Combination Therapy with Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors and Other Antidepressants or Stimulants: Strategies for the Management of Treatment‐Resistant Depression

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111275/1/phar1576.pd

Gause's exclusion principle revisited: artificial modified species and competition

Gause's principle of competition between two species is studied when one of them is sterile. We study the condition for total extinction in the niche, namely, when the sterile population exterminates the native one by an optimal use of resources. A mathematical Lotka-Volterra non linear model of interaction between a native and sterile species is proposed. The condition for total extinction is related to the initial number $M_{o}$ of sterile individuals released in the niche. In fact, the existence of a critical sterile-population value $M_{c}$ is conjectured from numerical analysis and an analytical estimation is found. When spatial diffusion (migration) is considered a critical size territory is found and, for small territory, total extinction exist in any case. This work is motived by the extermination agriculture problem of fruit flies in our region.Comment: 11 pages. Published in Jour.Phys.A Math.Gen. 33, 4877 (2000

Enhancing the early student experience

This paper is concerned with identifying how the early student experience can be enhanced in order to improve levels of student retention and achievement. The early student experience is the focus of this project as the literature has consistently declared the first year to be the most critical in shaping persistence decisions. Programme managers of courses with high and low retention rates have been interviewed to identify activities that appear to be associated with good retention rates. The results show that there are similarities in the way programmes with high retention are run, with these features not being prevalent on programmes with low retention. Recommendations of activities that appear likely to enhance the early student experience are provided

Mathematical Modeling of Risk-Taking in Bipolar Disorder: Evidence of Reduced Behavioral Consistency, With Altered Loss Aversion Specific to Those With History of Substance Use Disorder

Bipolar disorder (BD) is associated with excessive pleasure-seeking risk-taking behaviors that often characterize its clinical presentation. However, the mechanisms of risk-taking behavior are not well-understood in BD. Recent data suggest prior substance use disorder (SUD) in BD may represent certain trait-level vulnerabilities for risky behavior. This study examined the mechanisms of risk-taking and the role of SUD in BD via mathematical modeling of behavior on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). Three groups—18 euthymic BD with prior SUD (BD+), 15 euthymic BD without prior SUD (BD–), and 33 healthy comparisons (HC)—completed the BART. We modeled behavior using four competing hierarchical Bayesian models, and model comparison results favored the Exponential-Weight Mean-Variance (EWMV) model, which encompasses and delineates five cognitive components of risk-taking: prior belief, learning rate, risk preference, loss aversion, and behavioral consistency. Both BD groups, regardless of SUD history, showed lower behavioral consistency than HC. BD+ exhibited more pessimistic prior beliefs (relative to BD– and HC) and reduced loss aversion (relative to HC) during risk-taking on the BART. Traditional measures of risk-taking on the BART (adjusted pumps, total points, total pops) detected no group differences. These findings suggest that reduced behavioral consistency is a crucial feature of risky decision-making in BD and that SUD history in BD may signal additional trait vulnerabilities for risky behavior even when mood symptoms and substance use are in remission. This study also underscores the value of using mathematical modeling to understand behavior in research on complex disorders like BD

Altered N170 and mood symptoms in bipolar disorder: An electrophysiological study of configural face processing

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145368/1/bdi12587.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145368/2/bdi12587_am.pd

The measurement of ancestral roots with genealogical data

This study presents a new method to measure the depth of ancestral roots in a population. This method sheds light on the migratory movements which led to present-day population distribution across space. The method was applied to a dataset of 5,100 ascending genealogies from seventeen regions of the province of Quebec (Canada). Dates of marriage of the earliest ancestors married in the same region as their descendants were used to measure the age of individual ancestral roots. The average regional ages vary between 16 and 157 years, while some individual roots reach as far back as 300 years in the same region. The proposed method can be useful for assessing how deeply rooted a contemporary population is at a local, regional or other geographical level

Optimum dose of ginger root oil to treat sterile Mediterranean fruit fly males (Diptera: Tephritidae)

The sterile insect technique (SIT) is widely used as part of an integrated approach to reduce field populations of the Mediterranean fruit fly (Ceratitis capitata, Diptera: Tephritidae). Aromatherapy based on exposure to ginger root oil (GRO) volatiles is known as a method to significantly improve the sexual performance of sterile medfly males, and is being used in many mass-rearing facilities around the world. However, the optimum dose of GRO is not well defined. This work evaluated in laboratory cages four different doses of GRO and a control (0, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75 ml/m3), and two different methods to hold flies prior to release (paper bags and plastic cages). The objective was to find the lowest dose that provides optimal improvement in mating performance of sterile males when competing with wild males for wild females and optimal reduction in fertility of wild females. Egg hatch, copula duration, the Relative Sterility Index (RSI), and a Competitiveness (C) value (based on RSI) were calculated for each treatment to assess male sexual performance and induction of sterility. The method used to hold flies did not influence the aromatherapy effect. The mean time spent by wild females in copula with wild males was significantly longer than with sterile males for all treatments, except when sterile males were treated with 0.1 ml of GRO/m3. Amongst all doses studied, it is recommended to apply the lowest dose, 0.1 ml of GRO/m3, since at this dose both the RSI and induced sterility reached the highest levels, and were not statistically different from the 0.25 and 0.5 GRO/m3 doses. Indeed, this dose showed a very significant improvement in the mating competitiveness of sterile males aromatically treated with GRO.Supplement 1

Eye gaze perception in bipolar disorder: Self‐referential bias but intact perceptual sensitivity

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142550/1/bdi12564.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142550/2/bdi12564_am.pd

Assessment of first and second degree relatives of individuals with bipolar disorder shows increased genetic risk scores in both affected relatives and young At‐Risk Individuals

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113761/1/ajmgb32344.pd

Genome-wide parametric linkage analyses of 644 bipolar pedigrees suggest susceptibility loci at chromosomes 16 and 20

OBJECTIVE: Our aim is to map chromosomal regions that harbor loci that increase susceptibility to bipolar disorder. METHODS: We analyzed 644 bipolar families ascertained by the National Institute of Mental Health Human Genetics Initiative for bipolar disorder. The families have been genotyped with microsatellite loci spaced every approximately 10 cM or less across the genome. Earlier analyses of these pedigrees have been limited to nonparametric (model-free) methods and thus, information from unaffected subjects with genotypes was not considered. In this study, we used parametric analyses assuming dominant and recessive transmission and specifying a maximum penetrance of 70%, so that information from unaffecteds could be weighed in the linkage analyses. As in previous linkage analyses of these pedigrees, we analyzed three diagnostic categories: model 1 included only bipolar I and schizoaffective, bipolar cases (1565 patients of whom approximately 4% were schizoaffective, bipolar); model 2 included all individuals in model 1 plus bipolar II patients (1764 total individuals); and model 3 included all individuals in model 2 with the addition of patients with recurrent major depressive disorder (2046 total persons). RESULTS: Assuming dominant inheritance the highest genome-wide pair-wise logarithm of the odds (LOD) score was 3.2 with D16S749 using model 2 patients. Multipoint analyses of this region yielded a maximum LOD score of 4.91. Under recessive transmission a number of chromosome 20 markers were positive and multipoint analyses of the area gave a maximum LOD of 3.0 with model 2 cases. CONCLUSION: The chromosome 16p and 20 regions have been implicated by some studies and the data reported herein provide additional suggestive evidence of bipolar susceptibility genes in these regions