Neural Reward Processing Mediates the Relationship between Insomnia Symptoms and Depression in Adolescence

Introduction: While insomnia is associated with an increased risk of incident cardiovascular disease (CVD), its relationship with ideal cardiovascular health (ICH) is less certain. Given that sleep disturbances increase with age, we examined the relationship between insomnia symptoms and ICH in older women. Methods: Among women participating in the ongoing Women’s Health Study stress cohort with no apparent history of CVD [N= 2588; Mean age= 72.5 ± 6.3], insomnia symptoms were characterized as self-reported difficulty falling asleep or waking up multiple times a night, three or more times per week. Ideal cardiovascular health, as defined by the American Heart Association’s 2020 Impact goals, included standard optimal targets for blood pressure, total cholesterol, glucose, body mass index, physical activity, diet, and smoking. We examined the relationship between insomnia symptoms and ICH using logistic regression, adjusting for clinical and demographic variables. Results: Of the 26588 participants, 52% reported insomnia symptoms, and 38% had ICH. Women with insomnia symptoms had significantly lower odds of ICH after full adjustment for age, race/ethnicity, education, income, depression/anxiety, marital status, and sleep duration (OR [95% CI]: 0.73 [0.64-0.83]). Moreover, compared to women without insomnia symptoms, those with insomnia symptoms were significantly more likely to have hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, depression, anxiety, currently smoke, drink one or more alcoholic beverages per day, have a BMI >30, or exercise less frequently. Conclusion: In older women, insomnia symptoms were significantly associated with lower odds of ideal cardiovascular health even after adjusting for socioeconomic status, psychosocial factors, and sleep duration. These results suggest insomnia screening may be an important component of cardiovascular health promotion in this patient population. Further research is needed to evaluate the effects of sleep behavioral interventions on improving ICH.

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Interaction of Cannabis Use Disorder and Striatal Connectivity in Antipsychotic Treatment Response

Schizophrenia Bulletin Open ◽

10.1093/schizbullopen/sgaa014 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Melanie Blair Thies ◽

Pamela DeRosse ◽

Deepak K Sarpal ◽

Miklos Argyelan ◽

Christina L Fales ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Treatment Response ◽

Reward Processing ◽

Cannabis Use ◽

First Episode ◽

Antipsychotic Treatment ◽

Cannabis Use Disorder ◽

Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders ◽

Double Blind ◽

History Of ◽

The Relationship

Abstract Antipsychotic (AP) medications are the mainstay for the treatment of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), but their efficacy is unpredictable and widely variable. Substantial efforts have been made to identify prognostic biomarkers that can be used to guide optimal prescription strategies for individual patients. Striatal regions involved in salience and reward processing are disrupted as a result of both SSD and cannabis use, and research demonstrates that striatal circuitry may be integral to response to AP drugs. In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the relationship between a history of cannabis use disorder (CUD) and a striatal connectivity index (SCI), a previously developed neural biomarker for AP treatment response in SSD. Patients were part of a 12-week randomized, double-blind controlled treatment study of AP drugs. A sample of 48 first-episode SSD patients with no more than 2 weeks of lifetime exposure to AP medications, underwent a resting-state fMRI scan pretreatment. Treatment response was defined a priori as a binary (response/nonresponse) variable, and a SCI was calculated in each patient. We examined whether there was an interaction between lifetime CUD history and the SCI in relation to treatment response. We found that CUD history moderated the relationship between SCI and treatment response, such that it had little predictive value in SSD patients with a CUD history. In sum, our findings highlight that biomarker development can be critically impacted by patient behaviors that influence neurobiology, such as a history of CUD.

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The relationship between insomnia symptoms and the dark triad personality traits

Personality and Individual Differences ◽

10.1016/j.paid.2018.05.001 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 131 ◽

pp. 212-215 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Umair Akram ◽

Sarah Allen ◽

Kristofor McCarty ◽

Maria Gardani ◽

Alice Tan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Personality Traits ◽

Dark Triad ◽

The Relationship ◽

Insomnia Symptoms

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Anxiety and depression mediate the relationship between insomnia symptoms and the personality traits of conscientiousness and emotional stability

Heliyon ◽

10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01939 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 5 (6) ◽

pp. e01939 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Umair Akram ◽

Maria Gardani ◽

Asha Akram ◽

Sarah Allen

Keyword(s):

Personality Traits ◽

Emotional Stability ◽

Anxiety And Depression ◽

The Relationship ◽

Insomnia Symptoms

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Insomnia in the context of short sleep increases suicide risk

SLEEP ◽

10.1093/sleep/zsaa245 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Hedström Anna Karin ◽

Ola Hössjer ◽

Rino Bellocco ◽

Weimin Ye ◽

Lagerros Ylva Trolle ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Sleep Duration ◽

