Intracranial recordings of the human orbitofrontal cortical activity during self-referential episodic and valenced self-judgments

Poster Session B - Sunday, April 14, 2024, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Behzad Iravani^1,2,3 (biravani@stanford.edu), Neda Kaboodvand^1,3, James Stieger^1,2, Eugene Liang^1,2, Zoe Lusk^1,2, Peter Fransson³, Gayle Deutsch², Ian Gotlib⁴, Josef Parvizi^1,2; ¹Laboratory of Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, ²Departments of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA, ³Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, ⁴Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA.

Direct recordings were obtained from the orbital (oPFC) and ventromedial (vmPFC) regions of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in 22 epilepsy patients who were undergoing intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) during an experimental task. These patients participated in a task that evaluated the accuracy of self-referential autobiographical statements (self-episodic) and emotional self-judgment. During these processes, high-frequency activity (HFA) in both areas increased significantly, and the intensity of HFA varied depending on the nature of the statements that involved self-reference. Notably, the power of HFA increased more quickly in the vmPFC than in the oPFC. Among the 11 patients who underwent depression assessments, those with higher depression scores had lower HFA in the OFC when processing positive self-assessments. However, there was no correlation between HFA response and depression scores during negative self-assessments. These findings provide new insights into the timing and involvement of specific OFC subregions during tasks that involve personal memory and self-evaluation. Furthermore, this provides evidence for a hypothesis in depression pathology, suggesting that reduced neural responses to positive self-evaluation, as opposed to increased responses to negative self-judgment, may contribute to the condition's neural mechanisms.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Self perception