Beyond simple models of self-control to circuit-based accounts of adolescent behavior

The NIMH Intramural Longitudinal Study of the Endocrine and Neurobiological Events Accompanying Puberty: Protocol and rationale for methods and measures

Delineating the relationship between human neurodevelopment and the maturation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis during puberty is critical for investigating the increase in vulnerability to neuropsychiatric disorders that is well documented during this period. Preclinical research demonstrates a clear association between gonadal production of sex steroids and neurodevelopment; however, identifying similar associations in humans has been complicated by confounding variables (such as age) and the coactivation of two additional endocrine systems (the adrenal androgenic system and the somatotropic growth axis) and requires further elucidation. In this paper, we present the design of, and preliminary observations from, the ongoing NIMH Intramural Longitudinal Study of the Endocrine and Neurobiological Events Accompanying Puberty. The aim of this study is to directly examine how the increase in sex steroid hormone production following activation of the HPG-axis (i.e., gonadarche) impacts neurodevelopment, and, additionally, to determine how gonadal development and maturation is associated with longitudinal changes in brain structure and function in boys and girls. To disentangle the effects of sex steroids from those of age and other endocrine events on brain development, our study design includes 1) selection criteria that establish a well-characterized baseline cohort of healthy 8-year-old children prior to the onset of puberty (e.g., prior to puberty-related sex steroid hormone production); 2) temporally dense longitudinal, repeated-measures sampling of typically developing children at 8-10 month intervals over a 10-year period between the ages of eight and 18; 3) contemporaneous collection of endocrine and other measures of gonadal, adrenal, and growth axis function at each timepoint; and 4) collection of multimodal neuroimaging measures at these same timepoints, including brain structure (gray and white matter volume, cortical thickness and area, white matter integrity, myelination) and function (reward processing, emotional processing, inhibition/impulsivity, working memory, resting-state network connectivity, regional cerebral blood flow). This report of our ongoing longitudinal study 1) provides a comprehensive review of the endocrine events of puberty; 2) details our overall study design; 3) presents our selection criteria for study entry (e.g., well-characterized prepubertal baseline) along with the endocrinological considerations and guiding principles that underlie these criteria; 4) describes our longitudinal outcome measures and how they specifically relate to investigating the effects of gonadal development on brain development; and 5) documents patterns of fMRI activation and resting-state networks from an early, representative subsample of our cohort of prepubertal 8-year-old children.

Cortical maturation from childhood to adolescence is reflected in resting state EEG signal complexity

Endogenous cortical fluctuations captured by electroencephalograms (EEGs) reflect activity in large-scale brain networks that exhibit dynamic patterns over multiple time scales. Developmental changes in the coordination and integration of brain function leads to greater complexity in population level neural dynamics. In this study we examined multiscale entropy, a measure of signal complexity, in resting-state EEGs in a large (N = 405) cross-sectional sample of children and adolescents (9–16 years). Our findings showed consistent age-dependent increases in EEG complexity that are distributed across multiple temporal scales and spatial regions. Developmental changes were most robust as the age gap between groups increased, particularly between late childhood and adolescence, and were most prominent over fronto-central scalp regions. These results suggest that the transition from late childhood to adolescence is characterized by age-dependent changes in the underlying complexity of endogenous brain networks.

Development of Perceptual Inhibition in Adolescents—A Critical Period?

Recent studies suggest that the developmental curves in adolescence, related to the development of executive functions, could be fitted to a non-linear trajectory of development with progressions and retrogressions. Therefore, the present study proposes to analyze the pattern of development in Perceptual Inhibition (PI), considering all stages of adolescence (early, middle, and late) in intervals of one year. To this aim, we worked with a sample of 275 participants between 10 and 25 years, who performed a joint visual and search task (to measure PI). We have fitted ex-Gaussian functions to the probability distributions of the mean response time across the sample and performed a covariance analysis (ANCOVA). The results showed that the 10- to 13-year-old groups performed similarly in the task and differ from the 14- to 19-year-old participants. We found significant differences between the older group and all the rest of the groups. We discuss the important changes that can be observed in relation to the nonlinear trajectory of development that would show the PI during adolescence.

