PET-detectable tau pathology correlates with long-term neuropsychiatric outcomes in patients with traumatic brain injury.

Tau deposits is a core feature of neurodegenerative disorder following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Despite ample evidence from post-mortem studies demonstrating exposure to both mild-repetitive and severe TBIs are linked to tau depositions, associations of topology of tau lesions with late-onset psychiatric symptoms due to TBI have not been explored. To address this issue, we assessed tau deposits in long-term survivors of TBI by PET with 11C-PBB3, and evaluated those associations with late-life neuropsychiatric outcomes.

Dysconnectivity of the Agency Network in Schizophrenia: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study.

Self-disturbances in schizophrenia have recently been explained by an abnormality in the sense of agency (SoA). The cerebral structures of SoA in healthy people are considered to mainly include the insula and inferior parietal lobule. In contrast, the functional lesion of aberrant SoA in schizophrenia is not yet fully understood.

Impairment in judgement of the moral emotion guilt following orbitofrontal cortex damage.

Although neuroimaging studies have provided evidence for an association between moral emotions and the orbitofrontal cortex, studies on patients with focal lesions using experimental probes of moral emotions are scarce. Here, we addressed this topic by presenting a moral emotion judgement task to patients with focal brain damage. Four judgement tasks in a simple pairwise choice paradigm were given to 72 patients with cerebrovascular disease.

Semantic memory deficits are associated with pica in individuals with acquired brain injury.

Although pica is one of the most prominent signs in individuals with severe cognitive impairment, the mechanisms and neural basis for pica have not been well elucidated. To address this issue, patients with acquired brain injury who showed pica and hyperorality were investigated. Eleven patients with pica, i.

Updating the neuropsychological test system in Japan for the elderly and in a modern touch screen tablet society by resetting the cut-off values.

Aim: Covert hepatic encephalopathy is frequently seen in cirrhotic patients. This condition can be diagnosed by a computerized neuropsychological test system (NPT); however, NPT has not been updated for approximately two decades in Japan. The aim of this study is to update the NPT to be more suitable for both the elderly and modern society by resetting of cut-off values.

Disappearance of treatment-resistant depression after damage to the orbitofrontal cortex and subgenual cingulate area: a case study.

Background: Although post-stroke depression is a well-characterized disorder, there is less understanding of how pre-existence of depression is affected by a stroke.

Case Presentation: We describe a patient with treatment-resistant major depression, which had been ongoing for 14 years but disappeared shortly after onset of a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Her cognitive function and functional status were mostly unaffected by the stroke.

Strength of Intentional Effort Enhances the Sense of Agency.

Sense of agency (SoA) refers to the feeling of controlling one's own actions, and the experience of controlling external events with one's actions. The present study examined the effect of strength of intentional effort on SoA. We manipulated the strength of intentional effort using three types of buttons that differed in the amount of force required to depress them.

Behavioral evidence of delayed prediction signals during agency attribution in patients with schizophrenia.

Self-disturbance, a core feature of schizophrenia, recently has been explained from the standpoint of an abnormal sense of agency (SoA). Previous studies showed that aberrant SoA in schizophrenia arise from imprecise predictions about the sensory consequences of actions. However, the nature of the malfunctioning predictions remains unclear.

The Japanese version of the Rapid Dementia Screening Test is effective compared to the clock-drawing test for detecting patients with mild Alzheimer's disease.

Background: The Japanese version of the Rapid Dementia Screening Test (RDST-J) and the clock-drawing test (CDT) are both brief psychometric screening tools used to detect the severity of Alzheimer's disease. It remains unclear, however, which is more effective when screening for mild Alzheimer's disease.

Methods: We administered the RDST-J and CDT to 250 patients with very mild to severe Alzheimer's disease and to 49 healthy volunteers.

Utility of Scalp Hair Follicles as a Novel Source of Biomarker Genes for Psychiatric Illnesses.

Background: Identifying beneficial surrogate genetic markers in psychiatric disorders is crucial but challenging.

Methods: Given that scalp hair follicles are easily accessible and, like the brain, are derived from the ectoderm, expressions of messenger RNA (mRNA) and microRNA in the organ were examined between schizophrenia (n for first/second = 52/42) and control subjects (n = 62/55) in two sets of cohort. Genes of significance were also analyzed using postmortem brains (n for case/control = 35/35 in Brodmann area 46, 20/20 in cornu ammonis 1) and induced pluripotent stem cells (n = 4/4) and pluripotent stem cell-derived neurospheres (n = 12/12) to see their role in the central nervous system.

[Mirror neuron system dysfunction in schizophrenia and its clinical implication].

Since the discovery of mirror neuron system, several neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies showed that the mirror neuron system might have a role in understanding other people's actions and intentions with automatic simulation of their actions. Moreover, some studies suggested that mirror neurons have a broader role in social cognition including understanding others' emotions and empathy. It has not been proved, however, whether the mirror neuron system is necessarily involved in empathy processes.

Emergence of realism: Enhanced visual artistry and high accuracy of visual numerosity representation after left prefrontal damage.

