Publications by authors named "Tara Moore"

Article Synopsis
  • Recent advancements in extracellular vesicle (EV) biology are recognized for their potential impact on health and disease, particularly in vision research.
  • The National Eye Institute (NEI) highlighted EV research in its 2021-2025 Strategic Plan as a key focus area within Regenerative Medicine.
  • A workshop was held with twenty experts to assess the state of EV research and identify opportunities for its application in diagnosing and treating eye diseases.
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Normal aging, though lacking widespread neurodegeneration, is nevertheless characterized by cognitive impairment in learning, memory, and executive function. The aged brain is spared from neuron loss, but white matter is lost and damage to myelin sheaths accumulates. This myelin damage is strongly associated with cognitive impairment.

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Background: Chronic illness diagnosis while living in low resourced communities creates ongoing adversity in the process of adaptation. Resilience is an important phenomenon of study to improve health outcomes. The subject in this particular population has been poorly studied.

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Acetylcholine is a robust neuromodulator of the limbic system and a critical regulator of arousal and emotions. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the amygdala (AMY) are key limbic structures that are both densely innervated by cholinergic afferents and interact with each other for emotional regulation. The ACC is composed of functionally distinct dorsal (A24), rostral (A32), and ventral (A25) areas that differ in their connections with the AMY.

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The application of artificial intelligence (AI) to summarize a whole-brain magnetic resonance image (MRI) into an effective "brain age" metric can provide a holistic, individualized, and objective view of how the brain interacts with various factors (e.g., genetics and lifestyle) during aging.

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Cognitive impairment in learning, memory, and executive function occurs in normal aging even in the absence of Alzheimer's disease (AD). While neurons do not degenerate in humans or monkeys free of AD, there are structural changes including synapse loss and dendritic atrophy, especially in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), and these correlate with cognitive age-related impairment. Developmental studies revealed activity-dependent neuronal properties that lead to synapse remodeling by microglia.

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Students are less likely to hear and understand teacher-delivered directions or instructions when they are attending to other activities (e.g., a classmate, a previously assigned task).

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Understanding the microglial neuro-immune interactions in the primate brain is vital to developing therapeutics for cortical injury, such as stroke or traumatic brain injury. Our previous work showed that mesenchymal-derived extracellular vesicles (MSC-EVs) enhanced motor recovery in aged rhesus monkeys following injury of primary motor cortex (M1), by promoting homeostatic ramified microglia, reducing injury-related neuronal hyperexcitability, and enhancing synaptic plasticity in perilesional cortices. A focal lesion was induced via surgical ablation of pial blood vessels over lying the cortical hand representation of M1 of aged female rhesus monkeys, that received intravenous infusions of either vehicle (veh) or EVs 24 h and again 14 days post-injury.

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Article Synopsis
  • Postmortem studies are the gold standard for examining brain structure at a cellular level, but non-invasive methods like diffusion MRI (dMRI) are needed for studying development, aging, and diseases.
  • This study compared dMRI measures with histology in four rhesus monkeys, focusing on different regions of gray matter to see how well dMRI reflects cellular structure.
  • Results indicate that certain dMRI measures (trace and mean squared displacement) accurately capture details about cell composition and organization, suggesting they could be effective non-invasive biomarkers for future research on brain changes due to development, aging, and disease.
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Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of death worldwide despite the use of available cardiovascular disease risk prediction tools. Identification of high-risk individuals via risk stratification and screening at sub-clinical stages, which may be offered by ocular screening, is important to prevent major adverse cardiac events. Retinal microvasculature has been widely researched for potential application in both diabetes and cardiovascular disease risk prediction.

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Introduction: Strong links can be made between chronic illness, low-resource communities, and poor health outcomes. One such area is the Mississippi Delta within the United States that has identified its residents rank the lowest in overall health indicators with high rates of chronic illness.

Objective: This study aimed to explore the phenomenon of resilience in the setting of chronic illness and low resourced communities to gain baseline knowledge of the topic to improve protective resilience within the community.

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Article Synopsis
  • * The current study employed advanced imaging and gene analysis techniques to explore how these treatments influence microglial and neuronal interactions in injured brain areas, comparing treated monkeys to healthy controls.
  • * Findings demonstrated that EV treatment improved recovery by mitigating synaptic loss and inflammation, particularly in the motor cortex, which helps maintain the brain’s synaptic networks and overall function after injury.
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The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to explore the lived experience and meaning of resilience of individuals in the setting of chronic illness who reside in low-resource communities of the Mississippi Delta, USA. Descriptive phenomenology and Polk's resilience theory were utilized that focused on the individual's lifeworld and the meaning of resilience. The descriptive phenomenological psychological by reduction method (DPPRM) was used for the analysis and further linked to specific aspects of resilience and Polk's resilience theory operationalized patterns.

