Depressive symptoms following traumatic brain injury are associated with resting-state functional connectivity.

BACKGROUND: To determine whether depressive symptoms in traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients were associated with altered resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc) or voxel-based morphology in brain regions involved in emotional regulation and associated with depression. METHODS: In the present study, we examined 79 patients (57 males; age range = 17-70 years, M ± s.d. = 38 ± 16.13; BDI-II, M ± s.d. = 9.84 ± 8.67) with TBI. We used structural MRI and resting-state fMRI to examine whether there was a relationship between depression, as measured with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II), and the voxel-based morphology or functional connectivity in regions previously identified as involved in emotional regulation in patients following TBI. Patients were at least 4 months post-TBI (M ± s.d. = 15.13 ± 11.67 months) and the severity of the injury included mild to severe cases [Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), M ± s.d. = 6.87 ± 3.31]. RESULTS: Our results showed that BDI-II scores were unrelated to voxel-based morphology in the examined regions. We found a positive association between depression scores and rs-fc between limbic regions and cognitive control regions. Conversely, there was a negative association between depression scores and rs-fc between limbic and frontal regions involved in emotion regulation. CONCLUSION: These findings lead to a better understanding of the exact mechanisms that contribute to depression following TBI and better inform treatment decisions.

Insights into the Metal-CO Bond in O2M(η1-CO) (M = Cr, Mo, W, Nd, and U) Complexes.

Investigations on the structures and bonding properties of metal carbonyl compounds provide fundamental understandings on the origin of small-molecule activations. Herein, the geometry and bonding trends of a series of isovalent metal oxocarbonyl complexes O2M(η1-CO) (M = Cr, Mo, W, Nd, and U) were studied by combined matrix-isolation infrared spectroscopy and advanced quantum chemical calculations. The title complexes present red shift of C-O stretching bands in the range from 122 to 244 cm-1, indicating the difference of CO activation ability for the series of isovalent metal dioxides. Density functional theory calculations predict T-shaped structures with a C2v symmetry for all the title molecules. O2Nd(η1-CO) bears little resemblance to the other complexes in bonding characters because of the weak interactions between the NdO2 and CO moiety. For the other complexes, natural localized molecular orbital analysis reveals a gradual increase of covalent character in M-CO bonds along the metal series Cr → Mo → W→ U. Energy decomposition analysis with natural orbitals for chemical valence calculations demonstrates that the M-CO bonding patterns conform to the conventional Dewar-Chatt-Duncanson motif. The contributions from orbital interactions in total attractions increase from Cr (41.7%) to U (52.7%). The breakdown of the orbital term into pairwise interactions shows that contributions of the M ← CO σ donation decrease from Cr (59.2%) to U (28.4%), while the M → CO π* backdonation increases significantly from Cr (23.8%) to U (67.3%). The more effective overlap and the better energy matching of U 5f and U 6d valence orbitals with CO π* orbitals result in much stronger U → CO π backdonation than the other metal elements.

The baby schema effect in adolescence and its difference from that in adulthood.

The baby schema effect induced by particular features of baby faces acts as an innate releasing mechanism that evokes positive emotions and instinctual behavioral responses. Our prior research in adults has revealed that this effect initially found in infancy extends into child faces. Adolescence is an important period involving development in various aspects of cognition, including face perception. Here, we investigated whether the extended baby schema effect we previously found in adult observers develops earlier-in adolescence-and how different it appears in adolescents as compared with in adults. In the current study, 76 adolescents and 77 adults were asked to judge the likeability of 148 neutral faces of infants and children (0.08-6.5 years of age) on 7-point scales. Results showed that both adolescents and adults perceived the faces of both infants and children younger than 4.6 years as more likeable relative to those of older children, indicating that the baby schema effect previously found in adulthood also occurs in adolescence. However, adolescents rated lower than adults toward the infant and child faces across all face ages, suggesting that this effect might be under development in adolescence. Overall, our findings provide new evidence for the development of face perception in adolescence and demonstrate age-related changes in innate releasing mechanisms in our protective and caretaking responses toward infants and children.

