Neuroscience Applied最新文献

Psychedelic drugs including psilocybin and LSD are undergoing clinical trials for a range of psychiatric and neurological conditions, and have particularly shown substantial promise in phase 2 studies of depression. In this article we outline key knowledge gaps that may be imperative for a successful implementation of psychedelic drugs as medicines as identified by members of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology at the New Frontiers Meeting in Nice (2023). Key themes include pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic characterisation, comparisons between psychedelics, the relation between the duration of subjective effects and therapeutic outcomes, polypharmacology, and the impact of psychological support. We conclude with a perspective from the European Medicines Agency and Heath Technology Assessors on the most pressing requirements for medical implementation in Europe.

Circadian rhythms are pivotal for human functioning, and their disruption holds significant implications for well-being. One common source for circadian disruptions is circadian misalignment that can be related to chronotypes. Chronotypes refer to an individual's preferred timing for sleep and wakefulness. Individuals with late chronotypes are at a disadvantage in the morning-oriented modern world and are demonstrated to have negative consequences in many aspects of life. In the context of psychiatric disorders, chronotypes are related to prevalence of disorders and to treatment effects but less attention is given to the relationship between chronotype and well-being in chronic psychiatric patients. The current study aims to elucidate the extent to which individual chronotypes contribute to emotional well-being within a cohort of individuals with chronic psychiatric disorder in outpatient clinic.

Participants (n = 100) were recruited from the outpatient clinic of the 3rd Department of Psychiatry, AHEPA University Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece, and the AX Mental Health Outpatient Clinic in Heraklion, Crete, Greece. Most participants were diagnosed within the F2 cluster, Psychotic disorders (n = 38), or F3 cluster, Mood (affective) disorders (n = 48). The Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) was employed to assess chronotype. The STAI-Y1, CES-D, QoL Uniscale and RASS Questionnaires were used to assess aspects of emotional well-being. A single measure of emotional well-being was generated using Z-score transformation. Student's t-test, ANOVAs and Pearson's correlations were used to identify parameters contributing to emotional well-being, followed by a comprehensive regression model.

Results show a significant contribution to emotional well-being by “psychiatric diagnosis” with schizophrenia/schizoaffective patients showing better emotional well-being compared with the “other” group, “receiving treatment” with patients receiving treatment showing higher score than ones who do not receive treatment, and “morningness/eveningness preference” where morningness was associated with higher score of emotional well-being. No other demographic or health-related parameters were significantly associated with emotional well-being score.

These findings clearly indicate the critical importance of chronotypes to the emotional well-being of chronic psychiatric patients. Additional thought and research should explore possible chronotherapy interventions that will address this issue in patients.

Recent studies show the importance of timing of an intervention in the prevention of mental health disorders followed by exposure to traumatic experiences and lend further support to the concept of the “golden hours”. On the second day of the war escalation in Ukraine, a psychological first aid (PFA) digital intervention was launched aimed at promoting the well-being of the population at risk. Chatbot ‘Friend’ provided psychoeducation and self-help guidance on how to cope with war-related stress. About 50,000 users interacted with the chatbot from March 2022 until the end of May 2022.

The research aimed to identify the predictors of baseline levels of stress after exposure to traumatic experiences during the golden hours and the first 3 months of the war in the Ukrainian population.

The inclusion criteria for this study were informed consent and agreement to further usage of personal data, age between 18 and 80 years; and an indication of a stress level at the beginning of the chatbot conversation. The hypothesis test was conducted through a three-way Analysis of Variance.

Results

The final sample included N = 3740 participants (Mage = 29.00 years, SD age = 9.13 years). Approximately 67% of the sample participants reported having children. Most participants (93.2%) reported being safe, and 70.5% reported being lonely or isolated. Participants with children (p = .019), participants feeling not safe (p < .001), or isolated (p < .001) had significantly higher pre-intervention stress levels.

Parenthood, feelings of insecurity, and loneliness do predict the severity of perceived stress after exposure to traumatic experiences during the golden hours and the first 3 months of the war in the Ukrainian population. Especially those having children, feeling lonely and unsafe, require active follow-up. Digital interventions are promising tools that might be applied during the golden hours after exposure to traumatic experiences.

