Distinctive and common neural underpinnings of major depression,social anxiety,and their comorbidity

Assessing neural commonalities and differences among depression, anxiety and their comorbidity is critical in developing a more integrative clinical neuroscience and in evaluating currently debated categorical vs dimensional approaches to psychiatric classification. Therefore, in this study, we sought to identify patterns of anomalous neural responding to criticism and praise that are specific to and common among major depressive disorder (MDD), social anxiety disorder (SAD) and comorbid MDD-SAD. Adult females who met formal diagnostic criteria for MDD, SAD or MDD-SAD and psychiatrically healthy participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging as they listened to statements directing praise or criticism at them or at another person. MDD groups showed reduced responding to praise across a distributed cortical network, an effect potentially mediated by thalamic nuclei undergirding arousal-mediated attention. SAD groups showed heightened anterior insula and decreased default-mode network response to criticism. The MDD-SAD group uniquely showed reduced responding to praise in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Finally, all groups with psychopathology showed heightened response to criticism in a region of the superior frontal gyrus implicated in attentional gating. The present results suggest novel neural models of anhedonia in MDD, vigilance-withdrawal behaviors in SAD, and poorer outcome in MDD-SAD. Importantly, in identifying unique and common neural substrates of MDD and SAD, these results support a formulation in which common neural components represent general risk factors for psychopathology that, due to factors that are present at illness onset, lead to distinct forms of psychopathology with unique neural signatures.     

The awareness of the scared - context dependent influence of oxytocin on brain function

Brain Imaging and Behavior - Oxytocin is both a hormone and a neurotransmitter and has been originally recognized for its role in childbirth and lactation. Later, it became widely known as a...     

Neural correlates of anticipation and processing of performance feedback in social anxiety

Fear of negative evaluation, such as negative social performance feedback, is the core symptom of social anxiety. The present study investigated the neural correlates of anticipation and perception of social performance feedback in social anxiety. High (HSA) and low (LSA) socially anxious individuals were asked to give a speech on a personally relevant topic and received standardized but appropriate expert performance feedback in a succeeding experimental session in which neural activity was measured during anticipation and presentation of negative and positive performance feedback concerning the speech performance, or a neutral feedback‐unrelated control condition. HSA compared to LSA subjects reported greater anxiety during anticipation of negative feedback. Functional magnetic resonance imaging results showed deactivation of medial prefrontal brain areas during anticipation of negative feedback relative to the control and the positive condition, and medial prefrontal and insular hyperactivation during presentation of negative as well as positive feedback in HSA compared to LSA subjects. The results indicate distinct processes underlying feedback processing during anticipation and presentation of feedback in HSA as compared to LSA individuals. In line with the role of the medial prefrontal cortex in self‐referential information processing and the insula in interoception, social anxiety seems to be associated with lower self‐monitoring during feedback anticipation, and an increased self‐focus and interoception during feedback presentation, regardless of feedback valence. Hum Brain Mapp 35:6023–6031, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Glia cell line‐derived neurotrophic factor mediates survival of murine sympathetic precursors

During embryonic development, neurons are first produced in excess, and final numbers are adjusted by apoptosis at later stages. Crucial to this end is the amount of target‐derived growth factor available for the neurons. By this means, the target size correctly matches the innervating neuron number. This target‐derived survival has been well studied for sympathetic neurons, and nerve growth factor (NGF) was identified to be the crucial factor for maintaining sympathetic neurons at late embryonic and early postnatal stages, with a virtual complete loss of sympathetic neurons in NGF knockout (KO) mice. This indicates that all sympathetic neurons are dependent on NGF. However, also different glia cell line‐derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) KO mice consistently presented a loss of sympathetic neurons. This was the rationale for investigating the role of GDNF for sympathetic precursor/neuron survival. Here we show that GDNF is capable of promoting survival of 30% sympathetic precursors dissociated at E13. This is in line with data from GDNF KOs in which a comparable sympathetic neuron loss was observed at late embryonic stages, although the onset of the phenotype was unclear. We further present data showing that GDNF ligand and canonical receptors are expressed in sympathetic neurons especially at embryonic stages, raising the possibility of an autocrine/paracrine GDNF action. Finally, we show that GDNF also maintained neonatal sympathetic neurons (40%) cultured for 2 days. However, the GDNF responsiveness was lost at 5 days in vitro. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Questionnaire on parental attitudes and rearing practices (FEPS)

A positive parent-child relationship is one of the most important determinants of a healthy cognitive, emotional and social development. The relationship from parent to child is determined by parenting styles. Parenting styles are characterised by the two dimensions parental attitudes and rearing practices. The development and the psychometric properties of a questionnaire on parental attitudes and rearing practices (FEPS), which contains an extended version of the Parental Bonding Instrument by Parker et al. (PBI, 1979) and two scales on parental reinforcement and punishment behaviour, is presented. In a sample of 457 women and 159 men factorial and item analysis revealed four scales (care, autonomy, low punishment and low material reinforcement). The care dimension contained items of immaterial reinforcement on the positive pole and items of coldness and ignorance as means of punishment on the negative pole. Based on findings from its first application in a clinical study it can be assumed that the FEPS differentiates between clinical and non-clinical populations. Additionally, varying patterns of the four scales may emerge as risk factors for the development of certain psychiatric/psychological problems.     

