Increases in Midline and Frontal Theta Reflect the Degree of Cognitive Control Required During Continuous Motor Performance When Explicitly Monitoring Output

Monitoring performance while performing an action tends to disrupt performance. Researchers suggest performance disruption may be driven by explicit monitoring which turns an automated task into a serial task, thereby increasing the need for explicit control. Here, we used EEG to measure changes in frontal and midline theta while participants typed four-letter words normally (low-monitoring) or using only the left or right hand (high-monitoring). We observed significant increase in midline theta for high- compared to low-monitoring trials, followed by an increase in frontal theta. These findings suggest that dynamic changes in cognitive control occur during continuous performance

Towards precision medicine for anxiety disorders: objective assessment, risk prediction, pharmacogenomics, and repurposed drugs

Anxiety disorders are increasingly prevalent, affect people's ability to do things, and decrease quality of life. Due to lack of objective tests, they are underdiagnosed and sub-optimally treated, resulting in adverse life events and/or addictions. We endeavored to discover blood biomarkers for anxiety, using a four-step approach. First, we used a longitudinal within-subject design in individuals with psychiatric disorders to discover blood gene expression changes between self-reported low anxiety and high anxiety states. Second, we prioritized the list of candidate biomarkers with a Convergent Functional Genomics approach using other evidence in the field. Third, we validated our top biomarkers from discovery and prioritization in an independent cohort of psychiatric subjects with clinically severe anxiety. Fourth, we tested these candidate biomarkers for clinical utility, i.e. ability to predict anxiety severity state, and future clinical worsening (hospitalizations with anxiety as a contributory cause), in another independent cohort of psychiatric subjects. We showed increased accuracy of individual biomarkers with a personalized approach, by gender and diagnosis, particularly in women. The biomarkers with the best overall evidence were GAD1, NTRK3, ADRA2A, FZD10, GRK4, and SLC6A4. Finally, we identified which of our biomarkers are targets of existing drugs (such as a valproate, omega-3 fatty acids, fluoxetine, lithium, sertraline, benzodiazepines, and ketamine), and thus can be used to match patients to medications and measure response to treatment. We also used our biomarker gene expression signature to identify drugs that could be repurposed for treating anxiety, such as estradiol, pirenperone, loperamide, and disopyramide. Given the detrimental impact of untreated anxiety, the current lack of objective measures to guide treatment, and the addiction potential of existing benzodiazepines-based anxiety medications, there is a urgent need for more precise and personalized approaches like the one we developed

A New Biarylphosphine Ligand for the Pd-Catalyzed Synthesis of Diaryl Ethers under Mild Conditions

A new bulky biarylphosphine ligand (L8) has been developed that allows the Pd-catalyzed C–O cross-coupling of a wide range of aryl halides and phenols under milder conditions than previously possible. A direct correlation between the size of the ligand substituents in the 2′, 4′, and 6′ positions of the nonphosphine containing ring and the reactivity of the derived catalyst system was observed. Specifically, the rate of coupling increased with the size of these substituents.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant GM58160)Amgen Inc