Abstract Anhedonia is associated with dysfunction of the neural circuitry of reward in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). However, its neurobiological basis is not fully understood. The ...present study examined the association between anhedonia and white matter (WM) characteristics in patients with first-episode MDD. We recruited 30 patients with first-episode drug-naive MDD and 28 healthy controls (HC) to undergo diffusion weighted imaging. We examined specifically the correlation between WM characteristics and anhedonia measured with the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS) in MDD patients. Using Track-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS), we found that MDD patients exhibited reduced fractional anisotropy (FA) in the left cingulum and the forceps minor. These patients also exhibited increased radial diffusivity (RD) in several major tracts including the bilateral anterior thalamic radiation, the corticospinal tract, the superior longitudinal fasciculus and the uncinate fasciculus in the left hemisphere. Correlational analysis showed that increased RD was significantly correlated with anticipatory anhedonia in the MDD group, while reduced mean FA was correlated with consummatory anhedonia in HC. These preliminary findings suggest that left-sided WM tracts abnormalities may contribute to the development of anhedonia in MDD patients.
Aims
To investigate the effects of three symbiotic Bradyrhizobium strains on peanut growth and on rhizobacterial communities in flowering and harvest stages in an organic farm, also to evaluate the ...role of plant development in influencing peanut rhizobacterial microbiota and correlations among the inoculants, rhizobacterial communities and plant growth.
Methods and Results
Peanut seeds were inoculated with three individual Bradyrhizobium strains, plant growth performance was measured in two developmental stages and rhizobacterial communities were analysed by Illumina sequencing of rpoB gene amplicons from peanut rhizosphere. The three bradyrhizobial inoculants significantly increased the nodule numbers and aboveground fresh weight of peanut plants regardless of the different growth stages, and the pod yields were increased to some extent and significantly positively correlated with Bradyrhizobium abundances in rhizosphere. Principal coordinate analysis indicated that the rhizobacterial communities were strongly influenced by the inoculation and peanut developmental stages. The bradyrhizobia inoculation increased relative abundances of potentially beneficial bacteria in peanut rhizosphere, and also altered rhizobacterial co‐occurrence association networks and important network hub taxa. Similarly, plant development also significantly influenced the structure, composition and co‐occurrence association networks of rhizobacterial communities.
Conclusions
Bradyrhizobial inoculants increased peanut growth and yields, they and plant development affected the assembly of peanut rhizobacterial communities.
Significance and Impact of the Study
Rhizobial inoculants improved the host plant performance that might also be associated with the dynamic changes in rhizobacterial community except enhancing the biological nitrogen fixation and helps to profoundly understand the mechanism how rhizobia inoculants improve plant growth and yields.
Sperm are highly differentiated and the activities that reprogram them for embryonic development during fertilization have historically been considered unique to the oocyte. We here challenge this ...view and demonstrate that mouse embryos in the mitotic cell cycle can also directly reprogram sperm for full-term development. Developmentally incompetent haploid embryos (parthenogenotes) injected with sperm developed to produce healthy offspring at up to 24% of control rates, depending when in the embryonic cell cycle injection took place. This implies that most of the first embryonic cell cycle can be bypassed in sperm genome reprogramming for full development. Remodelling of histones and genomic 5'-methylcytosine and 5'-hydroxymethylcytosine following embryo injection were distinct from remodelling in fertilization and the resulting 2-cell embryos consistently possessed abnormal transcriptomes. These studies demonstrate plasticity in the reprogramming of terminally differentiated sperm nuclei and suggest that different epigenetic pathways or kinetics can establish totipotency.
The goal of this study is to evaluate the influence of the urea and glycine fuels on the synthesis of Mn–Zn ferrite by combustion reaction. The morphology and magnetic properties of the resulting ...powders were investigated. The powders were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), nitrogen adsorption (BET), scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM), and magnetic measurement of
M
×
H curves. The X-ray diffraction patterns indicated that the samples containing urea resulted in the formation of crystalline powders and the presence of hematite as a secondary phase. The samples containing glycine presented only the formation of crystalline and monophases (Mn,Zn)Fe
2O
4. The average crystallite size was 18 and 35
nm and saturation magnetization was 3.6 and 75
emu/g, respectively, for the samples containing urea and glycine. The samples synthesized with glycine fuel showed better magnetic properties for application as soft magnetic devices.
A phenomenon in schizophrenia patients that deserves attention is the high comorbidity rate with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Little is known about the neurobiological basis of ...schizo-obsessive comorbidity (SOC). We aimed to investigate whether specific changes in white matter exist in patients with SOC and the relationship between such abnormalities and clinical parameters. Twenty-eight patients with SOC, 28 schizophrenia patients, 30 OCD patients, and 30 demographically matched healthy controls were recruited. Using Tract-based Spatial Statistics and Probabilistic Tractography, we examined the pattern of white matter abnormalities in these participants. We also used ANOVA and Support Vector Classification of various white matter indices and structural connection probability to further examine white matter changes among the 4 groups. We found that patients with SOC had decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) and increased radial diffusivity in the right sagittal stratum and the left crescent of the fornix/stria terminalis compared with healthy controls. We also found changed connection probability in the Default Mode Network, the Subcortical Network, the Attention Network, the Task Control Network, the Visual Network, the Somatosensory Network, and the cerebellum in the SOC group compared with the other 3 groups. The classification results further revealed that FA features could differentiate the SOC group from the other 3 groups with an accuracy of .78. These findings highlight the specific white matter abnormalities found in patients with SOC.
