Tryptophan-enriched diet or 5-hydroxytryptophan supplementation given in a randomized controlled trial impacts social cognition on a neural and behavioral level.

Understanding of emotions and intentions are key processes in social cognition at which serotonin is an important neuromodulator. Its precursor is the essential amino acid tryptophan (TRP). Reduced TRP availability leads to weaker impulse control ability and higher aggression, while TRP supplementation promotes confidence. In a double-blind placebo-controlled fMRI study with 77 healthy adults, we investigated the influence of a 4 week TRP enriched diet and an acute 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) intake on two social-cognitive tasks, a moral evaluation and an emotion recognition task. With 5-HTP, immoral behavior without negative consequences was rated as more reprehensible. Additionally, during story reading, activation in insula and supramarginal gyrus was increased after TRP intake. No significant effects of TRP on emotion recognition were identified for the whole sample. Importantly, emotion recognition ability decreased with age which was for positive emotions compensated by TRP. Since the supramarginal gyrus is associated with empathy, pain and related information integration results could be interpreted as reflecting stricter evaluation of negative behavior due to better integration of information. Improved recognition of positive emotions with TRP in older participants supports the use of a TRP-rich diet to compensate for age related decline in social-cognitive processes.

"Influence of diet on mood and social cognition: a pilot study".

Recently, a relationship has been observed between nutrition and social cognition. In this aspect, several dietary patterns, or even some probiotics, have been reported as social cognition modulators. However, to date, no studies have reported the effects of specific nutrients. Our aim was to evaluate the relationship between dietary macronutrients and the processing of social and affective information. Participants were undergraduates from the University of Extremadura (Badajoz, Spain) aged 21.3 ± 2.9 years., with a BMI of 22.8 ± 3.9 (kg m-2). The students' social cognition and diet were analysed through questionnaires and a dietary record. The diets were analysed with DIAL v.1.18® software (Alce Ingeniería®). The participants filled out the WHO-5 well-being index, Beck's anxiety inventory, Beck's depression inventory, ruminative response scale (RSS), Leiden index of depression sensitivity (LEIDS-r), empathy quotient (EQ), and interpersonal reactivity index (IRI). To analyse the data, nutrients were grouped through principal component analysis (PCA) into lipids, carbohydrates and proteins. Additionally, we assayed if these principal components were associated with psychological questionnaire scores using multiple linear regression analyses. The dietary pattern differed from the traditional Mediterranean diet due to high intake of proteins and saturated fatty acids. Regarding social cognition and macronutrients, we found a positive association between lipids, specifically cholesterol, and the Perspective-Taking Scale (an IRI component). Carbohydrates influenced the RSS, indicating that complex carbohydrates may be a risk factor for depression. Moreover, the brooding factor, a component of the RRS, was negatively affected by dietary carbohydrates and proteins, specifically by fiber and aspartate. Diet may influence several variables related to social cognition and mood. Particularly, a low-cholesterol diet rich in fiber, complex carbohydrates, and aspartate apparently provides benefits, improving the processing of social and affective information and psychic well-being.

Repetitive negative thinking in daily life and functional connectivity among default mode, fronto-parietal, and salience networks.

Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) is a maladaptive response to sadness and a transdiagnostic risk-factor. A critical challenge hampering attempts to promote more adaptive responses to sadness is that the between-person characteristics associated with the tendency for RNT remain uncharacterized. From the perspective of the impaired disengagement hypothesis, we examine between-person differences in blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) functional networks underlying cognitive conflict signaling, self-referential thought, and cognitive flexibility, and the association between sadness and RNT in daily life. We pair functional magnetic resonance imaging with ambulatory assessments deployed 10 times per day over 4 consecutive days measuring momentary sadness and RNT from 58 participants (40 female, mean age = 36.69 years; 29 remitted from a lifetime episode of Major Depression) in a multilevel model. We show that RNT increases following sadness for participants with higher than average between-network connectivity of the default mode network and the fronto-parietal network. We also show that RNT increases following increases in sadness for participants with lower than average between-network connectivity of the fronto-parietal network and the salience network. We also find that flexibility of the salience network's pattern of connections with brain regions is protective against increases in RNT following sadness. Our findings highlight the importance of functional brain networks implicated in cognitive conflict signaling, self-referential thought, and cognitive flexibility for understanding maladaptive responses to sadness in daily life and provide support for the impaired disengagement hypothesis of RNT.

