• Energy Research
• 2016-2025close
• clinical medicine close
• Neuroinformatics close

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is a ventral striatal structure underlying reward, reinforcement, and motivation, with extensive anatomic and functional connections to a wide range of affective processing structures (medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), amygdala, and insula). Characterizing how acute alcohol intake affects resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) between the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and these regions will improve mechanistic understanding of alcohol's neurobehavioral effects, including the neural overlap between acute alcohol effects and pain processing.Fifteen healthy social drinkers (10 women; age: 25-45 years) were included in the study. Participants completed one session in which they consumed an alcohol dose targeting a breath alcohol concentration of 0.08 g/dL, and in a second a placebo beverage. Nine-minute resting state fMRI scans were acquired 30-35 min after beverage administration during each session. rsFC between NAc and a priori corticolimbic regions of interest (mPFC, amgydala, and insula), were compared between beverage conditions. We also conducted an exploratory whole-brain seed-to-voxel analysis of NAc FC.Alcohol intake reduced rsFC between NAc and mPFC, as well as NAc and amygdala. Alcohol also reduced rsFC between NAc and a 97-voxel cluster including bilateral paracingulate cortex and anterior cingulate cortex.Findings suggest that acute alcohol intake reduces rsFC between NAc and several structures, including mPFC, amygdala, and rostral ACC in healthy social drinkers. These structures underlie reward, motivated behavior, and emotion regulation, and may provide mechanistic insight to how alcohol affects related processes, including pain.

Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated gray matter (GM) volume abnormalities in substance users. While the majority of substance users are polysubstance users, very little is known about the relation between GM volume abnormalities and polysubstance use.In this study we assessed the relation between GM volume, and the use of alcohol, tobacco, cocaine and cannabis as well as the total number of substances used, in a sample of 169 males: 15 non-substance users, 89 moderate drinkers, 27 moderate drinkers who also smoke tobacco, 13 moderate drinkers who also smoke tobacco and use cocaine, 10 heavy drinkers who smoke tobacco and use cocaine and 15 heavy drinkers who smoke tobacco, cannabis and use cocaine.Regression analyses showed that there was a negative relation between the number of substances used and volume of the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the ventral mPFC. Without controlling for the use of other substances, the volume of the dorsal mPFC was negatively associated with the use of alcohol, tobacco, and cocaine. After controlling for the use of other substances, a negative relation was found between tobacco and cocaine and volume of the thalami and ventrolateral PFC, respectively.These findings indicate that mPFC alterations may not be substance-specific, but rather related to the number of substances used, whereas, thalamic and ventrolateral PFC pathology is specifically associated with tobacco and cocaine use, respectively. These findings are important, as the differential alterations in GM volume may underlie different cognitive deficits associated with substance use disorders.

Repeated local administration of ethanol (EtOH) sensitized the posterior ventral tegmental area (pVTA) to the local dopamine (DA)-stimulating effects of EtOH. Chronic alcohol drinking increased nucleus accumbens (NAC) DA transmission and pVTA glutamate transmission in alcohol-preferring (P) rats. The objectives of the present study were to determine the effects of chronic alcohol drinking by P rats on the (a) sensitivity and response of the pVTA DA neurons to the DA-stimulating actions of EtOH, and (b) negative feedback control of DA (via D2 auto-receptors) and glutamate (via group II mGlu auto-receptors) release in the pVTA. EtOH (50 or 150 mg%) or the D2/3 receptor antagonist sulpiride (100 or 200 μM) was microinjected into the pVTA while DA was sampled with microdialysis in the NAC shell (NACsh). The mGluR2/3 antagonist LY341495 (1 or 10 μM) was perfused through the pVTA via reverse microdialysis and local extracellular glutamate and DA levels were measured. EtOH produced a more robust increase of NACsh DA in the 'EtOH' than 'Water' groups (e.g., 150 mg% EtOH: to ∼ 210 vs 150% of baseline). In contrast, sulpiride increased DA release in the NACsh more in the 'Water' than 'EtOH' groups (e.g., 200 μM sulpiride: to ∼ 190-240 vs 150-160% of baseline). LY341495 (at 10 μM) increased extracellular glutamate and DA levels in the 'Water' (to ∼ 150-180% and 180-230% of baseline, respectively) but not the 'EtOH' groups. These results indicate that alcohol drinking enhanced the DA-stimulating effects of EtOH, and attenuated the functional activities of D2 auto-receptors and group II mGluRs within the pVTA.

Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMIs) have shown great potential for generating prosthetic control signals. Translating BMIs into the clinic requires fully implantable, wireless systems; however, current solutions have high power requirements which limit their usability. Lowering this power consumption typically limits the system to a single neural modality, or signal type, and thus to a relatively small clinical market. Here, we address both of these issues by investigating the use of signal power in a single narrow frequency band as a decoding feature for extracting information from electrocorticographic (ECoG), electromyographic (EMG), and intracortical neural data. We have designed and tested the Multi-modal Implantable Neural Interface (MINI), a wireless recording system which extracts and transmits signal power in a single, configurable frequency band. In prerecorded datasets, we used the MINI to explore low frequency signal features and any resulting tradeoff between power savings and decoding performance losses. When processing intracortical data, the MINI achieved a power consumption 89.7% less than a more typical system designed to extract action potential waveforms. When processing ECoG and EMG data, the MINI achieved similar power reductions of 62.7% and 78.8%. At the same time, using the single signal feature extracted by the MINI, we were able to decode all three modalities with less than a 9% drop in accuracy relative to using high-bandwidth, modality-specific signal features. We believe this system architecture can be used to produce a viable, cost-effective, clinical BMI.

Alcohol abuse and dependence remain significant public health issues, and yet the brain circuits that are involved in the rewarding effects of alcohol are poorly understood. One promising way to study the effects of alcohol on neural activity is to examine its effects on functional connectivity between brain areas involved in reward and other functions. Here, we compared the effects of two doses of alcohol (0.4 and 0.8 g/kg) to placebo on resting-state functional connectivity in brain circuits related to reward in 19 healthy young men without histories of alcohol problems. The higher, but not the lower, dose of alcohol, significantly increased connectivity from reward-related regions to sensory and motor cortex, and between seeds associated with cognitive control. Contrary to expectation, alcohol did not significantly change connectivity for the ventral striatum at either dose. These findings reveal unrecognized effects of alcohol on connectivity from reward-related regions to visual and sensory cortical areas.

Moringa oleifera Lamarck is a species that has long been used in high demand in folk medicine, including for the treatment of epilepsy. Nevertheless, scientific studies demonstrating its anticonvulsant properties and the nature of the bioactive constituents are lacking.The aim of this study was to evaluate the anticonvulsant activities of the Moringa oleifera leaves in non-polar vs. polar extracts using behavioral and electroencephalographic (EEG) analyses in rodents.First, PTZ (80 mg/kg, i.p.)-induced tonic-clonic seizures were assayed via a dose-response (100, 200 and 300 mg/kg, i.p.) evaluation in mice. Then, a dosage of the extracts (100 or 300 mg/kg) and one metabolite (30 mg/kg, i.p.) was selected to evaluate its effect on PTZ (35 mg/kg, i.p.)-induced EEG paroxystic activities in rats compared to the effects of ethosuximide (reference anticonvulsant drug, 100 mg/kg, i.p.). Latent onset of the first paroxystic spike, first seizure and frequency as well as seizure severity, were determined using Racine's scale.Moringa oleifera ethanol and hexane extracts produced a delay in the seizure latency in mice and rats; this effect was improved in the presence of the hexane extract containing the active metabolite hexadecanoic acid. The anticonvulsant effects were corroborated in the spectral analysis by the potency of the EEG due to a reduction in the spike frequency and amplitude, as well as in the duration and severity of the seizures. The effects of the hexane extract resembled those observed in the reference antiepileptic drug ethosuximide.Moringa oleifera leaves possess anticonvulsant activities due to the complementary of the non-polar and polar constituents. However, the non-polar constituents appear to exert an important influence via the partial participation of fatty acids, providing evidence of the effects of this plant in epilepsy therapy.

Background: Diet is a modifiable behavior of interest in multiple sclerosis (MS); however, measures of diet in persons with MS have not been vetted for feasibility, acceptability, and validity. Methods: This cross-sectional study examined the Automated Self-Administered 24-H (ASA24) Dietary Assessment Tool in 30 persons with MS and 15 healthy control (HC) participants. Participants were prompted to complete six ASA24 recalls and undergo a standard doubly labeled water (DLW) protocol. Acceptability of ASA24 was assessed using an online questionnaire. Total energy expenditure (TEE) from DLW was compared with ASA24-reported energy intake for assessing validity. Results: All participants completed four or more ASA24 recalls, indicating feasibility of ASA24. Regarding acceptability, the hardest part of completing the ASA24 was remembering everything eaten the previous day. Pearson correlation coefficients between DLW TEE and ASA24 kcal/day were not significant among HC (r = 0.40; p = 0.14) or MS (r = 0.26; p = 0.16) participants. The absolute mean error between DLW TEE and ASA24 among HC participants was 694.96 ± 506.25 mean kcal/day and among MS participants was 585.37 ± 529.02 mean kcal/day; this represents a mean difference of 30 and 25%, respectively. Conclusion: This study established the feasibility and acceptability of ASA24 in persons with MS and provides a foundation regarding the need for further validation research examining appropriate outcomes for supporting dietary interventions.