Previous studies have demonstrated that patients with schizophrenia and individuals with schizotypy experience decreased anticipatory pleasure. However, it is unclear whether this decrease is ...contributed by altered reward processing at the proximal or distal future. In order to investigate the preference for receiving rewards in the proximal or distal future for individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, individuals with either high or low levels of negative schizotypy performed a delay discounting task under positive, neutral and negative affective priming conditions. Compared with individuals with low levels of negative schizotypy, individuals with high levels of schizotypy exhibited increased delay discounting, preferring to choose immediate but smaller rewards instead of delayed but larger rewards across all three affective priming conditions. Negative affective priming elevated discounting for both groups compared with both the positive and neutral affective conditions. After dividing delayed temporal distance into the proximal and distal future, the results showed that individuals with high levels of negative schizotypy exhibited more preference for immediate but smaller rewards in the distal instead of proximal future compared with controls. Our results suggest that individuals with high levels of negative schizotypy have altered anticipatory reward processing, which is mainly attributed to alterations in representing rewards in the distal future. These findings extend the alterations in representing reward values from schizophrenia patients to schizotypal individuals, and suggest that diminished anticipatory pleasure in schizophrenia spectrum disorders may be due to changes in processing anticipatory rewards in the distal future.
Low-pleasure beliefs are found in both patients with schizophrenia (SZ) and individuals with high social anhedonia (SocAnh), and are associated with anhedonia. However, little is known about the ...development and maintenance of these low-pleasure beliefs in the clinical and subclinical populations. We investigated whether patients with SZ and individuals with high SocAnh have deficits in updating their beliefs, which may contribute to the understanding of the formation and maintenance of low-pleasure beliefs.
The Modified Belief Updating Task was administered to assess belief-updating patterns in a clinical sample (36 SZ patients and 30 matched controls) and a subclinical sample (27 individuals with high SocAnh and 30 matched controls).
We found that compared with controls, SZ patients updated their beliefs to a greater extent and more frequently when receiving bad news for positive life events, but not for negative life events. Moreover, individuals with high SocAnh also exhibited similar patterns in updating their beliefs for positive life events after controlling depressive symptoms.
Our findings suggest that negative belief-updating patterns for positive events may play an important role in the formation and maintenance of low-pleasure beliefs in patients with SZ and individuals with high SocAnh.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Abstract Previous studies have established a linkage between olfactory deficits and negative symptoms in schizophrenia. However, it is not known whether olfactory function is associated with hedonic ...traits in individuals with schizotypy. Seventeen individuals with schizotypy and 18 age- and sex-matched controls participated in this study. Hedonic traits were assessed with the Chapman Scales for Physical and Social Anhedonia (CSAS and CPAS). Olfactory function was assessed with the Sniffin' Stick Test (olfactory threshold, odour discrimination and odour identification). All participants undertook a structural imaging scan for grey matter volume measurements. Individuals with schizotypy had significantly higher CSAS and CPAS scores than healthy controls. They had normal olfactory function. Their odour identification ability was inversely correlated with physical and social anhedonia. The volume of the right parahippocampal gyrus was positively associated with odour identification ability, and negatively associated with physical and social anhedonia. Furthermore, mediation analysis suggested that odour identification ability influences anhedonia through its effect on the right parahippocampal gyrus. No such relationship was found in controls. These findings suggest that there is a relationship between odour identification and anhedonia in individuals with schizotypy, and the association may be mediated by parahippocampal gyrus volume.
•Emotional experience partly mediated the effect of social anhedonia on prediciton of pleasant events.•The pathway from social anhedonia to beliefs about pleasure to emotional experience to ...prediction of pleasant events was found.•Beliefs about pleasure and emotional experience may be considered promising factors for early interventions in individuals with anhedonia.
Few studies have examined whether there is a relationship between social anhedonia and prediction of future events and the role of beliefs about pleasure and emotional experience. In this study, 513 college students were recruited to complete a set of self-reported questionnaires, including the Revised Social Anhedonia Scale (CSAS), the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS), the Belief about Pleasure Scale (BAPS) and the Beck Depression Inventory. Moreover, a checklist of 100 daily life events was also administrated to all participants. Mediation analysis found that social anhedonia had a direct impact on prediction of pleasant events. Emotional experience partly mediated the relationship between social anhedonia and subjective prediction of pleasant events. However, beliefs about pleasure had no significant mediation effect between social anhedonia and prediction of pleasant events, but were shown to influence the subjective prediction of pleasant events completely through emotional experience. These findings suggest that beliefs about pleasure and emotional experience may be considered promising factors for interventions in individuals with anhedonia.
CD4
T cells can "help" or "license" conventional type 1 dendritic cells (cDC1s) to induce CD8
cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) anticancer responses, as proven in mouse models. We recently identified ...cDC1s with a transcriptomic imprint of CD4
T-cell help, specifically in T-cell-infiltrated human cancers, and these cells were associated with a good prognosis and response to PD-1-targeting immunotherapy. Here, we delineate the mechanism of cDC1 licensing by CD4
T cells in humans. Activated CD4
T cells produce IFNβ via the STING pathway, which promotes MHC-I antigen (cross-)presentation by cDC1s and thereby improves their ability to induce CTL anticancer responses. In cooperation with CD40 ligand (L), IFNβ also optimizes the costimulatory and other functions of cDC1s required for CTL response induction. IFN-I-producing CD4
T cells are present in diverse T-cell-infiltrated cancers and likely deliver "help" signals to CTLs locally, according to their transcriptomic profile and colocalization with "helped/licensed" cDCs and tumor-reactive CD8
T cells. In agreement with this scenario, the presence of IFN-I-producing CD4
T cells in the TME is associated with overall survival and the response to PD-1 checkpoint blockade in cancer patients.
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