Climate relicts hold considerable importance because they have resulted from numerous historical changes. However, there are major interspecific variations among the ways by which they survived climate changes. Therefore, investigating the factors and timing that affected population demographics can expand our understanding of how climate relicts responded to historical environmental changes. Here, we examined herbaceous hydrangeas of genus Deinanthe in East Asia, which show limited distributions and a remarkable disjunction between Japan and central China. Chloroplast genome and restriction siteassociated DNA sequencing revealed that speciation event occurred in the late Miocene (ca. 7-9 Mya) in response to global climate change. Two lineages apparently remained not branched until the middle Quaternary, and afterwards started to diverge to regional population groups. The narrow endemic species in central China showed lower genetic diversity (He = 0.082), as its population size rapidly decreased during the Holocene due to isolation in montane refugia. Insular populations in the three Japanese islands (He = 0.137-0.160) showed a genetic structure that was inconsistent with sea barriers, indicating that it was shaped in the glacial period when its range retreated to coastal refugia on the exposed sea floor. Demographic modelling by stairway-plot analysis reconstructed variable responses of Japanese populations: some experienced glacial bottlenecks in refugial isolation, while post-glacial range expansion seemingly exerted founder effects on other populations. Overall, this study demonstrated the involvement of not just one, but multiple factors, such as the interplay between climate changes, geography, and other population-specific factors, that determine the demographics of climate relicts.

Background Accumulating evidence suggests that deficits in decision making and judgment may be involved in several psychiatric disorders, including addiction. Behavioral addiction is a conceptually new psychiatric condition, raising a debate of what criteria would define behavioral addiction, and several impulse control disorders are equivalently considered as behavioral addiction. In this preliminary study with a relatively small sample size, we investigated how decision making and judgment were compromised in behavioral addiction to further characterize this psychiatric condition. Methods Healthy control subjects (n=31) and patients with kleptomania and paraphilia as behavioral addiction (n=16) were recruited. A battery of questionnaires for assessments of cognitive biases and economic decision making, and a psychological test for assessment of the jumping-to-conclusions bias with functional near-infrared spectroscopy recordings of prefrontal cortical (PFC) activity were conducted. Results Although behavioral addicts exhibited stronger cognitive biases than controls in the questionnaire, such difference was primarily due to lower intelligence in the patients. Behavioral addicts also exhibited higher risk taking in economic decision making, and worse performance indicating compromised probability judgment, along with diminished PFC activity in the right hemisphere. Conclusions Our study suggests that behavioral addiction may involve impairments of probability judgment associated with attenuated PFC activity, which consequently lead to higher risk taking in decision making.

Won 2 , tomonari Morita 2 , emi ishikawa 2 , Young-A Lee 3 & Yukiori Goto 1* Behavioral addiction (BA) is characterized by repeated, impulsive and compulsive seeking of specific behaviors, even with consequent negative outcomes. in drug addiction, alterations in biological mechanisms, such as monoamines and epigenetic processes, have been suggested, whereas whether such mechanisms are also altered in BA remains unknown. in this preliminary study with a small sample size, we investigated monoamine concentrations and genome-wide DnA methylation in blood samples from BA patients and control (ct) subjects. Higher dopamine (DA) metabolites and the ratio between DA and its metabolites were observed in the BA group than in the ct group, suggesting increased DA turnover in BA. In the methylation assay, 186 hyper-or hypomethylated CpGs were identified in the BA group compared to the CT group, of which 64 CpGs were further identified to correlate with methylation status in brain tissues with database search. Genes identified with hyperor hypomethylation were not directly associated with DA transmission, but with cell membrane trafficking and the immune system. Some of the genes were also associated with psychiatric disorders, such as drug addiction, schizophrenia, and autism spectrum disorder. these results suggest that BA may involve alterations in epigenetic regulation of the genes associated with synaptic transmission, including that of monoamines, and neurodevelopment.

Although studies have demonstrated that negative affects are critical attributes of drug addiction, this has remained less clear in behavioral addiction. In this preliminary study with a relatively small number of samples, we investigated negative affects in patients diagnosed with behavioral addiction, particularly paraphilia and kleptomania. Negative affects were examined using self-rating questionnaire and further evaluated by objective assessments in behavioral addicts and normal subjects. Explicit, self-referential negative affects, such as anxiety, stress, and depression, were higher in behavioral addicts than control subjects. Such self-referential negative affects were, although not entirely, consistent with objective evaluations by others and blood stress hormone concentrations. Further investigation of personality traits in behavioral addicts unveiled that heightened negative affects were associated with stronger neurotic personality in behavioral addicts than normal subjects. These results suggest that behavioral addiction, such as paraphilia and kleptomania, may be characterized by heightened negative affects attributable to stronger neurotic personality.

Background Impulse control disorder has been suggested to meet the criteria of addiction and is often considered a behavioral addiction; however, few studies have examined whether the disorder involves altered responses to situational cues that are associated with symptoms. In this study, we examined behavioral and neural responses to situational cues among individuals with an impulse control disorder, i.e., kleptomania. Methods Healthy adults and kleptomania patients whose symptoms were characterized by repetitive, uncontrolled shoplifting of sales goods in stores were recruited. Images with and without situational cues (e.g., a grocery store) were presented, and gazing patterns for the images were detected with the eye-tracker. Additionally, prefrontal cortical (PFC) responses were measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. PFC activities were further examined while subjects were watching video clips in virtual reality with and without situational cues. Results Among kleptomania patients, the gazing pattern for an image with situational cues was distinct from gazing patterns for other images; such differences were not observed in healthy subjects. Consistent with gazing patterns, PFC local network responses by hemoglobin changes to images and videos with situational cues were substantially different from other images and videos in kleptomania patients, whereas PFC responses were consistent across all image and video presentations in healthy subjects. Conclusions These results suggest that kleptomania patients may perceive situational cues associated with their problematic behaviors differently from healthy subjects.