Publications by authors named "RH Miller"

Background: Rumination is implicated in the onset and maintenance of major depressive disorder (MDD). Rumination-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (RF-CBT) effectively targets rumination and may change resting-state brain connectivity and change in activation during a rumination induction task (RIT) post-intervention predicts depressive symptoms two years later. We examined brain activation changes during an RIT in adolescents with remitted MDD following RF-CBT and evaluated RIT reliability (or stability) during treatment as usual (TAU).

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Article Synopsis
  • * A study using murine models showed that the presence of the Nef protein in HIV increases neuroinflammation and damages brain structures compared to Nef-deficient strains.
  • * Findings suggest that Nef plays a key role in worsening neuronal injury and may guide future research on HAND mechanisms and treatments.
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HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) are a spectrum of cognitive impairments that continue to affect approximately half of all HIV-positive individuals despite effective viral suppression through antiretroviral therapy (ART). White matter pathologies have persisted in the ART era, and the degree of white matter damage correlates with the degree of neurocognitive impairment in patients with HAND. The HIV protein Nef has been implicated in HAND pathogenesis, but its effect on white matter damage has not been well characterized.

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Disease, injury and aging induce pathological reactive astrocyte states that contribute to neurodegeneration. Modulating reactive astrocytes therefore represent an attractive therapeutic strategy. Here we describe the development of an astrocyte phenotypic screening platform for identifying chemical modulators of astrocyte reactivity.

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Background: In transtibial limb loss, computer simulations suggest that the maintenance of muscle strength between pre- and post-limb loss can maintain the pre-limb loss metabolic cost. These results are consistent with comparable costs found experimentally in select cases of high functioning military service members with transtibial limb loss. It is unlikely that similar results would be found with transfemoral limb loss, although the theoretical limits are not known.

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Motivated by the complex and multifactorial etiologies of osteoarthritis, here we use a comprehensive approach evaluating knee joint health after unilateral lower limb loss. Thirty-eight male Service members with traumatic, unilateral lower limb loss (mean age = 38 yr) participated in a prospective, two-year longitudinal study comprehensively evaluating contralateral knee joint health (i.e.

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Astrocytes and microglia play pivotal roles in central nervous system development, injury responses, and neurodegenerative diseases. These highly dynamic cells exhibit rapid responses to environmental changes and display significant heterogeneity in terms of morphology, transcriptional profiles, and functions. While our understanding of the functions of glial cells in health and disease has advanced substantially, there remains a need for in vitro, cell-specific analyses conducted in the context of insults or injuries to comprehensively characterize distinct cell populations.

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Insults to the central nervous system (CNS) elicit common glial responses including microglial activation evidenced by functional, morphological, and phenotypic changes, as well as astrocyte reactions including hypertrophy, altered process orientation, and changes in gene expression and function. However, the cellular and molecular mechanisms that initiate and modulate such glial response are less well-defined. Here we show that an adult cortical lesion generates a population of ultrastructurally unique microglial-like cells that express Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transcription factors including Snail.

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Background: Rumination is a transdiagnostic problem that is common in major depressive disorder (MDD). Rumination Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (RF-CBT) explicitly targets the ruminative habit. This study examined changes in brain activation during a rumination induction task in adolescents with remitted MDD following RF-CBT.

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Objective: To investigate the power of DNA methylation variability in sperm cells in assessing male fertility potential.

Design: Retrospective cohort.

Setting: Fertility care centers.

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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is characterized by a compromised blood-brain barrier (BBB) resulting in central nervous system (CNS) entry of peripheral lymphocytes, including T cells and B cells. While T cells have largely been considered the main contributors to neuroinflammation in MS, the success of B cell depletion therapies suggests an important role for B cells in MS pathology. Glial cells in the CNS are essential components in both disease progression and recovery, raising the possibility that they represent targets for B cell functions.

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High-velocity actions are central to clinical and athletic performance, with jumping used to assess outcomes in sports medicine. Ground reaction force (GRF)-based methods are the standard for computing jump characteristics, but require mass estimation and GRF integration, potentially resulting in mass errors which influence outcomes. This study investigated how simulated mass errors influenced the centre of mass (CoM) trajectory during a countermovement jump.

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Complex diseases have multifactorial etiologies making actionable diagnostic biomarkers difficult to identify. Diagnostic research must expand beyond single or a handful of genetic or epigenetic targets for complex disease and explore a broader system of biological pathways. With the objective to develop a diagnostic tool designed to analyze a comprehensive network of epigenetic profiles in complex diseases, we used publicly available DNA methylation data from over 2,400 samples representing 20 cell types and various diseases.

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The myelin sheath facilitates signal conduction along axons in white matter tracts, and when disrupted, can result in significant functional deficits. Demyelination, observed in diseases like multiple sclerosis and optic neuritis, are associated with neural degeneration, however the extent of this damage on upstream circuitry is not well understood. Here we use the MBP-iCP9 mouse model to induce selective oligodendrocyte ablation in the optic nerve at P14 via a chemical inducer of dimerization (CID), resulting in partial demyelination of retinal ganglion cell (RGC) axons with minimal inflammation after two weeks.

