Online Depression Communities as a Complementary Approach to Improving the Attitudes of Patients With Depression Toward Medication Adherence: Cross-Sectional Survey Study.

Background: Lack of adherence to prescribed medication is common among patients with depression in China, posing serious challenges to the health care system. Online health communities have been found to be effective in enhancing patient compliance. However, empirical evidence supporting this effect in the context of depression treatment is absent, and the influence of online health community content on patients' attitudes toward medication adherence is also underexplored.

Inhibitory feedback from the motor circuit gates mechanosensory processing in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Animals must integrate sensory cues with their current behavioral context to generate a suitable response. How this integration occurs is poorly understood. Previously, we developed high-throughput methods to probe neural activity in populations of Caenorhabditis elegans and discovered that the animal's mechanosensory processing is rapidly modulated by the animal's locomotion.

Mirror Clock: A Strategy for Identifying Atomic Clock Frequency Jumps.

Atomic clock frequency jumps directly influence the accuracy and reliability of timekeeping systems. The necessary corrections are typically implemented by postprocessing mutual comparison data between multiple atomic clocks based on the overly strict assumption that these atomic clocks are independent of each other. This paper describes the concept of a mirror clock, which enables atomic clock frequency jumps to be identified in real time without any assumptions.

A high-throughput method to deliver targeted optogenetic stimulation to moving C. elegans populations.

We present a high-throughput optogenetic illumination system capable of simultaneous closed-loop light delivery to specified targets in populations of moving Caenorhabditis elegans. The instrument addresses three technical challenges: It delivers targeted illumination to specified regions of the animal's body such as its head or tail; it automatically delivers stimuli triggered upon the animal's behavior; and it achieves high throughput by targeting many animals simultaneously. The instrument was used to optogenetically probe the animal's behavioral response to competing mechanosensory stimuli in the the anterior and posterior gentle touch receptor neurons.

Temporal processing and context dependency in response to mechanosensation.

A quantitative understanding of how sensory signals are transformed into motor outputs places useful constraints on brain function and helps to reveal the brain's underlying computations. We investigate how the nematode responds to time-varying mechanosensory signals using a high-throughput optogenetic assay and automated behavior quantification. We find that the behavioral response is tuned to temporal properties of mechanosensory signals, such as their integral and derivative, that extend over many seconds.

Whole-brain calcium imaging with cellular resolution in freely behaving Caenorhabditis elegans.

The ability to acquire large-scale recordings of neuronal activity in awake and unrestrained animals is needed to provide new insights into how populations of neurons generate animal behavior. We present an instrument capable of recording intracellular calcium transients from the majority of neurons in the head of a freely behaving Caenorhabditis elegans with cellular resolution while simultaneously recording the animal's position, posture, and locomotion. This instrument provides whole-brain imaging with cellular resolution in an unrestrained and behaving animal.

Novel FREM1 mutations expand the phenotypic spectrum associated with Manitoba-oculo-tricho-anal (MOTA) syndrome and bifid nose renal agenesis anorectal malformations (BNAR) syndrome.

Loss of function mutations in FREM1 have been demonstrated in Manitoba-oculo-tricho-anal (MOTA) syndrome and Bifid Nose Renal Agenesis and Anorectal malformations (BNAR) syndrome, but the wider phenotypic spectrum that is associated with FREM1 mutations remains to be defined. We screened three probands with phenotypic features of MOTA syndrome. In one severely affected infant who was diagnosed with MOTA syndrome because of bilateral eyelid colobomas, a bifid nasal tip, hydrometrocolpos and vaginal atresia, we found two nonsense mutations that likely result in complete loss of FREM1 function.