TY - JOUR
A1 - Heissel, Andreas
A1 - Pietrek, Anou F.
A1 - Schwefel, Melanie
A1 - Abula, Kahar
A1 - Wilbertz, Gregor
A1 - Heinzel, Stephan
A1 - Rapp, Michael A.
T1 - STEP.De study
BT - a multicentre cluster-randomised effectiveness trial of exercise therapy for patients with depressive symptoms in healthcare services : study protocol
JF - BMJ open
N2 - Introduction Although exercise therapy has widely been shown to be an efficacious treatment modality for depression, evidence for its effectiveness and cost efficiency is lacking. The Sport/Exercise Therapy for Depression study is a multicentre cluster-randomised effectiveness trial that aims to compare the effectiveness and cost efficiency of exercise therapy and psychotherapy as antidepressant treatment.
Methods and analysis 480 patients (aged 18-65) with an International Classification of Diseases diagnosis associated with depressive symptoms are recruited. Up to 30 clusters (psychotherapists) are randomly assigned to allocate patients to either an exercise or a psychotherapy treatment as usual in a 2: 1 ratio. The primary outcome (depressive symptoms) and the secondary outcomes (work and social adjustment, quality of life) will be assessed at six measurement time points (t0: baseline, t1: 8 weeks after treatment initiation, t2: 16 weeks after treatment initiation, t3/ 4/5: 2, 6, 12 months after treatment). Linear regression analyses will be used for the primary endpoint data analysis. For the secondary endpoints, mixed linear and logistic regression models with fixed and random factors will be added. For the cost efficiency analysis, expenditures in the 12 months before and after the intervention and the outcome difference will be compared between groups in a multilevel model. Recruitment start date was 1 July 2018 and the planned recruitment end date is 31 December 2020.
Ethics and dissemination The study protocol was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Potsdam (No. 17/2018) and the Freie Universitat Berlin (No. 206/2018) and registered in the ISRCTN registry. Informed written consent will be obtained from all participants. The study will be reported in accordance with the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials and the Recommendations for Interventional Trials statements. The results will be published in peer-reviewed academic journals and disseminated to the public.
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-036287
SN - 2044-6055
VL - 10
IS - 4
PB - BMJ Publishing Group
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Schulze, Susanne
A1 - Merz, Sibille
A1 - Thier, Anne
A1 - Tallarek, Marie
A1 - König, Franziska
A1 - Uhlenbrock, Greta
A1 - Nübling, Matthias
A1 - Lincke, Hans-Joachim
A1 - Rapp, Michael A.
A1 - Spallek, Jacob
A1 - Holmberg, Christine
T1 - Psychosocial burden in nurses working in nursing homes during the Covid-19 pandemic
BT - a cross-sectional study with quantitative and qualitative data
JF - BMC health services research
N2 - Background The Covid-19 pandemic led to increased work-related strain and psychosocial burden in nurses worldwide, resulting in high prevalences of mental health problems. Nurses in long-term care facilities seem to be especially affected by the pandemic. Nevertheless, there are few findings indicating possible positive changes for health care workers. Therefore, we investigated which psychosocial burdens and potential positive aspects nurses working in long-term care facilities experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Methods We conducted a mixed-methods study among nurses and nursing assistants working in nursing homes in Germany. The survey contained the third German version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ III). Using Welch's t-tests, we compared the COPSOQ results of our sample against a pre-pandemic reference group of geriatric nurses from Germany. Additionally, we conducted semi-structured interviews with geriatric nurses with a special focus on psychosocial stress, to reach a deeper understanding of their experiences on work-related changes and burdens during the pandemic. Data were analysed using thematic coding (Braun and Clarke). Results Our survey sample (n = 177) differed significantly from the pre-pandemic reference group in 14 out of 31 COPSOQ scales. Almost all of these differences indicated negative changes. Our sample scored significantly worse regarding the scales 'quantitative demands', 'hiding emotions', 'work-privacy conflicts', 'role conflicts', 'quality of leadership', 'support at work', 'recognition', 'physical demands', 'intention to leave profession', 'burnout', 'presenteeism' and 'inability to relax'. The interviews (n = 15) revealed six main themes related to nurses' psychosocial stress: 'overall working conditions', 'concern for residents', 'management of relatives', 'inability to provide terminal care', 'tensions between being infected and infecting others' and 'technicisation of care'. 'Enhanced community cohesion' (interviews), 'meaning of work' and 'quantity of social relations' (COPSOQ III) were identified as positive effects of the pandemic. Conclusions Results clearly illustrate an aggravation of geriatric nurses' situation and psychosocial burden and only few positive changes due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Pre-existing hardships seem to have further deteriorated and new stressors added to nurses' strain. The perceived erosion of care, due to an overemphasis of the technical in relation to the social and emotional dimensions of care, seems to be especially burdensome to geriatric nurses.
