Temporal dynamics of affective scene processing in the healthy adult human brain.

Understanding how the brain distinguishes emotional from neutral scenes is crucial for advancing brain-computer interfaces, enabling real-time emotion detection for faster, more effective responses, and improving treatments for emotional disorders like depression and anxiety. However, inconsistent research findings have arisen from differences in study settings, such as variations in the time windows, brain regions, and emotion categories examined across studies. This review sought to compile the existing literature on the timing at which the adult brain differentiates basic affective from neutral scenes in less than one second, as previous studies have consistently shown that the brain can begin recognizing emotions within just a few milliseconds.

The Impact of Intravenous Ketamine on Attentional Bias: Probing Mechanisms of Rapid-Acting Antidepressant Effects Across Two Clinical Studies.

Background: Ketamine is known for its rapid antidepressant effect, but its impact on affective information processing (including attentional bias, a putative cognitive mechanism of depression), remains largely unexplored. We leveraged a novel measurement of attentional bias and sought to: (1) establish adequate test-retest reliability and validity among depressed participants prior to ketamine treatment; and (2) harness a single dose of ketamine to assess mechanistic shifts in attentional bias and their relation to antidepressant efficacy.

Methods: A novel dual probe video task was used to index attentional bias toward sad film clips.

Replicable and robust cellular and biochemical blood marker signatures of depression and depressive symptoms.

Background: Identification of replicable and robust peripheral blood-based markers associated with depression remains elusive, given that studies frequently identify potential biomarkers that ultimately fail to replicate in other studies, impeding progress in psychiatric research. Peripheral biochemical and cellular markers (PBCs; e.g.

Investigating Medin Cleavage Accessibility in MfgE8: Conformational Insights Derived from Molecular Dynamics Simulations and AlphaFold2 Models.

Recent studies have indicated that the human amyloidogenic protein medin is associated with a range of vascular diseases, including aortic aneurysms, vascular dementia, and Alzheimer's disease. Medin accumulates in the vasculature with age, leading to endothelial dysfunction through oxidative and nitrative stress and inducing pro-inflammatory activation. Medin is a cleavage product from the C2 domain of MfgE8.

Intolerance of uncertainty as a predictor of anxiety severity and trajectory during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Efforts to identify risk and resilience factors for anxiety severity and course during the COVID-19 pandemic have focused primarily on demographic rather than psychological variables. Intolerance of uncertainty (IU), a transdiagnostic risk factor for anxiety, may be a particularly relevant vulnerability factor.

Method: N = 641 adults with pre-pandemic anxiety data reported their anxiety, IU, and other pandemic and mental health-related variables at least once and up to four times during the COVID-19 pandemic, with assessments beginning in May 2020 through March 2021.

Characterization of Olive Oil Phenolic Extracts and Their Effects on the Aggregation of the Alzheimer's Amyloid-β Peptide and Tau.

The dietary consumption of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is believed to slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) symptoms. Its protective mechanisms are unclear, but specific EVOO phenolic compounds can individually impede the aggregation of amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides and the microtubule-associated protein tau, two important pathological manifestations of AD. It is unknown, however, whether the numerous and variable phenolic compounds that are consumed in dietary EVOO can collectively alter tau and Aβ aggregation as effectively as the individual compounds.

AttentionCARE: replicability of a BCI for the clinical application of augmented reality-guided EEG-based attention modification for adolescents at high risk for depression.

Affect-biased attention is the phenomenon of prioritizing attention to emotionally salient stimuli and away from goal-directed stimuli. It is thought that affect-biased attention to emotional stimuli is a driving factor in the development of depression. This effect has been well-studied in adults, but research shows that this is also true during adolescence, when the severity of depressive symptoms are correlated with the magnitude of affect-biased attention to negative emotional stimuli.

Enhanced stabilisation and reduced fibril forming potential of an amyloidogenic light chain using a variable heavy domain to mimic the homodimer complex.

Light chain amyloidosis (AL), is classified as a plasma cell dyscrasia, whereby a mutant plasma cell multiplies uncontrollably and secretes enormous amounts of immunoglobulin-free light chain (FLC) fragments. These FLCs undergo a process of misfolding and aggregation into amyloid fibrils, that can cause irreversible system-wide damage. Current treatments that focus on depleting the underlying plasma cell clone are often poorly tolerated, particularly in patients with severe cardiac involvement, meaning patient prognosis is poor.

