Evaluating the efficacy of a smartphone mental health app, mindLAMP, in reducing anxiety and depression symptoms

BACKGROUND: Despite the growing popularity and widespread adoption of mobile mental health apps, there is still insufficient high-quality evidence demonstrating their safety and efficacy. Aims: This exploratory analysis investigates the potential effect size of mindLAMP, a smartphone mental health app, on reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety by comparing the results of using mindLAMP in a control implementation and in a intervention implementation. METHODS: A total of 238 participants were eligible and finished the study in the control implementation, while 156 participants completed the study in the intervention implementation of the mindLAMP app. All participants (both groups) had access to the same in-app activities, including self-assessments and therapeutic interventions. RESULTS: After multiple imputation, analysis revealed significant minor effect sizes of Hedge’s g = 0.21 and Hedge’s g = 0.34 in the reduction of depression and anxiety symptoms respectively. CONCLUSIONS: MindLAMP demonstrates a promising potential in reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety. Additionally, this study underscores the adaptability, reusability, and scalability of smartphone apps, as they can be implemented in diverse settings. These results serve as a basis for further research to examine the effectiveness of not only mindLAMP but also other mental health apps in addressing symptoms of depression and anxiety

A paradigm for exploring the impact of social isolation on olfactory sensitivity in mice

BACKGROUND: Mice have millions of olfactory sensory neurons that express one out of about 1,200 odorant receptor genes, giving them the ability to detect over 100,000 odorants. The activation of the sensory neurons is based on the different structural features of odor stimuli that each type of receptor has been genetically programmed to respond to. The activation at the level of the receptors corresponds to specific combinatorial codes for each odorant. Information from the receptors is sent to the olfactory bulb - where there is also a specific glomerular activation pattern for each odorant - and then to the olfactory tubercle, which plays a role in goal-directed behaviors and receives input from other parts of the brain that are essential for motivated behaviors. As a result of chronic social isolation, mice have been found to have impaired neurogenesis in their olfactory bulb, increased Tac2 expression, and decreased prefrontal cortex and hippocampal volumes. Since these neurological deficits alter the processing of olfactory information, using social isolation as a way to induce depression-like phenotypes in mice may provide insight into how changes in mental states are reflected in mouse behavior. OBJECTIVE: To determine the relationship between odor concentration and olfactory sensitivity in mice, and how the relationship is impacted by social isolation. METHODS: A total of 7 mice of either the C57BL/6J or tac1-cre strain aged 3-4 months were used. They underwent headplate surgery before going through habituation, after which they went through go/no-go task training. A custom 8-slot olfactometer and a behavioral box were used to run behavioral experiments, where up to 8 odorant tubes were placed in the olfactometer and mice were head-fixed in the behavioral box. Odorants were either blank odors made of only deionized water or different concentrations of n-butanol diluted in deionized water. With the blank odors as the “go” stimulus, the n-butanol odors as the “no-go” stimulus, and another blank odor as the “cheat” stimulus, mice went through go/no-go/cheat sessions over decreasing n-butanol concentrations. Python scripts were used to run experiments and collect data regarding the responses of the mice during each trial. RESULTS: By the end of the training period, mice were able to achieve an accuracy of at least 85% during go/no-go tasks. There is an overall downward trend in the performances of mice over decreasing n-butanol concentrations, but there were also large and unexpected improvements in performance at lower concentrations before and after isolation. There were many fluctuations in the average latencies to odor on incorrect no-go trials over decreasing n-butanol concentrations before and after the isolation period. Although sample sizes for each sex were too low for statistical analyses, preliminary data suggests that at low odor concentrations, social isolation might lead to enhanced performance in males and decreased performance in females. CONCLUSIONS: Mice can learn to associate novel odors with a water reward. Using social isolation as a way to induce depression in mice does not hinder mice from performing odor discrimination tasks. Conclusions cannot be made regarding the effect of social isolation on mouse olfactory sensitivity. Although there appears to be an improvement in performance as a result of isolation in male mice and a dampening of performance in female mice, further research will need to be conducted using larger sample sizes across both sexes

Denoising particle beam micrographs with plug-and-play methods

ECCS-2039762 - National Science Foundation; CCF-1815896 - National Science FoundationAccepted manuscrip

