Family environment and polygenic risk in the bipolar high-risk context.

Background: The interaction of polygenic risk (PRS) and environmental effects on development of bipolar disorder (BD) is understudied, as are high-risk offspring perceptions of their family environment (FE). We tested the association of offspring-perceived FE in interaction with BD-PRS on liability for BD in offspring at high or low familial risk for BD.

Methods: Offspring of a parent with BD (oBD;  = 266) or no psychiatric disorders ( = 174), aged 12-21 at recruitment, participated in the US and Australia.

Partially distinct combinations of psychological, metabolic and inflammatory risk factors are prospectively associated with the onset of the subtypes of Major Depressive Disorder in midlife.

Background: Given the well known heterogeneity of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), dividing this complex disorder into subtypes is likely to be a more promising approach to identify its determinants than to study it as a whole.

Methods: In a prospective population-based cohort study (CoLaus|PsyCoLaus) with 5.5 years of follow-up, 1524 participants without MDD at baseline, aged 35-66 years (mean age 51.

Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) between Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

The aim of this study was to identify any potential genetic overlap between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). We hypothesized that since these disorders share a sub-phenotype, they may share common risk alleles. In this manuscript, we report the overlap found between these two disorders.

Information Accumulation over Time in Monkey Inferior Temporal Cortex Neurons Explains Pattern Recognition Reaction Time under Visual Noise.

We recognize objects even when they are partially degraded by visual noise. We studied the relation between the amount of visual noise (5, 10, 15, 20, or 25%) degrading 8 black-and-white stimuli and stimulus identification in 2 monkeys performing a sequential delayed match-to-sample task. We measured the accuracy and speed with which matching stimuli were identified.

Genetic Feedback Regulation of Frontal Cortical Neuronal Ensembles Through Activity-Dependent Arc Expression and Dopaminergic Input.

Mental functions involve coordinated activities of specific neuronal ensembles that are embedded in complex brain circuits. Aberrant neuronal ensemble dynamics is thought to form the neurobiological basis of mental disorders. A major challenge in mental health research is to identify these cellular ensembles and determine what molecular mechanisms constrain their emergence and consolidation during development and learning.

Scene-Selectivity and Retinotopy in Medial Parietal Cortex.

Functional imaging studies in human reliably identify a trio of scene-selective regions, one on each of the lateral [occipital place area (OPA)], ventral [parahippocampal place area (PPA)], and medial [retrosplenial complex (RSC)] cortical surfaces. Recently, we demonstrated differential retinotopic biases for the contralateral lower and upper visual fields within OPA and PPA, respectively. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we combine detailed mapping of both population receptive fields (pRF) and category-selectivity, with independently acquired resting-state functional connectivity analyses, to examine scene and retinotopic processing within medial parietal cortex.

Hippocampal Transcriptomic and Proteomic Alterations in the BTBR Mouse Model of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are complex heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorders of an unclear etiology, and no cure currently exists. Prior studies have demonstrated that the black and tan, brachyury (BTBR) T+ Itpr3tf/J mouse strain displays a behavioral phenotype with ASD-like features. BTBR T+ Itpr3tf/J mice (referred to simply as BTBR) display deficits in social functioning, lack of communication ability, and engagement in stereotyped behavior.

Everyday executive functions in Down syndrome from early childhood to young adulthood: evidence for both unique and shared characteristics compared to youth with sex chromosome trisomy (XXX and XXY).

Executive functions (EF) are thought to be impaired in Down syndrome (DS) and sex chromosome trisomy (Klinefelter and Trisomy X syndromes; +1X). However, the syndromic specificity and developmental trajectories associated with EF difficulties in these groups are poorly understood. The current investigation (a) compared everyday EF difficulties in youth with DS, +1X, and typical development (TD); and (b) examined relations between age and EF difficulties in these two groups and a TD control group cross-sectionally.

Hypersexuality in Parkinson's Disease: Systematic Review and Report of 7 New Cases.

Hypersexuality (HS) was one of the earliest examples of an impulse control disorder (ICD) or behavior to be associated with treatment for Parkinson's disease (PD), with an estimated prevalence of approximately 3.5%. Here, we report on a systematic review of the published literature of HS in PD with a view to uncovering evidence as to whether it is distinct from other ICDs.

Prefrontal cortex hemodynamics and age: a pilot study using functional near infrared spectroscopy in children.

Cerebral hemodynamics reflect cognitive processes and underlying physiological processes, both of which are captured by functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Here, we introduce a novel parameter of Oxygenation Variability directly obtained from fNIRS data -the OV Index-and we demonstrate its use in children. fNIRS data were collected from 17 children (ages 4-8 years), while they performed a standard Go/No-Go task.

Perceptual memory drives learning of retinotopic biases for bistable stimuli.

