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The researchers, headed by Xiaoqin Liu, have applied register-based research to the study of 905,383 children born between 1998 and 2012 with the aim of exploring the possible adverse effects of the mother's use of antidepressants during her pregnancy . They found that out of the 905,383 children in total, 32,400 developed a psychiatric disorder later in life. Some of these children were born to mothers who were on antidepressants during their pregnancy, while other children had not been exposed to medication. "When we look at children born to mothers who discontinued and continued antidepressant treatment during pregnancy, we can see an increased risk of developing a psychiatric disorder if the mothers continued antidepressant treatment while pregnant," says Xiaoqin Liu, who is the lead author of the article, which has just been published in  BMJ-British Medical Journal . More specifically, the researchers divided the children into four groups depending on the mo...

"This work once again shows that alcoholism is not a one-size-fits-all condition," said lead researcher, Victor Karpyak (Mayo Clinic, MN, USA). "So the answer to the question of why alcoholics drink is probably that there is no single answer; this will probably have implications for how we diagnose and treat alcoholism." The work, presented at the ECNP congress by researchers from the Mayo Clinic*, determined the alcohol consumption of 287 males and 156 females with alcohol dependence over the previous 90 days, using the accepted Time Line Follow Back method and standardized diagnostic assessment for life time presence of psychiatric disorders (PRISM); they were then able to associate this with whether the drinking coincided with a positive or negative emotional state (feeling "up" or "down"), and whether the individual had a history of anxiety, depression ( MDD ) or substance abuse. The results showed that alcohol dependent men tended to d...

Researchers at the Institut de Neurociències of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (INc-UAB, Spain) have discovered in a study with mice and humans that the Ppm1f (Protein phosphatase 1f) gene expression is one of the most highly regulated after exposure to traumatic stress. Moreover, Ppm1f is associated with posttraumatic stress disorder ( PTSD ), depression and anxiety. The main function of Ppm1f is to regulate the activity of the protein Camk2 (Calmodulin-dependent protein kinase 2), which is key in many processes of the human body such as memory, the heart's functioning and the immune system. According to Dr. Raül Andero Galí, lead researcher in this study, "Once we discovered the relationship between the Ppm1f gene and different psychological disorders after exposure to traumatic stress, we wanted to find an effective drug to prevent these changes and its negative consequences on the brain." Dr Andero is scientist at the INc-UAB. It was already known that dosi...

In the first trial, 493 adult primary health care attendees with moderately severe or severe depression were randomly assigned to either the HAP treatment plus enhanced usual care (EUC), or enhanced usual care (EUC) alone. The researchers found that HAP participants maintained the benefits they showed at the end of treatment through the 12-month period, with significantly lower symptom severity scores (adjusted mean difference in BDI-II: ?4.45) and higher rates of remission (PHQ-9 score < 5: 63% versus 48%) than participants who received EUC alone. In the second trial, 377 adult male primary health care attendees with harmful drinking were randomly assigned to either the CAP treatment plus EUC, or EUC alone. The researchers found that CAP participants maintained the gains they showed at the end of treatment through the 12-month period, with higher remission rates (AUDIT score < 8: 54.3% versus 31.9%) and a greater proportion reporting no alcohol consumption in the past 14 day...

The most common mental disorders in children and adolescents include anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Children and adolescents are often treated with psychotherapy together with newer antidepressants such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors ( SNRIs ). Antidepressants work better than placebos but have more side effects Psychologists from the University of Basel analyzed 36 drug trials in cooperation with colleagues from Harvard Medical School and the American National Institute of Mental Health. The trials included data from 6,778 children and adolescents up to the age of 18. The results of the meta-analysis show that, although antidepressants work significantly better than placebos across the range of disorders, the difference is small and varies according to the type of mental disorder. However, the results also showed that the placebo effe...

"Our findings are the first results in living depressed patients to suggest that this microglial activation is most prominent in those with suicidal thinking," said Dr. Talbot. Previous studies suggesting this link have relied on brain tissue collected from patients after death. "This paper is an important addition to the view that inflammation is a feature of the neurobiology of a subgroup of depressed patients, in this case the group with suicidal ideation," said Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "This observation is particularly important in light of recent evidence supporting a personalized medicine approach to depression, i.e., that anti-inflammatory drugs may have antidepressant effects that are limited to patients with demonstrable inflammation." In the study, first author Dr. Sophie Holmes and colleagues assessed inflammation in 14 patients with moderate-to-severe depression who were not currently taking any antidepressant m...

Florida State University College of Medicine Associate Professor Antonio Terracciano joined a team of researchers from the United States, United Kingdom and Italy to examine the connection between personality traits and brain structure. Their study, published in the journal  Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , looked at differences in the anatomy of the cortex (the outer layer of the brain) as indexed by three measures -- the thickness, area, and amount of folding in the cortex -- and how these measures related to the five major personality traits. The traits include neuroticism , the tendency to be in a negative emotional state; extraversion, the tendency to be sociable and enthusiastic; openness, how open-minded a person is; agreeableness, a measure of altruism and cooperativeness; and conscientiousness, a measure of self-control and determination. The study involved an imaging dataset from more than 500 individuals made publicly available by the Human Connectome...

In the study, first authors Dr. Hannah Schoch and Dr. Arati Kreibich, both of the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues found that neurons in the amygdala of mice lacking one copy of Pcdh10 (Pcdh10+/-) had reduced levels of NMDA glutamate receptor subunits, indicating disrupted excitatory neural circuitry. "Our study of Pcdh10+/- mice gives us greater insight into the biology of social behaviors and into the function of a gene associated with ASD," said senior author Professor Edward Brodkin, also of the University of Pennsylvania. The study also suggests a possible target for treatment of ASD. When the researchers gave the mice a medication called d-cycloserine, the impaired social behavior improved. D-cycloserine is an old medication that was developed as a treatment for tuberculosis. However, nearly 30 years ago, it was discovered that this drug targets the NMDA glutamate receptor to enhance its function. Brodkin cautions that although much more work would b...

The genetics of neuropsychiatric disease is often complicated, but here we have a single gene in which specific mutations can cause either infantile seizures or autism in a consistent and predictable manner," said Stephan Sanders, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at UCSF and member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences who is co-senior author of the new study. "This gives us an opportunity to understand both what these disorders have in common and what makes them different." The findings are a first step towards understanding how different subtle changes in neural function in utero could lead to the development of either a seizure-prone brain or an autistic brain in infancy, the authors say. The study also further implicates the gene responsible for these changes -- called SCN2A -- as the single human gene with the strongest evidence for a causal role in driving ASDs. Matthew W. State, MD, PhD, the Oberndorf Family Distinguished Professor and c...

Inhibitory interneurons labelled with a fluorescent molecule (in inexperienced) are distributed within the cerebral cortex. These cells have been individually remoted and single cell transcriptomics revealed markers (in white) particularly expressed in distinct sub-groups of interneurons. Credit score: © Dayerlab UNIGE The event of cerebral cortex performs a serious position within the evolution of species and specifically for humankind. For this reason scientists are finding out the emergence of its mobile microstructure with excessive decision strategies. Neuroscientists on the College of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have analysed the variety of cortical neurons -- extra exactly inhibitory interneurons -- through the developmental interval surrounding start. They've found the emergence of three principal sub-groups of interneurons by decoding the expression of cell-type particular genes in addition to their actual, and infrequently sudden, location within the c...