Brainpod - The Neuropsychopharmacology Podcast

Adolescent consumption of caffeine, the most commonly used psychoactive stimulant in the world, has increased strikingly in recent years. Caffeine use has been associated with illicit drug use and risky behaviors, but whether consumption of caffeine during adolescence has effects on the mature brain is controversial. In this podcast, author Ryan Bachtell discusses his recent study, which found that consumption of caffeine by male adolescent rats results in enduring neurobiological effects in a key reward area in the brain and an increased sensitivity to cocaine in adulthood.
http://www.nature.com/npp/index.html

Brainpod: Caffeine consumption in adolescents

In this issue of Neuropsychopharmacology Reviews, entitled Neurodevelopment and the Origins of Brain Disorders, subject discipline experts provide both experimental highlights and perspectives on the current understanding of basic mechanisms of neurodevelopment, the influence of developmental disruptions on childhood and adult-onset brain and behavioral disorders, and the emerging promise of translation into treatments. In this podcast, the editors of this year's volume, Pat Levitt (Simms/Mann Chair in Development Neurogenetics, Children's Hospital Los Angeles) and Jeremy Veenstra-VanderWeele (Mortimer D Sackler Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University/New York State Psychiatric Institute), discuss the recent research and its future applications.
http://www.nature.com/npp/index.html

Brainpod: Neurodevelopment and the Origins of Brain Disorders

Marijuana use for medical purposes is becoming increasingly common in the U.S., and doctors prescribe it for ills ranging from headaches to insomnia. And yet, there is little scientific data supporting its medical use. In this podcast, Drs. Margaret Haney and Eden Evins discuss the relationship between cannabis use and two psychiatric disorders: post-traumatic stress disorder and psychotic illnesses, particularly schizophrenia.
www.nature.com/npp/index.html

Brainpod: Does Cannabis Cause, Exacerbate or Ameliorate Psychiatric Disorders?

There has been a recent and notable increase in the non-medical use of new psychoactive substances (NPS), or "designer drugs." Unlike classic drugs of abuse, many NPS were initially developed for research purposes. In this podcast, Drs. Michael Baumann and Nora Volkow discuss the complexities of working with these substances and how, given their genesis, research with NPS could be considered "dual use;" or, potentially utilized for both beneficial and malicious purposes.
www.nature.com/npp/index.html

Brainpod: Abuse of New Psychoactive Substances: Threats and Solutions

"Impact of Stress on the Brain: Pathology, Treatment and Prevention," the 2016 issue of Neuropsychopharmacology Reviews, focuses on advances in our understanding of the impact of stress on the brain: From pathology to circuits, treatment to prevention. Emerging data from genetics, epigenetics, neural circuit and intergenerational models, animal models, and neuroimaging all suggest that stress affects the brain in a variety of dynamic and often long-lasting ways. The effects of these processes on developmental risk for pathology are particularly notable.
www.nature.com/npp/index.html

Brainpod: Impact of Stress on the Brain: Pathology, Treatment and Prevention

Lately, scientists have begun to pay closer attention to the numbers of men and women who present at scientific meetings. Even in those fields where women are a majority, men dominate speaking roles; in 2011, a group of leaders in neuroscience fields decided to remedy this situation. By the 2015 annual meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, women made up 70% of the plenary speaking roles. Listen to this month's Brainpod to hear Dr. Bita Moghaddam and Dr. Raquel Gur discuss the importance of women at the podium, how their approach was successful, and what challenges still remain.
www.nature.com/npp/index.html

Brainpod: Women at the Podium: ACNP Strives to Reach Speaker Gender Equality at the Annual Meeting

Smartphones have become nearly ubiquitous in the United States. These mini-computers that we carry around in our bags or pockets have the potential to dramatically influence the practice of medicine, including psychiatry. A team of researchers is currently investigating the use of smartphones for what's known as digital phenotyping, or the continuous monitoring of someone's status via a personal digital device, to enhance behavioral and mental health. 

Listen to this month's BrainPod to hear Dr. JP Onnela discuss how digital phenotyping is crucial for studying mental health disorders.

NPP Brainpod

Harnessing Smartphone-Based Digital Phenotyping to Enhance Behavioral and Mental Health

LSD is not only a well-known psychedelic drug, but it was also studied extensively for its potential in psychotherapy in the early days of its use, about fifty years ago. Those early studies didn't necessarily meet today's standards for clinical trials, and previous research ended in the 1970s, due to changing regulations and a prohibition against LSD. Today, LSD is once again being studied for its therapeutic use, this time in a carefully controlled clinical setting. In a recent study, a team of researchers investigated LSD's effects on fear recognition, emotional empathy, and sociality. Listen to the latest BrainPod, Neuropsychopharmacology's official podcast, to hear Dr. Matthias Liechti discuss this study!

