Systematic review and meta-analysis of the visual mismatch negativity in schizophrenia.

Mismatch negativity (MMN) is an event-related potential component automatically elicited by events that violate predictions based on prior events. To elicit this component, researchers use stimulus repetition to induce predictions, and the MMN is obtained by subtracting the brain response to rare or unpredicted stimuli from that of frequent stimuli. Under the Predictive Processing framework, one increasingly popular interpretation of the mismatch response postulates that MMN represents a prediction error. In this context, the reduced MMN amplitude to auditory stimuli has been considered a potential biomarker of Schizophrenia, representing a reduced prediction error and the inability to update the mental model of the world based on the sensory signals. It is unclear, however, whether this amplitude reduction is specific for auditory events or if the visual MMN reveals a similar pattern in schizophrenia spectrum disorder. This review and meta-analysis aimed to summarise the available literature on the vMMN in schizophrenia. A systematic literature search resulted in 10 eligible studies that resulted in a combined effect size of g = -.63, CI [-.86, -.41], reflecting lower vMMN amplitudes in patients. These results are in line with the findings in the auditory domain. This component offers certain advantages, such as less susceptibility to overlap with components generated by attentional demands. Future studies should use vMMN to explore abnormalities in the Predictive Processing framework in different stages and groups of the SSD and increase the knowledge in the search for biomarkers in schizophrenia.

Autistic traits and event-related potentials in the general population: A scoping review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Differences in short and long-latency Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) can help us infer abnormalities in brain processing, considering early and later stages of stimuli processing across tasks and conditions. In autism research, the adult population remains largely understudied compared to samples at early stages of development. In this context, this scoping review briefly summarises what has been described in community and subclinical adult samples of autism. METHOD: The current scoping review and meta-analysis includes 50 records (N = 1652) and comprehensively explores short and long-latency ERP amplitudes and their relationship with autistic traits in adult community samples. RESULTS: This meta-analysis identified, with small to medium effect sizes, distinctive patterns in late ERP amplitudes, indicating enhanced responses to visual stimuli and the opposite patterns to auditory tasks in the included sample. Additionally, a pattern of higher amplitudes was also found for the component P3b in autistic traits. DISCUSSION: Differential effects in visual and auditory domains are explored in light of the predictive processing framework for Autism. It remains possible that different brain mechanisms operate to explain symptoms related with different sensory modalities. P3b is discussed as a possible component of interest in future studies as it revealed a more robust effect for differentiating severity in the expression of autistic traits in adulthood.

Effects of Concomitant Benzodiazepines and Antidepressants Long-Term Use on Social Decision-Making: Results From the Ultimatum Game.

Benzodiazepines and antidepressants have been shown to change responses to unfairness; however, the effects of their combined use on unfairness evaluation are unknown. This study examines the effects of concomitant benzodiazepines and antidepressants long-term use on the evaluation of fair and unfair offers. To analyze behavioral changes on responses to unfairness, we compared the performance of medicated participants and healthy controls in the Ultimatum Game (UG), both in the proposer and in the respondent role. The results showed that long-term psychotropic users had the worse economic strategy by accepting less offers than control subjects. However, in the proposer role, the unfair offers made by participants were similar between groups. The present results suggest that long-term use of psychotropic medication, specifically the combination of benzodiazepines and antidepressants, may increase the sensitivity to unfairness, resulting in higher rejection rates in conditions where this strategy is the most disadvantageous.

Abnormal Habituation of the Auditory Event-Related Potential P2 Component in Patients With Schizophrenia.

Auditory event-related potentials (ERP) may serve as diagnostic tools for schizophrenia and inform on the susceptibility for this condition. Particularly, the examination of N1 and P2 components of the auditory ERP may shed light on the impairments of information processing streams in schizophrenia. However, the habituation properties (i.e., decreasing amplitude with the repeated presentation of an auditory stimulus) of these components remain poorly studied compared to other auditory ERPs. Therefore, the current study used a roving paradigm to assess the modulation and habituation of N1 and P2 to simple (pure tones) and complex sounds (human voices and bird songs) in 26 first-episode patients with schizophrenia and 27 healthy participants. To explore the habituation properties of these ERPs, we measured the decrease in amplitude over a train of seven repetitions of the same stimulus (either bird songs or human voices). We observed that, for human voices, N1 and P2 amplitudes decreased linearly from stimulus 1-7, in both groups. Regarding bird songs, only the P2 component showed a decreased amplitude with stimulus presentation, exclusively in the control group. This suggests that patients did not show a fading of neural responses to repeated bird songs, reflecting abnormal habituation to this stimulus. This could reflect the inability to inhibit irrelevant or redundant information at later stages of auditory processing. In turn schizophrenia patients appear to have a preserved auditory processing of human voices.

