties in emotion regulation and more partner-rated support provided in everyday life. Taken together, these findings suggest that salient self-focused information may dampen individuals’ emotional and neural responses to their partners’ uplifting and critical feedback, that emotion regulation tendencies may be an important between-subjects moderator of this effect, and that individual differences in spontaneous neural responses during this task were associated with meaningful real-world outcomes, although further validation and replication are warranted.

Human social interactions rely on the ability to reflect on one’s own and others’ internal states and traits—a process known as mentalizing. Impaired or altered mentalizing is a hallmark of multiple psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions. Yet, replicable and easily testable brain markers of mentalizing have so far been lacking. Here, we apply an interpretable machine learning approach to multiple datasets (total n = 390) to train and validate fMRI brain signatures that predict i) mentalizing about the self, ii) mentalizing about another person, and iii) both types of mentalizing. Self-mentalizing and other-mentalizing classifiers had positive weights in anterior/medial and posterior/lateral brain areas, respectively, with accuracy rates of 82% and 77% for out-of-sample prediction. The classifier trained across both types of mentalizing showed 98% predictive accuracy and separated (mental) attributional from factual inferences. Classifier patterns revealed better self/other separation in healthy adults compared to individuals with schizophrenia and with increasing age in adolescence. Together, our findings reveal consistent and separable neural patterns subserving trait-based mentalizing about self and others—present at least from the age of adolescence and functionally altered in severe neuropsychiatric disorders. These mentalizing signatures hold promise as candidate neuromarkers of social-cognitive processes in different contexts and clinical conditions.

Relative to younger adults, older adults describe autobiographical event memories using less episodic detail. This outcome, although robust and highly replicated, is based on studies conducted in laboratory contexts that use unfamiliar, impersonal structured interviews – a context that may place older adults at an episodic specificity disadvantage. The present preregistered study compared how young adults (N = 24) and cognitively normal older adults (N = 50) narrate autobiographical event memories in a laboratory context, and as they went about their daily lives, using a smartphone application that unobtrusively captured their natural conversations. Findings revealed a significant context by age group interaction for autobiographical memory episodic specificity. Consistent with prior research, older adults recalled less episodic detail than young adults in the laboratory context. However, older adults’ episodic detail was significantly higher in event memory narratives captured in their natural conversations relative to the memories they described in the laboratory-based structured interview. In fact, young and older adults did not significantly differ in how specifically they shared event memories in their natural conversations. We found a similar outcome when we zoomed out and examined overall autobiographical thought specificity in natural daily conversations. These findings, along with additional analyzes examining how well laboratory measures of autobiographical and neuropsychological functioning predict everyday autobiographical thinking, suggest that even though laboratory tasks may provide some insight into how autobiographical event memories and thoughts are shared in daily conversation, they nonetheless underestimate older adults’ natural episodic specificity.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) has emerged as a promising strategy for patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who do not fully respond to cognitive behavioral therapy. However, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the effects of MBCT remain unclear. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a critical tool for identifying brain activity changes associated with therapeutic interventions. We aimed to identify the neurobiological underpinnings of MBCT for clinically complex OCD by evaluating task-based fMRI during self-referential processing. Thirty-one patients with OCD (i.e., 15 randomized to a 3-month MBCT program and 16 to a treatment-as-usual group) underwent task-based fMRI scanning sessions focused on self-referential processing at baseline and after 3 months. During the fMRI sessions, participants completed a self-referential processing task, where they responded "yes" or "no" to whether an adjective described themselves. A flexible factorial model and within-group paired t-tests were used to evaluate the impact of the treatment group on longitudinal changes in brain activation. Our analyses revealed a group-by-time interaction in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity during self-referential processing. Patients with OCD treated with MBCT showed a reduction in dlPFC activation. This study highlights that MBCT reduced dlPFC recruitment during self-referential processing in patients with OCD, implying less reliance on executive control when patients adopt a decentred and observer perspective. This dlPFC down-shift, potentially reflecting functional decoupling from the default-mode network, offers a plausible neurobiological route through which MBCT mitigates obsessive-compulsive symptoms.