Psychotic Misdiagnosis of Racially Minoritized Patients: A Case-Based Ethics, Equity, and Educational Exploration.

The overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis of racially minoritized groups as having a primary psychotic disorder is one of psychiatry's longest-standing inequities born of real-time clinician racial bias. Evidence suggests that providers assign a diagnosis of schizophrenia and/or schizoaffective disorder according to race more than any other demographic variable, and this inequity persists even in the absence of differences in clinician symptom ratings. This case report describes the journey of one young Black woman through her racialized misdiagnosis of schizophrenia and the process by which interdisciplinary, health equity-minded providers across the spectrum of medical education and practice joined together to provide a culturally informed, systematic rediagnosis of major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Multimodal and Site-Specific Plasticity of Amygdala Parvalbumin Interneurons after Fear Learning.

Stimulus processing in fear conditioning is constrained by parvalbumin interneurons (PV-INs) through inhibition of principal excitatory neurons. However, the contributions of PV-IN microcircuits to input gating and long-term plasticity in the fear system remain unknown. Here we interrogate synaptic connections between afferent pathways, PV-INs, and principal excitatory neurons in the basolateral amygdala.

Mice lacking TrkB in parvalbumin-positive cells exhibit sexually dimorphic behavioral phenotypes.

Activity-dependent brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) signaling through receptor tyrosine kinase B (TrkB) is required for cued fear memory consolidation and extinction. Although BDNF is primarily secreted from glutamatergic neurons, TrkB is expressed by other genetically defined cells whose contributions to the behavioral effects of BDNF remain poorly understood. Parvalbumin (PV)-positive interneurons, which are highly enriched in TrkB, are emerging as key regulators of fear memory expression.