Effects of phosphatidylcholine and betaine supplements on women's serum choline.

Background: Maternal phosphatidylcholine supplements have shown benefit in the development of the human fetal brain, as assessed both by newborn physiological measurements and by a related decrease in later childhood behavioral abnormalities. However, the relatively low choline component of phosphatidylcholine mandates high doses that are difficult for pregnant women to consume.

Objective: Betaine can substitute for some choline effects.

Positive predictive value of medical student specialty choices.

Background: Although medical school programs oriented toward postgraduate specialty training have the potential to reduce the duration and cost of medical school for US medical students, success depends on the ability of students to predict their postgraduate specialties. It is clear that first-year choices are poorly predictive, but it is not known when predictions become sufficiently reliable to support specialty-oriented learning programs. We therefore examined the predictive value of specialty preferences expressed at the ends of the first, second and third years of medical school and asked whether concurrent expressions of confidence in choices improved predictive ability.

Sleep Spindles and Auditory Sensory Gating: Two Measures of Cerebral Inhibition in Preschool-Aged Children are Strongly Correlated.

Introduction: Sleep spindles and P50 sensory gating are both reflective of cerebral inhibition, however, are differentially active during different phases of sleep. Assessing whether sleep spindles and P50 sensory gating correlate is a first step to evaluate whether these 2 forms of cerebral inhibition reflect overlapping neural circuits.

Methods: EEG data were collected between midnight and 6:00 AM on 13 healthy preschool-aged children.

Cortisol during human fetal life: Characterization of a method for processing small quantities of newborn hair from 26 to 42 weeks gestation.

Objective: Fetal cortisol may be reflected in hair collected shortly after birth. The objective of this study was to determine the range of human fetal hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) in live-born neonates using an approach for processing small quantities of hair.

Materials And Methods: Hair was cut on the day of birth from neonates and their mothers, born between 26 and 42 weeks gestational age (GA).

Measures of Maternal Stress and Mood in Relation to Preterm Birth.

Objective: To investigate the relationships between psychological and physiologic measures of stress, mood, and gestational age at delivery and preterm birth.

Methods: This prospective cohort study recruited healthy women in the early second trimester who were 18-45 years of age. Validated psychological measures of perceived stress, depressive symptoms, and anxiety were completed at 16, 22, 28, 34, and 40 weeks of gestation.

Sleep Moderates and Mediates the Relationship Between Acculturation and Depressive Symptoms in Pregnant Mexican-American Women.

Objective: Greater acculturation is associated with adverse perinatal outcomes in Mexican-American women, but the mechanisms by which acculturation influences perinatal outcomes are unclear. Pregnant acculturated Mexican-American women are more likely to engage in unhealthy prenatal behaviors relative to those less acculturated, including poor sleep. As sleep disruptions are associated with acculturation and negative perinatal outcomes, particularly maternal depression, alterations in sleep may adversely affect pregnant Mexican-American women.

Perinatal Phosphatidylcholine Supplementation and Early Childhood Behavior Problems: Evidence for CHRNA7 Moderation.

Objective: α7-Nicotinic receptors are involved in the final maturation of GABA inhibitory synapses before birth. Choline at levels found in the amniotic fluid is an agonist at α7-nicotinic receptors. The authors conducted a double-blind placebo-controlled trial to assess whether high-dose oral phosphatidylcholine supplementation during pregnancy to increase maternal amniotic fluid choline levels would enhance fetal development of cerebral inhibition and, as a result, decrease childhood behavior problems associated with later mental illness.

Characterization of choline transporters in the human placenta over gestation.

Introduction: The developing fetus relies on the maternal blood supply to provide the choline it requires for making membrane lipids, synthesizing acetylcholine, and performing important methylation reactions. It is vital, therefore, that the placenta is efficient at transporting choline from the maternal to the fetal circulation. Although choline transporters have been found in term placenta samples, little is known about what cell types express specific choline transporters and how expression of the transporters may change over gestation.

Thought Disorder in Preschool Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Preschool identification of and intervention for psychiatric symptoms has the potential for lifelong benefits. However, preschool identification of thought disorder, a symptom associated with long term risk for social and cognitive dysfunction, has received little attention with previous work limited to examining preschoolers with severe emotional and behavioral dysregulation. Using story-stem methodology, 12 children with ADHD and 12 children without ADHD, ages 4.

Prenatal choline and the development of schizophrenia.

Background: The primary prevention of illness at the population level, the ultimate aim of medicine, seems out of reach for schizophrenia. Schizophrenia has a strong genetic component, and its pathogenesis begins long before the emergence of psychosis, as early as fetal brain development. Cholinergic neurotransmission at nicotinic receptors is a pathophysiological mechanism related to one aspect of this genetic risk.

Endophenotypes in Schizophrenia for the Perinatal Period: Criteria for Validation.

Endophenotypes are disease-associated phenotypes that are thought to reflect the neurobiological or other mechanisms that underlie the more overt symptoms of a psychiatric illness. Endophenotypes have been critical in understanding the genetics, neurobiology, and treatment of schizophrenia. Because psychiatric illnesses have multiple causes, including both genetic and nongenetic risk factors, an endophenotype linked to one of the mechanisms may be expressed more frequently than the disease itself.

An Institutional Postdoctoral Research Training Program: Increasing Productivity of Postdoctoral Trainees.

