Laureate Institute for Brain Research - FEATURED PUBLICATIONS

Podcast: Vascular Injury Fuels Stimulant Addiction

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 20:36:11 GMT

Burrows et al. looked at people with stimulant use disorder (SUD), such as methamphetamine or amphetamine addiction, to better understand how drug use affects both the immune system and the brain. People with SUD showed higher levels of an inflammatory marker (sICAM-1), in their blood compared to those without SUD. Using brain scans (fMRI), researchers found that higher inflammation was linked to reduced activity in the brain’s reward center (nucleus accumbens) during anticipation of rewards and increased amygdala activity during attention to bodily sensations. These findings suggest that inflammation may contribute to altered reward and emotional processing in SUD. Targeting inflammatory pathways could represent a novel strategy for improving treatment outcomes.

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LEANDRA FIGUEROA-HALL,
Principal Investigator

Podcast: Float Therapy for Body Image and Anxiety in Anorexia Nervosa

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 20:12:42 GMT

In this article, Dr. Choquette and colleagues (Choquette et al., 2023) study a mind-body intervention called Floatation-REST (Reduced Environmental Stimulation Therapy via floatation), which involves floating in a quiet, dark pool filled with warm water highly concentrated with Epsom Salt. The goal is to reduce external stimuli (i.e., sound, light, etc.) and enhance one's attention to their internal body signals. In this study, women and adolescent girls were recruited from a residential eating disorder program and received either their usual treatment or usual treatment plus eight one-hour float sessions.

Two clinical features of anorexia nervosa are body image dissatisfaction and increased anxiety. The researchers found that after each float session, participants reported large and immediate reductions in anxiety and body dissatisfaction. These improvements did not occur in the group receiving usual care alone. Even more encouraging, six months later, the group who completed the float sessions continued to show lower body image dissatisfaction compared to the usual care group. Because body image dissatisfaction is linked to poorer long-term recovery, these findings suggest that Floatation-REST may be a promising tool for reducing anxiety and improving body image in people with anorexia nervosa.

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EMILY CHOQUETTE,
Associate Investigator

Podcast: Rewiring Depression With Real Time Neurofeedback

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 18:52:46 GMT

Why does neurofeedback training help some patients with depression but not others?
Research by Misaki et al. (2025) suggests that the answer lies not in the target region, the amygdala, but in whole-brain activity. The study shows that treatment success depends on specific neural strategies rather than localized activation alone, advancing our understanding of personalized psychiatric care.

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MASAYA MISAKI,
Associate Investigator

Podcast: How Opioids Break the Brain's Zoom Lens

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:12:21 GMT

Drugs are potent reinforcers biasing value-based decisions at the expense of non-drug rewards through poorly understood neurocomputational processes. Cross-species work suggests valuation is context-dependent, which may account for the over-selection of drug-related actions. In line with the theory of addiction as a form of maladaptive referent-dependent evaluation, we tested whether recent opioid exposure impacts range adaptation in OUD. Using a validated task probing contextual valuation, we extended previous work on healthy subjects to individuals who reported recent use (<90 days) or had abstained from opioid use (≥ 90 days) and comparison controls. Using computational modeling, we assessed whether participants made their decisions using a context-dependent valuation or assuming an objective value encoding. While most controls and ≥90-day abstinent OUD seemed to use contextual valuation, recent users were more prone to encode objective values. Interestingly, the degree of reliance on contextual valuation correlated with abstinence duration and subjective craving/withdrawal. Take-away: Reduced context adaptation to available rewards could explain difficulty deciding about smaller (typically non-drug) rewards in the aftermath of drug exposure.

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MAËLLE GUEGUEN,
Associate Investigator

Podcast: LIBR Helps Discover That Gentle Sound Waves Can “Tune” Depression Circuits in the Brain

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 20:14:56 GMT

Laureate Institute for Brain Research Discovers That Gentle Sound Waves Can “Tune” Depression Circuits in the BrainTULSA, OK (November 2025) — Researchers from the Laureate Institute for Brain Research (LIBR), led by Principal Investigator Salvador M. Guinjoan, M.D., Ph.D. have published a groundbreaking study showing that gentle sound waves can safely and temporarily shift brain activity tied to depression.
The research, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, used low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU) to reach a deep part of the brain called the anterior limb of the internal capsule — an area known to affect emotion and motivation.
After a brief ultrasound session, participants reported feeling more positive, while brain scans showed that key emotion-related regions were momentarily “disconnected,” suggesting that the ultrasound had successfully — and reversibly — quieted overactive communication between brain areas involved in depression.
“This is the first time we’ve demonstrated that focused ultrasound can precisely and reversibly modulate deep brain circuits related to depression,” said Dr. Guinjoan. “It’s an exciting step toward developing new treatments that don’t rely on medication or surgery.”
Dr. Guinjoan conducted this research in collaboration with leading scientists from other institutions, advancing LIBR’s mission to explore cutting-edge tools that illuminate the brain systems underlying mental health.
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SALVADOR GUINJOAN,
Principal Investigator

