Early mobilisation in critically ill COVID-19 patients: a subanalysis of the ESICM-initiated UNITE-COVID observational study.

Background: Early mobilisation (EM) is an intervention that may improve the outcome of critically ill patients. There is limited data on EM in COVID-19 patients and its use during the first pandemic wave.

Methods: This is a pre-planned subanalysis of the ESICM UNITE-COVID, an international multicenter observational study involving critically ill COVID-19 patients in the ICU between February 15th and May 15th, 2020.

Sex-dependent differences in connectivity patterns are related to episodic memory recall.

Previous studies have shown that females typically outperform males on episodic memory tasks. In this study, we investigated if (1) there are differences between males and females in their connectome characteristics, (2) if these connectivity patterns are associated with memory performance, and (3) if these brain connectome characteristics contribute to the differences in episodic memory performance between sexes. In a sample of 655 healthy young subjects (n = 391 females; n = 264 males), we derived brain network characteristics from diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) data using models of crossing fibers within each voxel of the brain and probabilistic tractography (graph strength, shortest path length, global efficiency, and weighted transitivity).

Mobilisation practices during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: A retrospective analysis (MobiCOVID).

Background: Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients display risk factors for intensive care unit acquired weakness (ICUAW). The pandemic increased existing barriers to mobilisation. This study aimed to compare mobilisation practices in COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients.

Human cerebellum and corticocerebellar connections involved in emotional memory enhancement.

Emotional information is better remembered than neutral information. Extensive evidence indicates that the amygdala and its interactions with other cerebral regions play an important role in the memory-enhancing effect of emotional arousal. While the cerebellum has been found to be involved in fear conditioning, its role in emotional enhancement of episodic memory is less clear.

Visual Exploration at Higher Fixation Frequency Increases Subsequent Memory Recall.

Only a small proportion of what we see can later be recalled. Up to date it is unknown how far differences in visual exploration during encoding affect the strength of episodic memories. Here, we identified individual gaze characteristics by analyzing eye tracking data in a picture encoding task performed by 967 healthy subjects during fMRI.

Recognition memory performance can be estimated based on brain activation networks.

Background: Recognition memory is an essential ability for functioning in everyday life. Establishing robust brain networks linked to recognition memory performance can help to understand the neural basis of recognition memory itself and the interindividual differences in recognition memory performance.

Methods: We analysed behavioural and whole-brain fMRI data from 1'410 healthy young adults during the testing phase of a picture-recognition task.

Reducing Amygdala Activity and Phobic Fear through Cognitive Top-Down Regulation.

The amygdala is critically involved in emotional processing, including fear responses, and shows hyperactivity in anxiety disorders. Previous research in healthy participants has indicated that amygdala activity is down-regulated by cognitively demanding tasks that engage the PFC. It is unknown, however, if such an acute down-regulation of amygdala activity might correlate with reduced fear in anxious participants.

Integrated genetic, epigenetic, and gene set enrichment analyses identify NOTCH as a potential mediator for PTSD risk after trauma: Results from two independent African cohorts.

The risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) increases with the number of traumatic event types experienced (trauma load) in interaction with other psychobiological risk factors. The NOTCH (neurogenic locus notch homolog proteins) signaling pathway, consisting of four different trans-membrane receptor proteins (NOTCH1-4), constitutes an evolutionarily well-conserved intercellular communication pathway (involved, e.g.

Identification of Two Distinct Working Memory-Related Brain Networks in Healthy Young Adults.

Working memory (WM) is an important cognitive domain for everyday life functioning and is often disturbed in neuropsychiatric disorders. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies in humans show that distributed brain areas typically described as fronto-parietal regions are implicated in WM tasks. Based on data from a large sample of healthy young adults ( = 1369), we applied independent component analysis (ICA) to the WM-fMRI signal and identified two distinct networks that were relevant for differences in individual WM task performance.

