Emotional cognition subgroups in unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with mood disorders

Background Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) or bipolar disorder (BD) exhibit difficulties with emotional cognition even during remission. There is evidence for aberrant emotional cognition in unaffected relatives of patients with these mood disorders, but studies are conflicting. We aimed to investigate whether emotional cognition in unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with mood disorders is characterised by heterogeneity using a data-driven approach. Methods Data from 94 unaffected relatives (33 of MDD patients; 61 of BD patients) and 203 healthy controls were pooled from two cohort studies. Emotional cognition was assessed with the Social Scenarios Test, Facial Expression Recognition Test and Faces Dot-Probe Test. Hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted using emotional cognition data from the 94 unaffected relatives. The resulting emotional cognition clusters and controls were compared for emotional and non-emotional cognition, demographic characteristics and functioning. Results Two distinct clusters of unaffected relatives were identified: a relatively ‘emotionally preserved’ cluster (55%; 40% relatives of MDD probands) and an ‘emotionally blunted’ cluster (45%; 29% relatives of MDD probands). ‘Emotionally blunted’ relatives presented with poorer neurocognitive performance (global cognition p = 0.010), heightened subsyndromal mania symptoms (p = 0.004), lower years of education (p = 0.004) and difficulties with interpersonal functioning (p = 0.005) than controls, whereas ‘emotionally preserved’ relatives were comparable to controls on these measures. Conclusions Our findings show discrete emotional cognition profiles that occur across healthy first-degree relatives of patients with MDD and BD. These emotional cognition clusters may provide insight into emotional cognitive markers of genetically distinct subgroups of individuals at familial risk of mood disorders.

CONCEPTUAL COMPONENT OF THE CONCEPT OF APPLICATION

This paper deals with the conceptual component of the concept APPLICATION in the contemporary English discourse. This concept is parametric, specific and regulatory. It has enriched its content with five cognitive markers. At the end of the 20th century another word app, a shortened version of the key name application, was introduced to objectify the meanings “a piece of software” and “a program”. The structure of the conceptual component consists of a core and two layers. The core contains the etymologically motivated cognitive marker “the bringing of something to bear on something else”. The first layer contains six cognitive markers “a piece of software, a program designed to do a particular job”, “the practical use of something, especially a theory, discovery, etc.”, “a formal request for something”, “an act of putting or spreading something onto something else”, “the act of making a rule, etc. operate or become effective” and “determination to work hard at something, great effort”. The second layer has the cognitive markers of the concepts whose names either have the word application in their definitions (social network) or are synonyms (applicability, etc.), antonyms, names of mobile applications and platforms.

Ethnic Stereotype Formation and Its Impact on Sojourner Adaptation: A Case of “Belt and Road” Chinese Migrant Workers in Montenegro

Ethnic stereotypes are cognitive markers that are formed and modified because of intercultural contact with a new cultural group. There is now much empirical evidence that explicates how stereotypes of ethnic groups can impact individuals’ acculturation experiences. However, what is unknown is how previously nonexistent ethnic beliefs are formed as a result of contact with the local culture. One hundred and seventy-four (N = 174) overseas Chinese construction workers were contacted through the Chinese Consulate in Montenegro and agreed to participate in the present study. The online questionnaire asked workers to describe Montenegrin majority members in terms of five characteristics. These traits formed the stereotype markers that were classified as positive, neutral, or negative. Sojourners also answered questions that measured perceived cultural distance, social exclusion, knowledge of Montenegrin culture, feelings of social exclusion, and their sociocultural adaptation. Results show that both positive and negative stereotypes are correlated with less social exclusion and better socio-cultural adaptation. Perceived cultural distance, knowledge of host culture and length of stay was mediated by stereotypes on adaptation outcomes. Interestingly longer sojourn did not lessen the type of stereotype, nor did it reduce cultural distance. Contribution to the stereotype literature and practical understanding of how Chinese sojourners see majority members will be discussed.

A-16 MoCA Subtest Analysis: Discriminating between Healthy Controls and MCI

Objective The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is a suitable, sensitive, and specific cognitive screener for detecting mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Previous research has found markers to discriminate between healthy controls and MCI on MoCA subtest scores. Specifically, MCI performed worse on executive functioning and attention tasks (i.e., inverse digits, serial 7’s, repetition, fluency, abstraction, and word recall). The aim of the present study is to assess for discrimination patterns in MoCA performance between healthy controls and MCI. Method Data was collected through the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC). A sample of healthy controls (n = 3776, 65% female, 80% White, 17% Black, 3% Asian/Pacific Islander) and MCI (n = 1143; 51% female, 82% White, 15% Black, 3% Asian/Pacific Islander) were examined. Results An initial independent t-test revealed a statistically significant difference in MoCA scores for healthy controls (M = 26.18, SD = 2.78) and MCI (M = 22.01, SD = 3.49; t(4917) = 36.91, p = 0.000, Cohen’s d = 1.32). Additional t-tests were performed to compare MoCA subtest scores and domain scores for diagnostic groups. There was a statistically significant difference for healthy controls and MCI groups across all MoCA subtests and domains. Further examination using normal distribution revealed worse performance on cube copy and word recall in MCI groups. Conclusions Consistent with previous findings, word recall was able to discriminate between healthy controls and MCI. However, this study was able to find discrimination in cube copy performance. These findings may guide clinicians to use these interval changes as early cognitive markers for impairment, allowing for early detection and intervention.

Diagnostic Accuracy of Affective Social Tasks in the Clinical Classification Between the Behavioral Variant of Frontotemporal Dementia and Other Neurodegenerative Disease

Background: Severe socio-emotional impairments characterize the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). However, literature reports social cognition disorders in other dementias. Objective: In this study, we investigated the accuracy of social cognition performances in the early and differential diagnosis of bvFTD. Methods: We included 131 subjects: 32 bvFTD, 26 Alzheimer’s disease (AD), 16 primary progressive aphasia (PPA), 17 corticobasal syndrome (CBS), and 40 healthy control (HC). Each subject completed the Ekman 60 faces (Ek-60F) test assessing basic emotion recognition and the Story-based Empathy Task (SET) assessing attribution of intentions/emotions. A combined social measure (i.e., Emotion Recognition and Attribution (ERA) index) was calculated. One-way ANOVA has been used to compare performances among groups, while receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve tested measures ability to distinguish subjects with and without bvFTD. Results: Ek-60F and ERA index scores were significantly lower in bvFTD versus HC, AD, and PPA groups. ROC analyses significantly distinguished bvFTD from HC (AUC 0.82–0.92), with the Ek-60F test showing the highest performance, followed by the ERA index. These two social measures showed the best accuracy in detecting bvFTD from AD (AUC 0.78–0.74) and PPA (AUC 0.80–0.76). Investigated measures failed in detecting bvFTD from CBS. Conclusion: Accuracy analyses support the advantage of using social cognition tests for bvFTD diagnosis. Short social battery may reduce uncertainties and improve disease identification in clinical settings. We recommend a revision of current clinical criteria considering neuropsychological deficits in emotion recognition and processing tasks as key cognitive markers of this neurodegenerative syndrome.

Cannabis Use Induces Distinctive Proteomic Alterations in Olfactory Neuroepithelial Cells of Schizophrenia Patients

A close epidemiological link has been reported between cannabis use and schizophrenia (SCZ). However, biochemical markers in living humans related to the impact of cannabis in this disease are still missing. Olfactory neuroepithelium (ON) cells express neural features and offer a unique advantage to study biomarkers of psychiatric diseases. The aim of our study was to find exclusively deregulated proteins in ON cells of SCZ patients with and without a history of cannabis use. Thus, we compared the proteomic profiles of SCZ non-cannabis users (SCZ/nc) and SCZ cannabis users (SCZ/c) with control subjects non-cannabis users (C/nc) and control cannabis users (C/c). The results revealed that the main cascades affected in SCZ/nc were cell cycle, DNA replication, signal transduction and protein localization. Conversely, cannabis use in SCZ patients induced specific alterations in metabolism of RNA and metabolism of proteins. The levels of targeted proteins in each population were then correlated with cognitive performance and clinical scores. In SCZ/c, the expression levels of 2 proteins involved in the metabolism of RNA (MTREX and ZNF326) correlated with several cognitive markers and clinical signs. Moreover, use duration of cannabis negatively correlated with ZNF326 expression. These findings indicate that RNA-related proteins might be relevant to understand the influence of cannabis use on SCZ.

Plans for the future and the ability to predict as cognitive navigators of a person's social success

Social success is an ambiguous category that has both external and internal criteria. Despite the difficult comprehension of the criteria and the ambiguity of their interpretation in different cultures and social strata, the desire for success in the form of various behavioral tendencies and manifestations is considered inherent in most people. The research results presented in the article were obtained on samples of different age groups: adolescence, young, adult age periods (from 17 to 45 years). The criteria of social success are considered through the prism of the leading activity of the age and are used as the basis for differentiating the samples into socially successful and unsuccessful respondents. The study is comparative in nature and shows that the cognitive markers of socially successful respondents differ from the mental trajectories of socially unsuccessful respondents. In adolescence, social success is accompanied by clear formulated goals and conscious plans for the future; in young and adult ages, while maintaining awareness of plans, socially successful respondents also have a high level of predictive abilities, expressed in the validity of the thinking process, flexibility of thinking, plasticity of ideas and the prospect of causal relationships. These cognitive characteristics allow a person to build mental processes in such a way that they accompany the person's social success.

AT(N) MODEL AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL MARKERS

Background: The National Institute on Aging and Alzheimer’s Association (NIA-AA) proposed the AT(N) model to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease (AD) considering some biomarkers: amyloid beta (A), phosphorylated tau (T), and neurodegeneration (N). Still, AT(N) correlation with cognitive markers is not yet covered. Objective: To investigate the neuropsychological profile of patients with CSF biomarkers according to AT(N) classification. Methods: Sixty-five patients with thorough neuropsychological data and results of CSF biomarkers were included in the study. We performed a cluster analysis using biomarkers results. The validity was checked by neuropsychological tests scores. Results: We found three clusters: Cluster 1 (n=24), classified as non-AD; Clusters 2 (n=9) and 3 (n=32), classified as AD. Cluster 2 had a higher burden of phosphorylated tau and total tau. All groups were similar regarding sociodemographics and functionality. AD groups had worse memory deficits than the non-AD cluster, but Cluster 2 was more affected than Cluster 3. No other cognitive difference was found, except in the Cubes subtest (Cluster 3>Cluster 2).Conclusion: Memory was the sole domain able to discriminate AD from non-AD, probably due to Cluster 1 heterogeneity. Further studies are warranted to explore this hypothesis. A smaller cluster with AD shows variability in the biomarker profile, which is relevant given its worse cognitive scores.