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Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine :... Oct 2022Although obesity, asthma, and sleep-disordered breathing are interrelated, there is limited understanding of the independent contributions of body-mass index and...
STUDY OBJECTIVES
Although obesity, asthma, and sleep-disordered breathing are interrelated, there is limited understanding of the independent contributions of body-mass index and pulmonary function on polysomnography in children with asthma.
METHODS
We conducted a retrospective chart review on 448 7- to 18-year-old children with asthma who had undergone polysomnography testing between 1/2007-12/2011 to elucidate the association between spirometry variables, body-mass index, and polysomnography parameters, adjusting for asthma and antiallergic medications.
RESULTS
Obese children had poorer sleep architecture and more severe gas exchange abnormalities compared to healthy weight children. Multivariate analysis revealed an independent association of body-mass index with sleep efficiency, with more light and less deep sleep in both obese and healthy-weight children, and with baseline oxygen saturation and oxygen nadir in obese children. In obese children, forced vital capacity was independently associated with less deep sleep (time in N3 sleep) as well as with oxygen nadir, while among healthy-weight children, forced expiratory volume directly correlated but forced vital capacity inversely correlated with deep sleep. In obese children, inhaled corticosteroid was associated with baseline oxygen saturation, and montelukast was associated with lower end-tidal carbon dioxide. In healthy-weight children, inhaled corticosteroid was associated with arousal awakening index, and montelukast was associated with light sleep. Antiallergic medications were not independently associated with polysomnography parameters.
CONCLUSIONS
Pulmonary function, body-mass index, and asthma medications have independent and differing influences on sleep architecture and gas exchange polysomnography parameters in obese and healthy-weight children with asthma. Asthma medications are associated with improved gas exchange in obese children and improved sleep architecture in healthy-weight children with asthma.
CITATION
Conrad LA, Nandalike K, Rani S, Rastogi D. Associations between sleep, obesity, and asthma in urban minority children. . 2022;18(10):2377-2385.
Topics: Acetates; Adolescent; Adrenal Cortex Hormones; Anti-Allergic Agents; Asthma; Body Mass Index; Carbon Dioxide; Child; Cyclopropanes; Humans; Oxygen; Pediatric Obesity; Quinolines; Retrospective Studies; Sleep; Sulfides
PubMed: 35801341
DOI: 10.5664/jcsm.10114 -
BioRxiv : the Preprint Server For... Jul 2023Recent work suggests that indentations of the cerebral cortex, or sulci, may be uniquely vulnerable to atrophy in aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) and that...
Recent work suggests that indentations of the cerebral cortex, or sulci, may be uniquely vulnerable to atrophy in aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) and that posteromedial cortex (PMC) is particularly vulnerable to atrophy and pathology accumulation. However, these studies did not consider small, shallow, and variable tertiary sulci that are located in association cortices and are often associated with human-specific aspects of cognition. Here, we first manually defined 4,362 PMC sulci in 432 hemispheres in 216 participants. Tertiary sulci showed more age- and AD-related thinning than non-tertiary sulci, with the strongest effects for two newly uncovered tertiary sulci. A model-based approach relating sulcal morphology to cognition identified that a subset of these sulci were most associated with memory and executive function scores in older adults. These findings support the retrogenesis hypothesis linking brain development and aging, and provide new neuroanatomical targets for future studies of aging and AD.
PubMed: 37425904
DOI: 10.1101/2023.06.29.546558 -
Behavioural Brain Research Jul 2022There is substantial evidence linking the prefrontal cortex (PFC) to a variety of cognitive abilities, with adolescence being a critical period in its development. In...
There is substantial evidence linking the prefrontal cortex (PFC) to a variety of cognitive abilities, with adolescence being a critical period in its development. In the current study, we investigated the neural basis of differences in learning in pre-adolescent common marmosets. At 8 months old, marmosets were given anatomical and resting state MRI scans (n = 24). At 9 months old, association learning and inhibitory control was tested using a 'go/no go' visual discrimination (VD) task. Marmosets were grouped into 'learners' (n = 12) and "non-learners" (n = 12), and associations between cognitive performance and sub-regional PFC volumes, as well as PFC connectivity patterns, were investigated. "Learners" had significantly (p < 0.05) larger volumes of areas 11, 25, 47 and 32 than 'non-learners', although 'non-learners' had significantly larger volumes of areas 24a and 8 v than "learners". There was also a significant correlation between average % correct responses to the 'punished' stimulus and volume of area 47. Further, 'non-learners' had significantly greater global PFC connections, as well as significantly greater numbers of connections between the PFC and basal ganglia, cerebellum and hippocampus, compared to 'learners'. These results suggest that larger sub-regions of the orbitofrontal cortex and ventromedial PFC, as well more refined PFC connectivity patterns to other brain regions associated with learning, may be important in successful response inhibition. This study therefore offers new information on the neurodevelopment of individual differences in cognition during pre-adolescence in non-human primates.
