A polygenic/threshold model of psychiatric disorder was first introduced more than 40 years ago by Gottesman and Shields (). They proposed, following on from the seminal work of Falconer (), that what is inherited is not so much a disorder as a liabili… . . . → Read More: Polygenic Heterogeneity: A Complex Model of Genetic Inheritance in Psychiatric Disorders
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For more than a century, clinical investigators have focused on early life as a source of adult psychopathology. Early theories about psychic conflict and toxic parenting have been replaced by more recent formulations of complex interactions of genes a… . . . → Read More: Early Life Programming and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Background: In the neurodevelopmental disorder autism, several neuroimmune abnormalities have been reported. However, it is unknown whether microglial somal volume or density are altered in the cortex and whether any alteration is associated with age o… . . . → Read More: Microglial Activation and Increased Microglial Density Observed in the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Autism Glass et al (). have not replicated our preliminary finding of shorter telomeres in adults reporting a history of childhood maltreatment. Unfortunately, their analysis is not comparable with the design of our study, and the number of affected subjects … . . . → Read More: In Response to “No Correlation Between Childhood Maltreatment and Telomere Length” Telomeres are lengths of repetitive DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes. They protect the ends of the chromosome and shorten with each cell division. Short leukocyte telomere length has been related to a number of age-related diseases (). In addition,… . . . → Read More: No Correlation Between Childhood Maltreatment and Telomere Length Background: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the most acutely effective treatment for depression, but is limited by cognitive side effects. However, research on their persistence, severity, and pattern is inconsistent. We aimed to quantify ECT-associ… . . . → Read More: Objective Cognitive Performance Associated with Electroconvulsive Therapy for Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Background: Genome-wide association studies are a powerful tool for unravelling the genetic background of complex disorders such as major depression.Methods: We conducted a genome-wide association study of 604 patients with major depression and 1364 po… . . . → Read More: Genome-Wide Association-, Replication-, and Neuroimaging Study Implicates HOMER1 in the Etiology of Major Depression The last decade has witnessed the emergence of new pharmacotherapy in the treatment of drug and alcohol dependence, although addiction to the psychostimulants cocaine and amphetamines is notoriously resistant to pharmacological approaches that can effe… . . . → Read More: Stress-Related Receptor Targets for Cocaine Addiction Background: The neuroplasticity hypothesis of depression proposes that a dysfunction of neural plasticity—the basic ability of living organisms to adapt their neural function and structure to external and internal cues—might represent a final commo… . . . → Read More: Learning as a Model for Neural Plasticity in Major Depression Background: The serotonin transporter gene-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) has been proposed as a predictor of antidepressant response. Insertion or deletion of a 44-base pair-long region gives rise to short “S” and long “L” forms of the p… . . . → Read More: Antidepressant Response and the Serotonin Transporter Gene-Linked Polymorphic Region Paloyelis et al. () raise two concerns about the statistical methods used in the original article by Scheres et al. (): first, they indicate that analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) is inappropriate when groups differ on the covariate; and second, they sug… . . . → Read More: What We Can and Cannot Conclude About the Relationship Between Steep Temporal Reward Discounting and Hyperactivity-Impulsivity Symptoms in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Background: Genetic variation in CACNA1C has been repeatedly shown to increase risk for psychiatric disorders, with the strongest evidence for involvement in bipolar disorder. To elucidate the mechanisms by which such effects on psychiatric disease are… . . . → Read More: Genetic Variation in CACNA1C, a Gene Associated with Bipolar Disorder, Influences Brainstem Rather than Gray Matter Volume in Healthy Individuals Background: Cerebrovascular disease plays an important role in depressive disorder, especially in older adults. An understanding of vascular function in depression is important etiologically and to develop innovative treatments that may improve prognosis by ameliorating vascular damage.Methods: This study assessed endothelial function, arterial stiffness, and atherosclerosis in a variety of vessel beds in 25 elderly subjects with depressive disorder compared with 21 nondepressed control subjects. Subjects underwent pulse wave velocity, pulse wave analysis, carotid intima media thickness analysis, and magnetic resonance imaging. A subset (16 patients and 15 control subjects) had assessment of biopsied small artery dilatation to acetylcholine to further assess endothelial function.Results: The mean sample age