Cannabis Use and Trajectories of Depression and Stress Across the Prenatal Period.

Importance: Cannabis use among pregnant individuals has increased. Depression and stress are frequently reported motives for cannabis use that may prolong using cannabis during pregnancy.

Objective: To examine associations between changes in depression, stress, and self-reported prenatal cannabis use (PCU), to examine motives for PCU, and to examine whether trajectories of depression and stress vary across individuals who report using cannabis to cope with mental health symptoms and/or stress, those who use cannabis for other reasons, and those who do not report PCU.

Adolescent social anxiety is associated with diminished discrimination of anticipated threat and safety in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis.

Social anxiety-which typically emerges in adolescence-lies on a continuum and, when extreme, can be devastating. Socially anxious individuals are prone to heightened fear, anxiety, and the avoidance of contexts associated with potential social scrutiny. Yet most neuroimaging research has focused on acute social threat.

Association between Time with Open Ductus Arteriosus and Outcomes in Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia.

Introduction: While a patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) helps offload the right ventricle in the acute congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH)-associated pulmonary hypertension, its role on long-term outcomes in CDH has not been investigated. Our objective was to examine associations of the PDA with long-term clinical outcomes in CDH.

Methods: A single-center retrospective descriptive study of 122 CDH patients dichotomized by duration with PDA, as ≤14 versus >14 postnatal days (PND) and ≤30 versus >30 PND.

Associations between Parenting and Cognitive and Language Abilities at 2 Years of Age Depend on Prenatal Exposure to Disadvantage.

Objective: To investigate whether parenting or neonatal brain volumes mediate associations between prenatal social disadvantage (PSD) and cognitive/language abilities and whether these mechanisms vary by level of disadvantage.

Study Design: Pregnant women were recruited prospectively from obstetric clinics in St Louis, Missouri. PSD encompassed access to social (eg, education) and material (eg, income to needs, health insurance, area deprivation, and nutrition) resources during pregnancy.

Leaders' Perspectives on Approaches and Challenges in Enacting Faculty Vitality in the Contemporary Landscape of Academic Medicine: A Deductive Thematic Analysis.

Continual changes in organizational structures within medical schools have contributed to the expanded scope and the centralization of faculty affairs offices, which support faculty administration and supportive functions. Using qualitative interviews, we investigated the perspectives of academic medicine faculty affairs leaders regarding their offices' priorities in sustaining faculty vitality in the face of current and anticipated challenges. A semi-structured interview protocol based on the researchers' practical knowledge, informed by the study's research inquiries, and pertinent academic literature guided the interviews.

A shared threat-anticipation circuit is dynamically engaged at different moments by certain and uncertain threat.

Temporal dynamics play a central role in models of emotion: is widely conceptualized as a phasic response to certain-and-imminent danger, whereas is a sustained response to uncertain-or-distal harm. Yet the underlying neurobiology remains contentious. Leveraging a translationally relevant fMRI paradigm and theory-driven modeling approach, we demonstrate that certain- and uncertain-threat anticipation recruit a shared circuit that encompasses the central extended amygdala (EAc), periaqueductal gray, midcingulate, and anterior insula.

Neuroticism/Negative Emotionality Is Associated with Increased Reactivity to Uncertain Threat in the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis, Not the Amygdala.

Neuroticism/negative emotionality (N/NE)-the tendency to experience anxiety, fear, and other negative emotions-is a fundamental dimension of temperament with profound consequences for health, wealth, and well-being. Elevated N/NE is associated with a panoply of adverse outcomes, from reduced socioeconomic attainment to psychiatric illness. Animal research suggests that N/NE reflects heightened reactivity to uncertain threat in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) and central nucleus of the amygdala (Ce), but the relevance of these discoveries to humans has remained unclear.

Adolescent social anxiety is associated with diminished discrimination of anticipated threat and safety in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis.

Social anxiety-which typically emerges in adolescence-lies on a continuum and, when extreme, can be devastating. Socially anxious individuals are prone to heightened fear, anxiety, and the avoidance of contexts associated with potential social scrutiny. Yet most neuroimaging research has focused on acute social threat.

A structured curriculum supporting biomedical trainees' transition into independent academic positions and early career success.

The United States government makes a substantial investment in biomedical training programs each year. However, for most trainees, these opportunities do not translate into career progression in academic research pathways. Only about one-fifth of postdoctoral fellows eventually secure a tenure-track faculty position, and even among these candidates, attrition is high.

Basic Environmental Supports for Positive Brain and Cognitive Development in the First Year of Life.

Importance: Defining basic psychosocial resources to facilitate thriving in the first year of life could tangibly inform policy and enhance child development worldwide.

Objective: To determine if key environmental supports measured as a thrive factor (T-factor) in the first year of life positively impact brain, cognitive, and socioemotional outcomes through age 3.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This prospective longitudinal cohort study took place at a Midwestern academic medical center from 2017 through 2022.

Racial disparities in endometrial cancer: Where are we after 26 years?

Introduction: Endometrial cancer is the most commonly diagnosed female genital tract malignancy in the United States of America. Racial disparities surrounding this particular disease have been extensively investigated for over 26-years. We sought to determine if research in this area has led to any significant improvements in this disparity.

Prenatal exposure to maternal disadvantage-related inflammatory biomarkers: associations with neonatal white matter microstructure.

