Relationships between interoceptive sensibility and resting-state functional connectivity of the insula in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) exhibit abnormality in their subjective perception of internal sensation, a process known as interoceptive sensibility (IS), as well as altered functioning of the insula, a key neural structure for interoception. We investigated the multivariate structure of IS in 77 OCD patients and 53 controls and examined associations of IS with resting-state functional connectivity (FC) of the insula within the OCD group. For each group, principal component analysis was performed on 8 subscales of the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness assessing putatively "adaptive" and "maladaptive" aspects of IS. Associations between IS components and insula FC in the OCD group were evaluated using seed regions placed in each of 3 subdivisions of the insula (posterior, anterior dorsal, and anterior ventral). Behaviorally, controls showed a 2-component solution broadly categorized into "adaptive" and "maladaptive" IS, while OCD patients exhibited a 3-component solution. The general tendency to notice or be aware of sensation loaded onto an "adaptive" IS component in controls but loaded onto both "adaptive" and "maladaptive" IS components in OCD. Within OCD, insula FC was differentially associated with distinct aspects of IS, identifying network connections that could serve as future targets for the modulation of IS in OCD.

The buildup of an urge in obsessive-compulsive disorder: Behavioral and neuroimaging correlates.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is highly heterogeneous. While obsessions often involve fear of harm, many patients report uncomfortable sensations and/or urges that drive repetitive behaviors in the absence of a specific fear. Prior work suggests that urges in OCD may be similar to everyday "urges-for-action" (UFA) such as the urge to blink, swallow, or scratch, but very little work has investigated the pathophysiology underlying urges in OCD. In the current study, we used an urge-to-blink approach to model sensory-based urges that could be experimentally elicited and compared across patients and controls using the same task stimuli. OCD patients and controls suppressed eye blinking over a period of 60 s, alternating with free blinking blocks, while brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging. OCD patients showed significantly increased activation in several regions during the early phase of eyeblink suppression (first 30 s), including mid-cingulate, insula, striatum, parietal cortex, and occipital cortex, with lingering group differences in parietal and occipital regions during late eyeblink suppression (last 30 s). There were no differences in brain activation during free blinking blocks, and no conditions where OCD patients showed reduced activation compared to controls. In an exploratory analysis of blink counts performed in a subset of subjects, OCD patients were less successful than controls in suppressing blinks. These data indicate that OCD patients exhibit altered brain function and behavior when experiencing and suppressing the urge to blink, raising the possibility that the disorder is associated with a general abnormality in the UFA system that could ultimately be targeted by future treatments.

The real-time fMRI neurofeedback based stratification of Default Network Regulation Neuroimaging data repository.

This data descriptor describes a repository of openly shared data from an experiment to assess inter-individual differences in default mode network (DMN) activity. This repository includes cross-sectional functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from the Multi Source Interference Task, to assess DMN deactivation, the Moral Dilemma Task, to assess DMN activation, a resting state fMRI scan, and a DMN neurofeedback paradigm, to assess DMN modulation, along with accompanying behavioral and cognitive measures. We report technical validation from n=125 participants of the final targeted sample of 180 participants. Each session includes acquisition of one whole-brain anatomical scan and whole-brain echo-planar imaging (EPI) scans, acquired during the aforementioned tasks and resting state. The data includes several self-report measures related to perseverative thinking, emotion regulation, and imaginative processes, along with a behavioral measure of rapid visual information processing. Technical validation of the data confirms that the tasks deactivate and activate the DMN as expected. Group level analysis of the neurofeedback data indicates that the participants are able to modulate their DMN with considerable inter-subject variability. Preliminary analysis of behavioral responses and specifically self-reported sleep indicate that as many as 73 participants may need to be excluded from an analysis depending on the hypothesis being tested. The present data are linked to the enhanced Nathan Kline Institute, Rockland Sample and builds on the comprehensive neuroimaging and deep phenotyping available therein. As limited information is presently available about individual differences in the capacity to directly modulate the default mode network, these data provide a unique opportunity to examine DMN modulation ability in relation to numerous phenotypic characteristics.

