Remote measurement based care (RMBC) interventions for mental health-Protocol of a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Poor management of mental illnesses is associated with lower treatment adherence, chronification, avoidable re-hospitalisations, and high costs. Remote measurement based care (RMBC) interventions have gained increasing relevance due to its potential in providing a comprehensive and patient-centric approach to mental health management.

Objectives: The systematic review and meta-analysis aims to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of existing evidence on the use of RMBC for patients with mental illness and to examine the effectiveness of RMBC interventions in alleviating disorder-specific symptoms, reducing relapse and improving recovery-oriented outcomes, global functioning, and quality of life.

A survey of stapling methods to increase affinity, activity, and stability of ghrelin analogues.

The growth hormone secretagogue receptor (GHSR) is a G protein-coupled receptor which regulates various important physiological and pathophysiological processes in the body such as energy homeostasis, growth hormone secretion and regulation of appetite. As a result, it has been postulated as a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of cancer cachexia and other metabolic disorders, as well as a potential imaging agent target for cancers and cardiovascular diseases. Ghrelin is the primary high affinity endogenous ligand for GHSR and has limited secondary structure in solution, which makes it proteolytically unstable.

A digital patient-reported outcome (electronic patient-reported outcome) system for patients with severe psychiatric disorders: User-centered development study and study protocol of a multicenter-controlled trial.

Background: The effective treatment of patients with severe psychiatric disorders primarily relies on subjective reporting of symptoms and side-effects. This information is crucial for a clinician's decision regarding medication adjustment. Treatment adjustment usually happens at a low frequency (∼4-8 weeks).

Digital Health Applications in the Area of Mental Health.

Background: The introduction of digital health applications (DiGA) is a fundamental innovation in Germany. In the field of mental health, numerous applications are already available whose efficacy has been tested in clinical trials. We investigated whether, and to what extent, the use of DiGA can be recommended on the basis of the available evidence.

Belief Updating in Subclinical and Clinical Delusions.

Background And Hypothesis: Current frameworks propose that delusions result from aberrant belief updating due to altered prediction error (PE) signaling and misestimation of environmental volatility. We aimed to investigate whether behavioral and neural signatures of belief updating are specifically related to the presence of delusions or generally associated with manifest schizophrenia.

Methods: Our cross-sectional design includes human participants ([female/male] = 66[25/41]), stratified into four groups: healthy participants with minimal ( = 22) or strong delusional-like ideation ( = 18), and participants with diagnosed schizophrenia with minimal ( = 13) or strong delusions ( = 13), resulting in a 2 × 2 design, which allows to test for the effects of delusion and diagnosis.

Racism and psychosis: an umbrella review and qualitative analysis of the mental health consequences of racism.

Black people and People of Color are disproportionately affected by racism and show increased rates of psychosis. To examine whether racialized migrant groups are particularly exposed to racism and therefore have higher risks for psychosis, this paper (1) systematically assesses rates of psychosis among racialized migrant groups concerning the country of origin, and (2) analyzes interviews regarding the association of racism experiences with psychosis-related symptoms in racialized Black people and People of Color populations in Germany. We present an umbrella review of meta-analyses that report the incidence of positive symptoms (e.

Nucleus basalis of Meynert predicts cognition after deep brain stimulation in Parkinson's disease.

Introduction: Subthalamic DBS in Parkinson's disease has been associated with cognitive decline in few cases. Volume reduction of the nucleus basalis of Meynert (NBM) seems to precede cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease. In this retrospective study, we evaluated NBM volume as a predictor of cognitive outcome 1 year after subthalamic DBS.

Neuromelanin-Sensitive Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Schizophrenia: A Meta-Analysis of Case-Control Studies.

Psychiatry is in urgent need of reliable biomarkers. Novel neuromelanin-sensitive magnetic resonance imaging (NM-MRI) sequences provide a time-efficient and non-invasive way to investigate the human brain . This gives insight into the metabolites of dopaminergic signaling and may provide further evidence for potential dopaminergic alterations in patients with schizophrenia (SCZ).

Traumatic Events, Social Adversity and Discrimination as Risk Factors for Psychosis - An Umbrella Review.

Exposure to childhood trauma is a well-known risk factor for severe mental disorders including schizophrenia and other non-affective psychoses. Beyond childhood trauma, there is increasing evidence that bullying, social exclusion, and discrimination during adolescence and adulthood may increase the risk of developing a psychotic disorder, and that such forms of traumatization may also underlie the elevated psychosis risk among migrants or persons with a visible minority status. In this umbrella review, we systematically assess meta-analyses regarding trauma and social adversity.

An active role of inferior frontal cortex in conscious experience.

