Tagged: Biological Psychiatry

Increasing evidence suggests that the clinical effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) are target-dependent. Within any given symptom, precise targeting of specific brain circuits may improve clinical outcomes. This principle can also be extended across symptoms – stimulation of different circuits may lead to different symptom-level outcomes. This may include targeting different symptoms within the same disorder (such as dysphoria versus anxiety in patients with major depression) or targeting the same symptom across different disorders (such as primary major depression and depression secondary to stroke, traumatic brain injury, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, or Parkinson’s disease).

Stress modulates the activity of various memory systems and can thereby guide behavioral interaction with the environment in an adaptive or maladaptive manner. At the cellular level, a large body of evidence indicates that (nor)adrenaline and glucocorticoid release induced by acute stress-exposure affects synapse function and synaptic plasticity, which are critical substrates for learning and memory. Recent evidence suggests that memories are supported in the brain by sparsely distributed neurons within networks, termed engram cell ensembles.

To gain insights into the role of brain structure and function on anxiety (ANX), we conducted a genetically informed investigation leveraging information from ANX genome-wide association studies available from UK Biobank (UKB; N=380,379), FinnGen Program (N=290,361), and Million Veteran Program (MVP; N=175,163) together with UKB genome-wide data (N=33,224) related to 3,935 brain imaging-derived phenotypes (IDP).

Primary and motile cilia are thin, hair-like cellular projections from the cell surface involved in movement, sensing, and communication between cells. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are small membrane-bound vesicles secreted by cells and they contain various proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids that are delivered to and influence the behavior of other cells. Both cilia and EVs are essential for the normal functioning of brain cells, and their malfunction can lead to several neurological diseases. Cilia and EVs can interact with each other in several ways, and this interplay plays a crucial role in facilitating various biological processes, including cell-to-cell communication, tissue homeostasis, and pathogen defense.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is characterized by compulsive alcohol-seeking behavior, which is associated with dysregulation of afferent projections from the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) to the basal amygdala (BLA). However, the contribution of the cell-type-specific mechanism in this neuronal circuit to alcohol-seeking behavior remains unclear.