Psilocybin: From Psychiatric Pariah to Perceived Panacea.

Objective: The authors critically examine the evidence base for psilocybin administered with psychological support/therapy (PST) in the treatment of psychiatric disorders and offer practical recommendations to guide future research endeavors.

Methods: PubMed was searched for English-language articles from January 1998 to November 2023, using the search term "psilocybin." A total of 1,449 articles were identified and screened through titles and abstracts.

Lifespan Normative Models of White Matter Fractional Anisotropy: Applications to Early Psychosis.

This study presents large-scale normative models of white matter (WM) organization across the lifespan, using diffusion MRI data from over 25,000 healthy individuals aged 0-100 years. These models capture lifespan trajectories and inter-individual variation in fractional anisotropy (FA), a marker of white matter integrity. By addressing non-Gaussian data distributions, race, and site effects, the models offer reference baselines across diverse ages, ethnicities, and scanning conditions.

Novel Pharmacologic and Other Somatic Treatment Approaches for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Adults: State of the Evidence.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a highly prevalent psychiatric disorder that can become chronic and debilitating when left untreated. The most commonly recommended first-line treatments for PTSD among adults are individual trauma-focused psychotherapies. Other evidence-based treatments include specific antidepressant medications and non-trauma-focused psychotherapies.

A longitudinal study of hippocampal subfield volumes and hippocampal glutamate levels in antipsychotic-naïve first episode psychosis patients.

Background: Previous studies have implicated hippocampal abnormalities in the neuropathology of psychosis spectrum disorders. Reduced hippocampal volume has been reported across all illness stages, and this atrophy has been hypothesized to be the result of glutamatergic excess. To test this hypothesis, we measured hippocampal subfield volumes and hippocampal glutamate levels in antipsychotic naïve first episode psychosis patients (FEP) and the progression of volume decline and changes in glutamate levels over a 16-week antipsychotic drug (APD) trial.

Dissecting Heterogeneity in Functional Network Connectivity Aberrations in Antipsychotic Medication-Naïve First Episode Psychosis Patients - A Normative Modeling Study.

Importance: While there is a general consensus that functional connectome pathology is a key mechanism underlying psychosis spectrum disorders, the literature is plagued with inconsistencies and translation into clinical practice is non-existent. This is perhaps because group-level findings may not be accurate reflections of pathology at the individual patient level.

Objective: To characterize inter-individual heterogeneity in functional networks and investigate if normative values can be leveraged to identify biologically less heterogeneous subgroups of patients.

Post-Roe v Wade psychiatry: legal, clinical, and ethical challenges in psychiatry under abortion bans.

In recent history, the world has witnessed a trend towards liberalization of abortion laws driven by an increasing understanding of the negative personal and public health consequences of criminalizing abortion. By contrast, several countries have recently implemented restrictive reproductive laws, joining the 112 countries where access to abortion care is banned completely or with narrow exceptions. On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned its landmark decisions in Roe v Wade that established abortion until the point of viability of the fetus as a constitutional right.

Topological Perturbations in the Functional Connectome Support the Deficit/Non-deficit Distinction in Antipsychotic Medication-Naïve First Episode Psychosis Patients.

Background: Heterogeneity in the etiology, pathophysiology, and clinical features of schizophrenia challenges clinicians and researchers. A helpful approach could be stratifying patients according to the presence or absence of clinical features of the deficit syndrome (DS). DS is characterized by enduring and primary negative symptoms, a clinically less heterogeneous subtype of the illness, and patients with features of DS are thought to present abnormal brain network characteristics, however, this idea has received limited attention.

Higher-order functional brain networks and anterior cingulate glutamate + glutamine (Glx) in antipsychotic-naïve first episode psychosis patients.

Human connectome studies have provided abundant data consistent with the hypothesis that functional dysconnectivity is predominant in psychosis spectrum disorders. Converging lines of evidence also suggest an interaction between dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) cortical glutamate with higher-order functional brain networks (FC) such as the default mode (DMN), dorsal attention (DAN), and executive control networks (ECN) in healthy controls (HC) and this mechanism may be impaired in psychosis. Data from 70 antipsychotic-medication naïve first-episode psychosis (FEP) and 52 HC were analyzed.

