Predicting Future Development of Stress-Induced Anhedonia From Cortical Dynamics and Facial Expression.

The current state of mental health treatment for individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder leaves billions of individuals with first-line therapies that are ineffective or burdened with undesirable side effects. One major obstacle is that distinct pathologies may currently be diagnosed as the same disease and prescribed the same treatments. The key to developing antidepressants with ubiquitous efficacy is to first identify a strategy to differentiate between heterogeneous conditions.

Multicenter comparative analysis of local and aggregated data training strategies in COVID-19 outcome prediction with Machine learning.

Machine learning (ML) is a promising tool in assisting clinical decision-making for improving diagnosis and prognosis, especially in developing regions. It is often used with large samples, aggregating data from different regions and hospitals. However, it is unclear how this affects predictions in local centers.

Social isolation recruits amygdala-cortical circuitry to escalate alcohol drinking.

How do social factors impact the brain and contribute to increased alcohol drinking? We found that social rank predicts alcohol drinking, where subordinates drink more than dominants. Furthermore, social isolation escalates alcohol drinking, particularly impacting subordinates who display a greater increase in alcohol drinking compared to dominants. Using cellular resolution calcium imaging, we show that the basolateral amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex (BLA-mPFC) circuit predicts alcohol drinking in a rank-dependent manner, unlike non-specific BLA activity.

Improving the performance of machine learning algorithms for health outcomes predictions in multicentric cohorts.

Machine learning algorithms are being increasingly used in healthcare settings but their generalizability between different regions is still unknown. This study aims to identify the strategy that maximizes the predictive performance of identifying the risk of death by COVID-19 in different regions of a large and unequal country. This is a multicenter cohort study with data collected from patients with a positive RT-PCR test for COVID-19 from March to August 2020 (n = 8477) in 18 hospitals, covering all five Brazilian regions.

Thalamus sends information about arousal but not valence to the amygdala.

Rationale: The basolateral amygdala (BLA) and medial geniculate nucleus of the thalamus (MGN) have both been shown to be necessary for the formation of associative learning. While the role that the BLA plays in this process has long been emphasized, the MGN has been less well-studied and surrounded by debate regarding whether the relay of sensory information is active or passive.

Objectives: We seek to understand the role the MGN has within the thalamoamgydala circuit in the formation of associative learning.

Physician preference for receiving machine learning predictive results: A cross-sectional multicentric study.

Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are transforming several areas of the digital world and are increasingly being applied in healthcare. Mobile apps based on predictive machine learning models have the potential to improve health outcomes, but there is still no consensus on how to inform doctors about their results. The aim of this study was to investigate how healthcare professionals prefer to receive predictions generated by machine learning algorithms.

COVID-19 and Indigenous health in the Brazilian Amazon.

We test whether the COVID-19 pandemic has an ethnicity-differentiated (Indigenous vs non-Indigenous) effect on infant health in the Brazilian Amazon. Using vital statistics data we find that Indigenous infants born during the pandemic are 0.5% more likely to have very low birth weights.

Neurotensin orchestrates valence assignment in the amygdala.

The ability to associate temporally segregated information and assign positive or negative valence to environmental cues is paramount for survival. Studies have shown that different projections from the basolateral amygdala (BLA) are potentiated following reward or punishment learning. However, we do not yet understand how valence-specific information is routed to the BLA neurons with the appropriate downstream projections, nor do we understand how to reconcile the sub-second timescales of synaptic plasticity with the longer timescales separating the predictive cues from their outcomes.

Cortical ensembles orchestrate social competition through hypothalamic outputs.

Most social species self-organize into dominance hierarchies, which decreases aggression and conserves energy, but it is not clear how individuals know their social rank. We have only begun to learn how the brain represents social rank and guides behaviour on the basis of this representation. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is involved in social dominance in rodents and humans.

Nonparametric estimation of a primary care production function in urban Brazil.

Background: The Brazilian public health system is one of the largest health systems in the world, with a mandate to deliver medical care to more than 200 million Brazilians. The objective of this study is to estimate a production function for primary care in urban Brazil. Our goal is to use flexible estimates to identify heterogeneous returns and complementarities between medical capital and labor.

Quality Improvement in Parkinson's Disease: A Successful Program to Enhance Timely Administration of Levodopa in the Hospital.

Background: Patients hospitalized with Parkinson's disease (PD) require timely delivery of carbidopa-levodopa (C/L) medication. Ill-timed administration of C/L doses is associated with greater morbidity and longer lengths of stay.

Objective: To understand the barriers to timely C/L administration, and implement strategies to improve the administration of the drug to hospitalized PD patients.

Dopamine enhances signal-to-noise ratio in cortical-brainstem encoding of aversive stimuli.

Dopamine modulates medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activity to mediate diverse behavioural functions; however, the precise circuit computations remain unknown. One potentially unifying model by which dopamine may underlie a diversity of functions is by modulating the signal-to-noise ratio in subpopulations of mPFC neurons, where neural activity conveying sensory information (signal) is amplified relative to spontaneous firing (noise). Here we demonstrate that dopamine increases the signal-to-noise ratio of responses to aversive stimuli in mPFC neurons projecting to the dorsal periaqueductal grey (dPAG).

