Brain network dysfunction is emerging as a central biomarker of interest in psychiatry, in large part, because psychiatric conditions are increasingly seen as disconnection syndromes. Understanding dysfunctional brain network profiles in task-active states provides important information on network engagement in an experimental context. This in turn may be predictive of many of the cognitive and behavioral deficits associated with complex behavioral phenotypes. Here we investigated brain network profiles in youth with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), contrasting them with a group of age-comparable controls. Network interactions were assessed during simple working memory: in particular, we focused on the modulation by the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) of cortical, striatal, and thalamic regions. The focus on the dACC was motivated by its hypothesized role in the pathophysiology of OCD. However, its task-active network signatures have not been investigated before. Network interactions were modeled using psychophysiological interaction, a simple directional model of seed to target brain interactions. Our results indicate that OCD is characterized by significantly increased dACC modulation of cortical, striatal, and thalamic targets during working memory, and that this aberrant increase in OCD patients is maintained regardless of working memory demand. The results constitute compelling evidence of dysfunctional brain network interactions in OCD and suggest that these interactions may be related to a combination of network inefficiencies and dACC hyper-activity that has been associated with the phenotype.

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From the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the metaverse emerged as a new platform where people interact and communicate. Of many changes this technology introduced, people active in the virtual world do not have many opportunities to run into neighbors in need as it has before the pandemic. So this research set out to investigate what factors are associated with people’s willingness to give to charity amidst the pandemic. More importantly, the group difference between metaverse users and non-users was analyzed and compared. The result shows that personal attributes like extroversion, compassion, resilience, and even academic achievement were positively correlated with people’s willingness to give to charity. In the group comparison, metaverse users were more likely to give charity to people in need as opposed to non-users. The users were more likely to have received help from others, thus more willing to give back to those who needed help.

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