Volume 1 Issue 11, November 2023

This Comment proposes to increase knowledge of the effects of urbanicity on brain and mental health by linking existing human spatial data with macroenvironmental and regional socioeconomic data. It introduces hypothesis-free models to capture the data and model life in the city and suggests refinements for future studies into conditions that will soon affect the majority of the earth’s population.

Numerous randomized placebo-controlled studies over the past two decades have shown that ketamine has a rapid antidepressant action. However, its acute transient effects on cognition and perception are likely to unmask study-arm assignment. Now, the use of surgical anesthesia to conceal treatment assignment finds high rates of rapid antidepressant response among participants, regardless of whether they are randomized to ketamine or placebo.

Robust 24-hour light–dark cycles are crucial for healthy circadian rhythms. A study now shows that there is an independent association between increased light at night and decreased light during the day with a variety of mental health disorders.

After the hindrance imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, neuroscience research pushed forward. NeuroFrance 2023 took place as an in-person meeting and highlighted current and future strategies for exploring the brain and its pathologies, including a strong pathway to mental health research.

In this Perspective, Kucyi and co-authors explore some of the recent developments in neuroscience, including investigations of network dynamics and neural mechanisms that support off-task thoughts, and consider the implications for maladaptive forms of thought in mental health.

Gupta and colleagues use multi-omic analyses of neuroimaging and fecal metabolites to identify brain–gut–microbiome disruptions in response to discrimination that may affect preference for unhealthy eating patterns and predispose individuals experiencing discrimination-related stress to obesity.

Burns et al. explored the association between day and night-time light exposure and the risk for psychiatric disorders using a large sample of adults from the UK Biobank dataset.

Based on a large neuroimaging dataset, the study reveals three robust major depression subtypes, each showing distinct clinical and transcriptomic profiles.

In this clinical trial, a single dose of intravenous ketamine delivered during surgical anesthesia had no greater effect than placebo in acutely reducing the severity of depressive symptoms in adults with major depressive disorder.

By developing the large-scale cortical spatial–rhythmic network analysis, authors identify putative electrophysiological biomarkers for clinical screening of individuals at high familial risk of bipolar disorder onset.

Ke et al. investigated the association between trauma exposure and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and the gut microbiome and dietary pattern of a cohort of women enrolled in a longitudinal study in the United States.