KW - COPSOQ
KW - Nurses
KW - Nursing home
KW - Psychosocial burden
KW - Mixed-methods study
KW - Covid-19
Y1 - 2022
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-08333-3
SN - 1472-6963
VL - 22
IS - 1
PB - BMC
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Ye, Fangyuan
A1 - Zhang, Shuo
A1 - Warby, Jonathan
A1 - Wu, Jiawei
A1 - Gutierrez-Partida, Emilio
A1 - Lang, Felix
A1 - Shah, Sahil
A1 - Saglamkaya, Elifnaz
A1 - Sun, Bowen
A1 - Zu, Fengshuo
A1 - Shoaee, Safa
A1 - Wang, Haifeng
A1 - Stiller, Burkhard
A1 - Neher, Dieter
A1 - Zhu, Wei-Hong
A1 - Stolterfoht, Martin
A1 - Wu, Yongzhen
T1 - Overcoming C-60-induced interfacial recombination in inverted perovskite solar cells by electron-transporting carborane
JF - Nature Communications
N2 - Inverted perovskite solar cells still suffer from significant non-radiative recombination losses at the perovskite surface and across the perovskite/C-60 interface, limiting the future development of perovskite-based single- and multi-junction photovoltaics. Therefore, more effective inter- or transport layers are urgently required. To tackle these recombination losses, we introduce ortho-carborane as an interlayer material that has a spherical molecular structure and a three-dimensional aromaticity. Based on a variety of experimental techniques, we show that ortho-carborane decorated with phenylamino groups effectively passivates the perovskite surface and essentially eliminates the non-radiative recombination loss across the perovskite/C-60 interface with high thermal stability. We further demonstrate the potential of carborane as an electron transport material, facilitating electron extraction while blocking holes from the interface. The resulting inverted perovskite solar cells deliver a power conversion efficiency of over 23% with a low non-radiative voltage loss of 110mV, and retain >97% of the initial efficiency after 400h of maximum power point tracking. Overall, the designed carborane based interlayer simultaneously enables passivation, electron-transport and hole-blocking and paves the way toward more efficient and stable perovskite solar cells. Effective transport layers are essential to suppress non-radiative recombination losses. Here, the authors introduce phenylamino-functionalized ortho-carborane as an interfacial layer, and realise inverted perovskite solar cells with efficiency of over 23% and operational stability of T97=400h.
Y1 - 2022
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34203-x
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 13
IS - 1
PB - Nature Publishing Group
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Förstner, Bernd Rainer
A1 - Böttger, Sarah Jane
A1 - Moldavski, Alexander
A1 - Bajbouj, Malek
A1 - Pfennig, Andrea
A1 - Manook, Andre
A1 - Ising, Marcus
A1 - Pittig, Andre
A1 - Heinig, Ingmar
A1 - Heinz, Andreas
A1 - Mathiak, Klaus
A1 - Schulze, Thomas G.
A1 - Schneider, Frank
A1 - Kamp-Becker, Inge
A1 - Meyer-Lindenberg, Andreas
A1 - Padberg, Frank
A1 - Banaschewski, Tobias
A1 - Bauer, Michael
A1 - Rupprecht, Rainer
A1 - Wittchen, Hans-Ulrich
A1 - Rapp, Michael A.
A1 - Tschorn, Mira
T1 - The associations of positive and negative valence systems, cognitive systems and social processes on disease severity in anxiety and depressive disorders
JF - Frontiers in psychiatry
N2 - Background Anxiety and depressive disorders share common features of mood dysfunctions. This has stimulated interest in transdiagnostic dimensional research as proposed by the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) approach by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) aiming to improve the understanding of underlying disease mechanisms. The purpose of this study was to investigate the processing of RDoC domains in relation to disease severity in order to identify latent disorder-specific as well as transdiagnostic indicators of disease severity in patients with anxiety and depressive disorders.
Methods Within the German research network for mental disorders, 895 participants (n = 476 female, n = 602 anxiety disorder, n = 257 depressive disorder) were recruited for the Phenotypic, Diagnostic and Clinical Domain Assessment Network Germany (PD-CAN) and included in this cross-sectional study. We performed incremental regression models to investigate the association of four RDoC domains on disease severity in patients with affective disorders: Positive (PVS) and Negative Valance System (NVS), Cognitive Systems (CS) and Social Processes (SP).
Results The results confirmed a transdiagnostic relationship for all four domains, as we found significant main effects on disease severity within domain-specific models (PVS: & beta; = -0.35; NVS: & beta; = 0.39; CS: & beta; = -0.12; SP: & beta; = -0.32). We also found three significant interaction effects with main diagnosis showing a disease-specific association.
Limitations The cross-sectional study design prevents causal conclusions. Further limitations include possible outliers and heteroskedasticity in all regression models which we appropriately controlled for.
