Annals of Neurosciences最新文献

Background: The endogenous opioid system regulates diverse functions including pain, physiological processes and motivation. An earlier study had demonstrated increased cell proliferation in the neurogenic niche, that is, the ventricular-subventricular zone (V-SVZ) of adult male zebra finches (Taenopygia guttata) following administration of naloxone, a general opioid antagonist.

Purpose: To explore gene expression changes underlying the increase in cell proliferation in the V-SVZ of these birds after blocking opioid receptors (ORs) with systemic injections of naloxone. To assess whether opioid antagonism influences neuronal differentiation in the V-SVZ adjacent to the song control nuclei HVC and Area X, both critical for song learning and production.

Methods: Whole transcriptome microarray analysis of the V-SVZ was performed following naloxone or vehicle administration. The analysis identified 26 differentially expressed transcripts (fold change [FC] ≥ 1.5), including upregulated genes associated with neuroblast migration, neuronal differentiation, synaptic plasticity, and chromatin remodelling. Quantification of bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) and doublecortin (DCX) positive cells was performed to determine proliferation and neuronal differentiation in the V-SVZ adjacent to HVC and Area X.

Results: Among differentially expressed transcripts, tgu-miR-124-201 (the precursor of miR-124-3p, a key regulator of neuronal differentiation), showed significant upregulation. Selected transcripts were validated by qRT-PCR, confirming their altered expression following naloxone treatment, compared to controls. Furthermore, we observed higher neuroblast density in the ventral V-SVZ adjacent to striatal song nucleus Area X, but not in the V-SVZ above the pallial song nucleus HVC, suggesting region-specific opioid modulation of neurogenesis.

Conclusion: Together, these results demonstrate that OR blockade may promote neurogenesis in adult songbirds and is accompanied by the upregulation of key transcripts, including miR-124-3p. Given the established role of miR-124 in promoting neuronal differentiation, its upregulation suggests that OR blockade may enhance neuronal differentiation via microRNA (miRNA)-mediated pathways. This finding provides the first evidence linking opioid modulation to miRNA-driven neurogenic processes in an adult avian brain.

Background: Epilepsy possesses significant long-term health sequelae and potential morbidity among children globally. A diagnosis of seizures can often be challenging in the paediatric population owing to seizure mimics and absence of classical features in clinical as well as electroencephalographic (EEG) presentations.

Purpose: The objective of the study is to explore potential EEG biomarkers using quantitative analysis of conventional EEG records of subjects with seizure in paediatric populations.

Method: 66 subjects with generalised seizures in the age group of 2-15 years had been recruited along with an equal number of age-matched healthy control subjects. Readings obtained from a 32-channel EEG were recorded along with the demographic details of the subjects. Using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) in the MATLAB environment, quantitative spectral features were extracted and compared between the groups and within the group to explore EEG markers related to the generalised seizures in the study population.

Results: The case group showed significantly higher alpha power in both left (17.86 vs 15.06 µV²/Hz) and right (20.76 vs 16.12 µV²/Hz) hemispheres compared to the controls. The case group had lower beta power in the left hemisphere (33.34 vs 35.52 µV²/Hz) but no difference in the right hemisphere. Significant asymmetries were observed across all cortical regions, including the temporal region showing the highest theta and delta asymmetry (asymmetry indices of -0.142 for both), whereas alpha asymmetry was highest in the occipitotemporal regions (asymmetry indices -0.125 and -0.141, respectively).

Conclusion: The study reveals a complex pattern of characteristic quantitative electroencephalographic (qEEG) alterations in the paediatric seizure population suggestive of significant neurophysiological implications, including alterations in arousal, attention and inhibitory control mechanisms and the features may be of some value in objective seizure assessment using EEG.

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) has recognised depression as one of the leading causes of illness and disability across the world. Young adults are highly susceptible to depression, as this age group stands at a critical junction of developmental transitions and increased psychosocial demands. Existing research indicates the importance of dispositional factors like self-evaluation mechanisms in relation to depression, but little attention has been paid to contextual factors like self-esteem and emotional reactivity and how the dispositional and contextual factors interact with each other to produce the risk of depression in young adults.

