Elevated Plasma S100B, Psychotic Symptoms, and Cognition in Schizophrenia.

S100B is a calcium binding protein mainly produced by glial cells. Previous studies have shown elevated levels of S100B in patients with schizophrenia. We measured S100B levels in fasting plasma of 39 patients with schizophrenia and 19 adult healthy controls. We used linear regression to compare S100B between patients and controls. In patients only, we also investigated the relationship between S100B levels and psychotic symptoms (assessed by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale), and cognitive function (assessed by the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery), respectively by calculating Pearson's correlation coefficients. Mean plasma S100B was significantly higher in the patient group than in the control group. There were no significant correlations between plasma S100B and psychotic symptoms or cognition.

Early and late cortical reactivity to passively viewed emotional faces in pediatric bipolar disorder.

BACKGROUND: We studied emotional information processing in youth with pediatric bipolar disorder (pBD) using the late positive potential (LPP), assessing automatic allocation of attentional resources to emotionally salient stimuli, and the occipital P1, assessing early sensory processing. METHODS: Participants were 20 youth with pBD and 26 healthy controls (HC). Participants passively viewed faces with a fearful, neutral or happy expressions. Group differences were tested with general linear models. P1 was included to examine modulating effects on LPP. We calculated Bayes factor (BF) values to express strength of evidence for choosing one hypothesis over another. RESULTS: A significant emotion by group interaction for LPP amplitude was associated with a larger amplitude for happy faces for pBD than HC (F[1,40] = 6.04, p = .018); this was not modulated by P1 amplitude or latency. P1 amplitude did not differ between groups, although P1 peaked earlier for HC (F[1,40] = 5.45, p = .025). BF for LPP was 2.93, suggesting moderate evidence favoring H1. BF for P1 latency of 14.58 suggests strong evidence favoring H1. LIMITATIONS: Inclusion of children and adolescents prohibited careful control for neurodevelopmental effects. CONCLUSIONS: Larger LPP amplitude for happy faces without change in P1 suggests enhanced automatic allocation of attentional resources to positive information in pBD. Delayed P1 latency in pBD suggests slower early processing of emotional information.