Glucose limited feed strategy leads to increased production of fusicocca-2,10(14)-diene by Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Fusicocca-2,10(14)-diene (FCdiene) is a diterpene which is interesting as a precursor of the anti-cancer drug fusicoccin A and therefore for pharmaceutical applications. Production of FCdiene using a genetically modified Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been previously demonstrated with batch cultivations with a product concentration up to 10 mg/L. However, it is widely known that fed-batch processes can significantly improve product titer in yeast fermentations.

Production of rhamnolipids by integrated foam adsorption in a bioreactor system.

Biosurfactants offer environmental as well as health benefits over traditionally used chemical surfactants and heterologous production from engineered microorganisms has been demonstrated, offering containable as well as scalable production of these alternative chemicals. Low product titers and cost intensive downstream processing are the main hurdles for economical biosurfactant production at industrial scales. Increased biosurfactant concentrations are found in the liquid fraction of the foam formed during fermentation of producing microbes.

Corticoamygdala Transfer of Socially Derived Information Gates Observational Learning.

Observational learning is a powerful survival tool allowing individuals to learn about threat-predictive stimuli without directly experiencing the pairing of the predictive cue and punishment. This ability has been linked to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the basolateral amygdala (BLA). To investigate how information is encoded and transmitted through this circuit, we performed electrophysiological recordings in mice observing a demonstrator mouse undergo associative fear conditioning and found that BLA-projecting ACC (ACC→BLA) neurons preferentially encode socially derived aversive cue information.

Obtaining continuous BrAC/BAC estimates in the field: A hybrid system integrating transdermal alcohol biosensor, Intellidrink smartphone app, and BrAC Estimator software tools.

Biosensors have been developed to measure transdermal alcohol concentration (TAC), but converting TAC into interpretable indices of blood/breath alcohol concentration (BAC/BrAC) is difficult because of variations that occur in TAC across individuals, drinking episodes, and devices. We have developed mathematical models and the BrAC Estimator software for calibrating and inverting TAC into quantifiable BrAC estimates (eBrAC). The calibration protocol to determine the individualized parameters for a specific individual wearing a specific device requires a drinking session in which BrAC and TAC measurements are obtained simultaneously.

Foam adsorption as an ex situ capture step for surfactants produced by fermentation.

In this report, a method for a simultaneous production and separation of a microbially synthesized rhamnolipid biosurfactant is presented. During the aerobic cultivation of flagella-free Pseudomonas putida EM383 in a 3.1L stirred tank reactor on glucose as a sole carbon source, rhamnolipids are produced and excreted into the fermentation liquid.

Inhibitory Input from the Lateral Hypothalamus to the Ventral Tegmental Area Disinhibits Dopamine Neurons and Promotes Behavioral Activation.

Projections from the lateral hypothalamus (LH) to the ventral tegmental area (VTA), containing both GABAergic and glutamatergic components, encode conditioned responses and control compulsive reward-seeking behavior. GABAergic neurons in the LH have been shown to mediate appetitive and feeding-related behaviors. Here we show that the GABAergic component of the LH-VTA pathway supports positive reinforcement and place preference, while the glutamatergic component mediates place avoidance.

Interprofessional education increases knowledge, promotes team building, and changes practice in the care of Parkinson's disease.

Objective: Examine outcomes for the National Parkinson Foundation (NPF) Allied Team Training for Parkinson (ATTP), an interprofessional education (IPE) program in Parkinson's disease (PD) and team-based care for medicine, nursing, occupational, physical and music therapies, physician assistant, social work and speech-language pathology disciplines.

Background: Healthcare professionals need education in evidence-based PD practices and working effectively in teams. Few evidence-based models of IPE in PD exist.

A circuit mechanism for differentiating positive and negative associations.

The ability to differentiate stimuli predicting positive or negative outcomes is critical for survival, and perturbations of emotional processing underlie many psychiatric disease states. Synaptic plasticity in the basolateral amygdala complex (BLA) mediates the acquisition of associative memories, both positive and negative. Different populations of BLA neurons may encode fearful or rewarding associations, but the identifying features of these populations and the synaptic mechanisms of differentiating positive and negative emotional valence have remained unknown.

Decoding neural circuits that control compulsive sucrose seeking.

The lateral hypothalamic (LH) projection to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) has been linked to reward processing, but the computations within the LH-VTA loop that give rise to specific aspects of behavior have been difficult to isolate. We show that LH-VTA neurons encode the learned action of seeking a reward, independent of reward availability. In contrast, LH neurons downstream of VTA encode reward-predictive cues and unexpected reward omission.

Enzyme-assisted process for DAG synthesis in edible oils.

This study deals with the enzymatic synthesis of diacylglycerols in rapeseed oil by the esterification of free fatty acids and monoacylglycerols. As enzymatic reactions are influenced by many factors, a statistical design of experiments was conducted to investigate the enrichment of diacylglycerols, systematically. Simultaneously, the investigated method contributes to the refining process, as the amount of free fatty acids could be reduced significantly from 2% to 0.