Sex-specific associations between levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and severity of depression: retrospective cross-sectional analysis of inpatients in China.

Background: We aimed to clarify the controversial relationship between levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) and severity of depression in men and women.

Methods: Medical records were retrospectively analyzed for 1,236 inpatients at our medical center who were diagnosed with depression at discharge between January 2018 and August 2022. Depression severity was assessed during hospitalization using the 24-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale.

Assessing consciousness in acute coma using name-evoked responses.

Detecting consciousness in clinically unresponsive patients remains a significant challenge. Existing studies demonstrate that electroencephalography (EEG) can detect brain responses in behaviorally unresponsive patients, indicating potential for consciousness detection. However, most of this evidence is based on chronic patients, and there is a lack of studies focusing on acute coma cases.

Genotype-phenotype correlation and founder effect analysis in southeast Chinese patients with sialidosis type I.

Background: Sialidosis type 1 (ST-1) is a rare autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutation in the NEU1 gene. However, limited reports on ST-1 patients in the Chinese mainland are available.

Methods: This study reported the genetic and clinical characteristics of 10 ST-1 patients from southeastern China.

Promoting glymphatic flow: A non-invasive strategy using 40 Hz light flickering.

The glymphatic system is critical for brain homeostasis by eliminating metabolic waste, whose disturbance contributes to the accumulation of pathogenic proteins in neurodegenerative diseases. Promoting glymphatic clearance is a potential and attractive strategy for several brain disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases. Previous studies have uncovered that 40 Hz flickering augmented glymphatic flow and facilitated sleep (Zhou et al.

Glymphatic System Impairment in the Advanced Stage of Moyamoya Disease.

Assessing the glymphatic system activity using diffusion tensor imaging analysis along with the perivascular space (DTI-ALPS) may be helpful to understand the pathophysiology of moyamoya disease (MMD). 63 adult patients with MMD and 20 healthy controls (HCs) were included for T1-weighted images, T2-FLAIR, pseudocontinuous arterial spin labeling, and DTI. 60 patients had digital subtraction angiography more than 6 months after combined revascularization.

The mrp-3 gene is involved in haem efflux and detoxification in a blood-feeding nematode.

Background: Haem is essential but toxic for metazoan organisms. Auxotrophic nematodes can acquire sufficient haem from the environment or their hosts in the meanwhile eliminate or detoxify excessive haem through tightly controlled machinery. In previous work, we reported a role of the unique transporter protein HRG-1 in the haem acquisition and homeostasis of parasitic nematodes.

Dimensionality reduction simplifies synaptic partner matching in an olfactory circuit.

The distribution of postsynaptic partners in three-dimensional (3D) space presents complex choices for a navigating axon. Here, we discovered a dimensionality reduction principle in establishing the 3D glomerular map in the fly antennal lobe. Olfactory receptor neuron (ORN) axons first contact partner projection neuron (PN) dendrites at the 2D spherical surface of the antennal lobe during development, regardless of whether the adult glomeruli are at the surface or interior of the antennal lobe.

Secular trends in the prevalence of schizophrenia among different age, period and cohort groups between 1990 and 2019.

Background: Schizophrenia remains a major public health challenge, and designing efforts to manage it requires understanding its prevalence over time at different geographic scales and population groups.

Methods: Drawing on data from the Global Burden of Disease study 2019, annual percentage change of schizophrenia was assessed across different age, period and cohort groups at different geographic scales from 1990 to 2019. We examined associations of prevalence with the sociodemographic index.

Hypothalamic-hindbrain circuit for consumption-induced fear regulation.

To ensure survival, animals must sometimes suppress fear responses triggered by potential threats during feeding. However, the mechanisms underlying this process remain poorly understood. In the current study, we demonstrated that when fear-conditioned stimuli (CS) were presented during food consumption, a neural projection from lateral hypothalamic (LH) GAD2 neurons to nucleus incertus (NI) relaxin-3 (RLN3)-expressing neurons was activated, leading to a reduction in CS-induced freezing behavior in male mice.

Conjunctive processing of spatial border and locomotion in retrosplenial cortex during spatial navigation.

Spatial information and dynamic locomotor behaviours are equally important for achieving locomotor goals during spatial navigation. However, it remains unclear how spatial and locomotor information is integrated during the processing of self-initiated spatial navigation. Anatomically, the retrosplenial cortex (RSC) has reciprocal connections with brain regions related to spatial processing, including the hippocampus and para-hippocampus, and also receives inputs from the secondary motor cortex.

The Medial Prefrontal Cortex-Basolateral Amygdala Circuit Mediates Anxiety in Shank3 InsG3680 Knock-in Mice.

Anxiety disorder is a major symptom of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with a comorbidity rate of ~40%. However, the neural mechanisms of the emergence of anxiety in ASD remain unclear. In our study, we found that hyperactivity of basolateral amygdala (BLA) pyramidal neurons (PNs) in Shank3 InsG3680 knock-in (InsG3680) mice is involved in the development of anxiety.

Revealing unexpected complex encoding but simple decoding mechanisms in motor cortex via separating behaviorally relevant neural signals.

In motor cortex, behaviorally relevant neural responses are entangled with irrelevant signals, which complicates the study of encoding and decoding mechanisms. It remains unclear whether behaviorally irrelevant signals could conceal some critical truth. One solution is to accurately separate behaviorally relevant and irrelevant signals at both single-neuron and single-trial levels, but this approach remains elusive due to the unknown ground truth of behaviorally relevant signals.

Brain region-specific action of ketamine as a rapid antidepressant.

Ketamine has been found to have rapid and potent antidepressant activity. However, despite the ubiquitous brain expression of its molecular target, the -methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR), it was not clear whether there is a selective, primary site for ketamine's antidepressant action. We found that ketamine injection in depressive-like mice specifically blocks NMDARs in lateral habenular (LHb) neurons, but not in hippocampal pyramidal neurons.

40 Hz light flickering facilitates the glymphatic flow via adenosine signaling in mice.

The glymphatic-lymphatic system is increasingly recognized as fundamental for the homeostasis of the brain milieu since it defines cerebral spinal fluid flow in the brain parenchyma and eliminates metabolic waste. Animal and human studies have uncovered several important physiological factors regulating the glymphatic system including sleep, aquaporin-4, and hemodynamic factors. Yet, our understanding of the modulation of the glymphatic system is limited, which has hindered the development of glymphatic-based treatment for aging and neurodegenerative disorders.

A novel interface for cortical columnar neuromodulation with multipoint infrared neural stimulation.

Cutting edge advances in electrical visual cortical prosthetics have evoked perception of shapes, motion, and letters in the blind. Here, we present an alternative optical approach using pulsed infrared neural stimulation. To interface with dense arrays of cortical columns with submillimeter spatial precision, both linear array and 100-fiber bundle array optical fiber interfaces were devised.

Recurrent inhibition refines mental templates to optimize perceptual decisions.

Translating sensory inputs to perceptual decisions relies on building internal representations of features critical for solving complex tasks. Yet, we still lack a mechanistic account of how the brain forms these mental templates of task-relevant features to optimize decision-making. Here, we provide evidence for recurrent inhibition: an experience-dependent plasticity mechanism that refines mental templates by enhancing γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-mediated (GABAergic) inhibition and recurrent processing in superficial visual cortex layers.