Most Recent PubMed Publications

Prenatal stress alters mouse offspring dorsal striatal development and placental function in sex-specific ways

Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Sara V Maurer
Prenatal stress is a risk factor for neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), including autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, how early stress modification of brain development contributes to this pathophysiology is poorly understood. Ventral forebrain regions such as dorsal striatum are of particular interest: dorsal striatum modulates movement and cognition, is altered in NDDs, and has a primarily GABAergic population. Here, we examine effects of prenatal stress on adult movement, cognition,...

Predictive Methods and Probabilistic Mapping of Subcortical Brain Components in Fossil Carnivora

Thursday, January 9, 2025
Emily Baer
Paleoneurology reconstructs the evolutionary history of nervous systems through direct observations from the fossil record and comparative data from extant species. Although this approach can provide direct evidence of phylogenetic links among species, it is constrained by the availability and quality of data that can be gleaned from the fossil record. Here, we sought to translate brain component relationships in a sample of extant Carnivora to make inferences about brain structure in fossil...

Alcohol Use Disorder Polygenic Score Compared With Family History and ADH1B

Thursday, January 9, 2025
Dongbing Lai
CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this study of AUD risk among populations of European ancestry, PGSs were calculated using concordant single-nucleotide variants and the best PGS was tested in targeted datasets. The findings suggest that the PGS may potentially be used to evaluate AUD risk. More datasets with similar AUD prevalence as in general populations are needed to further test the generalizability of PGS.

Medication adherence in rheumatoid arthritis: implications for cardiovascular disease risk and strategies to address in U.S. Veterans

Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Isaac D Smith
INTRODUCTION: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic inflammatory disease associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and premature mortality. The risk of CVD is closely associated with RA disease activity, and achieving RA remission using disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) can significantly mitigate this risk. However, despite the availability of highly effective DMARDs, many veterans fail to achieve sustained RA remission.

Gender Differences in Self-Assessment Among Clerkship Medical Students Despite Equivalent Academic and Clinical Performance

Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Melissa B Ludgate
CONCLUSIONS: Female medical students tend to underrate their performance compared to male peers in clinical knowledge, studying skills, and teamwork, despite equivalent academic and clinical performance. This study highlights gender disparities in self-assessment during medical training.

Whole genome sequence-based association analysis of African American individuals with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia

Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Runjia Li
In studies of individuals of primarily European genetic ancestry, common and low-frequency variants and rare coding variants have been found to be associated with the risk of bipolar disorder (BD) and schizophrenia (SZ). However, less is known for individuals of other genetic ancestries or the role of rare non-coding variants in BD and SZ risk. We performed whole genome sequencing of African American individuals: 1,598 with BD, 3,295 with SZ, and 2,651 unaffected controls (InPSYght study). We...

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex TMS evokes responses in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex: Evidence from human intracranial EEG

Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Nicholas T Trapp
Transcranial magnetic stimulation combined with intracranial local field potential recordings in humans (TMS-iEEG) represents a new method for investigating electrophysiologic effects of TMS with spatiotemporal precision. We applied TMS-iEEG to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) in two subjects and demonstrate evoked activity in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC). This study provides direct electrophysiologic evidence that dlPFC TMS, as targeted for depression treatment, can...

Long-term, cell type-specific effects of prenatal stress on dorsal striatum and relevant behaviors in mice

Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Maya M Evans
Maternal stress during pregnancy, or prenatal stress, is a risk factor for neurodevelopmental disorders in offspring, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In ASD, dorsal striatum displays abnormalities correlating with symptom severity, but there is a gap in knowledge about dorsal striatal cellular and molecular mechanisms that may contribute. Using a mouse model, we investigated how prenatal stress impacted striatal-dependent behavior in adult offspring. We observed enhanced motor learning...

Use of Robust Norming to Create a Sensitive Cognitive Summary Score in De Novo Parkinson's Disease: An Illustrative Example

Monday, January 6, 2025
Daniel Weintraub
CONCLUSIONS: Patients with PD perform worse cognitively than HCs, particularly in processing speed and verbal memory. Robust norming increases effect sizes and decreases PD scores to expected levels. The CSS outperformed individual tests and may detect cognitive changes in early PD, making it a useful outcome measure in clinical research. © 2025 The Author(s). Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

Consensus review and considerations on TMS to treat depression: A comprehensive update endorsed by the National Network of Depression Centers, the Clinical TMS Society, and the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology

Sunday, January 5, 2025
Nicholas T Trapp
This article updates the prior 2018 consensus statement by the National Network of Depression Centers (NNDC) on the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in the treatment of depression, incorporating recent research and clinical developments. Publications on TMS and depression between September 2016 and April 2024 were identified using methods informed by PRISMA guidelines. The NNDC Neuromodulation Work Group met monthly between October 2022 and April 2024 to define important clinical...

Iowa Gambling Task performance in individuals with schizophrenia: the role of general versus specific cognitive abilities

Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Stian Orm
OBJECTIVE: We aimed to explore how specific cognitive processes, such as attention and executive functions, account for variance in decision-making measured by Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) performance among individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Association between a large change between the minimum and maximum monthly values of solar insolation and a history of suicide attempts in bipolar I disorder

Monday, December 23, 2024
Philipp Ritter
CONCLUSIONS: A large change between the minimum and maximum monthly values of solar insolation was associated with a history of suicide attempts in bipolar I disorder, replicating our prior research. Physicians should be aware that daylight has wide ranging physiological and psychiatric impacts, and that living with large changes in solar insolation may be associated with an increased suicide risk.

Iowa Brain-Behavior Modeling Toolkit: An Open-Source MATLAB Tool for Inferential and Predictive Modeling of Imaging-Behavior and Lesion-Deficit Relationships

Monday, December 23, 2024
Joseph C Griffis
The traditional analytical framework taken by neuroimaging studies in general, and lesion-behavior studies in particular, has been inferential in nature and has focused on identifying and interpreting statistically significant effects within the sample under study. While this framework is well-suited for hypothesis testing approaches, achieving the modern goal of precision medicine requires a different framework that is predictive in nature and that focuses on maximizing the predictive power of...

Restorative Justice Practices as a Foundation for Medical Education Innovation

Sunday, December 22, 2024
Christopher L Klasson
BACKGROUND: Restorative justice (RJ) is an ethical lens that places emphasis on a community's connection and proliferative impact of actions, promoting communication and establishing methods for accountability. RJ practices can be applied on a spectrum, including proactive community-building practices, community discussions in response to an event, and restorative conferences addressing specific incidences of harm. This article describes an intervention that utilized RJ community-building...

PyAMARES, an Open-Source Python Library for Fitting Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Data

Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Jia Xu
Background/Objectives: Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) is a valuable tool for studying metabolic processes in vivo. While numerous quantification methods exist, the advanced method for accurate, robust, and efficient spectral fitting (AMARES) is among the most used. This study introduces pyAMARES, an open-source Python implementation of AMARES, addressing the need for a flexible, user-friendly, and versatile MRS quantification tool within the Python ecosystem. Methods: PyAMARES was...