Heart rate variability in subthreshold depression and major depressive disorder.

Background: The relationship between heart rate variability (HRV) and major depressive disorder (MDD) has been well explored. However, current researches lack an observation of HRV in subthreshold depression (SubD), which increases the risk of MDD and presents significant societal challenges.

Methods: This study compared resting state HRV among 128 MDD patients, 131 SubD individuals and 222 healthy controls (HC) recruited from the hospital, physical examination center, and colleges.

Construction and evaluation of two nomograms for screening major depressive disorder and subthreshold depression individuals based on anxiety, depression, and sleep items.

Background: Current evidence is insufficient to support specific tools for screening Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Early detection of subthreshold depression (SD) is crucial in preventing its progression to MDD. This study aims to develop nomograms that visualize the weights of predictors to improve the performance of screening tools.

Coping model, personality traits, social support and clinical outcomes in patients undergoing continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis: a post-hoc analysis of a randomized trial.

Background: Carrying out dialysis at home brings non-medical factors, including social support, or caretaker relationship, and internal features relevant to personality into the forefront. In this study, we aimed to explore the relationship between coping strategies of patients undergoing continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) and health outcomes.

Methods: Our post-hoc analysis was based on one previous randomized controlled trial that enrolled 150 incident patients who started CAPD from December 2010 to June 2016.

Discrimination of auditory verbal hallucination in schizophrenia based on EEG brain networks.

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are a core positive symptom of schizophrenia and are regarded as a consequence of the functional breakdown in the related sensory process. Yet, the potential mechanism of AVH is still lacking. In the present study, we explored the difference between AVHs (n = 23) and non-AVHs (n = 19) in schizophrenia and healthy controls (n = 29) by using multidimensional electroencephalograms data during an auditory oddball task.

Optimizing functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) channels for schizophrenic identification during a verbal fluency task using metaheuristic algorithms.

Objective: We aimed to reduce the complexity of the 52-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) system to facilitate its usage in discriminating schizophrenia during a verbal fluency task (VFT).

Methods: Oxygenated hemoglobin signals obtained using 52-channel fNIRS from 100 patients with schizophrenia and 100 healthy controls during a VFT were collected and processed. Three features frequently used in the analysis of fNIRS signals, namely time average, functional connectivity, and wavelet, were extracted and optimized using various metaheuristic operators, i.

Similarities and Differences in Brain Activation Between Patients With Schizophrenia and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study.

Schizophrenia (SZ) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) share several epidemiological and clinical features, but the neurobiological substrates shared by these two diseases remain unclear. This study aimed to explore the similarities and differences in brain function between them using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Eventually, 130 SZ patients, 70 OCD and 75 normal controls (NCs) were enrolled.

Prevalence and correlates of depression and anxiety among Chinese international students in US colleges during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional study.

Background: Previous studies showed that the COVID-19 outbreak increased the levels of depression and anxiety in heterogeneous populations. However, none has explored the prevalence and correlates of depression and anxiety among Chinese international students studying in US colleges during the pandemic.

Objective: This study examines the prevalence of depression and anxiety among Chinese international students enrolled in US universities during the COVID-19 pandemic and identifies the associated factors, including habits, social and psychological support, sleep quality, and remote learning.

Classification of Schizophrenia by Seed-based Functional Connectivity using Prefronto-Temporal Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy.

Background: Schizophrenia is one of the most serious mental disorders. Currently, the diagnosis of schizophrenia mainly relies on scales and doctors' experience. Recently, functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has been used to distinguish schizophrenia from other mental disorders.

Who will benefit from computerized cognitive remediation therapy? Evidence from a multisite randomized controlled study in schizophrenia.

Background: Computerized cognitive remediation therapy (CCRT) is generally effective for the cognitive deficits of schizophrenia. However, there is much uncertainty about what factors mediate or moderate effectiveness and are therefore important to personalize treatment and boost its effects.

Method: In total, 311 Chinese inpatients with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV schizophrenia were randomized to receive CCRT or Active control for 12 weeks with four to five sessions per week.

Reduced prefrontal-temporal cortical activation during verbal fluency task in obsessive-compulsive disorder: A multi-channel near-infrared spectroscopy study.

Functional neuroimaging studies by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) have focused on the role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the pathophysiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, the reported areas in the PFC were inconsistent in OCD, and correlations between hemodynamic response and clinical symptoms have not been investigated. This study aimed to evaluate the hemodynamic response related to the verbal fluency task (VFT) and assess the relationship between activation and clinical status in OCD patients using a 52-channel NIRS with a wide coverage over the prefrontal and temporal cortices.

Automatic schizophrenic discrimination on fNIRS by using complex brain network analysis and SVM.

