Cholecystokinin B receptor gene polymorphism (rs2941026) is associated with anxious personality and suicidal thoughts in a longitudinal study

Objective: Cholecystokinin is a neuropeptide with a role in the neurobiology of adaptive behaviour that is implicated in anxiety disorders, while the underlying mechanisms currently remain insufficiently explained. The rs2941026 variation in the cholecystokinin B receptor gene has previously been associated with trait anxiety. Our aim was to investigate associations between the CCKB receptor gene polymorphism rs2941026 with anxiety, personality, depressiveness, and suicidality in a longitudinal study of late adolescence and early adulthood. Methods: We used reports on trait and state anxiety, depressiveness and suicidal thoughts, as well as Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales, from the two birth cohorts of the Estonian Children Personality, Behaviour and Health Study. We measured associations between the CCKBR gene rs2941026 and anxiety-related phenotypes both longitudinally and cross-sectionally at ages 15, 18, 25 and 33. Results: Homozygosity for both alleles of the CCKBR rs2941026 was associated with higher trait and state anxiety in the longitudinal analysis. Cross-sectional comparisons were statistically significant at ages 18 and 25 for trait anxiety and at ages 25 and 33 for state anxiety. Higher depressiveness and suicidal thoughts were associated with the A/A genotype at age 18. Additionally, homozygosity for the A-allele was related to higher FEAR and SADNESS in the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales. The genotype effects were more apparent in females, who displayed higher levels of negative affect overall. Conclusions: CCKBR genotype is persistently associated with negative affect in adolescence and young adulthood. The association of the CCKBR rs2941026 genotype with anxiety-related phenotypes is more pronounced in females.

Affective Neuroscience Contributions to the Treatment of Addiction: The Role of Social Instincts, Pleasure and SEEKING

Addiction is an illness prevalent in the worldwide population that entails multiple health risks. Because of the nature of addictive disorders, users of drugs seldom look for treatment and when they do, availability can be difficult to access. Permanence in treatment and its outcomes vary from case to case. Most models work from a multidisciplinary approach that tackles several dimensions of addictive disorders. However, the different etiological factors claim for a personalized treatment to enhance opportunities for better results. Problems in relationships with others play an important role in the etiology and the recovery process of addiction. This paper focuses on the social-environmental causes of addiction based on an affective neuroscience approach that attempts to integrate the interplay between social instincts, pleasure, and the SEEKING system in addiction. To advance toward better treatment strategies, it is pertinent to understand the limitations of the current multidisciplinary models. Acknowledging the social nature of the human brain may help to identify the quality of different types of traumatic early life experiences in drug users and how to address them in what may become a neuropsychoanalytic treatment of addiction.

A distributed fMRI-based signature for the subjective experience of fear

The specific neural systems underlying the subjective feeling of fear are debated in affective neuroscience. Here, we combine functional MRI with machine learning to identify and evaluate a sensitive and generalizable neural signature predictive of the momentary self-reported subjective fear experience across discovery (n = 67), validation (n = 20) and generalization (n = 31) cohorts. We systematically demonstrate that accurate fear prediction crucially requires distributed brain systems, with important contributions from cortical (e.g., prefrontal, midcingulate and insular cortices) and subcortical (e.g., thalamus, periaqueductal gray, basal forebrain and amygdala) regions. We further demonstrate that the neural representation of subjective fear is distinguishable from the representation of conditioned threat and general negative affect. Overall, our findings suggest that subjective fear, which exhibits distinct neural representation with some other aversive states, is encoded in distributed systems rather than isolated ‘fear centers’.

Clinical Applications of Neuropsychoanalysis: Hypotheses Toward an Integrative Model

Neuropsychoanalysis has been established as a field based on the dialog between psychoanalysis and the neurosciences. Freud was a neurologist for 20 years and used the neuroscientific knowledge of his time as the foundation of his metapsychology. Psychoanalysis has predominantly relied on its own method to develop techniques for the different psychoanalytic treatments. It rarely uses contributions from fields outside psychoanalysis that could enrich its understanding of the mind. Neuropsychoanalysis has informed and revised several topics in psychoanalysis, for example consciousness and the unconscious, dreams, and affect amongst many others. Clear clinical applications of neuropsychoanalysis can be appreciated in the work with neurological patients. However, a constant question from clinicians is whether neuropsychoanalytic findings can contribute to psychoanalytic treatments with non-neurological patients. This paper explores clinical applications of neuropsychoanalysis mainly based on affective neuroscience to propose an analysis of emotions that may contribute to the gradual development of a neuropsychoanalytically informed psychotherapy. The task of integrating neuroscientific knowledge into psychoanalytic technique is still considered a challenge of accentuated complexity, but it is at the same time a necessary and promising endeavor that aims at improving the quality of the treatments available for human suffering and psychopathology.