Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience最新文献

Introduction: Delayed rewards discounting describes the tendency to choose a smaller immediate rewards instead of a larger delayed rewards. Considering the central role of impulsivity in models accounting for criminal conduct in general and violent behavior, the relationship between delayed rewards discounting and crime is likely to be present. Thereby extending the reported association with the addictive behavior. However, it is unclear whether it should be treated as a risk or an etiological factor. Consequently, the current literature review aims to summarize the existing empirical research focused on this aspect of impulsive decision-making among those who have offended.

Methods: The review was performed in accordance with the 2021 Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The literature search of the Web of Science, PubMed, and PsycINFO databases was conducted in February 2025.

Results: The initial search yielded 1,251 articles. After exclusion of 250 duplicates, 1,001 titles were screened for relevance, leading to 556 abstracts. After reading them, 162 full-text articles were inspected, leaving 25 articles included in the review.

Conclusion: This review demonstrates that although delayed rewards discounting is associated with general criminal conduct, the association with violence specifically is tenuous. Furthermore, several studies point out that influencing serotonergic functioning, behavioral modeling, or future representations have the potential to influence it. However, further detailed research is needed.

While it is known that chronic unpredictable stress and negative events adversely affect neurobiological outcomes, much less is known regarding the neurobiological impact of positive emotions such as chronic anticipation of appetitive events. From a translational perspective, an enhanced understanding of the impact of extended exposure to positive emotions may provide novel insights into effective non-pharmacological, behavior-based approaches to enhance mental resilience. Here, we investigate a novel rodent model of chronic Unpredictable Positive Event Response (UPER) training in male and female Long Evans rats to examine behavioral, neural, and endocrine effects of enhanced anticipation of positive events. Rats were exposed to either 3 weeks of daily, randomly administered, cued positive events (UPER training) or exposure to the same positive events administered at the same time (i.e., in a predictable manner) each day to control for anticipation (Enriched Control Training; ENR). Following UPER and ENR training, rats were assessed for cognitive bias, exploratory behaviors, and persistence in a Cognitive Bias Assessment paradigm, Novelty-Suppressed Feeding Task, and an Unattainable Puzzle Reward Task, respectively. In the Cognitive Bias Assessment, a trend for UPER-trained males to respond with an optimistic bias was observed. A main effect of training was observed in the Unattainable Puzzle Reward Task, with UPER-trained rats exhibiting reduced latency to interact with the novel object. A sex-dependent latency to consume a food reward in a Novelty-Suppressed Feeding Task was also seen. Focusing on fecal corticosterone metabolite (FCM) levels following anticipation-enhanced versus anticipation-minimized training, UPER-trained rats exhibited a trend for lower levels than ENR-trained rats. No c-fos activation differences were observed between the groups. Overall, these preliminary findings suggest that anticipation for positive events may have sex-specific effects on emotional responses to uncertain events. Accordingly, further research may determine relevance of this model in preclinical models of psychiatric diseases.

Background: Cognitive disorders span several diagnostic categories in psychiatry, but subjective cognitive complaints (SCC) remain underutilized in transdiagnostic assessments, particularly in Arab contexts. These difficulties can also be present in Affective disorder illnesses are assessed using neuropsychological tests. Self-assessments are useful for understanding difficulties from the user's perspective. The Subjective Scale to Investigate Cognition in Schizophrenia (SSTICS) is a rating scale designed to measure subjective cognitive complaints in persons with schizophrenia. This study explores the SSTIC-E, a culturally adapted tool, highlighting its cross-diagnostic relevance over simple psychometric validation.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 210 participants (126 patients, 84 controls) in the United Arab Emirates. Patients met ICD-10/DSM-5 criteria for schizophrenia spectrum disorders and affective disorders, in addition to other psychiatric disorders. The instruments included the SSTIC-E and the MoCA. Analysis focused on internal consistency, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and transdiagnostic comparisons.