Role of BDNF in the development of an OFC-amygdala circuit regulating sociability in mouse and human

Social deficits are common in many psychiatric disorders. However, due to inadequate tools for manipulating circuit activity in humans and unspecific paradigms for modeling social behaviors in rodents, our understanding of the molecular and circuit mechanisms mediating social behaviors remains relatively limited. Using human functional neuroimaging and rodent fiber photometry, we identified a mOFC-BLA projection that modulates social approach behavior and influences susceptibility to social anxiety. In humans and knock-in mice with a loss of function BDNF SNP (Val66Met), the functionality of this circuit was altered, resulting in social behavioral changes in human and mice. We further showed that the development of this circuit is disrupted in BDNF Met carriers due to insufficient BDNF bioavailability, specifically during a peri-adolescent timeframe. These findings define one mechanism by which social anxiety may stem from altered maturation of orbitofronto-amygdala projections and identify a developmental window in which BDNF-based interventions may have therapeutic potential.

Trajectories of Children's Executive Function After Traumatic Brain Injury

IMPORTANCE

Executive functions are critical for school and social success. Although these functions are adversely affected by pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI), recovery patterns are not well established.

OBJECTIVE

To examine 3-year trajectories of selected children's executive functions after TBI.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS

This prospective cohort study was conducted from January 22, 2013, to September 30, 2015, with 3-year follow-up at the level I pediatric trauma centers Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah and Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas. Study participants included children aged 2 to 15 years with TBI or orthopedic injury (OI) who were treated at the participating hospitals. Children were consecutively recruited and stratified by injury severity and age group. A total of 625 children consented and completed a baseline survey; 559 (89%) children completed at least 1 follow-up and composed the analysis cohort. It was hypothesized that recovery would differ by injury severity, age at injury, and sex. Data analyses were performed from June to October 2019.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES

Growth curve models examined the pattern of change in the Emotional Control, Inhibit, Working Memory, and Plan-Organize subscales of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) or BRIEF-Preschool. For all BRIEF subscales, higher scores indicate worse symptoms, and a score of 65 or greater represents clinical impairment.

RESULTS

A total of 559 children (mean [SD] age, 8.6 [4.4] years; 356 boys [64%], 328 non-Hispanic White children [59%]) were included in the study: 155 (28%) children had mild TBI, 162 (29%) had complicated mild or moderate TBI, 90 (16%) had severe TBI, and 152 (27%) had OI. Growth curve trajectories varied by BRIEF subscale and injury severity. Overall, children with TBI did not return to their preinjury baseline, with a stepwise worsening of each outcome at 36 months by TBI severity compared with OI. Among children with severe TBI, trajectories accelerated fastest, indicating increased problems, from injury to 12 months for the Emotional Control (9.0 points; 95% CI, 6.0-11.9 points), Inhibit (3.6 points; 95% CI, 1.6-5.6 points), and Working Memory (7.0 points; 95% CI, 4.1-9.9 points) subscales. Their trajectories plateaued, with a secondary acceleration before 36 months for the Emotional Control and Working Memory subscales. Children with mild TBI had worse 36-month scores on all subscales except Inhibit compared with OI. Recovery patterns were similar for boys and girls.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

In this longitudinal cohort study of children with TBI, trajectory analysis revealed that some children worsen after a recovery plateau, suggesting a need for longitudinal reassessment beyond 1 year postinjury.

Structural Connectivity Between Rostral Anterior Cingulate Cortex and Amygdala Predicts First Onset of Depressive Disorders in Adolescence

BACKGROUND

Adolescent-onset depressive disorders (DDs) are associated with deficits in the regulation of negative affect across modalities (self-report, behavioral paradigms, and neuroimaging), which may manifest prior to first-onset DDs. Whether the neurocircuitry governing emotional regulation predates DDs is unclear. This study tested whether a critical pathway for emotion regulation (rostral anterior cingulate cortex-amygdala structural connectivity) predicts first-onset DDs in adolescent females.

METHODS

Diffusion tensor imaging data were acquired on adolescent females (n = 212) without a history of DDs and the cohort was reassessed for first-onset DDs over the next 27 months.

RESULTS

A total of 26 girls developed first onsets of DDs in the 27 months after imaging. Multivariate logistic regression showed that lower weighted average fractional anisotropy of uncinate fasciculus tracts between the rostral anterior cingulate cortex and amygdala prospectively predicted first onset of DDs (adjusted odds ratio = 0.44, p = .005), above and beyond established risk factors including baseline depression symptom severity, history of anxiety disorders, parental history of depression, parental education, and age.

