Evidence suggests several causes for depression, including traumatic life events, disease, poison, and nutritional deficiencies. Many of these causes are associated with elevated levels of inflammatory biomarkers in the blood, which may in turn lead to inflammatory changes in the brain. Our authors examine what the latest research reveals about the link between inflammation in the brain and depression, and how a better understanding of that link can play a critical first step in the personalization of care.
Implicit intergroup bias emerges early in development, are typically pro-ingroup, and remain stable across the lifespan. Such findings have been interpreted in terms of an automatic ingroup bias similar to what is observed with minimal groups paradigms. These studies are typically conducted with groups of high cultural standing (e.g., Caucasians in North America and Europe). Research conducted among culturally lower status groups (e.g., African-Americans, Latino-Americans) reveals a notable absence of an implicit ingroup bias. Understanding the environmental factors that contribute to the absence of an implicit ingroup bias among people from culturally lower status groups is critical for advancing theories of implicit intergroup cognition. The present study aimed to elucidate the factors that shape racial group bias among African-American children and young adults by examining their relationship with age, school composition (predominantly Black schools or racially mixed schools), parental racial attitudes and socialization messages among African-American children (N = 86) and young adults (N = 130). Age, school-type and parents’ racial socialization messages were all found to be related to the strength of pro-Black (ingroup) bias. We also found that relationships between implicit and explicit bias and frequency of parents' racial socialization messages depended on the type of school participants attended. Our results highlight the importance of considering environmental factors in shaping the magnitude and direction of implicit and explicit race bias among African-Americans rather than treating them as a monolithic group.
Despite widespread assumptions that psychopathy is associated with serious and repeated law-breaking, individuals with psychopathic personality traits do not invariably become chronic criminal offenders. As a partial explanation for this finding, Lykken (1995) ventured that a fearless temperament underlies both psychopathic traits and heroic behavior, and that heroic individuals’ early exposure to effective socializing forces such as warm parenting or healthy self-esteem often fosters a characteristic adaption that tends to beget “successful” behaviors, thereby differentiating heroes from convicts. In this study, we investigate relations between psychopathy, principally its fearless dominance dimension, pride, and prosocial and antisocial behavior in a community sample (N = 339). Fearless dominance and self-centered impulsivity components of psychopathy yielded differential relations with authentic and hubristic pride (Tracy and Robins, 2004), such that fearless dominance was significantly positively correlated with both facets of pride while self-centered Impulsivity was significantly negatively correlated with authentic pride and significantly positively correlated with hubristic pride. Further, authentic pride moderated (potentiated) the relation between fearless dominance and transformational leadership, one of the two outcome measures for prosocial behavior employed in our investigation. Authentic pride did not moderate the relations between fearless dominance and either our other measure of prosocial behavior (heroism) or antisocial behavior, nor did positive parenting moderate the relations between psychopathy components and social behavior. Unexpectedly, hubristic pride significantly moderated the relation between impulsive-antisocial features and antisocial behavior in a protective manner.
by
Julie R. Gaither;
Joseph L. Goulet;
William C. Becker;
Stephen Crystal;
E. Jennifer Edelman;
Kirsha Gordon;
Robert D. Kerns;
David Rimland;
Melissa Skanderson;
Amy C. Justice;
David A. Fiellin
Objective: Patients with substance use disorders (SUDs) prescribed long-term opioid therapy (LtOT) are at risk for overdose and mortality. Prior research has shown that receipt of LtOT in accordance with clinical practice guidelines has the potential to mitigate these outcomes. Our objective was to determine whether the presence of a SUD modifies the association between guideline-concordant care and 1-year all-cause mortality among patients receiving LtOT for pain. Methods: Among HIV+ and HIV- patients initiating LtOT (≥90 days opioids) between 2000 and 2010 as part of the Veterans Aging Cohort Study, we used time-updated Cox regression and propensityscore matching to examine - stratified by SUD status - the association between 1-year all-cause mortality and 3 quality indicators derived from national opioid-prescribing guidelines. Specifically, we examined whether patients received psychotherapeutic cointerventions (≥2 outpatient mental health visits), benzodiazepine coprescriptions (≥7 days), and SUD treatment (≥1 inpatient day or outpatient visit). These indicators were among those found in a previous study to have a strong association with mortality. Results: Among 17,044 patients initiating LtOT, there were 1048 (6.1%) deaths during 1 year of follow-up. Receipt of psychotherapeutic cointerventions was associated with lower mortality in the overall sample and was more protective in patients with SUDs (adjusted hazard ratio [AHR] 0.43, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.33-0.56 vs AHR 0.65, 95% CI 0.53-0.81; P for interaction =0.002). Benzodiazepine copresc ribing was associated with higher mortality in the overall sample (AHR 1.41, 95% CI 1.22-1.63), but we found no interaction by SUD status (P for interaction =0.11). Among patients with SUDs, receipt of SUD treatment was associated with lower mortality (AHR 0.43, 95% CI 0.33-0.57). Conclusions: For clinicians prescribing LtOT to patients with untreated SUDs, engaging patients with psychotherapeutic and SUD treatment services may reduce mortality. Clinicians should also avoid, when possible, prescribing opioids with benzodiazepines.
