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Jeon-Slaughter H, Claassen CA, Khan DA, Mihalakos P, Lee KB, Brown ES. Temporal Association Between Nonfatal Self-Directed Violence and Tree and Grass Pollen Counts. J Clin Psychiatry 2016; 77:1160-1167. [PMID: 27314288 DOI: 10.4088/jcp.15m09864] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/05/2015] [Accepted: 07/13/2015] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES Prior research suggests a possible association between pollen and suicide. No studies have examined the relationship between pollen and attempted suicide. This study examines the temporal association between airborne pollen counts and nonfatal suicidal and nonsuicidal self-directed violence (SDV) requiring an emergency department visit. METHODS Data on daily emergency department visits due to nonfatal SDV as identified by ICD-9 diagnosis criteria were extracted from emergency department medical records of Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, between January 2000 and December 2003. Concurrent daily airborne tree, grass, and ragweed pollen data from the city of Dallas were extracted from the National Allergy Bureau online database. The data were analyzed using the time series method of generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity. RESULTS There were statistically significant and positive temporal associations between tree pollen counts and the number of nonfatal SDV events among women (P = .04) and between grass pollen counts and number of nonfatal SDV events among both men (P = .03) and women (P < .0001). There was no significant temporal association found between ragweed pollen counts and number of nonfatal SDV events. CONCLUSIONS The study findings suggest that an increase in nonfatal SDV is associated with changes in tree and grass pollen counts. This is the first study that has examined an association between seasonal variation in tree and grass pollen levels and nonfatal SDV event data. The study also used a narrowly defined geographic area and temporal window. The findings suggest that pollen count may be a factor influencing seasonal patterns in suicidal behavior.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haekyung Jeon-Slaughter
- Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
| | - Cynthia A Claassen
- Department of Psychiatry, The University of North Texas Health Science Center, Fort Worth, Texas, USA
| | - David A Khan
- Division of Allergy and Immunology in the Department of Internal Medicine, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
| | - Perry Mihalakos
- Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
| | - Kevin B Lee
- Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
| | - E Sherwood Brown
- Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Blvd, Dallas, TX 75390-8849. .,Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
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Puzziferri N, Zigman JM, Thomas BP, Mihalakos P, Gallagher R, Lutter M, Carmody T, Lu H, Tamminga CA. Brain imaging demonstrates a reduced neural impact of eating in obesity. Obesity (Silver Spring) 2016; 24:829-36. [PMID: 26891710 PMCID: PMC4814322 DOI: 10.1002/oby.21424] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/10/2015] [Revised: 11/12/2015] [Accepted: 11/14/2015] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE This study investigated functional brain response differences to food in women with BMI either <25 kg/m(2) (lean) or >35 kg/m(2) (severe obesity). DESIGN AND METHODS Thirty women, 18-65 years old, from academic medical centers participated. Baseline brain perfusion was measured with arterial spin labeling. Brain activity was measured via blood-oxygen-level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging in response to food cues, and appeal to cues was rated. Subjective hunger/fullness was reported pre- and post-imaging. After a standard meal, measures were repeated. RESULTS When fasting, brain perfusion did not differ significantly between groups; and both groups showed significantly increased activity in the neo- and limbic cortices and midbrain compared with baseline (P < 0.05, family-wise-error whole-brain corrected). Once fed, the lean group showed significantly decreased activation in these areas, especially the limbic cortex, whereas the group with severe obesity showed no such decreases (P < 0.05, family-wise-error whole-brain corrected). After eating, appeal ratings of food decreased only in lean women. Within groups, hunger decreased (P < 0.001) and fullness increased (P < 0.001) fasted to fed. CONCLUSIONS While fasting, brain response to food cues in women did not differ significantly despite BMI. After eating, brain activity quickly diminished in lean women but remained elevated in women with severe obesity. These brain activation findings confirm previous studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nancy Puzziferri
- Department of Surgery, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
- Department of Surgery, Veterans Administration North Texas Health Care System, Dallas, Texas, USA
- Department of Clinical Sciences, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
| | - Jeffrey M Zigman
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
- Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
| | - Binu P Thomas
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
- Advanced Imaging Research Center and the Department of Radiology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
| | - Perry Mihalakos
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
| | - Ryan Gallagher
- Department of Surgery, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
| | - Michael Lutter
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
| | - Thomas Carmody
- Department of Clinical Sciences, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
| | - Hanzhang Lu
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
- Advanced Imaging Research Center and the Department of Radiology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
| | - Carol A Tamminga
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA
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Tamminga CA, Thomas BP, Chin R, Mihalakos P, Youens K, Wagner AD, Preston AR. Hippocampal novelty activations in schizophrenia: disease and medication effects. Schizophr Res 2012; 138:157-63. [PMID: 22480957 DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2012.03.019] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2011] [Revised: 03/03/2012] [Accepted: 03/07/2012] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
We examined hippocampal activation in schizophrenia (SZ) with fMRI BOLD in response to the presentation of novel and familiar scenes. Voxel-wise analysis showed no group differences. However, anatomical region-of-interest analyses contrasting normal (NL), SZ-on-medication (SZ-ON), SZ-off-medication (SZ-OFF) showed substantial differences in MTL-based novelty responding, accounted for by the reduction in novelty responses in the SZ-OFF predominantly in the anterior hippocampus and parahippocampal cortex. These differences in novelty-based activation in the SZ-OFF group represent disease characteristics of schizophrenia without confounding effects of antipsychotic medication and illustrate the tendency of antipsychotic drug treatment to improve memory functions in schizophrenia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carol A Tamminga
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, TX, United States.
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Shad MU, Keshavan MS, Steinberg JL, Mihalakos P, Thomas BP, Motes MA, Soares JC, Tamminga CA. Neurobiology of self-awareness in schizophrenia: an fMRI study. Schizophr Res 2012; 138:113-9. [PMID: 22480958 PMCID: PMC3372627 DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2012.03.016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/28/2011] [Revised: 03/06/2012] [Accepted: 03/07/2012] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Self-awareness (SA) is one of the core domains of higher cortical functions and is frequently compromised in schizophrenia. Deficits in SA have been associated with functional and psychosocial impairment in this patient population. However, despite its clinical significance, only a few studies have examined the neural substrates of self-referential processing in schizophrenia. The aim of this study was to assess self-awareness in schizophrenia using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm designed to elicit judgments of self-reference in a simulated social context. While scanned, volunteers looked at visually-displayed sentences that had the volunteer's own first name (self-directed sentence-stimulus) or an unknown other person's first name (other-directed sentence stimulus) as the grammatical subject of the sentence. The volunteers were asked to discern whether each sentence-stimulus was about the volunteer personally (during a self-referential cue epoch) or asked whether each statement was about someone else (during an other-referential cue epoch). We predicted that individuals with schizophrenia would demonstrate altered functional activation to self- and other-directed sentence-stimuli as compared to controls. Fifteen controls and seventeen schizophrenia volunteers completed clinical assessments and SA fMRI task on a 3T Philips 3.0 T Achieva system. The results showed significantly greater activation in schizophrenia compared to controls for cortical midline structures in response to self- vs. other-directed sentence-stimuli. These findings support results from earlier studies and demonstrate selective alteration in the activation of cortical midline structures associated with evaluations of self-reference in schizophrenia as compared to controls.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mujeeb U. Shad
- The University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, TX
| | | | | | | | | | | | - Jair C. Soares
- The University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, TX
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Ivleva EI, Shohamy D, Mihalakos P, Morris DW, Carmody T, Tamminga CA. Memory generalization is selectively altered in the psychosis dimension. Schizophr Res 2012; 138:74-80. [PMID: 22551681 PMCID: PMC3365647 DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2012.04.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2011] [Revised: 03/28/2012] [Accepted: 04/03/2012] [Indexed: 12/25/2022]
Abstract
Global deficits in declarative memory are commonly reported in individuals with schizophrenia and psychotic bipolar disorder, and in their biological relatives. However, it remains unclear whether there are specific components within the global declarative memory dysfunction that are unique to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, or whether these impairments overlap the two psychoses. This study sought to characterize differential components of learning and memory in individuals within the psychosis dimension: probands with schizophrenia (SZP, n=33), probands with psychotic bipolar I disorder (BDP, n=20), and biological relatives of SZP (SZR, n=21), contrasted with healthy controls (HC, n=26). A computerized cognitive paradigm, the Acquired Equivalence test, with probes for associative learning, memory for learned associations, and memory generalization was administered, along with standardized neuropsychological measures of declarative memory. All study groups were able to learn and remember the associations, although SZP were slower than HC in the initial learning stages. Both SZP (significantly) and BDP (at a trend level) showed altered memory generalization compared to HC (SZP vs. HC, p=.038, d=.8; BDP vs. HC, p=.069, d=.95). SZR showed memory generalization intermediate between SZP and HC, although their performance did not differ significantly from either group. These findings indicate that probands with schizophrenia and bipolar psychoses have similar alteration in the ability to flexibly generalize learned knowledge when probed with novel stimuli, despite overall sufficient associative learning and memory for what they learned. These results suggest that the two disorders present a clinical continuum with overlapping hippocampus-mediated memory generalization dysfunction underlying the psychosis phenotype.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elena I Ivleva
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75390, USA.