Conclusion Our key results show that symptom burden in anxiety and depressive disorders is associated with latent RDoC indicators in transdiagnostic and disease-specific ways.
KW - Research Domain Criteria
KW - depression
KW - anxiety disoders
KW - disease severity
KW - transdiagnostic
KW - RDoC
Y1 - 2023
U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1161097
SN - 1664-0640
VL - 14
PB - Frontiers Research Foundation
CY - Lausanne
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Sebold, Miriam
A1 - Garbusow, Maria
A1 - Nebe, S.
A1 - Sundmacher, L.
A1 - Kuitunen-Paul, Sören
A1 - Wittchen, H. U.
A1 - Smolka, M.
A1 - Zimmermann, U.
A1 - Rapp, Michael A.
A1 - Huys, Q.
A1 - Schlagenhauf, Florian
A1 - Heinz, A.
T1 - From goals to habits in alcohol dependence
BT - association with treatment outcome and cognitive bias modification training
T2 - European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists
Y1 - 2018
SN - 0924-9338
SN - 1778-3585
VL - 48
SP - S274
EP - S274
PB - Elsevier
CY - Paris
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Garbusow, Maria
A1 - Nebe, Stephan
A1 - Sommer, Christian
A1 - Kuitunen-Paul, Sören
A1 - Sebold, Miriam
A1 - Schad, Daniel
A1 - Friedel, Eva
A1 - Veer, Ilya M.
A1 - Wittchen, Hans-Ulrich
A1 - Rapp, Michael A.
A1 - Ripke, Stephan
A1 - Walter, Henrik
A1 - Huys, Quentin J. M.
A1 - Schlagenhauf, Florian
A1 - Smolka, Michael N.
A1 - Heinz, Andreas
T1 - Pavlovian-To-Instrumental Transfer and Alcohol Consumption in Young Male Social Drinkers
BT - Behavioral, Neural and Polygenic Correlates
JF - Journal of Clinical Medicine
N2 - In animals and humans, behavior can be influenced by irrelevant stimuli, a phenomenon called Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT). In subjects with substance use disorder, PIT is even enhanced with functional activation in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and amygdala. While we observed enhanced behavioral and neural PIT effects in alcohol-dependent subjects, we here aimed to determine whether behavioral PIT is enhanced in young men with high-risk compared to low-risk drinking and subsequently related functional activation in an a-priori region of interest encompassing the NAcc and amygdala and related to polygenic risk for alcohol consumption. A representative sample of 18-year old men (n = 1937) was contacted: 445 were screened, 209 assessed: resulting in 191 valid behavioral, 139 imaging and 157 genetic datasets. None of the subjects fulfilled criteria for alcohol dependence according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV-TextRevision (DSM-IV-TR). We measured how instrumental responding for rewards was influenced by background Pavlovian conditioned stimuli predicting action-independent rewards and losses. Behavioral PIT was enhanced in high-compared to low-risk drinkers (b = 0.09, SE = 0.03, z = 2.7, p < 0.009). Across all subjects, we observed PIT-related neural blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal in the right amygdala (t = 3.25, p(SVC) = 0.04, x = 26, y = -6, z = -12), but not in NAcc. The strength of the behavioral PIT effect was positively correlated with polygenic risk for alcohol consumption (r(s) = 0.17, p = 0.032). We conclude that behavioral PIT and polygenic risk for alcohol consumption might be a biomarker for a subclinical phenotype of risky alcohol consumption, even if no drug-related stimulus is present. The association between behavioral PIT effects and the amygdala might point to habitual processes related to out PIT task. In non-dependent young social drinkers, the amygdala rather than the NAcc is activated during PIT; possible different involvement in association with disease trajectory should be investigated in future studies.
KW - Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer
KW - amygdala
KW - alcohol
KW - polygenic risk
KW - high risk drinkers
Y1 - 2019
U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm8081188
SN - 2077-0383
VL - 8
IS - 8
PB - MDPI
CY - Basel
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Jacob, Louis
A1 - Rapp, Michael A.
A1 - Kostev, Karel
T1 - Long-term use of benzodiazepines in older patients in Germany
BT - a retrospective analysis
JF - Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology
N2 - Background: The purpose of this study was to analyze the prevalence of long-term benzodiazepine use in older adults treated in general and neuropsychiatric practices in Germany. Methods: This study included 32,182 patients over the age of 65 years who received benzodiazepine prescriptions for the first time between January 2010 and December 2014 in general and neuropsychiatric practices in Germany. Follow up lasted until July 2016. The main outcome measure was the proportion of patients treated with benzodiazepines for >6 months. Results: The proportion of patients with benzodiazepine therapy for >6 months increased with age (65-70 years: 12.3%; 71-80 years: 15.5%; 81-90 years: 23.7%; >90 years: 31.6%) but did not differ significantly between men (15.5%) and women (17.1%). The proportion of patients who received benzodiazepines for >6 months was higher among those with sleep disorders (21.1%), depression (20.8%) and dementia (32.1%) than among those with anxiety (15.5%). By contrast, this proportion was lower among people diagnosed with adjustment disorders (7.7%) and back pain (3.8%). Conclusion: Overall, long-term use of benzodiazepines is common in older people, particularly in patients over the age of 80 and in those diagnosed with dementia, sleep disorders, or depression.