Cerebellar volume and cerebellocerebral structural covariance in schizophrenia: a multisite mega-analysis of 983 patients and 1349 healthy controls.

Although cerebellar involvement across a wide range of cognitive and neuropsychiatric phenotypes is increasingly being recognized, previous large-scale studies in schizophrenia (SZ) have primarily focused on supratentorial structures. Hence, the across-sample reproducibility, regional distribution, associations with cerebrocortical morphology and effect sizes of cerebellar relative to cerebral morphological differences in SZ are unknown. We addressed these questions in 983 patients with SZ spectrum disorders and 1349 healthy controls (HCs) from 14 international samples, using state-of-the-art image analysis pipelines optimized for both the cerebellum and the cerebrum. Results showed that total cerebellar grey matter volume was robustly reduced in SZ relative to HCs (Cohens's d=-0.35), with the strongest effects in cerebellar regions showing functional connectivity with frontoparietal cortices (d=-0.40). Effect sizes for cerebellar volumes were similar to the most consistently reported cerebral structural changes in SZ (e.g., hippocampus volume and frontotemporal cortical thickness), and were highly consistent across samples. Within groups, we further observed positive correlations between cerebellar volume and cerebral cortical thickness in frontotemporal regions (i.e., overlapping with areas that also showed reductions in SZ). This cerebellocerebral structural covariance was strongest in SZ, suggesting common underlying disease processes jointly affecting the cerebellum and the cerebrum. Finally, cerebellar volume reduction in SZ was highly consistent across the included age span (16-66 years) and present already in the youngest patients, a finding that is more consistent with neurodevelopmental than neurodegenerative etiology. Taken together, these novel findings establish the cerebellum as a key node in the distributed brain networks underlying SZ.

Neural reward processing in individuals remitted from major depression.

BACKGROUND: Dysfunctional behavioural and neural processing of reward has been found in currently depressed individuals. However, little is known about altered reward processing in remitted depressed individuals. METHOD: A total of 23 medication-free individuals with remitted major depressive disorder (rMDD) and 23 matched healthy controls (HCs) performed a reward task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. We also investigated reward dependence, novelty seeking and harm avoidance using the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire and their association with neural responses of reward processing. RESULTS: Compared to HCs, individuals with rMDD exhibited enhanced responses to reward-predicting cues in the hippocampus, amygdala and superior frontal gyrus. When reward was delivered, rMDD subjects did not significantly differ from HCs. In both groups neural activity during reward anticipation was negatively correlated with harm avoidance. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that rMDD is characterized by hyperactivation in fronto-limbic regions during reward anticipation. Alterations in neural activation during reward processing might reflect an increased effort in remitted depressed individuals to allocate neural activity for executive and evaluative processes during anticipatory reward processing.

Temporal unpredictability of a stimulus sequence and the processing of neutral and emotional stimuli.

Most experimental settings in cognitive neuroscience present a temporally structured stimulus sequence, i.e., stimuli may occur at either constant and predictable or variable and less predictable inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs). This experimental feature has been shown to affect behavior and activation of various cerebral structures such as the parietal cortex and the amygdala. Studies employing explicit or implicit cues to manipulate predictability of events have shown that unpredictability particularly accentuates the response to events of negative valence. The present study investigates whether the effects of unpredictability are similarly affected by the emotional content of stimuli when unpredictability is induced simply by the temporal structure of a stimulus sequence, i.e., by variable as compared to constant ISIs. In an fMRI study, we applied three choice-reaction-time tasks with stimuli of different social-emotional content. Subjects (N=30) were asked to identify the gender in angry and happy faces, or the shape of geometric figures. Tasks were performed with variable and constant ISIs. During the identification of shapes, variable ISIs increased activation in widespread areas comprising the amygdala and fronto-parietal regions. Conversely, variable ISIs during gender identification resulted in a decrease of activation in a small region near the intraparietal sulcus. Our findings reveal that variability in the temporal stimulus structure of an experimental setting affects cerebral activation depending on task demands. They suggest that the processing of emotional stimuli of different valence is not much affected by the decision of employing a constant or a variable temporal stimulus structure, at least in the context of implicit emotion processing tasks. In contrast, temporal structure diversely affects the processing of neutral non-social compared to emotional stimuli, emphasizing the relevance of considering this experimental feature in studies which aim at differentiating social-emotional from cognitive processing in general, and more particularly, aim at identifying circumscribed alterations of social cognition in mental disorders.