CONCLUSIONS

This study provides evidence for the first time showing that aberrant structural connectivity between the rostral anterior cingulate cortex and amygdala prospectively predates first onset of DDs in adolescent females. These results highlight the importance of a well-established neural circuit implicated in the regulation of negative affect as a likely etiological factor and a promising target for intervention and prevention of DDs.

Investigating salience strategies to counteract obesity

The investigation of the characteristics and attributes that make a brand prominent for shoppers is known as salience research. This line of study concentrates on influencing buying behaviors via the manipulation of shopping environments and food products. Such promotional strategies successfully attract massive food sales and therefore have been associated with changes in dietary patterns and the epidemic expansion of non-communicable diseases, like obesity. Marketers have empirically proven that global buying patterns are influenced by their salience strategies and techniques. However, despite the significance of such methods, empirical salience investigations have rarely been extended beyond their primary business focus to the field of health promotion. Therefore, this study is presenting a way of transferring the salience knowledge to the health promotion field in order to track dietary choices and possibly gain information to identify buying and eating behaviors connected to obesity. The salience literature from various disciplines permits to hypothesize that consumers are more likely to have unhealthy diets when food-choices and conditions are saliently manipulated. A quasi-experimental method (combining salience measures with Bayesian analysis) was used to test this proposition. The results support the hypothesis and endorse the introduced research tool. As predicted, data reflect the latest national overweight and obesity statistics and suggest that habitual unhealthy diets are more likely when salience strategies link food products to taste, social and emotional attributes. These preliminary findings encourage further investigation to enhance the method as a possible epidemiological tool.

Opportunities for increased reproducibility and replicability of developmental neuroimaging

Many workflows and tools that aim to increase the reproducibility and replicability of research findings have been suggested. In this review, we discuss the opportunities that these efforts offer for the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience, in particular developmental neuroimaging. We focus on issues broadly related to statistical power and to flexibility and transparency in data analyses. Critical considerations relating to statistical power include challenges in recruitment and testing of young populations, how to increase the value of studies with small samples, and the opportunities and challenges related to working with large-scale datasets. Developmental studies involve challenges such as choices about age groupings, lifespan modelling, analyses of longitudinal changes, and data that can be processed and analyzed in a multitude of ways. Flexibility in data acquisition, analyses and description may thereby greatly impact results. We discuss methods for improving transparency in developmental neuroimaging, and how preregistration can improve methodological rigor. While outlining challenges and issues that may arise before, during, and after data collection, solutions and resources are highlighted aiding to overcome some of these. Since the number of useful tools and techniques is ever-growing, we highlight the fact that many practices can be implemented stepwise.

Individual differences in social distancing and mask-wearing in the pandemic of COVID-19: The role of need for cognition, self-control and risk attitude

In the United States, while the number of COVID-19 cases continue to increase, the practice of social distancing and mask-wearing have been controversial and even politicized. The present study examined the role of psychological traits in social distancing compliance and mask-wearing behavior and attitude. A sample of 233 U.S. adult residents were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants completed scales of social distancing compliance, mask-wearing behavior and attitude, need for cognition, self-control, risk attitude, and political ideology. Epidemiological information (seven-day positive rate and the number of cases per 100,000) was obtained based on the state participants resided in. As a result, epidemiological information did not correlate with social distancing compliance mask-wearing. Political ideology, on the other hand, was a significant factor, with a more liberal tendency being associated with greater engagement in social distancing compliance and mask-wearing behavior an attitude. Importantly, those who were more risk averse, or had a higher level of self-control or need for cognition practiced more social distancing and mask-wearing, after controlling for demographics, epidemiological information, and political ideology. Furthermore, for mask-wearing behavior, political ideology interacted with both need for cognition and self-control. Collectively, the study revealed the psychological roots of individual differences in social distancing and mask-wearing compliance.