Purpose: The study aims to investigate core self-evaluation (CSE), state self-esteem (SSE) and negative emotional reactivity (ER-N) as predictors of depressive symptoms. Additionally, it aims to assess the role of SSE and ER-N as mediators in the relationship between CSE and depressive symptoms.

Methods: 438 participants between 18 and 25 years of age were assessed. The strength and direction of the relationships among CSE, SSE, ER-N and depressive symptoms were examined by the Pearson correlation coefficient. Furthermore, a mediation analysis was run to assess the role of negative emotion regulation (ER-N) and self-esteem in the relationship between CSE (independent variable) and depressive symptoms (dependent variable).

Results: A positive association was found between CSE and SSE, while on the other hand CSE and SSE both were negatively correlated with ER-N and depressive symptoms. This is despite the fact that ER-N significantly associates positively with depressive symptoms. Further, higher CSE exhibits fewer depressive symptoms, both directly and indirectly. Among SSE and ER-N as mediators, SSC emerged as a stronger mediator in the relationship.

Conclusion: Overall, the study highlights that positive CSE is likely to promote self-esteem in contextual situations and is also likely to manage emotional reactivity of a negative nature. The findings indicate that higher CSE reduces depression primarily by strengthening self-esteem and minimising negative emotional reactivity.

Background: Cognitive impairments in schizophrenia share considerable overlap with those seen in traumatic brain injury (TBI). This overlap offers a rationale for investigating whether cognitive remediation strategies developed for TBI can be tailored to benefit schizophrenia.

Purpose: This exploratory study assessed the efficacy and generalisability of the Brainwave-R cognitive remediation programme, designed initially for TBI, in improving neuropsychological functioning and symptom dimensions in individuals with schizophrenia.

Methods: This was a tertiary Psychiatric Care Facility-based exploratory study following the pre-and-post intervention with a control group (CG) design. Twenty hospitalised male patients diagnosed with schizophrenia were purposively sampled and divided into intervention and CGs (n = 10 each). Participants were assessed pre- and post-intervention using the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery and the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Mann-Whitney U tests were employed to compare the effect size of the intervention between groups.

Results: The intervention group exhibited statistically significant improvements across a broad range of neuropsychological domains. Additionally, significant reductions were observed in negative and select positive symptom scores, highlighting the programme's multidimensional clinical impact.

Conclusion: This study provides promising preliminary evidence for the cross-diagnostic applicability of TBI-based cognitive remediation in schizophrenia. However, the findings must be interpreted cautiously due to key limitations: small, all-male sample size; short intervention duration; and absence of long-term or functional outcome assessments. Future research should prioritise larger, gender-diverse, and longitudinal designs to establish the broader utility and personalisation of cognitive interventions in schizophrenia.

Background and purpose: Electroencephalography (EEG) is a popular non-invasive method for studying brain dynamics because of its excellent temporal resolution. However, the non-stationarity, intersubject variability and class imbalance of EEG data, make it difficult to automatically discriminate between brain states that correspond to various cognitive or sensory circumstances. With the use of a deep hybrid convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) networks with an attention architecture intended to improve discriminative learning from wavelet-based time-frequency features, this study attempts to categorise EEG recordings into discrete brain states recorded prior to and during auditory (mantra) stimulation.

Methods: Experienced practitioners (mean age: 37 ± 6 years; mean practice: 5 years) had their EEG data recorded in two different experimental settings: (a) When they were at rest before the auditory stimulus and (b) while they were listening to mantras. Each segment's time-frequency representations were produced using wavelet transforms and fed into a hybrid model that combined convolutional, recurrent and attention layers. To guarantee steady convergence, adaptive learning rate scheduling and early stopping were used in the model optimisation process.

Results: With CNN (76.92%), long short-term memory (LSTM) (75.30%), CNN+LSTM (84.62%) and CNN+BiLSTM (88.65%), baseline models performed moderately. The suggested CNN-BiLSTM-Attention model achieved an independent test accuracy of 99.46%, greatly outperforming all baselines. High discriminative capability was confirmed by the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, which produced an AUC near 1.0.

