Psychological and physiological differences related to supportive living situations amongst individuals with physical disabilities.

The caregiver-patient dynamic is a complex relationship. While caregivers' potential psychological and physical burdens have received much attention, few studies have focused on the patient's perspective. This study investigated how the presence of a caregiver affects perceived stress, mental health and metabolic function in individuals with physical disabilities (PDis).

Altered network efficiency in isolated REM sleep behavior disorder: A multicentric study.

Introduction: Isolated rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (iRBD), characterized by abnormal movements during REM sleep, is a prodromal stage of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Parkinson's disease (PD). While iRBD shows emerging brain changes, their impact on structural connectivity and network efficiency, and their predictive value, remain poorly characterized.

Methods: In this international prospective study, 198 polysomnography-confirmed iRBD patients and 174 controls underwent diffusion magnetic resonance imaging and were analyzed.

Investigating Indicators to Assess and Support Alcohol Taxation Policy: Results From the International Alcohol Control (IAC) Study.

Alcohol taxation is a key policy to reduce consumption and alcohol harm but evidence on tax design and indicators to assess taxation policy are lacking. Tax design and two indicators: tax as a share of lowest retail price and affordability, were investigated in eight high-income and nine middle-income jurisdictions. Collaborators populated the International Alcohol Control (IAC) study online Alcohol Policy Tool, providing measures of tax design, tax rates; and typical lowest prices available for retail take-away alcohol.

Prenatal linguistic exposure shapes language brain responses at birth.

Newborns have an immature brain network responsible for speech processing that resembles the adult language network. However, it remains unclear how prenatal experience modulates this network. To test this, we exposed 39 fetuses to a story in their native language and in a foreign language during the last month of gestation, while another group of 21 fetuses received no experimental prenatal exposure.

Latent Profile Analysis of Childhood Maltreatment and Neural Markers in Depression.

Importance: The limited success of major depressive disorder (MDD) treatments is largely due to the disorder's etiological and pathophysiological heterogeneity. Addressing this heterogeneity is essential for developing accurate prognostic models and personalized treatment strategies.

Objective: To characterize MDD heterogeneity using a mechanism-first latent profile analysis based on environmental, neurostructural, and neurofunctional indicators, and to validate profiles via associations with MDD course, severity, and antidepressant treatment remission.

The Mild Behavioral Impairment Checklist for Parkinson's Disease: An Ancillary Instrument in Cognitive Assessment.

Background: Mild behavioral impairment (MBI) is a syndrome characterized by the later-life onset of neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) and serves as a potential marker for dementia. In Parkinson's disease (PD), MBI has been associated with worse cognition, cortical atrophy, and altered connectivity. Unlike existing instruments that assess NPS in PD, the MBI Checklist (MBI-C) leverages sustained behavioral changes to identify patients at risk of cognitive impairment and neurodegeneration.

Transitions for youth and young adults with eating disorders and/or other mental health conditions: a Canadian guideline.

Background: Eating disorders (EDs) are severe mental illnesses with high rates of mortality, morbidity, and reduced quality of life. Their onset occurs during adolescence and early adulthood, coinciding with the critical transition from pediatric to adult care. To address the lack of guidelines to support ED transitions in Canada, this study developed evidence-based guideline recommendations.

Effectiveness of Nurse-Family Partnership on child outcomes by patterns of program intensity: Secondary evidence from a randomized controlled trial (British Columbia Healthy Connections Project).

Background: Nurse-Family Partnership's (NFP's) effectiveness at improving child outcomes is likely influenced by patterns of program provision and engagement, or 'intensity'.

Objective: To investigate program effectiveness by patterns of intensity.

Participants And Setting: We analyzed secondary data from the Canadian NFP randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving 739 maternal participants and their 737 children in British Columbia.

The neuroexistentialism of social connectedness and loneliness.