KW - benzodiazepines
KW - Germany
KW - long-term use
KW - older people
KW - risk factors
Y1 - 2017
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/2045125317696454
SN - 2045-1253
SN - 2045-1261
VL - 7
IS - 6/7
SP - 191
EP - 200
PB - Sage Publ.
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Sebold, Miriam
A1 - Chen, Hao
A1 - Önal, Aleyna
A1 - Kuitunen-Paul, Sören
A1 - Mojtahedzadeh, Negin
A1 - Garbusow, Maria
A1 - Nebe, Stephan
A1 - Wittchen, Hans-Ulrich
A1 - Huys, Quentin J. M.
A1 - Schlagenhauf, Florian
A1 - Rapp, Michael A.
A1 - Smolka, Michael N.
A1 - Heinz, Andreas
T1 - Stronger prejudices are associated with decreased model-based control
JF - Frontiers in psychology
N2 - Background:
Prejudices against minorities can be understood as habitually negative evaluations that are kept in spite of evidence to the contrary. Therefore, individuals with strong prejudices might be dominated by habitual or "automatic" reactions at the expense of more controlled reactions. Computational theories suggest individual differences in the balance between habitual/model-free and deliberative/model-based decision-making.
Methods:
127 subjects performed the two Step task and completed the blatant and subtle prejudice scale.
Results:
By using analyses of choices and reaction times in combination with computational modeling, subjects with stronger blatant prejudices showed a shift away from model-based control. There was no association between these decision-making processes and subtle prejudices.
Conclusion:
These results support the idea that blatant prejudices toward minorities are related to a relative dominance of habitual decision-making. This finding has important implications for developing interventions that target to change prejudices across societies.
KW - subtle and blatant prejudice
KW - immigrant
KW - social behavior;
KW - decision-making
KW - computational modeling
KW - reinforcement learning
Y1 - 2022
U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.767022
SN - 1664-1078
VL - 12
PB - Frontiers Research Foundation
CY - Lausanne
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Jara Muñoz, Julius
A1 - Melnick, Daniel
A1 - Li, Shaoyang
A1 - Socquet, Anne
A1 - Cortés-Aranda, Joaquín
A1 - Brill, Dominik
A1 - Strecker, Manfred
T1 - The cryptic seismic potential of the Pichilemu blind fault in Chile revealed by off-fault geomorphology
JF - Nature Communications
N2 - The first step towards assessing hazards in seismically active regions involves mapping capable faults and estimating their recurrence times. While the mapping of active faults is commonly based on distinct geologic and geomorphic features evident at the surface, mapping blind seismogenic faults is complicated by the absence of on-fault diagnostic features. Here we investigated the Pichilemu Fault in coastal Chile, unknown until it generated a Mw 7.0 earthquake in 2010. The lack of evident surface faulting suggests activity along a partly-hidden blind fault. We used off-fault deformed marine terraces to estimate a fault-slip rate of 0.52 ± 0.04 m/ka, which, when integrated with satellite geodesy suggests a 2.12 ± 0.2 ka recurrence time for Mw~7.0 normal-faulting earthquakes. We propose that extension in the Pichilemu region is associated with stress changes during megathrust earthquakes and accommodated by sporadic slip during upper-plate earthquakes, which has implications for assessing the seismic potential of cryptic faults along convergent margins and elsewhere.
Y1 - 2022
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30754-1
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 13
PB - Springer Nature
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Jozi Najafabadi, Azam
A1 - Haberland, Christian
A1 - Ryberg, Trond
A1 - Verwater, Vincent F.
A1 - Breton, Eline le
A1 - Handy, Mark R.
