On the nature of monozygotic twin concordance and discordance for autistic trait severity: A quantitative analysis

The characterizing features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are continuously distributed in nature; however, prior twin studies have not systematically incorporated this knowledge into estimations of concordance and discordance. We conducted a quantitative analysis of twin-twin similarity for autistic trait severity in three existing data sets involving 366 pairs of uniformly-phenotyped monozygotic (MZ) twins with and without ASD. Probandwise concordance for ASD was 96%; however, MZ trait correlations differed markedly for pairs with ASD trait burden below versus above the threshold for clinical diagnosis, with

Brain connectivity and socioeconomic status at birth and externalizing symptoms at age 2 years

Low childhood socioeconomic status (SES) predisposes individuals to altered trajectories of brain development and increased rates of mental illness. Brain connectivity at birth is associated with psychiatric outcomes. We sought to investigate whether SES at birth is associated with neonatal brain connectivity and if these differences account for socioeconomic disparities in infant symptoms at age 2 years that are predictive of psychopathology. Resting state functional MRI was performed on 75 full-term and 37 term-equivalent preterm newborns (n = 112). SES was characterized by insurance type, the Area Deprivation Index, and a composite score. Seed-based voxelwise linear regression related SES to whole-brain functional connectivity of five brain regions representing functional networks implicated in psychiatric illnesses and affected by socioeconomic disadvantage: striatum, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC), and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Lower SES was associated with differences in striatum and vlPFC connectivity. Striatum connectivity with frontopolar and medial PFC mediated the relationship between SES and behavioral inhibition at age 2 measured by the Infant-Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (n = 46). Striatum-frontopolar connectivity mediated the relationship between SES and externalizing symptoms. These results, convergent across three SES metrics, suggest that neurodevelopmental trajectories linking SES and mental illness may begin as early as birth

Cortical and subcortical brain structure in generalized anxiety disorder: findings from 28 research sites in the enigma-anxiety working group

The goal of this study was to compare brain structure between individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and healthy controls. Previous studies have generated inconsistent findings, possibly due to small sample sizes, or clinical/analytic heterogeneity. To address these concerns, we combined data from 28 research sites worldwide through the ENIGMA-Anxiety Working Group, using a single, pre-registered mega-analysis. Structural magnetic resonance imaging data from children and adults (5–90 years) were processed using FreeSurfer. The main analysis included the regional and vertex-wise cortical thickness, cortical surface area, and subcortical volume as dependent variables, and GAD, age, age-squared, sex, and their interactions as independent variables. Nuisance variables included IQ, years of education, medication use, comorbidities, and global brain measures. The main analysis (1020 individuals with GAD and 2999 healthy controls) included random slopes per site and random intercepts per scanner. A secondary analysis (1112 individuals with GAD and 3282 healthy controls) included fixed slopes and random intercepts per scanner with the same variables. The main analysis showed no effect of GAD on brain structure, nor interactions involving GAD, age, or sex. The secondary analysis showed increased volume in the right ventral diencephalon in male individuals with GAD compared to male healthy controls, whereas female individuals with GAD did not differ from female healthy controls. This mega-analysis combining worldwide data showed that differences in brain structure related to GAD are small, possibly reflecting heterogeneity or those structural alterations are not a major component of its pathophysiology

White matter integrity in adolescent irritability: A preliminary study

Irritability is a prevalent, impairing transdiagnostic symptom, especially during adolescence, yet little is known about irritability's neural mechanisms. A few studies examined the integrity of white matter tracts that facilitate neural communication in irritability, but only with extreme, disorder-related symptom presentations. In this preliminary study, we used a group connectometry approach to identify white matter tracts correlated with transdiagnostic irritability in a community/clinic-based sample of 35 adolescents (mean age = 14 years, SD = 2.0). We found positive and negative associations with irritability in local white matter tract bundles including sections of the longitudinal fasciculus; frontoparietal, parolfactory, and parahippocampal cingulum; corticostriatal and thalamocortical radiations; and vertical occipital fasciculus. Our findings support functional neuroimaging studies that implicate widespread neural pathways, particularly emotion and reward networks, in irritability. Our findings of positive and negative associations reveal a complex picture of what is "good" white matter connectivity. By characterizing irritability's neural underpinnings, targeted interventions may be developed

Datasets on Irregular Migration and Irregular Migrants in the EU

The evidence produced during the recent migration crisis in Europe is often based on datasets that have intrinsic limitations of coverage and availability, and that capture the complex phenomenon of migration from different perspectives. Simple questions such as “What is the number of migrants in the European Union (EU)?” cannot be answered by providing one single number, but a set of numbers where each number tells a different part of the story. Besides trying to expand the availability of data on migration, it is important to be aware of the characteristics of the existing datasets since knowledge of this determines the type of analysis and conclusions that can be drawn from the data. This paper describes the main datasets that can be used to quantify trends of irregular migration and indirectly also the stock of irregular migrants in the EU. The review covers only datasets that are openly available and have supra-national relevance.JRC.E.6-Demography, Migration and Governanc

Web-based interactive analysis and visualisation of Earth Observation data at petabyte scale

The Copernicus programme of the European Union with its fleet of Sentinel satellites for monitoring land, ocean, and atmosphere with applications from environment monitoring to emergency response is generating Terabytes of free and open data on a daily basis. The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission has developed a prototype Joint Earth Observation Data and Processing platform (JEODPP) to enable its knowledge production units to process and analyse global geospatial data at Petabyte scale in support to EU policy needs. In the framework of a collaboration between CERN and JRC, the EOS distributed file system enables high data throughput between the processing nodes and the storage servers. The performance of the JEODPP is analysed on use-cases in the context of interactive and batch processing based on docker containerisation and managed by the HTCondor workload manager. Web-based interactive analysis and visualisation of the Copernicus data on the EOS repository is obtained via Jupyter Notebooks connected to distributed backend processing servers. The process distribution and real-time visualisation of the results on interactive maps is achieved via custom interactive widget like IPyLeaflet used in the Jupyter notebooks. This way the data analysis capability of the JEODPP can be shared with internal or remote user groups.JRC.I.3-Text and Data Minin

Additional file 7: Table S7. of Phospholipid Phosphatase 4 promotes proliferation and tumorigenesis, and activates Ca2+-permeable Cationic Channel in lung carcinoma cells

The relationship between PLPP4 IHC expression level and clinical pathological characteristics in 265 patients with non-small cell lung cancer. (PDF 59 kb

methods in : The experience of the generalized anxiety disorder working group

The ENIGMA group on Generalized Anxiety Disorder (ENIGMA-Anxiety/GAD) is part of a broader effort to investigate anxiety disorders using imaging and genetic data across multiple sites worldwide. The group is actively conducting a mega-analysis of a large number of brain structural scans. In this process, the group was confronted with many methodological challenges related to study planning and implementation, between-country transfer of subject-level data, quality control of a considerable amount of imaging data, and choices related to statistical methods and efficient use of resources. This report summarizes the background information and rationale for the various methodological decisions, as well as the approach taken to implement them. The goal is to document the approach and help guide other research groups working with large brain imaging data sets as they develop their own analytic pipelines for mega-analyses. This report summarizes the background information and rationale for the various methodological decisions made by the ENIGMA-GAD group. The aim of this work is to help guide other research groups working with large brain imaging data set