Clinical efficacy and safety of vortioxetine as an adjuvant drug for patients with bipolar depression.

Objectives: Whether vortioxetine has a utility as an adjuvant drug in the treatment of bipolar depression remains controversial. This study aimed to validate the efficacy and safety of vortioxetine in bipolar depression.

Methods: Patients with bipolar Ⅱ depression were enrolled in this prospective, two-center, randomized, 12-week pilot trial.

Esketamine alleviates LPS-induced depression-like behavior by activating Nrf2-mediated anti-inflammatory response in adolescent mice.

Background: The mechanisms underlying esketamine's therapeutic effects remain elusive. The study aimed to explore the impact of single esketamine treatment on LPS-induced adolescent depressive-like behaviors and the role of Nrf2 regulated neuroinflammatory response in esketamine-produced rapid antidepressant efficacy.

Methods: Adolescent male C57BL/6J mice were randomly assigned to three groups: control, LPS, and LPS + esketamine (15 mg/kg, i.

Peripheral Single-Cell Immune Characteristics Contribute to the Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia With Lewy Bodies.

Objective: Alzheimer's disease (AD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) are common neurodegenerative diseases with distinct but overlapping pathogenic mechanisms. The clinical similarities between these diseases often result in high misdiagnosis rates, leading to serious consequences. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) are easy to collect and can accurately reflect the immune characteristics of both DLB and AD.

Input-output specific orchestration of aversive valence in lateral habenula during stress dynamics.

Stress has been considered as a major risk factor for depressive disorders, triggering depression onset via inducing persistent dysfunctions in specialized brain regions and neural circuits. Among various regions across the brain, the lateral habenula (LHb) serves as a critical hub for processing aversive information during the dynamic process of stress accumulation, thus having been implicated in the pathogenesis of depression. LHb neurons integrate aversive valence conveyed by distinct upstream inputs, many of which selectively innervate the medial part (LHbM) or lateral part (LHbL) of LHb.

Altered neurovascular coupling and structure-function coupling in Moyamoya disease affect postoperative collateral formation.

Chronic ischemia in moyamoya disease (MMD) impaired white matter microstructure and neural functional network. However, the coupling between cerebral blood flow (CBF) and functional connectivity and the association between structural and functional network are largely unknown. 38 MMD patients and 20 sex/age-matched healthy controls (HC) were included for T1-weighted imaging, arterial spin labeling imaging, resting-state functional MRI and diffusion tensor imaging.

Shared genetic architecture and bidirectional clinical risks within the psycho-metabolic nexus.

Background: Increasing evidence suggests a complex interplay between psychiatric disorders and metabolic dysregulations. However, most research has been limited to specific disorder pairs, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of the broader psycho-metabolic nexus.

Methods: This study leveraged large-scale cohort data and genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics, covering 8 common psychiatric disorders and 43 metabolic traits.

A Unified Flexible Large Polysomnography Model for Sleep Staging and Mental Disorder Diagnosis.

Sleep disorders affect billions worldwide, yet clinical polysomnography (PSG) analysis remains hindered by labor-intensive manual scoring and limited generalizability of automated sleep staging tools across heterogeneous protocols. We present LPSGM, a large-scale PSG model designed to address two critical challenges in sleep medicine: cross-center generalization and adaptable diagnosis of neuropsychiatric disorders. Trained on 220,500 hours of multi-center PSG data (24,000 full-night recordings from 16 public datasets), LPSGM integrates domain-adaptive pre-training, flexible channel configurations, and a unified architecture to mitigate variability in equipment, montages, and populations during sleep staging while enabling downstream fine-tuning for mental disorder detection.

Boosting neuronal activity-driven mitochondrial DNA transcription improves cognition in aged mice.

Deciphering the complex interplay between neuronal activity and mitochondrial function is pivotal in understanding brain aging, a multifaceted process marked by declines in synaptic function and mitochondrial performance. Here, we identified an age-dependent coupling between neuronal and synaptic excitation and mitochondrial DNA transcription (E-TC), which operates differently compared to classic excitation-transcription coupling in the nucleus (E-TC). We demonstrated that E-TC repurposes molecules traditionally associated with E-TC to regulate mitochondrial DNA expression in areas closely linked to synaptic activation.

CD2AP deficiency aggravates Alzheimer's disease phenotypes and pathology through p38 MAPK activation.

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of neurodegenerative disorder, which is characterized by a decline in cognitive abilities. Genome-wide association and clinicopathological studies have demonstrated that the CD2-associated protein (CD2AP) gene is one of the most important genetic risk factors for AD. However, the precise mechanisms by which CD2AP is linked to AD pathogenesis remain unclear.