In the search for the neural correlates of consciousness, it has remained controversial whether prefrontal cortex determines what is consciously experienced or, alternatively, serves only complementary functions, such as introspection or action. Here, we provide converging evidence from computational modeling and two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments that indicated a key role of inferior frontal cortex in detecting perceptual conflicts caused by ambiguous sensory information. Crucially, the detection of perceptual conflicts by prefrontal cortex turned out to be critical in the process of transforming ambiguous sensory information into unambiguous conscious experiences: in a third experiment, disruption of neural activity in inferior frontal cortex through transcranial magnetic stimulation slowed down the updating of conscious experience that occurs in response to perceptual conflicts.

Are psychotic-like experiences related to a discontinuation of cannabis consumption in young adults?

Objective: To assess changes in cannabis use in young adults as a function of psychotic-like experiences.

Method: Participants were initially recruited at age 14 in high schools for the longitudinal IMAGEN study. All measures presented here were assessed at follow-ups at age 19 and at age 22, respectively.

Glutamate in the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Patients With Schizophrenia: A Meta-analysis of H-Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Studies.

Background: To date, there is no systematic overview of glutamate in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of patients with schizophrenia. Here, we meta-analyzed case-control studies of high-field proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (H-MRS) investigating glutamate in DLPFC. Additionally, we estimated variance ratios to investigate homo/heterogeneity.

The IMAGEN study: a decade of imaging genetics in adolescents.

Imaging genetics offers the possibility of detecting associations between genotype and brain structure as well as function, with effect sizes potentially exceeding correlations between genotype and behavior. However, study results are often limited due to small sample sizes and methodological differences, thus reducing the reliability of findings. The IMAGEN cohort with 2000 young adolescents assessed from the age of 14 onwards tries to eliminate some of these limitations by offering a longitudinal approach and sufficient sample size for analyzing gene-environment interactions on brain structure and function.

Striatal Dopamine and Reward Prediction Error Signaling in Unmedicated Schizophrenia Patients.

Increased striatal dopamine synthesis capacity has consistently been reported in patients with schizophrenia. However, the mechanism translating this into behavior and symptoms remains unclear. It has been proposed that heightened striatal dopamine may blunt dopaminergic reward prediction error signaling during reinforcement learning.

Volatility Estimates Increase Choice Switching and Relate to Prefrontal Activity in Schizophrenia.

Background: Reward-based decision making is impaired in patients with schizophrenia (PSZ), as reflected by increased choice switching. The underlying cognitive and motivational processes as well as associated neural signatures remain unknown. Reinforcement learning and hierarchical Bayesian learning account for choice switching in different ways.

[Computational psychiatry : Data-driven vs. mechanistic approaches].

The emerging research field of so-called computational psychiatry attempts to contribute to an understanding of complex psychiatric phenomena by applying computational methods and to promote the translation of neuroscientific research results into clinical practice. This article presents this field of research using selected examples based on the distinction between data-driven and theory-driven approaches. Exemplary for a data-driven approach are studies to predict clinical outcome, for example, in persons with a high-risk state for psychosis or on the response to pharmacological treatment for depression.

Association of Cortical Glutamate and Working Memory Activation in Patients With Schizophrenia: A Multimodal Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study.

Background: Cognitive deficits such as working memory (WM) impairment are core features of schizophrenia. One candidate marker for the integrity of synaptic neurotransmission necessary for cognitive processes is glutamate. It is frequently postulated that antipsychotic medication possibly alters functional mechanisms in the living brain.

Reduced parietofrontal effective connectivity during a working-memory task in people with high delusional ideation.

Background: Working-memory impairment is a core cognitive dysfunction in people with schizophrenia and people at mental high risk. Recent imaging studies on working memory have suggested that abnormalities in prefrontal activation and in connectivity between the frontal and parietal regions could be neural underpinnings of the different stages of psychosis. However, it remains to be explored whether comparable alterations are present in people with subclinical levels of psychosis, as experienced by a small proportion of the general population who neither seek help nor show constraints in daily functioning.

Epigenetic variance in dopamine D2 receptor: a marker of IQ malleability?

Genetic and environmental factors both contribute to cognitive test performance. A substantial increase in average intelligence test results in the second half of the previous century within one generation is unlikely to be explained by genetic changes. One possible explanation for the strong malleability of cognitive performance measure is that environmental factors modify gene expression via epigenetic mechanisms.

Genome-wide association meta-analysis in 269,867 individuals identifies new genetic and functional links to intelligence.

Intelligence is highly heritable and a major determinant of human health and well-being. Recent genome-wide meta-analyses have identified 24 genomic loci linked to variation in intelligence, but much about its genetic underpinnings remains to be discovered. Here, we present a large-scale genetic association study of intelligence (n = 269,867), identifying 205 associated genomic loci (190 new) and 1,016 genes (939 new) via positional mapping, expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) mapping, chromatin interaction mapping, and gene-based association analysis.