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Study Objectives: Deterioration in sleep quality seems to be a natural consequence of physical changes during pregnancy. It is still unclear if insomnia in pregnancy is associated with the same factors as chronic insomnia in the general population. The aim of this study was to explore the determinants of insomnia during pregnancy. Methods: The study included 266 women (mean age: 30.6 ± 5 years, weeks of pregnancy: 36 [interquartile range 32-38]) recruited at the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Medical University of Warsaw. The assessment of variables was performed using the Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Regestein Hyperarousal Scale (HS), Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), General Practice Physical Activity Questionnaire, and a semi-structured interview about different sleep disorders. Results: Almost 40% of the women in our study received a diagnosis of insomnia based on AIS cutoff scores. The between-group analyses indicated that HS score, BDI score, eating at night, legs tingling, nightmares, snoring, and myoclonus differentiated the groups of individuals with insomnia from those without insomnia. Other variables were not significantly different between the groups. We divided individuals with insomnia in terms of insomnia duration: 49% developed insomnia at least 1 year before the study onset and 39.6% during pregnancy. For further analyses we used only the women in whom insomnia developed during pregnancy. Logistic regression confirmed that depressive symptoms (BDI) and eating at night were significant predictors of insomnia in pregnancy. Conclusions: Depressive symptoms and night eating are key factors related to insomnia developed during pregnancy.

Cognitive deficits in depression are mostly apparent in executive functions, especially when integration of information and reasoning is required. In parallel, there are also numerous studies pointing to the frontal alpha band asymmetry as a psychophysiological marker of depression. In this study, we explored the role of frontal alpha asymmetry as a potential factor explaining the cognitive problems accompanying depression. Twenty-six depressed and 26 control participants completed a reasoning task and underwent 5 minutes of electroencephalography recording. In line with the previous studies, depressed people showed difficulties with reasoning but we did not observe the relationship between frontal asymmetry in the alpha band and depression. However, we found that in the depressed group the frontal alpha asymmetry index was characterised by larger variance than in the control group, and it was also a strong predictor of cognitive functioning exclusively in the depressed group. Our results point to the disruption of a psychophysiological balance, reflected in changed frontal alpha asymmetry (into more left-sided frontal asymmetry in the alpha band, reflecting more right-sided cortical activity) as a possible brain correlate of cognitive disturbances present in depressive disorders.

Objectives: Dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis leads to impaired stress response. FK506-binding protein 51 (FKBP5), which influences HPA axis activity via glucocorticoid receptors, is supposed to play an important role in the regulation of negative feedback and glucocorticoid resistance. Since ineffective stress response mechanisms are considered as a biological background of suicide behavior, we aimed to analyze a possible association between FKBP5 functional polymorphisms and completed suicide. Methods: The selected FKBP5 polymorphisms rs1360780 and rs3800373 were genotyped in a sample of 563 suicide victims and 475 controls. Results: A significant association between the high-induction rs3800373 C allele and completed suicide was detected (OR = 1.36, p = 0.007). In this polymorphism, genotype distribution supported a codominant model of inheritance. The analyzed SNPs were in strong linkage disequilibrium (D' = 0.916 and r² = 0.826) with the rs1360780 (T)-rs3800373 (C) haplotype apparently responsible for the observed association (OR = 1.34, p = 0.010). Conclusion: The results of the present study indicate that genetic alterations in FKBP5 may influence vulnerability to suicide.

Anxiety disorders are a social problem due to their prevalence and consequences. It is crucial to explore the influence of anxiety on cognitive processes. In this study we recorded EEG activity from 73 subjects (35 patients, 38 controls, matched for age and education) during performance of the Continuous Attention Task. We used low resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) for evaluation of mechanisms of impaired cognitive performance in anxiety disorders. Analysis showed that patients with anxiety disorders committed more errors than the controls, had a short latency of P300 and higher amplitude of ERPs at all steps of stimulus processing. Furthermore, we showed that there was a relationship between the scores of Hamilton Anxiety Scale and Beck Depression Inventory, and amplitudes and latencies of ERPs. The results of LORETA analysis showed that enhanced neural responses were found within circuits mediating visual information processing, sustained attention and anxiety. Also, we found higher current density within areas playing an important role in the brain fear network -anterior cingulate and anterior part of insula. Electrophysiological neuroimaging showed greater recruitment of cognitive resources in anxiety disorders, evidenced by higher current density and activation of greater number of brain areas. Despite the strategy employed to compensate for cognitive problems, the anxiety patients did not achieve the same performance as controls. Present study demonstrates that anxiety disorders influence processing of neutral stimuli and this influence is observable at both behavioral and electrophysiological level. The data suggests instability of neural systems responsible for information selection, working memory, engagement and focusing of attention.

We present an open, parametric system for automatic detection of EEG artifacts in polysomnographic recordings. It relies on independent parameters reflecting the relative presence of each of the eight types of artifacts in a given epoch. An artifact is marked if any of these parameters exceeds a threshold. These thresholds, set for each parameter separately, can be adjusted via "learning by example" procedure (multidimensional minimization with computationally intensive cost function), which can be used to automatically tune the parameters to new types of datasets, environments or requirements. Performance of the system, evaluated on 103 overnight polysomnographic recordings, revealed concordance with decisions of human experts close to the inter-expert agreement. To make this statement well defined, we review the methodology of evaluation for this kind of detection systems. Complete source code is available from http://eeg.pl; a user-friendly version with Java interface is available from http://signalml.org.

Accumulating evidence points to a pivotal role of the brain in the regulation of the circulatory system and energy balance. It has also been found that common civilization diseases such as depression, obesity, hypertension, myocardial infarction or heart failure are accompanied by an increase in concentration of inflammatory mediators in the blood, cerebrospinal fluid and various tissues. Recent studies have revealed that inflammatory mediators that are synthesized peripherally or in the brain may affect the nervous regulation of animal body systems. For example, it has been found that non-specific pro-inflammatory stimuli as well as treatment with several cytokines may cause depressive behavior, disturbances in energy balance and alterations in the circulatory system. On the other hand, knockout of genes for pro-inflammatory cytokines or administration of anti-inflammatory mediators may normalize the pathological changes. In the present manuscript we will review studies that imply the common neuroinflammatory pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases, depression and energy balance disorders.