Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging
November 2024
Background: Neurocognitive impairment is a well-known phenomenon in schizophrenia that begins prior to psychosis onset. Connectome-wide association studies have inconsistently linked cognitive performance to resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. We hypothesized that a carefully selected cognitive instrument and refined population would allow identification of reliable brain-behavior associations with connectome-wide association studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDecades of psychosis research highlight the prevalence and the clinical significance of negative emotions, such as fear and anxiety. Translational evidence demonstrates the pivotal role of the amygdala in fear and anxiety. However, most of these approaches have used hypothesis-driven analyses with predefined regions of interest.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Hypothesis: Disturbances in effort-cost decision-making have been highlighted as a potential transdiagnostic process underpinning negative symptoms in individuals with schizophrenia. However, recent studies using computational phenotyping show that individuals employ a range of strategies to allocate effort, and use of different strategies is associated with unique clinical and cognitive characteristics. Building on prior work in schizophrenia, this study evaluated whether effort allocation strategies differed in individuals with distinct psychotic disorders.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Psychomotor disturbances are observed across psychiatric disorders and often manifest as psychomotor slowing, agitation, disorganized behavior, or catatonia. Psychomotor function includes both cognitive and motor components, but the neural circuits driving these subprocesses and how they relate to symptoms have remained elusive for centuries.
Methods: We analyzed data from the HCP-EP (Human Connectome Project for Early Psychosis), a multisite study of 125 participants with early psychosis and 58 healthy participants with resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and clinical characterization.
This article describes the rationale, aims, and methodology of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership® Schizophrenia (AMP® SCZ). This is the largest international collaboration to date that will develop algorithms to predict trajectories and outcomes of individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis and to advance the development and use of novel pharmacological interventions for CHR individuals. We present a description of the participating research networks and the data processing analysis and coordination center, their processes for data harmonization across 43 sites from 13 participating countries (recruitment across North America, Australia, Europe, Asia, and South America), data flow and quality assessment processes, data analyses, and the transfer of data to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Data Archive (NDA) for use by the research community.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBipolar Disord
May 2024
Background: Abnormalities in dopamine and norepinephrine signaling are implicated in cognitive impairments in bipolar disorder (BD) and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This systematic review by the ISBD Targeting Cognition Task Force therefore aimed to investigate the possible benefits on cognition and/or ADHD symptoms and safety of established and off-label ADHD therapies in BD.
Methods: We included studies of ADHD medications in BD patients, which involved cognitive and/or safety measures.
Background: Cognitive deficits are a core feature of schizophrenia and are closely associated with poor functional outcomes. It remains unclear if cognitive deficits progress over time or remain stable. Determining patients at increased risk of progressive worsening might help targeted neurocognitive remediation approaches.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeuropsychopharmacology
February 2024
The choroid plexus (ChP) is part of the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier, regulating brain homeostasis and the brain's response to peripheral events. Its upregulation and enlargement are considered essential in psychosis. However, the timing of the ChP enlargement has not been established.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBipolar Disord
September 2022
Background: Developing treatments for cognitive impairment is key to improving the functioning of people with mood disorders. Neuroimaging may assist in identifying brain-based efficacy markers. This systematic review and position paper by the International Society for Bipolar Disorders Targeting Cognition Task Force examines the evidence from neuroimaging studies of pro-cognitive interventions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn people with schizophrenia and related disorders, impairments in communication and social functioning can negatively impact social interactions and quality of life. In the present study, we investigated the cognitive basis of a specific aspect of linguistic communication-lexical alignment-in people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. We probed lexical alignment as participants played a collaborative picture-naming game with the experimenter, in which the two players alternated between naming a dual-name picture (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBipolar Disord
June 2022
Background: Cognitive impairments are an emerging treatment target in mood disorders, but currently there are no evidence-based pro-cognitive treatments indicated for patients in remission. With this systematic review of randomised controlled trials (RCTs), the International Society for Bipolar Disorders (ISBD) Targeting Cognition Task force provides an update of the most promising treatments and methodological recommendations.
Methods: The review included RCTs of candidate pro-cognitive interventions in fully or partially remitted patients with major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder.
Brain morphology differs markedly between individuals with schizophrenia, but the cellular and genetic basis of this heterogeneity is poorly understood. Here, we sought to determine whether cortical thickness (CTh) heterogeneity in schizophrenia relates to interregional variation in distinct neural cell types, as inferred from established gene expression data and person-specific genomic variation. This study comprised 1849 participants in total, including a discovery (140 cases and 1267 controls) and a validation cohort (335 cases and 185 controls).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMotivational and perceptual disturbances co-occur in psychosis and have been linked to aberrations in reward learning and sensory gating, respectively. Although traditionally studied independently, when viewed through a predictive coding framework, these processes can both be linked to dysfunction in striatal dopaminergic prediction error signaling. This study examined whether reward learning and sensory gating are correlated in individuals with psychotic disorders, and whether nicotine-a psychostimulant that amplifies phasic striatal dopamine firing-is a common modulator of these two processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychiatric diagnosis is often treated as a stable construct both clinically and in research; however, some evidence suggests that diagnostic change may be common, which may impact research validity and clinical care. In the present study we examined diagnostic stability in individuals with psychosis over time. Participants with a diagnosis of any psychotic disorder ( = 142) were assessed at two timepoints using the Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe early stage of psychosis (ESP) is a critical period where effective intervention has the most favorable impact on outcomes. Thalamic connectivity abnormalities have been consistently found in psychosis, and are associated with clinical symptoms and cognitive deficits. However, most studies consider ESP patients as a homogeneous population and fail to take the duration of illness into account.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Reduced mismatch negativity (MMN) is observed in early psychosis (EP) and correlated with cognition and functioning, but few studies have examined their longitudinal relationships and diagnostic specificity. We examined MMN, neuro- and social-cognition, and functional measures in EP patients with schizophrenia-spectrum (SZ) or bipolar disorder (BD) over a 1-year follow-up.
Methods: 54 EP patients (SZ: n = 24; BD: n = 30) and 42 healthy controls completed baseline measures: MMN, neuro- and social-cognition, and functional assessments.
Psychotic disorders are characterized by impairment in social cognitive processing, which is associated with poorer community functioning. However, the neural mechanisms of social impairment in psychosis remain unclear. Social impairment is a hallmark of other psychiatric illnesses as well, including autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and the nature and degree of social cognitive impairments across psychotic disorders and ASD are similar, suggesting that mechanisms that are known to underpin social impairments in ASD may also play a role in the impairments seen in psychosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecent theoretical models propose that abnormal effort-cost decision-making (ECDM) likely has divergent underpinnings across mood and psychotic disorders. However, whether this same model applies to individuals across the psychosis spectrum, including individuals with affective psychosis, remains unclear. This study aimed to empirically test whether two component processes - working memory and reward learning - contribute to ECDM impairment across the psychosis spectrum.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhite matter (WM) abnormalities are commonly reported in schizophrenia but whether these arise from the axon or myelin compartments or both is not known. In addition, the relationship between WM abnormalities and cognitive function is not fully explored in this condition. We recruited 39 individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and 37 healthy comparison subjects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEarly Interv Psychiatry
April 2021
Aim: Cognitive remediation is an evidence-based intervention targeting the common and disabling cognitive deficits in people with psychosis. Findings from efficacy studies and meta-analyses show that cognitive remediation produces medium to large effects on cognition in both chronic and first episode patients. However, clinical availability of this treatment remains scarce, reflecting a major gap between science and practice.
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