Improved implicit self-esteem is associated with extended antidepressant effects following a novel synergistic intervention.

Introduction: In a previously published randomized controlled trial, automated self-association training (ASAT), a novel digital intervention, was found to extend the rapid antidepressant effect of a single infusion of ketamine for at least 30 days. In this secondary analysis, we aimed to understand the potential role of implicit self-esteem in the combined antidepressant effect of ketamine and ASAT training, by investigating the novel synergistic treatment's effects on implicit self-associations and their relation to symptom improvement.

Methods: A total of 154 adults (ages 18-60) with treatment-resistant unipolar depression and lower-than-normative explicit self-esteem were randomized in a double-blind, parallel-arm design to receive one of three treatment allocations: an active/active treatment combination consisting of one infusion of ketamine (0.

Experiences of Awe Mediate Ketamine's Antidepressant Effects: Findings From a Randomized Controlled Trial in Treatment-Resistant Depression.

Background: Ketamine, an NMDA receptor antagonist, provides rapid antidepressant effects. Although much research has focused on neural and molecular mechanisms of action, it is critical to also consider psychological mechanisms that may contribute to its therapeutic efficacy. The construct of an awe-inducing experience, which is a well-validated psychological phenomenon tied to emotional well-being, had not been applied previously in ketamine research.

Exploring the impact of music on response to ketamine/esketamine: A scoping review.

Music and ketamine are both known to affect therapeutic outcomes, but few studies have investigated their co-administration. This scoping review describes the existing literature on the joint use of music and ketamine-or esketamine (the S(+) enantiomer of ketamine)-in humans. The review considers that extant studies have explored the intersection of ketamine/esketamine and music in healthy volunteers and in patients of various age groups, at different dosages, through different treatment processes, and have varied the sequence of playing music relative to ketamine/esketamine administration.

Neural connectivity moderators and mechanisms of ketamine treatment among treatment-resistant depressed patients: a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Intravenous (IV) ketamine has emerged as a rapid and effective treatment for TRD. However, the specific neural mechanisms of ketamine's effects in humans remains unclear. Although neuroplasticity is implicated as a mechanism of action in animal models, relatively few randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in TRD patients have examined ketamine's impact on functional connectivity, a posited functional marker of neuroplasticity-particularly in the context of a mood-induction paradigm (termed miFC).

Design of a syringe extension device (Chloe SED®) for low-resource settings in sub-Saharan Africa: a circular economy approach.

Underfunded healthcare infrastructures in low-resource settings in sub-Saharan Africa have resulted in a lack of medical devices crucial to provide healthcare for all. A representative example of this scenario is medical devices to administer paracervical blocks during gynaecological procedures. Devices needed for this procedure are usually unavailable or expensive.

Deep Learning-based structure modelling illuminates structure and function in uncharted regions of β-solenoid fold space.

Repeat proteins are common in all domains of life and exhibit a wide range of functions. One class of repeat protein contains solenoid folds where the repeating unit consists of β-strands separated by tight turns. β-solenoids have distinguishing structural features such as handedness, twist, oligomerisation state, coil shape and size which give rise to their diversity.

Exploring the multiverse: the impact of researchers' analytic decisions on relationships between depression and inflammatory markers.

In recent years, a replication crisis in psychiatry has led to a growing focus on the impact of researchers' analytic decisions on the results from studies. Multiverse analyses involve examining results across a wide array of possible analytic decisions (e.g.

Rapid neuroplasticity changes and response to intravenous ketamine: a randomized controlled trial in treatment-resistant depression.

Intravenous ketamine is posited to rapidly reverse depression by rapidly enhancing neuroplasticity. In human patients, we quantified gray matter microstructural changes on a rapid (24-h) timescale within key regions where neuroplasticity enhancements post-ketamine have been implicated in animal models. In this study, 98 unipolar depressed adults who failed at least one antidepressant medication were randomized 2:1 to a single infusion of intravenous ketamine (0.

Resting-State Functional Connectivity Differences Following Experimental Manipulation of the Orbitofrontal Cortex in Two Directions via Theta-Burst Stimulation.

Compulsive behaviors (CBs) have been linked to orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) function in animal and human studies. However, brain regions function not in isolation but as components of widely distributed brain networks-such as those indexed via resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC). Sixty-nine individuals with CB disorders were randomized to receive a single session of neuromodulation targeting the left OFC-intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) or continuous TBS (cTBS)-followed immediately by computer-based behavioral "habit override" training.