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Background: Symptoms of major depressive disorder (MDD) are reported to change early in treatment with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). We evaluated early changes in sleep, anxiety, and mood as predictors of nonresponse to rTMS treatment., Methods: Three hundred twenty-nine subjects with nonpsychotic MDD completed a 6-week course of rTMS treatment. Subjects were stratified by the severity of their baseline depression, and had their overall depressive symptoms recorded every week of treatment. We evaluated lack of improvement in sleep, anxiety, and mood symptoms after 1 and 2 weeks as potential predictors of eventual nonresponse, defined as <50% improvement in compositive depressive symptoms after 6 weeks. This was measured as negative predictive value (NPV; the likelihood that lack of early symptom improvement accurately predicted eventual treatment nonresponse)., Results: Subjects with severe or very severe baseline depression achieving <20% improvement in mood at 1 week were correctly predicted as nonresponders with NPVs largely >90%. At 2 weeks, subjects with very severe baseline depression who failed to demonstrate any improvement in mood were all nonresponders. Lack of improvement in sleep at 2 weeks was also a significant predictor., Conclusions: Identifying a lack of early mood improvement is a practical and robust method to predict rTMS nonresponse. This suggests a treatment protocol change may be indicated in patients with more severe baseline depression showing minimal early mood improvement., (© 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Obesity and overweight are often defined by the body mass index (BMI), which associates with metabolic and cardiovascular disease, and possibly with dementia as well as variations in brain volume. However, body fat distribution and abdominal obesity (as measured by waist circumference) is more strongly correlated with cardiovascular and metabolic risk than is BMI. While prior studies have revealed negative associations between gray matter tissue volumes and BMI, the relationship with respect to waist circumference remains largely unexplored. We therefore investigated the effects of both BMI and waist circumference on local gray matter volumes in a group of 115 healthy subjects screened to exclude physical or mental disorders that might affect the central nervous system. Results revealed significant negative correlations for both BMI and waist circumference where regional gray matter effects were largest within the hypothalamus and further encompassed prefrontal, anterior temporal and inferior parietal cortices, and the cerebellum. However, associations were more widespread and pronounced for waist circumference than BMI. Follow-up analyses showed that these relationships differed significantly across gender. While associations were similar for both BMI and waist circumference for males, females showed more extensive correlations for waist circumference. Our observations suggest that waist circumference is a more sensitive indicator than BMI, particularly in females, for potentially determining the adverse effects of obesity and overweight on the brain and associated risks to health., (Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Autism spectrum disorder is a heterogeneous disorder of brain development with wide ranging cognitive deficits. Typically diagnosed before age 3, autism spectrum disorder is behaviorally defined but patients are thought to have protracted alterations in brain maturation. With longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we mapped an anomalous developmental trajectory of the brains of autistic compared with those of typically developing children and adolescents. Using tensor-based morphometry, we created 3D maps visualizing regional tissue growth rates based on longitudinal brain MRI scans of 13 autistic and seven typically developing boys (mean age/interscan interval: autism 12.0 ± 2.3 years/2.9 ± 0.9 years; control 12.3 ± 2.4/2.8 ± 0.8). The typically developing boys demonstrated strong whole brain white matter growth during this period, but the autistic boys showed abnormally slowed white matter development (P = 0.03, corrected), especially in the parietal (P = 0.008), temporal (P = 0.03), and occipital lobes (P = 0.02). We also visualized abnormal overgrowth in autism in gray matter structures such as the putamen and anterior cingulate cortex. Our findings reveal aberrant growth rates in brain regions implicated in social impairment, communication deficits and repetitive behaviors in autism, suggesting that growth rate abnormalities persist into adolescence. Tensor-based morphometry revealed persisting growth rate anomalies long after diagnosis, which has implications for evaluation of therapeutic effects., (Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Previous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based volumetric studies have shown age-related increases in the volume of total white matter and decreases in the volume of total gray matter of normal children. Recent adaptations of image analysis strategies enable the detection of human brain growth with improved spatial resolution. In this article, we further explore the spatio-temporal complexity of adolescent brain maturation with tensor-based morphometry. By utilizing a novel non-linear elastic intensity-based registration algorithm on the serial structural MRI scans of 13 healthy children, individual Jacobian growth maps are generated and then registered to a common anatomical space. Statistical analyses reveal significant tissue growth in cerebral white matter, contrasted with gray matter loss in parietal, temporal, and occipital lobe. In addition, a linear regression with age and gender suggests a slowing down of the growth rate in regions with the greatest white matter growth. We demonstrate that a tensor-based Jacobian map is a sensitive and reliable method to detect regional tissue changes during development., ((c) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)