Associations between white matter microstructure and cognitive decline in major depressive disorder versus controls in Germany: a prospective case-control cohort study.

Background: Cognitive deficits are a key source of disability in individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) and worsen with disease progression. Despite their clinical relevance, the underlying mechanisms of cognitive deficits remain poorly elucidated, hampering effective treatment strategies. Emerging evidence suggests that alterations in white matter microstructure might contribute to cognitive dysfunction in MDD.

A novel gene variant in the voltage-dependent Kv3.3 channel in an atypical form of SCA13 with dominant central vertigo.

Potassium channel mutations play an important role in neurological diseases, such as spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA). SCA is a heterogeneous autosomal-dominant neurodegenerative disorder with multiple sub-entities, such as SCA13, which is characterized by mutations in the voltage-gated potassium channel Kv3.3 ().

Augmented Reality in Extratemporal Lobe Epilepsy Surgery.

: Epilepsy surgery for extratemporal lobe epilepsy (ETLE) is challenging, particularly when MRI findings are non-lesional and seizure patterns are complex. Invasive diagnostic techniques are crucial for accurately identifying the epileptogenic zone and its relationship with surrounding functional tissue. Microscope-based augmented reality (AR) support, combined with navigation, may enhance intraoperative orientation, particularly in cases involving subtle or indistinct lesions, thereby improving patient outcomes and safety (e.

Functional MRI of imprinting memory in awake newborn domestic chicks.

Filial imprinting, a crucial ethological paradigm, provides insights into the neurobiology of early learning and its long-term impact on behaviour. To date, invasive techniques like autoradiography or lesions have been used to study it, limiting the exploration of whole brain networks. Recent advances in fMRI for avian brains now open new windows to explore bird's brain functions at the network level.

Memory-related brain potentials for visual objects in early AD show impairment and compensatory mechanisms.

Impaired episodic memory is the primary feature of early Alzheimer's disease (AD), but not all memories are equally affected. Patients with AD and amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI) remember pictures better than words, to a greater extent than healthy elderly. We investigated neural mechanisms for visual object recognition in 30 patients (14 AD, 16 aMCI) and 36 cognitively unimpaired healthy (19 in the "preclinical" stage of AD).

Involvement of muscarinic acetylcholine receptor-mediated cholinergic neurotransmission in TMS-EEG responses.

The combination of transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) is emerging as a valuable tool for investigating brain functions in health and disease. However, the detailed neural mechanisms underlying TMS-EEG responses, including TMS-evoked EEG potentials (TEPs) and TMS-induced EEG oscillations (TIOs), remain largely unknown. Combining TMS-EEG with pharmacological interventions provides a unique opportunity to elucidate the roles of specific receptor-mediated neurotransmissions in these responses.

Superior temporal sulcus folding, functional network connectivity, and autistic-like traits in a non-clinical population.

Background: Autistic-like traits (ALT) are prevalent across the general population and might be linked to some facets of a broader autism spectrum disorder (ASD) phenotype. Recent studies suggest an association of these traits with both genetic and brain structural markers in non-autistic individuals, showing similar spatial location of findings observed in ASD and thus suggesting a potential neurobiological continuum.

Methods: In this study, we first tested an association of ALTs (assessed with the AQ questionnaire) with cortical complexity, a cortical surface marker of early neurodevelopment, and then the association with disrupted functional connectivity.

Prediction of adolescent depression from prenatal and childhood data from ALSPAC using machine learning.

Depression is a major cause of disability and mortality for young people worldwide and is typically first diagnosed during adolescence. In this work, we present a machine learning framework to predict adolescent depression occurring between ages 12 and 18 years using environmental, biological, and lifestyle features of the child, mother, and partner from the child's prenatal period to age 10 years using data from 8467 participants enrolled in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). We trained and compared several cross-sectional and longitudinal machine learning techniques and found the resulting models predicted adolescent depression with recall (0.

Gambling on others' health: risky pro-social decision-making in the era of COVID-19.

Introduction: In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals were asked to perform costly actions to reduce harm to strangers, even while the general population, including authorities and experts, grappled with the uncertainty surrounding thenovel virus. Many studies have examined health decision-making by experts, but the study of lay, non-expert, individual decision-making on a stranger's health has been left to the wayside, as ordinary citizens are usually not tasked with such decisions.

Methods: We sought to capture a snapshot of this specific choice behavior by administering two surveys to the general population in the spring of 2020, when much of the global community was subject to COVID-19-related restrictions, as well as uncertainty surrounding the virus.

Community Member Views on Autism Intervention: Effects of Closeness to Autistic People with Intellectual Disabilities And Nonspeaking Autistic People.