Conclusion: The inclusion of convolutional, recurrent and attention methods greatly improves spatial-temporal feature learning, as demonstrated by the suggested framework's ability to distinguish between resting and during mantra EEG states. These results demonstrate the model's resilience and possible use in neurophysiological monitoring and real-time cognitive state detection.

Background: Convulsions (seizures) are common neurological conditions characterised by abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Various modern treatments are available for managing convulsions; however, due to the side effects of available treatments, alternative medicine is gaining attention. One of the most popular homoeopathic remedies is Belladonna, used for treating neurological symptoms such as seizures, but scientific evidence is not available.

Purpose: The present study was designed to evaluate its anticonvulsive effect in the zebrafish animal model.

Methodology: The effect of homoeopathic Belladonna on pentylenetetrazole (PTZ)-induced seizures in zebrafish (Danio rerio) was assessed in this study. The safe dose was identified through acute toxicity studies, which revealed that 0.25% and 0.5% were non-toxic to zebrafish larvae and adults, respectively. In seizure studies, zebrafish larvae and adults were pre-treated with Belladonna mother tincture (Bell-MT), Bell-6C and Bell-30C potencies, followed by PTZ exposure to induce epileptic responses. An in silico molecular docking study was performed with the help of the Glide tool of Schrödinger Suite 2022-4.

Results: The total phenolic content (TPC) in Belladonna-MT was 292.61 µg of gallic acid/100% MT. In zebrafish larvae, Bell-6C and Bell-30C significantly increased the latency to reach seizure score 2 and score 3, compared to the PTZ group. In adult zebrafish, Bell-6C and Bell-30C pre-treatment resulted in significant delays in reaching seizure scores 1-5. Additionally, the number of rotations and total distance travelled were also improved after the Belladonna pre-treatment in larvae and adult zebrafish and suggest a marked protective effect against pentylenetetrazole (PTZ)-induced seizures in zebrafish. The possible mechanisms involved in the anti-convulsant activity of Belladonna were elucidated using molecular docking studies.

Conclusion: Collectively, these findings support the potential of Belladonna as an anticonvulsant and could be a potential candidate for the management of epilepsy. However, further exploration for epilepsy management through the underlying mechanisms of action is needed in the future.

Background: Stroke is a chronic, debilitating health condition with serious and often fatal implications. Lack of public awareness is one of the main reasons for the delay in getting timely intervention.

Purpose: This study was conducted to evaluate the knowledge and awareness of risk factors and warning signs and symptoms of stroke among the general population.

Method: A self-structured questionnaire on stroke, risk factors of stroke and warning signs and symptoms of stroke was administered to 2,868 healthy individuals (65.83%; n = 1,888 males and 34.17%; n = 980 females) from Northeast India. A descriptive statistics approach was undertaken for data analysis.

Results: The mean age of the cohort was 43 ± 12.2 years. About 45.50% (n = 1,305) of individuals were aware of stroke. Only 19.87% (n = 570) of individuals correctly responded brain is the organ where a stroke occurs. Awareness about the risk factors of stroke was reported by only 26.11% (n = 749) of individuals. High blood pressure (45.94%; n = 509) was found to be the common response in terms of risk factors of stroke. Further, 19.42% (n = 557) individuals were aware of the warning signs and symptoms of stroke with paralysis on one side of the body as the most common response given by 37.97% (n = 303) individuals. Knowledge regarding their own blood pressure, blood sugar and blood cholesterol levels was reported by 26.26% (n = 753), 9.72% (n = 279) and 2.79% (n = 80) individuals, respectively.

Conclusion: Data from the survey suggested that there is scarce knowledge and awareness among the community adults regarding stroke, its risk factors and its alarming signs and symptoms. Awareness among the general public is of utmost importance for early recognition and treatment of stroke. Educating the vulnerable public can improve the chances of survival and recovery post-stroke.

