Psychiatric disorders

…themes cover neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, ageing, human glia, glia-focused technologies, and interactions with immune cells and other glia. Talks, posters and extended discussion support exchange among established researchers and trainees. Applicants n

…devices for the treatment of psychiatric disorders in areas of unmet medical need. The NOFO will support milestone-driven early stage trials in pediatric and adult populations. First in human (FIH) and Phase II studies of novel agents must assess target engagement (brain exposure), pharmacological effects, safety, and tolerability to assess feasibility for Phase II/proof o

The stress response is a significant precipitating factor in various psychiatric disorders. Numerous neuropsychiatric disorders are characterized by sex differences in the prevalence, type, and severity of symptoms, which include cognitive dysfunctions mainly supported by the prefrontal cortex (PFC). This study aims to evaluate the sexual dimorphic effects of acute stress on PFC synaptic properties, as well as on both the intrinsic and synaptic properties of PFC-basolateral amygdala (BLA) and PFC-PFC projection neurons. Adult male and female mice were exposed to either restraint stress (RS) or

…ligand of C3aR, is elevated in several psychiatric disorders, such as psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. Previous studies have shown that mice lacking C3aR exhibit behavioural abnormalities, including anxiety, hyperactivity, and working memory deficit. These findings indicate that C3aR is involved in the development and/or function of brain circuits. We performed a brain imaging

Psychiatric disorders are among the most common causes of years lived with disability. Yet, we lack a solid understanding of their onset and course, and current treatments are unsatisfactory. To offset this predicament, the study of critical periods (CPs) of development sets the focus on the roots of psychiatric disorders, when susceptibility to these illnesses is being installed but not yet set off, in order to better understand the underlying mechanisms.Recently, we identified in mice the CP of a brain circuit, the Habenulo-Interpeduncular-OTX2-Positive-System (HIPOPS), regarding stress resp

…their dysfunctions are implicated in psychiatric disorders. Previous modeling studies focused on their role in generating long-timescale neuronal dynamics for working memory or evidence accumulation. Less is known about how NMDA-mediated synapses shape oscillatory dynamics in local field potentials (LFPs) or non-invasive E/MEG recordings, and how changes in NMDA transmission can be inferred from such measures of mass activity. To address these issues, we developed a recurrent network model of excitatory (E) and inhibi

Psychiatric disorders have pathophysiological changes in dysfunction and altered neuroplasticity in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex (PFC), while atypical antipsychotics are able to modulate neuroplasticity. It has been reported that exercise may upregulate brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression in the hippocampus through the action of beta-hydroxybutyrate. Previously, our study showed that plasma beta-hydroxybutyrate level was reduced by exercise, but significantly increased by exercise+risperidone co-treatment in juvenile female rats. Therefore, this study aimed to assess t

…in the pathophysiology of different psychiatric disorders.In this study we investigated in vitro the molecular mechanisms underlying the interplay of glucocorticoids and TRKB signaling. We found that the glucocorticoid receptor physically interacts with TRKB, modulating its dimer

Background: Emerging evidence suggests a central role of mitochondria in psychiatric disorders. We have previously shown that high anxious (HA) rats exhibit reduced active coping behavior under adversity and competitiveness. HA animals also show alterations in the neural circuits involved in motivation such as nucleus accumbens (Nac), at both the cellular and organelle level. We have identified an essential role for mitochondria and energy metabolism in NAc function in effort-related and motivated behaviors, suggesting that boosting mitochondrial function in the NAc could lead to enhanced perf

Environmental stress plays a key role in the development of psychiatric disorders, and also has a negative impact on sleep integrity. Insomnia and sleep disturbances are core symptoms observed in patients with stress-related disorders. However, stress reactivity is the result of a combination of genetic and environmental influences that ultimately impacts one’s physiology and behavior in a variety of ways. In this project we will focus on stress susceptibility and how it could trigger psychiatric diseases in a peculiar gene-environment interaction.Studying glutamatergic neurotransmission, we d