Common capacity-limited neural mechanisms of selective attention and spatial working memory encoding

One characteristic feature of visual working memory (WM) is its limited capacity, and selective attention has been implicated as limiting factor. A possible reason why attention constrains the number of items that can be encoded into WM is that the two processes share limited neural resources. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have indeed demonstrated commonalities between the neural substrates of WM and attention. Here we investigated whether such overlapping activations reflect interacting neural mechanisms that could result in capacity limitations. To independently manipulate the demands on attention and WM encoding within one single task, we combined visual search and delayed discrimination of spatial locations. Participants were presented with a search array and performed easy or difficult visual search in order to encode one, three or five positions of target items into WM. Our fMRI data revealed colocalised activation for attention-demanding visual search and WM encoding in distributed posterior and frontal regions. However, further analysis yielded two patterns of results. Activity in prefrontal regions increased additively with increased demands on WM and attention, indicating regional overlap without functional interaction. Conversely, the WM load-dependent activation in visual, parietal and premotor regions was severely reduced during high attentional demand. We interpret this interaction as indicating the sites of shared capacity-limited neural resources. Our findings point to differential contributions of prefrontal and posterior regions to the common neural mechanisms that support spatial WM encoding and attention, providing new imaging evidence for attention-based models of WM encoding.     

Pharmakoökonomie und Public Health

The main purpose of Public health is improvement of the health state of the population. Thereby necessary coasts have to be considered. Public Health research is directly practice-related because of the development and implementation of health policy strategies. Important aims of the public health research are the realization of interventions in practice and their reevaluation. Health economy is an essential point of Public health. The public health research aims at analyzing the medical care and control systems. Further aims of the health economy are the individual processes of decisions of participating persons (e.g. physicians, patients)are object of research. Pharmacoeconomic aspects belong to an optimal therapy, that means the quality assurance and improvement with regard to circumstances. Quality assurance is not possible without the consideration of the state of knowledge. Only on the basis of actual data from the medical care system specific interventions on the political and individual level may be established. Subsequently these programs can be evaluated according to quality and cost outcomes. Drug information services and pharmacotherapy circles (Peer review groups)can contribute to an optimization in medical treatment. As a result these interventions are of consequence for health economy and medical care.     

Sleep in Adolescents with Primary Major Depression and Schizophrenia: A Pilot Study

Abstract— The present study aimed at investigating the question whether abnormalities of sleep, especially disinhibition of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, are already present in adolescents with primary major depressive disorder (MDD). Ten healthy controls assessed at home, 10 inpatients with MDD and 10 inpatients with schizophrenia (age range: 13–19 years) were investigated polysomnographically. REM latency was significantly shortened in MDD compared with the two other groups. Adolescents with MDD did not display disturbances of sleep continuity as typically observed in adults with major depression. The most pronounced impairment of sleep continuity was noted in schizophrenic patients. The results stress that shortened REM latency may already occur in adolescent depression.     

Mutant androgen receptors in prostatic tumors distinguish between amino-acid-sequence requirements for transactivation and ligand binding

Mutant androgen receptors are thought to contribute to hormone resistance in prostate carcinoma. The part they play in this process, however, is ill-defined. Here we report on transactivation by 2 mutant androgen receptors from prostatic tumors with single amino-acid exchanges in their hormone-binding domains. These exchanges enhance the transactivation property of the receptors, particularly to androsterone and androstanediol, 2 metabolized derivatives of testosterone present in the prostate. Additionally, they enhance the transactivation potential of the mutant receptors to hydroxyflutamide, an anti-androgen frequently used in hormone ablation therapy. The increased transactivation by the mutant receptors did not result from altered affinity of the receptors to the inducing ligands nor from measurable changes in conformation of the liganded receptors. Thus the single amino-acid exchanges identify differences in amino-acid-sequence requirements for transactivation and ligand binding in the hormone-binding domain of the androgen receptor. These results provide new insights into ligand-dependent transactivation, and form a framework for the search for effective antagonists to be used in prostate-cancer therapy.