Beta-adrenergic Blockade at Memory Encoding, but Not Retrieval, Decreases the Subjective Sense of Recollection.

Humans remember emotional events not only better but also exhibit a qualitatively distinct recollective experience-that is, emotion intensifies the subjective vividness of the memory, the sense of reliving the event, and confidence in the accuracy of the memory [Phelps, E. A., & Sharot, T. How (and why) emotion enhances the subjective sense of recollection. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 147-152, 2008]. Although it has been demonstrated that activation of the beta-adrenergic system, linked to increases in stress hormone levels and physiological arousal, mediates enhanced emotional memory accuracy, the mechanism underlying the increased subjective sense of recollection is unknown. Behavioral evidence suggests that increased arousal associated with emotional events, either at encoding or retrieval, underlies their increased subjective sense of recollection. Using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject design, we showed that reducing arousal at encoding through oral intake of 80-mg of the beta-adrenergic receptor antagonist propranolol decreases the subjective sense of recollection for both negative and neutral stimuli 24 hr later. In contrast, administration of propranolol before memory retrieval did not alter the subjective sense of recollection. These results suggest that the neurohormonal changes underlying increased arousal at the time of memory formation, rather than the time of memory retrieval, modulate the subjective sense of recollection.

Determinants of Propranolol's Selective Effect on Loss Aversion.

Research on emotion and decision making has suggested that arousal mediates risky decisions, but several distinct and often confounded processes drive such choices. We used econometric modeling to separate and quantify the unique contributions of loss aversion, risk attitudes, and choice consistency to risky decision making. We administered the beta-blocker propranolol in a double-blind, placebo-controlled within-subjects study, targeting the neurohormonal basis of physiological arousal. Matching our intervention's pharmacological specificity with a quantitative model delineating decision-making components allowed us to identify the causal relationships between arousal and decision making that do and do not exist. Propranolol selectively reduced loss aversion in a baseline- and dose-dependent manner (i.e., as a function of initial loss aversion and body mass index), and did not affect risk attitudes or choice consistency. These findings provide evidence for a specific, modulatory, and causal relationship between precise components of emotion and risky decision making.

C-Reactive Protein Does Not Predict Future Depression Onset in Adolescents: Preliminary Findings from a Longitudinal Study.

Introduction: Neuroinflammatory processes have been extensively implicated in the underlying neurobiology of numerous neuropsychiatric disorders. Elevated C-reactive protein (CRP), an indicator of nonspecific inflammation commonly utilized in clinical practice, has been associated with depression in adults. In adolescents, our group previously found CRP to be associated with altered neural reward function but not with mood and anxiety symptoms assessed cross-sectionally. We hypothesized that the distinct CRP findings in adolescent versus adult depression may be due to chronicity, with neuroinflammatory effects on psychiatric disorders gradually accumulating over time. Here, we conducted a longitudinal study to evaluate if CRP levels predicted future onset or progression of depression in adolescents. Methods: Participants were 53 adolescents (age = 14.74 ± 1.92 years, 35 female), 40 with psychiatric symptoms and 13 healthy controls. At baseline, participants completed semistructured diagnostic evaluations; dimensional assessments for anxiety, depression, anhedonia, and suicidality severity; and bloodwork to quantify CRP levels. Clinical assessments were repeated at longitudinal follow-up after ∼1.5 years. Spearman's correlation between CRP levels and follow-up symptom severity were controlled for body mass index, age, sex, and follow-up interval and considered significant at the two-tailed, Bonferroni-adjusted p < 0.05 level. Results: After correction for multiple comparisons, no relationships were identified between baseline CRP levels and follow-up symptom severity. Conclusion: CRP levels were not significantly associated with future psychiatric symptoms in adolescents in this preliminary analysis. This may suggest that CRP is not a useful biomarker for adolescent depression and anxiety. However, future longitudinal studies with larger sample sizes and incorporating additional indicators of neuroinflammation are needed.