A1 - Weber, Michael
T1 - Relocation of earthquakes in the southern and eastern Alps (Austria, Italy) recorded by the dense, temporary SWATH-D network using a Markov chain Monte Carlo inversion
JF - Solid earth : SE ; an interaktive open access journal of the European Geosciences Union
N2 - In this study, we analyzed a large seismological dataset from temporary and permanent networks in the southern and eastern Alps to establish high-precision hypocenters and 1-D V-P and V-P/V-S models. The waveform data of a subset of local earthquakes with magnitudes in the range of 1-4.2 M-L were recorded by the dense, temporary SWATH-D network and selected stations of the AlpArray network between September 2017 and the end of 2018. The first arrival times of P and S waves of earthquakes are determined by a semi-automatic procedure. We applied a Markov chain Monte Carlo inversion method to simultaneously calculate robust hypocenters, a 1-D velocity model, and station corrections without prior assumptions, such as initial velocity models or earthquake locations. A further advantage of this method is the derivation of the model parameter uncertainties and noise levels of the data. The precision estimates of the localization procedure is checked by inverting a synthetic travel time dataset from a complex 3-D velocity model and by using the real stations and earthquakes geometry. The location accuracy is further investigated by a quarry blast test. The average uncertainties of the locations of the earthquakes are below 500m in their epicenter and similar to 1.7 km in depth. The earthquake distribution reveals seismicity in the upper crust (0-20 km), which is characterized by pronounced clusters along the Alpine frontal thrust, e.g., the Friuli-Venetia (FV) region, the Giudicarie-Lessini (GL) and Schio-Vicenza domains, the Austroalpine nappes, and the Inntal area. Some seismicity also occurs along the Periadriatic Fault. The general pattern of seismicity reflects head-on convergence of the Adriatic indenter with the Alpine orogenic crust. The seismicity in the FV and GL regions is deeper than the modeled frontal thrusts, which we interpret as indication for southward propagation of the southern Alpine deformation front (blind thrusts).
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/se-12-1087-2021
SN - 1869-9529
SN - 1869-9510
VL - 12
IS - 5
SP - 1087
EP - 1109
PB - Copernicus
CY - Göttingen
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Klaus, Benita
A1 - Müller, Patrick
A1 - van Wickeren, Nora
A1 - Dordevic, Milos
A1 - Schmicker, Marlen
A1 - Zdunczyk, Yael
A1 - Brigadski, Tanja
A1 - Lessmann, Volkmar
A1 - Vielhaber, Stefan
A1 - Schreiber, Stefanie
A1 - Müller, Notger Germar
T1 - Structural and functional brain alterations in patients with myasthenia gravis
JF - Brain communications
N2 - Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune disease affecting neuromuscular transmission and causing skeletal muscle weakness. Additionally, systemic inflammation, cognitive deficits and autonomic dysfunction have been described.
However, little is known about myasthenia gravis-related reorganization of the brain. In this study, we thus investigated the structural and functional brain changes in myasthenia gravis patients.
Eleven myasthenia gravis patients (age: 70.64 +/- 9.27; 11 males) were compared to age-, sex- and education-matched healthy controls (age: 70.18 +/- 8.98; 11 males). Most of the patients (n = 10, 0.91%) received cholinesterase inhibitors.
Structural brain changes were determined by applying voxel-based morphometry using high-resolution T-1-weighted sequences. Functional brain changes were assessed with a neuropsychological test battery (including attention, memory and executive functions), a spatial orientation task and brain-derived neurotrophic factor blood levels.
Myasthenia gravis patients showed significant grey matter volume reductions in the cingulate gyrus, in the inferior parietal lobe and in the fusiform gyrus. Furthermore, myasthenia gravis patients showed significantly lower performance in executive functions, working memory (Spatial Span, P = 0.034, d = 1.466), verbal episodic memory (P = 0.003, d = 1.468) and somatosensory-related spatial orientation (Triangle Completion Test, P = 0.003, d = 1.200).
Additionally, serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor levels were significantly higher in myasthenia gravis patients (P = 0.001, d = 2.040). Our results indicate that myasthenia gravis is associated with structural and functional brain alterations. Especially the grey matter volume changes in the cingulate gyrus and the inferior parietal lobe could be associated with cognitive deficits in memory and executive functions.
Furthermore, deficits in somatosensory-related spatial orientation could be associated with the lower volumes in the inferior parietal lobe. Future research is needed to replicate these findings independently in a larger sample and to investigate the underlying mechanisms in more detail.
Klaus et al. compared myasthenia gravis patients to matched healthy control subjects and identified functional alterations in memory functions as well as structural alterations in the cingulate gyrus, in the inferior parietal lobe and in the fusiform gyrus.
KW - myasthenia gravis
KW - neuroplasticity
KW - VBM
KW - neuropsychological testing
KW - BDNF
Y1 - 2022
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcac018
SN - 2632-1297
VL - 4
IS - 1
PB - Oxford Univ. Press
CY - Oxford
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Menze, Inga
A1 - Müller, Notger Germar
A1 - Zähle, Tino
A1 - Schmicker, Marlen
T1 - Individual response to transcranial direct current stimulation as a function of working memory capacity and electrode montage
JF - Frontiers in human neuroscience
N2 - Introduction
Attempts to improve cognitive abilities via transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) have led to ambiguous results, likely due to the method's susceptibility to methodological and inter-individual factors. Conventional tDCS, i.e., using an active electrode over brain areas associated with the targeted cognitive function and a supposedly passive reference, neglects stimulation effects on entire neural networks.
