Publications by authors named "Katy Venable"

Article Synopsis
  • Depression and anxiety are significant public health challenges, especially in rural areas where access to effective treatments is limited.
  • Blueberries, rich in polyphenols and anthocyanins, show promise as a nutraceutical for improving mood and cognitive function, with studies indicating they can alleviate symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
  • While the exact biochemical mechanisms behind these benefits are not fully understood, they may involve changes in the gut-brain axis, highlighting the potential of blueberries as an alternative therapy for mental health conditions.
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Identifying neurobiological mechanisms of aging-related parkinsonism, and lifestyle interventions that mitigate them, remain critical knowledge gaps. No aging study, from rodent to human, has reported loss of any dopamine (DA) signaling marker near the magnitude associated with onset of parkinsonian signs in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, in substantia nigra (SN), similar loss of DA signaling markers in PD or aging coincide with parkinsonian signs.

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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with cognitive deficits, oxidative stress, and inflammation. Animal models have recapitulated features of PTSD, but no comparative RNA sequencing analysis of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the brain between PTSD and animal models of traumatic stress has been carried out. We compared DEGs from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of an established stress model to DEGs from the dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) of humans.

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The escalating increase in retirees living beyond their eighth decade brings increased prevalence of aging-related impairments, including locomotor impairment (Parkinsonism) that may affect ~50% of those reaching age 80, but has no confirmed neurobiological mechanism. Lifestyle strategies that attenuate motor decline, and its allied mechanisms, must be identified. Aging studies report little to moderate loss of striatal dopamine (DA) or tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) in nigrostriatal terminals, in contrast to ~70%-80% loss associated with bradykinesia onset in Parkinson's disease.

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