Sensory over-responsivity and orbitofrontal cortex connectivity in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

BACKGROUND: Sensory over-responsivity (SOR) in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with illness severity and functional impairment. However, the neural substrates of SOR in OCD have not yet been directly probed. METHODS: We examined resting-state global functional connectivity markers of SOR in 119 adults with OCD utilizing the CONN-fMRI Functional Connectivity Toolbox for SPM (v21a). We quantified SOR with the sensory sensitivity and sensory avoiding subscales of the Adult and Adolescent Sensory Profile (AASP). We also measured: OCD severity, with the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) and Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R); sensory phenomena with the Sensory Phenomena Scale (SPS); general anxiety, with the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI); and depressive symptomatology, with Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptoms, Self-Report (QIDS-SR). RESULTS: There was a significant positive relationship of SOR with global connectivity in anterior and medial OFC (Brodmanns area 11, k = 154, x = 14, y = 62, z = -18, whole-brain corrected at FWE p < 0.05). LIMITATIONS: Future investigations should explore neural responses to sensory stimulation tasks in OCD and compare findings with those obtained in other conditions also characterized by high SOR, such as autism spectrum disorder. CONCLUSIONS: This study implicates OFC functional connectivity as a neurobiological mechanism of SOR in OCD and suggests that the substrates of SOR in OCD may be dissociable from both that of other symptoms in OCD, and SOR in other disorders. With replication and extension, the finding may be leveraged to develop and refine treatments for OCD and investigate the pathophysiology of SOR in other conditions.

Identifying subgroups of urge suppression in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder using machine learning.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is phenomenologically heterogeneous. While predominant models suggest fear and harm prevention drive compulsions, many patients also experience uncomfortable sensory-based urges ("sensory phenomena") that may be associated with heightened interoceptive sensitivity. Using an urge-to-blink eyeblink suppression paradigm to model sensory-based urges, we previously found that OCD patients as a group had more eyeblink suppression failures and greater activation of sensorimotor-interoceptive regions than controls. However, conventional approaches assuming OCD homogeneity may obscure important within-group variability, impeding precision treatment development. This study investigated the heterogeneity of urge suppression failure in OCD and examined relationships with clinical characteristics and neural activation. Eighty-two patients with OCD and 38 controls underwent an fMRI task presenting 60-s blocks of eyeblink suppression alternating with free-blinking blocks. Latent profile analysis identified OCD subgroups based on number of erroneous blinks during suppression. Subgroups were compared on behavior, clinical characteristics, and brain activation during task. Three patient subgroups were identified. Despite similar overall OCD severity, the subgroup with the most erroneous eyeblinks had the highest sensory phenomena severity, interoceptive sensitivity, and subjective urge intensity. Compared to other subgroups, this subgroup exhibited more neural activity in somatosensory and interoceptive regions during the early phase (first 30 s) of blink suppression and reduced activity in the middle frontal gyrus during the late phase (second 30 s) as the suppression period elapsed. Heterogeneity of urge suppression in OCD was associated with clinical characteristics and brain function. Our results reveal potential treatment targets that could inform personalized medicine.

Age, Motion, Medical, and Psychiatric Associations With Incidental Findings in Brain MRI.