Neuropsychopharmacology

Brainpod: LSD Acutely Impairs Fear Recognition and Enhances Emotional Empathy and Sociality

The 2017 issue of Neuropsychopharmacology Reviews, "The Immunology of Behavior—focuses on the growing appreciation of the immune system in understanding brain and health illness.

This podcast synthesizes this year's issue, which showcases a wide range of reviews about the relationship between immunology and brain and health illness, demonstrating how advances in our understanding of immunology have led to novel insights into psychiatric illnesses and their treatment. Hear more from Andrew H Miller, Ebrahim Haroon, and Jennifer C Felger, the editors of this NPPR issue!

Neuropsychopharmacology Reviews: http://www.nature.com/nppr/index.html

Brainpod: Exploring the Role of the Immune System in Brain Health and Illness

The National Institutes of Health recently published a statement requiring sex as a biological variable in studies. This is in part simply because it's good science, and in part to correct for decades in which both animal and human studies were largely conducted with male subjects. In their review paper responding to this statement, Dr. Tracy Bale and Dr. Neill Epperson discuss how sex has a direct impact on brain development, and how it results in a sexually dimorphic brain: meaning there are physical differences between males and females. Listen to the latest BrainPod, Neuropsychopharmacology's official podcast, to hear Dr. Bale and Dr. Epperson discuss this topic!

Article: http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v42/n2/full/npp2016215a.html

Brainpod January 2017: Sex as a Biological Variable: Who, What, When, Why, and How

The gateway hypothesis, that early use of drugs such as tobacco, alcohol, or marijuana during adolescence progresses to harder drugs such as cocaine and heroin, was first proposed in the 1970s. In a recent publication of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, Yasmin Hurd, Professor of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai, co-authored a commentary evaluating the research to date that either supports or challenges the gateway hypothesis. Listen to the latest BrainPod, Neuropsychopharmacology's official podcast, to hear more from Dr. Hurd!

Article: https://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v42/n5/full/npp2016279a.html

Brainpod March 2017: The Gateway Hypothesis of Addiction

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a disorder that has been defined by the medical community, but so far, none of the medications available for ASD treat the core symptoms of the disease, but rather secondary symptoms such as agitation or hyperactivity. Because ASD is genetically linked to Fragile X syndrome, researchers noticed that in a mouse model, the drug arbaclofen reduced what would be core symptoms of autism, such as combatting social avoidance and improving social function. A randomized placebo-controlled trial was conducted to test this idea and the results were recently published in Neuropsychopharmacology. Listen to the latest BrainPod to hear Dr. Jeremy Veenstra-VanderWeele discuss these results!

Article:
Arbaclofen in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Randomized, Controlled, Phase 2 Trial
https://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v42/n7/full/npp2016237a.html

Brainpod May 2017: Arbaclofen in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

One method of treating Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) involves extinction therapy, but researchers have found that the timing of such therapy is extremely important, and that it often doesn't work if the therapy is conducted too soon after the initial trauma. Stress itself may be harming the efficacy of the treatment. A team of researchers at Texas A&M University conducted research to determine whether there was a way to dampen stress and make extinction therapy more effective by using pharmaceuticals. The results were published in a recent issue of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. Listen to the latest podcast to hear about this study from researchers Stephen Maren and Tom Giustino!

Article: β-Adrenoceptor Blockade in the Basolateral Amygdala, But Not the Medial Prefrontal Cortex, Rescues the Immediate Extinction Deficit - https://www.nature.com/npp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/npp201789a.html

Brainpod July 2017: β-Adrenoceptor Blockade in the Basolateral Amygdala...

Studies have shown that stress and trauma early in life can lead to an increased risk for drug addiction later in life. In rat models developed to mimic and study this effect, some rats received normal maternal care, while others received enriched maternal care - extra grooming and attention from their mothers. Those with enriched maternal care have been shown to be less likely to return to a room in which the rats received a dose of morphine. But does that accurately represent drug use? They've also been shown to have neurological changes in the brain - but these changes have been correlational. A new study published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology was set up to tease out a number of aspects of this research.

Article: Opioid Self-Administration is Attenuated by Early-Life Experience and Gene Therapy for Anti-Inflammatory IL-10 in the Nucleus Accumbens of Male Rats
https://www.nature.com/articles/npp201782

Brainpod Sept 2017: Opioid Self-Administration is Attenuated by Early-Life Experience ...

