233 results match your criteria: "Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC; Virginia Tech; Roanoke[Affiliation]"

The Experimental Beverage Marketplace: Feasibility and preliminary validation of a tool to experimentally study sugar-sweetened beverage taxes and beverage purchasing.

Appetite

January 2025

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion, Roanoke, VA, USA; Center for Health Behaviors Research, Virginia Tech Carillion, Roanoke, VA, USA; Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA. Electronic address:

Sugar sweetened-beverage (SSB) consumption contributes to poor diet quality and diet-related chronic diseases. One effective public health strategy to reduce SSB consumption is to tax SSB. Laboratory approaches can complement existing methods to improve understanding of how taxes on SSB influence purchasing.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Beyond the first try: How many quit attempts are necessary to achieve substance use cessation?

Drug Alcohol Depend

December 2024

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, United States; Department of Psychology, College of Science, Virginia Tech, United States.

Unlabelled: Substance use disorder (SUD) is a chronically relapsing disorder; thus, individuals with SUD may require several attempts before achieving abstinence. The goal of the present study was to investigate what variables are associated with the number of quit attempts before successful abstinence was achieved. Data were collected from 421 International Quit & Recovery Registry participants.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Engineering the physical characteristics of biomaterials for innate immune-mediated cancer immunotherapy.

J Control Release

December 2024

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA, USA; Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA. Electronic address:

It has recently been recognized that the physical characteristics of biomaterials - such as size, structure, shape, charge, mechanical strength, hydrophobicity, and multivalency - regulate immunological functions in innate immune cells. In immuno-oncology applications, biomaterials are engineered with distinct physical properties to achieve desired innate immune responses. In this review, we discuss how physical characteristics influence effector functions and innate immune signaling pathways in distinct innate immune cell subtypes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Children and adolescents exposed to maltreatment are at a greater risk for substance use disorders in adulthood. However, developmental processes that explain how maltreatment experiences may influence substance use behaviors remain unclear. We investigated whether delay discounting (ie, the preference for immediate over delayed rewards), a critical indicator of self-regulation, serves as a key mechanism linking maltreatment and substance use.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Optimizing infant neuroimaging methods to understand the neurodevelopmental impacts of early nutrition and feeding.

Dev Cogn Neurosci

November 2024

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA, USA; Department of Human Development and Family Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA. Electronic address:

There is strong evidence proper nutrition is imperative for healthy infant neurodevelopment, providing the neural foundations for later cognition and behavior. Over the first years of life infants are supported by unique sources of nutrition (e.g.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Effects of early maternal care on anxiety and threat learning in adolescent nonhuman primates.

Dev Cogn Neurosci

November 2024

Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, United States; Emory National Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States; Center for Translational Social Neuroscience, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States. Electronic address:

Early life adverse experiences, including childhood maltreatment, are major risk factors for psychopathology, including anxiety disorders with dysregulated fear responses. Consistent with human studies, maltreatment by the mother (MALT) leads to increased emotional reactivity in rhesus monkey infants. Whether this persists and results in altered emotion regulation, due to enhanced fear learning or impaired utilization of safety signals as shown in human stress-related disorders, is unclear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Research shows that aspects of reinforcement learning are linked to symptoms of psychopathology and improve with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).
  • The study involved 1,299 participants who engaged in a probabilistic reward-learning task that incorporated different verbal queries to influence learning processes.
  • Results indicated that these queries changed learning behaviors in ways tailored to the queries, suggesting innovative strategies for therapy aimed at improving mood disorders based on learning principles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Humans combine social info and personal preferences when making risky choices, but it's unclear how this works if personal preferences are impaired.
  • The study focused on participants with specific brain lesions while they engaged in a gambling task, involving both solo and observed choices.
  • Results showed that those with lesions were less able to use standard risk calculations and instead relied more on conforming to others' choices, suggesting that social cues can drive decisions when personal risk assessment fails.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The nervous system contains complex circuits comprising thousands of cell types and trillions of connections. Here, we discuss how the field of "developmental systems neuroscience" combines the molecular and genetic perspectives of developmental neuroscience with the (typically adult-focused) functional perspective of systems neuroscience. This combination of approaches is critical to understanding how a handful of cells eventually produce the wide range of behaviors necessary for survival.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

PERM1 regulates mitochondrial energetics through O-GlcNAcylation in the heart.

J Mol Cell Cardiol

November 2024

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA, USA; Center for Vascular and Heart Research, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA, USA; Department of Human Nutrition, Food and Exercise, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA. Electronic address:

PERM1 was initially identified as a new downstream target of PGC-1α and ERRs that regulates mitochondrial bioenergetics in skeletal muscle. Subsequently, we and other groups demonstrated that PERM1 is also a positive regulator of mitochondrial bioenergetics in the heart. However, the exact mechanisms of regulatory functions of PERM1 remain poorly understood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Substance use disorder (SUD) and pain are highly comorbid conditions and several pain indices (e.g., pain intensity) are associated with an increased risk of relapse.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Child maltreatment impacts approximately one in seven children in the United States, leading to adverse outcomes throughout life. Adolescence is a time period critical for the development of executive function, but there is little research examining how abuse and neglect may differently affect the developmental trajectories of executive function throughout adolescence and into young adulthood. In the current study, 167 adolescents participated at six time points from ages 14 to 20.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In previous real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback (rtfMRI-NF) studies on smoking craving, the focus has been on within-region activity or between-region connectivity, neglecting the potential predictive utility of broader network activity. Moreover, there is debate over the use and relative predictive power of individual-specific and group-level classifiers. This study aims to further advance rtfMRI-NF for substance use disorders by using whole-brain rtfMRI-NF to assess smoking craving-related brain patterns, evaluate the performance of group-level or individual-level classification ( = 31) and evaluate the performance of an optimized classifier across repeated NF runs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Neural and metabolic factors in carbohydrate reward: Rationale, design, and methods for a flavor-nutrient learning paradigm in humans.