Topics: Animals; Brain; Callithrix; Learning; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Neural Pathways; Prefrontal Cortex
PubMed: 35595058
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2022.113920 -
Journal of the American Academy of... Mar 2022Studies drawing on data from the Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes (GUSTO, https://www.gusto.sg) have provided unprecedented evidence for associations...
Studies drawing on data from the Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes (GUSTO, https://www.gusto.sg) have provided unprecedented evidence for associations between prenatal maternal mental health symptoms and variations in offspring early brain structural and functional development. Wei et al. expand upon these studies by using data from GUSTO to test for both sex-specific effects of prenatal maternal depressive symptoms (pre-MDS) and to examine whether cortical development mediated the relationship between pre-MDS and child sensitivity to reward and punishment in preschoolers. The study found a fascinating sex-specific pattern. It showed that higher pre-MDS was associated with greater cortical surface area in boys and lower surface area in girls, specifically in areas of the prefrontal cortex, superior temporal gyrus, and superior parietal lobule. Regarding their hypothesized mediation model, their analysis found that superior parietal lobule surface area mediated the association between pre-MDS and sensitivity to reward in girls but not boys. In this editorial, I will discuss some of the implications, limitations, and future directions for this line of research.
Topics: Child; Depression; Female; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Prefrontal Cortex; Pregnancy; Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects; Reward
PubMed: 34363966
DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2021.07.592 -
Neuron Oct 2020The representation of odor in olfactory cortex (piriform) is distributive and unstructured and can only be afforded behavioral significance upon learning. We performed...
The representation of odor in olfactory cortex (piriform) is distributive and unstructured and can only be afforded behavioral significance upon learning. We performed 2-photon imaging to examine the representation of odors in piriform and in two downstream areas, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), as mice learned olfactory associations. In piriform, we observed that odor responses were largely unchanged during learning. In OFC, 30% of the neurons acquired robust responses to conditioned stimuli (CS+) after learning, and these responses were gated by internal state and task context. Moreover, direct projections from piriform to OFC can be entrained to elicit learned olfactory behavior. CS+ responses in OFC diminished with continued training, whereas persistent representations of both CS+ and CS- odors emerged in mPFC. Optogenetic silencing indicates that these two brain structures function sequentially to consolidate the learning of appetitive associations.
Topics: Animals; Appetitive Behavior; Association Learning; Conditioning, Classical; Intravital Microscopy; Mice; Microscopy, Fluorescence, Multiphoton; Neurons; Odorants; Olfactory Pathways; Optogenetics; Piriform Cortex; Prefrontal Cortex
PubMed: 32827456
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2020.07.033 -
Frontiers in Public Health 2023Different medication prescription patterns have been associated with varying course of disease and outcomes in COVID-19. Health claims data is a rich source of...
BACKGROUND
Different medication prescription patterns have been associated with varying course of disease and outcomes in COVID-19. Health claims data is a rich source of information on disease treatment and outcomes. We aimed to investigate drug prescription patterns and their association with mortality and hospitalization via insurance data for a relatively long period of the pandemic in Iran.
METHODS
We retrieved hospitalized patients' data from Iran Health Insurance Organization (IHIO) spanning 26 months (2020-2022) nationwide. Included were patients with ICD-10 codes U07.1/U07.2 for confirmed/suspected COVID-19. A case was defined as a single hospitalization event for an individual patient. Multiple hospitalizations of a patient within a 30-day interval were aggregated into a single case, while hospitalizations with intervals exceeding 30 days were treated as independent cases. The Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) was used for medications classification. The two main study outcomes were general and intensive care unit (ICU) hospitalization periods and mortality. Besides, various demographic and clinical associate factors were analyzed to derive the associations with medication prescription patterns and study outcomes using accelerated failure time (AFT) and logistic regression models.