Importance: Few investigations have evaluated rates of brain-based magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) incidental findings (IFs) in large lifespan samples, their stability over time, or their associations with health outcomes. Objectives: To examine rates of brain-based IFs across the lifespan, their persistence, and their associations with phenotypic indicators of behavior, cognition, and health; to compare quantified motion with radiologist-reported motion and evaluate its associations with IF rates; and to explore IF consistency across multiple visits. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cross-sectional study included participants from the Nathan Kline Institute-Rockland Sample (NKI-RS), a lifespan community-ascertained sample, and the Healthy Brain Network (HBN), a cross-sectional community self-referred pediatric sample focused on mental health and learning disorders. The NKI-RS enrolled participants (ages 6-85 years) between March 2012 and March 2020 and had longitudinal participants followed up for as long as 4 years. The HBN enrolled participants (ages 5-21 years) between August 2015 and October 2021. Clinical neuroradiology MRI reports were coded for radiologist-reported motion as well as presence, type, and clinical urgency (category 1, no abnormal findings; 2, no referral recommended; 3, consider referral; and 4, immediate referral) of IFs. MRI reports were coded from June to October 2021. Data were analyzed from November 2021 to February 2023. Main Outcomes and Measures: Rates and type of IFs by demographic characteristics, health phenotyping, and motion artifacts; longitudinal stability of IFs; and Euler number in projecting radiologist-reported motion. Results: A total of 1300 NKI-RS participants (781 [60.1%] female; mean [SD] age, 38.9 [21.8] years) and 2772 HBN participants (976 [35.2%] female; mean [SD] age, 10.0 [3.5] years) had health phenotyping and neuroradiology-reviewed MRI scans. IFs were common, with 284 of 2956 children (9.6%) and 608 of 1107 adults (54.9%) having IFs, but rarely of clinical concern (category 1: NKI-RS, 619 [47.6%]; HBN, 2561 [92.4%]; category 2: NKI-RS, 647 [49.8%]; HBN, 178 [6.4%]; category 3: NKI-RS, 79 [6.1%]; HBN, 30 [1.1%]; category 4: NKI-RS: 12 [0.9%]; HBN, 6 [0.2%]). Overall, 46 children (1.6%) and 79 adults (7.1%) required referral for their IFs. IF frequency increased with age. Elevated blood pressure and BMI were associated with increased T2 hyperintensities and age-related cortical atrophy. Radiologist-reported motion aligned with Euler-quantified motion, but neither were associated with IF rates. Conclusions and Relevance: In this cross-sectional study, IFs were common, particularly with increasing age, although rarely clinically significant. While T2 hyperintensity and age-related cortical atrophy were associated with BMI and blood pressure, IFs were not associated with other behavioral, cognitive, and health phenotyping. Motion may not limit clinical IF detection.

Immunological correlates of suicidality among adolescents with internalizing symptoms.

Background: Suicide is a leading cause of death in adolescents and young adults globally. Well-established risk factors for suicide are depression and past suicide attempts. People experiencing suicidality may represent a distinct neurobiological group of people with depression. Because converging evidence has implicated inflammation in depression, we sought to investigate relationships between suicidality and immune markers in youth experiencing diverse mood and anxiety symptoms. We hypothesized that adolescents with suicidality would exhibit a unique immune signature. Methods: Adolescents underwent semi-structured interviews and completed self-reported measures to assess psychopathology, including suicidality (suicidal ideation, plans, or attempts). Fasting blood samples were collected, cultured with and without lipopolysaccharide (LPS) to stimulate an inflammatory response, and analyzed for 41 immune analytes. To assess how immune function related to suicidality categorically and dimensionally, we conducted group comparisons and correlations while controlling for multiple comparisons using false discovery rate (FDR). To further uncover subtle immune-suicidality relationships, we employed a data-driven approach using factor analysis to extract major immune factors, each of which was subsequently correlated with suicidality measures. Results: Among 126 participants, 29 were healthy controls and 97 participants had internalizing symptoms; within the clinical group, 57 experienced suicidality. Three immune analytes differed between healthy controls, suicidal, and non-suicidal adolescents with internalizing symptoms in the LPS condition: Flt-3L (p FDR = 0.0246), GM-CSF (p FDR = 0.0246), and IFN-γ (p FDR = 0.0246). These analytes were negatively correlated with the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation (BSSI): Flt-3L (ρ = -0.19, p = 0.04); GM-CSF (ρ = -0.26, p = 0.004); IFN-γ (ρ =-0.33, p = 0.0003). GM-CSF also negatively correlated with number of suicide attempts (ρ = -0.39, p = 0.003). Factor analysis reduced 41 analytes to several common immune factors across experimental conditions, with Flt-3L, GM-CSF, and IFN-γ all loading heavily onto immune factors that were hypoactive in suicidality. Through this data-driven approach, we detected further associations between suicidality and immune factors across all conditions. Conclusions: Peripheral immune function may be distinctly altered in adolescent suicidality. Future work should examine immune-suicidality relationships longitudinally.