Contemp Clin Trials

December 2024

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, Roanoke, VA, USA; Center for Health Behaviors Research at Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, Roanoke, VA, USA; Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA. Electronic address:

Overconsumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs), which are linked with adverse health outcomes, is a growing public health concern. UPFs deliver highly bioavailable calories rapidly, which may contribute to their reinforcing potential and drive overconsumption. Our primary aim is to test the role of speed of nutrient availability on reward learning.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Intercellular mitochondrial transfer from mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) to chondrocytes may enhance tissue healing and has potential for treating osteoarthritis, but the mechanisms are not fully understood.
  • The study aimed to investigate the role of connexin 43 (Cx43) in this transfer, especially under oxidative stress conditions, and tested hypotheses about increased mitochondrial transfer and the influence of Cx43 expression.
  • Results indicated that oxidative stress in chondrocytes promoted mitochondrial transfer from MSCs, which was significantly enhanced by direct cell contact, with evidence showing Cx43 localizing at these contact sites.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Quantifying brain development in the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study: The magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy protocol.

Dev Cogn Neurosci

December 2024

Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA; Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA; Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA. Electronic address:

The HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study, a multi-site prospective longitudinal cohort study, will examine human brain, cognitive, behavioral, social, and emotional development beginning prenatally and planned through early childhood. The acquisition of multimodal magnetic resonance-based brain development data is central to the study's core protocol. However, application of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) methods in this population is complicated by technical challenges and difficulties of imaging in early life.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study, a multi-site prospective longitudinal cohort study, will examine human brain, cognitive, behavioral, social, and emotional development beginning prenatally and planned through early childhood. The longitudinal collection of biological samples from over 7000 birthing parents and their children within the HBCD study enables research on pre- and postnatal exposures (e.g.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Polygenicity in a box: Copy number variants, neural circuit development, and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Curr Opin Neurobiol

December 2024

The Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech-Carilion School of Medicine, Roanoke, VA 24016, United States; Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA, 24061, United States. Electronic address:

Clinically defined neurodevelopmental disorders (cd-NDDs), including Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Schizophrenia (Scz), are primarily polygenic: Multiple risk genes distributed across the genome, in potentially infinite combinations, account for variable pathology. Polygenicity raises a fundamental question: Can "core" cd-NDD pathogenic mechanisms be identified given this genomic complexity? With the right models and analytic targets, a distinct class of polygenic mutations-Copy Number Variants (CNVs): contiguous gene deletions or duplications associated with cd-NDD risk-provide a singular opportunity to define cd-NDD pathology. CNVs orthologous to those that confer cd-NDD risk have been engineered in animals as well as human stem cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated how administrative burdens, termed "sludge," affect colorectal cancer (CRC) screening experiences among patients in the Southeastern U.S.
  • Using a mixed methods design, researchers combined patient interviews and surveys to explore perceptions of sludge and its impact on screening delays and health system distrust.
  • Findings revealed that many patients experienced poor screening processes, with significant associations between higher sludge levels and delays or forgoing of screenings, highlighting issues like long wait times and complex communication.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Reinforcement learning processes as forecasters of depression remission.

J Affect Disord

January 2025

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA, United States of America; Department of Psychology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, United States of America; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, Virginia Tech, Roanoke, VA, United States of America. Electronic address:

Article Synopsis
  • The study explores how reinforcement learning indicators, specifically neural prediction error (nPE) and neural expected value (nEV), can predict remission in individuals with depression.
  • Using support vector machines, researchers analyzed BOLD responses from participants undergoing cognitive behavioral therapy or with natural depressive course, comparing their effectiveness as classifiers.
  • Findings indicate that nEV is a stronger predictor of remission than nPE, suggesting these neural signals may enhance personalized approaches in depression treatment regardless of previous therapies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Molecular and functional diversity among synapses is generated, in part, by differential expression of neurotransmitter receptors and their associated protein complexes. -methyl--aspartate receptors (NMDARs) are tetrameric ionotropic glutamate receptors that most often comprise two GluN1 and two GluN2 subunits. NMDARs generate functionally diverse synapses across neuron populations through cell-type-specific expression patterns of GluN2 subunits (GluN2A - 2D), which have vastly different functional properties and distinct downstream signaling.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Restrictions of cigarette and e-cigarette flavor and filter ventilation on demand and substitution in the Experimental Tobacco Marketplace.

Drug Alcohol Depend

October 2024

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion, Roanoke, VA, USA; Department of Psychology, College of Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA. Electronic address:

Significance: Tobacco product design features, including flavors and cigarette filter ventilation, are subject to regulation. This study examined the effects of cigarette and e-cigarette flavors on demand and substitution by preferred cigarette flavor and ventilation in the Experimental Tobacco Marketplace (ETM).

Methods: In a mixed between-group (usual cigarette flavor and ventilation)/within-subject design (policy conditions), individuals who use tobacco (n=176 cigarette (60.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

species predominate the human vagina and are associated with positive vaginal health, including an acidic pH (<4.5). The prevalence of vaginal increases with increased oestrogen due to increased glycogen production within the vagina.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF