Brain and Behavior

Impaired working memory functioning in soldiers with posttraumatic stress disorder. Mood symptoms contribute to working memory decrement.

Maternal care is essential in mammals, and the environment provided by mothers may directly influence the viability of newborns and emotional behavior later in life. We investigated three candidate genes Oxt, FosB and Peg3 in LG/J and SM/J postpartum females contrasting some maternal care features that are impaired in the first ones. We observed a copy number variation in a stretch of 10 amino acids in the Peg3 gene with a higher number of repeats in LG/J females which, along with its lower levels of expression on the hypothalamus when compared to SM/J females, suggests its participation in maternal care variation between LG/J and SM/J mouse strains.

Use of head CT to detect new infarction in patients with TIA and clinical predictors of CT finding in patients with TIA.

The regression relation between fiber diameter and internodal length was not a sensitive index of recovery. MCV and mean fiber diameter were the most sensitive indices of functional recovery during sciatic nerve regeneration.

D-Aspartate (D-Asp) activates a Na+ and K+ current of unknown identity independent of L-glutamate (L-Glu) in neurons of Aplysia californica. Portions of D-Asp currents were blocked by L-Glu antagonists including kynurenate and APV, but L-Glu currents were unaffected by APV, and showed greater block by kynurenate, suggesting that D-Asp and L-Glu may act at different sites. The mixed pharmacological results as well as an asymmetrical desensitization by D-Asp of L-Glu currents suggest that D-Asp channels in Aplysia are not uniformly characteristic of any known agonist-associated channel type.

We have examined the expression of JAM-C, a junctional adhesion molecule, in the rat sciatic nerve after crush injury. Expression, which was confined to paranodes and Schwann cell incisures, was downregulated after injury and re-expressed during axon regeneration. The time course of expression indicates possible roles for JAM-C in remyelination and node formation.

Research on how depression influences social decision making has been scarce. Findings of this study clearly illustrate that people with depression demonstrated a pattern of social decision making different from that of the healthy counterparts. These results contribute to furthering our understanding of the specific pattern of social behavioral changes associated with depression.

This article investigates the basis of neurodevelopmental defects resulting from SOD2 loss-of-function. We discovered an increase in neuronal mistargeting that could underlie the observed aberrant neurodevelopment and brain morphology defects. This novel allele, SOD2^bewildered, provides a unique opportunity to study the effects of increased mitochondrial ROS on neural development, axonal targeting, and neural cell degeneration in vivo.

In this study we found 31 cases of hippocampal sclerosis (HS) in a sample of 130 consecutive autopsy cases from the Ischemic Vascular Dementia Program Project. Because all cases were reviewed bilaterally we found that HS could be either unilateral or bilateral. While roughly half of all cases were bilateral, more than half of unilateral cases were left-only. While HS can be found as the sole pathological finding it is more frequently found in the context of other neurodegenerative diseases. Perhaps because of this, HS in late life is never diagnosed clinically.

More efficacious therapeutic approach for obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is strongly needed since there are limitations in both pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy. A novel psychotherapy, cognitive–coping therapy, has been established and our data suggest that it is an efficacious approach for OCD treatment and might be a potential complementary treatment of OCD for long term with higher response and remission rate, higher compliance, and lower rate of relapse.

Using a maternal separation paradigm, we investigated phenotypic and epigenetic changes following early life stress in two inbred strains of mice, C57BL/6J and DBA/2J. We found an increase in the corticosterone response to stress in male, C57BL/6J mice that had undergone maternal separation, and early life stress induced a number of mild but significant behavioral changes, many of which were dependent on genetic background.

In this review, we discussed the structure and function of neuronal mitochondrial uncoupling proteins (UCP) 4 and 5 and factors influencing their expression.

The use of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) tools in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), as effective means to compensate for the progressive loss of verbal and gestural communication, has been deeply investigated in the recent literature. The development of advanced AAC systems, such as brain-computer interface (BCI) devices, allowed to bypass the important motor difficulties present in ALS patients. More, BCIs could offer a new possibility to administer cognitive tasks without the need of verbal or motor responses, as highlighted by preliminary studies in this field. In this review, we outline the essential features of BCIs systems, considering advantages and challenges of these tools with regard to ALS patients and the main applications developed in this field.

Stimulant dependence is associated with neuropsychological impairments. We summarize and integrate the existing neuroimaging literature on the neural substrates of neuropsychological (dys)function in stimulant dependence, including cocaine, (meth-)amphetamine, ecstasy and nicotine dependence, and excessive caffeine use, comparing stimulant abusers to non-drug using healthy controls.