Background: Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a recent psychological phenomenon and has been constantly linked with aggression, disturbed sleeping habits and deficits in self-regulatory skills. It is important to understand the mechanism through which FOMO influences sleepiness, self-regulation and aggression.

Purpose: The objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between FOMO and aggression in young adults and examine the mediating roles of fatigue, daytime sleepiness and self-regulation in the relationship between FOMO and aggression.

Method: A cross-sectional correlational research design was employed to collect data from 455 young adults aged 18-24 years (M = 20.71; SD = 1.61). Data were collected through standardised self-report measures. The obtained data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences v23, and sequential mediation analysis using AMOS v22.

Results: Findings indicated significant relationships between FOMO and the outcome variables like aggression, daytime sleepiness and self-regulation. However, no significant relationship was found between FOMO and fatigue; therefore, fatigue was not considered for further analysis. Sequential mediation analysis revealed that elevated levels of FOMO predicted lower daytime sleepiness (β = -0.26, p < .001), which in turn predicted low self-regulation (β = -0.39, p < .001) and consequently led to elevated levels of aggression (β = -0.26, p < .001). The indirect route (FOMO → sleepiness → self-regulation → aggression) was statistically significant with excellent model fit (χ²(2) = 3.86, RMSEA = 0.02, CFI = 0.99, SRMR = 0.01).

Conclusion: The study indicates a full sequential mediation: greater FOMO levels reduce daytime sleepiness, possibly due to heightened arousal, which in turn leads to poor self-regulatory skills and increased aggression. It can be concluded that psychological interventions to improve self-regulation can help manage aggression in people with high levels of FOMO.

Background: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder characterised primarily by inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness with associated impairments related to sensory processing and motor coordination, and attributed to abnormalities in the brain areas responsible for sensory-motor integration and cognitive control. The symptoms may persist until adulthood, impacting various aspects of life. Traditional treatment and pharmacological approaches chiefly target behavioural aspects, highlighting the need to address sensory, motor, and cognitive issues via an integrative approach.

Purpose: This study aims to determine the effect of a multi-modal exercise programme on improving cognitive, sensory, and motor function among children with ADHD.

Methods: The study will be a randomised controlled trial involving 60 children diagnosed with ADHD, aged 6-12 years. Children will be randomly allocated to either the intervention group or the control group. Both groups will be subjected to a 45-minute therapy session four times a week for eight weeks. The intervention group will receive sensory, motor and cognitive training, and the control group will receive standard care. Outcomes Paediatric Balance Scale (PBS), Short Sensory Profile (SSP), Trail Making Test, and Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire 2007 will be analysed at baseline, two weeks, four weeks, and at the end of the eight-week training programme.

Results: It is anticipated that an integrative training approach among the intervention group, will concurrently address the underlying neurodevelopmental deficits and improve sensory, motor, and cognitive functions instead of focusing solely on symptom management among children with ADHD.

Conclusion: Incorporating sensory, motor, and cognitive training offers a promising supplementary approach in ADHD management. The multimodal stimulation of neural circuits will serve to improve core functions and promote more adaptive behaviours.

Trial registration: This prospective trial has been successfully registered with the Clinical Trial Registry of India with registration number (CTRI/2025/05/086742).

Introduction: Sarcoidosis is defined as an immune-mediated disorder characterised by granulomatous inflammation of affected organs. Neurosarcoidosis is demographically reported in 5%-10% of all patients with primary sarcoidosis. A similar genetic mechanism for inflammation compared to active systemic tuberculosis suggests that identical inflammatory pathways are acting in both tuberculosis and sarcoidosis.

Case report: We, hereby, report a case of recurrent cranial nerve neuropathy, which was falsely diagnosed as tuberculosis, and the diagnosis of neurosarcoidosis was masked for more than a year.

Conclusion: Any case with recurrent cranial nerve involvement, bilateral lymphadenopathy with multi-system involvement and a history of steroid-dependent resolution of symptoms must be primarily evaluated for sarcoidosis with histological evidence.