Methods
We investigated the advantage of frontoparietal network stimulation (right prefrontal anode, left posterior parietal cathode) against conventional and sham tDCS in modulating working memory (WM) capacity dependent transfer effects of a single-session distractor inhibition (DIIN) training. Since previous results did not clarify whether electrode montage drives this individual transfer, we here compared conventional to frontoparietal and sham tDCS and reanalyzed data of 124 young, healthy participants in a more robust way using linear mixed effect modeling.
Results
The interaction of electrode montage and WM capacity resulted in systematic differences in transfer effects. While higher performance gains were observed with increasing WM capacity in the frontoparietal stimulation group, low WM capacity individuals benefited more in the sham condition. The conventional stimulation group showed subtle performance gains independent of WM capacity.
Discussion
Our results confirm our previous findings of WM capacity dependent transfer effects on WM by a single-session DIIN training combined with tDCS and additionally highlight the pivotal role of the specific electrode montage. WM capacity dependent differences in frontoparietal network recruitment, especially regarding the parietal involvement, are assumed to underlie this observation.
KW - tDCS
KW - electrode montage
KW - individual differences
KW - working memory
KW - capacity
KW - distractor inhibition
KW - frontoparietal network
Y1 - 2023
U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2023.1134632
SN - 1662-5161
VL - 17
PB - Frontiers Media
CY - Lausanne
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Menze, Inga
A1 - Müller, Patrick
A1 - Müller, Notger Germar
A1 - Schmicker, Marlen
T1 - Age-related cognitive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and associated mental health changes in Germans
JF - Scientific reports
N2 - Restrictive means to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have not only imposed broad challenges on mental health but might also affect cognitive health. Here we asked how restriction-related changes influence cognitive performance and how age, perceived loneliness, depressiveness and affectedness by restrictions contribute to these effects. 51 Germans completed three assessments of an online based study during the first lockdown in Germany (April 2020), a month later, and during the beginning of the second lockdown (November 2020). Participants completed nine online cognitive tasks of the MyBrainTraining and online questionnaires about their perceived strain and impact on lifestyle factors by the situation (affectedness), perceived loneliness, depressiveness as well as subjective cognitive performance. The results suggested a possible negative impact of depressiveness and affectedness on objective cognitive performance within the course of the lockdown. The younger the participants, the more pronounced these effects were. Loneliness and depressiveness moreover contributed to a worse evaluation of subjective cognition. In addition, especially younger individuals reported increased distress. As important educational and social input has partly been scarce during this pandemic and mental health problems have increased, future research should also assess cognitive long-term consequences.
Y1 - 2022
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11283-9
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 12
IS - 1
PB - Nature portfolio
CY - Berlin
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zielhofer, Christoph
A1 - Schmidt, Johannes
A1 - Reiche, Niklas
A1 - Tautenhahn, Marie
A1 - Ballasus, Helen
A1 - Burkart, Michael
A1 - Linstädter, Anja
A1 - Dietze, Elisabeth
A1 - Kaiser, Knut
A1 - Mehler, Natascha
T1 - The lower Havel River Region (Brandenburg, Germany)
BT - a 230-Year-Long historical map record indicates a decrease in surface water areas and groundwater levels
JF - Water
N2 - Instrumental data show that the groundwater and lake levels in Northeast Germany have decreased over the past decades, and this process has accelerated over the past few years. In addition to global warming, the direct influence of humans on the local water balance is suspected to be the cause. Since the instrumental data usually go back only a few decades, little is known about the multidecadal to centennial-scale trend, which also takes long-term climate variation and the long-term influence by humans on the water balance into account. This study aims to quantitatively reconstruct the surface water areas in the Lower Havel Inner Delta and of adjacent Lake Gulpe in Brandenburg. The analysis includes the calculation of surface water areas from historical and modern maps from 1797 to 2020. The major finding is that surface water areas have decreased by approximately 30% since the pre-industrial period, with the decline being continuous. Our data show that the comprehensive measures in Lower Havel hydro-engineering correspond with groundwater lowering that started before recent global warming. Further, large-scale melioration measures with increasing water demands in the upstream wetlands beginning from the 1960s to the 1980s may have amplified the decline in downstream surface water areas.
KW - long-term hydrological changes
KW - historical maps
KW - review of written
KW - sources
KW - preindustrial to industrial period
KW - hydro-engineering history;
KW - effects of global warming
KW - drying trend
KW - wetlands
KW - drainage works to
KW - create cropland
KW - Lower Havel River Region
KW - Brandenburg
KW - Germany
Y1 - 2022
U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/w14030480
SN - 2073-4441
VL - 14
IS - 3
PB - MDPI
CY - Basel
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Ring, Raphaela M.
A1 - Eisenmann, Clemens
A1 - Kandil, Farid
A1 - Steckhan, Nico
A1 - Demmrich, Sarah
A1 - Klatte, Caroline
A1 - Kessler, Christian S.