Criticism in a foreign language hurts less.

Understanding emotional resonances to social evaluations delivered in different languages may contribute to favourable social communication in today's increasingly internationalised world. The present study thus investigated the language-induced emotionality differences by presenting Chinese-English bilinguals with self-referential praising and criticising statements in both their native Chinese and foreign English languages and asking them to make their affective and cognitive judgments on the comments, namely, to rate how pleased they were by the comments and how truly the comments described their attributes. Results revealed that while criticism was rated more unpleasant than praise in both languages, the unpleasantness was reduced by the use of English as compared to Chinese. Intriguingly, no cross-language differences were found in the cognitive assessment. Our findings may shed light on facilitating affective social communication using different languages.

Oxytocin, the peptide that bonds the sexes also divides them.

Facilitation of social attraction and bonding by the evolutionarily conserved neuropeptide oxytocin is well-established in female mammals. However, accumulating behavioral evidence suggests that oxytocin may have evolved sex-specific functional roles in the domain of human social cognition. A critical question is how oxytocin differentially modulates neural processing of social information in men and women, leading to divergent behavioral responses. Here we show that intranasal oxytocin treatment produces sex- and valence-dependent increases in amygdala activation when women view individuals identified as praising others but in men those who criticize them. Women subsequently show increased liking for the faces of these individuals, whereas in men it is reduced. Thus, oxytocin may act differentially via the amygdala to enhance the salience of positive social attributes in women but negative ones in men. We hypothesize that oxytocin may have evolved different but complementary roles to help ensure successful reproduction by encouraging mothers to promote a prosocial rearing environment for offspring and fathers to protect against antisocial influences.

A dimensional approach to determine common and specific neurofunctional markers for depression and social anxiety during emotional face processing.

Major depression disorder (MDD) and anxiety disorder are both prevalent and debilitating. High rates of comorbidity between MDD and social anxiety disorder (SAD) suggest common pathological pathways, including aberrant neural processing of interpersonal signals. In patient populations, the determination of common and distinct neurofunctional markers of MDD and SAD is often hampered by confounding factors, such as generally elevated anxiety levels and disorder-specific brain structural alterations. This study employed a dimensional disorder approach to map neurofunctional markers associated with levels of depression and social anxiety symptoms in a cohort of 91 healthy subjects using an emotional face processing paradigm. Examining linear associations between levels of depression and social anxiety, while controlling for trait anxiety revealed that both were associated with exaggerated dorsal striatal reactivity to fearful and sad expression faces respectively. Exploratory analysis revealed that depression scores were positively correlated with dorsal striatal functional connectivity during processing of fearful faces, whereas those of social anxiety showed a negative association during processing of sad faces. No linear relationships between levels of depression and social anxiety were observed during a facial-identity matching task or with brain structure. Together, the present findings indicate that dorsal striatal neurofunctional alterations might underlie aberrant interpersonal processing associated with both increased levels of depression and social anxiety.

Sex-dependent neural effect of oxytocin during subliminal processing of negative emotion faces.

In line with animal models indicating sexually dimorphic effects of oxytocin (OXT) on social-emotional processing, a growing number of OXT-administration studies in humans have also reported sex-dependent effects during social information processing. To explore whether sex-dependent effects already occur during early, subliminal, processing stages the present pharmacological fMRI-study combined the intranasal-application of either OXT or placebo (n = 86-43 males) with a backward-masking emotional face paradigm. Results showed that while OXT suppressed inferior frontal gyrus, dorsal anterior cingulate and anterior insula responses to threatening face stimuli in men it increased them in women. In women increased anterior cingulate reactivity during subliminal threat processing was also positively associated with trait anxiety. On the network level, sex-dependent effects were observed on amygdala, anterior cingulate and inferior frontal gyrus functional connectivity that were mainly driven by reduced coupling in women following OXT. Our findings demonstrate that OXT produces sex-dependent effects even at the early stages of social-emotional processing, and suggest that while it attenuates neural responses to threatening social stimuli in men it increases them in women. Thus in a therapeutic context OXT may potentially produce different effects on anxiety disorders in men and women.

