Purpose Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is a psychiatric disorder that causes serious impairments in the functioning and quality of life of affected women. Until recently, research efforts were somewhat hampered by the lack of formal diagnostic criteria, which have now been codified as a category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). Better characterization of deficits in socioemotional functioning caused by PMDD may aid in improving treatment efforts. Methods In this investigation, prospective symptom ratings, based on DSM-5 criteria, were used to measure PMDD symptoms in 36 women (18 with PMDD, 18 healthy controls). Two self-report inventories, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, were used to measure ability to regulate emotions, and socioemotional functioning was measured by inventories of social connectedness, perceived stress, and affect. Potential relationships between ability to regulate emotion and PMDD symptom severity, as well as other measures of socioemotional functioning and affective state were tested. Results Women with PMDD reported significantly more behavioral impulsivity, and greater difficulties in regulating emotion and in socioemotional functioning. Conclusions Cognitive or behavioral strategies to improve these problems may benefit women with PMDD and help to alleviate distress caused by this disorder.

During the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, women with PMDD experience difficulty regulating emotions. Hypoactivation in the right dlPFC may contribute to this problem, but may be related more generally to other affective symptoms of PMDD. Hypofunction in the right pre- and postcentral gyri warrants additional study.

A variety of genetic techniques have been devised to determine cell lineage relationships during tissue development. Some of these systems monitor cell lineages spatially and/or temporally without regard to gene expression by the cells, whereas others correlate gene expression with the lineage under study. The GAL4 Technique for Real-time and Clonal Expression (G-TRACE) system allows for rapid, fluorescent protein-based visualization of both current and past GAL4 expression patterns and is therefore amenable to genome-wide expression-based lineage screens. Here we describe the results from such a screen, performed by undergraduate students of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Undergraduate Research Consortium for Functional Genomics (URCFG) and high school summer scholars as part of a discovery-based education program. The results of the screen, which reveal novel expression-based lineage patterns within the brain, the imaginal disc epithelia, and the hematopoietic lymph gland, have been compiled into the G-TRACE Expression Database (GED), an online resource for use by the Drosophila research community. The impact of this discovery-based research experience on student learning gains was assessed independently and shown to be greater than that of similar programs conducted elsewhere. Furthermore, students participating in the URCFG showed considerably higher STEM retention rates than UCLA STEM students that did not participate in the URCFG, as well as STEM students nationwide.

BackgroundPremenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is an understudied, debilitating disorder of women. Given evidence for prefrontal cortical and limbic dysfunction in PMDD, we compared intrinsic connectivity of the executive control network (ECN), default mode network (DMN), and amygdala in women with PMDD vs. controls.MethodsThirty-six women (18 PMDD, 18 control) participated in fMRI during the follicular and luteal phases of the menstrual cycle. At each time, resting-state functional connectivity was evaluated both before and after participants performed an emotion regulation task. The ECN was identified using independent components analysis, and connectivity of left and right amygdala seeds was also evaluated.ResultsNonparametric permutation testing identified a cluster in the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) with significantly stronger connectivity to the left ECN in women with PMDD vs. controls in all four fMRI sessions. Women with PMDD exhibited no difference in functional connectivity between menstrual cycle phases. Amygdala connectivity did not differ between the groups but differed significantly with menstrual phase, with left amygdala connectivity to cingulate cortex being significantly stronger during the follicular vs. luteal phase. Right amygdala connectivity to the middle frontal gyrus was also stronger during the follicular vs. luteal phase, with no group differences. These findings suggest that women with PMDD have different intrinsic network dynamics in the left executive control network compared to healthy controls.