0000000000191422
AUTHOR
Jürgen Brinkmeyer
The P300 event-related potential and smoking--a population-based case-control study.
A better understanding of the factors underlying habitual tobacco smoking may further new strategies to go about this major health problem. The P300 event-related potential (ERP) has emerged as a valuable (endo)phenotype in neuropsychiatric research. Previous studies suggested the P300 ERP to be reduced in smokers. The main purpose of the present study was to provide an in-depth description of smoking-related behavioral, biological and electrophysiological phenotypes with an emphasis on the P300 ERP and its mutual relationship with other smoking-related parameters. In this case-control study N=1318 participants (smokers and never-smoking controls) were investigated at 6 German academic inst…
Psychological and hormonal features of smokers at risk to gain weight after smoking cessation--results of a multicenter study.
Preclinical and clinical data suggest modulating effects of appetite-regulating hormones and stress perception on food intake. Nicotine intake also interferes with regulation of body weight. Especially following smoking cessation gaining weight is a common but only partially understood consequence. The aim of this study was to examine the interaction between smoking habits, the appetite regulating hormone leptin, negative affectivity, and stress vulnerability on eating behavior in a clinical case-control study under standardized conditions. In a large population-based study sample, we compared leptin and cortisol plasma concentrations (radioimmunoassay) between current tobacco smokers with …
Spontaneous brain activity and EEG microstates. A novel EEG/fMRI analysis approach to explore resting-state networks.
The brain is active even in the absence of explicit input or output as demonstrated from electrophysiological as well as imaging studies. Using a combined approach we measured spontaneous fluctuations in the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal along with electroencephalography (EEG) in eleven healthy subjects during relaxed wakefulness (eyes closed). In contrast to other studies which used the EEG frequency information to guide the functional MRI (fMRI) analysis, we opted for transient EEG events, which identify and quantify brain electric microstates as time epochs with quasi-stable field topography. We then used this microstate information as regressors for the BOLD fluctuations. S…
The German multi-centre study on smoking-related behavior-description of a population-based case-control study
Tobacco smoking is a major risk factor for most of the diseases leading in mortality. Nicotine dependence (ND), which sustains regular smoking, is now acknowledged to be under substantial genetic control with some environmental contribution. At present, however, genetic studies on ND are mostly conducted in populations that have been poorly characterized with regard to ND-related phenotypes for the simple reason that the respective populations were not primarily collected to study ND. The German multi-centre study 'Genetics of Nicotine Dependence and Neurobiological Phenotypes', which is funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) as part of the Priority …
Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) Improves Facial Affect Recognition in Schizophrenia
Abstract Objective Facial affect recognition, a basic building block of social cognition, is often impaired in schizophrenia. Poor facial affect recognition is closely related to poor functional outcome; however, neither social cognitive impairments nor functional outcome are sufficiently improved by antipsychotic drug treatment alone. Adjunctive repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been shown to enhance cognitive functioning in both healthy individuals and in people with neuropsychiatric disorders and to ameliorate clinical symptoms in psychiatric disorders, but its effects on social cognitive impairments in schizophrenia have not yet been studied. Therefore, we evaluate…
Impaired sleep quality and sleep duration in smokers-results from the German Multicenter Study on Nicotine Dependence
Cigarette smoking is a severe health burden being related to a number of chronic diseases. Frequently, smokers report about sleep problems. Sleep disturbance, in turn, has been demonstrated to be involved in the pathophysiology of several disorders related to smoking and may be relevant for the pathophysiology of nicotine dependence. Therefore, determining the frequency of sleep disturbance in otherwise healthy smokers and its association with degree of nicotine dependence is highly relevant. In a population-based case-control study, 1071 smokers and 1243 non- smokers without lifetime Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Axis I disorder were investigated. S…
P50 sensory gating and smoking in the general population
P50 gating is a major functional biomarker in research on schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions with high smoking prevalence. It is used as endophenotype for studying nicotinic systems genetics and as surrogate endpoint measure for drug development of nicotinic agonists. Surprisingly, little is known about P50 gating in the general population and the relationship to smoking-related characteristics. In this multicenter study at six academic institutions throughout Germany, n = 907 never-smokers (NS < 20 cigarettes/lifetime), n = 463 light smokers (LS) with Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND) ≥ 4 and n = 353 heavy smokers (HS, FTND < 4) were randomly selected from the gene…
High frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) reduces EEG-hypofrontality in patients with schizophrenia.
The reduced metabolic activity in the prefrontal brain lobes, so-called hypofrontality, is associated with increased electrophysiological delta-band activity. Schizophrenia inpatients (N=35) received sham-controlled 10Hz rTMS over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in a randomised design. After treatment, the resting electroencephalography revealed a significant decrease in the delta-band activity, which originated in the right prefrontal cortex and correlated with improvements in facial affect recognition.