Background: Schizophrenia is a kind of serious mental illness. Due to the lack of an objective physiological data supporting and a unified data analysis method, doctors can only rely on the subjective experience of the data to distinguish normal people and patients, which easily lead to misdiagnosis. In recent years, functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) has been widely used in clinical diagnosis, it can get the hemoglobin concentration through the variation of optical intensity.

The underlying mechanism of deficits of speech comprehension and hallucinations in Chinese patients with schizophrenia.

Sentence context and fundamental frequency (F0) contours are important factors to speech perception and comprehension. In Chinese-Mandarin, lexical tones can be distinguished by the F0 contours. Previous studies found healthy people could use the cue of context to recover the phonological representations of lexical tones from the altered tonal patterns to comprehend the sentences in quiet condition, but can not in noise environment.

Prefrontal activation during a working memory task differs between patients with unipolar and bipolar depression: A preliminary exploratory study.

Background: To identify bipolar disorder during the initial stages of a depressive episode has always been a great clinical challenge. Patterns of functional brain activity may underlie the differences in the neural mechanisms of bipolar depression (BD) and unipolar depression (UD). This study aimed to investigate the differences in neural activity between BD and UD patients during executive task.

Electrophysiological basis of reading related phonological impairment in Chinese speakers with schizophrenia: An ERP study.

It has been reported in alphabetic languages that individuals with schizophrenia showed language-related cognitive impairments including phonological deficits, which were in turn associated with clinical symptoms such as auditory hallucinations and thought disorders. To date, however, the phonological deficits involved in schizophrenia in Chinese and its neural basis have not been well established. In order to establish such a relationship we conducted a behavioral study using lexical tone judgment and digit span tasks as well as an event-related potential (ERP) study with an auditory oddball paradigm, in particular, for P300 effects, the event-related brain potential (ERP) index of discrimination.

Performance of the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination (3MS) in Assessing Specific Cognitive Function in Patients Undergoing Peritoneal Dialysis.

Purpose: While Cognitive impairment (CI) has been identified as an independent risk factors for mortality in patients undergoing peritoneal dialysis (PD), it is inadequately assessed. We evaluated the applicability of the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination (3MS) in assessing specific cognitive function and compared it to a detailed neuropsychological test battery as the reference standard.

Methods: In this multicentric cross-sectional study, we enrolled 445 clinically stable patients from five PD units, who were undergoing PD for at least 3 months.

Lexical and sub-lexical reading skills and their correlation to clinical symptoms in young Chinese patients with schizophrenia.

Patients with schizophrenia often experience severe reading deficits such as oral reading and reading comprehension deficits. However, it is not known whether different types of lexical or sub-lexical components in reading are also impaired. In order to address this issue, the present study had 22 young Chinese patients with schizophrenia and 22 young Chinese normal controls undergo a battery of reading tests, which specifically measures lexical and sub-lexical components of reading in Chinese.

Evaluation of different classification methods for the diagnosis of schizophrenia based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

Background: Based on near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), recent converging evidence has been observed that patients with schizophrenia exhibit abnormal functional activities in the prefrontal cortex during a verbal fluency task (VFT). Therefore, some studies have attempted to employ NIRS measurements to differentiate schizophrenia patients from healthy controls with different classification methods. However, no systematic evaluation was conducted to compare their respective classification performances on the same study population.

Reduced prefrontal activation during a verbal fluency task in Chinese-speaking patients with schizophrenia as measured by near-infrared spectroscopy.

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has been applied to examine the possible functional alternations during the performance of cognitive tasks in schizophrenia. With this technique, previous studies have observed that patients with schizophrenia are often associated with reduced brain activation in the prefrontal cortex during the verbal fluency task (VFT) of the English version or the Japanese version. However, it remains unclear whether there is a brain functional impairment in Chinese-speaking patients with schizophrenia.

Near-infrared spectroscopy for examination of prefrontal activation during cognitive tasks in patients with major depressive disorder: a meta-analysis of observational studies.

Aims: Near-infrared spectroscopy has the potential for aiding the diagnosis of major depressive disorder. The purpose of this study was to systematically review the evidence from observational studies regarding the use of near-infrared spectroscopy in patients with major depressive disorder and to identify the characteristic pattern of prefrontal lobe activity in major depressive disorder.

Methods: medline, PubMed, Cochrane Library and Web of Science databases were searched in December 2013.

Polymorphism of the regulatory region of the presenilin-2 gene in sporadic Alzheimer's disease: a case-control study.

Objective: presenilin-2 is one of the causative genes for familial Alzheimer's disease, and the apolipoprotein E epsilon4 allele is a major genetic risk factor for late-onset and sporadic early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Polymorphism of the regulatory region of presenilin-2 has recently been reported to be associated with sporadic Alzheimer's disease in a Russian population. The purpose of this study was to determine whether Alzheimer's disease is associated with the presenilin-2 gene polymorphism and the apolipoprotein E genotype in an extended case-control study.