Objective: Postdoctoral training is a critical stage of career development, and there has been a national effort to increase the consistency and quality of postdoctoral experiences. However, much of the effort has gone towards improving the process of training with less effort focusing on the content of what should be achieved during postdoctoral training, primarily because of a lack of empirical evidence in this area. One possible predictor of later scientific productivity is the number of peer-reviewed papers published during postdoctoral training.

The human CHRNA7 and CHRFAM7A genes: A review of the genetics, regulation, and function.

The human α7 neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptor gene (CHRNA7) is ubiquitously expressed in both the central nervous system and in the periphery. CHRNA7 is genetically linked to multiple disorders with cognitive deficits, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, ADHD, epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, and Rett syndrome. The regulation of CHRNA7 is complex; more than a dozen mechanisms are known, one of which is a partial duplication of the parent gene.

Stability of P50 auditory sensory gating during sleep from infancy to 4 years of age.

The stability of cerebral inhibition was assessed across early childhood using a paired-click auditory sensory gating paradigm. The P50 ERP was measured during REM (or its infant analogue, active sleep) and NREM sleep in 14 children at approximately 3 months of age and again at approximately 4 years of age. Evoked response amplitudes, latencies, and the S2/S1 ratio of the amplitudes of the evoked responses were compared between the two visits.

Reduced brain resting-state network specificity in infants compared with adults.

Purpose: Infant resting-state networks do not exhibit the same connectivity patterns as those of young children and adults. Current theories of brain development emphasize developmental progression in regional and network specialization. We compared infant and adult functional connectivity, predicting that infants would exhibit less regional specificity and greater internetwork communication compared with adults.

Neuropsychological functioning in childhood-onset psychosis and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Background: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and childhood-onset psychosis (COP) are chronic, heterogeneous disorders with symptoms that frequently co-occur, but the etiology of their comorbidity is unknown. Studies of each disorder indicate that both ADHD and COP are associated with a range of neuropsychological weaknesses, but few neuropsychological studies have directly compared groups with ADHD and COP.

Methods: Groups with ADHD only (32 F, 48 M), COP only (5 F, 5 M), ADHD + COP (9 F, 21 M), and a control group with neither disorder (25 F, 44 M) completed a neuropsychological battery that included measures of verbal working memory, response inhibition, response speed and variability, and selective attention.

P50 sensory gating in infants.

Attentional deficits are common in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders including attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, autism, bipolar mood disorder, and schizophrenia. There has been increasing interest in the neurodevelopmental components of these attentional deficits; neurodevelopmental meaning that while the deficits become clinically prominent in childhood or adulthood, the deficits are the results of problems in brain development that begin in infancy or even prenatally. Despite this interest, there are few methods for assessing attention very early in infancy.

Diminished Infant P50 Sensory Gating Predicts Increased 40-Month-Old Attention, Anxiety/Depression, and Externalizing Symptoms.

Objective: When behavioral problems resulting from attentional difficulties present, often in preschool, it is unknown whether these problems represent preexisting altered brain development or new brain changes. This study examines whether infant sensory gating of auditory evoked potentials predicts parent-reported behavior at 40 months.

Method: P50 sensory gating, an auditory evoked potential measure reflective of inhibitory processes in the brain, was measured in 50 infants around 70 days old.

Violence in childhood-onset schizophrenia.

Violence is elevated in older adolescents and adults with schizophrenia; however, little is known about younger children. This report focuses on rates of violence in younger children with schizophrenic-spectrum illnesses. A retrospective review of structured diagnostic interviews from a case series of 81 children, ages 4-15 years of age, with childhood onset of schizophrenic-spectrum illness is reported.

Paternal psychopathology and maternal depressive symptom trajectory during the first year postpartum.

Understanding parental psychopathology interaction is important in preventing negative family outcomes. This study investigated the effect of paternal psychiatric history on maternal depressive symptom trajectory from birth to 12 months postpartum. Maternal Edinburgh Postpartum Depression screens were collected at 1, 6 and 12 months and fathers' psychiatric diagnoses were assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV from 64 families.

Perinatal choline effects on neonatal pathophysiology related to later schizophrenia risk.

Objective: Deficient cerebral inhibition is a pathophysiological brain deficit related to poor sensory gating and attention in schizophrenia and other disorders. Cerebral inhibition develops perinatally, influenced by genetic and in utero factors. Amniotic choline activates fetal α7-nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and facilitates development of cerebral inhibition.

Preschoolers of Mothers with Affective and Anxiety Disorders Show Impairments in Cognitive Inhibition During a Chimeric Animal Stroop.

Aims: To determine whether maternal affective and anxiety disorders are associated with cognitive inhibitory deficits in four-year-old children utilizing a chimeric animal stroop task, a childhood adaptation of the traditional stroop task.

Study Design: Blinded Cross-Sectional Study.

Place And Duration Of Study: Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine, data collected from June 2009 to October 2010.

In Six-month-old Infants, Prenatal Exposure to Maternal Anxiety is Associated with Less Developed Smooth Pursuit Eye Movements: An Initial Study.

Aims: There are an increasing number of reports suggesting an association between maternal anxiety experienced during pregnancy and adverse outcomes of the offspring. However, exploration of the biological changes in the brain that mediate that relationship has been hampered by the lack of appropriate biomarkers. This report represents an initial step exploring whether a potential infant biomarker, smooth pursuit eye movements, may be associated with prenatal exposure to maternal anxiety.