Evolutionary psychiatry

Early life adoption shows rearing environment supersedes transgenerational effects of paternal stress on aggressive temperament in the offspring

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Guillaume Poirier

Prenatal experience and transgenerational influences are increasingly recognized as critical for defining the socio-emotional system, through the development of social competences and of their underlying neural circuitries. Here, we used an established rat ...

2021

GABA A receptors in the ventral tegmental area control the outcome of a social competition in rats

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Ioannis Zalachoras

Social dominance can be attained through social competitions. Recent work in both humans and rodents has identified trait anxiety as a crucial predictor of social competitiveness. In addition, the anxiolytic GABAA positive modulator, diazepam, injected eit ...

2018

Not all anxious individuals get lost: trait anxiety and mental rotation ability interact to explain performance in map-based route learning in men

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, John Christian Thoresen, Rebecca Francelet

Navigation through an environment is a fundamental human activity. Although group differences in navigational ability are documented (e.g., gender), little is known about traits that predict these abilities. Apart from a well-established link between menta ...

2016

Visual impairments in schizophrenia

Michael Herzog, Maya Roinishvili, Albulena Jashari-Shaqiri

The obvious symptoms of schizophrenia are hallucinations, delusions, and cognitive dysfunctions. However, schizophrenia patients have many other abnormalities, including visual impairments. Visual paradigms are versatile tools of schizophrenia research bec ...

2016

A randomised controlled trial of bumetanide in the treatment of autism in children

Nouchine Hadjikhani

Gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA)-mediated synapses and the oscillations they orchestrate are altered in autism. GABA-acting benzodiazepines exert in some patients with autism paradoxical effects, raising the possibility that like in epilepsies, GABA excites ...

Nature Publishing Group2012