Predictors of placebo response in three large clinical trials of the V1a receptor antagonist balovaptan in autism spectrum disorder.

High rates of placebo response are increasingly implicated in failed autism spectrum disorder (ASD) clinical trials. Despite this, there are limited investigations of placebo response in ASD. We sought to identify baseline predictors of placebo response and quantify their influence on clinical scales of interest for three harmonized randomized clinical trials of balovaptan, a V1a receptor antagonist. We employed a two-step approach to identify predictors of placebo response on the Vineland-II two-domain composite (2DC) (primary outcome and a caregiver measure) and Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scale (secondary outcome and a clinician measure). The initial candidate predictor set of variables pertained to participant-level, site-specific, and protocol-related factors. Step 1 aimed to identify influential predictors of placebo response using Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) regression, while Step 2 quantified the influence of predictors via linear regression. Results were validated through statistical bootstrapping approaches with 500 replications of the analysis dataset. The pooled participant-level dataset included individuals with ASD aged 5 to 62 years (mean age 21 [SD 10]), among which 263 and 172 participants received placebo at Weeks 12 and 24, respectively. Although no influential predictors were identified for CGI, findings for Vineland-II 2DC are robust and informative. Decreased placebo response was predicted by higher baseline Vineland-II 2DC (i.e., more advanced adaptive function), longer trial duration, and European (vs United States) sites, while increased placebo response was predicted by commercial (vs academic) sites, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression. Identification of these factors may be useful in anticipating and mitigating placebo response in drug development efforts in ASD and across developmental and psychiatric conditions.

Personality characteristics, not clinical symptoms, are associated with anhedonia in a community sample: A preliminary investigation.

Anhedonia is a salient transdiagnostic psychiatric symptom associated with increased illness severity and chronicity. Anhedonia is also present to varying degrees in non-clinical cohorts. Here, we sought to examine factors influencing expression of anhedonia. Participants (N = 335) were recruited through the Nathan Kline Institute-Rockland Sample, an initiative to deeply phenotype a large community sample across the lifespan. Utilizing a data-driven approach, we evaluated associations between anhedonia severity, indexed by Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS), and 20 physical, developmental, and clinical measures, including Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV, Beck Depression Inventory, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, NEO Five-Factor Inventory-3 (NEO-FFI-3), BMI, Hemoglobin A1C, and demography. Using a bootstrapped AIC-based backward selection algorithm, seven variables were retained in the final model: NEO-FFI-3 agreeableness, extraversion, and openness to experience; BMI; sex; ethnicity; and race. Though median SHAPS scores were greater in participants with psychiatric diagnoses (18.5) than those without (17.0) (U = 12238.5, z = 2.473, p = 0.013), diagnosis and symptom measures were not retained as significant predictors in the final robust linear model. Participants scoring higher on agreeableness, extraversion, and openness to experience reported significantly lower anhedonia. These results demonstrate personality as a mild-to-moderate but significant driver of differences in experiencing pleasure in a community sample.