Podcast: P300 Amplitude Predicts Therapy Completion in Major Depression

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 19:03:08 GMT

This research paper from the Journal of Affective Disorders investigates the relationship between brain activity, measured by P300 amplitude during a reward-based task, and treatment outcomes for individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD). The study found that MDD patients showed smaller P300 amplitudes compared to healthy individuals, indicating reduced neural resource allocation to task stimuli. Furthermore, within the MDD group, individuals with larger P300 amplitudes at the start of treatment were more likely to complete therapy. These findings suggest that P300 amplitude could potentially serve as a predictive marker for treatment adherence in behavioral therapy for depression.

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ROBIN AUPPERLE,
Principal Investigator

Podcast: The Unique Face of Comorbid Anxiety and Depression: Increased Frontal, Insula and Cingulate Cortex Response During Pavlovian Fear-conditioning

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 15:21:52 GMT

This research paper investigated how the brains of individuals with both anxiety and depression (AnxMDD) respond differently to fear conditioning compared to those with only major depressive disorder (MDD). Using fMRI, the study found that the AnxMDD group showed greater activation in brain regions associated with fear processing, such as the frontal, insular, and cingulate cortices, when presented with stimuli paired with a threat. Conversely, the MDD group did not exhibit this heightened response to threat cues. These findings suggest that comorbid anxiety and depression is characterised by an exaggerated neural sensitivity to fear, highlighting potential distinct neurobiological underpinnings and treatment targets for this prevalent and often treatment-resistant condition.

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MARIA IRONSIDE,
Principal Investigator

Podcast: Reward Processing Predicts GAD Treatment Outcomes - A Clinical Trial

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 15:17:14 GMT

This research article explores whether brain activity related to reward and loss before treatment can predict how well adults with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) improve with either behavioral activation (BA) or exposure therapy (EXP). The study used fMRI to measure neural responses during a monetary incentive task and then randomized participants to ten sessions of BA or EXP. Findings suggest that specific pre-treatment brain activity patterns, particularly in regions like the left caudate and fronto-parietal regions of the cortex, were associated with different outcomes depending on the type of therapy received, highlighting the potential for neural predictors to inform GAD treatment approaches.

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HANNAH BERG,
Associate Investigator

Podcast: Neurofeedback Response Subtypes Predict Depression Treatment Outcomes

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 13:44:49 GMT

This research investigated the effectiveness of real-time fMRI neurofeedback (rtfMRI-NF) for treating major depressive disorder (MDD) by analyzing whole-brain activity patterns during training. The study identified distinct subtypes of brain activation during self-regulation and responses to feedback, which were significantly associated with symptom reduction. Notably, the clinical response was more related to these large-scale brain patterns than the activity within the targeted amygdala region. These findings suggest that successful neurofeedback therapy for MDD involves specific patterns of brain activity, including control regions and areas related to self-referential thinking. The research highlights the potential for tailoring neurofeedback training to these subtypes to enhance its therapeutic impact on depression.

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MASAYA MISAKI,
Associate Investigator

Podcast: BRAINIAC

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 13:34:47 GMT

The provided sources describe BRAINIAC, a novel Bayesian statistical model designed for neuroimaging research to analyze the complex relationships between whole-brain data (primarily resting-state fMRI) and cognitive or behavioral traits. This model addresses the challenges of replicating findings from smaller studies by simultaneously considering all brain features and assessing the contribution of predefined brain feature groupings called annotations. BRAINIAC estimates the total variance in a cognitive trait explained by brain data and identifies whether certain annotated feature groups are particularly enriched for these associations, as demonstrated in its application to the ABCD Study data for crystallized intelligence and psychopathology, with validation using the HCP-D dataset. The method aims to offer a more reliable and comprehensive understanding of brain-behavior links by moving beyond traditional single-feature or sparsity-assuming analyses.

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WESLEY THOMPSON,
Principal Investigator