Suicide Risk ◽

Proportional Hazards ◽

Cox Proportional Hazards ◽

Total Effect ◽

P Value ◽

Short Sleep ◽

Cox Proportional Hazards Models ◽

The Relationship ◽

Insomnia Symptoms

Abstract Study Objectives The relationship between insomnia and suicide risk is not completely understood. We aimed to investigate the influence of insomnia on suicide risk, taking both sleep duration and depression into consideration. Methods The present study is based on a Swedish prospective cohort study of 38,786 participants with a mean follow-up time of 19.2 years. Cox proportional hazards models with attained age as time-scale were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) of death by suicide with 95% confidence intervals (CI) for participants categorized by frequency of insomnia symptoms. Causal mediation analysis was performed to assess to what extent the relationship between insomnia and suicide risk is mediated by depression. Results Insomnia was only associated with suicide risk among short sleepers, whereas no significant association was observed among those who slept 7 h/night or more. The total effect of insomnia in the context of short sleep on suicide risk, expressed on the HR scale, was 2.85 (95% CI 1.42–5.74). The direct effect was 2.25 (95% CI 1.12–4.54) and the indirect effect, mediated by depression, was 1.27 (95% CI 1.05–1.53). Of the total effect, 32% was mediated by depression. The association between insomnia and suicide risk became more pronounced with decreasing depressive symptoms (p value for trend <0.05). Conclusions Insomnia in the context of short sleep increases suicide risk, both directly and indirectly by affecting the risk of depression. Abnormalities of sleep duration and insomnia symptoms should be evaluated when assessing suicide risk.

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Anxiety Mediates the Relationship between Perfectionism and Insomnia Symptoms: A Longitudinal Study

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0138865 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 10 (10) ◽

pp. e0138865 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Umair Akram ◽

Jason G. Ellis ◽

Nicola L. Barclay

Keyword(s):

Longitudinal Study ◽

The Relationship ◽

Insomnia Symptoms

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Great Expectations: A Critical Review of and Recommendations for the study of Reward Processing as a Cause and Predictor of Depression

10.1101/2020.03.04.975136 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Dylan M. Nielson ◽

Hanna Keren ◽

Georgia O’Callaghan ◽

Sarah M. Jackson ◽

Ioanna Douka ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Animal Studies ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Reward Processing ◽

Great Promise ◽

Neural Signals ◽

Great Expectations ◽

Classical Work ◽

Reported Data ◽

The Impact ◽

The Relationship

AbstractBoth human and animal studies support the relationship between depression and reward processing abnormalities, giving rise to the expectation that neural signals of these processes may serve as biomarkers or mechanistic treatment targets. Given the great promise of this research line, we scrutinize those findings and the theoretical claims that underlie them. To achieve this, we apply the framework provided by classical work on causality as well as contemporary approaches to prediction. We identify a number of conceptual, practical, and analytical challenges to this line of research, and use a pre-registered meta-analysis to quantify the longitudinal associations between reward processing aberrations and depression. We also investigate the impact of measurement error on reported data. We find that reward processing abnormalities do not reach levels that would be useful for clinical prediction, yet the evidence thus far does not exclude their possible causal role in depression.

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Peripheral-physiological and neural correlates of the flow experience while playing video games: a comprehensive review

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.10520 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

pp. e10520

Author(s):

Shiva Khoshnoud ◽

Federico Alvarez Igarzábal ◽

Marc Wittmann

Keyword(s):

Video Games ◽

Game Design ◽

Neural Correlates ◽

Reward Processing ◽

Neural Mechanisms ◽

Flow Experience ◽

Focused Attention ◽

Flow State ◽

Comprehensive Review ◽

The Relationship

The flow state is defined by intense involvement in an activity with high degrees of concentration and focused attention accompanied by a sense of pleasure. Video games are effective tools for inducing flow, and keeping players in this state is considered to be one of the central goals of game design. Many studies have focused on the underlying physiological and neural mechanisms of flow. Results are inconsistent when describing a unified mechanism underlying this mental state. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the physiological and neural correlates of flow and explains the relationship between the reported physiological and neural markers of the flow experience. Despite the heterogeneous results, it seems possible to establish associations between reported markers and the cognitive and experiential aspects of flow, particularly regarding arousal, attention control, reward processing, automaticity, and self-referential processing.

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Blood pressure, executive function, and network connectivity in middle-aged adults at risk of dementia in late life

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.2024265118 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 118 (37) ◽

pp. e2024265118

Author(s):

Lisanne M. Jenkins ◽

Alexandr Kogan ◽

Matthew Malinab ◽

Carson Ingo ◽

Sanaz Sedaghat ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Blood Pressure ◽

Executive Function ◽

Cognitive Decline ◽

Systolic Blood Pressure ◽

Executive Control ◽

Resting State ◽

Late Life ◽

Reward Processing ◽

Resting State Functional Connectivity ◽

The Relationship

Midlife blood pressure is associated with structural brain changes, cognitive decline, and dementia in late life. However, the relationship between early adulthood blood pressure exposure, brain structure and function, and cognitive performance in midlife is not known. A better understanding of these relationships in the preclinical stage may advance our mechanistic understanding of vascular contributions to late-life cognitive decline and dementia and may provide early therapeutic targets. To identify resting-state functional connectivity of executive control networks (ECNs), a group independent components analysis was performed of functional MRI scans of 600 individuals from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults longitudinal cohort study, with cumulative systolic blood pressure (cSBP) measured at nine visits over the preceding 30 y. Dual regression analysis investigated performance-related connectivity of ECNs in 578 individuals (mean age 55.5 ± 3.6 y, 323 female, 243 Black) with data from the Stroop color–word task of executive function. Greater connectivity of a left ECN to the bilateral anterior gyrus rectus, right posterior orbitofrontal cortex, and nucleus accumbens was associated with better executive control performance on the Stroop. Mediation analyses showed that while the relationship between cSBP and Stroop performance was mediated by white matter hyperintensities (WMH), resting-state connectivity of the ECN mediated the relationship between WMH and executive function. Increased connectivity of the left ECN to regions involved in reward processing appears to compensate for the deleterious effects of WMH on executive function in individuals across the burden of cumulative systolic blood pressure exposure in midlife.

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