Results: Patients reported higher SSTIC-E scores than controls (mean = 34.06 vs. 22.55, p < 0.001). MoCA scores confirmed decreased objective performance in patients (mean = 22.71 vs. 27.19, p < 0.001). The SSTIC-E has excellent reliability (α = 0.89). No significant differences were observed in SCCs between the schizophrenia and affective disorder groups. CFA analysis confirmed a one-factor model with residual item correlations (CFI = 0.91, RMSEA = 0.058). Women reported higher SCC; age had no effect.

Discussion: The SSTIC-E demonstrates utility beyond diagnostic silos, providing a valuable and culturally relevant instrument for transdiagnostic psychiatric assessment in Arabic-speaking populations. Schizophrenia exhibited slightly higher SCC compared to patients with affective disorders, with a lack of clear association between subjective and objective cognition. SCC is common across psychiatric diagnoses in the United Arab Emirates, supporting a dimensional model of cognitive dysfunction. SSTIC-E reveals insights into the lived experiences of patients not captured by objective tests. Cultural and gender influences underscore the necessity of context-specific approaches.

Sex differences are well-documented in the prevalence of psychiatric disorders, with anxiety and stress-related conditions more common in women. Growing evidence highlights the role of sex hormones, particularly estradiol (E2), and its receptor mechanisms as contributing factors to this disparity. Estrogen exerts its effects through three main receptors: estrogen receptor alpha (ERα), estrogen receptor beta (ERβ), and the G protein-coupled estrogen receptor (GPER). While the classical receptors ERα and ERβ have been widely studied in the context of fear and anxiety, the role of GPER remains less understood. Moreover, estrogen receptors themselves may be sexually dimorphic, adding complexity to their functional roles. Preclinical research has been valuable in advancing our understanding of these mechanisms; therefore, this review mostly focuses on findings from rodent studies. Here we discuss the influence of sex and E2 on anxiety and fear-related behavior, highlight emerging research on sex differences in GPER modulation of fear and anxiety in mice, rats, and humans, and explore GPER as a potential therapeutic target for anxiety and stress-related disorders.

Introduction: The study of social behavior in mice has grown increasingly relevant for unraveling associated brain circuits and advancing the development of treatments for psychiatric symptoms involving social withdrawal or social anxiety. However, a data-driven understanding of behavior and its modulation in solitary and social contexts is lacking.

Methods: In this study, we employed motion sequencing ("MoSeq") to decompose mouse behaviors into discrete units ("syllables") and investigate whether-and how-the behavioral repertoire differs between solitary and dyadic (social) settings.

Results: Our results reveal that social context significantly modulates a minority (25%) of syllables, containing predominantly stationary and undirected behaviors. Notably, these changes are associated with spatial proximity to another mouse rather than active social contact. Interestingly, a network analysis of syllable transitions shows that context-sensitive syllables exhibit altered network influence, independent of the number of connected syllables, suggesting a regulatory role. Furthermore, syllable composition changes significantly during social contact events with two distinct sequence families governing approach and withdrawal behaviors. However, no unique syllable sequences mapped to specific social interactions.

Discussion: Overall, our findings suggest that a subset of syllables drives contextual behavioral adaptation in female and male mice, potentially facilitating transitions within the broader behavioral repertoire. This highlights the utility of MoSeq in dissecting nuanced, context-dependent behavioral dynamics.

Krabbe disease (KD), also known as globoid cell leukodystrophy, is a rare autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disorder caused by pathogenic variants in the GALC gene. While infantile-onset KD is prevalent globally, adult-onset KD is frequently presented in East Asian populations and typically manifests with progressive spastic paraparesis. We herein report a unique case of a 28-years-old male who initially presented with generalized tonic-clonic seizures, rather than the classic gait disturbance. Brain MRI revealed symmetrical white matter lesions and early cortical involvement. Genetic testing revealed compound heterozygous GALC variants (c.908C > T/p.Ser303Phe and c.136G > T/p.Asp46Tyr). Subsequent enzyme assays confirmed low galactocerebrosidase activity. This case broadens the clinical spectrum of adult-onset KD and highlights the importance of considering KD in the differential diagnosis of adult epilepsy with progressive neurological symptoms.