Over the last two decades, evidence of enhancement of drawing and painting skills due to focal prefrontal damage has accumulated. It is of special interest that most artworks created by such patients were highly realistic ones, but the mechanism underlying this phenomenon remains to be understood. Our hypothesis is that enhanced tendency of realism was associated with accuracy of visual numerosity representation, which has been shown to be mediated predominantly by right parietal functions.

Predictors of repeated sick leave in the workplace because of mental disorders.

Introduction: Mental disorders create a considerable burden to society. Previous studies have shown that productivity loss constitutes the largest proportion of the total societal burden. For depression and anxiety disorders, in particular, more than half of the associated productivity loss occurs in the workplace.

Increased l1 retrotransposition in the neuronal genome in schizophrenia.

Recent studies indicate that long interspersed nuclear element-1 (L1) are mobilized in the genome of human neural progenitor cells and enhanced in Rett syndrome and ataxia telangiectasia. However, whether aberrant L1 retrotransposition occurs in mental disorders is unknown. Here, we report high L1 copy number in schizophrenia.

Norepinephrine transporter occupancy by nortriptyline in patients with depression: a positron emission tomography study with (S,S)-[¹⁸F]FMeNER-D₂.

Norepinephrine transporter (NET) plays important roles in the treatment of various neuropsychiatric disorders, such as depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Nortriptyline is a NET-selective tricyclic antidepressant (TCAs) that has been widely used for the treatment of depression. Previous positron emission tomography (PET) studies have reported over 80% serotonin transporter occupancy with clinical doses of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), but there has been no report of NET occupancy in patients treated with relatively NET-selective antidepressants.

Reverse Fox test for detecting visuospatial dysfunction corresponding to parietal hypoperfusion in mild Alzheimer's disease.

Background/aim: We developed a novel visuospatial clinical task to detect parietal dysfunction in mild Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Methods: A total of 65 outpatients, including 47 with mild AD and 18 cognitively and neuroradiologically normal individuals with subjective memory impairment (NL), performed the "Reverse Fox" test and underwent brain single photon emission tomography. Patients with AD were divided into subgroups according to the results of the Reverse Fox test (successful vs unsuccessful).

Progression of logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia to apraxia and semantic memory deficits.

Background: Due to the nature of neurodegenerative disorders, patients with primary progressive aphasia develop cognitive impairment other than aphasia as the disorder progresses. The progression of logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA), however, has not been well described. In particular, praxic disorders and semantic memory deficits have rarely been reported.

Neural substrates for judgment of self-agency in ambiguous situations.

The sense of agency is the attribution of oneself as the cause of one's own actions and their effects. Accurate agency judgments are essential for adaptive behaviors in dynamic environments, especially in conditions of uncertainty. However, it is unclear how agency judgments are made in ambiguous situations where self-agency and non-self-agency are both possible.

Reduced sense of agency in chronic schizophrenia with predominant negative symptoms.

Self-disturbances in schizophrenia have been regarded as a fundamental vulnerability marker for this disease, and have begun to be studied from the standpoint of an abnormal "sense of agency (SoA)" in cognitive neuroscience. To clarify the nature of aberrant SoA in schizophrenia, it needs to be investigated in various clinical subtypes and stages. The residual type of chronic schizophrenia with predominant negative symptoms (NS) has never been investigated for SoA.

It's not my fault: postdictive modulation of intentional binding by monetary gains and losses.

Sense of agency refers to the feeling that one's voluntary actions caused external events. Past studies have shown that compression of the subjective temporal interval between actions and external events, called intentional binding, is closely linked to the experience of agency. Current theories postulate that the experience of agency is constructed via predictive and postdictive pathways.

[Neuropsychological approach to elucidating delusion and psychotic symptoms].

Neuropsychological symptom-oriented approach is a critical method to elucidate delusion and psychotic symptoms in patients with focal brain damages and schizophrenia. In Capgras delusion (CD), the delusional misidentification of familiar people disguised as others, the patients with right amygdala damage and bilateral ventromedial prefrontal lesions have a deficient or reduced emotional valence of the person with intact configurational processes of the face. Reduplicative paramnesia (RP) is a specific phenomenon characterized by subjective certainty that a familiar place or person has been duplicated.

Poor performance on the Iowa gambling task in children with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Background: Several lines of evidence implicate orbitofrontal cortex dysfunction in the pathophysiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The purpose of this study was to investigate neuropsychological dysfunction of the orbitofrontal cortex in children with OCD.

Methods: The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which reflects orbitofrontal cortex function, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), which is associated with functioning of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, were administered to 22 children with OCD and 22 healthy controls matched for gender, age, and intelligence.

Increased left anterior insular and inferior prefrontal activity in post-stroke mania.

Background: Post-stroke mania is an infrequent complication after stroke, and the mechanisms underlying this disorder remain unclear. Although a contralesional release phenomenon has been implicated in post-stroke mania, empirical findings are lacking.

Case Presentation: We present a case report of post stroke mania.