Dongwu Xu

Background: Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a major clinical concern among adolescents with depression, but reliable tools for individualized risk assessment are limited. This study aimed to develop and validate a clinically applicable nomogram for estimating the probability of NSSI in this population. Methods: Data were obtained from a nationwide multicenter cohort of 2, 343 adolescents with depression recruited from 14 hospitals in China. Participants were randomly divided into training and validation sets. Variables associated with NSSI were selected by utilizing Random Forest integrated with SHAP values combined with logistic regression. Model performance was assessed using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), the Hosmer–Lemeshow test, calibration curves, and decision curve analysis (DCA). Results: Eight variables were identified, including depression score, sleep medication use, difficulty identifying feelings, age, perceived family support, female, hallucination and externally oriented thinking. The nomogram performed well in both the training and validation cohorts, as evidenced by AUC values of 0.754 (95% CI: 0.726-0.781) and 0.748 (95% CI: 0.707-0.789), together with the calibration curves and DCA. Conclusion: A nomogram integrating eight clinical and psychosocial variables was developed and validated to estimate NSSI risk among adolescents with depression. This tool may help clinicians estimate the current probability of NSSI and support further psychosocial assessment and individualized clinical management.

Background: Elevated impulsivity and temporal processing deficits are key risk factors for adolescent non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI); however, their joint neural substrates and specific contributions to NSSI remain inadequately characterized. This study aimed to elucidate the behavioral and neural interplay between these cognitive domains in adolescents with NSSI. Methods: We recruited 44 adolescents with NSSI and 37 typically developing (TD) controls. Participants completed the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11), a Choice Delay Task (CDT), and time perception assessments (discrimination and estimation tasks). A subsample (33 NSSI, 30 TD) subsequently underwent functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to monitor prefrontal hemodynamic responses during an oddball task, a paradigm assessing inhibitory control. Results: Compared to TD controls, adolescents with NSSI exhibited significantly elevated trait impulsivity (BIS-11), heightened delay aversion (preference for immediate rewards in CDT), impaired short-interval temporal discrimination (600ms), and a consistent underestimation of time intervals (7s, 12s, 34s, and 90s). Stepwise regression analysis identified BIS-11 scores, 600ms discrimination thresholds, and 90s estimation bias as significant predictors of NSSI. Neuroimaging revealed that the NSSI group showed lower accuracy on the oddball task and significant hypoactivation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (L-DLPFC). Crucially, reduced L-DLPFC activation was associated with greater time estimation errors (at 12s and 34s) and increased NSSI. Conclusion: Adolescents with NSSI display a distinct neurocognitive phenotype characterized by high impulsivity and distorted time perception. These deficits may be associated with reduced activation in the L-DLPFC. Our findings suggest that NSSI involves a dual failure of inhibitory control and temporal processing, indicating that interventions targeting prefrontal regulation may offer novel strategies for risk reduction.

Background: Sleep deprivation (SD) exerts adverse effects on human brain. However, whether there were distinct effects of partial SD associated with gray matter changes in young and old adults, respectively, remains unclear.Methods: 42 young adults and 38 old adults were enrolled in this study. All participants underwent MRI scanning, and FreeSurfer 5.3 was used to calculate cortical thickness (CT) and cortical surface area (CSA). Paired two samples t-tests was conducted to explore CT and CSA changes. Partial SD involved restricting total sleep time to approximately three hours, compared with baseline sleep conditions.Results: Young adults exhibited increased biopsychological response (Sickness-Q score) following partial SD compared to the rested condition, and similar trend was observed in old adults in SD. Young adults exhibited decreased CSA of left caudal middle frontal cortex and CT of entorhinal cortex (EC), but increased CSA of left temporal pole and CT of right insula after SD. However, old adults showed increased CSA and CT in widespread brain regions, including left superior frontal cortex, left isthmus cingulate cortex and right EC. While young adults showed a significant positive correlation between percent change of CSA of left EC and the biopsychological response, old adults showed a significant negative correlation between percentage change in CT of the left isthmus cingulate cortex and biopsychological response.Conclusion: Distinct effect of partial SD associated with gray matter changes were observed in young and old adults, respectively. These findings shed light on SD might affect brain structures differently in young adults and old adults.

Introduction: To evaluate whether both acute and chronic low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) affect brain functions of healthy male and female mice. Methods: Ultrasound (frequency: 1.5 MHz; pulse: 1.0 kHz; spatial average temporal average (SATA) intensity: 25 mW/cm ² ; and pulse duty cycle: 20%) was applied at mouse head in acute test for 20 minutes, and in chronic experiment for consecutive 10 days, respectively. Behaviors were then evaluated. Results: Both acute and chronic LIPUS at 25 mW/cm ² exposure did not affect the abilities of movements, mating, social interaction, and anxiety-like behaviors in the male and female mice. However, physical restraint caused struggle-like behaviors and short-time memory deficits in chronic LIPUS groups in the male mice. Conclusion: LIPUS at 25 mW/cm ² itself does not affect brain functions, while physical restraint for LIPUS therapy elicits struggle-like behaviors in the male mice. An unbound helmet targeted with ultrasound intensity at 25-50 mW/cm ² is proposed for clinical brain disease therapy.