A1 - Jeitler, Michael
A1 - Boschmann, Michael
A1 - Michalsen, Andreas
A1 - Blakeslee, Sarah B.
A1 - Stöckigt, Barbara
A1 - Stritter, Wiebke
A1 - Koppold-Liebscher, Daniela A.
T1 - Mental and behavioural responses to Bahá’í fasting: Looking behind the scenes of a religiously motivated intermittent fast using a mixed methods approach
JF - Nutrients
N2 - Background/Objective: Historically, fasting has been practiced not only for medical but also for religious reasons. Baha'is follow an annual religious intermittent dry fast of 19 days. We inquired into motivation behind and subjective health impacts of Baha'i fasting. Methods: A convergent parallel mixed methods design was embedded in a clinical single arm observational study. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted before (n = 7), during (n = 8), and after fasting (n = 8). Three months after the fasting period, two focus group interviews were conducted (n = 5/n = 3). A total of 146 Baha'i volunteers answered an online survey at five time points before, during, and after fasting. Results: Fasting was found to play a central role for the religiosity of interviewees, implying changes in daily structures, spending time alone, engaging in religious practices, and experiencing social belonging. Results show an increase in mindfulness and well-being, which were accompanied by behavioural changes and experiences of self-efficacy and inner freedom. Survey scores point to an increase in mindfulness and well-being during fasting, while stress, anxiety, and fatigue decreased. Mindfulness remained elevated even three months after the fast. Conclusion: Baha'i fasting seems to enhance participants' mindfulness and well-being, lowering stress levels and reducing fatigue. Some of these effects lasted more than three months after fasting.
KW - intermittent food restriction
KW - mindfulness
KW - self-efficacy
KW - well-being
KW - mixed methods
KW - health behaviour
KW - coping ability
KW - religiously motivated
KW - dry fasting
Y1 - 2022
U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14051038
SN - 2072-6643
VL - 14
IS - 5
PB - MDPI
CY - Basel
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - De Freitas, Jessica K.
A1 - Johnson, Kipp W.
A1 - Golden, Eddye
A1 - Nadkarni, Girish N.
A1 - Dudley, Joel T.
A1 - Böttinger, Erwin
A1 - Glicksberg, Benjamin S.
A1 - Miotto, Riccardo
T1 - Phe2vec
BT - Automated disease phenotyping based on unsupervised embeddings from electronic health records
JF - Patterns
N2 - Robust phenotyping of patients from electronic health records (EHRs) at scale is a challenge in clinical informatics. Here, we introduce Phe2vec, an automated framework for disease phenotyping from EHRs based on unsupervised learning and assess its effectiveness against standard rule-based algorithms from Phenotype KnowledgeBase (PheKB). Phe2vec is based on pre-computing embeddings of medical concepts and patients' clinical history. Disease phenotypes are then derived from a seed concept and its neighbors in the embedding space. Patients are linked to a disease if their embedded representation is close to the disease phenotype. Comparing Phe2vec and PheKB cohorts head-to-head using chart review, Phe2vec performed on par or better in nine out of ten diseases. Differently from other approaches, it can scale to any condition and was validated against widely adopted expert-based standards. Phe2vec aims to optimize clinical informatics research by augmenting current frameworks to characterize patients by condition and derive reliable disease cohorts.
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2021.100337
SN - 2666-3899
VL - 2
IS - 9
PB - Elsevier
CY - Amsterdam
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Grdseloff, Nastasja
A1 - Boulday, Gwenola
A1 - Roedel, Claudia J.
A1 - Otten, Cecile
A1 - Vannier, Daphne Raphaelle
A1 - Cardoso, Cecile
A1 - Faurobert, Eva
A1 - Dogra, Deepika
A1 - Tournier-Lasserve, Elisabeth
A1 - Abdelilah-Seyfried, Salim
T1 - Impaired retinoic acid signaling in cerebral cavernous malformations
JF - Scientific reports
N2 - The capillary-venous pathology cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM) is caused by loss of CCM1/Krev interaction trapped protein 1 (KRIT1), CCM2/MGC4607, or CCM3/PDCD10 in some endothelial cells. Mutations of CCM genes within the brain vasculature can lead to recurrent cerebral hemorrhages. Pharmacological treatment options are urgently needed when lesions are located in deeply-seated and in-operable regions of the central nervous system. Previous pharmacological suppression screens in disease models of CCM led to the discovery that treatment with retinoic acid improved CCM phenotypes. This finding raised a need to investigate the involvement of retinoic acid in CCM and test whether it has a curative effect in preclinical mouse models. Here, we show that components of the retinoic acid synthesis and degradation pathway are transcriptionally misregulated across disease models of CCM. We complemented this analysis by pharmacologically modifying retinoic acid levels in zebrafish and human endothelial cell models of CCM, and in acute and chronic mouse models of CCM. Our pharmacological intervention studies in CCM2-depleted human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and krit1 mutant zebrafish showed positive effects when retinoic acid levels were increased. However, therapeutic approaches to prevent the development of vascular lesions in adult chronic murine models of CCM were drug regiment-sensitive, possibly due to adverse developmental effects of this hormone. A treatment with high doses of retinoic acid even worsened CCM lesions in an adult chronic murine model of CCM. This study provides evidence that retinoic acid signaling is impaired in the CCM pathophysiology and suggests that modification of retinoic acid levels can alleviate CCM phenotypes.
