Genome-wide analysis of self-reported risk-taking behaviour and cross-disorder genetic correlations in the UK Biobank cohort.

Risk-taking behaviour is a key component of several psychiatric disorders and could influence lifestyle choices such as smoking, alcohol use, and diet. As a phenotype, risk-taking behaviour therefore fits within a Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) approach, whereby identifying genetic determinants of this trait has the potential to improve our understanding across different psychiatric disorders. Here we report a genome-wide association study in 116,255 UK Biobank participants who responded yes/no to the question "Would you consider yourself a risk taker?" Risk takers (compared with controls) were more likely to be men, smokers, and have a history of psychiatric disorder.

Genome-wide analysis in UK Biobank identifies four loci associated with mood instability and genetic correlation with major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder and schizophrenia.

Mood instability is a core clinical feature of affective and psychotic disorders. In keeping with the Research Domain Criteria approach, it may be a useful construct for identifying biology that cuts across psychiatric categories. We aimed to investigate the biological validity of a simple measure of mood instability and evaluate its genetic relationship with several psychiatric disorders, including major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar disorder (BD), schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Functional neuroimaging of visual creativity: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Introduction: The generation of creative visual imagery contributes to technological and scientific innovation and production of visual art. The underlying cognitive and neural processes are, however, poorly understood.

Methods: This review synthesizes functional neuroimaging studies of visual creativity.

Cortical pattern separation and item-specific memory encoding.

Pattern separation and pattern completion are fundamental brain processes thought to be critical for episodic memory encoding and retrieval, and for discrimination between similar memories. These processes are best understood in the hippocampus, but are proposed to occur throughout the brain, in particular in sensory regions. Cortical, as well as hippocampal, pattern separation may therefore support formation of event-unique memory traces.

Age-related increases in false recognition: the role of perceptual and conceptual similarity.

Older adults (OAs) are more likely to falsely recognize novel events than young adults, and recent behavioral and neuroimaging evidence points to a reduced ability to distinguish overlapping information due to decline in hippocampal pattern separation. However, other data suggest a critical role for semantic similarity. Koutstaal et al.