Background: Controversy regarding the neurodiversity movement (NDM), the social and medical models of disability, autism intervention goals, and causal attributions of disability contributes to divides in the autistic and autism communities. The present study investigates the views of autistic and non-autistic autistic and autism community members on these topics. We explored whether these views are shaped by having close relationships to autistic people with intellectual disabilities (ID) and nonspeaking autistic (NSA) people.

A tradeoff between efficiency and robustness in the hippocampal-neocortical memory network during human and rodent sleep.

Sleep constitutes a brain state of disengagement from the external world that supports memory consolidation and restores cognitive resources. The precise mechanisms how sleep and its varied stages support information processing remain largely unknown. Synaptic scaling models imply that daytime learning accumulates neural information, which is then consolidated and downregulated during sleep.

A psychophysical evaluation of techniques for Mooney image generation.

Mooney images can contribute to our understanding of the processes involved in visual perception, because they allow a dissociation between image content and image understanding. Mooney images are generated by first smoothing and subsequently thresholding an image. In most previous studies this was performed manually, using subjective criteria for generation.

Opposite-Direction Spatial Working Memory Biases in People With Schizophrenia and Healthy Control Participants.

Background: People with schizophrenia (PSZ) show impaired accuracy in spatial working memory (sWM), which is thought to reflect abnormalities in the sustained firing of feature selective neurons that are critical for successful encoding and maintenance processes. Recent research has documented a new source of variance in the accuracy of sWM: In healthy adults, sWM representations are unconsciously biased by previous trials such that current-trial responses are attracted to previous-trial responses (serial dependence). This opens a new window to examine how schizophrenia impacts both the sustained neural firing representing the current-trial target and the longer-term synaptic plasticity that stores previous-trial information.

The power of cultural habits: The role of effortless control in delaying gratification.

What factors lead children to delay gratification, holding out for larger rewards later instead of taking smaller rewards now? Traditionally, delay of gratification has been associated with effortful control and willpower. However, we propose that delay of gratification may be partially supported by effortless control employed through habits shaped within sociocultural contexts. Specifically, in sociocultural contexts where waiting is rewarding and socially valued, children are more likely to wait for larger, delayed rewards and to form associations between these contexts and waiting for rewards.

Towards the definition of a standard in TMS-EEG data preprocessing.

Combining Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation (NIBS) techniques with the recording of brain electrophysiological activity is an increasingly widespread approach in neuroscience. Particularly successful has been the simultaneous combination of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and Electroencephalography (EEG). Unfortunately, the strong magnetic pulse required to effectively interact with brain activity inevitably induces artifacts in the concurrent EEG acquisition.

Development of Comorbid Alcohol Use and Depressive Symptoms During Late Adolescence: Examining the Roles of Emotion Regulation and Gender Differences.

Depression and alcohol use are highly comorbid, and often emerge during adolescence. Depressive symptoms may precede alcohol use, via the self-medication pathway, or alcohol use may precede depressive symptoms, via the alcohol induced disruption pathway. Yet little is known about other risks for developing comorbidity via either path.

Effects of Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids on the Formation of Adipokines, Cytokines, and Oxylipins in Retroperitoneal Adipose Tissue of Mice.

Oxylipins and specialized pro-resolving lipid mediators (SPMs) derived from polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are mediators that coordinate an active process of inflammation resolution. While these mediators have potential as circulating biomarkers for several disease states with inflammatory components, the source of plasma oxylipins/SPMs remains a matter of debate but may involve white adipose tissue (WAT). Here, we aimed to investigate to what extent high or low omega (n)-3 PUFA enrichment affects the production of cytokines and adipokines (RT-PCR), as well as oxylipins/SPMs (liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry) in the WAT of mice during lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced systemic inflammation (intraperitoneal injection, 2.

Voxel-Based Lesion Analysis of Ideomotor Apraxia.

Ideomotor apraxia is a cognitive disorder most often resulting from acquired brain lesions (i.e., strokes or tumors).

Comparison of Visual and Quantra Software Mammographic Density Assessment According to BI-RADS in 2D and 3D Images.

Mammographic density (MD) assessment is subject to inter- and intra-observer variability. An automated method, such as Quantra software, could be a useful tool for an objective and reproducible MD assessment. Our purpose was to evaluate the performance of Quantra software in assessing MD, according to BI-RADS Atlas Fifth Edition recommendations, verifying the degree of agreement with the gold standard, given by the consensus of two breast radiologists.

The German research consortium for the study of bipolar disorder (BipoLife): a quality assurance protocol for MR neuroimaging data.

Background: The German multicenter research consortium BipoLife aims to investigate the mechanisms underlying bipolar disorders. It focuses in particular on people at high risk of developing the disorder and young patients in the early stages of the disease. Functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data was collected in all participating centers.