Brain Mechanisms Supporting Flexible Cognition and Behavior in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Cognitive flexibility enables appropriate responses to a changing environment and is associated with positive life outcomes. Adolescence, with its increased focus on transitioning to independent living, presents particular challenges for youths with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who often struggle to behave in a flexible way when faced with challenges. This review focuses on brain mechanisms underlying the development of flexible cognition during adolescence and how these neural systems are affected in ASD. Neuroimaging studies of task switching and set-shifting provide evidence for atypical lateral frontoparietal and midcingulo-insular network activation during cognitive flexibility task performance in individuals with ASD. Recent work also examines how intrinsic brain network dynamics support flexible cognition. These dynamic functional connectivity studies provide evidence for alterations in the number of transitions between brain states, as well as hypervariability of functional connections in adolescents with ASD. Future directions for the field include addressing issues related to measurement of cognitive flexibility using a combination of metrics with ecological and construct validity. Heterogeneity of executive function ability in ASD must also be parsed to determine which individuals will benefit most from targeted training to improve flexibility. The influence of pubertal hormones on brain network development and cognitive maturation in adolescents with ASD is another area requiring further exploration. Finally, the intriguing possibility that bilingualism might be associated with preserved cognitive flexibility in ASD should be further examined. Addressing these open questions will be critical for future translational neuroscience investigations of cognitive and behavioral flexibility in adolescents with ASD.

Cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression relate differentially to longitudinal structural brain development across adolescence

Emotional disorders commonly emerge in adolescence, a period characterized by changes in emotion-related processes. Thus, the ability to regulate emotions is crucial for well-being and adaptive social functioning during this period. Concurrently, the brain undergoes large structural and functional changes. We investigated relations between tendencies to use two emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, and structural development of the cerebral cortex and subcortical structures (specifically amygdala and nucleus accumbens given these structures are frequently associated with emotion regulation). A total of 112 participants (59 females) aged 8-26 were followed for up to 3 times over a 7-year period, providing 272 observations. Participants completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), yielding a measure of tendencies to use cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression at the final time point. Linear mixed model analyses were performed to account for the longitudinal nature of the data. Contrary to expectations, volumetric growth of the amygdala and nucleus accumbens was not associated with either emotion regulation strategy. However, frequent use of expressive suppression was linked to greater regionally-specific apparent cortical thinning in both sexes, while tendency to use cognitive reappraisal was associated with greater regionally-specific apparent thinning in females and less thinning in males. Although cognitive reappraisal is traditionally associated with cognitive control regions of the brain, our results suggest it is also associated with regions involved in social cognition and semantics. The continued changes in cortical morphology and their associations with habitual use of different emotion regulation strategies indicate continued plasticity during this period, and represent an opportunity for interventions targeting emotion regulation for adolescents at risk.

Dynamic Adjustments of Midfrontal Control Signals in Adults and Adolescents

During task performance, our level of cognitive control is dynamically adjusted to task demands as reflected, for example, by the congruency sequence effect (CSE) in conflict tasks. Although brain areas related to cognitive control show protracted maturation across adolescence, previous studies found that adolescents show similar behavioral CSEs to adults. In the present study, we investigated whether there are age-related changes in the neural underpinnings of dynamic control adjustments using electroencephalography. Early adolescents (ages 12-14, N = 30) and young adults (ages 25-27, N = 29) completed a confound-minimized flanker task optimized for the detection of sequential control adjustments. The CSE was observed in midfrontal theta power thought to capture anterior cingulate cortex-mediated monitoring processes but was not modulated significantly by age. Adolescents, however, showed a smaller congruency effect in the power and cross-trial temporal consistency of midfrontal theta oscillations than adults. No age differences were observed in phase-based connectivity between midfrontal and lateral frontal regions in the theta band. These findings provide strong support for the role of midfrontal theta oscillations in conflict monitoring and reactive control and suggest that the cognitive system of early adolescents initially responds less reliably to the occurrence of conflict than that of adults.

The Neurobiology of Binge-eating Disorder Compared with Obesity: Implications for Differential Therapeutics

PURPOSE

Emerging work indicates divergence in the neurobiologies of binge-eating disorder (BED) and obesity despite their frequent co-occurrence. This review highlights specific distinguishing aspects of BED, including elevated impulsivity and compulsivity possibly involving the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system, and discusses implications for differential therapeutics for BED.

METHODS

This narrative review describes epidemiologic, clinical, genetic, and preclinical differences between BED and obesity. Subsequently, this review discusses human neuroimaging work reporting differences in executive functioning, reward processing, and emotion reactivity in BED compared with obesity. Finally, on the basis of the neurobiology of BED, this review identifies existing and new therapeutic agents that may be most promising given their specific targets based on putative mechanisms of action relevant specifically to BED.

FINDINGS

BED is characterized by elevated impulsivity and compulsivity compared with obesity, which is reflected in divergent neurobiological characteristics and effective pharmacotherapies. Therapeutic agents that influence both reward and executive function systems may be especially effective for BED.

