An interview with Professor Benjamin Becker: understanding our brain and mental disorders requires collaboration across all disciplines.

From July 20 to 22, 2024, the ISMRM Endorsed Workshop on MR for Psychiatry was held in Chengdu City, China. This prestigious event attracted numerous academic elites worldwide, and Professor Benjamin Becker from the University of Hong Kong was invited. On the morning of July 20, during the "Advances in MR Technology" session, Professor Becker delivered an engaging lecture entitled "Novel approaches to precision MRI-imaging of human emotion.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation enhanced by neuronavigation in the treatment of depressive disorder and schizophrenia.

This editorial assesses the advancements in neuronavigation enhanced repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for depressive disorder and schizophrenia treatment. Conventional repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation faces challenges due to the intricacies of brain anatomy and patient variability. Neuronavigation offers innovative solutions by integrating neuroimaging with three-dimensional localization to pinpoint brain regions and refine therapeutic targeting.

Examining network structure of impulsivity and depression in adolescents and young adults: A two-sample study.

Background: Depression ranks as one of the top five contributors to ill health in youth, the most formative period in life. Extensive research has highlighted the significant role of impulsivity in understanding depression. However, there has been limited exploration into how each dimension of impulsivity uniquely affect depressive symptoms, especially across crucial developmental stages like adolescence and young adulthood.

Ischemic cardio-cerebrovascular disease and all-cause mortality in Chinese elderly patients: a propensity-score matching study.

Background: Ischemic cardio-cerebrovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality worldwide. However, studies focusing on elderly and very elderly patients are scarce. Hence, our study aimed to characterize and investigate the long-term prognostic implications of ischemic cardio-cerebrovascular diseases in elderly Chinese patients.

Imaging Transcriptomics of the Brain for Schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder with a neurodevelopmental origin. Although schizophrenia results from changes in the brain, the underlying biological mechanisms are unknown. Transcriptomics studies quantitative expression changes or qualitative changes of all genes and isoforms, providing a more meaningful biological insight.

Mental health problems of front-line medical staff in the early stage of public health emergencies.

In the face of the unprecedented public health crisis caused by the novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic, front-line health workers are under enormous mental pressure. This paper aims to explore the mental health challenges faced by front-line health workers in the early stages of a public health emergency, such as stress, anxiety, and depression. At the same time, the factors that increase their mental stress are analyzed, and practical measures are put forward to prevent and manage mental health problems, aiming at improving the quality of medical treatment during public health emergencies.

Transcriptomic and neuroimaging data integration enhances machine learning classification of schizophrenia.

Background: Schizophrenia is a polygenic disorder associated with changes in brain structure and function. Integrating macroscale brain features with microscale genetic data may provide a more complete overview of the disease etiology and may serve as potential diagnostic markers for schizophrenia.

Objective: We aim to systematically evaluate the impact of multi-scale neuroimaging and transcriptomic data fusion in schizophrenia classification models.

Affected cortico-striatal-cerebellar network in schizophrenia with catatonia revealed by magnetic resonance imaging: indications for electroconvulsive therapy and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Catatonia is a psychomotor syndrome that can occur in a broad spectrum of brain disorders, including schizophrenia. Current findings suggest that the neurobiological process underlying catatonia symptoms in schizophrenia is poorly understood. However, emerging neuroimaging studies in catatonia patients have indicated that a disruption in anatomical connectivity of the cortico-striatal-cerebellar system is part of the neurobiology of catatonia, which could serve as a target of neurostimulation such as electroconvulsive therapy and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Two neurostructural subtypes: results of machine learning on brain images from 4,291 individuals with schizophrenia.

Machine learning can be used to define subtypes of psychiatric conditions based on shared clinical and biological foundations, presenting a crucial step toward establishing biologically based subtypes of mental disorders. With the goal of identifying subtypes of disease progression in schizophrenia, here we analyzed cross-sectional brain structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from 4,291 individuals with schizophrenia (1,709 females, age=32.5 years±11.

Differential expression of diacylglycerol kinase ζ is involved in inferior parietal lobule-related dysfunction in schizophrenia with cognitive impairments.

Background: Cognitive impairment is the main factor in the poor prognosis of schizophrenia, but its mechanism remains unclear. The inferior parietal lobule (IPL) is related to various clinical symptoms and cognitive impairment in schizophrenia. We aimed to explore the relationship between IPL-related functions and cognitive impairment in schizophrenia.

Transcriptional level of inflammation markers associates with short-term brain structural changes in first-episode schizophrenia.

Background: Inflammation has been implicated in the pathology of schizophrenia and may cause neuronal cell death and dendrite loss. Neuroimaging studies have highlighted longitudinal brain structural changes in patients with schizophrenia, yet it is unclear whether this is related to inflammation. We aim to address this question, by relating brain structural changes with the transcriptional profile of inflammation markers in the early stage of schizophrenia.

Transcriptomics and magnetic resonance imaging in major psychiatric disorders.

Major psychiatric disorders create a significant public health burden, and mental disorders such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia are major contributors to the national disease burden. The search for biomarkers has been a leading endeavor in the field of biological psychiatry in recent decades. And the application of cross-scale and multi-omics approaches combining genes and imaging in major psychiatric studies has facilitated the elucidation of gene-related pathogenesis and the exploration of potential biomarkers.

Neuroimaging study of electroconvulsive therapy for depression.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an important treatment for depression. Although it is known as the most effective acute treatment for severe mood disorders, its therapeutic mechanism is still unclear. With the rapid development of neuroimaging technology, various neuroimaging techniques have been available to explore the alterations of the brain by ECT, such as structural magnetic resonance imaging, functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, positron emission tomography, single photon emission computed tomography, arterial spin labeling, etc.

Longitudinal real world correlation study of blood pressure and novel features of cerebral magnetic resonance angiography by artificial intelligence analysis on elderly cognitive impairment.

Objective: This study aims to investigate novel clinical risk factors for cognitive impairment (CI) in elderly.

Methods: A total of 3221 patients (259 patients with CI and 2,962 subjects without CI) were recruited into this nested case-control study who underwent cerebral magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) from 2007 to 2021. All of the clinical data with MRA imaging were recorded followed by standardization processing blindly.

The relations between different components of intolerance of uncertainty and symptoms of depression during the COVID-19 pandemic: A network analysis.

Background: The relations between depression and intolerance of uncertainty (IU) have been extensively investigated during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is a lack of understanding on how each component of IU may differentially affect depression symptoms and vice versa. The current study used a network approach to reveal the component-to-symptom interplay between IU and depression and identify intervention targets for depression during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging throughout the Clinical Course of Schizophrenia: Neurobiological Underpinnings and Clinical Implications.

As a non-invasive detection method and an advanced imaging method, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been widely used in the research of schizophrenia. Although a large number of neuroimaging studies have confirmed that MRI can display abnormal brain phenotypes in patients with schizophrenia, no valid uniform standard has been established for its clinical application. On the basis of previous evidence, we argue that MRI is an important tool throughout the whole clinical course of schizophrenia.