The entorhinal cortex and cognitive impairment in schizophrenia: A comprehensive review.

Schizophrenia, a severe mental illness characterized by cognitive impairment and olfactory dysfunction, remains an enigma with its pathological mechanism yet to be fully elucidated. The entorhinal cortex, a pivotal structure involved in numerous neural loop circuits related to olfaction, cognition, and emotion, has garnered significant attention due to its structural and functional abnormalities, which have been implicated in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. This review focuses on the abnormal structural and functional changes in the entorhinal cortex in schizophrenia patients, as evidenced by neuroimaging, cellular biology, and genetic studies.

Association of altered cortical gyrification and working memory in male early abstinent alcohol-dependent individuals.

Background: Alcohol dependence (AD) is an addictive disorder with multifaceted neurobiological features. Recent research on the pathophysiological mechanisms of AD has emphasized the important role of dysconnectivity. Cortical gyrification is known to be a reliable marker of neural connectivity.

Single-Nucleus RNA Sequencing Reveals the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Disease-Associated Microglia in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

Disease-associated microglia (DAM) are observed in neurodegenerative diseases, demyelinating disorders, and aging. However, the spatiotemporal dynamics and evolutionary trajectory of DAM during the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) remain unclear. Using a mouse model of ALS that expresses a human gene mutation, we found that the microglia subtype DAM begins to appear following motor neuron degeneration, primarily in the brain stem and spinal cord.

Deconstructing the neural circuit underlying social hierarchy in mice.

Social competition determines hierarchical social status, which profoundly influences animals' behavior and health. The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) plays a fundamental role in regulating social competitions, but it was unclear how the dmPFC orchestrates win- and lose-related behaviors through its downstream neural circuits. Here, through whole-brain c-Fos mapping, fiber photometry, and optogenetics- or chemogenetics-based manipulations, we identified anatomically segregated win- and lose-related neural pathways downstream of the dmPFC in mice.

Efficacy of bright light therapy improves outcomes of perinatal depression: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

The efficacy of bright light therapy (BLT) in the context of perinatal depression remains underexplored. This meta-analysis aimed to systematically assess the effectiveness of BLT among perinatal depression. A comprehensive literature search was performed across several databases, including the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, PubMed, Embase, CNKI and the clinical trials registry platform, covering the period from the inception of each database up to January 2024.

Multiple loci for foveolar vision in macaque monkey visual cortex.

In humans and nonhuman primates, the central 1° of vision is processed by the foveola, a retinal structure that comprises a high density of photoreceptors and is crucial for primate-specific high-acuity vision, color vision and gaze-directed visual attention. Here, we developed high-spatial-resolution ultrahigh-field 7T functional magnetic resonance imaging methods for functional mapping of the foveolar visual cortex in awake monkeys. In the ventral pathway (visual areas V1-V4 and the posterior inferior temporal cortex), viewing of a small foveolar spot elicits a ring of multiple (eight) foveolar representations per hemisphere.

Visualizing ER-phagy and ER architecture in vivo.

ER-phagy is an evolutionarily conserved mechanism crucial for maintaining cellular homeostasis. However, significant gaps persist in our understanding of how ER-phagy and the ER network vary across cell subtypes, tissues, and organs. Furthermore, the pathophysiological relevance of ER-phagy remains poorly elucidated.

Bridging Three Years of Insights: Examining the Association Between Depression and Gallstone Disease.

Background: Despite sharing common pathophysiological risk factors, the relationship between gallstones and depression requires further evidence for a clearer understanding. This study combines the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2017 - 2020 observational data and Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to shed light on the potential correlation between these conditions.

Methods: By analyzing the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2017 - 2020 data through weighted multivariable-adjusted logistic regression, we examined the association between depression and gallstone risk.

Thermogenic Adipocytes Promote M2 Macrophage Polarization through CNNM4-Mediated Mg Secretion.

M2 macrophages promote adipose tissue thermogenesis which dissipates energy in the form of heat to combat obesity. However, the regulation of M2 macrophages by thermogenic adipocytes is unclear. Here, it is identified magnesium (Mg) as a thermogenic adipocyte-secreted factor to promote M2 macrophage polarization.

FLUID: a fluorescence-friendly lipid-compatible ultrafast clearing method.

Many clearing methods achieve high transparency by removing lipid components from tissues, which damages microstructure and limits their application in lipid research. As for methods which preserve lipid, it is difficult to balance transparency, fluorescence preservation and clearing speed. In this study, we propose a rapid water-based clearing method that is fluorescence-friendly and preserves lipid components.