Systematic review of the influence of antipsychotics on the blood oxygenation level-dependent signal of functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) is a non-invasive technique for brain mapping and mostly performed using changes of the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD)-signal. It has been widely used to investigate patients with schizophrenia. Most of the studies examine patients treated with antipsychotic drugs, although little is known about the effects of these drugs on the BOLDsignal.

"Distracters" Do Not Always Distract: Visual Working Memory for Angry Faces is Enhanced by Incidental Emotional Words.

We are often required to filter out distraction in order to focus on a primary task during which working memory (WM) is engaged. Previous research has shown that negative versus neutral distracters presented during a visual WM maintenance period significantly impair memory for neutral information. However, the contents of WM are often also emotional in nature.

Integrative neuroimaging in mood disorders.

Purpose Of Review: Neuroimaging has become a central technique of biological psychiatry and is uniquely suited to assess functional and structural brain changes in psychiatric patients in vivo. In this review, we highlight several recent developments that may enable the transition of psychiatric neuroimaging from laboratory to clinic.

Recent Findings: We describe recent trends in refining imaging techniques for brain microstructure (diffusion imaging) and neurochemistry (magnetic resonance spectroscopy of neurotransmitters and metabolites) and their application to patients with mood disorders and individuals at risk, such as first-degree relatives.

Placental nutrient transport is affected by pregnancy rank in sheep.

Understanding the link between placental function and fetal growth is critical to comprehend the mechanisms underlying altered fetal growth. This study investigated the relationship between fetal weight and placentome type and size in placentae of singleton and twin fetuses and fetuses within a twin pair from ad libitum-fed ewes at d 140 of pregnancy. In addition, insulin, IGF-I, metabolites, and free AA profiles in fetal, umbilical artery, and vein plasma of singleton and twin fetuses were investigated and used as an indicator of placental nutrient transport.

The relationship between metacognitive beliefs, auditory hallucinations, and hallucination-related distress in clinical and non-clinical voice-hearers.

Objectives: To test the hypothesis that metacognitive beliefs are implicated in the development of distress associated with auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) rather than in their aetiology.

Design: A cross sectional questionnaire design was used.

Methods: Three groups of participants were recruited (n= 20 in each group); clinical voice-hearers diagnosed with psychiatric disorders; non-clinical voice-hearers with no psychiatric history; and non-clinical participants with no history of voices or psychiatric disorder.

External validation of the bacterial meningitis score in children hospitalized with meningitis.

Unlabelled: The Bacterial Meningitis Score (BMS) is considered as the rule with the highest sensitivity to safely distinguish between aseptic and bacterial meningitis (BM).

Objective: The objective of our study was to evaluate the performance of the score and its usefulness for the clinician.

Method: Retrospective analysis of two Belgian academic hospitals-based cohort studies.

Colitis is associated with a loss of intestinofugal neurons.

Intestinofugal neurons sense and receive information regarding mechanical distension of the bowel and transmit this information to postganglionic sympathetic neurons in the prevertebral ganglia. Previous studies have demonstrated that trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS)-induced colitis is associated with a loss of myenteric neurons that occurs within the first 12 h following the inflammatory insult. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that intestinofugal neurons are among the myenteric neurons lost during TNBS-induced colitis.

Enhanced excitability of guinea pig inferior mesenteric ganglion neurons during and following recovery from chemical colitis.

Postganglionic sympathetic neurons in the prevertebral ganglia (PVG) provide ongoing inhibitory tone to the gastrointestinal tract and receive innervation from mechanosensory intestinofugal afferent neurons primarily located in the colon and rectum. This study tests the hypothesis that colitis alters the excitability of PVG neurons. Intracellular recording techniques were used to evaluate changes in the electrical properties of inferior mesenteric ganglion (IMG) neurons in the trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS) and acetic acid models of guinea pig colitis.

COMT val158met predicts reward responsiveness in humans.

