NP_Publications

Maladaptive avoidance is a central feature of many mental disorders, particularly stress- and anxiety-related disorders. Those disorders are more prevalent in women, suggesting that there may be sex differences in avoidance propensity. Sex differences have been documented in threat conditioning, but not in active avoidance paradigms, despite their potential clinical relevance. Preclinical research has historically focused on males, limiting our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms...

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Fatigue is a pervasive and difficult-to-treat symptom of major depressive disorder (MDD) that contributes to disability. Understanding this problem in its earlier stages will be critical for averting long-term negative outcomes. To investigate the molecular roots of fatigue in early-stage depression, the current work measured bioenergetic mechanisms, with a focus on adenosine triphosphate (ATP), in brain and blood cells in young adults with MDD versus healthy controls (HC). To measure ATP...

Understanding the neural mechanisms of adolescent substance use is a critical public health issue, with direct implications for bolstering prevention and treatment strategies. Yet this effort is challenging because substance use is multi-faceted, substance use facets change over time, and commonly used brain network features are not optimized to capture both local and global aspects of intrinsic connectivity. In this study, we aimed to address these issues. We operationalized adolescent...

To investigate the relevance of small RNAs to human longevity, we pursued three goals: (a) to validate epigenetic (small RNA) factors underlying survival of older adults, (b) to develop and validate prediction models of survival for potential clinical application, and (c) to identify plausible druggable targets prolonging longevity. We evaluated 828 small non-coding RNAs-687 microRNAs (miRNAs) and 141 piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs)-in baseline plasma from 1271 community-dwelling older adults (≥...

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Maternal depressive symptoms during pregnancy have consequences for offspring brain development, likely mediated via biological signals. However, gestational biological correlates of maternal depression may differ depending on childhood maltreatment (CM) history. We investigated the association of maternal depressive symptoms in pregnancy and CM history with newborn global white matter microstructure. In a sample of N = 90 mother-infant dyads from two cohorts, maternal depressive symptoms were...

There is an urgent need to advance understanding of the neural underpinnings of depression, especially early in the life span. Examination of neural dynamics using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data can provide indices of neural flexibility, which may provide important new insights for the neurobiology of pediatric depression. Here we applied Hidden Markov Modeling (HMM) to resting-state fMRI data to investigate neural flexibility in relation to depression and...

Functional brain networks support human cognition, yet how individualized network architecture emerges in early childhood remains poorly understood. Averaging across participants can obscure age-specific organization and person-to-person differences, particularly in slowly developing association cortices. We developed an age-appropriate functional reference that captured common structure across toddlers without averaging away individual variability, enabling estimation of each child's networks...

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Individuals with binge-type eating disorders (binge-EDs) repeatedly engage in binge eating despite negative consequences, suggesting altered decision-making. However, the specific cognitive mechanisms underlying these alterations remain poorly understood. In this longitudinal study, we applied the drift diffusion model (DDM) - a computational approach that isolates core decision-making components - to examine how these components relate to binge-eating frequency over time. Ninety-five adults...

CONCLUSIONS: Present findings revealed isolated regions of volume loss and white matter abnormalities in patients with PDD as compared to other cognitive subtypes. Hippocampal atrophy and white matter disruption were observed in patients with PDD and should be interpreted as correlates of advanced cognitive impairment rather than predictive biomarkers. Longitudinal studies are needed to determine whether these imaging features track or precede cognitive decline.

CONCLUSIONS: Lower lGI, which is associated with impaired signaling efficiency, was observed in the PTSD group compared with the control group for the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region that has been strongly implicated in associative fear learning and extinction. It is possible that PTSD accelerates the typical age-associated decline in lGI of the rostral middle frontal cortices.

The scope of knowledge is constantly evolving, due to such factors as environmental changes, cultural evolution, and scientific discovery. Consequently, we are frequently confronted with gaps in our knowledge, compelling us to seek information from available sources. Sometimes the information we seek is easy to find; other times it has yet to be established by others, requiring us to creatively come up with an original perspective. Yet, little is known about how our foraging strategies change...

The low prevalence effect, which posits that people are more likely to miss a present target when its prevalence rate is low, has important implications for real-world scenarios such as cancer screening and bomb detection. This effect has primarily been studied under full visibility; however, real-world scenarios often come with incomplete visibility. Occlusion and poor visibility introduce perceptual uncertainty, potentially altering how people decide whether a target is present. Here, we...

The recently developed phenomenological renormalization group (pRG) analysis has uncovered scale-free properties in large-scale neural population recordings across recording modalities, including extracellular electrophysiology and calcium imaging. The convergence of these properties across the datasets hints at universal neural behavior. Yet, it is unknown how differences in temporal resolution and measurement details affect pRG scaling. Here, we use a network model known to produce scaling...

CONCLUSIONS: Behavioral learning impairments that seem similar across clinical groups can be linked to distinct neurocognitive mechanisms via integrative neurocomputational modeling. Our approach provides insights into the interplay of underlying learning mechanisms and how they manifest differently across psychopathologies.

CONCLUSION: These results emphasize the importance of input stimulation parameters on cerebro-cerebral evoked potential (CCEP) response magnitude and consistency and are a step towards guiding selective engagement of specific fiber populations for both research and clinical settings.

Acute appendicitis is widely recognized as the leading cause of acute abdominal pain in patients seeking hospital treatment. The standard of care and golden approach has traditionally involved performing an appendicectomy, which nowadays is more often performed using laparoscopic techniques. As with any laparoscopic procedure, there is a risk of iatrogenic organ injury, particularly during trocar insertion; one such organ at risk is the urinary bladder (0.17-0.73%). Most reported cases of...

Influenza A viruses exhibit broad host tropism, infecting multiple species including humans, avian species, and swine. Swine influenza virus (SIV), while primarily circulating in porcine populations, demonstrates zoonotic potential with sporadic human infections. In this investigation, we identified two H1N1 subtype swine influenza A virus strains designated A/swine/China/SD6591/2019(H1N1) (abbreviated SD6591) and A/swine/China/SD6592/2019(H1N1) (abbreviated SD6592) in Shandong Province, China....