Many people who exercise regularly have experienced a so-called "runner's high," either a feeling of euphoria after exercise, or a feeling of happiness and well-being. Scientists have studied this and found that exercise does indeed improve mood and combat stress, for instance, but researchers at Finland's University of Turku wanted to know: Are endorphins being produced in and thus affecting the brain? To try to answer this question, the team labeled a drug that can bind to endorphin receptors in the brain and compete with endogenous endorphins. So if the study subjects were producing endorphins in the brain, the drug binding should be reduced. Listen to Neuropsychopharmacology's latest podcast to learn more!

Article: Opioid Release after High-Intensity Interval Training in Healthy Human Subjects
https://www.nature.com/articles/npp2017148

Brainpod Nov 2017: Opioid Release after High-Intensity Interval Training in Healthy Human Subjects

The 2018 issue of Neuropsychopharmacology Reviews, "Cannabis and Cannabinoids: From Synapse to Society," showcases the remarkable advances in the biology of cannabinoids and cannabis in the past two decades, ranging from their impact at the synaptic level through to public health.

Edited by Margaret Haney and Matthew N Hill, this issue represents current findings across several major research areas, contributing novel insights into psychiatric illness treatment and a data-driven perspective relevant to public policy changes occurring worldwide.

Neuropsychopharmacology Reviews: http://www.nature.com/nppr/index.html

Brainpod Jan 2018: Cannabis and Cannabinoids: From Synapse to Society

There's a technology that's proven to be increasingly useful in the past decade — it's called DREADD, or "designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs." The current approach is to create a designer receptor that is unlocked by the drug, clozapine-n-oxide, or CNO. Researchers have used it to study the function of populations of neurons or of particular pathways in the brains in rodents, by using the DREADD technique to turn on and off these neurons or pathways. However, last year, a paper published in the journal Science called the use of DREADDs into question. Some people interpreted the paper as an overall indictment of the DREADD technology, though this wasn't the original intent of the authors. Listen to Neuropsychopharmacology's latest podcast to learn more!

Article link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/npp2017299

Brainpod March 2018: Considerations for the Use of DREADDs in Behavioral Neuroscience

The question of whether neurogenesis persists in humans and for how long — that is, whether and where humans grow new neurons in their brains, and how long into our lives — is one that has engaged neuroscientists for decades. Some papers showed that humans did retain neurogenesis into adulthood, but the issue has been debated. That debate was reignited just recently with the publication of two new studies. The first one, published in Nature, is titled "Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults." Not long after, a second paper was published in Cell Stem Cell, titled, "Human hipoocampal neurogenesis persists throughout aging." To discuss the seemingly contradictory results of these two papers on Neuropsychopharmacology's BrainPod are Dr. Lisa Monteggia, professor of neuroscience at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and Dr. Christoph Anacker, assistant professor in clinical neurobiology at Columbia University.

Brainpod May 2018: Debating the Persistence of Neurogenesis in Humans

Burst activation of dopamine neurons produces prolonged post-burst availability of actively released dopamine

For years now, scientists have noticed a rather strange phenomenon in animal models: scientists would stimulate dopamine production in the brain, but once the stimulation was over, the dopamine would remain. Bita Moghaddam is chair and professor of behavioral neuroscience at Oregon Health and Science University. She says that when dopamine is released, dopamine transporters take the dopamine back up into cells so it can be synthesized and broken down. So scientists had assumed that the dopamine that remained for those twenty minutes was just leftover dopamine from the original activation. But in theory the dopamine transporters should be more efficient in taking up the dopamine.

Article link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-018-0088-7

Brainpod July 2018: Burst activation of dopamine neurons produces...

While the influence of sweet taste on neurocognitive function has been widely studied, umami or savory has received less of a research focus. Animal models and even some small human studies seem to show that umami given in a broth before a meal can influence appetite and food intake. And this inspired Dr. Miguel Alonso-Alonso, Assistant Professor and Director of the Laboratory of Bariatric and Nutritional Neuroscience at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. He and his colleagues decided to test the influence of glutamate on behavior and food choice, as well as the neurocognitive mechanisms that might be affecting such behavioral changes.

Related article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-018-0044-6

NEW Brainpod: Neurocognitive effects of umami: association with eating behavior and food choice

Welcome to the Springer Nature Soundcloud page! Here you will find several podcasts from our journals across a range of scientific subjects, including Gene Pod, ModPath Chat, Pediapod, Hereditypod and Brainpod.