Pregnancy renders anatomical changes in hypothalamic substructures of the human brain that relate to aspects of maternal behavior.

Animal studies have shown that pregnancy is associated with neural adaptations that promote maternal care. The hypothalamus represents a central structure of the mammalian maternal brain and hormonal priming of specific hypothalamic nuclei plays a key role in the induction and expression of maternal behavior. In humans, we have previously demonstrated that becoming a mother involves changes in grey matter anatomy, primarily in association areas of the cerebral cortex.

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).

Theory of mind during pregnancy and postpartum: A systematic review.

Pregnancy is associated with prominent structural changes in brain areas involved in Theory of Mind (ToM), pointing to the possibility of modifications in ToM-related behavior and brain responses in parents. We performed a systematic review screening for studies that examined ToM in pregnant and/or early postpartum parents. The evaluation of the included 12 studies allowed us to construct an overview of ToM changes during pregnancy and postpartum as well as other associated factors, such as oxytocin, mental health, and parental behavior.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sex-dependent dissociation between emotional appraisal and memory: a large-scale behavioral and fMRI study.

Extensive evidence indicates that women outperform men in episodic memory tasks. Furthermore, women are known to evaluate emotional stimuli as more arousing than men. Because emotional arousal typically increases episodic memory formation, the females' memory advantage might be more pronounced for emotionally arousing information than for neutral information.

Motor threshold predicts working memory performance in healthy humans.

Cognitive functions, such as working memory, depend on neuronal excitability in a distributed network of cortical regions. It is not known, however, if interindividual differences in cortical excitability are related to differences in working memory performance. In the present transcranial magnetic stimulation study, which included 188 healthy young subjects, we show that participants with lower resting motor threshold, which is related to higher corticospinal excitability, had increased 2-back working memory performance.

Dynamic modulation of amygdala-hippocampal connectivity by emotional arousal.

Positive and negative emotional events are better remembered than neutral events. Studies in animals suggest that this phenomenon depends on the influence of the amygdala upon the hippocampus. In humans, however, it is largely unknown how these two brain structures functionally interact and whether these interactions are similar between positive and negative information.

Epigenetic modification of the glucocorticoid receptor gene is linked to traumatic memory and post-traumatic stress disorder risk in genocide survivors.

Recent evidence suggests that altered expression and epigenetic modification of the glucocorticoid receptor gene (NR3C1) are related to the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The underlying mechanisms, however, remain unknown. Because glucocorticoid receptor signaling is known to regulate emotional memory processes, particularly in men, epigenetic modifications of NR3C1 might affect the strength of traumatic memories.

Converging genetic and functional brain imaging evidence links neuronal excitability to working memory, psychiatric disease, and brain activity.

Working memory, the capacity of actively maintaining task-relevant information during a cognitive task, is a heritable trait. Working memory deficits are characteristic for many psychiatric disorders. We performed genome-wide gene set enrichment analyses in multiple independent data sets of young and aged cognitively healthy subjects (n = 2,824) and in a large schizophrenia case-control sample (n = 32,143).

Human genome-guided identification of memory-modulating drugs.

In the last decade there has been an exponential increase in knowledge about the genetic basis of complex human traits, including neuropsychiatric disorders. It is not clear, however, to what extent this knowledge can be used as a starting point for drug identification, one of the central hopes of the human genome project. The aim of the present study was to identify memory-modulating compounds through the use of human genetic information.

PKCα is genetically linked to memory capacity in healthy subjects and to risk for posttraumatic stress disorder in genocide survivors.

Strong memory of a traumatic event is thought to contribute to the development and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Therefore, a genetic predisposition to build strong memories could lead to increased risk for PTSD after a traumatic event. Here we show that genetic variability of the gene encoding PKCα (PRKCA) was associated with memory capacity--including aversive memory--in nontraumatized subjects of European descent.

Testosterone levels in healthy men are related to amygdala reactivity and memory performance.

Testosterone is a steroid hormone thought to influence both emotional and cognitive functions. It is unknown, however, if testosterone also affects the interaction between these two domains, such as the emotional arousal-induced enhancement of memory. Healthy subjects (N=234) encoded pictures taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and underwent a free recall test 10 min after memory encoding.

Temporal changes in magnetic resonance imaging characteristics of Gliadel wafers and of the adjacent brain parenchyma.

Carmustine is used in the treatment of glioblastomas as locally applied chemotherapy in the form of biodegradable wafers, which are lined on the walls of the resection cavity at the end of the resection, to increase local concentrations and decrease systemic toxicity. A total of 44 patients with glioblastoma with gross macroscopic tumor removal were included. MRIs were performed at various times postoperatively (within 24 hours, 1 week, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 1 year).

Statistical epistasis and functional brain imaging support a role of voltage-gated potassium channels in human memory.

Despite the current progress in high-throughput, dense genome scans, a major portion of complex traits' heritability still remains unexplained, a phenomenon commonly termed "missing heritability." The negligence of analytical approaches accounting for gene-gene interaction effects, such as statistical epistasis, is probably central to this phenomenon. Here we performed a comprehensive two-way SNP interaction analysis of human episodic memory, which is a heritable complex trait, and focused on 120 genes known to show differential, memory-related expression patterns in rat hippocampus.

CPEB3 is associated with human episodic memory.

Cytoplasmic polyadenylation element-binding (CPEB) proteins are crucial for synaptic plasticity and memory in model organisms. A highly conserved, mammalian-specific short intronic sequence within CPEB3 has been identified as a ribozyme with self-cleavage properties. In humans, the ribozyme sequence is polymorphic and harbors a single nucleotide polymorphism that influences cleavage activity of the ribozyme.