Personal reflections on the role of mathematical logic in computer science

Accepted manuscrip

Not all learnable distribution classes are privately learnable

FG-2022-18482 - Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; CNS-2046425 - National Science Foundationhttps://arxiv.org/abs/2402.00267Accepted manuscrip

Mathematical logic in computer science

First author draf

BlackWomen: keepers of the Democratic Party, democratic process and democracy

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-gender/article/black-women-keepers-of-democracy-the-democratic-process-and-the-democratic-party/8372A741075812D0AC7ACDDA5C871E1

Comparative effectiveness on various Graves’ Disease treatment options

Graves’ Disease is an autoimmune disorder represented by the overproduction of thyroid hormones (hyperthyroidism). Graves’ Disease is more common among women of reproductive age, and genetic, endogenous, and environmental factors influence the pathogenesis of Graves’ Disease. Graves’ Disease presents with many clinical manifestations, such as tachycardia, fatigue, heat intolerance, palpitations, weight loss, muscle weakness, alterations in menstrual cycles, insomnia, hair loss, goiter, and others. Currently, there are three main treatment routes for Graves’ Disease: antithyroid drugs, radioactive iodine therapy, and thyroidectomy. Antithyroid drug therapy has a high relapse rate. At the same time, both radioactive iodine and thyroidectomy eradicate or surgically remove the tissue of the thyroid and lead to the consequence of developing another disease, hyperthyroidism, that requires a life-long supplementation of the thyroid replacement hormone, levothyroxine. Presently, investigations are focused on finding new therapeutics that can supplement existing treatments as a combination therapy that can lengthen the remission period after cessation of ATDs or conduction of RAI therapy. Future research is exploring treatment options that target different components of the immune system response pathway, the thyroid stimulating hormone receptor or thyrotropin receptor autoantibodies, that have the potential to cure Graves’ Disease

Localization and characterization of myelin damage in behaviorally characterized normal aging and calorie restricted rhesus macaques using quantitative immunofluorescence

The normal aging process in humans is characterized by a number of hallmark changes including decreased white matter volume in the brain and accompanying cognitive decline. This is in contrast to neurodegenerative aging processes which involve acute pathology which results in neuronal cell death. Studying non-degenerative normal aging in humans can be difficult because of the high prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases in the population and other potentially confounding effects. Rhesus monkeys are an excellent model organism for the study of normal aging, as their aging process has been demonstrated to involve diminished white matter volume, but they do not suffer from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. In this study we seek to quantify levels of myelin degradation using confocal microscopy in regions of interest where it has been previously demonstrated that loss of white matter integrity results in lower levels of cognitive function across different treatment groups including aging monkeys, calorie restricted monkeys, and controls for calorie restricted monkeys. These areas include prefrontal white matter which is vital to executive function, the hippocampus which is integral to memory consolidation and the learning process, and finally the anterior, middle, and posterior cingulum bundle. The cingulum bundle contains a diverse variety of projections between cortical and subcortical regions, including but not limited to projections to and from the cingulate cortex which has been demonstrated to be vital for emotional processing, the limbic system, and a wide spectrum of other functions. We aim to quantify white matter degradation in these regions by using immunofluorescent tagging for healthy myelin basic protein (MBP) and degraded myelin basic protein (dMBP) and by measuring the colocalization between the two. For prefrontal white matter and hippocampus, we did not find significant differences in myelin degradation across treatment groups. In the cingulum bundle, however, we did find a significant effect of treatment on overall myelin damage throughout the bundle, and in particular we determined that there was a significant difference in colocalization in the anterior cingulum bundle between aging monkeys and control calorie restricted monkeys. Analysis of behavioral testing data yielded surprising results as we were unable to find a strong correlation between our measure for myelin degradation, and level of cognitive impairment. Our results indicate that there are likely differences in regional vulnerability to age related myelin damage across different white matter regions of the brain, however we would like to expand on this study to gain a more accurate understanding of how loss of white matter volume is distributed through the brain and the impact that has on cognitive outcomes

Salvation, California and other stories

Please note: creative writing works are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the lock icon and fill out the appropriate web form.This thesis is the culmination of my graduate work in fiction writing. The first parts are short stories, written for this program and workshopped by my peers, and then heavily revised by me. The second section is an excerpt of a novel-in-progress, created in a similar process. All of the works in this thesis touch on the small absurdities of the human experience, including but not limited to: self-doubt, miscommunication, chance, and the lonesome subjectivity of reality.2999-01-01T00:00:00