by
Mai-Anh T. Vu;
Tülay Adali;
Demba Ba;
Gyorgy Buzsaki;
David Carlson;
Katherine Heller;
Conor Liston;
Cynthia Rudin;
Vikaas S. Sohal;
Alik S. Widge;
Helen S Mayberg;
Guillermo Sapiro;
Kafui Dzirasa
With ever-increasing advancements in technology, neuroscientists are able to collect data in greater volumes and with finer resolution. The bottleneck in understanding how the brain works is consequently shifting away from the amount and type of data we can collect and toward what we actually do with the data. There has been a growing interest in leveraging this vast volume of data across levels of analysis, measurement techniques, and eperimental paradigms to gain more insight into brain function. Such efforts are visible at an international scale, with the emergence of big data neuroscience initiatives, such as the BRAIN initiative (Bargmann et al., 2014), the Human Brain Project, the Human Connectome Project, and the National Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria initiative. With these large-scale projects, much thought has been given to data-sharing across groups (Poldrack and Gorgolewski, 2014; Sejnowski et al., 2014); however, even with such data-sharing initiatives, funding mechanisms, and infrastructure, there still eists the challenge of how to cohesively integrate all the data. At multiple stages and levels of neuroscience investigation, machine learning holds great promise as an addition to the arsenal of analysis tools for discovering how the brain works.
The present research investigated the retention of new factual knowledge derived through integration of information acquired across temporally distributed learning episodes. Young adults were exposed to novel facts as they read long lists of seemingly unrelated information, one sentence at a time. They then were presented open-ended questions, the answers to which could be self-derived through integration of pairs of facts from the list. Experiment 1 was the first test of self-derivation of new factual knowledge through integration in adults using open-ended testing (as opposed to forced-choice testing). Participants successfully self-derived integrated knowledge under these more challenging conditions. Experiment 2 was a test for long-term retention of newly self-derived information. Newly derived knowledge remained accessible after a 1-week delay. Striking individual differences were also observed, which were related to whether individuals spontaneously identified the relational structure of the learning task. Insight into the relation between explicit task knowledge and strategic processing was also revealed through examination of response speed at the time of test. Specifically, knowledge of the task structure was associated with response latencies on unsuccessful (but not successful) trials, such that participants who were aware of the opportunity to integrate spent longer when they were subsequently unsuccessful, presumably reflecting directed search strategies and heightened perseverance when those processes failed. Together, the present findings provide direct evidence for the role of memory integration in the long-term accumulation of a semantic knowledge base and have theoretical implications for our understanding of this fundamental form of learning.