Higher-Order Intrinsic Brain Network Trajectories After Antipsychotic Treatment in Medication-Naïve Patients With First-Episode Psychosis.

Background: Intrinsic brain network connectivity is already altered in first-episode psychosis (FEP), but the longitudinal trajectories of network connectivity, especially in response to antipsychotic treatment, remain poorly understood. The goal of this study was to investigate how antipsychotic medications affect higher-order intrinsic brain network connectivity in FEP.

Methods: Data from 87 antipsychotic medication-naïve patients with FEP and 87 healthy control participants were used.

Replication of a neuroimaging biomarker for striatal dysfunction in psychosis.

To bring biomarkers closer to clinical application, they should be generalizable, reliable, and maintain performance within the constraints of routine clinical conditions. The functional striatal abnormalities (FSA), is among the most advanced neuroimaging biomarkers in schizophrenia, trained to discriminate diagnosis, with post-hoc analyses indicating prognostic properties. Here, we attempt to replicate its diagnostic capabilities measured by the area under the curve (AUC) in receiver operator characteristic curves discriminating individuals with psychosis (n = 101) from healthy controls (n = 51) in the Human Connectome Project for Early Psychosis.

Replication of a neuroimaging biomarker for striatal dysfunction in psychosis.

To bring biomarkers closer to clinical application, they should be generalizable, reliable, and maintain performance within the constraints of routine clinical conditions. The functional striatal abnormalities (FSA), is among the most advanced neuroimaging biomarkers in schizophrenia, trained to discriminate diagnosis, with post-hoc analyses indicating prognostic properties. Here, we attempt to replicate its diagnostic capabilities measured by the area under the curve (AUC) in receiver operator characteristic curves discriminating individuals with psychosis (n=101) from healthy controls (n=51) in the Human Connectome Project for Early Psychosis.

Replication of a neuroimaging biomarker for striatal dysfunction in psychosis.

To bring biomarkers closer to clinical application, they should be generalizable, reliable, and maintain performance within the constraints of routine clinical conditions. The functional striatal abnormalities (FSA), is among the most advanced neuroimaging biomarkers in schizophrenia, trained to discriminate diagnosis, with post-hoc analyses indicating prognostic properties. Here, we attempt to replicate its diagnostic capabilities measured by the area under the curve (AUC) in receiver operator characteristic curves discriminating individuals with psychosis (n=101) from healthy controls (n=51) in the Human Connectome Project for Early Psychosis.

Structural Racism in Psychiatric Research Careers: Eradicating Barriers to a More Diverse Workforce.

Investigators from minoritized backgrounds are underrepresented in psychiatric research. That underrepresentation contributes to disparities in outcomes of access to mental health care. Drawing on lived experience, scholarly qualitative reports, and empirical data, the authors review how the underrepresentation of minoritized researchers arises from interlocking, self-reinforcing effects of structural biases in our research training and funding institutions.

Hippocampal Hyperconnectivity to the Visual Cortex Predicts Treatment Response.

Background: Converging lines of evidence point to hippocampal dysfunction in psychosis spectrum disorders, including altered functional connectivity. Evidence also suggests that antipsychotic medications can modulate hippocampal dysfunction. The goal of this project was to identify patterns of hippocampal connectivity predictive of response to antipsychotic treatment in 2 cohorts of patients with a psychosis spectrum disorder, one medication-naïve and the other one unmedicated.

Co-occurring opioid use disorder and serious mental illness: A selective literature review.

Objective: The overarching goal of this review is to provide a clinical overview of epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment, and to discuss the public health impact, social determinants including access to care, and implications for health care delivery and research. It is estimated that approximately 1 in 4 individuals suffering from a serious mental illness (SMI) may have a co-occurring opioid use disorder (OUD). In these individuals, the overall disease burden is higher and clinical outcomes are worse compared to those without a co-occurring illness, making an integrated approach to diagnosis and treatment an urgent priority.

Neurite Orientation Dispersion and Density Imaging in Psychiatric Disorders: A Systematic Literature Review and a Technical Note.