Investigation of metamemory functioning in the at-risk mental state for psychosis.

BACKGROUND: Metamemory describes the monitoring and knowledge about one's memory capabilities. Patients with schizophrenia have been found to be less able in differentiating between correct and false answers (smaller confidence gap) when asked to provide retrospective confidence ratings in previous studies. Furthermore, higher proportions of very-high-confident but false responses have been found in this patient group (high knowledge corruption). Whether and how these biases contribute to the early pathogenesis of psychosis is yet unclear. This study thus aimed at investigating metamemory function in the early course of psychosis. METHOD: Patients in an at-risk mental state for psychosis (ARMS, n = 34), patients with a first episode of psychosis (FEP, n = 21) and healthy controls (HCs, n = 38) were compared on a verbal recognition task combined with retrospective confidence-level ratings. RESULTS: FEP patients showed the smallest confidence gap, followed by ARMS patients, followed by HCs. All groups differed significantly from each other. Regarding knowledge corruption, FEP patients differed significantly from HCs, whereas a statistical trend was revealed in comparison of ARMS and FEP groups. Correlations were revealed between metamemory, measures of positive symptoms and working memory performance. CONCLUSIONS: These data underline the presence of a metamemory bias in ARMS patients which is even more pronounced in FEP patients. The bias might represent an early cognitive marker of the beginning psychotic state. Longitudinal studies are needed to unravel whether metacognitive deficits predict the transition to psychosis and to evaluate therapeutic interventions.

Orientation of colonized sand flies Phlebotomus papatasi, P. duboscqi, and Lutzomyia longipalpis (Diptera: Psychodidae) to diverse honeys using a 3-chamber in-line olfactometer.

A 3-chamber in-line olfactometer designed for use with sand flies is described and tested as a high-throughput method to screen honeys for attractiveness to Phlebotomus papatasi (four geographic isolates), P. duboscqi (two geographic isolates), and Lutzomyia longipalpis maintained in colonies at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. A diversity of unifloral honey odors were evaluated as a proxy for the natural floral odors that sand flies may use in orientation to floral sugar sources in the field. In the 3-chamber in-line olfactometer, the choice modules come directly off both sides of the release area instead of angling away as in the Y-tube olfactometer. Of the 25 honeys tested, five had a significant attraction for one or more of the sand fly isolates tested. This olfactometer and high-throughput method has utility for evaluating a diversity of natural materials with unknown complex odor blends that can then be down-selected for further evaluation in wind tunnels and/or field scenarios.

Multi-site reproducibility of prefrontal-hippocampal connectivity estimates by stochastic DCM.

This study examined the reproducibility of prefrontal-hippocampal connectivity estimates obtained by stochastic dynamic causal modeling (sDCM). 180 healthy subjects were measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a standard working memory N-Back task at three different sites (Mannheim, Bonn, Berlin; each with 60 participants). The reproducibility of regional activations in key regions for working memory (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, DLPFC; hippocampal formation, HF) was evaluated using conjunction analyses across locations. These analyses showed consistent activation of right DLPFC and deactivation of left HF across all three different sites. The effective connectivity between DLPFC and HF was analyzed using a simple two-region sDCM. For each subject, we evaluated sixty-seven alternative sDCMs and compared their relative plausibility using Bayesian model selection (BMS). Across all locations, BMS consistently revealed the same winning model, with the 2-Back working memory condition as driving input to both DLPFC and HF and with a connection from DLPFC to HF. Statistical tests on the sDCM parameter estimates did not show any significant differences across the three sites. The consistency of both the BMS results and model parameter estimates indicates the reliability of sDCM in our paradigm. This provides a basis for future genetic and clinical studies using this approach.

