Chloroquine-Induced First-Episode Psychosis in a Patient Self-medicated for COVID-19.
Published in Biological psychiatry
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and the Developing Adolescent Brain.
Published in Biological psychiatry
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adolescents is common and debilitating. In contrast to adult PTSD, relatively little is known about the neurobiology of adolescent PTSD, nor about how current treatments may alter adolescent neurodevelopment to allow recovery from PTSD. Improving our understanding of biological mechanisms of adolescent PTSD, ...
Navigating the Social Environment in Adolescence: The Role of Social Brain Development.
Published in Biological psychiatry
Successful navigation of the social environment is dependent on a number of social cognitive processes, including mentalizing and resistance to peer influence. These processes continue to develop during adolescence, a time of significant social change, and are underpinned by regions of the social brain that continue to mature structurally and funct...
Considerations When Characterizing Adolescent Neurocognitive Development.
Published in Biological psychiatry
Convergence and Divergence in the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders From Pathways to Developmental Stages.
Published in Biological psychiatry
In the past decade, the identification of susceptibility genes for psychiatric disorders has become routine, but understanding the biology underlying these discoveries has proven extremely difficult. The large number of potential risk genes and the genetic overlap between disorders are major obstacles for studying the etiology of these conditions. ...
Microglia Control Escalation of Drinking in Alcohol-Dependent Mice: Genomic and Synaptic Drivers.
...Published in Biological psychiatry
Microglia, the primary immune cells of the brain, are implicated in alcohol use disorder. However, it is not known if microglial activation contributes to the transition from alcohol use to alcohol use disorder or is a consequence of alcohol intake. We investigated the role of microglia in a mouse model of alcohol dependence using a colony stimulat...
Mammalian Target of Rapamycin-RhoA Signaling Impairments in Direct Striatal Projection Neurons Induce Altered Behaviors ...
Published in Biological psychiatry
As an integrator of molecular pathways, mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) has been associated with diseases including neurodevelopmental, psychiatric, and neurodegenerative disorders such as autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, and Huntington's disease. An important brain area involved in all these diseases is the striatum. However, the mech...
Ventral Hippocampal Afferents to Nucleus Accumbens Encode Both Latent Vulnerability and Stress-Induced Susceptibility.
Published in Biological psychiatry
Stress is a major risk factor for depression, but not everyone responds to stress in the same way. Identifying why certain individuals are more susceptible is essential for targeted treatment and prevention. In rodents, nucleus accumbens (NAc) afferents from the ventral hippocampus (vHIP) are implicated in stress-induced susceptibility, but little ...
Dopaminergic Regulation of Nucleus Accumbens Cholinergic Interneurons Demarcates Susceptibility to Cocaine Addiction.
...Published in Biological psychiatry
Cholinergic interneurons (ChINs) in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) play critical roles in processing information related to reward. However, the contribution of ChINs to the emergence of addiction-like behaviors and its underlying molecular mechanisms remain elusive. We employed cocaine self-administration to identify two mouse subpopulations: suscept...
Role of Long Noncoding RNA Gas5 in Cocaine Action.
...Published in Biological psychiatry
Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are a class of transcribed RNA molecules greater than 200 nucleotides in length. Although lncRNAs do not encode proteins, they play numerous functional roles in gene expression regulation. lncRNAs are notably abundant in brain; however, their neural functions remain largely unknown. We examined the expression of the ln...