The visual system exploits past experience at multiple timescales to resolve perceptual ambiguity in the retinal image. For example, perception of a bistable stimulus can be biased toward one interpretation over another when preceded by a brief presentation of a disambiguated version of the stimulus (positive priming) or through intermittent presentations of the ambiguous stimulus (stabilization). Similarly, prior presentations of unambiguous stimuli can be used to explicitly "train" a long-lasting association between a percept and a retinal location (perceptual association).

Theta band activity in response to emotional expressions and its relationship with gamma band activity as revealed by MEG and advanced beamformer source imaging.

Neuronal oscillations in the theta and gamma bands have been shown to be important for cognition. Here we examined the temporal and spatial relationship between the two frequency bands in emotional processing using magnetoencephalography and an advanced dynamic beamformer source imaging method called synthetic aperture magnetometry. We found that areas including the amygdala, visual and frontal cortex showed significant event-related synchronization in both bands, suggesting a functional association of neuronal oscillations in the same areas in the two bands.

Male mice emit distinct ultrasonic vocalizations when the female leaves the social interaction arena.

Adult male mice emit large number of complex ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) when interacting with adult females. Call numbers and call categories differ greatly among inbred mouse strains. Little is known about USV emissions when the social partner departs.

Graph theoretical analysis of resting magnetoencephalographic functional connectivity networks.

Complex networks have been observed to comprise small-world properties, believed to represent an optimal organization of local specialization and global integration of information processing at reduced wiring cost. Here, we applied magnitude squared coherence to resting magnetoencephalographic time series in reconstructed source space, acquired from controls and patients with schizophrenia, and generated frequency-dependent adjacency matrices modeling functional connectivity between virtual channels. After configuring undirected binary and weighted graphs, we found that all human networks demonstrated highly localized clustering and short characteristic path lengths.

Functional organization and visual representations of human ventral lateral prefrontal cortex.

Recent neuroimaging studies in both human and non-human primates have identified face selective activation in the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) even in the absence of working memory (WM) demands. Further, research has suggested that this face-selective response is largely driven by the presence of the eyes. However, the nature and origin of visual category responses in the VLPFC remain unclear.

The impact of anxiety upon cognition: perspectives from human threat of shock studies.

Anxiety disorders constitute a sizeable worldwide health burden with profound social and economic consequences. The symptoms are wide-ranging; from hyperarousal to difficulties with concentrating. This latter effect falls under the broad category of altered cognitive performance which is the focus of this review.

The impact of induced anxiety on response inhibition.

Anxiety has wide reaching effects on cognition; evidenced most prominently by the "difficulties concentrating" seen in anxiety disorders, and by adaptive harm-avoidant behaviors adopted under threatening circumstances. Despite having critical implications for daily-living, the precise impact of anxiety on cognition is as yet poorly quantified. Here we attempt to clarify the impact of anxiety on sustained attention and response inhibition via a translational anxiety induction in healthy individuals (N = 22).

Modeling the glutamate-glutamine neurotransmitter cycle.

Glutamate is the principal excitatory neurotransmitter in brain. Although it is rapidly synthesized from glucose in neural tissues the biochemical processes for replenishing the neurotransmitter glutamate after glutamate release involve the glutamate-glutamine cycle. Numerous in vivo(13)C magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) experiments since 1994 by different laboratories have consistently concluded: (1) the glutamate-glutamine cycle is a major metabolic pathway with a flux rate substantially greater than those suggested by early studies of cell cultures and brain slices; (2) the glutamate-glutamine cycle is coupled to a large portion of the total energy demand of brain function.

Input-specific excitation of olfactory cortex microcircuits.

Every higher-order association cortex receives a variety of synaptic signals from different regions of the brain. How these cortical networks are capable of differentially responding to these various extrinsic synaptic inputs remains unclear. To address this issue, we studied how the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and the anterior piriform cortex (aPC) were functionally connected to the association olfactory cortex, the posterior piriform cortex (pPC).

Neurotrapping: cellular screens to identify the neural substrates of behavior in Drosophila.

The availability of new tools for manipulating neuronal activity, coupled with the development of increasingly sophisticated techniques for targeting these tools to subsets of cells in living, behaving animals, is permitting neuroscientists to tease apart brain circuits by a method akin to classical mutagenesis. Just as mutagenesis can be used to introduce changes into an organism's DNA to identify the genes required for a given biological process, changes in activity can be introduced into the nervous system to identify the cells required for a given behavior. If the changes are introduced randomly, the cells can be identified without any prior knowledge of their properties.

Light phase testing of social behaviors: not a problem.

The rich repertoire of mouse social behaviors makes it possible to use mouse models to study neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by social deficits. The fact that mice are naturally nocturnal animals raises a critical question of whether behavioral experiments should be strictly conducted in the dark phase and whether light phase testing is a major methodologically mistake. Although mouse social tasks have been performed in both phases in different laboratories, there seems to be no general consensus on whether testing phase is a critical factor or not.