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Purpose: Healthy diets are believed to be associated with a reduced risk of experiencing common mental disorders (CMDs) and related symptomatology (such as ruminative thinking), and with healthier brain chemistry and structure, especially in the frontal regions implicated in CMDs, cognitive control, and food choice. Nevertheless, there is very limited research on the relationship between diet health/quality and brain function. In this study we assessed the associations between adherence to the Mediterranean diet and resting state functional connectivity (rs-FC) of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) with the whole brain and whether this connectivity would be associated with ruminative thinking as a transdiagnostic factor for CMDs., Methods: Thirty-seven adults (Mean Age = 25.57, SD = 7.18) completed the Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener (MEDAS) and were classified into high- and low-quality diet groups and completed the Ruminative Response Scale. All participants underwent resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) to determine whole-brain rs-FC of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)., Results: Participants in the high MEDAS group (vs. low MEDAS group) exhibited significantly greater rs-FC of the mPFC seed with the thalamus, caudate and putamen. Additionally, the strength of rs-FC of the mPFC seed with these regions was positively associated with the MEDAS scores across groups in both crude and adjusted models. There were no significant associations between the strength of rs-FC of the mPFC seed with the cluster of voxels with the thalamus, caudate, and putamen and ruminative thinking., Discussion: This work shows that healthy dietary patterns are associated with rs-FC in the frontal-subcortical circuitry in healthy volunteers. Considering the implications of the dysregulation of this circuity, adhering to healthy dietary patterns may offer a promising alternative/complementary method to improve CMDs, cognitive control, and food choices., Competing Interests: Declarations. Ethics approval: The research protocol was approved by the Ethical committee at the University of Roehampton (Reference: PSYC 22/ 444) on 30/01/2023. The study has been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. All participants provided informed consent. Conflict of interest: PH, AC, and PA have received research funding, consultancy, travel support, and speaking honoraria from various industrial companies. MHS is employed by FrieslandCampina, Amersfoort, the Netherlands. Other authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. Funding for this study was provided by FrieslandCampina whom had no further role in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication (Ref: 3129AQ00)., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Rationale and Objectives: The mechanism of comorbidity between alcohol dependence and depressive disorders are not well understood. This study investigated differences in the brain function of alcohol-dependent patients with and without depression by performing functional connectivity analysis using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging., Materials and Methods: A total of 29 alcohol-dependent patients with depression, 31 alcohol-dependent patients without depression and 31 healthy control subjects were included in this study. The resting-state functional connectivity between the amygdala and the whole brain was compared among the three groups. Additionally, we examined the correlation between functional connectivity values in significantly different brain regions and levels of alcohol dependence and depression., Results: The resting-state functional connectivity between the left amygdala and the right caudate nucleus was decreased in alcohol-dependent patients. Additionally, the resting-state functional connectivity of the right amygdala with the right caudate nucleus, right transverse temporal gyrus, right temporal pole: superior temporal gyrus were also decreased. In alcohol-dependent patients with depression, not only was functional connectivity between the above brain regions significantly decreased, but so was functional connectivity between the right amygdala and the left middle temporal gyrus. Also, there was no significant correlation between the resting-state functional connectivity values in statistically significant brain regions and the levels of alcohol dependence and depression., Conclusion: The impairment of the functional connectivity of the amygdala with caudate nucleus and partial temporal lobe may be involved in the neural mechanism of alcohol dependence comorbidity depressive disorders., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors have declared that there are no conflicts of interest in relation to the subject of this study., (Copyright © 2024 The Association of University Radiologists. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Having multiple previous generations with depression in the family increases offspring risk for psychopathology. Parental depression has been associated with smaller subcortical brain volumes in their children, but whether two prior generations with depression is associated with further decreases is unclear., Methods: Using two independent cohorts, 1) a Three-Generation Study (TGS, N = 65) with direct clinical interviews of adults and children across all three generations, and 2) the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD, N = 10,626) of 9-10 year-old children with family history assessed by a caregiver, we tested whether having more generations of depression in the family was associated with smaller subcortical volumes (using structural MRI)., Results: In TGS, caudate, pallidum and putamen showed decreasing volumes with higher familial risk for depression. Having a parent and a grandparent with depression was associated with decreased volume compared to having no familial depression in these regions. Putamen volume was associated with depression at eight-year follow-up. In ABCD, smaller pallidum and putamen were associated with family history, which was driven by parental depression, regardless of grandparental depression., Limitations: Discrepancies between cohorts could be due to interview type (clinical or self-report) and informant (individual or common informant), sample size or age. Future analyses of follow-up ABCD waves will be able to assess whether effects of grandparental depression on brain markers become more apparent as the children enter young adulthood., Conclusions: Basal ganglia regional volumes are significantly smaller in offspring with a family history of depression in two independent cohorts., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest Dr. Weissman receives funds from NIMH and Columbia University Institute for Developmental Sciences and book royalties from Perseus Press and Oxford Press. Dr. Posner has received research support from Takeda (formerly Shire) and Aevi Genomics and consultancy fees from Innovative Science and AlphaSights. None of these present a conflict of interest with or have influenced the research presented in this article., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is associated with food restriction and significantly low body weight, but the neurobiology of food avoidance in AN is unknown. Animal research suggests that food avoidance can be triggered by conditioned fear that engages the anterior cingulate and nucleus accumbens. We hypothesized that the neural activation during food avoidance in AN could be modeled based on aversive goal value processing. Nineteen females with AN and thirty healthy controls matched for age underwent functional magnetic resonance brain imaging while conducting a food avoidance task. During active control free-bid and computer-generated forced-bid trials, participants bid money to avoid eating food items. Brain activation was parametrically modulated with the trial-by-trial placed bids. During free-bid trials, the AN group engaged the caudate nucleus, nucleus accumbens, ventral anterior cingulate, and inferior and medial orbitofrontal cortex more than the control group. High- versus low-bid trials in the AN group were associated with higher caudate nucleus response. Emotion dysregulation and intolerance of uncertainty scores were inversely associated with nucleus accumbens free-bid trial brain response in AN. This study supports the idea that food avoidance behavior in AN involves aversive goal value computation in the nucleus accumbens, caudate nucleus, anterior cingulate, and orbitofrontal cortex.

The complexity of brain activity reflects its ability to process information, adapt to environmental changes, and transition between states. However, it remains unclear how schizophrenia (SZ) affects brain activity complexity, particularly its dynamic changes. This study aimed to investigate the abnormal patterns of brain activity complexity in SZ, their relationship with cognitive deficits, and the impact of antipsychotic medication. Forty-four drug-naive first-episode (DNFE) SZ patients and thirty demographically matched healthy controls (HC) were included. Functional MRI-based sliding window analysis was utilized for the first time to calculate weighted permutation entropy to characterize complex patterns of brain activity in SZ patients before and after 12 weeks of risperidone treatment. Results revealed reduced complexity in the caudate, putamen, and pallidum at baseline in SZ patients compared to HC, with reduced complexity in the left caudate positively correlated with Continuous Performance Test (CPT) and Category Fluency Test scores. After treatment, the complexity of the left caudate increased. Regions with abnormal complexity showed decreased functional connectivity, with complexity positively correlated with connectivity strength. We observed that the dynamic complexity of the brain exhibited the characteristic of spontaneous, recurring "complexity drop", potentially reflecting transient state transitions in the resting brain. Compared to HC, patients exhibited reduced scope, intensity, and duration of complexity drop, all of which improved after treatment. Reduced duration was negatively correlated with CPT scores and positively with clinical symptoms. The results suggest that abnormalities in brain activity complexity and its dynamic changes may underlie cognitive deficits and clinical symptoms in SZ patients. Antipsychotic treatment partially restores these abnormalities, highlighting their potential as indicators of treatment efficacy and biomarkers for personalized therapy., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Suicide is the second leading cause of death in youth, and depression is a strong proximal predictor of adolescent suicide. It is important to identify psychological factors that may protect against suicide ideation in depressed adolescents. Self-compassion may be