Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging

ObjectiveTo delineate the phenotype of juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) with a focus on obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) using multimodal psychiatric, neuropsychological, quantitative EEG (qEEG), and structural MRI markers within a predictive-processing/free-energy framework. MethodsWe prospectively studied 65 patients with JME and 68 matched healthy controls (HC). Participants completed DSM-IV SCID I/II interviews and a neuropsychological battery assessing working memory, psyc...

ObjectiveSubthreshold depression (StD) in adolescence is a potent risk factor for major depressive disorder, yet its neurobiological mechanisms remain unclear. The glymphatic system, a brain-wide waste clearance pathway, has been implicated in psychiatric disorders but has not been investigated integratively in StD. This study aimed to characterize glymphatic function in adolescents with StD using a multimodal neuroimaging approach. MethodsA total of 107 adolescents (71 with StD and 36 healthy ...

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) manifests with diverse symptom constellations that likely arise from dysfunction in partially distinct neural circuits. Deep brain stimulation (DBS), paired with high-resolution connectomics, offers a unique window into these pathways in humans. Here, we analyzed clinical outcomes and stimulation sites from 77 treatment-refractory patients with OCD and 39 with Tourettes syndrome (TS) exhibiting comorbid obsessive-compulsive behaviors (244 electrodes across 15 ...

Anxiety is marked by exaggerated vigilance which may be linked to impaired sensory habituation, yet the physiological mechanisms linking anxiety to dysregulated habituation in the brain remain unclear. The brains ability to filter sensory input is characteristic of healthy functioning and disruption of this can lead to over-responsiveness and hypervigilance that may underlie pathological anxiety. Here, we examined how state and trait anxiety relate to acoustic startle reflex habituation across s...

1Psychopathy is a multifaceted construct encompassing affective, interpersonal, behavioural, and antisocial traits. Intrinsic brain organization, captured via functional connectivity, is widely used to map brain-behaviour relationships and to characterize the neural underpinnings of psychopathology. Prior work reports associations between psychopathic traits and altered connectivity in the frontoparietal control, default mode, and salience networks. However, current evidence is constrained by sm...

BackgroundFunctional neurological disorder (FND) is associated with alterations in functional brain networks, yet relationships between peripheral autonomic physiology and brain architecture remain poorly characterized. This pilot study examined associations between cardiac autonomic metrics and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in FND. MethodsTwenty females with FND and 23 age-matched female psychiatric controls (PCs) completed questionnaires, 10-min resting photoplethysmography rec...

Vortioxetine has been reported to alleviate cognitive deficits in patients with depression, accompanied by changes in functional connectivity (FC). An open-label study suggested potential benefits of vortioxetine in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition also characterized by both cognitive and FC alterations. However, controlled studies are required to rule out nonspecific treatment effects and to determine whether FC changes are generalizable to this population. To address...

IntroductionLactate plays dual roles in neuronal energy metabolism and signalling. The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), a region with high baseline glycolytic activity implicated in psychiatric disorders, may exhibit dynamic lactate responses to graded cognitive-emotional demands. Because mitochondrial function declines with age, aging may model whether fMRS-derived lactate dynamics can detect latent neurometabolic vulnerabilities. MethodsUsing fMRS, we monitored dACC metabolite changes...

Trauma is an established risk factor for a diverse range of psychiatric disorders. This effect on risk is widely thought to be mediated, at least partially, by the deleterious impact of trauma on brain structure and function. We tested this neurobiological mediation hypothesis in 670 adults (40% male; age 18-45 years, M = 29.60, SD = 7.67) with diverse psychiatric histories who undertook self-reported and interview-based assessment of psychopathology along with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). ...

When the brain and body misalign, emotional experience and sense of reality can be disrupted. Although such atypical experiences are central to schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), interoception, processing of internal bodily signals, remains poorly understood in individuals with SSD, particularly across subjective, behavioural, and neural domains. We tested whether SSD is associated with convergent alterations across interoceptive domains and whether these relate to clinical symptoms in a cr...