Prenatal exposure to heightened maternal inflammation has been associated with adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes, including atypical brain maturation and psychiatric illness. In mothers experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage, immune activation can be a product of the chronic stress inherent to such environmental hardship. While growing preclinical and clinical evidence has shown links between altered neonatal brain development and increased inflammatory states in utero, the potential mechanism by which socioeconomic disadvantage differentially impacts neural-immune crosstalk remains unclear.

Early Emotion Development Intervention Improves Mental Health Outcomes in Low-Income, High-Risk Community Children.

Children living in poverty and facing related forms of adversity are at higher risk for experiencing concurrent and later psychopathology. Although negative psychological outcomes can be improved by enhancing sensitive and responsive caregiving early in development, interventions targeting the caregiver-child dyad are not readily accessible. The present study investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of delivering a shortened eight-session form of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy-Emotion Development (PCIT-ED) in-person or remotely as an early intervention for 3-6-year-old children (N = 62) at elevated risk for psychopathology who were growing up in low-income communities.

Diagnostic Criteria for Identifying Individuals at High Risk of Progression From Mild or Moderate to Severe Alcohol Use Disorder.

Importance: Current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition) (DSM-5) diagnoses of substance use disorders rely on criterion count-based approaches, disregarding severity grading indexed by individual criteria.

Objective: To examine correlates of alcohol use disorder (AUD) across count-based severity groups (ie, mild, moderate, mild-to-moderate, severe), identify specific diagnostic criteria indicative of greater severity, and evaluate whether specific criteria within mild-to-moderate AUD differentiate across relevant correlates and manifest in greater hazards of severe AUD development.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cohort study involved 2 cohorts from the family-based Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) with 7 sites across the United States: cross-sectional (assessed 1991-2005) and longitudinal (assessed 2004-2019).

Developmental trajectories of anger and sadness dysregulation in childhood differentially predict later borderline symptoms.

Difficulties with emotion regulation are integral to borderline personality disorder (BPD) and its hypothesized developmental pathway. Here, we prospectively assess trajectories of emotion processing across childhood, how BPD symptoms impact these trajectories, and whether developmental changes are transdiagnostic or specific to BPD, as major depressive (MDD) and conduct disorders (CD) are also characterized by emotion regulation difficulties. This study included 187 children enriched for those with early symptoms of depression and disruptive behaviors from a longitudinal study.

Program Evaluation: exploring health disparities that impact chronic pain referrals within a VA Health Care System.

Introduction: The present Program Evaluation study examines sociodemographic characteristics of Veterans in the Phoenix VA Health Care System who have back pain, and specifically the likelihood of those characteristics being associated with a referral to the Chronic Pain Wellness Center (CPWC) in the year 2021. We examined the following characteristics: Race/ethnicity, gender, age, mental health diagnosis, substance use disorder diagnosis, and service-connected diagnosis.

Methods: Our study used cross sectional data from the Corporate Data Warehouse for 2021.

Childhood emotion dysregulation mediates the relationship between preschool emotion labeling and adolescent depressive symptoms.

Deficits in emotion processing (e.g., emotion labeling and regulation) are widely implicated in depression risk.

Associations of observed callous-unemotional behaviors in early childhood with conduct problems and substance use over 14 years.

Callous-unemotional (CU) behaviors (i.e., low concern and active disregard for others) uniquely predict severe conduct problems and substance use when present by late childhood.

Processes of change in a randomized clinical trial of radically open dialectical behavior therapy (RO DBT) for adults with treatment-refractory depression.

Objective: Radically open dialectical behavior therapy (RO DBT) is an empirically supported psychotherapy for treatment-refractory depression (TRD) that targets psychological inflexibility and interpersonal functioning within the context of maladaptive overcontrol. However, it is unknown whether change in these mechanistic processes is associated with decreased symptoms. This study tested whether change in psychological inflexibility and interpersonal functioning is associated with change in depressive symptoms in RO DBT.

Abdominally based free flap breast reconstruction in the severely obese population: Is it safe?

Introduction: Class 3 (severe) obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) greater than 40 kg/m . Obesity is common and an independent risk factor for breast cancer. The plastic surgeon will be tasked with providing reconstruction for obese patients after mastectomy.

Neuroticism/negative emotionality is associated with increased reactivity to uncertain threat in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, not the amygdala.

Neuroticism/Negative Emotionality (N/NE)-the tendency to experience anxiety, fear, and other negative emotions-is a fundamental dimension of temperament with profound consequences for health, wealth, and wellbeing. Elevated N/NE is associated with a panoply of adverse outcomes, from reduced socioeconomic attainment to psychiatric illness. Animal research suggests that N/NE reflects heightened reactivity to uncertain threat in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) and central nucleus of the amygdala (Ce), but the relevance of these discoveries to humans has remained unclear.

Associations Between Cannabis Use, Polygenic Liability for Schizophrenia, and Cannabis-related Experiences in a Sample of Cannabis Users.

Background And Hypothesis: Risk for cannabis use and schizophrenia is influenced in part by genetic factors, and there is evidence that genetic risk for schizophrenia is associated with subclinical psychotic-like experiences (PLEs). Few studies to date have examined whether genetic risk for schizophrenia is associated with cannabis-related PLEs.

Study Design: We tested whether measures of cannabis involvement and polygenic risk scores (PRS) for schizophrenia were associated with self-reported cannabis-related experiences in a sample ascertained for alcohol use disorders (AUDs), the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA).