Negative valence in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A worldwide mega-analysis of task-based functional neuroimaging data of the ENIGMA-OCD consortium.

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.

Towards an Understanding of the Dentate Gyrus Hilus.

For many years, the hilus of the dentate gyrus (DG) was a mystery because anatomical data suggested a bewildering array of cells without clear organization. Moreover, some of the anatomical information led to more questions than answers. For example, it had been identified that one of the major cell types in the hilus, the mossy cell, innervates granule cells (GCs).

Connectome-based symptom mapping and related gene expression in children with autism and/or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Clinical, neuroimaging and genomics evidence have increasingly underscored a degree of overlap between autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study explores the specific contribution of their core symptoms to shared biology in a sample of N=166 verbal children (6-12 years) with rigorously-established primary diagnoses of either autism or ADHD (without autism). We investigated the associations between inter-individual differences in clinician-based dimensional measures of autism and ADHD symptoms and whole-brain low motion intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC).

Brain Activation Associated With Response to Psychotherapies for Late-Life Depression: A Task-Based fMRI Study.

Background: The course of late-life depression is associated with functioning of multiple brain networks. Understanding the brain mechanisms associated with response to psychotherapy can inform treatment development and a personalized treatment approach. This study examined how activation of key regions of the salience network, default mode network and reward systems is associated with response to psychotherapies for late-life depression.

Impact of neighborhood-level COVID-19 mortality on the increase in drug overdose mortality in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Overdose mortality increased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is unclear to what extent the COVID-19 mortality had contributed to this increase at the neighborhood level.

Methods: This was an ecological study based on New York City United Hospital Fund (NYC UHF) neighborhood-level data from 2019 to 2021, split into two time-windows: pre-COVID (2019) and during-COVID (2020 and 2021). Linear regression models were used to estimate the effect of cumulative COVID-19 mortality on the increase in drug overdose mortality from the pre-COVD to during-COVID periods at the neighborhood level, with and without adjusting for neighborhood characteristics.

Tau filaments are tethered within brain extracellular vesicles in Alzheimer's disease.

The abnormal assembly of tau protein in neurons is a pathological hallmark of multiple neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD). Assembled tau associates with extracellular vesicles (EVs) in the central nervous system of individuals with AD, which is linked to its clearance and prion-like propagation. However, the identities of the assembled tau species and EVs, as well as how they associate, are not known.

Improving Survey Inference Using Administrative Records Without Releasing Individual-Level Continuous Data.

Probability surveys are challenged by increasing nonresponse rates, resulting in biased statistical inference. Auxiliary information about populations can be used to reduce bias in estimation. Often continuous auxiliary variables in administrative records are first discretized before releasing to the public to avoid confidentiality breaches.

Dysfunctional activation of the default mode network in response inhibition in schizophrenia.

The aim of this study was to characterize dysfunctional cerebral activation in patients with schizophrenia while they performed a response inhibition task. To achieve this, performance on the task and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) were compared between healthy control subjects (HC) and patients with schizophrenia (SZ). We focused on the default mode network (DMN), as there is strong evidence in the literature that lack of DMN suppression in schizophrenia is associated with cognitive impairment including poor response inhibition.

An expanding repertoire of circuit mechanisms for visual prediction errors.

Cortical responses to stimuli vary dependingon context and expectation. Adding insight into this process, Furutachi et al. recently demonstrated that higher-order thalamic input to visual cortex cooperates with interneurons to augment responses to unexpected stimuli, consistent with a body of literature implicating top-down modulation and local inhibition in predictive processing.

Visual remediation of contrast processing impairments in schizophrenia: A preliminary clinical trial.

Schizophrenia (SZ) is associated with visual processing impairments, which are related to higher-level functional impairments. This study investigated the impact of a novel visual remediation intervention (VisR) targeting low- and mid-level visual processing impairments in SZ. We hypothesized that VisR would lead to greater improvements in contrast processing when compared to an active control condition and explored potential treatment-related changes in symptom severity.

Increasing adult-born neurons protects mice from epilepsy.