The anterolateral group of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST ALG ) is a critical modulator of a variety of rodent and primate behaviors spanning anxiety behavior and drug addiction. Three distinct neuronal cell types have been previously defined in the rat BNST ALG based on differences in the voltage-response to hyperpolarizing and depolarizing current injection. Differences in genetic expression profile between these three cell types suggest electrophysiological cell type may be an indicator for functional differences in the circuit of the rat BNST ALG . Although the behavioral role of the BNST is conserved across species, it is unknown if the same electrophysiological cell types exist in the BNST ALG of the mouse and nonhuman primate. Here, we used whole-cell patch clamp electrophysiology and neuronal reconstructions of biocytin-filled neurons to compare and contrast the electrophysiological and morphological properties of neurons in the BNST ALG from the mouse, rat, and rhesus macaque. We provide evidence that the BNST ALG of all three species contains neurons that match the three defined cell types found in the rat; however, there are intriguing differences in the relative frequency of these cell types as well as electrophysiological and morphological properties of the BNST ALG neurons across species. This study suggests that the overall landscape of the BNST ALG in the primate and mouse may be similar to that of the rat in some aspects but perhaps significantly different in others.
Background: Olfactory dysfunction is a common and defining symptom of chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS). Many measures of olfactory dysfunction in CRS are limited by scoring criteria defined within general populations with interpretations of statistical significance to infer clinically meaningful improvement. In this investigation we define a minimal clinically important difference (MCID) for the Brief Smell Identification Test (BSIT) in CRS patients electing endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS). Methods: A multicenter cohort of 290 adult patients electing ESS for medically recalcitrant CRS were prospectively enrolled between March 2011 and June 2015 and completed BSIT evaluations before and after ESS. Distribution and anchor-based analytic approaches were utilized to define MCID values of the BSIT across patient cofactors. Results: A total of 92 (∽32%) patients were found to have preoperative olfactory dysfunction (BSIT <9), significantly associated with nasal polyposis (χ2= 35.0; p < 0.001). The effect-size distribution-based approach identified 1.0 as a MCID criterion value between “small” and “medium” effect (range, 0.61-1.52) overall. Significant mean postoperative change (ΔM) was reported for patients with olfactory dysfunction (ΔM = 2.28; p < 0.001), both with (n = 54; ΔM = 2.52; p < 0.001) and without (n = 38; ΔM = 1.95; p < 0.001) nasal polyposis, significantly exceeding the MCID criterion. Anchor-based approaches with regression modeling confirmed associations between MCID values and postoperative changes to olfactory-specific survey responses (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Clinically meaningful change in BSIT scores may be defined as an absolute value difference of at least 1.0 unit for heterogeneous patients electing ESS for CRS. Significantly exceeding this criterion may be restricted to CRS patients with baseline olfactory dysfunction, regardless of nasal polyposis.
Partner dance has been shown to be beneficial for the health of older adults. Robots could potentially facilitate healthy aging by engaging older adults in partner dance-based exercise. However, partner dance involves physical contact between the dancers, and older adults would need to be accepting of partner dancing with a robot. Using methods from the technology acceptance literature, we conducted a study with 16 healthy older adults to investigate their acceptance of robots for partner dance-based exercise. Participants successfully led a human-scale wheeled robot with arms (i.e., a mobile manipulator) in a simple, which we refer to as the Partnered Stepping Task (PST). Participants led the robot by maintaining physical contact and applying forces to the robot’s end effectors. According to questionnaires, participants were generally accepting of the robot for partner dance-based exercise, tending to perceive it as useful, easy to use, and enjoyable. Participants tended to perceive the robot as easier to use after performing the PST with it. Through a qualitative data analysis of structured interview data, we also identified facilitators and barriers to acceptance of robots for partner dance-based exercise. Throughout the study, our robot used admittance control to successfully dance with older adults, demonstrating the feasibility of this method. Overall, our results suggest that robots could successfully engage older adults in partner dance-based exercise.
Although research has shown that mothers significantly influence daughters' willingness to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV), cultural factors influencing immigrant Haitian mothers' willingness to have adolescent daughters to be vaccinated are unknown. This is of concern as this population experiences disproportionately higher rates of HPV infection and related cervical cancers. This study identifies cultural beliefs influencing 31 immigrant Haitian mothers' willingness to vaccinate their daughters against HPV using semistructured interviews. Mothers had low levels of HPV and HPV vaccine knowledge, and desired more information. Concerns centered on cultural values regarding adolescent sexuality and HIV/AIDS stigmas specific to Haitian communities. If vaccination were recommended by a physician, mothers are more likely to have their daughters vaccinated. HPV vaccination uptake efforts targeting Haitian months should emphasize physician involvement and incorporate culturally relevant health concerns.