TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schiele, Miriam A.
A1  - Ziegler, Christiane
A1  - Kollert, Leonie
A1  - Katzorke, Andrea
A1  - Schartner, Christoph
A1  - Busch, Yasmin
A1  - Gromer, Daniel
A1  - Reif, Andreas
A1  - Pauli, Paul
A1  - Deckert, Jürgen
A1  - Herrmann, Martin J.
A1  - Domschke, Katharina
T1  - Plasticity of Functional MAOA Gene Methylation in Acrophobia
JF  - International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology
N2  - Epigenetic mechanisms have been proposed to mediate fear extinction in animal models. Here, MAOA methylation was analyzed via direct sequencing of sodium bisulfite-treated DNA extracted from blood cells before and after a 2-week exposure therapy in a sample of n = 28 female patients with acrophobia as well as in n = 28 matched healthy female controls. Clinical response was measured using the Acrophobia Questionnaire and the Attitude Towards Heights Questionnaire. The functional relevance of altered MAOA methylation was investigated by luciferase-based reporter gene assays. MAOA methylation was found to be significantly decreased in patients with acrophobia compared with healthy controls. Furthermore, MAOA methylation levels were shown to significantly increase after treatment and correlate with treatment response as reflected by decreasing Acrophobia Questionnaire/Attitude Towards Heights Questionnaire scores. Functional analyses revealed decreased reporter gene activity in presence of methylated compared with unmethylated pCpGfree_MAOA reporter gene vector constructs. The present proof-of-concept psychotherapy-epigenetic study for the first time suggests functional MAOA methylation changes as a potential epigenetic correlate of treatment response in acrophobia and fosters further investigation into the notion of epigenetic mechanisms underlying fear extinction.
KW  - monoamine oxidase A
KW  - anxiety
KW  - extinction
KW  - epigenetics
KW  - DNA methylation
Y1  - 2018
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-228571
VL  - 21
IS  - 9
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Akhrif, Atae
A1  - Romanos, Marcel
A1  - Domschke, Katharina
A1  - Schmitt-Boehrer, Angelika
A1  - Neufang, Susanne
T1  - Fractal Analysis of BOLD Time Series in a Network Associated With Waiting Impulsivity
JF  - Frontiers in Physiology
N2  - Fractal phenomena can be found in numerous scientific areas including neuroscience. Fractals are structures, in which the whole has the same shape as its parts. A specific structure known as pink noise (also called fractal or 1/f noise) is one key fractal manifestation, exhibits both stability and adaptability, and can be addressed via the Hurst exponent (H). FMRI studies using H on regional fMRI time courses used fractality as an important characteristic to unravel neural networks from artificial noise. In this fMRI-study, we examined 103 healthy male students at rest and while performing the 5-choice serial reaction time task. We addressed fractality in a network associated with waiting impulsivity using the adaptive fractal analysis (AFA) approach to determine H. We revealed the fractal nature of the impulsivity network. Furthermore, fractality was influenced by individual impulsivity in terms of decreasing fractality with higher impulsivity in regions of top-down control (left middle frontal gyrus) as well as reward processing (nucleus accumbens and anterior cingulate cortex). We conclude that fractality as determined via H is a promising marker to quantify deviations in network functions at an early stage and, thus, to be able to inform preventive interventions before the manifestation of a disorder.
KW  - fMRI
KW  - Hurst Exponent
KW  - frontal cortex
KW  - nucleus accumbens
KW  - biomarker
KW  - impulse control disorders
Y1  - 2018
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-189191
SN  - 1664-042X
VL  - 9
ER  -