A functional variant of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene [val158met (rs4680)] is frequently implicated in decision-making and higher cognitive functions. It may achieve its effects by modulating dopamine-related decision-making and reward-guided behaviour. Here we demonstrate that individuals with the met/met polymorphism have greater responsiveness to reward than carriers of the val allele and that this correlates with risk-seeking behaviour.

Astrocyte inositol triphosphate receptor type 2 and cytosolic phospholipase A2 alpha regulate arteriole responses in mouse neocortical brain slices.

Functional hyperemia of the cerebral vascular system matches regional blood flow to the metabolic demands of the brain. One current model of neurovascular control holds that glutamate released by neurons activates group I metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) on astrocytes, resulting in the production of diffusible messengers that act to regulate smooth muscle cells surrounding cerebral arterioles. The acute mouse brain slice is an experimental system in which changes in arteriole diameter can precisely measured with light microscopy.

Association between white matter fiber integrity and subclinical psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia patients and unaffected relatives.

In this study, we investigate whether aberrant integrity of white matter (WM) fiber tracts represents a genetically determined biological marker of schizophrenia (SZ), and its relation with clinical symptoms. We collected brain DTI data from 28 SZ patients, 18 first-degree relatives and 22 matched controls and used voxel-based analysis with tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) in order to compare fractional anisotropy (FA) between groups. Mean voxel-based FA values from the entire skeleton of each group were compared.

Real-time self-regulation of emotion networks in patients with depression.

Many patients show no or incomplete responses to current pharmacological or psychological therapies for depression. Here we explored the feasibility of a new brain self-regulation technique that integrates psychological and neurobiological approaches through neurofeedback with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In a proof-of-concept study, eight patients with depression learned to upregulate brain areas involved in the generation of positive emotions (such as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and insula) during four neurofeedback sessions.

Office work and complaints of the arms, neck and shoulders: the role of job characteristics, muscular tension and need for recovery.

Objectives: This study investigated physical, psychological and social job characteristics as potential risk factors for complaints of the arms, neck and shoulders (CANS) and mediating effects of muscular tension and need for recovery.

Methods: Data were collected among 105 computer workers using questionnaires and electromyography (EMG), and were analyzed with linear regression analyses.

Results: Task interdependence, information processing and lower social support predicted more CANS.

Frontal and parietal theta burst TMS impairs working memory for visual-spatial conjunctions.

In tasks that selectively probe visual or spatial working memory (WM) frontal and posterior cortical areas show a segregation, with dorsal areas preferentially involved in spatial (e.g. location) WM and ventral areas in visual (e.

Cortical-basal ganglia imbalance in schizophrenia patients and unaffected first-degree relatives.

Structural brain changes are amongst the most robust biological alterations in schizophrenia, and their investigation in unaffected relatives is important for an assessment of the contribution of genetic factors. In this cross-sectional morphometry study we investigated whether volume changes in SZ are linked with genetic vulnerability and whether these effects are separated from secondary illness effects. We compared density of grey and white matter using high-resolution 3D-anatomical MRI imaging data in 31 SZ patients, 29 first-degree relatives and 38 matched healthy controls, using Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM) with SPM8.

Patterns of autobiographical memory in bipolar disorder examined by psychometric and functional neuroimaging methods.

This is the first study to combine psychometric and functional neuroimaging methods to study altered patterns of autobiographical memory in bipolar disorder (BD). All participants were interviewed with an expanded version of the Bielefelder Autobiographical Memory Inventory (Bielefelder Autobiographisches Gedächtnis Inventar 2004;Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger). We then acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging data during a task of individually designed autobiographical recall.

Association between psychotic symptoms and cortical thickness reduction across the schizophrenia spectrum.