Insights into the Phase Relations in a U-N System Using a Cluster Formula.

Despite the fact that five kinds of uranium nitrides, i.e., uranium mononitrides (UN, R3̅m and Fm3̅m), a uranium dinitride (UN2, Fm3̅m), and uranium sesquinitrides (α-U2N3, Ia3̅; ß-U2N3,P3̅m1), have been confirmed, until now the phase relations are not well understood because of the puzzling nonstoichiometric issue. This work reinvestigated the crystallographic structures of these phases using cluster formula theory. The principal clusters (cuboctahedron with six squares and eight triangles) in these phases were determined. N atoms can occupy either six octahedral sites (square face centers) or eight tetrahedral sites (formed by a center atom and a triangle) in the principal cluster of 13 U atoms, resulting in these diversified phases and the nonstoichiometric issue. Also, phase transformations at certain temperatures and pressures (from CaF2-type UN2 to Mn2O3-type U2N3, from Mn2O3-type U2N3 to NaCl-type UN, and from NaCl-type UN to HgIn-type UN) were deduced by tracking the bond and angle changes of a simplified cluster [U-U6N6]. This investigation provides an in-depth understanding of the phase relations in a U-N system.

Oxytocin blurs the self-other distinction during trait judgments and reduces medial prefrontal cortex responses.

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) may act either to increase or blur the distinction between self and other and thereby promote either more selfish or altruistic behaviors. To attempt to distinguish between these two possibilities we performed a double-blind, between-subject, placebo-controlled design study to investigate the effect of intranasal OXT on self and other (mother, classmate, or stranger) trait judgments in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results showed that OXT reduced response times for making both self and other judgments, but also reduced the accuracy of their subsequent recall, thereby abolishing the normal self-bias observed in this task. OXT also abolished the positive correlation between response and self-esteem scale scores seen in the PLC group, suggesting that its effects were strongest in individuals with higher levels of self-esteem. A whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis revealed that OXT also reduced responses during both self and other trait judgments in the dorsal (dmPFC) and ventral (vmPFC) medial prefrontal cortex. A subsequent region of interest analysis revealed that behavioral performance and self-esteem scale scores were associated with dmPFC activation and its functional connectivity with the anterior cingulate and between the vmPFC and posterior cingulate. Thus overall, while OXT may improve speed of decision making in self -vs. other trait judgments it also blunts the normal bias towards remembering self-attributes and reduces mPFC responses and connectivity with other cortical midline regions involved in self-processing. This is consistent with the view that OXT can reduce self-centered behavior. Hum Brain Mapp 37:2512-2527, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Study of the Decomposition and Phase Transition of Uranium Nitride under UHV Conditions via TDS, XRD, SEM, and XPS.

Uranium nitrides are among the most promising fuels for Generation IV nuclear reactors, but until now, very little has been known about their thermal stability properties under nonequilibrium conditions. In this work, thermal decomposition of nitrogen-rich uranium nitride (denoted as UN2-x) under ultrahigh-vacuum (UHV) conditions was investigated by thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS). It has been shown that the nitrogen TDS spectrum consists of two peaks at about 723 and 1038 K. The X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron microscopy results indicate that UN2-x (UN2 phase) decomposed into the α-U2N3 phase in the first step and the α-U2N3 phase decomposed into the UN phase in the second step.

Oxytocin selectively facilitates learning with social feedback and increases activity and functional connectivity in emotional memory and reward processing regions.

