Publications by authors named "Ysbrand D Van der Werf"

Objective: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with altered brain function related to processing of negative emotions. To investigate neural correlates of negative valence in OCD, we pooled fMRI data of 633 individuals with OCD and 453 healthy controls from 16 studies using different negatively-valenced tasks across the ENIGMA-OCD Working-Group.

Methods: Participant data were processed uniformly using HALFpipe, to extract voxelwise participant-level statistical images of one common first-level contrast: negative vs.

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Introduction: Improved effectiveness and treatment adherence is needed in smoking cessation (SC) therapies. Another important challenge is to disrupt maladaptive drug-related memories. To achieve these goals, we developed a novel treatment strategy on the basis of motion-assisted memory desensitization and reprocessing (3MDR).

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Alterations in subcortical brain regions are linked to motor and non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, associations between clinical expression and regional morphological abnormalities of the basal ganglia, thalamus, amygdala and hippocampus are not well established. We analyzed 3D T1-weighted brain MRI and clinical data from 2525 individuals with PD and 1326 controls from 22 global sources in the ENIGMA-PD consortium.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study explores how brain activation during symptom provocation tasks can predict the effectiveness of a combined treatment of rTMS and ERP for patients with treatment-resistant OCD.
  • Sixty-one adults with OCD participated in fMRI scans to measure brain activity in response to OCD-related stimuli before undergoing an 8-week treatment regimen, with multiple rTMS applied to different brain areas.
  • Results indicated that higher activation in the right amygdala prior to treatment was associated with a better response to therapy, while activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex had a negative association with treatment outcomes.
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Article Synopsis
  • Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) often face cognitive impairments due to structural disconnections in the brain, affecting how different regions communicate dynamically for normal cognitive function.* -
  • The study analyzed brain imaging data from a cohort of MS patients, categorizing them based on cognitive function and identifying different functional networks involved, such as the visual and default mode networks.* -
  • Cognitively impaired patients showed less frequent transitions between brain connectivity states and required more energy to make these transitions, suggesting that their brains struggle to adapt functionally compared to cognitively preserved patients.*
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Background: Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has the potential to increase the clinical effect of exposure with response prevention psychotherapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). We investigated the use of task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging for predicting clinical outcomes to different rTMS protocols combined with exposure with response prevention in OCD.

Methods: Sixty-one adults with OCD underwent rTMS and exposure with response prevention and were randomized to different high-frequency rTMS conditions: left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (n = 19), left presupplementary motor area (n = 23), and control stimulation at the vertex at low intensity (n = 19).

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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder with traumatic memories at its core. Post-treatment sleep may offer a unique time window to increase therapeutic efficacy through consolidation of therapeutically modified traumatic memories. Targeted memory reactivation (TMR) enhances memory consolidation by presenting reminder cues (e.

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Background: Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is an emerging treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The neurobiological mechanisms of rTMS in OCD have been incompletely characterized. We compared clinical outcomes and changes in task-based brain activation following 3 different rTMS protocols, all combined with exposure and response prevention.

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Chronotype, an individual's preferred sleep-wake timing, is influenced by sex and age. Men sometimes report a later chronotype than women and older age is associated with earlier chronotype. The sex-related changes in chronotype coincide with puberty and menopause.

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Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder is characterized by dream enactment during REM sleep. Due to different treatment requirements, it is important to distinguish REM sleep behavior disorder from other causes of nocturnal restlessness, including sleep apnea, non-REM parasomnia and sleep-related hypermotor epilepsy. In addition, a diagnosis of isolated REM sleep behavior disorder is impactful, because it carries a greatly increased risk for the later development of Parkinson's disease and related synucleinopathies.

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Background: Degeneration of the locus coeruleus (LC) noradrenergic system contributes to clinical symptoms in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD). Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has the potential to evaluate the integrity of the LC noradrenergic system. The aim of the current study was to determine whether the diffusion MRI-measured integrity of the LC and its tracts are sensitive to noradrenergic degeneration in AD and PD.

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Background: Computerized cognitive training may be promising to improve cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease and has even been suggested to delay cognitive decline. However, evidence to date is limited. The aim of this study was to assess the durability of eight-week cognitive training effects at up to two years follow-up.

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Neuroplasticity, or activity-dependent neuronal change, is a crucial mechanism underlying the mechanisms of effect of many therapies for neuropsychiatric disorders, one of which is repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Understanding the neuroplastic effects of rTMS at different biological scales and on different timescales and how the effects at different scales interact with each other can help us understand the effects of rTMS in clinical populations and offers the potential to improve treatment outcomes. Several decades of research in the fields of neuroimaging and blood biomarkers is increasingly showing its clinical relevance, allowing measurement of the synaptic, functional, and structural changes involved in neuroplasticity in humans.

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Purpose: Studies showing problematic sleep patterns in blind and visually impaired children are often based on (parent) self-report. The purpose was to compare sleep patterns of blind children to normally sighted peers using objective measures.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 100 blind (best-corrected visual acuity <3/60) and 100 age- and gender-matched normally sighted children aged 7 to 17 years wore a digital activity monitoring device for 1 week.

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Background: Increasing evidence points to a pathophysiological role for the cerebellum in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, regional cerebellar changes associated with motor and non-motor functioning remain to be elucidated.

Objective: To quantify cross-sectional regional cerebellar lobule volumes using three dimensional T1-weighted anatomical brain magnetic resonance imaging from the global ENIGMA-PD working group.

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Background: Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is an emerging treatment option for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The neurobiological mechanisms of rTMS in OCD have, however, been incompletely characterized. We compared clinical outcomes and changes in task-based brain activation following three different rTMS stimulation protocols, all combined with exposure and response prevention (ERP).

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Study Objectives: Sex differences in sleep architecture are well-documented, with females experiencing longer total sleep time, more slow wave sleep (SWS), and shorter Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep duration than males. Although studies imply that sex hormones could affect sleep, research on exogenous sex hormones on sleep architecture is still inconclusive. This study examined sleep architecture changes in transgender individuals after 3 months of gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT).

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Study Objectives: Transgender persons can use gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) to align their physical appearance with their identified gender. Many transgender persons report poor sleep, but the effects of GAHT on sleep are unknown. This study examined the effects of a 12 months of GAHT use on self-reported sleep quality and insomnia severity.

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Current knowledge about functional connectivity in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is based on small-scale studies, limiting the generalizability of results. Moreover, the majority of studies have focused only on predefined regions or functional networks rather than connectivity throughout the entire brain. Here, we investigated differences in resting-state functional connectivity between OCD patients and healthy controls (HC) using mega-analysis of data from 1024 OCD patients and 1028 HC from 28 independent samples of the ENIGMA-OCD consortium.

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Background: Widely used psychotropic medications for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) may change the volumes of subcortical brain structures, and differently in children vs. adults. We measured subcortical volumes cross-sectionally in patients finely stratified for age taking various common classes of OCD drugs.

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Tactile sensations can bias visual perception in the awake state while visual sensitivity is known to be facilitated by sleep. It remains unknown, however, whether the tactile sensation during sleep can bias the visual improvement after sleep. Here, we performed nap experiments in human participants ( = 56, 18 males, 38 females) to demonstrate that repetitive tactile motion stimulation on the fingertip during slow wave sleep selectively enhanced subsequent visual motion detection.

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The brain activation patterns related to sleep resistance remain to be discovered in health and disease. The maintenance of wakefulness test (MWT) is an objective neuropsychological assessment often used to assess an individual's ability to resist sleep. It is frequently used in narcolepsy type 1, a disorder characterized by impaired sleep-wake control and the inability to resist daytime sleep.

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