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Long-term neural and physiological phenotyping of a single human

ABSTRACT: The dynamics of human brain function are increasingly well understood at the short timescale of seconds/minutes (for example, through studies of learning) and the long timescale of years/decades (for example, through studies of development andageing), but almost nothing is known about how the human brainfunction varies across the range of days to months. This is a critical gap, because major psychiatric disorders show large fluctuations in brain function over this timescale. However, the kind of dense longitudinal phenotyping that is necessary to understand this question is extremely challenging with healthy human volunteers,who are unlikely to be sufficiently motivated to sustain frequent participation in a study over a long period. For this reason, the participation of motivated experimenters can be uniquely useful for demanding longitudinal studies. We investigated the long-range dynamics of brain function andtheir relation to a broad set of psychological and biological variables in a single healthy human (author R.A.P.) over the course of 532 days (along with several follow-up visits), representing one of the most intensive biological characterizations of a single individual ever performed (referred to hereafter as the MyConnectomestudy). The study was designed to measure the broadest possible range of human phenotypes (the phenome’3,4) to allow the widespread assessment of relations between psychological, neural and metabolic function. The results of the present study demonstrate that healthy brain function shows rich dynamics over the course of 18 months, and that these dynamics are paralleled by ongoing fluctuations in psychological and physiological function as observed in behaviour,gene expression and metabolomic measurements. These findings provide a proof of concept for the dynamic longitudinal phenotyping of individuals, which we propose will be crucial togain a better understanding of the substantial fluctuations in psychological and neural function in individuals with major psychiatric disorders.

ORGANISM(S): Human Homo Sapiens

TISSUE(S): Blood

SUBMITTER: Oliver Fiehn

PROVIDER: ST000397 | MetabolomicsWorkbench | Wed May 11 00:00:00 BST 2016

REPOSITORIES: MetabolomicsWorkbench

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Project description:Brain structure and function are sexually dimorphic. As neuroscience research has largely focused on the male brain and behavior, the female brain and, in particular, its inherent dynamics have been left underexplored. During the mammalian reproductive period, the female brain is exposed to fluctuating hormone levels over the cycles known as menstrual (in humans) or estrous (in rodents). Variation in estradiol levels has been shown to affect synaptic plasticity in the female brain, including changes in dendritic spine density systematically across the estrous cycle. Female emotionality and cognitive function vary with physiologically fluctuating sex hormone levels. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the dynamic nature of the female brain structure and function are currently unknown. Here we show that neuronal chromatin organization in the female ventral hippocampus of mouse is dynamic and fluctuates across the estrous cycle. We find changes in chromatin organization associated with the transcriptional activity of nearby genes important for neuronal function, neurotransmission, synapse formation, and behavior. We also link these chromatin dynamics to variation in anxiety-like behavior and to fluctuations in dendritic spine and synaptic density in the ventral hippocampus. In terms of chromatin structure, within-female and between-sex variation are of similar magnitudes, emphasizing the importance of accounting for fluctuating sex-hormone levels in females in the studies of the brain epigenome and behavior. These results provide critical insights into the mechanisms underlying sex-hormone and sex-dependent variation in adult brain structure and function. The study also has implications for better understanding of sex-biased disorders such as depression and anxiety which are strongly associated with sex-hormone status in females and are twice as prevalent in women than in men. This study establishes a foundation for the development of sex-specific approaches to treat sex-biased neuropsychiatric disorders including depression and anxiety disorders.

Project description:Interplanetary human spaceflight represents a formidable medical challenge, but also provides a unique platform for investigating human adaptation to extreme environmental changes. Understanding the long-term effects of isolation has relevance in a range of scenarios and it is well recognized that a better understanding of the relationship between environmental exposure and the epigenome can lead to more effective preventive measures. Here we conduct a longitudinal epigenetic, mood state and biochemical profiling of 6 crew members in an experiment simulating a 520-day mission to Mars. Illumina HumanMethylation450 BeadChip was used to obtain DNA methylation profiles. Firstly, we found that long-term isolation can induce global DNA methylation remodeling, and this change seems to be an active adaptation (rather than a random process or a by-product of the isolation). This study is the first to demonstrate the dynamic relationship between global epigenetic remodeling and isolation-induced mood state and biochemical changes. Secondly, by considering the location of methylation sites within the genome and using gene-pathway annotation, we were able to identify pathways that were significantly enriched in methylation events and consider their association with specific function and the timeline of the mission. Thirdly, via our definition of epi-entropy, a measure of entropy adapted to methylation events, we observed that the methylation remodeling produced a marked reduction in epi-entropy. Results suggest that DNA methylation change is an indicator of change rather than its by-product, i.e., there is a psychology-epigenome-metabolism model of long-term depression; DNA methylation programs the environment signal into the epigenome, which is subsequently transformed into the biochemical output and health outcome. Thus, longitudinal epigenetic profiling could code the effect of isolation and act as early indicators of latent health outcome. A longitudinal epigenetic, mood state and biochemical profiling of 6 crew members in an experiment simulating a 520-day mission to Mars. 36 samples of blood cell DNA methylation profiling were obtained by Illumina HumanMethylation450 BeadChip, across 6 sampling points during the 520 days mission for all of the 6 crew members.

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Long-term neural and physiological phenotyping of a single human

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