Imbalance between default mode and sensorimotor connectivity is associated with perseverative thinking in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is highly heterogeneous. Although perseverative negative thinking (PT) is a feature of OCD, little is known about its neural mechanisms or relationship to clinical heterogeneity in the disorder. In a sample of 85 OCD patients, we investigated the relationships between self-reported PT, clinical symptom subtypes, and resting-state functional connectivity measures of local and global connectivity. Results indicated that PT scores were highly variable within the OCD sample, with greater PT relating to higher severity of the "unacceptable thoughts" symptom dimension. PT was positively related to local connectivity in subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), pregenual ACC, and the temporal poles-areas that are part of, or closely linked to, the default mode network (DMN)-and negatively related to local connectivity in sensorimotor cortex. While the majority of patients showed higher local connectivity strengths in sensorimotor compared to DMN regions, OCD patients with higher PT scores had less of an imbalance between sensorimotor and DMN connectivity than those with lower PT scores, with healthy controls exhibiting an intermediate pattern. Clinically, this imbalance was related to both the "unacceptable thoughts" and "symmetry/not-just-right-experiences" symptom dimensions, but in opposite directions. These effects remained significant after accounting for variance related to psychiatric comorbidity and medication use in the OCD sample, and no significant relationships were found between PT and global connectivity. These data indicate that PT is related to symptom and neural variability in OCD. Future work may wish to target this circuity when developing personalized interventions for patients with these symptoms.

Large multicenter randomized trials in autism: key insights gained from the balovaptan clinical development program.

BACKGROUND: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a common and heterogeneous neurodevelopmental condition that is characterized by the core symptoms of social communication difficulties and restricted and repetitive behaviors. At present, there is an unmet medical need for therapies to ameliorate these core symptoms in order to improve quality of life of autistic individuals. However, several challenges are currently faced by the ASD community relating to the development of pharmacotherapies, namely in the conduct of clinical trials. Balovaptan is a V1a receptor antagonist that has been investigated to improve social communication difficulties in individuals with ASD. In this viewpoint, we draw upon our recent first-hand experiences of the balovaptan clinical development program to describe current challenges of ASD trials. DISCUSSION POINTS: The balovaptan trials were conducted in a wide age range of individuals with ASD with the added complexities associated with international trials. When summarizing all three randomized trials of balovaptan, a placebo response was observed across several outcome measures. Placebo response was predicted by greater baseline symptom severity, online recruitment of participants, and less experienced or non-academic trial sites. We also highlight challenges relating to selection of outcome measures in ASD, the impact of baseline characteristics, and the role of expectation bias in influencing trial results. CONCLUSION: Taken together, the balovaptan clinical development program has advanced our understanding of the key challenges facing ASD treatment research. The insights gained can be used to inform and improve the design of future clinical trials with the collective aim of developing efficacious therapies to support individuals with ASD.

Balovaptan vs Placebo for Social Communication in Childhood Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: There are no approved medications for the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), socialization and communication difficulties. Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of balovaptan, an oral selective vasopressin 1a receptor antagonist, compared with placebo in children and adolescents with ASD. Design, Setting, and Participants: The aV1ation study was a randomized, double-blind, 24-week, parallel-group, placebo-controlled phase 2 trial. Between November 22, 2016, and September 3, 2019, individuals were screened and randomly assigned to treatment groups. The primary efficacy analysis population comprised participants taking age-adjusted balovaptan equivalent to a 10-mg adult dose and participants from the concurrently randomized placebo group. This multicenter trial took place across 41 sites in the US. Participants were aged 5 to 17 years with diagnosed ASD and an IQ of 70 or greater. Data were analyzed from April 8 to November 16, 2020. Interventions: Participants were randomly assigned to daily 4-mg or 10-mg adult-equivalent balovaptan or placebo, until the 4-mg group was discontinued. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary end point was change from baseline on the Vineland-II two-domain composite (2DC; socialization and communication domains) score at week 24. Results: Between November 2016 and September 2019, a total of 599 individuals were screened and 339 participants were randomly assigned to receive 4-mg balovaptan adult-equivalent dose (91 [26.8%]), 10-mg balovaptan adult-equivalent dose (126 [37.2%]), or placebo (122 [36.0%]). Primary analysis included 86 participants assigned to receive 10-mg balovaptan adult-equivalent dose and 81 assigned to receive placebo (mean [SD] age, 12.1 [3.4] years; 139 male participants [83.2%]). No statistically significant differences were observed between the balovaptan and placebo groups in change from baseline on the Vineland-II 2DC score at week 24 (difference in adjusted least-squares mean, -0.16; 90% CI, -2.56 to 2.23; P = .91). No improvements for balovaptan vs placebo were observed at week 24 for any secondary end points. Balovaptan was well tolerated with no emerging safety concerns. Similar proportions of participants reported adverse events (balovaptan, 66 of 86 [76.7%] vs placebo, 61 of 81 [75.3%]) and serious adverse events (balovaptan, 1 of 86 [1.2%] vs placebo, 4 of 81 [4.9%]). Conclusions and Relevance: In this randomized clinical trial, balovaptan did not demonstrate efficacy in improvement of socialization and communication in this population with pediatric ASD. Balovaptan was well tolerated in children 5 years or older. Further development of robust, sensitive, and objective outcome measures may help to improve future studies in the assessment of therapies targeting communication and socialization in pediatric ASD. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02901431.