BackgroundChallenges in correctly identifying bipolar II disorder (BD-II) during depressive states have led to poor clinical outcomes. BD-II-specific imaging investigations are lacking. This study addresses current knowledge gaps by comparing white matter (WM) integrity in BD-II and unipolar depression (UD) using fixel-based analysis. MethodFibre density (FD), fibre cross-section (FC), and the combined measure (FDC) within 72 WM tracts were compared among 33 individuals with BD-II, 50 with UD, ...

BackgroundAuditory hallucinations are among the most disabling symptoms in individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and are linked to aberrant signaling within deep-striatal circuits, such as the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and caudate head (CH). However, causal tests of striatal involvement have been limited by the inaccessibility of these structures using noninvasive neuromodulatory techniques. Low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU) provides millimeter-scale precision capable of modulating deep-brain ...

In-scanner head motion is a recognized source of bias in structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI), yet it remains under-addressed in psychiatric neuroimaging where structural difference in patient populations are considered foundational. We examined motion-related bias in grey matter volume estimates across eight independent cohorts comprising 9,664 individuals, including 8,979 neurotypical controls (NC), 497 patients with schizophrenia (SCZ), and 188 patients with bipolar disorder (BD). Mot...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by both physiological and psychological changes that impact daily function and quality of life. Despite advancements in treatment approaches, clinical outcomes remain variable, highlighting the need for reliable biomarkers to guide treatment selection and to monitor treatment responses. Transcranial magnetic stimulation combined with electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) allows for the characterization of local cortical excitation and inhibition throug...

Schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) are clinically and biologically heterogeneous and lack reliable biomarkers for stratification and outcome prediction. Evidence from postmortem, fluid biomarker, and neuroimaging studies suggests that blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction may contribute to pathophysiology in a biologically defined subgroup. However, findings are inconsistent and often based on cross-sectional or indirect measures. The IMPACT study is a longitudinal, multimodal investigatio...

The present study focuses on the role of amygdala reactivity to negative facial expressions in major depressive disorder (MDD). A number of studies have found amygdala hyperreactivity in depressed patients compared with control subjects. This has been interpreted in terms of a negative depressive bias in attention and memory, given the amygdalas role in attending to and remembering negatively valenced stimuli. However, failure to find amygdala hyperreactivity in depression is not uncommon, and a...

Bullying is an adverse childhood experience affecting up to one-third of the global population and linked to psychosis-like experiences (PLEs), which increase the risk of psychotic disorders. This study aimed to investigate the association between the severity and persistence of bullying and PLEs and the neurobiological pathways from bullying to psychosis-like experiences by assessing multiscale brain functional network connectivity (msFNC). We used data from the ABCD Study, a large, ongoing, mu...

BackgroundImpaired glymphatic clearance, the perivascular system supporting cerebrospinal and interstitial fluid exchange, has been implicated in neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. Diffusion tensor imaging along the perivascular space (DTI-ALPS) provides a non-invasive proxy for glymphatic-related processes, yet its role in psychiatric conditions remains uncertain. MethodsFollowing PRISMA guidelines, we systematically searched PubMed, PsycNET, and Embase for articles published up to S...

BackgroundCerebellar transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) may serve as an adjuvant therapy for psychosis symptoms, most recently we have shown improvements in negative symptoms. Historically, cerebellum TMS has not utilized functional neuroanatomy for targeting, and the precision of TMS to the cerebellum is unclear. A classical view of the cerebellum as solely involved in motor computations has been updated with the discovery of rich non-motor connectivity including the default, dorsal attent...

Neuroimaging has revealed that major depression is underpinned by dysfunctional brain networks, with symptom variability stemming from altered interactions within and between brain regions. While the effect of depression severity is well-studied, the effect of depression duration (chronicity) is relatively neglected, despite its clinical significance. This study examined how severity, chronicity, and their interaction affect brain network connectivity and grey matter volume. Forty-six patients (...