IMPLICATIONS

Greater attention to impulsivity/compulsivity-related, reward-related, and emotion reactivity-related processes may enhance conceptualization and treatment approaches for patients with BED. Consideration of these distinguishing characteristics and processes could have implications for more targeted pharmacologic treatment research and interventions.

Functional Connectivity Predicts Individual Development of Inhibitory Control during Adolescence

Derailment of inhibitory control (IC) underlies numerous psychiatric and behavioral disorders, many of which emerge during adolescence. Identifying reliable predictive biomarkers that place the adolescents at elevated risk for future IC deficits can help guide early interventions, yet the scarcity of longitudinal research has hindered the progress. Here, using a large-scale longitudinal dataset in which the same subjects performed a stop signal task during functional magnetic resonance imaging at ages 14 and 19, we tracked their IC development individually and tried to find the brain features predicting their development by constructing prediction models using 14-year-olds' functional connections within a network or between a pair of networks. The participants had distinct between-subject trajectories in their IC development. Of the candidate connections used for prediction, ventral attention-subcortical network interconnections could predict the individual development of IC and formed a prediction model that generalized to previously unseen individuals. Furthermore, we found that connectivity between these two networks was related to substance abuse problems, an IC-deficit related problematic behavior, within 5 years. Our study reveals individual differences in IC development from mid- to late-adolescence and highlights the importance of ventral attention-subcortical network interconnections in predicting future IC development and substance abuse in adolescents.

A person-centered examination of emotion dysregulation, sensitivity to threat, and impulsivity among children and adolescents: An ERP study

Objectives

Adolescence often is characterized by the onset of social anxiety and risk taking; yet, not all youth are anxious and/or risk takers. There are several factors that may help differentiate youth with anxiety (e.g., threat sensitivity and emotion dysregulation) and youth who take risks (e.g., impulsivity and emotion dysregulation). We conducted a latent class analysis to identify groups of youth who differ in these processes, and then investigated group differences on the error-related negativity, an ERP that has been differentially associated with threat sensitivity and impulsivity.

Method

Youth (N = 1313, M_age = 11, range = 8–15 years) completed a survey assessing their emotion dysregulation, sensitivity to threat, and impulsivity. A subsample (N = 424) also completed a go/no-go task while EEG was recorded.

Results and conclusions

Four groups were identified with differential levels of emotion dysregulation, sensitivity to threat, and impulsivity. Adolescents had greater odds than children of being in the High_Dysregulation/ThreatSensitivity or ModerateDysregulation/HighImpulsivity Groups in comparison to two other groups with lower scores. The High_Dysregulation/ThreatSensitivity Group had the largest ERN, while the ModerateDysregulation/HighImpulsivity Group had the smallest ERN. The ERN may be a potential biomarker to help distinguish between different profiles of adolescents who may be at risk for either anxiety or risk taking.

Neural processes of reward and punishment processing in childhood and adolescence: An event-related potential study on age differences

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Children and adolescents performed the Monetary Incentive Delay Task.

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We examined anticipatory and outcome ERPs of reward and punishment processing.

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SPN amplitudes for anticipating loss or no gain decreased with increasing age.

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Sensitivity to negative outcomes decreases from childhood to adolescence.

Reward and punishment processing are subject to substantial developmental changes during youth. However, little is known about the neurophysiological correlates that are associated with these developmental changes, particularly with regard to both anticipatory and outcome processing stages. Thus, the aim of this study was to address this research gap in a sample of typically developing children and adolescents.

Fifty-four children and adolescents (8–18 years) performed a Monetary Incentive Delay Task comprising a monetary reward and punishment condition. Using event-related brain potential recordings, the cue-P3 and the stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) were analyzed during the anticipation phase, while the Reward Positivity and the feedback-P3 were analyzed during the outcome phase.

When anticipating monetary loss or no gain, SPN amplitude in the right hemisphere decreased with age. Moreover, exploratory analyses revealed a decrease in feedback-P3 amplitudes in response to monetary loss with increasing age. No other group differences were observed.

Age-related changes in the SPN and fP3 component suggest that sensitivity to negative outcomes decreases from childhood to late adolescence, supporting the notion that adolescence is associated with reduced harm-avoidance. Longitudinal research including young adults is needed to substantiate our findings and its clinical implications regarding disturbed developmental trajectories in psychiatric populations.