was 72.4 years with an average age at onset for depression of 60 years. Mean carotid intima media thickness was significantly higher in depressed subjects (p < .01). Pulse wave velocity was 1.6 m/sec higher in depressed subjects (borderline significance). There was a significant reduction in the dilatation response to acetylcholine in preconstricted small arteries (p = .01). On magnetic resonance imaging, depressed subjects had significantly more dilated Virchow–Robin spaces in the basal ganglia (p = .01). Depressed subjects had greater volume of white matter lesions in all regions, but this did not reach statistical significance. There were no baseline differences in vascular risk.Conclusions: Depression in the elderly is associated with poorer endothelial function and more atherosclerosis. This is associated with a greater white matter hyperintensities lesion load and basal ganglia microangiopathy. The use of vasoprotective drugs to improve endothelial function or retard atherosclerosis as depression-modifying agents should be explored. . . . → Read More: Vascular Function in Older Adults with Depressive Disorder For centuries, poets and folklore have asserted a relation between the heart (vascular system) and depression. The common metaphor of a “broken heart” is a symbol of the recognition of the link, and in fact “broken heart syndrome,” also called … . . . → Read More: Fish Oil, Blood Vessels, and Depression We read with interest Garriock and colleagues’ article “A Genomewide Association Study of Citalopram Response in Major Depressive Disorder” (). This work is an important step in analyzing the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (… . . . → Read More: A Genomewide Association Study of Citalopram Response in Major Depressive Disorder—A Psychometric Approach Background: Timing abilities are critical to the successful management of everyday activities and personal safety, and timing abnormalities have been argued to be fundamental to impulsiveness, a core symptom of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder … . . . → Read More: Neural Substrates of Impaired Sensorimotor Timing in Adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Background: Dopamine D3 receptors are involved in the pathophysiology of several neuropsychiatric conditions. [11C]-(+)-PHNO is a radiolabeled D2 and D3 agonist, suitable for imaging the agonist binding sites (denoted D2HIGH and D3) of these receptors … . . . → Read More: Imaging Dopamine D3 Receptors in the Human Brain with Positron Emission Tomography, [11C]PHNO, and a Selective D3 Receptor Antagonist Objectives: The absence of pathophysiologically relevant diagnostic markers of bipolar disorder (BD) leads to its frequent misdiagnosis as unipolar depression (UD). We aimed to determine whether whole brain white matter connectivity differentiated BD f… . . . → Read More: Right Orbitofrontal Corticolimbic and Left Corticocortical White Matter Connectivity Differentiate Bipolar and Unipolar Depression In a timely and interesting study, Scheres et al. () examined the association between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) subtype and discounting of delayed rewards in real-time. They found that the ADHD-combined subtype group (henceforth A… . . . → Read More: Are Steeper Discounting Rates in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Specifically Associated with Hyperactivity-Impulsivity Symptoms or Is This a Statistical Artifact? Over 20 years ago an article in Biological Psychiatry described unusually high levels of dopamine in the thalamus of individuals with schizophrenia (). I had just started my graduate research work in the laboratory of Ralph Adams where this work was be… . . . → Read More: Dopamine in the Thalamus: A Hotbed for Psychosis? Background: Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are severe psychiatric diseases with overlapping symptomatology. Widespread brain morphologic abnormalities, including cortical thinning and subcortical volume reductions, have been demonstrated in schizop… . . . → Read More: Cortical Thickness and Subcortical Volumes in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Background: Circadian rhythm abnormalities are strongly associated with bipolar disorder; however the role of circadian genes in mood regulation is unclear. Previously, we reported that mice with a mutation in the Clock gene (Clock?19) display a behav… . . . → Read More: Knockdown of Clock in the Ventral Tegmental Area Through RNA Interference Results in a Mixed State of Mania and Depression-Like Behavior Background: The protein p11 (also called S100A10) is downregulated in human and rodent depressive-like states. Considerable experimental evidence also implicates p11 in the mechanism of action of antidepressant drugs and electroconvulsive seizures, in … . . . → Read More: A Role for p11 in the Antidepressant Action of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Background: The ?-aminobutyric acid (GABA) Type A receptor deficits that are induced by global or forebrain-specific heterozygous inactivation of the ?2 subunit gene in mouse embryos result in behavior indicative of trait anxiety and depressive state… . . . → Read More: ?