Association between genetic variation in a region on chromosome 11 and schizophrenia in large samples from Europe.

Recent molecular studies have implicated common alleles of small to moderate effect and rare alleles with larger effect sizes in the genetic architecture of schizophrenia (SCZ). It is expected that the reliable detection of risk variants with very small effect sizes can only be achieved through the recruitment of very large samples of patients and controls (that is tens of thousands), or large, potentially more homogeneous samples that have been recruited from confined geographical areas using identical diagnostic criteria. Applying the latter strategy, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 1169 clinically well characterized and ethnically homogeneous SCZ patients from a confined area of Western Europe (464 from Germany, 705 from The Netherlands) and 3714 ethnically matched controls (1272 and 2442, respectively). In a subsequent follow-up study of our top GWAS results, we included an additional 2569 SCZ patients and 4088 controls (from Germany, The Netherlands and Denmark). Genetic variation in a region on chromosome 11 that contains the candidate genes AMBRA1, DGKZ, CHRM4 and MDK was significantly associated with SCZ in the combined sample (n=11 540; P=3.89 × 10(-9), odds ratio (OR)=1.25). This finding was replicated in 23 206 independent samples of European ancestry (P=0.0029, OR=1.11). In a subsequent imaging genetics study, healthy carriers of the risk allele exhibited altered activation in the cingulate cortex during a cognitive control task. The area of interest is a critical interface between emotion regulation and cognition that is structurally and functionally abnormal in SCZ and bipolar disorder.

Comparison of three carbon dioxide sources on phlebotomine sand fly capture in Egypt.

Lighted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) light traps were baited with carbon dioxide (CO2) produced from three different sources to compare the efficacy of each in collecting phlebotomine sand flies in Bahrif village, Aswan Governorate, Egypt. Treatments consisted of compressed CO2 gas released at a rate of 250 ml/min, 1.5 kg of dry ice (replaced daily) sublimating from an insulated plastic container, CO2 gas produced from a prototype FASTGAS (FG) CO2 generator system (APTIV Inc., Portland, OR), and a CDC light trap without a CO2 source. Carbon dioxide was released above each treatment trap's catch opening. Traps were placed in a 4 x 4 Latin square designed study with three replications completed after four consecutive nights in August 2007. During the study, 1,842 phlebotomine sand flies were collected from two genera and five species. Traps collected 1,739 (94.4%) Phlebotomus papatasi (Scopoli), 19 (1.0%) Phlebotomus sergenti, 64 (3.5%) Sergentomyia schwetzi, 16 (0.9%) Sergentomyia palestinensis, and four (0.2%) Sergentomyia tiberiadis. Overall treatment results were dry ice (541) > FG (504) > compressed gas (454) > no CO2 (343). Total catches of P. papatasi were not significantly different between treatments, although CO2-baited traps collected 23-34% more sand flies than the unbaited (control) trap. Results indicate that the traps baited with a prototype CO2 generator were as attractive as traps supplied with CO2 sources traditionally used in sand fly surveillance efforts. Field-deployable CO2 generators are particularly advantageous in remote areas where dry ice or compressed gas is difficult to obtain.

ADHD related behaviors are associated with brain activation in the reward system.