such a factor. Converging evidence indicates the inverse association between self-compassion and suicide ideation, but the neural mechanisms underlying their link remain unknown. Because self-referential caudate activity is associated with both self-compassion and suicide ideation, its functional connectivity might explain their relationship. In this study, we examined the relationship between self-compassion and caudate functional connectivity during self-appraisals, a typical self-referential paradigm, and their associations with suicide ideation in both depressed and healthy youth. In the scanner, 79 depressed youth and 36 healthy controls evaluated, from various perspectives, whether phrases they heard were self-descriptive. Self-compassion and suicide ideation were rated with self-report and interview-based measures. We found that self-compassion was associated with stronger left caudate functional connectivity with bilateral posterior superior temporal sulcus/temporoparietal junction, the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG), and the left middle occipital gyrus during positive versus negative self-appraisals. Stronger left caudate connectivity with the left MTG explained the association between higher self-compassion and lower suicide ideation, even controlling for non-suicide ideation depression severity, anxiety severity, and non-suicidal self-injurious behavior. The findings suggest that the left caudate to MTG connectivity during positive versus negative self-referential processing could be a biomarker to be targeted by neural stimulation interventions for reducing suicide ideation in depressed youth, combined with self-compassion interventions., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a serious psychiatric illness that remains difficult to treat. Elucidating the neural mechanisms of AN is necessary to identify novel treatment targets and improve outcomes. A growing body of literature points to a role for dorsal fronto-striatal circuitry in the pathophysiology of AN, with increasing evidence of abnormal task-based fMRI activation within this network among patients with AN. Whether these abnormalities are present at rest and reflect fundamental differences in brain organization is unclear., Methods: The current study combined resting-state fMRI data from patients with AN ( n = 89) and healthy controls (HC; n = 92) across four studies, removing site effects using ComBat harmonization. First, the a priori hypothesis that dorsal fronto-striatal connectivity strength - specifically between the anterior caudate and dlPFC - differed between patients and HC was tested using seed-based functional connectivity analysis with small-volume correction. To assess specificity of effects, exploratory analyses examined anterior caudate whole-brain connectivity, amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF), and node centrality., Results: Compared to HC, patients showed significantly reduced right, but not left, anterior caudate-dlPFC connectivity ( p = 0.002) in small-volume corrected analyses. Whole-brain analyses also identified reduced connectivity between the right anterior caudate and left superior frontal and middle frontal gyri ( p = 0.028) and increased connectivity between the right anterior caudate and right occipital cortex ( p = 0.038). No group differences were found in analyses of anterior caudate ALFF and node centrality., Conclusions: Decreased coupling of dorsal fronto-striatal regions indicates that circuit-based abnormalities persist at rest and suggests this network may be a potential treatment target.

We used a virtual navigation paradigm in a city environment to assess neuroanatomical correlates of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). We studied a total of N = 36 subjects: 18 with SSD and 18 matched unaffected controls. Participants completed 10 rapid, single-trial navigation tasks within the virtual city while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). All trials tested ability to find different targets seen earlier, during the passive viewing of a path around different city blocks. SSD patients had difficulty finding previously-encountered targets, were less likely to find novel shortcuts to targets, and more likely to attempt retracing of the path observed during passive viewing. Based on a priori region-of-interest analyses, SSD participants had hyperactivation of the left hippocampus when passively viewing turns, hyperactivation of the left caudate when finding targets, and hypoactivation of a focal area of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex when targets were initially shown during passive viewing. We propose that these brain-behaviour relations may bias or reinforce stimulus-response navigation approaches in SSD and underlie impaired performance when allocentric spatial memory is required, such as when forming efficient shortcuts. This pattern may extend to more general cognitive impairments in SSD that could be used to design remediation strategies., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest Dr. Foussias has been involved in research sponsored by Medicure Inc., and Neurocrine Bioscience, has received consultant fees from Roche, and has received speaker fees from Roche, Lundbeck, and Novartis. Dr. Wong is a scientific consultant to Lucid psycheceuticals, a subsidiary of FSD Pharma Inc. The other authors declare no competing financial interest., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)