-Aminobutyric Acid-Type A Receptor Deficits Cause Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis Hyperactivity and Antidepressant Drug Sensitivity Reminiscent of Melancholic Forms of Depression Background: The hippocampus is likely involved in mood disorders, but in vivo evidence for the role of anatomically distinct hippocampal subregions is lacking. Multiple sclerosis, an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system, is linked to a high prevalence of depression as well as hippocampal damage and may thus provide important insight into the pathologic correlates of medical depression. We examined the role of subregional hippocampal volume for depression in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.Methods: Anatomically defined hippocampal subregional volumes (cornu ammonis 1–3 [CA1–CA3] and the dentate gyrus [CA23DG], subiculum, entorhinal cortex) were measured using a high-resolution T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging sequence in 29 relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients and 20 matched healthy control subjects. Diurnal salivary cortisol was assessed at awakening, 4 pm, and 9 pm on 2 consecutive days. Subjects also completed the Beck Depression Inventory.Results: Multiple sclerosis patients showed smaller hippocampal volumes compared with control subjects, particularly in the CA1 and subiculum subregions. In addition, multiple sclerosis patients with depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory score >13) also showed smaller CA23DG volumes and higher cortisol levels. Within the multiple sclerosis group, CA23DG volume was correlated with depressive symptoms and cortisol levels. There were no associations with number of previous steroid treatments, global atrophy, or disease duration.Conclusions: This report provides in vivo evidence for selective association of smaller CA23DG subregional volumes in the hippocampus with cortisol hypersecretion and depressive symptoms in multiple sclerosis. . . . → Read More: Smaller Cornu Ammonis 2–3/Dentate Gyrus Volumes and Elevated Cortisol in Multiple Sclerosis Patients with Depressive Symptoms Background: Psychostimulants and opiates trigger similar enduring neuroadaptations within the reward circuitry thought to underlie addiction. Transcription factors are key to mediating these enduring behavioral alterations. The facilitation of these ma… . . . → Read More: Glucocorticoid Receptors in Dopaminoceptive Neurons, Key for Cocaine, Are Dispensable for Molecular and Behavioral Morphine Responses Recently, an article by Hebert et al. () reported a rod retinal response anomaly in high-risk offspring of patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. These authors reported significant results mainly concerning the rod b-wave amplitude but only a… . . . → Read More: Retinal Response Anomalies in Patients with Mental Illness and High Risk Relatives We appreciate the comments of Dr. Fountoulakis on our study of electroretinogram (ERG) response in young nonaffected offspring at high risk to develop a psychiatric disorder (). The comments give us an opportunity to discuss the important methodologica… . . . → Read More: Important Differences in Methodology and Reliability of the Electro-oculogram and the Electroretinogram in Psychiatric Research Background: Despite recent interest in glycogen synthase kinase-3? (GSK-3?) as a target for the treatment of mood disorders, there has been very little work related to these illnesses on the upstream signaling molecules that regulate this kinase as w… . . . → Read More: Wnt2 Expression and Signaling Is Increased by Different Classes of Antidepressant Treatments Background: Modulation of midbrain dopamine neurons by nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) plays an important role in behavior, cognition, motivation, and reward. Specifically, nAChRs containing ?2 subunits (?2-nAChRs) switch dopamine cells fr… . . . → Read More: Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptors-Alpha Modulate Dopamine Cell Activity Through Nicotinic Receptors Background: The three-way interaction between the functional polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene linked promoter region, the val66met polymorphism in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene, and childhood adversity in the prediction of de… . . . → Read More: Interaction Between Childhood Adversity, Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor val/met and Serotonin Transporter Promoter Polymorphism on Depression: The TRAILS Study Background: Lipids appear to mediate depressive vulnerability in the elderly; however, sex differences and genetic vulnerability have not been taken into account in previous prospective studies.Methods: Depression was assessed in a population of 1040 w… . . . → Read More: Gender and Genotype Modulation of the Association Between Lipid Levels and Depressive Symptomatology in Community-Dwelling Elderly (The ESPRIT Study) Bewernick et al. () demonstrated the antidepressant and antianxiety effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS) to the nucleus accumbens (NAc) in patients suffering from treatment-resistant depression. Deep brain stimulation has also been proposed in the m… . . . → Read More: Hypomania Following Bilateral Ventral Capsule Stimulation in a Patient with Refractory Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Background: Oral naltrexone effectively antagonizes heroin, but patient noncompliance limits its utility; sustained-release preparations may overcome this. Few data are available on optimal blood naltrexone levels for