Dorsal Raphe Nucleus Down-Regulates Medial Prefrontal Cortex during Experience of Flow.

ABSTRACT: Previous neuroimaging studies have suggested that the experience of flow aligns with a relative increase in activation of the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN), and relative activation decreases of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and of the amygdala (AMY). In the present study, Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) was used to explore effective connectivity between those brain regions. To test our hypothesis that the DRN causally down-regulates activity of the MPFC and/or of the AMY, 23 healthy male students solved mental arithmetic tasks of varying difficulty during functional magnetic resonance imaging. A "flow" condition, with task demands automatically balanced with participants' skill level, was compared with conditions of "boredom" and "overload". DCM models were constructed modeling full recip

SUBMITTER: Ulrich M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5011146 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature