Introduction of a Novel Ethics Curriculum to the Third-Year Psychiatry Clerkship Experience.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine if a brief ethics curriculum embedded in a third-year required clerkship differentially impacted students' self-rated confidence versus competence (determined by a written examination) regarding ethical principles related to psychiatry.

Methods: Using a naturalistic design, 270 medical students at the University of Washington were assigned to one of three groups during their third-year psychiatry clerkship: a control group with no additional ethics content, a group with access to a pre-recorded video ethics curriculum, or a group with live didactic sessions in addition to the video curriculum. All students took a pre- and post-test that assessed their confidence and competence in ethical theory and behavioral health ethics.

Elements of an Excellent Psychiatry Clerkship Experience: A Survey Study of Graduating Medical Students.

Objective: One possible factor associated with choosing psychiatry as a career is students rating their psychiatry clerkship as excellent. Although this suggests that an excellent clerkship may improve recruitment into psychiatry, to our knowledge there has never been a multi-site survey study of graduating medical students that identify what factors lead to an excellent clerkship rating. The purpose of this study was to determine factors that medical student find important for an excellent psychiatry clerkship experience.

Network Optimization of Functional Connectivity Within Default Mode Network Regions to Detect Cognitive Decline.

The rapid aging of the world's population is causing an increase in the prevalence of cognitive decline and degenerative brain disease in the elderly. Current diagnoses of amnestic and nonamnestic mild cognitive impairment, which may represent early stage Alzheimer's disease or related degenerative conditions, are based on clinical grounds. The recent emergence of advanced network analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data taken at cognitive rest has provided insight that declining functional connectivity of the default mode network (DMN) may be correlated with neurological disorders, and particularly prodromal Alzheimer's disease.

The association between higher order abilities, processing speed, and age are variably mediated by white matter integrity during typical aging.

Although aging is associated with changes in brain structure and cognition it remains unclear which specific structural changes mediate individual cognitive changes. Several studies have reported that white matter (WM) integrity, as assessed by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), mediates, in part, age-related differences in processing speed (PS). There is less evidence for WM integrity mediating age-related differences in higher order abilities (e.

Midlife memory improvement predicts preservation of hippocampal volume in old age.

This study examines whether midlife change in episodic memory predicts hippocampal volume in old age. From the Seattle Longitudinal Study we retrospectively identified 84 healthy, cognitively normal individuals, age 52 to 87, whose episodic memory had reliably declined (n = 33), improved (n = 28) or remained stable (n = 23) over a 14-year period in midlife (age 43-63). Midlife memory improvement was associated with 13% larger hippocampal volume (p < 0.

Neuroimaging in the clinical diagnosis of dementia: observations from a memory disorders clinic.

Objectives: To determine how often neuroimaging confirms, clarifies, or contradicts initial diagnoses of late-life cognitive disorders.

Design: Retrospective case review.

Setting: Outpatient clinic specializing in memory disorders.

Changes in neuronal activation patterns in response to androgen deprivation therapy: a pilot study.

Background: A common treatment option for men with prostate cancer is androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). However, men undergoing ADT may experience physical side effects, changes in quality of life and sometimes psychiatric and cognitive side effects.

Methods: In this study, hormone naïve patients without evidence of metastases with a rising PSA were treated with nine months of ADT.

Neural activation patterns during working memory tasks and OSA disease severity: preliminary findings.

Study Objectives: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is associated with cognitive impairments in working memory (WM). Neuronal activation during WM tasks can be indirectly assessed by blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD-fMRI). The purpose of this study was to describe BOLD-fMRI responses during 2 separate working memory tasks and a finger tapping task in men with OSA.

Altered medial temporal lobe responses during visuospatial encoding in healthy APOE*4 carriers.

The apolipoprotein varepsilon4 allele (APOE*4) is a major genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and has been associated with altered cortical activation as assessed by functional neuroimaging in cognitively normal younger and older carriers. We chose to evaluate medial temporal lobe (MTL) activation during encoding and recognition using a perspective-dependent (route or survey) visuospatial memory task by monitoring the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI response in older, non-demented APOE*4 carriers (APOE*4+) and non-carriers (APOE*4-). During encoding, the APOE*4- group had greater average task-associated BOLD responses in ventral visual pathways, including the MTLs, as compared to the APOE*4+ group.

Migration from a mitogenic niche promotes cell-cycle exit.

During development, neural precursors proliferate in one location and migrate to the residence of their mature function. The transition from a proliferative stage to a migratory stage is a critical juncture; errors in this process may result in tumor formation, mental retardation, or epilepsy. This transition could be the result of a simple sequential process in which precursors exit the cell cycle and then begin to migrate or a dynamically regulated process in which migration away from a mitogenic niche induces precursors to exit the cell cycle.

BDNF stimulates migration of cerebellar granule cells.

During development of the nervous system, neural progenitors arise in proliferative zones, then exit the cell cycle and migrate away from these zones. Here we show that migration of cerebellar granule cells out of their proliferative zone, the external granule cell layer (EGL), is impaired in Bdnf(-/-) mice. The reason for impaired migration is that BDNF directly and acutely stimulates granule cell migration.