KW - Developmental biology
KW - Molecular medicine
Y1 - 2023
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31905-0
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 13
IS - 1
PB - Nature Portfolio
CY - Berlin
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Smith, Taylor
A1 - Boers, Niklas
T1 - Global vegetation resilience linked to water availability and variability
JF - Nature Communications
N2 - Quantifying the resilience of vegetated ecosystems is key to constraining both present-day and future global impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Here we apply both empirical and theoretical resilience metrics to remotely-sensed vegetation data in order to examine the role of water availability and variability in controlling vegetation resilience at the global scale. We find a concise global relationship where vegetation resilience is greater in regions with higher water availability. We also reveal that resilience is lower in regions with more pronounced inter-annual precipitation variability, but find less concise relationships between vegetation resilience and intra-annual precipitation variability. Our results thus imply that the resilience of vegetation responds differently to water deficits at varying time scales. In view of projected increases in precipitation variability, our findings highlight the risk of ecosystem degradation under ongoing climate change.
Vegetation dynamics depend on both the amount of precipitation and its variability over time. Here, the authors show that vegetation resilience is greater where water availability is higher and where precipitation is more stable from year to year.
Y1 - 2023
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36207-7
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 14
IS - 1
PB - Springer Nature
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Falkenhagen, Undine
A1 - Knöchel, Jane
A1 - Kloft, Charlotte
A1 - Huisinga, Wilhelm
T1 - Deriving mechanism-based pharmacodynamic models by reducing quantitative systems pharmacology models
BT - an application to warfarin
JF - CPT: Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology
N2 - Quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) models integrate comprehensive qualitative and quantitative knowledge about pharmacologically relevant processes. We previously proposed a first approach to leverage the knowledge in QSP models to derive simpler, mechanism-based pharmacodynamic (PD) models. Their complexity, however, is typically still too large to be used in the population analysis of clinical data. Here, we extend the approach beyond state reduction to also include the simplification of reaction rates, elimination of reactions, and analytic solutions. We additionally ensure that the reduced model maintains a prespecified approximation quality not only for a reference individual but also for a diverse virtual population. We illustrate the extended approach for the warfarin effect on blood coagulation. Using the model-reduction approach, we derive a novel small-scale warfarin/international normalized ratio model and demonstrate its suitability for biomarker identification. Due to the systematic nature of the approach in comparison with empirical model building, the proposed model-reduction algorithm provides an improved rationale to build PD models also from QSP models in other applications.
Y1 - 2023
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/psp4.12903
SN - 2163-8306
VL - 12
IS - 4
SP - 432
EP - 443
PB - Wiley
CY - Hoboken
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Moreno-Romero, Jordi
A1 - Probst, Aline V.
A1 - Trindade, Inês
A1 - Kalyanikrishna,
A1 - Engelhorn, Julia
A1 - Farrona, Sara
T1 - Looking At the Past and Heading to the Future
BT - Meeting Summary of the 6th European Workshop on Plant Chromatin 2019 in Cologne, Germany
JF - Frontiers in Plant Science
N2 - In June 2019, more than a hundred plant researchers met in Cologne, Germany, for the 6th European Workshop on Plant Chromatin (EWPC). This conference brought together a highly dynamic community of researchers with the common aim to understand how chromatin organization controls gene expression, development, and plant responses to the environment. New evidence showing how epigenetic states are set, perpetuated, and inherited were presented, and novel data related to the three-dimensional organization of chromatin within the nucleus were discussed. At the level of the nucleosome, its composition by different histone variants and their specialized histone deposition complexes were addressed as well as the mechanisms involved in histone post-translational modifications and their role in gene expression. The keynote lecture on plant DNA methylation by Julie Law (SALK Institute) and the tribute session to Lars Hennig, honoring the memory of one of the founders of the EWPC who contributed to promote the plant chromatin and epigenetic field in Europe, added a very special note to this gathering. In this perspective article we summarize some of the most outstanding data and advances on plant chromatin research presented at this workshop.
KW - EWPC2019
KW - chromatin
KW - epigenetics
KW - transcription
KW - nucleus
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2019.01795
SN - 1664-462X
VL - 10
IS - 1795
SP - 1
EP - 12
PB - Frontiers Media
CY - Lausanne
ER -