In male Caucasian subjects, learning is facilitated by receipt of social compared with non-social feedback, and the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) facilitates this effect. In this study, we have first shown a cultural difference in that male Chinese subjects actually perform significantly worse in the same reinforcement associated learning task with social (emotional faces) compared with non-social feedback. Nevertheless, in two independent double-blind placebo (PLC) controlled between-subject design experiments we found OXT still selectively facilitated learning with social feedback. Similar to Caucasian subjects this OXT effect was strongest with feedback using female rather than male faces. One experiment performed in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging showed that during the response, but not feedback phase of the task, OXT selectively increased activity in the amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus and putamen during the social feedback condition, and functional connectivity between the amygdala and insula and caudate. Therefore, OXT may be increasing the salience and reward value of anticipated social feedback. In the PLC group, response times and state anxiety scores during social feedback were associated with signal changes in these same regions but not in the OXT group. OXT may therefore have also facilitated learning by reducing anxiety in the social feedback condition. Overall our results provide the first evidence for cultural differences in social facilitation of learning per se, but a similar selective enhancement of learning with social feedback under OXT. This effect of OXT may be associated with enhanced responses and functional connectivity in emotional memory and reward processing regions.

Adults with siblings like children's faces more than those without.

Humans cross-culturally find infant faces both cute and highly likeable. Their so-called "baby schema" features have clear adaptive value by likely serving as an innate releasing mechanism that elicits caretaking behaviors from adults. However, we do not know whether experience with young children during social development might act to further facilitate this. Here we investigated the potential impact of having siblings on adult likeability judgments of children's faces. In this study, 73 adult men and women (40 with siblings and 33 without) were shown 148 different face pictures of young children (1 month to 6.5 years) and judged them for likeability. Results showed that both groups found faces of infants (<7 months) as equally likeable. However, for faces more than 7 months of age, whereas the no-sibling group showed a reduced liking for faces with increasing age, the sibling group found faces of all ages as equally likeable. Furthermore, for adults with siblings, the closer in age they were to their siblings, the stronger their likeability was for young children's faces. Our results are the first to show that having siblings can extend the influence of baby schema to children as well as infants.

Oxytocin makes females, but not males, less forgiving following betrayal of trust.

Although oxytocin has been shown to enhance trust behavior, to date no study has directly established whether oxytocin can modulate the effect of repair strategies on restoring damaged trust. In the current double-blind, between-subjects, placebo-controlled design study, two repair strategies were used to examine the effect of intranasal oxytocin administration on modulating trust restoration in a revised trust game. The results showed that although oxytocin had no overall effect on modulating trust restoration, it did have a significant gender specific effect. Female subjects showed less evidence for trust repair in the oxytocin compared with the placebo treatment group. This suggests that oxytocin may make female subjects exhibit more punitive behavior towards partners who violate their trust and less sensitive to repair strategies provided by them. Interestingly, this gender specific effect was more evident in the context of attempted trust repair using financial compensation. However, it also extended to both apology alone and no compensation conditions, but not to the fair one, in females exhibiting high trait forgiveness. Thus females with a more forgiving attitude towards betrayal may actually be more likely to punish betrayal following oxytocin treatment.

How race and age experiences shape young children's face processing abilities.

Despite recent advances in research on race and age biases, the question of how race and age experiences combine to affect young children's face perception remains unexplored. To fill this gap, the current study tested two ethnicities of 3-year-old children using a combined cross-race/cross-age design. Caucasian children with and without older siblings and Mainland Chinese children without older siblings were tested for their ability to discriminate adult and child Caucasian faces as well as adult and child Asian faces in both upright and inverted orientations. Children of both ethnicities manifested an own-race bias, which was confined to adult faces, and an adult face bias, which was confined to own-race faces. Likewise, sibling experience affected Caucasian children's processing of own-race child faces, but this effect did not generalize to other-race faces. Results suggest that race and age information are represented at the same hierarchical level in young children's memory.

Anti-saccades reveal impaired attention control over negative social evaluation in individuals with depressive symptoms.