Neurogenesis occurs in the adult brain in the hippocampal dentate gyrus, an area that contains neurons which are vulnerable to insults and injury, such as severe seizures. Previous studies showed that increasing adult neurogenesis reduced neuronal damage after these seizures. Because the damage typically is followed by chronic life-long seizures (epilepsy), we asked if increasing adult-born neurons would prevent epilepsy.

Log-Cholesky filtering of diffusion tensor fields: Impact on noise reduction.

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a powerful neuroimaging technique that provides valuable insights into the microstructure and connectivity of the brain. By measuring the diffusion of water molecules along neuronal fibers, DTI allows the visualization and study of intricate networks of neural pathways. DTI is a noise-sensitive method, where a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) results in significant errors in the estimated tensor field.

The relationship between COMT, proline, and negative symptoms in clinical high risk and recent psychosis onset.

Individuals at clinical high-risk (CHR) of developing psychosis, as well as patients with recent psychosis onset (RO), experience significant negative symptoms that detrimentally impact daily-life functioning and are associated with poor outcomes, even in those who do not convert to psychosis. Targeting negative symptoms may thus hold promise for the treatment of CHR and RO patients. Building from previous findings we examined whether the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) ValMet functional polymorphism and fasting peripheral proline concentration predicts the severity of negative symptoms experienced by adolescents and young adults at CHR or those with RO.

Large-Scale Mechanistic Models of Brain Circuits with Biophysically and Morphologically Detailed Neurons.

Understanding the brain requires studying its multiscale interactions from molecules to networks. The increasing availability of large-scale datasets detailing brain circuit composition, connectivity, and activity is transforming neuroscience. However, integrating and interpreting this data remains challenging.

Is there a ubiquitous spectrolaminar motif of local field potential power across primate neocortex?

Mendoza-Halliday, Major et al., 2024 ("") advocates a local field potential (LFP)-based approach to functional identification of cortical layers during "laminar" (simultaneous recordings from all cortical layers) multielectrode recordings in nonhuman primates (NHPs). describes a "ubiquitous spectrolaminar motif" in the primate neocortex: 1) 75-150 Hz power peaks in the supragranular layers, 2) 10-19 Hz power peaks in the infragranular layers and 3) the crossing point of their laminar power gradients identifies Layer 4 (L4).

Cross-species striatal hubs: Linking anatomy to resting-state connectivity.

Corticostriatal connections are essential for motivation, cognition, and behavioral flexibility. There is broad interest in using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) to link circuit dysfunction in these connections with neuropsychiatric disorders. In this paper, we used tract-tracing data from non-human primates (NHPs) to assess the likelihood of monosynaptic connections being represented in rs-fMRI data of NHPs and humans.

Frequent Alzheimer's disease neuropathological change in patients with glioblastoma.

Background: The incidence of brain cancer and neurodegenerative diseases is increasing with a demographic shift towards aging populations. Biological parallels have been observed between glioblastoma and Alzheimer's disease (AD), which converge on accelerated brain aging. Here, we aimed to map the cooccurrence of AD neuropathological change (ADNC) in the tumor-adjacent cortex of patients with glioblastoma.

Biogenesis and secretion of mitovesicles, small extracellular vesicles of mitochondrial origin at the crossroads between brain health and disease.

In the brain, mitochondrial components are released into the extracellular space via several mechanisms, including a recently identified type of extracellular vesicles called mitovesicles. While vesiculation of neuronal mitochondria yields various intracellular types of vesicles, with either a single or a double membrane, mitovesicles secreted into the extracellular space are a unique subtype of these mitochondria-derived vesicles, with a double membrane and a specific set of mitochondrial DNA, RNA, proteins, and lipids. Based on the most relevant literature describing mitochondrial vesiculation and mitochondrial exocytosis, we propose a model for their secretion when the amphisome, a hybrid endosome-autophagosome organelle, fuses with the plasma membrane, releasing mitovesicles and exosomes into the extracellular space.

Correction: Borges et al. The Roles of Potassium and Calcium Currents in the Bistable Firing Transition. 2023, , 1347.

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