University of Groningen Insight in the brain Larabi, Daouia

University of Groningen

Insight in the brain

Larabi, Daouia

DOI:

10.33612/diss.118152005

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Publication date:

2020

Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database

Citation for published version (APA):

Larabi, D. (2020). Insight in the brain: a multimodal approach investigating insight in individuals with a

psychotic disorder and healthy individuals. University of Groningen.

https://doi.org/10.33612/diss.118152005

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Propositions belonging to the PhD thesis

INSIGHT IN THE BRAIN

A multimodal approach investigating insight in individuals

with a psychotic disorder and healthy individuals

By Daouia I. Larabi

1.

Impaired clinical insight is associated with spatially diffuse abnormalities across the brain in patients with a psychotic disorder, suggesting such insight requires a broad range of cognitive functions that necessitate global brain integration (Chapter 2).

2.

Lower concentrations of dorsolateral prefrontal N-acetylaspartate, and by inference lower dorsolateral prefrontal neuronal integrity, is related to lower scores on the clinical insight subdimension “awareness of illness” in patients with a psychotic disorder (Chapter 3).

3.

Patients with schizophrenia and a poorer ability to relabel symptoms engage different

neural pathways during the expressive suppression of negative emotions, which are implicated in cognitive-emotional control and visual processing of negative stimuli (Chapter 4).

4.

System-level abnormalities in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders appear to have meaning for specific symptomatology given that a lower ability to attribute symptoms to the illness (i.e. contributing to lower clinical insight) is related to higher betweenness centrality and decreased segregation of the gray matter connectome into separate subnetworks

(Chapter 5).

5.

In order to yield useful and meaningful information for clinical practice, studies investigating system-level graph metrics should also investigate finer graph levels, given that information at the macroscale level solely does not necessarily contribute to a better understanding of brain disorders.

6.

Functional and structural networks of individuals with lower cognitive insight, and more specifically lower trait self-reflectiveness, are less stable than those of individuals with good cognitive insight, with a key role for the Default Mode Network (Chapter 6).

7.

In order to gain a further understanding of complex mental processes such as insight, studies should move from focusing on one level of explanation to a less-simplified holistic approach integrating information from different levels of explanation so that brain structure, function and behavior can be related.

8.

A PhD-student in cognitive neuroscience should have a healthy balance between being open to new neuroimaging methodology, while also being skeptical.

9.

“If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t” (Emerson M. Pugh).

10.

“To ask the ‘right’ question is far more important than to receive the answer” (Jiddu Krishnamurti).