Effects of benzodiazepines administration on identification of facial expressions of emotion: a meta-analysis.

RATIONALE: Benzodiazepines, a class of commonly prescribed drugs, were shown to cause cognitive impairments in several domains. However, the effect of benzodiazepines on social cognition is still unclear. OBJECTIVES: In order to clarify how benzodiazepines administration affects the identification of facial expressions of emotion (FEE), we conducted a meta-analysis of 8 empirical studies (N = 153 benzodiazepines, N = 153 placebo). RESULTS: Results showed that participants receiving benzodiazepines were less accurate at identifying facial expressions of anger compared with those receiving placebo (M = - 0.52). Regarding the remaining facial expressions, the meta-analysis did not reveal significant differences between the groups. CONCLUSIONS: We discuss several factors that may explain the differences in the identification of emotions in facial expressions associated with benzodiazepines administration. Additionally, the relevance of assessing the effects of benzodiazepines when used on a long-term basis is addressed.

Neuropsychiatric Symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis: State of the Art.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disabling neuroinflammatory disease. Psychiatric manifestations have a high prevalence in MS patients and may worsen the illness progression and the patients' quality of life (QoL). Depression is a highly prevalent condition in MS patients, associated with poorer adherence to treatment, decreased functional status and QoL, and increased suicide risk. Diagnosis and treatment of this disorder is challenging because of symptom overlap. Other prevalent psychiatric comorbidities are anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, psychotic disorders, substance misuse and personality disorders. As the illness progresses, personality changes can happen, as well as affect abnormalities. Cognitive changes occur frequently in MS patients, and affect features like processing speed, attention, learning, memory, visual spatial capabilities, and some language deficits. Disease-modifying treatments may reduce cognitive impairment because of their container action on the brain's lesion burden. Other QoL determinants such as fatigue, pain, sexual dysfunction, exercise, resilience and social support should be taken into account, in order to promote the individuals' well-being. Further studies are needed in order to elucidate the effectiveness of pharmacotherapy and more neuroimaging studies are required to clarify the relationship between structural changes and psychiatric comorbidities.

Course of serological tests in treated subjects with chronic Trypanosoma cruzi infection: A systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the course of serological tests in subjects with chronic Trypanosoma cruzi infection treated with anti-trypanosomal drugs. METHODS: A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted using individual participant data. Survival analysis and the Cox proportional hazards regression model with random effects to adjust for covariates were applied. The protocol was registered in the PROSPERO database (http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO; CRD42012002162). RESULTS: A total of 27 studies (1296 subjects) conducted in eight countries were included. The risk of bias was low for all domains in 17 studies (63.0%). Nine hundred and thirteen subjects were assessed (149 seroreversion events, 83.7% censored data) for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), 670 subjects (134 events, 80.0% censored) for indirect immunofluorescence assay (IIF), and 548 subjects (99 events, 82.0% censored) for indirect hemagglutination assay (IHA). A higher probability of seroreversion was observed within a shorter time span in subjects aged 1-19 years compared to adults. The chance of seroreversion also varied according to the country where the infection might have been acquired. For instance, the pooled adjusted hazard ratio between children/adolescents and adults for the IIF test was 1.54 (95% confidence interval 0.64-3.71) for certain countries of South America (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Paraguay) and 9.37 (95% confidence interval 3.44-25.50) for Brazil. CONCLUSIONS: The disappearance of anti-T. cruzi antibodies was demonstrated along the course of follow-up. An interaction between age at treatment and country setting was found.

Similar sound intensity dependence of the N1 and P2 components of the auditory ERP: Averaged and single trial evidence.

OBJECTIVE: The literature suggests that the N1 and P2 waves of the auditory ERP are dissociable at the developmental, experimental, and source levels. At the experimental level, inconsistent findings suggest different effects of intensity on the amplitudes of the auditory N1 and P2. Our main goal was to analyze the intensity dependence of the auditory N1 and P2 while controlling for habituation effects. METHODS: We examined the intensity dependence of both averaged and single-trial auditory N1 and P2 waves elicited in a repeated-stimulation protocol. RESULTS: N1 and P2 revealed similar intensity dependence on both standard and filter denoised ERP, with a linear tendency for higher intensities to elicit higher absolute peak amplitudes. At the single-trial level, both waves covary irrespective of stimulus intensity and trial order. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that stimulus intensity variation induces similar effects on both and N1 and P2 and partially contradict previous data that classified the P2 as a non-habituating component. SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings contribute to the ongoing discussion on the functional significance of the auditory P2 deflection. In addition, the present work demonstrated the applicability of a filter denoising method for single-trial estimation in the analysis of the experimental effects on auditory ERP components.