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Athletic shoes that induce dorsiflexion in standing can improve jump height compared to traditional athletic shoes that induce plantarflexion, but it is unknown if dorsiflexion shoes (DF) also affect landing biomechanics associated with lower extremity injury risk. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate if DF adversely affect landing mechanics related to patellofemoral pain and anterior cruciate ligament injury risk compared to neutral (NT) and plantarflexion (PF) shoes. Sixteen females (21.

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Background: The objective of this study was to investigate differences in tibiofemoral joint contact forces between individuals with moderate medial OA who exhibit radiographic knee OA progression within 3 years versus those who do not, and to understand the relationship between model-predicted contact forces and net external moments for this population.

Methods: 27 individuals with moderate medial compartment knee OA underwent baseline instrumented gait analysis. OA progressors were defined as those who experienced at least a one grade increase in medial joint space narrowing at three years.

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Background: The knee adduction moment, a biomechanical risk factor of knee osteoarthritis, is typically measured in a gait laboratory with expensive equipment and inverse dynamics modeling software. We aimed to develop a framework for a portable knee adduction moment estimation for healthy female individuals using deep learning neural networks and custom instrumented insole and evaluated its accuracy compared to the standard inverse dynamics approach.

Methods: Feed-forward, convolutional, and recurrent neural networks were applied to the data extracted from five piezo-resistive force sensors attached to the insole of a shoe.

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The global pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has highlighted the disparity between developed and developing countries for infectious disease surveillance and the sequencing of pathogen genomes. The majority of SARS-CoV-2 sequences published are from Europe, North America, and Asia. Between April 2020 and January 2022, 795 SARS-CoV-2-positive nares swabs from individuals in the U.

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Background: Individuals with lower limb amputation exhibit lower residual limb strength compared to their sound limb. Deficits in residual limb knee flexion and extension strength may impact functional performance during tasks relevant to daily living.

Research Question: Does knee flexor and extensor strength in the residual limb impact functional outcome measures, such as walking energetics and performance metrics, in individuals with unilateral transtibial amputation?

Methods: Fourteen individuals with traumatic unilateral transtibial amputation were recruited for this observational study.

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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a central nervous system (CNS) autoimmune disease characterized by inflammation, demyelination, and neurodegeneration. The ideal MS therapy would both specifically inhibit the underlying autoimmune response and promote repair/regeneration of myelin as well as maintenance of axonal integrity. Currently approved MS therapies consist of non-specific immunosuppressive molecules/antibodies which block activation or CNS homing of autoreactive T cells, but there are no approved therapies for stimulation of remyelination nor maintenance of axonal integrity.

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Introduction: Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a primary source of long-term disability and decreased quality of life (QoL) in service members (SM) with lower limb loss (LL); however, it remains difficult to preemptively identify and mitigate the progression of KOA and KOA-related symptoms. The objective of this study was to explore a comprehensive cross-sectional evaluation, at the baseline of a prospective study, for characterizing KOA in SM with traumatic LL.

Materials And Methods: Thirty-eight male SM with traumatic unilateral LL (23 transtibial and 15 transfemoral), 9.

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How common are mental-health difficulties among applied psychologists? This question is paradoxically neglected, perhaps because disclosure and discussion of these experiences remain taboo within the field. This study documented high rates of mental-health difficulties (both diagnosed and undiagnosed) among faculty, graduate students, and others affiliated with accredited doctoral and internship programs in clinical, counseling, and school psychology. More than 80% of respondents ( = 1,395 of 1,692) reported a lifetime history mental-health difficulties, and nearly half (48%) reported a diagnosed mental disorder.

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Background: Astrocytes and microglia are essential cellular elements of the CNS that are critical for normal development, function, and injury responses. Both cell types are highly pleiotropic and respond rapidly to environmental changes, making them challenging to characterize. One approach is to develop efficient isolation paradigms of distinct cell populations, allowing for characterization of their roles in distinct CNS regions and in pathological states.

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Super-hydrophobic surfaces (SHS) usually are formed from a combination of low surface energy materials and micro/nanostructures two-step approaches, and they have promising applications in material corrosion protection. In this paper, the authors obtained a super-hydrophobic surface onto the copper plates through a rapid one-step electrodeposition process from the electrolytic solution containing cobalt nitrate (Co(NO)·6HO), myristic acid, and ethanol. The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and polarization curve are adopted to evaluate a super-hydrophobic surface's durability and corrosion resistance.

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Retinal ganglion cells generate a pattern of action potentials to communicate visual information from the retina to cortical areas. Myelin, an insulating sheath, wraps axonal segments to facilitate signal propagation and when deficient, can impair visual function. Optic nerve development and initial myelination has largely been considered completed by the fifth postnatal week.

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