Depressed individuals are excessively sensitive to negative information but blunt to positive information, which has been considered as vulnerability to depression. Here, we focused on inhibitory control over attentional bias on social evaluation in individuals with depression. We engaged individuals with and without depressive symptoms (categorized by Beck Depression Inventory-II) in a novel attention control task using positive and negative evaluative adjectives as self-referential feedback given by social others. Participants were instructed to look at sudden onset feedback targets (pro-saccade) or the mirror location of the targets (anti-saccade) when correct saccade latencies and saccade errors were collected. The two indices showed that while both groups displayed longer latencies and more errors for anti-saccade relative to pro-saccade responses depressed individuals spent more time reacting correctly and made more errors than non-depressed individuals in the anti-saccade trials and such group differences were not observed in the pro-saccade trials. Although group differences in correct anti-saccade latencies were found for both positive and negative stimuli, depressed individuals spent more time making correct anti-saccade responses to negative social feedback than to positive ones whereas non-depressed individuals featured longer correct anti-saccade latencies for positive relative to negative evaluations. Our results suggest that depressed individuals feature an impaired ability in attention control for self-referential evaluations, notably those of negative valence, shedding new light on depression-distorted self-schema and corresponding social dysfunctions.

Emotion-dependent language featuring depression.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Understanding language features of depression contributes to the detection of the disorder. Considering that depression is characterized by dysfunctions in emotion and individuals with depression often show emotion-dependent cognition, the present study investigated the speech features and word use of emotion-dependent narrations in patients with depression. METHODS: Forty depression patients and forty controls were required to narrate self-relevant memories under five basic human emotions (i.e., sad, angry, fearful, neutral, and happy). Recorded speech and transcribed texts were analyzed. RESULTS: Patients with depression, as compared to non-depressed individuals, talked slower and less. They also performed differently in using negative emotion, work, family, sex, biology, health, and assent words regardless of emotion manipulation. Moreover, the use of words such as first person singular pronoun, past tense, causation, achievement, family, death, psychology, impersonal pronoun, quantifier and preposition words displayed emotion-dependent differences between groups. With the involvement of emotion, linguistic indicators associated with depressive symptoms were identified and explained 71.6% variances of depression severity. LIMITATIONS: Word use was analyzed based on the dictionary which does not cover all the words spoken in the memory task, resulting in text data loss. Besides, a relatively small number of depression patients were included in the present study and therefore the results need confirmation in future research using big emotion-dependent data of speech and texts. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that consideration of different emotional contexts is an effective means to improve the accuracy of depression detection via the analysis of word use and speech features.

A study of the proteomic expression in patients with complicated parapneumonic pleural effusion.

Introduction: The present study aimed to investigate the differences in the proteomic expression between uncomplicated parapneumonic pleural effusion (UPPE) and complicated parapneumonic pleural effusion (CPPE). Material and methods: There were 10 patients with UPPE and 10 patients with CPPE. These patients were combined due to the complication of pleural effusion and further divided into group A and group B. An LC-MS analysis was conducted with the extraction of high-abundance proteins, and proteins with 1.5-fold or higher difference multiples were identified as differential proteins. Then, gene ontology (GO) and KEGG analyses were conducted on the differential proteins between the groups. Results: Compared with the UPPE group, there were 38 upregulated proteins and 29 downregulated proteins in the CPPE group. The GO analysis revealed that the CPPE group had enhanced expressions in monosaccharide biosynthesis, glucose catabolism, fructose-6-phosphate glycolysis, glucose-6-phosphate glycolysis, and NADH regeneration as well as reduced expressions in fibrinogen complexes, protein polymerization, and coagulation. Moreover, the KEGG analysis showed that the CPPE group had enhanced expressions in amino acid synthesis, the HIF-1 signalling pathway, and glycolysis/glycoisogenesis and decreased expressions in platelet activation and complement activation. Conclusions: In pleural effusion in patients with CPPE, there are enhanced expressions of proteins concerning glucose and amino acid metabolism, NADH regeneration, and HIF-1 signalling pathways together with decreased expressions of proteins concerning protein polymerization, blood coagulation, platelet activation, and complement activation.

More Exposure to Childhood Trauma Associates with Reduced Displeasure at Self-Referential Criticism.