Introduction: One of the most common mental disorders in the perinatal period is depression, which is associated with impaired emotional functioning due to alterations in different cognitive aspects including thought and facial emotion recognition. These functional impairment may affect emerging maternal sensitivity and have lasting consequences for the dyadic relationship. The current study aimed to investigate the impact of depressive symptoms on the attention bias of infant stimuli during pregnancy.Methods: Eighty-six pregnant women completed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and an eye-tracking task comprising infant-related emotion images. All participants showed biased attention to infant-related images.Results: First, compared to healthy pregnant women, pregnant women with depression symptoms initially directed their attention to infant-related stimuli more quickly (F (1, 84) = 6.175, p = 0.015, η² = 0.068). Second, the two groups of pregnant women paid attention to the positive infant stimuli faster than the neutral infant stimuli, and the first fixation latency bias score was significantly smaller than that of the infant-related negative stimulus (p = 0.007). Third, compared with the neutral stimulus, the non-depression group showed a longer first gaze duration to the negative stimulus of infants (p = 0.019), while the depressive symptoms group did not show this difference.Conclusion: We speculate that structural and functional changes in affective motivation and cognitive-attention brain areas may induce these attentional bias patterns. These results provide suggestions for the implementation of clinical intervention programs to correct the attention bias of antenatal depressed women.

Background: Sleep problems and cognitive changes are typical in pregnant women with depressive symptoms. However, the relationship between sleep quality and executive dysfunction remains unclear. This study aims to explore the differences in sleep quality and cognitive inhibition between pregnant women with and without depressive symptoms in the third trimester of pregnancy and investigate the correlations between sleep quality, cognitive inhibition and depressive symptoms.Methods: In the third trimester, 169 women without depressive symptoms and 88 women with depressive symptoms participated in the study. Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Questionnaire (EPDS) was used to assess depressive symptoms, and Pittsburgh Standard Sleep Quality Index Questionnaire (PSQI) was used to investigate sleep quality. The color-word Stroop task is used to evaluate cognitive inhibition.Results: Compared with women without depressive symptoms, pregnant women with depressive symptoms showed worse sleep quality and Stroop task performances (response speed and accuracy). In addition, the speed of cognitive inhibition plays a mediating role in the relationship between sleep quality and prenatal depressive symptoms.Conclusion: This research emphasizes the importance of sleep quality screening and cognitive training for depression during pregnancy and childbirth in ensuring women’s mental health during pregnancy and childbirth.

Background: Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) and suicide attempts (SAs) by adolescent patients with depression have become serious public health problems. There is still insufficient research evidence on the effects of NSSI and SAs on neurocognitive functioning in adolescents. Cognitive function alterations may be associated with SAs and self-injury. NSSI and SAs have different influencing factors. Methods: Participants were recruited from outpatient clinics and included 142 adolescent patients with depression (12–18 years old). This cohort included the SAs group (n = 52), NSSI group (n = 65), and depression without SAs/NSSI control group (n = 25). All participants underwent a clinical interview and neuropsychological assessment for group comparisons, and post-hoc tests were performed. Finally, partial correlation analysis was used to explore factors related to changes in cognitive function. Results: The SAs group performed significantly worse than the control group in executive function and working memory. The depression score was directly proportional to the executive function of the SAs group, whereas cognitive functioning in the NSSI group was associated with borderline traits and rumination. Conclusions: These findings suggest that impairment of executive function and working memory may be a common pattern in adolescent depressed patients with SAs. However, borderline traits and rumination may be indicative of NSSI but not SAs.

Background: This study aimed to categorize different subgroups of problematic smartphone use in Chinese college students. Differences in gender and psychosocial characteristics of the categorized groups were also examined. Methods: A total of 1123 participants completed the Mobile Phone Addiction Index Scale, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, the Perceived Social Support Scale, and the Perceived Stress Scale. Using latent profile analysis, we identified different subgroups of problematic smartphone use in college students. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was implemented to examine the relationship between latent classes and demographic and psychosocial covariates. Results: The four following latent classes were identified: a low-risk group, a moderate-risk with no evasiveness group, a moderate-risk with evasiveness group, and high-risk group that accounted for 11%, 24.1%, 35.5%, and 29.4% of the total sample, respectively. Further analysis revealed that female participants were more likely to be in the moderate-risk with evasiveness and high-risk groups, and individuals with depressed mood were more likely to be in the moderate-risk and high-risk groups. Conclusions: Classifying college students according to the features of problematic smartphone use is potentially useful for understanding risk factors and developing targeted prevention and intervention programs.

Background: Current research on perinatal depression rarely pays attention to the continuity and volatility of depression symptoms over time, which is very important for the early prediction and prognostic evaluation of perinatal depression. This study investigated the trajectories of perinatal depression symptoms and aimed to explore the factors related to these trajectories.Methods: The study recruited 550 women during late pregnancy (32 ± 4 weeks of gestation) and followed them up 1 and 6 weeks postpartum. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). Latent growth mixture modelling (LGMM) was used to identify trajectories of depressive symptoms during pregnancy.Results: Two trajectories of perinatal depressive symptoms were identified: “decreasing” (n = 524, 95.3%) and “increasing” (n = 26, 4.7%). History of smoking, alcohol use and gestational hypertension increased the chance of belonging to the increasing trajectories, and a high level of social support was a protective factor for maintaining a decreasing trajectory.Conclusions: This study identified two trajectories of perinatal depression and the factors associated with each trajectory. Paying attention to these factors and providing necessary psychological support services during pregnancy would effectively reduce the incidence of perinatal depression and improve patient prognosis.

Commentary: Stimulation of the Posterior Cortical-Hippocampal Network Enhances Precision of Memory Recollection