RESULTS
During the 26 months of the study period, 1,113,678 admissions with COVID-19 diagnosis at hospitals working in company with IHIO were recorded. 917,198 cases were detected from the database, among which 51.91% were females and 48.09% were males. Among the main groups of medications, antithrombotics (55.84% [95% CI: 55.74-55.94]), corticosteroids (54.14% [54.04-54.24]), and antibiotics (42.22% [42.12-42.32]) were the top used medications among cases with COVID-19. Investigation of the duration of hospitalization based on main medication groups showed antithrombotics (adjusted median ratio = 0.94 [0.94-0.95]) were significantly associated with shorter periods of overall hospitalization. Also, antithrombotics (adjusted odds ratio = 0.74 [95%CI, 0.73-0.76]), corticosteroids (0.97 [0.95-0.99]), antivirals (0.82 [0.80-0.83]), and ACE inhibitor/ARB (0.79 [0.77-0.80]) were significantly associated with lower mortality.
CONCLUSION
Over 2 years of investigation, antithrombotics, corticosteroids, and antibiotics were the top medications for hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Trends in medication prescription varied based on various factors across the country. Medication prescriptions could potentially significantly impact the trends of mortality and hospitalization during epidemics, thereby affecting both health and economic burdens.
Topics: Male; Female; Humans; COVID-19; Angiotensin Receptor Antagonists; Big Data; COVID-19 Testing; Fibrinolytic Agents; Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors; Hospitalization; Drug Prescriptions; Adrenal Cortex Hormones; Anti-Bacterial Agents
PubMed: 38164450
DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1280434 -
International Journal of Molecular... Jul 2021The parietal cortex of rodents participates in sensory and spatial processing, movement planning, and decision-making, but much less is known about its role in...
The parietal cortex of rodents participates in sensory and spatial processing, movement planning, and decision-making, but much less is known about its role in associative learning and memory formation. The present study aims to examine the involvement of the parietal association cortex (PtA) in associative fear memory acquisition and retrieval in mice. Using ex vivo c-Fos immunohistochemical mapping and in vivo Fos-EGFP two-photon imaging, we show that PtA neurons were specifically activated both during acquisition and retrieval of cued fear memory. Fos immunohistochemistry revealed specific activation of the PtA neurons during retrieval of the 1-day-old fear memory. In vivo two-photon Fos-EGFP imaging confirmed this result and in addition detected specific c-Fos responses of the PtA neurons during acquisition of cued fear memory. To allow a more detailed study of the long-term activity of such PtA engram neurons, we generated a Fos-Cre-GCaMP transgenic mouse line that employs the Targeted Recombination in Active Populations (TRAP) technique to detect calcium events specifically in cells that were Fos-active during conditioning. We show that gradual accumulation of GCaMP3 in the PtA neurons of Fos-Cre-GCaMP mice peaks at the 4th day after fear learning. We also describe calcium transients in the cell bodies and dendrites of the TRAPed neurons. This provides a proof-of-principle for TRAP-based calcium imaging of PtA functions during memory processes as well as in experimental models of fear- and anxiety-related psychiatric disorders and their specific therapies.
Topics: Animals; Association Learning; Calcium Signaling; Fear; Green Fluorescent Proteins; Male; Memory; Mice; Mice, Inbred C57BL; Neurons; Parietal Lobe; Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-fos; Recombinant Proteins
PubMed: 34361009
DOI: 10.3390/ijms22158244 -
NeuroImage Apr 2020Creative thinking relies on the ability to make remote associations and fruitfully combine unrelated concepts. Hence, original associations and bi-associations (i.e.,...
Creative thinking relies on the ability to make remote associations and fruitfully combine unrelated concepts. Hence, original associations and bi-associations (i.e., associations to one and two concepts, respectively) are considered elementary cognitive processes of creative cognition. In this work, we investigated the cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying these association processes with tasks that asked for original associations to either one or two adjective stimuli. Study 1 showed that the generation of more original associations and bi-associations was related to several indicators of creativity, corroborating the validity of these association performances as basic processes underlying creative cognition. Study 2 assessed brain activity during performance of these association tasks by means of fMRI. The generation of original versus common associations was related to higher activation in bilateral lingual gyri suggesting that cued search for remote representatives of given properties are supported by visually-mediated search strategies. Parametric analyses further showed that the generation of more original associations involved activation of the left inferior frontal cortex and the left ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which are consistently implicated in constrained retrieval and evaluation processes, and relevant for making distant semantic connections. Finally, the generation of original bi-associations involved higher activation in bilateral hippocampus and inferior parietal lobe, indicating that conceptual combination recruits episodic simulation processes. Together, these findings suggest that the generation of verbally cued, original associations relies not only on verbal semantic memory but involves mental imagery and episodic simulation, offering new insights in the nuanced interplay of memory systems in creative thought.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Association; Brain Mapping; Cerebral Cortex; Creativity; Cues; Female; Hippocampus; Humans; Imagination; Language; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Memory, Episodic; Young Adult
PubMed: 32001370
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116586 -
Depression and Anxiety May 2022The investigation of disease course-associated brain structural alterations in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) have resulted in heterogeneous findings, possibly due to...