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Shohamy D, Mihalakos P, Chin R, Thomas B, Wagner AD, Tamminga C. Learning and generalization in schizophrenia: effects of disease and antipsychotic drug treatment. Biol Psychiatry 2010; 67:926-32. [PMID: 20034612 PMCID: PMC4023678 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.10.025] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/05/2009] [Revised: 09/24/2009] [Accepted: 10/13/2009] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Schizophrenia involves alterations in hippocampal function. The implications of these alterations for memory function in the illness remain poorly understood. Furthermore, it remains unknown how memory is impacted by drug treatments for schizophrenia. The goal of this study was to delineate specific memory processes that are disrupted in schizophrenia and explore how they are affected by medication. We specifically focus on memory generalization--the ability to flexibly generalize memories in novel situations. METHODS Individuals with schizophrenia (n = 56) and healthy control subjects (n = 20) were tested on a computerized memory generalization paradigm. Participants first engaged in trial-by-error associative learning. They were then asked to generalize what they learned by responding to novel stimulus combinations. Individuals with schizophrenia were tested on or off antipsychotic medication, using a between-subject design in order to eliminate concerns about learning-set effects. RESULTS Individuals with schizophrenia were selectively impaired in their ability to generalize knowledge, despite having intact learning and memory accuracy. This impairment was found only in individuals tested off medication. Individuals tested on medication generalized almost as well as healthy control subjects. This between-group difference was selective to memory generalization. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that individuals with schizophrenia have a selective alteration in the ability to flexibly generalize past experience toward novel learning environments. This alteration is unaccompanied by global memory impairments. Additionally, the results indicate a robust generalization difference on the basis of medication status. These results suggest that hippocampal abnormalities in schizophrenia might be alleviated with antipsychotic medication, with important implications for understanding adaptive memory-guided behavior.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daphna Shohamy
- Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA.
| | - Perry Mihalakos
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas TX
| | - Ronald Chin
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas TX
| | - Binu Thomas
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas TX
| | | | - Carol Tamminga
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas TX
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Uh J, Yezhuvath U, Mihalakos P, Tamminga CA, Lu H. Perfusion Deficit in Schizophrenia and Correlation with Psychopathological Symptoms. Neuroimage 2009. [DOI: 10.1016/s1053-8119(09)71642-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022] Open
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Osuji IJ, McGarrahan A, Mihalakos P, Garver D, Kingsbury S, Cullum CM. Neuropsychological functioning in MRI-derived subgroups of schizophrenia. Schizophr Res 2007; 92:189-96. [PMID: 17363218 DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2006.12.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/26/2006] [Revised: 12/02/2006] [Accepted: 12/07/2006] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
This study examined neuropsychological functioning in two subgroups of patients with familial schizophrenia. Those who showed evidence of progressive ventricular enlargement observed across serial MRI scans (n=6) were compared with subjects whose ventricular volume remained static (n=10) over an average of 28 months. No differences were found in terms of age, education, ethnicity, level of psychotic symptomatology, DSM-IV subtype, age of onset, or duration of illness. Neurocognitively, the static ventricle group was impaired across more cognitive domains and had a larger percentage of subjects falling into the impaired range on a majority of measures, with the greatest differences on measures of attention (p<0.02) and nonverbal memory (p<0.07). These results suggest that clinically meaningful differences between these two MRI-derived subgroups of patients with schizophrenia may exist, and further underscore the heterogeneity of the illness.
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Affiliation(s)
- I J Osuji
- The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, 5323 Harry Hines Blvd., Dallas, TX 75390, USA
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