Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms for Translational Research in Cerebrovascular, Cardiovascular Diseases and Psychiatric Disorders

Dear Colleagues,

Through BRAIN Initiative and related projects all over the world, it has become clear that brain functional changes occur not only in neurological and psychiatric disorders, but also in many other chronic conditions that do not primarily affect the brain and mind. Recently, fMRI studies have found aberrant insular and cerebellar neural response to Valsalva maneuver in heart failure patients, which is associated with abnormal autonomic nervous systems change. Other fMRI studies have found an altered brain–gut axis in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. Moreover, significant changes in the activity of the reward system have been reported in patients with diabetes or obesity. These innovative methods (structural image, connectome, sequencing, etc.) may help us to characterize activity or pathological changes, including extra-brain information such as brain–heart or brain–gut interactions and their biomolecules.

Introducing these innovative methods or combined with genomics/proteomics or big-data population-based studies will provide us with more cellular and molecular mechanisms with spatial resolution to explore the pathobiology underlying different brain- and heart-related diseases/disorders (such as ADHD, CNS infection, heart failure, hepatic encephalopathy, Parkinson’s disease, temporal lobe epilepsy, etc.) and diseases that may chronically affect the brain and mind, including but not limited to COVID-19 and lung infection, diabetes, obesity, and tumors.

The rationale of this Special Issue is to provide an interdisciplinary platform for researchers to exchange information and ideas about state-of-the-art methods and their application in the study of biomolecules, cells, and connections for various diseases and disorders that are related to the brain, heart, and mind.

Prof. Zheng Zachory Wei
Dr. Xiaopeng Song
Guest Editors

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• brain dynamics
• big data
• biomarkers
• genomics
• medical image
• MRI
• neuropsychiatry
• neurovasculature
• proteomics
• sequencing