Pilot study of genome-wide DNA methylation and gene expression for treatment response to escitalopram in panic disorder

BACKGROUND Antidepressants,particularly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors,are currently considered the first-line treatment for panic disorder(PD).However,little is known about the relationship between the biomarkers that may predict better treatment.AIM To compare genome-wide methylation and gene expression patterns between responsive and non-responsive patients with PD after 4 wk of escitalopram treatment.METHODS Thirty patients with PD were enrolled in this study(responders=13;nonresponders=17).All patients were assessed using the PD Severity Scale-Chinese version before and after treatment.The Illumina Infinium MethylationEPIC(850k)BeadChip for genome-wide methylation screening and mRNA sequencing was used in all patients with PD.RESULTS A total of 701 differentially methylated positions(DMPs)were found between responders and non-responders(|Δβ|≥0.06,q<0.05),and the hyper-and hypomethylated CpG sites were 511(72.9%)and 190(27.1%),respectively.Relative to non-responders,there were 59 differential transcripts,of which 20 were downregulated and 39 were upregulated(q<0.05).However,no differen tially expressed genes were identified by mRNA sequencing after correcting for multiple testing(|log2(FC)|>1,q>0.05).CONCLUSION This preliminary study showed that DMPs might be associated with the treatment response to escitalopram in PD;however,these DMPs need to be verified in large samples.

Estimation of the Hemodynamic Response during Motor Imagery Using Bayesian RBF Neural Network

Hemodynamic response during motor imagery （MI） is studied extensively by functional magnetic resonance imaging （fMRI） technologies. To further understand the human brain functions under MI, a more precise classification of the brain regions corresponding to each brain function is desired. In this study, a Bayesian trained radial basis function （RBF） neural network, which determines the weights and regularization parameters automatically by Bayesian learning, is applied to make a precise classification of the hemodynamic response to the tasks during the MI experiment. To illustrate the proposed method, data with MI task performance from 1 subject was used. The results demonstrate that this approach splits the hemodynamic response to different tasks successfully.

Study on the Location of the Activated Cerebellum Regions in Manual Movement Related to Handedness

The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging （fMRI） to study the activated site in the cerebellum during bi-hand movement and uni-hand movement, and the lateralization of the cerebellum in hand movement. The coordinates of the peak activation in the CRB were compared using statistical tests, and the results in the primary motor cortex （PMC） were presented as comparison. The results showed a significant difference in cerebellum during bi-hand movement comparing the right-handed with the left-handed subjects. When comparing the right-handed subjects and left-handed subjects during right-hand movement, the significantly different coordinate in dorsal/ventral orientation was observed. The results also showed the different activated site during bi-hand movement and non-dominant hand movement. Our study took the point of view of the lateralization in cerebellum, and the results demonstrated the different site of the peak activation in cerebellum during bi-hand movement and uni-hand movement, which suggested that the handedness also existed in the cerebellum.