The current study provides a complete magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) analysis of thickness throughout the cerebral cortical mantle in patients with schizophrenia (SZ) and rigorously screened and matched unaffected relatives and controls and an assessment of its relation to psychopathology and subjective cognitive function. We analyzed 3D-anatomical MRI data sets, obtained at 3 T, from 3 different subject groups: 25 SZ patients, 29 first-degree relatives, and 37 healthy control subjects. We computed whole-brain cortical thickness using the Freesurfer software and assessed group differences.

The incidence of admissions for schizophrenia and related psychoses in two cohorts: 1875-1924 and 1994-2010.

Objective To investigate changes in incidence of admissions for schizophrenia and related non-affective psychoses in North Wales. Design Data from two epidemiologically complete cohorts of patients presenting for the first time to mental health services in North Wales between 1875-1924 and 1994-2010 are used in this study to map the incidence of hospital admissions for schizophrenia and non-affective psychoses. Setting The North Wales Asylum Denbigh (archived patient case notes) and the North West Wales District General Hospital psychiatric unit.

The challenges and promise of neuroimaging in psychiatry.

Neuroimaging is central to the quest for a biological foundation of psychiatric diagnosis but so far has not yielded clinically relevant biomarkers for mental disorders. This review addresses potential reasons for this limitation and discusses refinements of paradigms and analytic techniques that may yield improved diagnostic and prognostic accuracy. Neuroimaging can also be used to probe genetically defined biological pathways underlying mental disorders, for example through the genetic imaging of variants discovered in genome-wide association studies.

Emotional faces and the default mode network.

The default-mode network (DMN) of the human brain has become a central topic of cognitive neuroscience research. Although alterations in its resting state activity and in its recruitment during tasks have been reported for several mental and neurodegenerative disorders, its role in emotion processing has received relatively little attention. We investigated brain responses to different categories of emotional faces with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and found deactivation in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), posterior cingulate gyrus (PC) and cuneus.

Real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback for treatment of Parkinson's disease.

Self-regulation of brain activity in humans based on real-time feedback of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal is emerging as a potentially powerful, new technique. Here, we assessed whether patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) are able to alter local brain activity to improve motor function. Five patients learned to increase activity in the supplementary motor complex over two fMRI sessions using motor imagery.

Biological pathways to adaptability--interactions between genome, epigenome, nervous system and environment for adaptive behavior.

Because living systems depend on their environment, the evolution of environmental adaptability is inseparable from the evolution of life itself (Pross 2003). In animals and humans, environmental adaptability extends further to adaptive behavior. It has recently emerged that individual adaptability depends on the interaction of adaptation mechanisms at diverse functional levels.

A late phase of LTD in cultured cerebellar Purkinje cells requires persistent dynamin-mediated endocytosis.

Long-term synaptic depression (LTD) of cerebellar parallel fiber-Purkinje cell synapses is a form of use-dependent synaptic plasticity that may be studied in cell culture. One form of LTD is induced postsynaptically through an mGlu1/Ca influx/protein kinase Cα (PKCα) cascade, and its initial expression requires phosphorylation of ser-880 in the COOH-terminal PDZ-ligand region of GluA2 and consequent binding of PICK1. This triggers postsynaptic clathrin/dynamin-mediated endocytosis of GluA2-containing surface AMPA receptors.

Burned out cognition--cognitive functioning of burnout patients before and after a period with psychological treatment.

Objectives: Many employees with burnout report cognitive difficulties. However, the relation between burnout and cognitive functioning has hardly been empirically validated. Moreover, it is unknown whether the putative cognitive deficits in burnout are temporary or permanent.

Mapping brain activation and information during category-specific visual working memory.

How is working memory for different visual categories supported in the brain? Do the same principles of cortical specialization that govern the initial processing and encoding of visual stimuli also apply to their short-term maintenance? We investigated these questions with a delayed discrimination paradigm for faces, bodies, flowers, and scenes and applied both univariate and multivariate analyses to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. Activity during encoding followed the well-known specialization in posterior areas. During the delay interval, activity shifted to frontal and parietal regions but was not specialized for category.