Neuromodulatory subcortical systems (NSSs) are uniquely susceptible to dementia-related pathology, leading to frequent molecular and behavioral impairments associated with altered function of these nuclei. Some of these systems display clear sex-specific cytoarchitecture and signaling leading to distinct physiology and behavioral outputs in males and females, while other regions display nominal sex differences. However, the relevance of sex differences in modulating dysfunction of NSSs in...

In high-stress humanitarian and mental health contexts, timely access to accurate, empathetic, and actionable information remains critically limited, especially for at-risk and underserved populations. This work introduces LLooMi, an open-source, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) conversational agent designed to deliver trustworthy, emotionally attuned, and context-aware support across domains such as mental health crises, housing insecurity, medical emergencies, immigration, and food access....

CONCLUSIONS: This multisite evaluation generated collaborative insights from key partners with diverse perspectives of the employee wellness program implementation process. Organizations can adopt this evaluation model to assess and refine their own employee wellness initiatives, identifying both challenges and successes to drive engagement. VA has invested significant resources to support employees via the Employee Whole Health Program. To improve employee engagement with the wellness...

CONCLUSIONS: Rural Veterans with COPCs may benefit from increased access to specialty pain care, which may also reduce burden on rural primary care providers.

Weak handedness is frequently observed in individuals with neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Although birth-related stressors, such as prematurity, have been shown to contribute to this association, the influence of early prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) remains under-explored. This study examined the trimester-specific effects of disaster-related PNMS on handedness development using rare longitudinal data from the 2008 Iowa Flood Study. Pregnant women exposed to major flooding were...

CONCLUSION: This suite of clinician-focused SH education modules represents a key step in advancing AYA SH care throughout cancer treatment and survivorship. Future work will explore the efficacy of the modules on AYA-clinician SH communication.

No abstract

Thalamocortical circuits regulate information flow between sensory inputs and higher-order processing, and their disruption is increasingly implicated in psychotic disorders. However, scalable biomarkers of this circuitry remain limited. We assessed P50 sensory gating, 40 Hz auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) and sleep spindles in relation to resting-state thalamocortical connectivity in early-course psychosis (EC, n = 19), first-degree relatives (FHR, n = 24), and demographically matched...

CONCLUSIONS: As compared to social overinclusion, Cyberball-induced social exclusion did not significantly influence performance on cognitive tasks associated with suicide risk. Future research may consider within-subject designs comparing exclusion and inclusion paradigms, using alternative acute stress manipulations or powering studies to detect smaller effect sizes when studying interpersonal stress in youth at high-risk for suicide.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Injection drug use is a driver of hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission, thus integrating HCV care into addiction care is likely necessary for HCV elimination. Here we describe how we integrated HCV care into our addiction medicine (AM) clinic and evaluate its effect on HCV treatment.

No abstract

CONCLUSIONS: Group-based interventions may positively impact weight trajectories and cardiometabolic health among adolescent military-dependents. Future studies should elucidate potential moderators and mechanisms of interventions on outcomes in this important population.

Over the past decade, fetal, infant, and toddler (FIT) neuroimaging has become a rapidly expanding field, driven by advances in technology and computational methods. By providing non-invasive ways to explore the developing brain in both typical and pathological development, FIT neuroimaging holds promise for advancing pediatric medicine. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasonography, and electroencephalography (EEG) are regularly used in clinical practice to identify or rule out structural...

Hippocampal activity supports memory and many other brain functions. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) guided by hippocampal functional connectivity (FC) shows promise in improving memory, but direct neural evidence of its capacity to engage and modulate hippocampal activity is lacking. Here we combined TMS with intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) in 8 neurosurgical patients and with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 79 neurologically healthy participants. We...

CONCLUSIONS: While the PBA-s demonstrates adequate internal consistency, our results revealed high rates of non-endorsement (i.e., item total scores = 0) and a variable factor structure with disease progression. Thus, the PBA-s may not distinguish mild changes in behavioral symptoms that might occur in early HD-ISS stages of disease.