Neuroimaging studies on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) suggest dysfunctional reward processing, with hypo-responsiveness during reward anticipation in the reward system including the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). In this study, we investigated the association between ADHD related behaviors and the reward system using functional magnetic resonance imaging in a non-clinical sample. Participants were 31 healthy, female undergraduate students with varying levels of self-reported ADHD related behaviors measured by the adult ADHD self-report scale. The anticipation of different types of reward was investigated: monetary reward, punishment avoidance, and verbal feedback. All three reward anticipation conditions were found to be associated with increased brain activation in the reward system, with the highest activation in the monetary reward anticipation condition, followed by the punishment avoidance anticipation condition, and the lowest activation in the verbal feedback anticipation condition. Most interestingly, in all three conditions, NAcc activation was negatively correlated with ADHD related behaviors. In conclusion, our results from a non-clinical sample are in accordance with reported deficits in the reward system in ADHD patients: the higher the number and severity of ADHD related behaviors, the lower the neural responses in the dopaminergic driven reward anticipation task. Thus, our data support current aetiological models of ADHD which assume that deficits in the reward system might be responsible for many of the ADHD related behaviors.

Effects of a genome-wide supported psychosis risk variant on neural activation during a theory-of-mind task.

Schizophrenia is associated with marked deficits in theory of mind (ToM), a higher-order form of social cognition representing the thoughts, emotions and intentions of others. Altered brain activation in the medial prefrontal cortex and temporo-parietal cortex during ToM tasks has been found in patients with schizophrenia, but the relevance of these neuroimaging findings for the heritable risk for schizophrenia is unclear. We tested the hypothesis that activation of the ToM network is altered in healthy risk allele carriers of the single-nucleotide polymorphism rs1344706 in the gene ZNF804A, a recently discovered risk variant for psychosis with genome-wide support. In all, 109 healthy volunteers of both sexes in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium for rs1344706 were investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging during a ToM task. As hypothesised, risk carriers exhibited a significant (P<0.05 false discovery rate, corrected for multiple comparisons) risk allele dose effect on neural activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and left temporo-parietal cortex. Moreover, the same effect was found in the left inferior parietal cortex and left inferior frontal cortex, which are part of the human analogue of the mirror neuron system. In addition, in an exploratory analysis (P<0.001 uncorrected), we found evidence for aberrant functional connectivity between the frontal and temporo-parietal regions in risk allele carriers. To conclude, we show that a dysfunction of the ToM network is associated with a genome-wide supported genetic risk variant for schizophrenia and has promise as an intermediate phenotype that can be mined for the development of biological interventions targeted to social dysfunction in psychiatry.

Objective measurement of motor activity during cognitive performance in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigates whether hyperactivity, i.e. an increased level of motor activity, can be observed in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). METHOD: An infrared motion-tracking system was used to measure motor activity in 20 unmedicated adults with ADHD and 20 matched healthy controls (HC) during a 1-back working memory task. RESULTS: Motor activity was higher in ADHD. It increased with the duration of testing and co-varied with cognitive performance in ADHD only. Subjective and objective measurements of motor activity were related in HC, but not in ADHD. CONCLUSION: Higher levels of motor activity in ADHD are objectively measurable not only in children, but in adults as well. It is linked to cognitive performance arguing against distinguishable diagnostic subtypes. The objective measurement of motor activity seems to extend the description of ADHD symptoms derived from rating scales and might thus help to bridge the gap between psychopathological symptom description and neurobiological alterations.

Neuronal correlates of affective theory of mind in schizophrenia out-patients: evidence for a baseline deficit.

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia out-patients have deficits in affective theory of mind (ToM) but also on more basal levels of social cognition, such as the processing of neutral and emotional expressions. These deficits are associated with changes in brain activation in the amygdala and the superior temporal sulcus (STS). However, until now there have been no studies that examined these different levels of social cognition and their neurobiological underpinnings in patients within one design. METHOD: Sixteen medicated schizophrenia out-patients and 16 matched healthy controls were studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a social cognition task that allows the investigation of affective ToM (aToM), emotion recognition and the processing of neutral facial expressions. RESULTS: Patients showed a deficit in emotion recognition and a more prominent deficit in aToM. The performance in aToM and in emotion recognition was correlated in the control group but not in the schizophrenia group. Region-of-interest analysis of functional brain imaging data revealed no difference between groups during aToM, but a hyperactivation in the schizophrenia group in the left amygdala and right STS during emotion recognition and the processing of neutral facial expressions. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that schizophrenia out-patients have deficits at several levels of social cognition and provide the first evidence that deficits on higher-order social cognitive processes in schizophrenia may be traced back to an aberrant processing of faces per se.