preventing craving and/or return to heroin use. This study assesses various risk factors, including blood naltrexone level, for heroin craving and relapse to illicit opioids.Methods: Heroin-dependent persons from a randomized controlled trial of oral versus implant naltrexone were followed up for 6 months. Thirty-four participants received 50 mg oral naltrexone daily, plus placebo implant; thirty-five participants received a single dose of 2.3 g naltrexone implant, plus daily oral placebo tablets.Results: Compared to oral naltrexone patients, implant naltrexone patients were significantly less likely to use any opioids and had one-fifth the risk of using heroin ? weekly. Risk of ? weekly heroin use increased by 2.5 times at blood naltrexone concentration < .5 ng/mL compared with ? .5 ng/mL, with 3 ng/mL associated with very low risk of use. Craving remained near “floor” levels for implant patients but rebounded to higher levels among oral patients. Lower craving scores (? 20/70) predicted lower relapse risk. Noncompliance with daily oral formula, higher baseline craving, longer history of use, and being younger predicted higher craving at follow-up.Conclusions: Implant naltrexone was better associated with reduced heroin craving and relapse than oral naltrexone. Effective treatment was achieved at blood naltrexone levels of 1 ng/mL to 3 ng/mL, with higher levels associated with greater efficacy. Craving assessment may be valuable in predicting relapse risk allowing timely intervention. . . . → Read More: Risk Factors for Craving and Relapse in Heroin Users Treated with Oral or Implant Naltrexone The N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) hypofunction model of schizophrenia is based on the ability of NMDAR antagonists to produce many symptoms of the disease. Recent work in rats shows that NMDAR antagonist works synergistically with dopamine to p… . . . → Read More: A Thalamo-Hippocampal-Ventral Tegmental Area Loop May Produce the Positive Feedback that Underlies the Psychotic Break in Schizophrenia Background: Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) experience intense emotions and often show a deficiency of emotion regulation skills. Moreover, they display high prevalence rates of self-injurious behavior. Patients report engaging in s… . . . → Read More: Affect Regulation and Pain in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Possible Link to the Understanding of Self-Injury Background: Serotonin 1A receptors (5-HT1A) are implicated in major depressive disorder (MDD). We previously reported higher 5-HT1A binding potential (BPF) in antidepressant naive MDD subjects compared with control subjects, while other studies report … . . . → Read More: Higher Serotonin 1A Binding in a Second Major Depression Cohort: Modeling and Reference Region Considerations Background: Schizophrenia is hypothesized to involve disordered connectivity between brain regions. Currently, there are no direct measures of brain connectivity; functional and structural connectivity used separately provide only limited insight. Simu… . . . → Read More: Brain Connectivity Is Not Only Lower but Different in Schizophrenia: A Combined Anatomical and Functional Approach Background: Children raised in institutional settings are exposed to social and environmental circumstances that may deprive them of expected environmental inputs during sensitive periods of brain development that are necessary to foster healthy develo… . . . → Read More: Delayed Maturation in Brain Electrical Activity Partially Explains the Association Between Early Environmental Deprivation and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Background: Acute and chronic stress reinstates drug-seeking behavior. Current animal models show that these effects are contingent (temporally, contextually, or both) on the drug-conditioning environment. To date, no paradigm exists to model the commo… . . . → Read More: Persistent Increases in Cocaine-Seeking Behavior After Acute Exposure to Cold Swim Stress Cannabis, like other drugs of abuse, produces its reinforcing effects by activating the brain “reward” pathways comprising dopamine (DA) neurons in the ventral tegmental area that project to the nucleus accumbens and by increasing DA levels in the … . . . → Read More: Baclofen in Cannabis Dependence Syndrome Background: Visual masking paradigms assess the early part of visual information processing, which may reflect vulnerability measures for schizophrenia. We examined the neural substrates of visual backward performance in unaffected sibling of schizophr… . . . → Read More: Regional Brain Activity During Early Visual Perception in Unaffected Siblings of Schizophrenia Patients Background: While the neuroanatomical underpinnings of the functional brain disconnectivity observed in patients with schizophrenia (SZ) remain elusive, white matter fiber bundles of the brain are a likely candidate, given that they represent the infra… . . . → Read More: Corpus Callosum Abnormalities and Their Association with Psychotic Symptoms in Patients with Schizophrenia Schizophrenia patients suffer from cognitive impairments that are not satisfactorily treated by currently available medications. Cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia encompasses deficits in several cognitive modalities that can be differentially resp… . . . → Read More: Disruption of Performance in the Five-Choice Serial