Efficacy of Sulforaphane in Treatment of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Randomized Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Multi-center Trial.

Sulforaphane has been reported to possibly improve core symptoms associated with autism spectrum disorders from mostly small size studies. Here we present results of a larger randomized clinical trial (N = 108) in China. There were no significant changes in caregiver rated scales between sulforaphane and placebo groups. However, clinician rated scales showed a significant improvement in the sulforaphane group, and one third of participants showed at least a 30% decrease in score by 12 weeks treatment. The effects of sulforaphane were seen across the full range of intelligence and greater in participants over 10 years. Sulforaphane was safe and well-tolerated even for young children. The inconsistent results between caregiver and clinician rated scales suggest more clinical trials are needed to confirm our findings.

A longitudinal resource for studying connectome development and its psychiatric associations during childhood.

Most psychiatric disorders are chronic, associated with high levels of disability and distress, and present during pediatric development. Scientific innovation increasingly allows researchers to probe brain-behavior relationships in the developing human. As a result, ambitions to (1) establish normative pediatric brain development trajectories akin to growth curves, (2) characterize reliable metrics for distinguishing illness, and (3) develop clinically useful tools to assist in the diagnosis and management of mental health and learning disorders have gained significant momentum. To this end, the NKI-Rockland Sample initiative was created to probe lifespan development as a large-scale multimodal dataset. The NKI-Rockland Sample Longitudinal Discovery of Brain Development Trajectories substudy (N = 369) is a 24- to 30-month multi-cohort longitudinal pediatric investigation (ages 6.0-17.0 at enrollment) carried out in a community-ascertained sample. Data include psychiatric diagnostic, medical, behavioral, and cognitive phenotyping, as well as multimodal brain imaging (resting fMRI, diffusion MRI, morphometric MRI, arterial spin labeling), genetics, and actigraphy. Herein, we present the rationale, design, and implementation of the Longitudinal Discovery of Brain Development Trajectories protocol.

Cerebellar morphology in Tourette syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

OBJECTIVE: Neuroanatomical and functional imaging studies have identified the cerebellum as an integral component of motor and language control. Few studies, however, have investigated the role of the cerebellum in Tourette syndrome (TS), a condition defined by the presence of semi-involuntary movements and sounds. METHODS: Magnetic resonance imaging was conducted in 163 persons with TS and 147 control participants. Multivariate linear regression models were used to explore effects on cerebellar surface morphology and underlying volumes for the main diagnosis effects of TS as well as comorbid obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Additionally, the correlations of symptom severity with cerebellar morphology were also assessed. RESULTS: The TS group demonstrated reduced volumes of the cerebellar hemispheres bilaterally that derived primarily from reduced gray matter in crus I and lobules VI, VIIB, and VIIIA. These decreased regional volumes accompanied increasing tic symptom severity and motoric disinhibition as demonstrated by a finger tapping test. Males had reduced volumes of these same regions compared with females, irrespective of diagnosis. Comorbid OCD was associated with relative enlargement of these regions in proportion to the increasing severity of OCD symptoms. INTERPRETATION: The cerebellum is involved in the pathogenesis of TS and tic-related OCD. Baseline gender differences in cerebellar morphology may in part account for the more prevalent expression of TS in males.