Emotion regulation in adolescents: Influences of internal representations of relationships - An ERP study

Emotion regulation (ER) strategies can decrease the intensity or modify the experience of emotions. Deficits in emotion regulation are implicated in a wide range of psychopathologies. It is argued that interpersonal, socio-cognitive, and developmental variables play an important role in ER. This is the first study to explore the contribution of individual differences in internal representations of relationships (IRR) to neural correlates of ER in a sample of adolescents. Event related potentials of 53 adolescents (12 to 17 years old) were collected while performing an ER task. IRR was assessed with the social cognition and object relations scale (SCORS-G; Westen, 1995) coding of narratives from interviews. Results show that individual differences in IRR significantly predicted the modulation of emotional responses by expressive suppression in adolescents, accounting for 48% of the variance of changes in occipital late positive potentials (LPP). Thus, it appears that IRR are implicated in an individual's ability to regulate emotions. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

Differential brain activity as a function of social evaluative stress in early adolescence: Brain function and salivary cortisol

Understanding individual differences in neural responses to stressful environments is an important avenue of research throughout development. These differences may be especially critical during adolescence, which is characterized by opportunities for healthy development and increased susceptibility to the development of psychopathology. While the neural correlates of the psychosocial stress response have been investigated in adults, these links have not been explored during development. Using a new task, the Minnesota Imaging Stress Test in Children (MISTiC), differences in activation are found in fusiform gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, insula, and anterior cingulate cortex when comparing a stressful math task to a nonstressful math task. The MISTiC task successfully elicits cortisol responses in a similar proportion of adolescents as in behavioral studies while collecting brain imaging data. Cortisol responders and nonresponders did not differ in their perceived stress level or behavioral performance during the task despite differences in neuroendocrine function. Future research will be able to leverage the MISTiC task for many purposes, including probing associations between individual differences in stress responses with environmental conditions, personality differences, and the development of psychopathology.

Differential Facial Articulacy in Robots and Humans Elicit Different Levels of Responsiveness, Empathy, and Projected Feelings

Life-like humanoid robots are on the rise, aiming at communicative purposes that resemble humanlike conversation. In human social interaction, the facial expression serves important communicative functions. We examined whether a robot’s face is similarly important in human-robot communication. Based on emotion research and neuropsychological insights on the parallel processing of emotions, we argue that greater plasticity in the robot’s face elicits higher affective responsivity, more closely resembling human-to-human responsiveness than a more static face. We conducted a between-subjects experiment of 3 (facial plasticity: human vs. facially flexible robot vs. facially static robot) × 2 (treatment: affectionate vs. maltreated). Participants (N = 265; Mage = 31.5) were measured for their emotional responsiveness, empathy, and attribution of feelings to the robot. Results showed empathically and emotionally less intensive responsivity toward the robots than toward the human but followed similar patterns. Significantly different intensities of feelings and attributions (e.g., pain upon maltreatment) followed facial articulacy. Theoretical implications for underlying processes in human-robot communication are discussed. We theorize that precedence of emotion and affect over cognitive reflection, which are processed in parallel, triggers the experience of ‘because I feel, I believe it’s real,’ despite being aware of communicating with a robot. By evoking emotional responsiveness, the cognitive awareness of ‘it is just a robot’ fades into the background and appears not relevant anymore.

Behavioral and brain signatures of substance use vulnerability in childhood

The prevalence of risky behavior such as substance use increases during adolescence; however, the neurobiological precursors to adolescent substance use remain unclear. Predictive modeling may complement previous work observing associations with known risk factors or substance use outcomes by developing generalizable models that predict early susceptibility. The aims of the current study were to identify and characterize behavioral and brain models of vulnerability to future substance use. Principal components analysis (PCA) of behavioral risk factors were used together with connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) during rest and task-based functional imaging to generate predictive models in a large cohort of nine- and ten-year-olds enrolled in the Adolescent Brain & Cognitive Development (ABCD) study (NDA release 2.0.1). Dimensionality reduction (n = 9,437) of behavioral measures associated with substance use identified two latent dimensions that explained the largest amount of variance: risk-seeking (PC1; e.g., curiosity to try substances) and familial factors (PC2; e.g., family history of substance use disorder). Using cross-validated regularized regression in a subset of data (Year 1 Fast Track data; n>1,500), functional connectivity during rest and task conditions (resting-state; monetary incentive delay task; stop signal task; emotional n-back task) significantly predicted individual differences in risk-seeking (PC1) in held-out participants (partial correlations between predicted and observed scores controlling for motion and number of frames [r_p]: 0.07-0.21). By contrast, functional connectivity was a weak predictor of familial risk factors associated with substance use (PC2) (r_p: 0.03-0.06). These results demonstrate a novel approach to understanding substance use vulnerability, which—together with mechanistic perspectives—may inform strategies aimed at early identification of risk for addiction.

