VIENNA — Inpatient treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD) can lead to brain connectivity increases that are associated with degree of symptom improvement, new research suggests. In a “repeat” MRI study, adult participants with MDD had significantly lower brain connectivity compared with their healthy peers at baseline — but showed significant improvement at the 6-week … Read more
The production of estrogen in the thalamus appears to be curtailed by just one dose of nicotine, equivalent to that in a cigarette, reveals a whole brain analysis of healthy women in the first study of its kind. The findings were presented at the 35th European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Congress. The researchers performed both … Read more
The study covered in this summary was published on medRxiv.org as a preprint and has not yet been peer reviewed. Key Takeaways Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and possible mTBI are associated with greater risk for poor behavioral and mental health outcomes in adolescents. An unexpected finding was the association of mTBI with decreased cerebrospinal … Read more
Sleep loss, ranging from the individual level of missing a night’s sleep to a societal level of losing an hour’s sleep because of Daylight Saving Time, is associated with reduced altruism or an inclination to help others, new research suggests. These effects were observed even at the neurologic level on brain MRIs, investigators report. “In … Read more
Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) have not able shrinkage in key brain structures and these deficits are less severe in patients on the path to weight recovery, a new brain imaging study shows. The reductions of cortical thickness, subcortical volumes, and cortical surface area were “very pronounced in acutely underweight anorexia,” Stefan Ehrlich, MD, PhD, … Read more
The covered study in this summary was published in bioRxiv.org as a preprint and has not yet been peer reviewed. Key Takeaways Using the Layer-wise Relevance Propagation algorithm and various structural MRI modalities (T1-weighted, fluid-attenuated inversion recovery [FLAIR]and susceptibility-weighted magnitude images [SWI]), brain age can be estimated. The structural abnormalities found were changes in the … Read more
Structural brain differences appear to distinguish psychopaths from individuals without psychopathic traits, new research shows. Using MRI, researchers found that the striatum was about 10% larger on average in adults with psychopathic traits than in matched control persons and that this relationship was mediated by stimulation seeking and impulse. The striatum is a subcortical region … Read more
A new study suggests that overgrowth of the amygdala in infants during the first 6 to 12 months of life is tied to a later diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). “The faster the amygdala grew in infancy, the more social difficulties the child showed when diagnosed with autism a year later,” first author Mark … Read more
Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. Even mild cases of COVID-19 are associated with brain changes including decreased gray matter, an overall reduction in brain volume, and cognitive decline, a new imaging study shows. In the first study to use magnetic resonance brain imaging, before and after … Read more
The study covered in this summary was published in medRxiv.org as a preprint and has not yet been peer reviewed. Key Takeaway Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) inflammatory marker levels were found to be associated with changes in gray matter volume and cortical thickness in the frontal, orbitofrontal, and temporal regions in hospitalized patients with severe SARS-CoV-2 … Read more