Collaboration With Tribal Stakeholders to Explore Care for Postpartum Depression in the Chickasaw Nation.

OBJECTIVE: To describe and interpret Indigenous women's experiences of postpartum depression (PPD) from the perspectives of community advisory board members. DESIGN: Qualitative, descriptive design with a community-engagement approach. SETTING: Virtual group interviews. PARTICIPANTS: Community advisory board members (N = 8) who were tribal employees, citizens of the tribe, and/or family members of citizens who had detailed knowledge of PPD among Indigenous women and issues surrounding their care. METHODS: In video- and audio-recorded virtual group interviews, we asked participants questions using a semistructured interview guide. We used qualitative content analysis to generate results. RESULTS: Major themes included The "Who, What, and Where" of PPD in Indigenous Women; Meanings Attributed to PPD in Indigenous Women; Realities of PPD Care in the Chickasaw Nation; and Feasibility, Acceptability, Perceived Barriers, and Facilitators of a Future Collaboration. CONCLUSION: The participants identified next steps for addressing PPD in the Chickasaw Nation: raise awareness of PPD among providers, patients, and families; improve messaging about PPD to decrease stigma and normalize mental health care; and develop or adapt a culturally appropriate and relevant tool to screen for PPD in Indigenous women.

Inhibiting presynaptic calcium channel motility in the auditory cortex suppresses synchronized input processing.

Introduction: The emergent coherent population activity from thousands of stochastic neurons in the brain is believed to constitute a key neuronal mechanism for salient processing of external stimuli and its link to internal states like attention and perception. In the sensory cortex, functional cell assemblies are formed by recurrent excitation and inhibitory influences. The stochastic dynamics of each cell involved is largely orchestrated by presynaptic CAV2.1 voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs). Cav2.1 VGCCs initiate the release of neurotransmitters from the presynaptic compartment and are therefore able to add variability into synaptic transmission which can be partly explained by their mobile organization around docked vesicles. Methods: To investigate the relevance of Cav2.1 channel surface motility for the input processing in the primary auditory cortex (A1) in vivo, we make use of a new optogenetic system which allows for acute, reversable cross-linking Cav2.1 VGCCs via a photo-cross-linkable cryptochrome mutant, CRY2olig. In order to map neuronal activity across all cortical layers of the A1, we performed laminar current-source density (CSD) recordings with varying auditory stimulus sets in transgenic mice with a citrine tag on the N-terminus of the VGCCs. Results: Clustering VGCCs suppresses overall sensory-evoked population activity, particularly when stimuli lead to a highly synchronized distribution of synaptic inputs. Discussion: Our findings reveal the importance of membrane dynamics of presynaptic calcium channels for sensory encoding by dynamically adjusting network activity across a wide range of synaptic input strength.