Reciprocal Predictions Between Reading Achievement and Cognitive Flexibility Development in Children and the Mediating Roles of the Left Middle Frontal Gyrus.

The development of reading skills and cognitive flexibility is crucial for success in childhood and adulthood. Although previous studies demonstrate the existing links between the development of cognitive flexibility and the reading acquisition in children, it remains unclear how baseline reading achievement influences later cognitive flexibility, or vice versa, particularly in relation to the underlying brain development. Therefore, in this prospective longitudinal study, we investigated the reciprocal prediction between reading achievement and cognitive flexibility, along with the underlying brain development that potentially mediated this relationship in school-aged children.

Moderating effect of insulin resistance on the relationship between cortical surface area and cognitive function in patients with first-episode schizophrenia.

Objective: The mechanisms underlying cognitive deficits in schizophrenia remain unclear. Accumulating evidence suggests that insulin resistance (IR) is closely related to brain structure and cognitive impairment. We aimed to determine whether IR mediates or moderates the association between cortical surface area (CSA) and cognitive function in patients with first-episode schizophrenia (PFES).

Dissecting human cortical similarity networks across the lifespan.

The human cortex exhibits remarkable morphometric similarity between regions; however, the form and extent of lifespan network remodeling remain unknown. Here, we show the spatiotemporal maturation of morphometric brain networks, using multimodal neuroimaging data from 33,937 healthy participants aged 0-80 years. Global architecture matures from birth to early adulthood through enhanced modularity and small worldness.

The neurofucntional abnormalities of temporal gyrus underly impaired sensory attenuation in schizophrenia during action-outcome contingent paradigm.

Previous research suggests that individuals with schizophrenia may exhibit impairments in sensory attenuation. This neurocognitive process is defined as reduced neural responses in sensory cortices to self-generated actions compared with externally triggered sensory inputs. However, the specific neuroimaging association between sensory attenuation deficits and schizophrenia has not been fully established.

Can circadian rhythms of heart rate variability identify major depressive disorder? - A study based on support vector machine analysis.

Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a prevalent and severe psychiatric condition for which objective diagnostic tools are lacking. Heart rate variability (HRV), an index of autonomic nervous system (ANS) function, has shown potential for distinguishing patients with MDD. This study aimed to improve classification performance by leveraging circadian rhythm features derived from multiple HRV indices using a support vector machine (SVM) approach.

Quantification of nitrate in simulated high-level liquid waste by Raman spectroscopy.

A rapid analysis technique for determining nitrate in simulated high-level radioactive liquid waste (HLLW) was investigated using Raman spectroscopy. The concentration of nitrate can be quantified by the sharp and strong Raman peak height at 1047 cm and peak area in the range of 1020-1070 cm from the spectrum. The maximum Raman peak intensity and peak area of water in the range of 3000-3700 cm were chosen as the internal standards.

Positive school climate boosts children's reading achievement, mental health and cortical thinning.

Growing evidence underscores school climate as an important protective factor for children's academic achievement and mental health. However, whether and how school climate impacts child development from behavioral to brain has remained largely unknown. This study aimed to investigate the protective roles of school climate in children's reading achievement, mental health, and cortical thickness.

A network analysis of facial and vocal emotion recognition deficits in schizophrenia.

Introduction: Facial and vocal emotion recognition deficits are common in individuals with schizophrenia.

Methods: In this observational, single-center study, 106 patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) and 118 age- and sex-matched healthy controls underwent cognitive and emotional function assessments. The Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS), Personal and Social Performance Scale, Positive and Negative Symptom Scale, and Brief Negative Symptom Scale were used to evaluate psychotic symptoms in the SCZ group.

Resting-state functional connectivity of neural circuits associated with primary and secondary rewards linked to positive and negative symptoms of first-episode schizophrenia.

Background: Schizophrenia may be diagnosed based on the presence of positive and negative symptoms. However, the underlying pathophysiology of these positive and negative symptoms remains poorly understood. In this study, we used resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) to evaluate the integrity of neural circuits associated with primary and secondary rewards in first-episode schizophrenia (FES) and their relationship with positive and negative symptoms to better understand the physiological and pathological mechanisms of positive or negative symptoms.

Cortisol response patterns to stress correlated to white matter integrity and duration of illness in patients with schizophrenia.

Stress plays a critical role in schizophrenia pathogenesis, and blunted cortisol responses to acute stress exposure among patients with schizophrenia may be related to damaged white matter (WM) fibers in specific brain regions. The present aim was to assess correlations between cortisol response patterns and changes in WM integrity in patients with schizophrenia and to determine if such changes relate to the duration of illness. This study included patients with chronic schizophrenia (PCS, n = 92), patients with first-episode schizophrenia (PFS, n = 86), and healthy controls (HC, n = 77).

Validation of the Chinese version of patient health Questionnaire-4 among Chinese adolescents.

Background: The incidence of mental health issues among adolescents, particularly anxiety and depression, is increasing in China. Given the large adolescent population and their increasing prevalence, there is an urgent need for a reliable screening tool. This study aimed to validate the Chinese version of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-4) among Chinese adolescents.

Hearing vocals to recognize schizophrenia: speech discriminant analysis with fusion of emotions and features based on deep learning.