Neural substrates of pleiotropic action of genetic variation in COMT: a meta-analysis.

Genetic variation in catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), encoding an enzyme critical for prefrontal dopamine flux, has been studied extensively using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods. In behavior, pleiotropic action of a functional Val(158)Met (rs4680) polymorphism on executive cognition and emotional stability has been described and proposed to be of evolutionary significance (the 'warrior/worrier' hypothesis). We conducted a meta-analysis of all available neuroimaging studies of rs4680 to investigate the evidence for a neural substrate of this behavioral pleiotropy. We show significant association between the COMT genotype and prefrontal activation, with large (d=0.73) effect size without evidence for publication bias. Strong and opposing effects were found for executive cognition paradigms (favoring Met allele carriers) and emotional paradigms (favoring Val), providing meta-analytical evidence for a neural substrate for the pleiotropic behavioral effects of COMT genetic variation and validating the use of intermediate phenotypes as a method to bridge between genes and behavior.

Attraction of Triatoma dimidiata and Rhodnius prolixus (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) to combinations of host cues tested at two distances.

The "kissing bugs," Triatoma dimidiata (Latreille) and Rhodnius prolixus (Stål) (Reduviidae: Triatominae) are major vectors of Chagas disease in Central and South America. To further uncover the attraction to certain host cues by these vectors at long and short distances from their host, the behavioral responses of two life stages (fifth-instar nymphs and adult males) of these two species to different known or suspected attractants, alone or in combination, were investigated. Tests were done using short- and long-range environments, namely, a four-port olfactometer and a long-range artificial chamber designed to mimic the insect's natural habitats. In single-attractant trials, heat alone and CO2 alone were found to be more attractive than selected chemicals. In multiple-attractant trials, both species and life stages were attracted at short distances, and a statistically significant synergistic increase in attraction was observed in long-distance multimodal tests. Lures containing CO2 were the most effective attractants at both long and short distances. R. prolixus adult males were significantly less attracted to several lure combinations than the nymphs of either species, perhaps because adults were more motivated to seek mates than feed. Our findings suggest that although the triatomine bugs may be capable of detecting odorants and heat sources at short distances, their ability to locate a host over a long distance is best aided by the presence of a CO2 plume.

Gene polymorphisms of renin angiotensin system and serotonin transporter gene in patients with vasovagal syncope.

UNLABELLED: Objective of this study was to compare the distribution frequencies of gene polymorphisms of renin-angiotensin and serotonin system in patients with positive and negative head- up tilt test (HUT). METHODS: DNA from 191 patients (mean age 44+ 18 years, 61 men) was collected. HUT was positive in 117 and negative in 74 patients. Following gene polymorphisms were determined by the PCR method: ACE insertion/deletion (I/D ACE), angiotensinogen (AGT) (M 235), angiotensin II receptor (ATR1) (A 1166C) and serotonin transporter (SERT) polymorphism (5HTTLPR). RESULTS: No significant differences in the distribution of gene polymorphisms between syncopal patients with positive and negative HUT were dectected. Distribution of polymorphisms included: I/D ACE: II 19 vs 20%, ID 55 vs 52%, DD 26 vs 28%. Angiotensinogen gene polymorphism MM 27% vs 30%, MT 48% vs 46%, TT 25% vs 24%. ATR1 polymorphism AA 44 vs 32%, AC50 vs 60%, CC 6 vs 8%, 5HTTLPR serotonin transporter gene polymorphism LL 42 vs 43%, SL 41 vs 39%, SS 17 vs 18%. CONCLUSIONS: An association between polymorphisms of ACE, AGT, ATR1 and SERT gene, and predisposition to VVS was not proven by the present study (Tab. 2, Ref. 22). Full Text (Free, PDF) www.bmj.sk.