Subcortical shape alterations in major depressive disorder: Findings from the ENIGMA major depressive disorder working group.

Alterations in regional subcortical brain volumes have been investigated as part of the efforts of an international consortium, ENIGMA, to identify reliable neural correlates of major depressive disorder (MDD). Given that subcortical structures are comprised of distinct subfields, we sought to build significantly from prior work by precisely mapping localized MDD-related differences in subcortical regions using shape analysis. In this meta-analysis of subcortical shape from the ENIGMA-MDD working group, we compared 1,781 patients with MDD and 2,953 healthy controls (CTL) on individual measures of shape metrics (thickness and surface area) on the surface of seven bilateral subcortical structures: nucleus accumbens, amygdala, caudate, hippocampus, pallidum, putamen, and thalamus. Harmonized data processing and statistical analyses were conducted locally at each site, and findings were aggregated by meta-analysis. Relative to CTL, patients with adolescent-onset MDD (≤ 21 years) had lower thickness and surface area of the subiculum, cornu ammonis (CA) 1 of the hippocampus and basolateral amygdala (Cohen's d = -0.164 to -0.180). Relative to first-episode MDD, recurrent MDD patients had lower thickness and surface area in the CA1 of the hippocampus and the basolateral amygdala (Cohen's d = -0.173 to -0.184). Our results suggest that previously reported MDD-associated volumetric differences may be localized to specific subfields of these structures that have been shown to be sensitive to the effects of stress, with important implications for mapping treatments to patients based on specific neural targets and key clinical features.

Neural Correlates of Emotion Regulation in Adolescents and Emerging Adults: A Meta-analytic Study.

BACKGROUND: The development of adaptive implicit and explicit emotion regulation skills is crucial for mental health. Adolescence and emerging adulthood are periods of heightened risk for psychopathology associated with emotion dysregulation, and neurodevelopmental mechanisms have been proposed to account for this increased risk. However, progress in understanding these mechanisms has been hampered by an incomplete knowledge of the neural underpinnings of emotion regulation during development. METHODS: Using activation likelihood estimation, we conducted a quantitative analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies in healthy developmental samples (i.e., adolescence [10-18 years of age] and emerging adulthood [19-30 years of age]) investigating emotion reactivity (N studies = 48), and implicit (N studies = 41) and explicit (N studies = 19) emotion regulation processes. RESULTS: Explicit emotion regulation was associated with activation in frontal, temporal, and parietal regions, whereas both implicit regulation and emotion reactivity were associated with activation in the amygdala and posterior temporal regions. During implicit regulation, adolescents exhibited more consistent activation of the amygdala, fusiform gyrus, and thalamus than emerging adults, who showed more consistent activation in the posterior superior temporal sulcus. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that emotion reactivity and regulation in developmental samples engage a robust group of regions that are implicated in bottom-up and top-down emotional responding. Adolescents are also more likely to recruit regions involved in early stages of emotion processing during implicit regulation, while emerging adults recruit higher-order regions involved in the extraction of semantic meaning. Findings have implications for future research aiming to better understand the neurodevelopmental mechanisms underlying risk for psychopathology.

Cow's Milk Allergy: Immunomodulation by Dietary Intervention.

Cow's milk proteins cause allergic symptoms in 2% to 3% of all infants. In these individuals, the physiological mechanism of tolerance is broken with subsequent possible sensitization to antigens, which can lead eventually to allergic responses. The present review aims to provide an overview of different aspects of immune modulation by dietary intervention in cow's milk allergy (CMA). It focuses on pathogenetic mechanisms of different CMA related disorders, e.g., gastroesophageal reflux and eosinophilic esophagitis, highlighting the role of dietary management on innate and adaptive immune systems. The traditional dietary management of CMA has greatly changed in the last years, moving from a passive approach, consisting of an elimination diet to relieve symptoms, to a "proactive" one, meaning the possibility to actively modulate the immune system. Thus, new insights into the role of hydrolysates and baked milk in immunomodulation are addressed here. Additionally, nutritional components, such as pre- and probiotics, may target the immune system via microbiota, offering a possible road map for new CMA prevention and treatment strategies.