Dysconnectivity within the default mode in first-episode schizophrenia: a stochastic dynamic causal modeling study with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

We report the first stochastic dynamic causal modeling (sDCM) study of effective connectivity within the default mode network (DMN) in schizophrenia. Thirty-three patients (9 women, mean age = 25.0 years, SD = 5) with a first episode of psychosis and diagnosis of schizophrenia--according to the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, revised criteria--were studied. Fifteen healthy control subjects (4 women, mean age = 24.6 years, SD = 4) were included for comparison. All subjects underwent resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) interspersed with 2 periods of continuous picture viewing. The anterior frontal (AF), posterior cingulate (PC), and the left and right parietal nodes of the DMN were localized in an unbiased fashion using data from 16 independent healthy volunteers (using an identical fMRI protocol). We used sDCM to estimate directed connections between and within nodes of the DMN, which were subsequently compared with t tests at the between subject level. The excitatory effect of the PC node on the AF node and the inhibitory self-connection of the AF node were significantly weaker in patients (mean values = 0.013 and -0.048 Hz, SD = 0.09 and 0.05, respectively) relative to healthy subjects (mean values = 0.084 and -0.088 Hz, SD = 0.15 and 0.77, respectively; P < .05). In summary, sDCM revealed reduced effective connectivity to the AF node of the DMN--reflecting a reduced postsynaptic efficacy of prefrontal afferents--in patients with first-episode schizophrenia.

Cuidado integral à saúde bucal

Este módulo se propõe a analisar as políticas públicas de saúde bucal, planejamento e programação de sistemas locais de saúde bucal. Com o auxílio de vídeo-aulas, o material é composto de 16 lições sobre os temas: agenda Política Federal e a Saúde Bucal; oferta nacional de atenção de saúde bucal na atenção básica; a superoferta de força de trabalho odontológica no Brasil, consequências para o SUS; fundamentos e técnicas para planejamento de sistemas locais de Saúde Bucal na Estratégia Saúde da Família; considerações sobre universalidade, integralidade e equidade num sistema local de saúde bucal; o estabelecimento de rede horizontal e vertical, financiamento num sistema local de saúde bucal; fundamentos teóricos para o modelo lógico e planejamento em saúde bucal.

Seminário Integrador 2: Problemas de Saúde

Busca: Identificar e descrever os problemas de saúde da população adscrita e da rede serviços em termos de acesso e qualidade; Selecionar os principais problemas de saúde da população e do trabalho da equipe de Saúde da Família; Analisar os problemas de saúde selecionados em termos de causas e consequências (rede de determinação).

Seminário Integrador 3: Plano de Intervenção a saúde

Explica que o Plano de intervenção deve ser consistente, coerente e viável. Deve conter objetivos e ações estratégicas e finalísticas para a solução do problema. E mostra a etapa Normativa e estratégica do planejamento situacional em saúde - PES, a partir de sua aplicação metodológica, que corresponde a etapa D3 que é aquela que visa trabalhar a capacidade de Planejar e gerenciar projetos e ações de intervenção em saúde.

Ambientação à plataforma Moodle

Módulo de Ambientação à Plataforma Moodle para estudantes do Curso de Especialização em Saúde da Família do Projeto Universidade Aberta do SUS (UNASUS), da Universidade de Brasília (UnB). O módulo tem o objetivo de orientar os alunos para o uso de algumas funcionalidades do ambiente virtual de aprendizagem. É composto por lições que abordam os seguintes temas: orientação passo a passo ao ambiente Moodle, edição do perfil do usuário, navegação e interação com a plataforma, utilização das ferramentas "Fórum", "Envio de arquivos", "Wiki" e "chat" (bate papo).

Políticas de saúde e organização do processo de trabalho em Saúde da Família

Este módulo tem foco no contexto no qual acontece o trabalho cotidiano e a organização das Equipes de Saúde da Família. É composto por três lições que abordam os seguintes temas: diagnóstico inicial das competências dos participantes e o instrumento de acompanhamento; direito à saúde e características específicas do SUS, a Estratégia de Saúde da Família (ESF) e os desafios da relação da ESF com o conjunto da rede de serviço do SUS; mecanismo de gestão participativa no SUS; processo de trabalho da ESF na prática multiprofissional com abordagem interdisciplinar e intersetorial. Procura-se convidar os participantes a refletir sobre suas atividades do dia a dia, procurando a expressão de dinâmicas sociais mais amplas e possibilidade de melhora da sua organização.