Introduction: Adolescence shapes adaptive adult behaviors. It is characterized by increased responsiveness to socially salient stimuli and heightened sensitivity to rewards in peer settings. The particular importance of social context during adolescence indicates that neural circuits responsible for social reward may develop along a different trajectory from those involved in non-social reward processing. However, this remains largely unexplored, as much of the existing research tends to focus on a single reward type, a specific age group of adolescents, or a single sex, thereby limiting a comprehensive understanding of how reward processing evolves across development.

Methods: Here, we investigated how social, cocaine, and palatable food reward sensitivity is expressed in female and male C57BL/6 mice across early- (pubertal onset), mid- (peripubertal phase), and late- (sexual maturity) adolescence, compared to adults. We examined how these different rewards become associated with environmental contexts across developmental stages using the conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm, a fundamental method for evaluating the motivational properties of stimuli.

Results: We found that adolescent mice exhibited a lower preference for social and palatable food conditioned contexts, while cocaine CPP was not significantly affected by age. Comparisons across CPP tasks confirmed that age, rather than reward type or sex, was the primary factor influencing the magnitude of CPP. Overall, mid- and late-adolescent mice showed reduced mean CPP, with mid-adolescents exhibiting significantly lower odds of expressing a conditioned preference relative to adults.

Discussion: These findings challenge the prevailing assumption that adolescent reward sensitivity universally enhances reward-context learning. Instead, we propose that the attenuated CPP observed in adolescence reflects lower reward sensitivity in emotionally neutral conditions, rather than deficits in associative learning or increased novelty seeking. Our results highlight how developmental stage influences reward-related behaviors and underscore the need for age- and sex-specific analyses in behavioral studies.

Oscillatory activity is thought to coordinate neural computations across brain regions, and theta oscillations are critical for learning and memory. Because respiration-related oscillations (RROs) in rodents can be identified in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the hippocampus in addition to canonical theta oscillations, we asked whether odor-cued working memory may be supported by both of these two oscillations. We first confirmed that RROs were propagated to the hippocampus and PFC and that RRO frequency spans a broad range that partially overlaps with canonical theta frequency. During all task phases, we found coherence between PFC and hippocampus at the RRO frequency, irrespective of whether RROs and canonical theta oscillations overlapped or differed in frequency. In parallel, there was also high coherence across PFC and hippocampus at theta frequency, except that the coupling at theta was weakest during odor sampling. Therefore, long-range coordination between brain regions occurs at more than one oscillation frequency in a working memory task, but the two types of oscillations did not show evidence of conjunctively supporting working memory.

Deep brain stimulation of the nucleus accumbens (NAc-DBS) has been shown to ameliorate depressive-like behaviors. However, the underlying mechanisms of action remain elusive. We aimed to investigate the impact of NAc-DBS on synaptic spine alterations in hippocampus in a depression mice model and unveil the possible signal pathway mediating such effects. The experimental protocol involved exposing adult mice to chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) with or without NAc-DBS. Behavioral assessments were performed to evaluate the impact of NAc-DBS on emotional alterations. Local field potential (LFP) recordings were employed to examine the hippocampal neuronal activity in awake mice. Golgi-Cox staining was applied to quantify modifications in dendritic spine density. Additionally, hippocampal protein expression of postsynaptic density protein-95 (PSD-95), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and the protein kinase B (AKT)/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway were analyzed. Results indicate that CUMS mice exhibited apparent depressive-like behaviors, concomitant with reduced hippocampal high gamma oscillation power and synaptic spine density. In addition, CUMS reduced the expression level of PSD-95 and BDNF in mice hippocampus, as well as phosphorylated AKT and mTOR protein. The study revealed that NAc-DBS could attenuate depression-like behaviors, restore high gamma oscillation power and enhance synaptic spine density, potentially by increasing BDNF protein expression level and activating AKT/mTOR signaling pathway. Furthermore, Rapamycin, a potent and specific mTOR inhibitor, was found to moderate the effects of NAc-DBS. These findings suggest that NAc-DBS could enhance synaptic spine density via AKT/mTOR/BDNF signal pathway, which may partially underline its potential antidepressant effects in CUMS induced depressive models.