A longitudinal study investigating trajectories of sensitivity to threat over time and their association with alpha asymmetry among children and adolescents

Research has yet to investigate trajectories of sensitivity to threat across childhood and adolescence. Further, neural associations of these trajectories remain unknown. The current 3-year study used a latent class growth curve analysis to investigate whether there were distinct trajectories of sensitivity to threat among children and adolescents over time (N = 363; age range at Time 1 = 8-14). We also examined whether alpha asymmetry (a neural index of motivational tendencies) was associated with the different trajectories. Results revealed three distinct trajectory groups (1) high-stable sensitivity to threat, (2) moderate-increasing sensitivity to threat and (3) low-stable sensitivity to threat. The high-stable sensitivity to threat group had greater right frontal asymmetry activation (i.e., greater neural avoidance motivation) than the other two groups. Additionally, females, those with higher parental education, and individuals with more advanced pubertal development (but not age) had greater odds of being part of the high-stable sensitivity to threat group compared to the other groups. Of interest, puberty rather than age may be an important indicator of heightened sensitivity to threat.

Frontostriatal White Matter Integrity Relations with "Cool" and "Hot" Self-Regulation after Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) produces microstructural damage to white matter pathways connecting neural structures in pre-frontal and striatal regions involved in self-regulation (SR). Dorsal and ventral frontostriatal pathways have been linked to cognitive ("cool") and emotional ("hot") SR, respectively. We evaluated the relation of frontostriatal pathway fractional anisotropy (FA) 2 months post-TBI on cool and hot SR assessed 7 months post-TBI. Participants were 8-15 years of age, including children with uncomplicated mild TBI (mTBI; n = 24), more severe TBI (complicated-mild, moderate, severe [cms]TBI; n = 60), and typically developing (TD) children (n = 55). Diffusion tensor tractography was used to map frontostriatal pathways. Cool SR included focused and sustained attention performance, and parent-reported attention, whereas hot SR included risk-taking performance and parent-reported emotional control. Multivariate general linear models showed that children with cmsTBI had greater parent-reported cool and hot SR difficulties and lower dorsal and ventral FA than TD children. Focused attention, risk taking, and emotional control correlated with FA of specific dorsal and ventral pathways; however, only the effect of TBI on focused attention was mediated by integrity of dorsal pathways. Results suggest that frontostriatal FA may serve as a biomarker of risk for SR difficulties or to assess response to interventions targeting SR in pediatric TBI and in broader neurodevelopmental populations.

The rational use of causal inference to guide reinforcement learning strengthens with age

Beliefs about the controllability of positive or negative events in the environment can shape learning throughout the lifespan. Previous research has shown that adults' learning is modulated by beliefs about the causal structure of the environment such that they update their value estimates to a lesser extent when the outcomes can be attributed to hidden causes. This study examined whether external causes similarly influenced outcome attributions and learning across development. Ninety participants, ages 7 to 25 years, completed a reinforcement learning task in which they chose between two options with fixed reward probabilities. Choices were made in three distinct environments in which different hidden agents occasionally intervened to generate positive, negative, or random outcomes. Participants' beliefs about hidden-agent intervention aligned with the true probabilities of the positive, negative, or random outcome manipulation in each of the three environments. Computational modeling of the learning data revealed that while the choices made by both adults (ages 18-25) and adolescents (ages 13-17) were best fit by Bayesian reinforcement learning models that incorporate beliefs about hidden-agent intervention, those of children (ages 7-12) were best fit by a one learning rate model that updates value estimates based on choice outcomes alone. Together, these results suggest that while children demonstrate explicit awareness of the causal structure of the task environment, they do not implicitly use beliefs about the causal structure of the environment to guide reinforcement learning in the same manner as adolescents and adults.