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Age-related declines in cognitive abilities occur as early as middle-age in humans and rhesus monkeys. Specifically, performance by aged individuals on tasks of executive function (EF) and working memory (WM) is characterized by greater frequency of errors, shorter memory spans, increased frequency of perseverative responses, impaired use of feedback and reduced speed of processing. However, how aging precisely differentially impacts specific aspects of these cognitive functions and the distinct brain areas mediating cognition are not well understood.

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Both the medial temporal lobe and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex have been implicated in learning and memory. However, it has been difficult to ascertain the degree to which the two structures are dependent on each other or interact in subserving these cognitive functions. To investigate this question directly, we prepared two group of monkeys.

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Down syndrome (DS), or trisomy 21, is manifested in a variety of anatomical and cellular abnormalities resulting in intellectual deficits and early onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD) with no effective treatments available to alleviate the pathologies associated with the disorder. The therapeutic potential of extracellular vesicles (EVs) has emerged recently in relation to various neurological conditions. We have previously demonstrated the therapeutic efficacy of mesenchymal stromal cell-derived EVs (MSC-EVs) in cellular and functional recovery in a rhesus monkey model of cortical injury.

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Age-related declines in cognitive abilities occur as early as middle-age in humans and rhesus monkeys. Specifically, performance by aged individuals on tasks of executive function (EF) and working memory (WM) is characterized by greater frequency of errors, shorter memory spans, increased frequency of perseverative responses, impaired use of feedback and reduced speed of processing. However, how aging precisely differentially impacts specific aspects of these cognitive functions and the distinct brain areas mediating cognition are not well understood.

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Introduction: Diabetes is a major public health issue that is approaching epidemic proportions globally. Diabetes mortality is increasing in all ethnic groups, irrespective of socio-economic class. Obesity is often seen as the main contributor to an increasing prevalence of diabetes.

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Background: Atherosclerotic heart disease often remains asymptomatic until presentation with a major adverse cardiovascular event. Primary preventive therapies improve outcomes, but conventional screening often misattributes risk. Vascular imaging can be utilised to detect atherosclerosis, but often involves ionising radiation.

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Objective: Coronary microvascular dysfunction (CMD) is a cause of ischaemia with non-obstructive coronary arteries (INOCA). It is notoriously underdiagnosed due to the need for invasive microvascular function testing. We hypothesized that systemic microvascular dysfunction could be demonstrated non-invasively in the microcirculation of the bulbar conjunctiva in patients with CMD.

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Article Synopsis
  • Research shows that the reorganization of motor circuits in the cortex is key to recovery after cortical injuries, but how this happens is still not fully understood.
  • A study using mesenchymal stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) in rhesus monkeys demonstrated significant improvements in fine motor skills and reduced inflammation after treatment post-cortical damage.
  • The findings indicated that EV treatment enhanced neuron activity in the motor areas of the brain while lessening the damage to lower motor neurons in the spinal cord, suggesting a promising anti-inflammatory role in recovering motor function.
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Purpose: To evaluate the therapeutic benefit of a novel peptide, ALM201, in ocular pathologic vascularization.

Design: Experimental study in mouse, rat, and rabbit animal models.

Participants: Ten-week-old Lister Hooded male rats, 8-week-old Brown Norway male rats, 9-day-old C57BL/6J mice, and 12-month-old New Zealand male rabbits.

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We conducted a 16-week randomized controlled trial in psychiatric outpatients with a lifetime diagnosis of a mood and/or anxiety disorder to measure the impact of a first-of-its-kind precision digital intervention software solution based on social rhythm regulation principles. The full intent-to-treat (ITT) sample consisted of 133 individuals, aged 18-65. An exploratory sub-sample of interest was those individuals who presented with moderately severe to severe depression at study entry (baseline PHQ-8 score ≥15;  = 28).

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Age-associated cognitive decline is common among otherwise healthy elderly people, even in the absence of Alzheimer's disease and neuron loss. Instead, white matter loss and myelin damage are strongly associated with cognitive decline. Myelin is subject to lifelong oxidative stress that damages the myelin sheath, which is repaired by cells of the oligodendrocyte lineage.

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