Background And Objective: Accurate detection of schizophrenia poses a grand challenge as a complex and heterogeneous mental disorder. Current diagnostic criteria rely primarily on clinical symptoms, which may not fully capture individual differences and the heterogeneity of the disorder. In this study, a discriminative model of schizophrenic speech based on deep learning is developed, which combines different emotional stimuli and features.

Human lifespan changes in the brain's functional connectome.

Functional connectivity of the human brain changes through life. Here, we assemble task-free functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging data from 33,250 individuals at 32 weeks of postmenstrual age to 80 years from 132 global sites. We report critical inflection points in the nonlinear growth curves of the global mean and variance of the connectome, peaking in the late fourth and late third decades of life, respectively.

The multiscale brain structural re-organization that occurs from childhood to adolescence correlates with cortical morphology maturation and functional specialization.

From childhood to adolescence, the structural organization of the human brain undergoes dynamic and regionally heterogeneous changes across multiple scales, from synapses to macroscale white matter pathways. However, during this period, the developmental process of multiscale structural architecture, its association with cortical morphological changes, and its role in the maturation of functional organization remain largely unknown. Here, using two independent multimodal imaging developmental datasets aged 6-14 years, we investigated developmental process of multiscale cortical organization by constructing an in vivo multiscale structural connectome model incorporating white matter tractography, cortico-cortical proximity, and microstructural similarity.

Norms of Hong Kong Brief Cognitive Test and the Utility for Screening Cognitive Impairment Among Chinese Older Adults.

Objective: To establish the norms of the Hong Kong Brief Cognitive Test (HKBC) among Chinese older adults and to examine its utility for differentiating neurocognitive disorders from cognitively normal controls.

Methods: Two thousand three hundred twelve participants aged 40 years and above were recruited from six regions of China as the norm construction sample. 93 normal participants and 246 cognitive impairment patients were included for diagnostic test of HKBC.

Unveiling distinct representations of P3a in schizophrenia through two-stimulus and three-stimulus auditory oddball paradigms.

Background: P3a event-related potential (ERP) is considered a potential biomarker for schizophrenia (SZ), can be elicited through both passive two-stimulus and active three-stimulus auditory oddball paradigms. While both types of P3a reflect involuntary attention shifts, the nuanced understanding of what P3a represents in different contexts is important and rarely studied. This study aims to examine correlations between P3a ERPs elicited from different paradigms and associations of each P3a with cognitive function, clinical symptoms, and antipsychotic medication.

Physical activity alleviates mental health problems related to bullying through moderating rumination.

Background: Physical activity and experiencing bullying is a protective and risk factor for mental health, respectively. Adolescents who suffer from bullying tend to be trapped in rumination, leading to mental health problem. However, the interaction among them from the perspective of increasing protective factors and reducing risk factors is unclear.

Schizophrenia recognition based on three-dimensional adaptive graph convolutional neural network.

Previous deep learning-based brain network research has made significant progress in understanding the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. However, it ignores the three-dimensional spatial characteristics of EEG signals and cannot dynamically learn the interactions between nodes. To address this issue, a schizophrenia classification model based on a three-dimensional adaptive graph convolutional neural network (3D-AGCN) is proposed.

Depression Recognition Using Daily Wearable-Derived Physiological Data.

The objective identification of depression using physiological data has emerged as a significant research focus within the field of psychiatry. The advancement of wearable physiological measurement devices has opened new avenues for the identification of individuals with depression in everyday-life contexts. Compared to other objective measurement methods, wearables offer the potential for continuous, unobtrusive monitoring, which can capture subtle physiological changes indicative of depressive states.

DNA-damage orchestrates self-renewal and differentiation via reciprocal p53 family and Hippo/Wnt/TGF-β pathway activation in embryonic stem cells.

The mechanism by which DNA-damage affects self-renewal and pluripotency remains unclear. DNA damage and repair mechanisms have been largely elucidated in mutated cancer cells or simple eukaryotes, making valid interpretations on early development difficult. Here we show the impact of ionizing irradiation on the maintenance and early differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs).

Aberrant Cortical Morphological Networks in First-Episode Schizophrenia.

Background And Hypothesis: Population-based morphological covariance networks are widely reported to be altered in schizophrenia. Individualized morphological brain network approaches have emerged recently. We hypothesize that individualized morphological brain networks are disrupted in schizophrenia.

Interplay of chromatin remodeling BAF complexes in mouse embryonic and epiblast stem cell conversion and maintenance.

Mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and epiblast stem cells (EpiSCs) are pluripotent stem cells derived from preimplantation and postimplantation embryos, respectively. These cells are capable of interconversion through manipulation of key transcription factors and signaling pathways. While BRG1/BRM-associated factor (BAF) chromatin remodeling complexes are known to play crucial roles in ESC self-renewal and pluripotency, their roles in EpiSCs and their interconversion with ESCs remain unclear.

Subcortical and insula functional connectivity aberrations and clinical implications in first-episode schizophrenia.

Introduction: Schizophrenia is a complex mental disorder whose pathophysiology remains elusive, particularly in the roles of subcortex. This study aims to explore the role of subcortex and insula and their relationship with symptom changes in first-episode schizophrenia (FES) patients by utilizing machine learning algorithms and functional connectivity (FC).

Methods: The study encompasses 261 participants, sourced from two independent samples of FES patients and their matched healthy controls (HC).