Binge-eating disorder (BED) is the most common eating disorder, but the mechanisms that underlie this disorder are still largely unknown. There is tentative evidence to suggest that the gut microbiota, which communicates to the brain via the gut-brain axis, plays a role in the pathogenesis of BED. However, more mechanistic research is urgently required to gain greater clarity and inform the development of superior management strategies. In this review, we sought to develop a new conceptual model that incorporates the gut microbiota to provide valuable guidance for future research in this area. In BED, the large quantities of hyper-palatable, energy-dense foods rapidly consumed reduces microbial diversity and their associated metabolites alongside promotions in microbial volatility and inflammation. These dietary-induced effects on the microbiota alter pathways implicated in BED including satiety, reward, impulsivity, and mood. The biological mechanisms underpinning the psychological effects include actions of microbial components and metabolites, alongside effects on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the dopaminergic and serotonergic systems. Importantly, individual baseline characteristics such as genetics and environmental stressors can moderate the relationship between one's diet, the gut microbiota, and BED. A growing body of evidence suggests that microbiota-targeted interventions, so called psychobiotics, may affect these pathways to modulate brain and behaviour. While further research is necessary to test this hypothesis, the gut microbiota represents a novel avenue for future BED therapeutics.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurological disorder that often affects middle-aged and elderly people. It is primarily characterized by the degeneration of dopaminergic (DA) neurons in the ventral midbrain. Clinical therapy mostly relies on the holistic approach of pharmaceutical intervention and surgical procedures. Nevertheless, therapies might just alleviate symptoms temporarily and then result in notable adverse consequences, ultimately failing to produce a therapeutic outcome. Stem cells has the benefits of being capable of self-renewal and exhibiting multi-directional differentiation potential. This enables replacement of dysfunctional neurons and reconstruction of neural circuit, offering promise for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. This research examines and evaluates the fundamental principles, effectiveness, benefits, and drawbacks of various stem cell types in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. This review provides a concise summary of many potential processes by which stem cells might be effective in treating Parkinson's disease. The aim is to support ongoing research and clinical trials focused on using stem cells for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

Stress, encompassing psychological, physical, and physiological challenges, is an important factor affecting an individual's well-being and potentially leading to psychiatric, neurodegenerative, immune, and metabolic disorders. However, not everyone exposed to stress develops these conditions, highlighting the concept of resilience. Resilience is a dynamic process categorized into four dimensions: pre-existing resilience capacity, ongoing resilience processes, post-stress resilience outcomes, and recovery from psychopathologies. These dimensions involve genomic, cellular, and systemic interactions influenced by genetic factors, early life experiences, adult life experiences in addition to community/environmental factors, and health behaviors. The biological response to stress encompasses endocrine, autonomic, immunological, and behavioral components, modulated by stressor characteristics and individual traits. Due to the limitations in studying stress and resilience in humans, translational models using rodents and cell cultures are essential. Rodent models include acute, chronic, and traumatic stress paradigms, aiding the study of stress-related behavioral and molecular outcomes. Additionally, early life stress models, such as prenatal stress and maternal separation, provide insights into developmental impacts. In this review, first, rodent models for lifelong stress exposure will be summarized considering their validity, advantages, and limitations. Subsequently, an overview of models designed to enhance resilience capacity and process in rodents, and later the behavioral models employed to study the outcomes of resilience will be given. Lastly, the focus will be shifted to cell culture and iPSCs models. Finally, future considerations focused on improving translational models used to study stress and resilience will be discussed. It is aimed to provide an overview of designs for translational stress and resilience models to access more effective translational biomarkers associated with stress and resilience. Stress and resilience are complex phenomena influenced by various factors, spanning molecular to behavioral levels. Integrating data across dimensions remains crucial for unraveling the complexities of stress-related disorders and resilience.

Treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS) is associated with great disability, functional impairment, and substantial socioeconomic costs. While clozapine is indicated in patients with TRS, its use is restricted to patients who have not responded to at least 2 other antipsychotics, thus implying a series of empirical trials of different drugs before receiving effective treatment. In this scenario, the identification of reliable biological markers to predict the risk for TRS before starting pharmacological treatments might significantly improve the management of TRS in its early stages. We conducted a systematic review on PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science to identify studies investigating peripheral biological markers of TRS. A total of 75 articles were included. These studies mostly investigated the association between TRS and genetic markers (n = 42, of which 16 with a genome-wide and 25 with a candidate-gene design) and protein/metabolite markers (n = 23), while only a minority of studies investigated RNA markers (n = 5), methylation levels (n = 4), gut microbiota profiles (n = 1), or more than one type of marker (n = 3). The elucidation of peripheral biomarkers of TRS is challenging due to the large heterogeneity across studies in terms of clinical definition of TRS, the relatively small sample size of many studies, as well as the lack of powered studies integrating data at a multi-omic level. Nonetheless, available studies suggest TRS to be a trait with a significant heritability and point to inflammation and cytokine imbalance as the most promising pathways involved in this complex phenotype.