Three principles for the utility of simple tasks that assess elemental processes in parsing heterogeneity.

As clinical psychological science and biological psychiatry push to assess, model, and integrate heterogeneity and individual differences, approaches leveraging computational modeling, translational methods, and dimensional approaches to psychopathology are increasingly useful in establishing brain-behavior relationships. The field is ultimately interested in complex human behavior, and disruptions in such behaviors can arise through many different pathways, leading to heterogeneity in etiology for seemingly similar presentations. Parsing this complexity may be enhanced using "simple" tasks-which we define as those assaying elemental processes that are the building blocks to complexity.

Modeling Decision-Making in Schizophrenia: Associations Between Computationally Derived Risk Propensity and Self-Reported Risk Perception.

Background And Hypothesis: Schizophrenia is associated with a decreased pursuit of risky rewards during uncertain-risk decision-making. However, putative mechanisms subserving this disadvantageous risky reward pursuit, such as contributions of cognition and relevant traits, remain poorly understood.

Study Design: Participants (30 schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder [SZ]; 30 comparison participants [CP]) completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART).

Differential Risk: Gender and Racial Differences in the Relationship between Trauma, Discrimination, and Schizotypy.

Traumatic experiences are associated with increased experiences of positive schizotypy. This may be especially important for People of Color, who experience higher rates of trauma and racial discrimination. No study to date has examined how racial disparities in traumatic experiences may impact schizotypy.

Alterations in self-reported sensory gating and interoception in individuals frequently using cannabis.

Cannabis use is associated with altered processing of external (exteroceptive) and internal (interoceptive) sensory stimuli. However, little research exists on whether subjective experiences of these processes are altered in people who frequently use cannabis. Altered exteroception may influence externally oriented attention, whereas interoceptive differences have implications for intoxication, craving, and withdrawal states.

Measurement invariance of the Revised-Green Paranoid Thought Scale across Black and White Americans.

Given the culturally diverse landscape of mental healthcare and research, ensuring that our psychological constructs are measured equivalently across diverse populations is critical. One construct for which there is significant potential for inequitable assessment is paranoia, a prominent feature in psychotic disorders that can also be driven by culture and racial marginalization. This study examined measurement invariance-an analytic technique to rigorously investigate whether a given construct is being measured similarly across groups-of the Revised-Green Paranoid Thought Scale (R-GPTS; Freeman et al.

Neural evidence of switch processes during semantic and phonetic foraging in human memory.

Humans may retrieve words from memory by exploring and exploiting in "semantic space" similar to how nonhuman animals forage for resources in physical space. This has been studied using the verbal fluency test (VFT), in which participants generate words belonging to a semantic or phonetic category in a limited time. People produce bursts of related items during VFT, referred to as "clustering" and "switching.

Sex differences in neuroendocrine, sympathetic nervous system, and affect responses to acute stress in cannabis users.

Rationale: Cannabis is the most widely used illicit substance in the USA and is often reportedly used for stress reduction. Indeed, cannabinoids modulate signaling of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and sympathetic nervous system. However, the role of biological sex in this interaction between cannabis use and stress is poorly understood, despite sex differences in neurobiological stress responsivity, endocannabinoid signaling, and clinical correlates of cannabis use.

Alcohol consumption's effects on working memory: Examining familial confounding.

Objective: The purpose of our study was to provide a more rigorous test of the causal hypothesis that chronic alcohol use impairs working memory performance.

Method: We measured linear associations between a latent factor representing alcohol consumption and accuracy across four working memory tasks before and after accounting for familial confounding using a cotwin control design. Specifically, this study examined accuracy through a latent working memory score, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Toolbox List Sorting, NIH Toolbox Picture Sequence, Penn Word Memory, and 2-back tasks.

The D-amino acid oxidase inhibitor luvadaxistat improves mismatch negativity in patients with schizophrenia in a randomized trial.

Several attempts have been made to enhance N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor function in schizophrenia, but they have yielded mixed results. Luvadaxistat, a D-amino acid oxidase (DAAO) inhibitor that increases the glutamate co-agonist D-serine levels, is being developed for the treatment of cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia. We conducted a biomarker study in patients, assessing several endpoints related to physiological outcomes of NMDA receptor modulation to determine whether luvadaxistat affects neural circuitry biomarkers relevant to NMDA receptor function and schizophrenia.

Evidence of familial confounding of the association between cannabis use and cerebellar-cortical functional connectivity using a twin study.

Cerebellar-cortical resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) has been reported to be altered in cannabis users. However, this association may be due to genetic and environmental confounding rather than a causal relationship between cannabis use and changes in rsFC. In this co-twin control study, linear mixed models were used to assess relationships between the number of lifetime cannabis uses (NLCU) and age of cannabis onset (ACO) with cerebellar-cortical rsFC.

Cerebellar Structure and Function in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental condition characterized by early-onset repetitive behaviors, restricted interests, sensory and motor difficulties, and impaired social interactions. Converging evidence from neuroimaging, lesion and postmortem studies, and rodent models suggests cerebellar involvement in ASD and points to promising targets for therapeutic interventions for the disorder. This review elucidates understanding of cerebellar mechanisms in ASD by integrating and contextualizing recent structural and functional cerebellar research.

Temporal and Spectral Properties of the Auditory Mismatch Negativity and P3a Responses in Schizophrenia.

The mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related potential (ERP) indexes relatively automatic detection of changes in sensory stimuli and is typically attenuated in individuals with schizophrenia. However, contributions of different frequencies of electroencephalographic (EEG) activity to the MMN and the later P3a attentional orienting response in schizophrenia are poorly understood and were the focus of the present study. Participants with a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder ( = 85) and non-psychiatric control participants ( = 74) completed a passive auditory oddball task containing 10% 50 ms "deviant" tones and 90% 100 ms "standard" tones.

A review of risky decision-making in psychosis-spectrum disorders.

The investigation of risky decision-making has a prominent place in clinical science, with sundry behavioral tasks aimed at empirically quantifying the psychological construct of risk-taking. However, use of differing behavioral tasks has resulted in lack of agreement on risky decision-making within psychosis-spectrum disorders, as findings fail to converge upon the typical, binary conceptualization of increased risk-seeking or risk-aversion. The current review synthesizes the behavioral, risky decision-making literature to elucidate how specific task parameters may contribute to differences in task performance, and their associations with psychosis symptomatology and cognitive functioning.

Race and self-reported paranoia: Increased item endorsement on subscales of the SPQ.

There is a dearth of research examining how individual-level and systemic racism may lead to elevated diagnostic and symptom rates of paranoia in Black Americans. The present study employed item response theory methods to investigate item- and subscale-level functioning in the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ) in 388 Black and 450 White participants across the schizophrenia-spectrum (i.e.

Cerebellar Activation Deficits in Schizophrenia During an Eyeblink Conditioning Task.

The cognitive dysmetria theory of psychotic disorders posits that cerebellar circuit abnormalities give rise to difficulties coordinating motor and cognitive functions. However, brain activation during cerebellar-mediated tasks is understudied in schizophrenia. Accordingly, this study examined whether individuals with schizophrenia have diminished neural activation compared to controls in key regions of the delay eyeblink conditioning (dEBC) cerebellar circuit (eg, lobule VI) and cerebellar regions associated with cognition (eg, Crus I).

The Sensory Gating Inventory-Brief.

The Sensory Gating Inventory (SGI) is a 36-item measure used to assess an individual's subjective ability to modulate, filter, over-include, discriminate, attend to, and tolerate sensory stimuli. Due to its theoretical and empirical link with sensory processing deficits, this measure has been used extensively in studies of psychosis and other psychopathology. The current work fills a need within the field for a briefer measure of sensory gating aberrations that maintains the original measure's utility.

Decision Making and Impulsivity in Young Adult Cannabis Users.

Chronic cannabis users show impairments on laboratory measures of decision making which reflect risk factors for initiation and continued use of cannabis. However, the differential sensitivity of these tasks to cannabis use has not been established. Moreover, studies to date have often lacked assessment of psychiatric histories and use of other illicit substances, both of which may influence decision making outcomes.

Differential Cognitive Performance in Females and Males with Regular Cannabis Use.

Objectives: Preclinical and clinical studies suggest that males and females may be differentially affected by cannabis use. This study evaluated the interaction of cannabis use and biological sex on cognition, and the association between observed cognitive deficits and features of cannabis use.

Methods: Cognitive measures were assessed in those with regular, ongoing, cannabis use (N = 40; 22 female) and non-using peers (N = 40; 23 female).

Is a paired-stimuli configuration necessary to obtain typical evoked response differences in studies of psychosis? An MEG study.

Paired-stimuli (S1-S2) procedures have long been used to assess auditory processing in psychosis. Such studies have shown aberrant evoked responses (ERPs) following long (S1 response) and/or short (S2 response) inter-stimulus intervals. The historical tendency from paired stimuli outcomes in the schizophrenia (SZ) literature is for (i) response to the first stimulus (S1) to be smaller among SZ, and (ii) response to the second stimulus (S2) to be larger among SZ in relation to the size of their S1.

Altered cerebellar-cortical resting-state functional connectivity in cannabis users.

Background: Cannabis use has been associated with abnormalities in cerebellar mediated motor and non-motor (i.e. cognition and personality) phenomena.

Differential effects of two early life stress paradigms on cerebellar-dependent delay eyeblink conditioning.

Early life stress paradigms have become prominent in the animal literature to model atypical development. Currently, two models have prevailed within the literature: (1) limited bedding or nesting and (2) maternal separation or deprivation. Both models have produced aberrations spanning behavior and neural circuitry.

Does Chronic Cannabis Use Impact Risky Decision-Making: An Examination of fMRI Activation and Effective Connectivity?

With the increase in use of cannabis and its shifting legal status in the United States, cannabis use has become an important research focus. While studies of other drug populations have shown marked increases in risky decision-making, the literature on cannabis users is not as clear. The current study examined the performance of 17 cannabis users and 14 non-users on the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) using behavioral, fMRI and effective connectivity methods.

Investigating cerebellar neural function in schizophrenia using delay eyeblink conditioning: A pilot fMRI study.

There is accruing evidence of cerebellar abnormalities in individuals with schizophrenia as measured by performance on a variety of tasks believed to be dependent on cerebellar integrity, including delay eyeblink conditioning. There is also evidence of cerebellar dysfunction on a neural level in schizophrenia from both task-based and resting state neuroimaging studies, however few studies have examined cerebellar neural function while the cerebellum is directly recruited in individuals with schizophrenia. In the current pilot study, we examined neural activity during an explicitly cerebellar task in individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and non-psychiatric controls.