INTRODUCTION
The investigation of disease course-associated brain structural alterations in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) have resulted in heterogeneous findings, possibly due to low reliability of single clinical variables used for defining disease course. The present study employed a principal component analysis (PCA) on multiple clinical variables to investigate effects of cumulative lifetime illness burden on brain structure in a large and heterogeneous sample of MDD patients.
METHODS
Gray matter volumes (GMV) was estimated in n = 681 MDD patients (mean age: 35.87 years; SD = 12.89; 66.6% female) using voxel-based-morphometry. Five clinical variables were included in a PCA to obtain components reflecting disease course to associate resulting components with GMVs.
RESULTS
The PCA yielded two main components: Hospitalization reflected by patients' frequency and duration of inpatient treatment and Duration of Illness reflected by the frequency and duration of depressive episodes. Hospitalization revealed negative associations with bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and left insula volumes. Duration of Illness showed significant negative associations with left hippocampus and right DLPFC volumes. Results in the DLPFC and hippocampus remained significant after additional control for depressive symptom severity, psychopharmacotherapy, psychiatric comorbidities, and remission status.
CONCLUSION
This study shows that a more severe and chronic lifetime disease course in MDD is associated with reduced volume in brain regions relevant for executive and cognitive functions and emotion regulation in a large sample of patients representing the broad heterogeneity of MDD disease course. These findings were only partly influenced by other clinical characteristics (e.g., remission status, psychopharmacological treatment).
Topics: Adult; Brain; Depressive Disorder, Major; Disease Progression; Female; Gray Matter; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Reproducibility of Results
PubMed: 35485921
DOI: 10.1002/da.23260 -
EBioMedicine May 2022Childhood traumatic events are risk factors for psychopathology, but large-scale studies of how childhood traumatic events relate to mental health and cognition in...
BACKGROUND
Childhood traumatic events are risk factors for psychopathology, but large-scale studies of how childhood traumatic events relate to mental health and cognition in adulthood, and how the brain is involved, are needed.
METHODS
The associations between childhood traumatic events (such as abuse and neglect, and defined by the 'Childhood Trauma' questions in the UK Biobank database) and brain functional connectivity, mental health problems, and cognitive performance were investigated by a univariate correlation analysis with 19,535 participants aged 45-79 from the UK Biobank dataset. The results were replicated with 17,747 independent participants in the second release from the same dataset.
FINDINGS
Childhood traumatic events were significantly associated with mental health problems in adulthood including anxiety (r=0.19, p<1.0 × 10), depression (r=0.21, p<1.0 × 10), and self-harm (r=0.24, p<1.0 × 10), and with adult cognitive performance including fluid intelligence (r=-0.05, p=2.8 × 10) and prospective memory (r=-0.04, p=6.8 × 10). Functional connectivities of the medial and lateral temporal cortex, the precuneus, the medial orbitofrontal cortex; and the superior, middle and inferior prefrontal cortex extending back to precentral regions were negatively correlated with the childhood traumatic events (FDR corrected, p<0.01). These lower functional connectivities significantly mediated the associations between childhood traumatic events and addiction, anxiety, depression and well-being (all p<1.0 × 10), and cognitive performance. The association between childhood traumatic events and behavioural measures and functional connectivity were confirmed in a replication with different participants in the second release of the UK Biobank dataset.
INTERPRETATION
Childhood traumatic events are strongly associated with adult mental health problems mediated by brain functional connectivities in brain areas involved in executive function, emotion, face processing, and memory. This understanding may help with prevention and treatment.
FUNDING
Funding was provided by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFC1312900 and No. 2019YFA0709502).
Topics: Adult; Brain; Child; Cognition; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Mental Health; Prefrontal Cortex
PubMed: 35472671
DOI: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2022.104002