Reaction Time Task Induced By Administration of N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor Antagonists: Relevance to Cognitive Dysfunction in Schizophrenia Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a moderately heritable disorder with a high lifetime prevalence. At present, laboratory blood tests to support MDD diagnosis are not available.Methods: We used a classifier approach on blood gene expressio… . . . → Read More: Stimulated Gene Expression Profiles as a Blood Marker of Major Depressive Disorder Background: Increased immune sensitivity to gluten has been reported in schizophrenia. However, studies are inconsistent about this association.Methods: The sample of 471 individuals included 129 with recent-onset psychosis, 191 with multi-episode schi… . . . → Read More: Markers of Gluten Sensitivity and Celiac Disease in Recent-Onset Psychosis and Multi-Episode Schizophrenia Background: Depression has a strong genetic component but candidate gene studies conducted to date have not shown consistent associations.Methods: We conducted a genome-wide parametric and nonparametric linkage analysis in a large-scale family-based st… . . . → Read More: A Genome-Wide Screen for Depression in Two Independent Dutch Populations Background: On the basis of evidence from studies showing the antidepressant effects of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and the inverse relation between fish consumption and the prevalence of depression, the phospholipid hypothesis seems promising … . . . → Read More: A Meta-Analytic Review of Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Compositions in Patients with Depression Background: Long-lasting increases in dendritic spine density and gene expression in the nucleus accumbens and in the ambulatory response to cocaine occur following chronic cocaine treatment. Despite numerous reports of these findings, the molecular me… . . . → Read More: Behavioral and Morphological Responses to Cocaine Require Kalirin7 Background: Optimal decision-making requires that organisms correctly evaluate both the costs and benefits of potential choices. Dopamine transmission within the nucleus accumbens (NAc) has been heavily implicated in reward-learning and decision-making… . . . → Read More: Phasic Nucleus Accumbens Dopamine Release Encodes Effort- and Delay-Related Costs Background: Loss of cortical volume in frontotemporal regions has been reported in patients with schizophrenia and their relatives. Cortical area and thickness are determined by different genetic processes, and measuring these parameters separately may… . . . → Read More: Changes in the Frontotemporal Cortex and Cognitive Correlates in First-Episode Psychosis Background: Recent behavioral and psychophysiological studies have provided converging evidence for emotional dysfunction in conduct disorder (CD). Most of these studies focused on male subjects and little is known about emotional processing in female … . . . → Read More: Facial Expression Recognition, Fear Conditioning, and Startle Modulation in Female Subjects with Conduct Disorder Background: The combined analysis of several large genome-wide association studies identified the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor TCF4 as one of the most significant schizophrenia susceptibility genes. Its function in the adult brain… . . . → Read More: Cognitive and Sensorimotor Gating Impairments in Transgenic Mice Overexpressing the Schizophrenia Susceptibility Gene Tcf4 in the Brain Background: A recent genome-wide association study linked a common variant in RELN (rs7341475G) with risk for schizophrenia in women. In the largest neuroimaging intermediate phenotype study reported so far, we evaluated the effect of rs7341475 on an e… . . . → Read More: No Effect of a Common Allelic Variant in the Reelin Gene on Intermediate Phenotype Measures of Brain Structure, Brain Function, and Gene Expression We thank the authors for their interest in our article (). They raise a question about gender effects and highlight “it would be informative to look at the results stratified by gender.” We agree that examination of gender effects, where feasible, … . . . → Read More: Response to: Testing the Association Between Smoking in Pregnancy and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in a Novel Design Background: Previous studies have provided somewhat inconsistent results about the effects of season of birth on the risk of suicidal behavior. Therefore, we decided to investigate this question in a large sample of suicide completers.Methods: We determined the season of birth-associated risk of completed suicide between the years 1970 and 2008 among all individuals who were born in the area of today’s Hungary between 1930 and 1939, 1941 and 1942, and 1944 and 1969.Results: The final sample of participants included around six and a half million people. About 80,000 completed suicides occurred among participants during the period investigated (the number of suicide completers in our study greatly exceeds the number of suicide completers in any previous studies). A significantly (p < .05) elevated risk of completed suicide was found among those individuals who were born in the high-risk period (spring and summer). Quantitatively, the biggest increase (7.6% [95% confidence interval: 5.4–9.9]) in suicide risk was detected among those who were born in July compared with the average risk