While major psychiatric disorders lack signature diagnostic neuropathologies akin to dementias, classic postmortem studies have established microstructural involvement, i.e., cellular changes in neurons and glia, as a key pathophysiological finding.

In Search of Biomarkers to Guide Interventions in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review.

Objective: The aim of this study was to catalog and evaluate response biomarkers correlated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptoms to improve clinical trials.

Methods: A systematic review of MEDLINE, Embase, and Scopus was conducted in April 2020. Seven criteria were applied to focus on original research that includes quantifiable response biomarkers measured alongside ASD symptoms.

Dorsal striatial hypoconnectivity predicts antipsychotic medication treatment response in first-episode psychosis and unmedicated patients with schizophrenia.

Introduction: The dorsal striatum, comprised of the caudate and putamen, is implicated in the pathophysiology of psychosis spectrum disorders. Given the high concentration of dopamine receptors in the striatum, striatal dopamine imbalance is a likely cause in cortico-striatal dysconnectivity. There is great interest in understanding the relationship between striatal abnormalities in psychosis and antipsychotic treatment response, but few studies have considered differential involvement of the caudate and putamen.

Contrasting Case-Control and Normative Reference Approaches to Capture Clinically Relevant Structural Brain Abnormalities in Patients With First-Episode Psychosis Who Are Antipsychotic Naive.

Importance: To make progress toward precision psychiatry, it is crucial to move beyond case-control studies and instead capture individual variations and interpret them in the context of a normal range of biological systems.

Objective: To evaluate whether baseline deviations from a normative reference range in subcortical volumes are better predictors of antipsychotic treatment response than raw volumes in patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP) who were naive to antipsychotic medication.

Design, Setting, And Participants: In this prospective longitudinal study, patients with first-episode psychosis who were referred from different clinical settings (emergency department, inpatient units, and outpatient clinics) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham were included.

Contrasting Frontoparietal Network Connectivity in Antipsychotic Medication-Naive First-Episode Psychosis Patients Who Do and Do Not Display Features of the Deficit Syndrome.

Background: The deficit syndrome is a clinical subtype of schizophrenia that is characterized by enduring negative symptoms. Several lines of evidence point to frontoparietal involvement, but the frontoparietal control network (FPCN) and its subsystems (FPCNA and FPCNB) proposed by Yeo et al. have not been systematically characterized at rest in patients with the deficit syndrome.

The neural substrates of neurological soft signs in schizophrenia: a systematic review.

Neurological soft signs (NSS) are common in patients with schizophrenia. However, the neural substrates of NSS remain poorly understood. Using legacy PubMed, we performed a systematic review and included studies that assessed NSS and obtained neuroimaging data in patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder published up to June 2020.

A multimodal neuroimaging study investigating resting-state connectivity, glutamate and GABA at 7 T in first-episode psychosis.

Background: The major excitatory and inhibitory neurometabolites in the brain, glutamate and γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), respectively, are related to the functional MRI signal. Disruption of resting-state functional MRI signals has been reported in psychosis spectrum disorders, but few studies have investigated the role of these metabolites in this context.

Methods: We included 19 patients with first-episode psychosis and 21 healthy controls in this combined magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and resting-state functional connectivity study.

Risks and Benefits of Cannabis and Cannabinoids in Psychiatry.

Objective: The United States is in the midst of rapidly changing laws regarding cannabis. The increasing availability of cannabis for recreational and medical use requires that mental health clinicians be knowledgeable about evidence to be considered when counseling both patients and colleagues. In this review, the authors outline the evidence from randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials for therapeutic use of cannabinoids for specific medical conditions and the potential side effects associated with acute and chronic cannabis use.

Salience network glutamate and brain connectivity in medication-naïve first episode patients - A multimodal magnetic resonance spectroscopy and resting state functional connectivity MRI study.

Background: Salience network (SN) connectivity is altered in schizophrenia, but the pathophysiological origin remains poorly understood. The goal of this multimodal neuroimaging study was to investigate the role of glutamatergic metabolism as putative mechanism underlying SN dysconnectivity in first episode psychosis (FEP) subjects.

Methods: We measured glutamate + glutamine (Glx) in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) from 70 antipsychotic-naïve FEP subjects and 52 healthy controls (HC).