Cuidado integral da saúde do adulto

Este módulo visa estimular as discussões sobre temas relevantes e prevalentes relacionados à saúde do adulto, no âmbito da Atenção Básica/Estratégia Saúde da Família, visando construir plano de cuidados no contexto individual, familiar e comunitário. Os conteúdos abordados no módulo são: estilo de vida saudável, diabetes, hipertensão arterial, asma e tuberculose.

Cuidado integral da saúde do idoso

O presente módulo busca promover a integração dos profissionais das equipes de Saúde da Família para a prestação da assistência aos pacientes, reconhecendo a importância de manter e restaurar o estado funcional e a qualidade de vida do idoso, no âmbito da Atenção Básica/Estratégia Saúde da Família. É composto por quatro lições que englobam o processo de envelhecimento; grupos de convivência; práticas de cuidado integral à saúde do idoso nas UBS e saúde da família; violência ­ Estatuto do Idoso e redes de apoio social; relações familiares; cuidados em gerontologia e prevenção de acidentes; assistência domiciliar; atenção ao cuidador; os cinco Is da geriatria (iatrogenia, imobilidade, instabilidade, incontinência e insuficiência das funções cognitivas) condições crônicas de saúde; alterações na acuidade visual e auditiva; sexualidade do idoso e cuidados paliativos e assistência ao óbito em domicílio.

Cuidado integral em saúde mental

Esse módulo visa capacitar os profissionais de saúde para atuarem na mobilização da rede interna e externa do território com foco na atenção integral à saúde mental. É constituído por 9 lições com os seguintes conteúdos: rede de atenção à saúde mental; núcleo de apoio a saúde da família (NASF); transtornos mentais comuns; transtorno de ansiedade generalizada; transtorno depressivo; transtorno do pânico; transtorno obsessivo-compulsivo; psicoses; uso, abuso e dependência de substancias psicoativas.

Alimentação e nutrição saudável

Os conteúdos desse módulo têm como intuito capacitar os profissionais de saúde para analisar a política nacional de alimentação e nutrição com ênfase na atenção básica/estratégia Saúde da Família, visando compreender a inserção dessas ações nas práticas das equipes multiprofissionais e interdisciplinares, com destaque para segurança alimentar e nutricional, políticas públicas e programas sociais de alimentação e nutrição.

Cuidados em doenças infecciosas e parasitárias: endêmicas, emergentes e re-emergentes

Este módulo é dividido em nove lições e aborda epidemiologia, manifestações clínicas, diagnóstico, tratamento, medidas de controle e vigilância epidemiológica das seguintes doenças: Influenza, Febre Amarela, Leishmaniose, Malária, Doença de Chagas, Parasitoses, Esquistossomose, Doenças Sexualmente Transmissíveis e Hantavirose.

Effects of inter-stimulus interval (ISI) duration on the N1 and P2 components of the auditory event-related potential.

The N1 and P2 components of the event-related potential are relevant markers in the processing of auditory information, indicating the presence of several acoustic phenomena, such as pure tones or speech sounds. In addition, the expression of these components seems to be sensitive to diverse experimental variations. The main purpose of the present investigation was to explore the role of inter-stimulus interval (ISI) on the N1 and P2 responses, considering two widely used experimental paradigms: a single tone task (1000 Hz sound repeated in a fixed rhythm) and an auditory oddball (80% of the stimuli were equal to the sound used in the single tone and the remaining were a 1500 Hz tone). Both tasks had four different conditions, and each one tested a fixed value of ISI (600, 1000, 3000, or 6000 ms). A sample of 22 participants performed these tasks, while an EEG was recorded, in order to examine the maximum amplitude of the N1 and P2 components. Analysis of the stimuli in the single tone task and the frequent tones in the oddball task revealed a similar outcome for both tasks and for both components: N1 and P2 amplitudes were enhanced in conditions with longer ISIs regardless of task. This response pattern emphasizes the dependence of both the N1 and P2 components on the ISI, especially in a scenario of repetitive and regular stimulation. The absence of task effects suggests that the ISI effect reported may depend on refractory mechanisms rather than being due to habituation effects.