Francesco Amico

Texas Center for Lifestyle Medicine & Neotherapy Weston FL

Background. Persons with a history of traumatic brain injury (TBI) may exhibit short- and long-term cognitive deficits as well as psychiatric symptoms. These symptoms often reflect functional anomalies in the brain that are not detected by standard neuroimaging. In this context, quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) is more suitable to evaluat...

Suicide is a global phenomenon that impacts individuals, families, and communities from all income groups and all regions worldwide. While it can be prevented if personalized interventions are implemented, more objective and reliable diagnostic methods are needed to complement interview-based risk assessments. In this context, electroencephalograph...

Background: Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a psychiatric illness that is often associated with potentially life-threatening physiological changes and increased risk for suicidal behavior. Electroencephalography (EEG) research suggests an association between depression and specific frequency imbalances in the frontal brain region. Further, whil...

Auditory hallucinations (AH) are reported by 60–75% of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. They have been linked to a range of cortical structural and functional changes. We systematically reviewed electroencephalogram (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) resting-state studies of adults with schizophrenia experiencing auditory hallucinations (ve...

Introduction: The incomplete effectiveness of interventions demands new ways to help people diagnosed with schizophrenia who experience auditory verbal hallucinations (SZ-AVH). We aimed to perform a feasibility study of low-resolution electromagnetic tomography analysis (LORETA) neurofeedback with people exhibiting treatment-resistant SZ-AVH. Metho...

Introduction. In high-contact sport athletes, repetitive head trauma might be linked to permanent brain damage. In particular, findings in professional American football players indicate that brain injury is often associated with long-term cognitive slowing. In this context, hemp extracts might have beneficial effects. Methods. Forty-two former pro...

Background: Despite the growing awareness across the general population, migraine is often underdiagnosed and undertreated in socially and economically marginalized groups. The present study aimed to investigate the differential effects of race and income on other sociodemographic data and hospital length of stay in patients admitted to hospital wi...

Exercise improves both physical and mental health and increases neurogenesis in the dendate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus. The aim of this study was to examine whether exercising, as compared to no change in regular physical activity, would impact on hippocampal volume, and in particular the core hippocampal structures, DG and cornu ammonis (CA) su...

Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, yet rates of missed- and mis-diagnoses are alarmingly high. The introduction of objective biomarkers, to aid diagnosis, informed by depression's physiological pathology may alleviate some of the burden on strained mental health services. Three minutes of eyes-closed resting state heart rate a...

Background Previous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) research suggests that, prior to the onset of psychosis, high risk youths already exhibit brain abnormalities similar to those present in patients with schizophrenia. Objectives The goal of the present study was to describe the functional organization of endogenous activation in young adolescent...

This study investigates the potential of using heart rate-related measurements to aid clinicians in predicting suicide risk. For this purpose, heart rate was recorded during 10 minutes resting state from 15 patients with suicide ideation and 15 healthy subjects using an affordable and wearable sensor. Our results showed statistically significant di...

Finding robust brain substrates of mood disorders is an important target for research. The degree to which major depression and bipolar disorder are associated with common and/or distinct patterns of volumetric changes is nevertheless unclear. Furthermore the extant literature is heterogeneous with respect to the nature of these changes. We report...

Facial expression is an independent and objective marker of affect. Basic emotions (fear, sadness, joy, anger, disgust and surprise) have been shown to be universal across human cultures. Techniques such as the Facial Action Coding System can capture emotion with good reliability. Such techniques visually process the changes in different assembli...

Objective: Several neuroimaging meta-analyses have summarized structural brain changes in major depression using coordinate-based methods. These methods might be biased toward brain regions where significant differences were found in the original studies. In this study, a novel voxel-based technique is implemented that estimates and meta-analyses...

Exercise increases wellbeing and improves mood. It is however unclear how these mood changes relate to brain function. We conducted a randomized controlled trial investigating resting state modifications in healthy adults after an extended period of aerobic physical exercise and their relationship with mood improvements. We aimed to identify novel...

We explored a novel method to electrophysiologically measure visuo-spatial recognition memory using a modified version of the Virtual Tray of Objects Task (VTOT). Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded from 18 healthy volunteers during performance in the VTOT. Participants were required to detect random repetitions of three-dimensional visual...

Abnormal brain connectivity is thought to have a key role in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. White matter (WM) abnormalities have been reported in patients with schizophrenia and patients with prodromal syndromes. To our knowledge, no studies have yet reported on WM differences among adolescents who report psycho...

Previous diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies have shown that various factors can affect white matter (WM) tract diffusivity. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of childhood adversity (CA), age and gender on WM diffusivity in tracts that are thought to be involved in emotional regulation in individuals with major depressi...

Background: Childhood maltreatment has been found to play a crucial role in the development of psychiatric disorders. However, whether childhood maltreatment is associated with structural brain changes described for major depressive disorder (MDD) is still a matter of debate. The aim of this study was to investigate whether patients with MDD and a...

Objectives: There is mounting evidence that inflammatory processes play a key role in emotional as well as cognitive dysfunctions. In this context, research employing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MR spectroscopy) suggests a possible link between structural/functional anomalies in the brain and an increase o...

Experimental studies support a neurotrophic hypothesis of major depressive disorder (MDD). The aim of this study was to determine the effect of Val66Met brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) polymorphism on the white matter fiber tracts connecting hippocampus and amygdala with the prefrontal lobe in a sample of patients with MDD and healthy cont...

The kynurenine pathway (KP) and its rate-limiting tryptophan degrading enzyme indolamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) have been implicated in the pathogenesis of depression. IDO expression is driven by inflammatory cytokines, and has been suggested as the link between inflammation and a serotonergic deficit in depression. Studies also indicate that inflam...

Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) process information with a bias towards negative stimuli. However, little is known on the link between vulnerability to MDD and brain functional anomalies associated with stimulus bias. A cohort of 38 subjects, of which 14 were patients with acute MDD and 24 were healthy controls (HC), were recruited...

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a psychiatric disease that affects children and persists in 50% of cases into adulthood. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) studies in children suggest that ADHD is associated with structural abnormalities in the brain. However, very little research has been carried out on adult ADHD. Using high-reso...

In major depressive disorder (MDD), it is unclear to what extent structural brain changes are associated with depressive episodes or represent part of the mechanism by which the risk for illness is mediated. The aim of this study was to investigate whether structural abnormalities are related to risk for the development of MDD. We compared healthy...

Dopamine D(1)/D(5) receptor agonists may enhance cognition by mimicking dopamine's neurophysiological actions on the processes underlying learning and memory. The present study examined the task- and performance- dependence of the cognitive effects of a partial agonist at dopamine D(1)/D(5) receptors, SKF 38393 [(+/-)-1-phenyl-2,3,4,5-tetrahydro-(1...