Genetic estimators of DNA methylation provide insights into the molecular basis of polygenic traits.

The large biological distance between genetic risk loci and their mechanistic consequences in the tissue of interest limits the ability to establish functionality of susceptibility variants for genetically complex traits. Such a biological gap may be reduced through the systematic study of molecular mediators of genomic action, such as epigenetic modification. Here, we report the identification of robust genetic estimators of whole-blood CpG methylation, which can serve as intermediate molecular traits amenable to association testing with other genetically complex traits.

Exhaustive search for epistatic effects on the human methylome.

Studies assessing the existence and magnitude of epistatic effects on complex human traits provide inconclusive results. The study of such effects is complicated by considerable increase in computational burden, model complexity, and model uncertainty, which in concert decrease model stability. An additional source introducing significant uncertainty with regard to the detection of robust epistasis is the biological distance between the genetic variation and the trait under study.

Picture free recall performance linked to the brain's structural connectome.

Introduction: Memory functions are highly variable between healthy humans. The neural correlates of this variability remain largely unknown.

Methods: Here, we investigated how differences in free recall performance are associated with DTI-based properties of the brain's structural connectome and with grey matter volumes in 664 healthy young individuals tested in the same MR scanner.

Genome-Wide Temporal Expression Profiling in Identifies a Core Gene Set Related to Long-Term Memory.

The identification of genes related to encoding, storage, and retrieval of memories is a major interest in neuroscience. In the current study, we analyzed the temporal gene expression changes in a neuronal mRNA pool during an olfactory long-term associative memory (LTAM) in hermaphrodites. Here, we identified a core set of 712 (538 upregulated and 174 downregulated) genes that follows three distinct temporal peaks demonstrating multiple gene regulation waves in LTAM.

The NCAM1 gene set is linked to depressive symptoms and their brain structural correlates in healthy individuals.

Depressive symptoms exist on a continuum, the far end of which is found in depressive disorders. Utilizing the continuous spectrum of depressive symptoms may therefore contribute to the understanding of the biological underpinnings of depression. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) is an important tool for the identification of gene groups linked to complex traits, and was applied in the present study on genome-wide association study (GWAS) data of depression scores and their brain-level structural correlates in healthy young individuals.

Common epigenetic variation in a European population of mentally healthy young adults.

DNA methylation represents an important link between structural genetic variation and complex phenotypes. The study of genome-wide CpG methylation and its relation to traits relevant to psychiatry has become increasingly important. Here, we analyzed quality metrics of 394,043 CpG sites in two samples of 568 and 319 mentally healthy young adults.

Genetic Analysis of Association Between Calcium Signaling and Hippocampal Activation, Memory Performance in the Young and Old, and Risk for Sporadic Alzheimer Disease.

Importance: Human episodic memory performance is linked to the function of specific brain regions, including the hippocampus; declines as a result of increasing age; and is markedly disturbed in Alzheimer disease (AD), an age-associated neurodegenerative disorder that primarily affects the hippocampus. Exploring the molecular underpinnings of human episodic memory is key to the understanding of hippocampus-dependent cognitive physiology and pathophysiology.

Objective: To determine whether biologically defined groups of genes are enriched in episodic memory performance across age, memory encoding-related brain activity, and AD.

Computational dissection of human episodic memory reveals mental process-specific genetic profiles.

Episodic memory performance is the result of distinct mental processes, such as learning, memory maintenance, and emotional modulation of memory strength. Such processes can be effectively dissociated using computational models. Here we performed gene set enrichment analyses of model parameters estimated from the episodic memory performance of 1,765 healthy young adults.

Continuous theta burst stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex decreases medium load working memory performance in healthy humans.

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) plays a key role in working memory. Evidence indicates that transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the DLPFC can interfere with working memory performance. Here we investigated for how long continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) over the DLPFC decreases working memory performance and whether the effect of cTBS on performance depends on working memory load.