ArticleHeliyon2018
Yearning predicts subgenual anterior cingulate activity in bereaved individuals.
Article in Heliyon, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The neurobiological reward system in Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD): A systematic review.Psychiatry research. Neuroimaging · 2020Pooled it
- Dwelling in prolonged grief: Resting state functional connectivity during oxytocin and placebo administration.Human brain mapping · 2023Trial
- Prolonged grief disorder in later life: advancing our understanding of biopsychosocial mechanisms to guide future personalized interventions.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Amygdala-Centered Emotional Processing in Prolonged Grief Disorder: Relationship With Clinical Symptomatology.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2025Article
- When perception meets grief: how the brain reconstructs person networks in response to absence.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- The nature of grief: implications for the neurobiology of emotion.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2024Article
- Romantic relationship dissolutions are significantly associated with posttraumatic stress symptoms as compared to a DSM-5 Criterion A event: a case-case-control comparison.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2023Article
- Ventral striatal subregional dysfunction in late-life grief: Relationships with yearning and depressive symptoms.Journal of psychiatric research · 2022Article
- Emerging experience with selected new categories in the ICD-11: complex PTSD, prolonged grief disorder, gaming disorder, and compulsive sexual behaviour disorder.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2022Article
- Why do mothers never stop grieving for their deceased children? Enduring alterations of brain connectivity and function.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Emotion regulation in prolonged grief disorder in later life: Protocol and rationale for a longitudinal neuroimaging study.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Complicated grief, or persistent complex bereavement disorder, is a condition that affects approximately 10% of bereaved individuals and is marked by intense longing and yearning for the deceased. Little is known about the neurocognitive mechanisms contributing to this syndrome, but previous research suggests that reward pathways in the brain may play a role. Twenty-five older adults were categorized based on grief severity into one of three groups: complicated grief (CG), non-complicated grief (NCG) and non-bereaved married controls (NB). Neural activation was examined using fMRI while participants viewed a countdown on the screen (anticipation) followed by a photo of their (living or deceased) spouse. There was no significantly differential activation between the three groups for the spouse v. stranger photo contrast, nor for anticipation period v. spouse photo. Post-hoc analyses were conducted using self-reported yearning scores as a regressor across all bereaved participants, which revealed that greater symptoms of yearning predicted greater activation in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC). Given the small sample size, the results should be considered preliminary and in need of replication, but may suggest a more nuanced, transdiagnostic role of the sgACC. This region of the brain has been previously linked to depression and suggests that symptoms of yearning may present an opportune place to intervene to improve outcomes in CG.
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Registered trials
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