Childhood trauma has been shown to contribute to low self-concept, potentially affecting trauma survivors' perception of social evaluations from others. However, there is little evidence for the association between traumatic experience in childhood and adult processing of evaluative verbal cues related to self. Therefore, the present study aimed to address whether and how cognitive and affective responses to self-referential praise and criticism would vary with different forms of childhood trauma. We engaged undergraduates and postgraduates in completing the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and an evaluation task in which participants rated self-related praising and criticizing sentences for pleasantness and truthfulness. These ratings and CTQ scores were subjected to correlation and regression analyses. Positive correlations were found between the pleasantness ratings for criticism and the scores of the CTQ full scale (r 90 = .314, p = 0.0011) and two subscales for physical abuse (r 90 = .347, p = 0.0004) and physical neglect (r 90 = .335, p = 0.0005), indicating that higher scores in the scales were associated with reduced unpleasantness for self-related criticism. The regression analysis further revealed that 14.2% variances of emotional response to criticism could be explained by experience in physical abuse (ß = .452, p = .022) and physical neglect (ß = .387, p = .027). These findings suggest that childhood exposure to traumatic experience, particularly physical abuse and neglect, leads to attenuated emotional responses to self-referential criticism possibly via the mediation of self-concept.

Altered centromedial amygdala functional connectivity in adults is associated with childhood emotional abuse and predicts levels of depression and anxiety.

BACKGROUND: Childhood maltreatment is significantly associated with greater occurrence of mental disorders in adulthood such as depression and anxiety. As a key node of the limbic system, the amygdala is engaged in emotional processing and regulation and is dysfunctional in many psychiatric disorders. The present study aimed at exploring the association between childhood maltreatment and amygdala-based functional networks and their potential contributions to depression and anxiety. METHODS: Totally 90 Chinese healthy volunteers participated in a resting-state fMRI experiment. Levels of childhood maltreatment experience were assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ-SF) as well as levels of depression and anxiety. Associations between CTQ-SF scores and bilateral amygdala gray matter volume and resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) of the amygdala and selected regions of interest were analyzed using multiple regression analyses with sex and age as covariates. A subsequent moderation analysis was performed to identify whether associations were predictive of depression and anxiety levels. RESULTS: Childhood maltreatment was significantly negatively associated with RSFC between left amygdala and anterior insula. Further sub-region analyses revealed that this negative association only occurred for the left centromedial amygdala subregion, which subsequently moderated the relationship between levels of childhood emotional abuse and depression / anxiety. LIMITATIONS: No psychiatric patients were involved and specific neural associations with different childhood maltreatment subtypes need to be examined in future studies. CONCLUSION: The present findings provide evidence for altered RSFC of centromedial amygdala and the anterior insula associated with childhood maltreatment and which moderate levels of depression and anxiety in adulthood.

Disorder-specific impaired neurocognitive function in major depression and generalized anxiety disorder.

BACKGROUND: Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) are both highly prevalent and comorbid psychiatric disorders. Neurocognitive dysfunction has been commonly found in MDD, but the findings in GAD are inconsistent. Few studies have directly compared cognitive performance between GAD and MDD. Therefore, the present study aimed to reveal the similar and distinct cognitive impairments between both disorders. METHODS: Three non-overlapping and non-comorbid groups were enrolled in the current study including patients with GAD (n = 37), MDD (n = 107) and healthy controls (n = 74). Levels of anxiety and depression were assessed using the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAMA) and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD) respectively. The Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) was used to compare the cognitive performance, including sustained attention, visual memory, executive functions and learning. RESULTS: Both MDD and GAD groups demonstrated common significant deficits in sustained attention, visual memory, working memory and learning when compared to healthy controls. Despite the similarities, the MDD group had significantly greater impairment in learning, particularly generalization, while the GAD group demonstrated more pronounced deficits in visual memory. LIMITATIONS: Patients involved were medicated and the sample size for GAD was relatively small. CONCLUSIONS: The significant differences in visual memory and learning between MDD and GAD groups might be indicators to distinguishing both disorders. These results confirm that cognitive function is of great importance as a future target for treatment in order to improve wellbeing, quality of life and functionality in both GAD and MDD.