Multimodal Investigations of Reward Circuitry and Anhedonia in Adolescent Depression.

Depression is a highly prevalent condition with devastating personal and public health consequences that often first manifests during adolescence. Though extensively studied, the pathogenesis of depression remains poorly understood, and efforts to stratify risks and identify optimal interventions have proceeded slowly. A major impediment has been the reliance on an all-or-nothing categorical diagnostic scheme based solely on whether a patient endorses an arbitrary number of common symptoms for a sufficiently long period. This approach masks the well-documented heterogeneity of depression, a disorder that is highly variable in presentation, severity, and course between individuals and is frequently comorbid with other psychiatric conditions. In this targeted review, we outline the limitations of traditional diagnosis-based research and instead advocate an alternative approach centered around symptoms as unique dimensions of clinical dysfunction that span across disorders and more closely reflect underlying neurobiological abnormalities. In particular, we highlight anhedonia-the reduced ability to anticipate and experience pleasure-as a specific, quantifiable index of reward dysfunction and an ideal candidate for dimensional investigation. Anhedonia is a core symptom of depression but also a salient feature of numerous other conditions, and its severity varies widely within clinical and even healthy populations. Similarly, reward dysfunction is a hallmark of depression but is evident across many psychiatric conditions. Reward function is especially relevant in adolescence, a period characterized by exaggerated reward-seeking behaviors and rapid maturation of neural reward circuitry. We detail extensive work by our research group and others to investigate the neural and systemic factors contributing to reward dysfunction in youth, including our cumulative findings using multiple neuroimaging and immunological measures to study depressed adolescents but also trans-diagnostic cohorts with diverse psychiatric symptoms. We describe convergent evidence that reward dysfunction: (a) predicts worse clinical outcomes, (b) is associated with functional and chemical abnormalities within and beyond the neural reward circuitry, (c) is linked to elevated peripheral levels of inflammatory biomarkers, and (d) manifests early in the course of illness. Emphasis is placed on high-resolution neuroimaging techniques, comprehensive immunological assays, and data-driven analyses to fully capture and characterize the complex, interconnected nature of these systems and their contributions to adolescent reward dysfunction.

Disease-Specific Contribution of Pulvinar Dysfunction to Impaired Emotion Recognition in Schizophrenia.

One important aspect for managing social interactions is the ability to perceive and respond to facial expressions rapidly and accurately. This ability is highly dependent upon intact processing within both cortical and subcortical components of the early visual pathways. Social cognitive deficits, including face emotion recognition (FER) deficits, are characteristic of several neuropsychiatric disorders including schizophrenia (Sz) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Here, we investigated potential visual sensory contributions to FER deficits in Sz (n = 28, 8/20 female/male; age 21-54 years) and adult ASD (n = 20, 4/16 female/male; age 19-43 years) participants compared to neurotypical (n = 30, 8/22 female/male; age 19-54 years) controls using task-based fMRI during an implicit static/dynamic FER task. Compared to neurotypical controls, both Sz (d = 1.97) and ASD (d = 1.13) participants had significantly lower FER scores which interrelated with diminished activation of the superior temporal sulcus (STS). In Sz, STS deficits were predicted by reduced activation of early visual regions (d = 0.85, p = 0.002) and of the pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus (d = 0.44, p = 0.042), along with impaired cortico-pulvinar interaction. By contrast, ASD participants showed patterns of increased early visual cortical (d = 1.03, p = 0.001) and pulvinar (d = 0.71, p = 0.015) activation. Large effect-size structural and histological abnormalities of pulvinar have previously been documented in Sz. Moreover, we have recently demonstrated impaired pulvinar activation to simple visual stimuli in Sz. Here, we provide the first demonstration of a disease-specific contribution of impaired pulvinar activation to social cognitive impairment in Sz.