Launching into Adulthood from Institutional Care with a Serious Mental Health Condition

This qualitative study explores the experiences of emerging adults with serious mental health conditions (e.g., bipolar disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder) before and after they emancipate from the child welfare system and exit a transitional living program. Sixteen participants were interviewed before and 13 were interviewed after aging out. Findings suggest that transitional living programs services were appreciated for the relationships and safety net they fostered. Future plans were positive, but vague, and worries about the future were prevalent. Struggles with independence post-emancipation were common despite adult service use. Additional research is needed to understand how to best support these at-risk emerging adults.     

Auditory tasks for assessment of sensory function and affective prosody in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia patients exhibit impairments in auditory-based social cognition, indicated by deficits in detection of prosody, such as affective prosody and basic pitch perception. However, little is known about the psychometric properties of behavioral tests used to assess these functions. The goal of this paper is to characterize the properties of prosody and pitch perception tasks and to investigate whether they can be shortened. The pitch perception test evaluated is a tone-matching task developed by Javitt and colleagues (J-TMT). The prosody test evaluated is the auditory emotion recognition task developed by Juslin and Laukka (JL-AER). The sample includes 124 schizophrenia patients (SZ) and 131 healthy controls (HC). Properties, including facility and discrimination, of each item were assessed. Effects of item characteristics (e.g., emotion) were also evaluated. Shortened versions of the tests are proposed based on facility, discrimination, and/or ability of item characteristics to discriminate between patients and controls. Test–retest reliability is high for patients and controls for both the original and short forms of the J-TMT and JL-AER. Thus, the original as well as short forms of the J-TMT and JL-AER are suggested for inclusion in clinical trials of social cognitive and perceptual treatments. The development of short forms further increases the utility of these auditory tasks in clinical trials and clinical practice. The large SZ vs. HC differences reported here also highlight the profound nature of auditory deficits and a need for remediation.     

Early fear memory defects are associated with altered synaptic plasticity and molecular architecture in the TgCRND8 Alzheimer's disease mouse model

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a complex and slowly progressing dementing disorder that results in neuronal and synaptic loss, deposition in brain of aberrantly folded proteins, and impairment of spatial and episodic memory. Most studies of mouse models of AD have employed analyses of cognitive status and assessment of amyloid burden, gliosis, and molecular pathology during disease progression. Here we sought to understand the behavioral, cellular, ultrastructural, and molecular changes that occur at a pathological stage equivalent to the early stages of human AD. We studied the TgCRND8 mouse, a model of aggressive AD amyloidosis, at an early stage of plaque pathology (3 months of age) in comparison to their wildtype littermates and assessed changes in cognition, neuron and spine structure, and expression of synaptic glutamate receptor proteins. We found that, at this age, TgCRND8 mice display substantial plaque deposition in the neocortex and hippocampus and impairment on cued and contextual memory tasks. Of particular interest, we also observed a significant decrease in the number of neurons in the hippocampus. Furthermore, analysis of CA1 neurons revealed significant changes in apical and basal dendritic spine types, as well as altered expression of GluN1 and GluA2 receptors. This change in molecular architecture within the hippocampus may reflect a rising representation of inherently less stable thin spine populations, which can cause cognitive decline. These changes, taken together with toxic insults from amyloid‐β protein, may underlie the observed neuronal loss. J. Comp. Neurol. 522:2319–2335, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Health-related quality of life among adolescents with eating disorders

Objective

Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is an emerging area of research in eating disorders (EDs) that has not been examined in adolescents in detail. The aim of the current study is to investigate HRQoL in an adolescent ED sample, examining the impact of ED symptoms on HRQoL.

Methods

Sixty-seven treatment-seeking adolescents (57 females) with anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), or eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS) completed self-report measures of HRQoL and ED symptoms.

Results

Participants reported poorer HRQoL in mental health domains than in physical health domains. Disordered attitudes, binge eating, and compensatory behaviors were associated with poorer mental health HRQoL, and body dissatisfaction was associated with poorer physical health HRQoL.

Conclusion

The current study assessed HRQoL among adolescents with EDs, finding several consistencies with the literature on adults with EDs. Future research should compare adolescents and adults with EDs on HRQoL.     

Gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH) secretion into the ovine hypophyseal portal system

GnIH was first identified in avian species, and there is now strong evidence that it is operant in mammals as an inhibitor of reproduction. Mammalian gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH)-3 is encoded by the RFRP gene in neurons of the dorsomedial nucleus. These neurons project to the median eminence, predicting a role as a secreted neurohormone and regulation of the pituitary gonadotropes. To determine whether GnIH-3 is a secreted neurohormone, we measured its concentration in hypophyseal portal blood in ewes during the nonbreeding (anestrous) season and during the luteal and follicular phases of the estrous cycle in the breeding season. Paired portal and jugular blood samples were collected and plasma prepared for RIA using an ovine GnIH-3 antibody. Pulsatile GnIH-3 secretion was observed in the portal blood of all animals. Mean GnIH-3 pulse amplitude and pulse frequency was higher during the nonbreeding season. GnIH-3 was virtually undetectable in peripheral blood plasma. There was a lack of association between secretory pulses of GnIH-3 (portal) and LH (peripheral). To determine the role of secreted GnIH-3, we examined its effects on GnRH-stimulated LH secretion in hypothalamo-pituitary-disconnected ewes; a significant reduction in the LH response to GnRH was observed. Finally, to identify cellular targets in the pituitary, the expression of GnIH receptor [G protein-coupled receptor 147 (GPR147)] in fractions enriched for gonadotropes somatotropes, and lactotropes was examined; expression was observed in each cell type. These data show GnIH-3 is secreted into portal blood to act on pituitary gonadotropes, reducing the action of GnRH.