Social isolation and loneliness have been subject to extensive investigation and discussion by both modern neuroscience and existentialist philosophy. Neuroexistentialism, though controversial, examines how neuroscientific findings inform human existential concerns. In the present discussion, we argue that (1) in the absence of meaningful attributes, typically provided by relationships with objects and others, social isolation and loneliness lead an individual to a pervasive fear of being or the perception of " which resembles an existential horror of loneliness; and (2) the pervasiveness of these influences justifies the ubiquity of cerebral responses to both objective and subjective prolonged social disengagement in humans.

Juvenile male rats form preferences based on strain when playing in groups but not in pairs.

Like many young mammals, juvenile rats engage in rough-and-tumble play. Play occurs naturally both in wild and laboratory rats, making it a suitable, ethologically relevant behavior to investigate. In the laboratory, rats are typically housed and tested in dyads, despite living in large colonies in the wild.

Standardized EEG for multi-site biomarker-informed trials: Implementation in the Canadian Biomarker Integration Network in Depression.

Objectives: To standardize EEG practices in research and facilitate the transition to multi-site biomarker-informed clinical trials, with the aim of enhancing the treatment of depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders.

Methods: This study details the approaches employed by the Canadian Biomarker Integration Network in Depression (CAN-BIND), a collaborative, multi-site network supported by the Ontario Brain Institute and Brain Canada, focused on enhancing depression care. To achieve our objective, we implemented strategies to reduce variability across CAN-BIND sites participating in EEG data collection.

Light therapy for bipolar disorders: Clinical recommendations from the international society for bipolar disorders (ISBD) Chronobiology and Chronotherapy Task Force.

The International Society for Bipolar Disorders (ISBD) Chronobiology and Chronotherapy Task Force conducted a comprehensive review to deliver concise evidence-based recommendations on the use of bright light therapy (BLT) for bipolar disorder (BD). Adjunctive BLT is likely an efficacious acute treatment for bipolar depression as implicated by higher quality evidence. The position of maintenance BLT for relapse prevention awaits further investigation.

Pain informed movement compared to neuromuscular exercise and standard education in people with knee osteoarthritis: A pilot and feasibility randomized controlled trial.

Objective: To determine the feasibility of conducting a full-scale randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of pain informed movement (PIM) (includes mind-body techniques, neuromuscular strengthening exercises (NEMEX) and pain neuroscience education), compared to NEMEX and standard education in people with knee osteoarthritis (KOA).

Methods: Adults ≥40 years with KOA were randomized to a twice weekly in-person group program for 8 weeks. Education was delivered through weekly videos.

Studying unconscious processing: Contention and consensus.

The scope of unconscious processing has long been, and still remains, a hotly debated issue. This is driven in part by the current diversity of methods to manipulate and measure perceptual consciousness. Here, we provide ten recommendations and nine outstanding issues about designing experimental paradigms, analyzing data, and reporting the results of studies on unconscious processing.

Mapping psilocybin therapy: A systematic review of therapeutic frameworks, adaptations, and standardization across contemporary clinical trials.

Accumulating evidence suggests that psilocybin can produce rapid and sustained clinical benefits when administered in conjunction with psychological support. Though non-pharmacological procedures are considered integral, the field lacks therapeutic guidelines and little is known about current practices. This systematic review sought to provide a comprehensive and cross-diagnostic synthesis of current psilocybin therapy (PT) protocols across contemporary mental health related trials.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide meta-analysis of 56,241 individuals identifies known and novel cross-population and ancestry-specific associations as novel risk loci for Alzheimer's disease.

Background: Limited ancestral diversity has impaired our ability to detect risk variants more prevalent in ancestry groups of predominantly non-European ancestral background in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). We construct and analyze a multi-ancestry GWAS dataset in the Alzheimer's Disease Genetics Consortium (ADGC) to test for novel shared and population-specific late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) susceptibility loci and evaluate underlying genetic architecture in 37,382 non-Hispanic White (NHW), 6728 African American, 8899 Hispanic (HIS), and 3232 East Asian individuals, performing within ancestry fixed-effects meta-analysis followed by a cross-ancestry random-effects meta-analysis.