of suicide in the population investigated. The associations between season of birth and the risk of completed suicide were stronger among male subjects than among female subjects and among those who committed suicide using violent methods than among those who chose nonviolent methods.Conclusions: Our results from a large sample of suicide completers from Hungary—a country with one of the highest suicide rates in the world over the last century—strongly support the concept that the season of birth is significantly associated with the risk of completed suicide. . . . → Read More: Season of Birth Is Significantly Associated with the Risk of Completed Suicide Background: Rats with extended daily cocaine access show escalating cocaine self-administration and behavioral signs of dependence. Regulation of glutamatergic transmission by metabotropic glutamate receptors has emerged as a mechanism in the addictive… . . . → Read More: Behavioral and Functional Evidence of Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 2/3 and Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 5 Dysregulation in Cocaine-Escalated Rats: Factor in the Transition to Dependence Background: Parental alcoholism substantially raises risk for offspring alcoholism, an effect thought to be mediated by a dysregulation in impulse control. Adult alcoholics have alterations in the frontostriatal system involved in regulating impulsive … . . . → Read More: Striatal Dysfunction Marks Preexisting Risk and Medial Prefrontal Dysfunction Is Related to Problem Drinking in Children of Alcoholics Background: Exposure to x-irradiation in early gestation has been shown to disrupt normal thalamocortical development in the monkey and thereby model one key feature of the neuropathology of schizophrenia. However, the effect of fetal irradiation on co… . . . → Read More: Fetal Irradiation Interferes with Adult Cognition in the Nonhuman Primate Background: The limbic system-associated membrane protein (LAMP) promotes development of neurons of limbic origin. We have previously shown that genetic deletion of LAMP results in heightened reactivity to novelty and reduced anxiety-like behaviors in … . . . → Read More: Loss of Limbic System-Associated Membrane Protein Leads to Reduced Hippocampal Mineralocorticoid Receptor Expression, Impaired Synaptic Plasticity, and Spatial Memory Deficit Background: Approximately 30% of patients with depression are resistant to antidepressant drugs. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been found effective in combination with antidepressants in this patient group. The aim of this stu… . . . → Read More: Transcranial Low Voltage Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields in Patients with Treatment-Resistant Depression Background: Spine density on the basilar dendrites of pyramidal neurons is lower in layer 3, but not in layers 5 and 6, in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of subjects with schizophrenia. The expression of CDC42 (cell division cycle 42), a Rh… . . . → Read More: Altered Cortical CDC42 Signaling Pathways in Schizophrenia: Implications for Dendritic Spine Deficits We would like to report a case of Capgras syndrome in a healthy subject that was induced by ketamine (an antagonist of the N-methyl-D-aspartate [NMDA] subtype of glutamate receptors). We believe this is the first report of delusion-like misidentificati… . . . → Read More: Capgras Syndrome Induced by Ketamine in a Healthy Subject In a recent report in Biological Psychiatry, Thapar et al. () presented an interesting design to evaluate the association between smoking in pregnancy and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the offspring. . . . → Read More: Testing the Association Between Smoking in Pregnancy and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in a Novel Design Deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the nucleus accumbens has been reported to decrease ratings of depression and anxiety in treatment-resistant depression (). Does DBS in the nucleus accumbens also hold a preventive potential against the development of a … . . . → Read More: Nucleus Accumbens Deep Brain Stimulation Did Not Prevent Suicide Attempt in Tourette Syndrome Background: Everyday language relates depressed mood to visual phenomena. Previous studies point to a reduced sensitivity of subjective contrast perception in depressed patients. One way to assess visual contrast perception in an objective way at the l… . . . → Read More: Seeing Gray When Feeling Blue? Depression Can Be Measured in the Eye of the Diseased Background: Orphanin FQ/nociceptin (OFQ/N), the endogenous ligand of the opioid receptor–like (ORL1) receptor, blocks cocaine sensitization in rats. In this study, we tested whether OFQ/N would block sensitization to the motor stimulatory and conditi… . . . → Read More: Orphanin FQ/Nociceptin Not Only Blocks but Also Reverses Behavioral Adaptive Changes Induced by Repeated Cocaine in Mice Background: When making decisions, children with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) are thought to focus on reward and ignore penalty. This is suggested to be associated with a state of low psychophysiological arousal.Methods: This study investigates … . . . → Read More: Impaired Decision Making in Oppositional Defiant Disorder Related to Altered Psychophysiological Responses to Reinforcement Background: The nonapeptide oxytocin (OT) has been repeatedly implicated in processes of parent-infant bonding in animal models; yet, its role in the development of human parenting has received less attention and no research has addressed the involveme… . . . → Read More: Oxytocin and the Development of Parenting in Humans Background: Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are characterized by social, communication, and behavioral deficits and complex genetic etiology. A recent study of 517 ASD families implicated DOCK4 by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) association and a… . . . → Read More: Characterization of a Family with Rare Deletions in CNTNAP5 and DOCK4 Suggests Novel Risk Loci for Autism and Dyslexia Depression is a complex and heterogeneous disorder whose cause is poorly understood. Theories on the mechanisms of the disease have often focused on either its neurobiology or its cognitive and behavioral manifestations. Recently, studies exploring how… . . . → Read More: Reward and Punishment Processing in Depression Background: Language delay is a hallmark feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The identification of word boundaries in continuous speech is a critical first step in language acquisition that can be accomplished via statistical learning and relia… . . . → Read More: No Neural Evidence of Statistical Learning During Exposure to Artificial Languages in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Background: Biochemical diagnostics of ethanol intake would improve alcohol abuse treatment and have applications in clinical trial and public safety settings. Self-reporting of alcohol use has clinical utility but lacks the desired reliability. Previo… . . . → Read More: Classification of Alcohol Abuse by Plasma Protein Biomarkers Background: Nicotine is the principal component of tobacco smoke, resulting in addiction, and recent evidence suggests that damage to the insular cortex (insula) disrupts tobacco addiction in human smokers. However, the effect of an inactivation of thi… . . . → Read More: Granular Insular Cortex Inactivation as a Novel Therapeutic Strategy for Nicotine Addiction Background: Treatment adherence is a significant problem in patients with bipolar disorder. This study was designed to determine the efficacy of risperidone long-acting injectable (LAI) in the maintenance treatment of bipolar I disorder.Methods: Eligible patients with current or recent manic or mixed episodes (n = 559, aged 18–65 years) were treated with open-label oral risperidone for 3 weeks (period II) and open-label risperidone LAI for 26 weeks (n = 501; period III). Patients who maintained response (n = 303) were randomly allocated 1:1 to placebo injections (n = 149) or to continue risperidone LAI (n = 154) for up to 24 months (period IV).Results: Most (77%) patients on risperidone LAI received a dose of 25 mg every 2 weeks during period IV. Time to recurrence for any mood episode (primary outcome variable) was significantly longer in the risperidone LAI group versus placebo (p < .001); the difference was significant for time to recurrence of elevated-mood episode (p < .001) but not time to recurrence of depressive episode (p = .805). Weight gains ?7% (compared with the period’s baseline) occurred in 15% of patients in period III; in 12% of patients on risperidone LAI and 3% of patients on placebo in period IV.Conclusions: Risperidone LAI monotherapy significantly delayed the time to recurrence of mood episodes, versus placebo, in this controlled, randomized study in patients with bipolar I disorder. Risperidone LAI was tolerable and no new safety concerns emerged compared with previous studies of risperidone LAI. . . . → Read More: Risperidone Long-Acting Injectable Monotherapy in the Maintenance Treatment of Bipolar I Disorder Background: To extend the early treatment response literature, this article aims to quantify the extent of heterogeneity and describe the characteristics of treatment response trajectories in schizophrenia.Methods: Data were extracted from two double-b… . . . → Read More: Elaboration on the Early-Onset Hypothesis of Antipsychotic Drug Action: Treatment Response Trajectories Background: Movement abnormalities and cognitive deficits may represent external markers of an underlying neural process linked with the early etiology of psychosis. As basal ganglia function plays a governing role in both movement and cognitive proces… . . . → Read More: Markers of Basal Ganglia Dysfunction and Conversion to Psychosis: Neurocognitive Deficits and Dyskinesias in the Prodromal Period Background: Recent neurobiological models on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as well as findings from imaging studies suggest a crucial involvement of dopaminergic midbrain nuclei, especially the substantia nigra (SN), in the pathogenes… . . . → Read More: Increased Echogenicity of the Substantia Nigra in Children and Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Background: A dual representation model of intrusive memory proposes that personally experienced events give rise to two types of representation: an image-based, egocentric representation based on sensory-perceptual features; and a more abstract, alloc… . . . → Read More: Acute Effects of Alcohol on Intrusive Memory Development and Viewpoint Dependence in Spatial Memory Support a Dual Representation Model |
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