…by a significant risk for the onset of psychiatric disorders. Inflammatory events during this period may increase the risk of developing psychiatric disorders, with tryptophan metabolism playing a potential role in this process.Our goal was to investigate whether exposure to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) during adolescence impacts emotional behaviour and the inflammatory response in adult animals in a sex-specific manner. Male and female C57BL6J mice were injected at PND36 with LPS (0.1 mg/kg i.p.) or

Increasing evidence has demonstrated an astrocytic key role in the brain, namely in the modulation of synapses, neuronal networks, and behavior, proving that these are more than mere supportive cells. Indeed, astrocytes gained recognition as the third active element of a synapse. In this tripartite synapse concept, while interacting closely with neurons, these cells can modulate neuronal activity by sensing, processing, integrating, and responding to synaptic transmission. Astrocytes were shown to sense glutamate, the most abundant excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain, which occurs by acti

…for diagnosing or even predicting psychiatric disorders (Mathalon and Sohal, 2015). The state of brain oscillations is believed to reflect the balance between excitation and inhibition in neural networks (Kim et al., 2015). As neurotransmission is significantly influenced by sex hormones (Krolick et al., 2018), it is reasonable to expect sex differences in brain oscillations between males and females. However, there is a lack of data, particularly in the field of animal research (Shansky and Murphy, 2021). Therefore, in

Various clinical cases have provided evidence linking cardiovascular, neurological, and psychiatric disorders to changes in the brain-heart interaction. Our recent experimental evidence on patients with disorders of consciousness revealed that observing brain-heart interactions helps to detect residual consciousness, even in patients with absence of behavioral signs of consciousness. Those findings support hypotheses suggesting that visceral activity is involved in the neurobiology of consciousness and sum to the existing evidence in healthy participants in which the neural responses to heartb

The human voice is possibly the most important sound category in the social landscape. Compared to other non-verbal emotion signals, the voice is particularly effective in communicating emotions: it can carry information over large distances and independent of sight. However, the study of vocal emotion expression and perception is surprisingly far less developed than the study of emotion in faces. Thereby, its neural and functional correlates remain elusive. As the voice represents a dynamically changing auditory stimulus, temporally sensitive techniques such as the EEG are particularly info

…genetic variations across different psychiatric disorders raising the question of how these genetic variants relate to the corresponding pharmacological treatments. In this talk, I will outline our work investigating whether functional information from a range of open bioinformatics datasets such as protein interaction network (PPI), brain eQTL, and gene expression pattern across the brain can uncover the relationship between GWAS-identified genetic variation and the genes targeted by current drugs for psychiatr

…social deficits, as observed in many psychiatric disorders. In this talk, I will present our recent neurocomputational and intracranial work that attempts to model both 1) how humans dynamically adapt beliefs about other people and 2) how individuals can exert influence over social others through model-based forward thinking. Lastly, I will present our findings of how impaired social computations mi

How inclusive and diverse is non-invasive brain stimulation in the treatment of psychiatric disorders?Indira Tendolkar, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Department of Psychiatry. Mental illness is associated with a huge socioeconomic burden worldwide, with annual costs only in the Netherlands of €22 billion. Over two decades of cognitive and affective neuroscience research with modern tools of neuroimaging and neurophysiology in humans have given us a wealth of information about neural circuits underlying the main symptom domains of psychiatric disorders and their remediat

…features of many mental/emotional disorders associated both with externalizing problems (aggressive, antisocial behaviors) and internalizing problems (anxiety, depression). As Dr. Joseph LeDoux, our invited speaker of this program, wrote in his famous book “Synaptic self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are”—the brain’s synapses—are the channels through which we think, act, imagine, feel, and remember. Synapses encode the essence of personality, enabling each of us to function as a distinctive, integrat

…affective-motivational processes in psychiatric disorders. We are developing a mouse version of the MID task in order to facilitate translations of findings from the wealth of human imaging studies. This talk presents our task design and behavioural data from the ongoing work.

…Indeed, many mood and psychiatric disorders involve disturbed feelings and/or beliefs about the visceral body. However, current methods to measure interoceptive ability are limited in a number of ways, restricting the utility and interpretation of interoceptive biomarkers in psychiatry. I will present some newly developed measures and models which aim to improve our understanding of disordered brain-body interaction in psychiatric illnesses.