Results: We identify 13 loci with cross-population associations including known loci at/near CR1, BIN1, TREM2, CD2AP, PTK2B, CLU, SHARPIN, MS4A6A, PICALM, ABCA7, APOE, and two novel loci not previously reported at 11p12 (LRRC4C) and 12q24.

Hallmarks of primary headache: part 2- Tension-type headache.

Background And Aim: Tension-type headache is the most prevalent primary headache disorder. While the episodic subtype is more common, chronic tension-type headache significantly impacts health-related quality of life and contribute to increased healthcare utilization and disability. Despite considerable advances in the understanding of tension-type headache, critical gaps persist.

Structural and functional connectivity in tau mutation carriers: from presymptomatic to symptomatic frontotemporal dementia.

Introduction: Microtubule-associated protein tau (MAPT) mutations cause frontotemporal dementia (FTD), characterised by behavioural, language, and motor impairments due to brain connectivity disruptions. We investigated structural and functional connectivity in 86 mutation carriers and 272 controls to map connectivity changes at different disease stages.

Methods: The CDR Dementia Staging Instrument plus National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center (NACC) Behaviour and Language domains (CDR plus NACC FTLD) stratified carriers into three groups: asymptomatic, prodromal, and symptomatic.

Tau PET positivity in individuals with and without cognitive impairment varies with age, amyloid-β status, APOE genotype and sex.

Tau positron emission tomography (PET) imaging allows in vivo detection of tau proteinopathy in Alzheimer's disease, which is associated with neurodegeneration and cognitive decline. Understanding how demographic, clinical and genetic factors relate to tau PET positivity will facilitate its use for clinical practice and research. Here we conducted an analysis of 42 cohorts worldwide (N = 12,048), including 7,394 cognitively unimpaired (CU) participants, 2,177 participants with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 2,477 participants with dementia.

Human development, inequality, and their associations with brain structure across 29 countries.

Background: The macro-social and environmental conditions in which people live, such as the level of a country's development or inequality, are associated with brain-related disorders. However, the relationship between these systemic environmental factors and the brain remains unclear. We aimed to determine the association between the level of development and inequality of a country and the brain structure of healthy adults.

Trigeminal nerve stimulation as an active control condition in TMS clinical trials: Evidence from heart-brain coupling and clinical outcomes.

The inertness of sham controls in transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies, particularly those involving Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS), remains controversial. Using heart-brain coupling (HBC) as a frontal-vagal engagement measure, we analyzed pilot data and data from two placebo-controlled accelerated intermittent theta burst stimulation (aiTBS) trials (combined N = 100). Active-TMS induced significantly stronger HBC compared to sham in both studies, with the effect size for TENS-sham considerably attenuated, and significantly stronger HBC for TENS-sham relative to SAINT-sham (d = 0.

A divergent astrocytic response to stress alters activity patterns via distinct mechanisms in male and female mice.

The lateral hypothalamus is a brain region that regulates activity levels, circadian, and motivated behaviour. While disruption of these behaviours forms a hallmark of stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders, the underlying cellular mechanisms of how stress affects this brain region remain poorly understood. Here, we report that the effects of stress on behavioural activity levels correlate with spontaneous firing of orexin neurons, inducing hyperactivity in males and hypoactivity in female mice.

Efficacy and Safety of Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Agonists for Psychiatric Symptoms: A Systematic Review.

Background: Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) have emerged as potential therapeutic options for psychiatric symptoms due to their effects on mood and behavior. However, their use has been primarily for metabolic diseases, and limited research has evaluated their psychiatric efficacy. This systematic review examined the impact of GLP-1 RAs on psychiatric symptoms, categorizing studies based on whether psychiatric outcomes were primary or secondary.

Beyond hearing loss: exploring neurological and neurodevelopmental sequelae in asymptomatic congenital cytomegalovirus infection.

Congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV) infection is common, and usually clinically inapparent. The prevalence of infection is approximately 1:200 births, but only 10-15% of infants have clinically apparent CMV disease (CACMV) as newborns. The most common long-term disability is sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), which occurs in 10-15% of all cases.