Who is honest and why: Baseline activation in anterior insula predicts inter-individual differences in deceptive behavior

Humans engage in deceptive behavior that negatively affects others. The propensity to deceive is, however, characterized by vast inter-individual heterogeneity that is poorly understood. Attempts to investigate the origins of this heterogeneity have so far mainly relied on subjective measures and have shown little predictive power. Here, we used resting electroencephalography to measure objective and stable individual differences in neural baseline activation in combination with an ecologically valid deception paradigm. Results showed that task-independent baseline activation in the anterior insula, a brain area implicated in mapping internal bodily states and in representing emotional arousal and conscious feelings, predicts individuals’ propensity for deceptive behavior. The higher the neural baseline activation in this area is, the lower individuals’ propensity to deceive. Moreover, results provide evidence that high baseline activation in the anterior insula is associated with negative affect and dispositional tendencies to avoid aversive emotional situations. These results provide converging neural and psychological evidence that individuals might avoid a deceptive act due to a highly active negative emotional system which would make a deceptive act too stressful and bothersome.     

Rare malignant anomalous right coronary artery incidentally detected by dual source computed tomography angiography in an adult referred for transcatheter aortic valve implantation

Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is a safe treatment option for elderly patients with aortic stenosis (AS) with high or intermediate surgical risk. The anomalous origin of coronaries from a single Valsalva sinus has a higher risk of coronary obstruction during the TAVI procedure, so prior knowledge of these anatomical variants is of paramount importance as it can change the surgical strategy. In this report, we present the case of an adult patient suffering from severe aortic stenosis and incidentally diagnosed with an anomalous malignant variant of right coronary artery (RCA) by pre-procedural Computed Tomography (CT) Angiography. In TAVI planning, the use of electrocardiography (ECG) gated Dual Source CT (DSCT) enables accurate coronary and aorto-iliac vascular study, useful for detecting congenital coronary anomalies.