Nucleus accumbens cytoarchitecture predicts weight gain in children

The prevalence of obesity in children and adolescents worldwide has quadrupled since 1975 and is a key predictor of obesity later in life. Previous work has consistently observed relationships between macroscale measures of reward-related brain regions (e.g., the nucleus accumbens [NAcc]) and unhealthy eating behaviors and outcomes; however, the mechanisms underlying these associations remain unclear. Recent work has highlighted a potential role of neuroinflammation in the NAcc in animal models of diet-induced obesity. Here, we leverage a diffusion MRI technique, restriction spectrum imaging, to probe the microstructure (cellular density) of subcortical brain regions. More specifically, we test the hypothesis that the cell density of reward-related regions is associated with obesity-related metrics and early weight gain. In a large cohort of nine- and ten-year-olds enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, we demonstrate that cellular density in the NAcc is related to individual differences in waist circumference at baseline and is predictive of increases in waist circumference after 1 y. These findings suggest a neurobiological mechanism for pediatric obesity consistent with rodent work showing that high saturated fat diets increase gliosis and neuroinflammation in reward-related brain regions, which in turn lead to further unhealthy eating and obesity.

Unraveling the Consequences of Childhood Maltreatment: Deviations From Typical Functional Neurodevelopment Mediate the Relationship Between Maltreatment History and Depressive Symptoms

BACKGROUND

Childhood maltreatment is associated with lifelong psychiatric sequelae. However, our understanding of neurobiological mechanisms responsible for this association is limited. Childhood maltreatment may confer risk for psychopathology by altering neurodevelopmental trajectories during childhood and adolescence. Longitudinal research, which is essential for examining this question, has been limited.

METHODS

We investigated maltreatment-associated alterations in the development of neural circuitry. Associations between cumulative childhood maltreatment (assessed using a dimensional measure of abuse and neglect via the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire) and the longitudinal development of resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) were examined in 130 community-residing adolescents. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired at age 16 (T1; mean ± SD age, 16.46 ± 0.52 years; 66 females) and age 19 (T2; mean follow-up period, 2.35 years; n = 90 with functional magnetic resonance imaging data at both time points).

RESULTS

We found maltreatment to be associated with widespread longitudinal increases in rsFC, primarily between default mode, dorsal attention, and frontoparietal systems. We also found sex-dependent increased maltreatment-associated rsFC in male participants in salience and limbic circuits. Cross-sectional analyses revealed a shift in maltreatment-related rsFC alterations, which were localized to subcortical and sensory circuits at T1 and to frontal circuits at T2. Finally, longitudinal increases in rsFC connectivity mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and increased depressive symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine longitudinal maltreatment-related alterations in rsFC in adolescents. Our findings shed light on the neurodevelopmental consequences of childhood maltreatment and provide evidence for their role in risk for depression.

Adolescent Barriers to HIV Prevention Research: Are Parental Consent Requirements the Biggest Obstacle?

PURPOSE

One third of people newly living with HIV/AIDS are adolescents. Research on adolescent HIV prevention is critical owing to differences between adolescents and adults. Parental permission requirements are often considered a barrier to adolescent enrollment in research, but whether adolescents view this barrier as the most important one is unclear.

METHODS

Adolescents were approached in schools in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and at a sexually transmitted infection clinic at the Children's Hospital of Aurora, Colorado. Surveys with a hypothetical vignette about participation in a pre-exposure prophylaxis trial were conducted on smartphones or tablets with 75 adolescents at each site. We calculated descriptive statistics for all variables, using 2-sample tests for equality of proportions with continuity correction. Statistical significance was calculated at p < 0.05. Multivariate analyses were also conducted.

RESULTS

Most adolescents thought side effects (77%) and parental consent requirements (69%) were very important barriers to research participation. When asked to rank barriers, adolescents did not agree on a single barrier as most important, but the largest group of adolescents ranked parental consent requirements as most important (29.5%). Parental consent was seen as more of a barrier for adolescents in South Africa than in the United States. Concerns about being experimented on or researchers' mandatory reporting to authorities were ranked much lower. Finally, most (71%, n = 106) adolescents said they would want to extra support from another adult if parental permission was not required.

CONCLUSION

Adolescents consider both parental permission requirements and side effects important barriers to their enrollment in HIV prevention research. Legal reform and better communication strategies may help address these barriers.

Neural and behavioral signatures of social evaluation and adaptation in childhood and adolescence: The Leiden consortium on individual development (L-CID)

The transition period between early childhood and late adolescence is characterized by pronounced changes in social competence, or the capacity for flexible social adaptation. Here, we propose that two processes, self-control and prosociality, are crucial for social adaptation following social evaluation. We present a neurobehavioral model showing commonalities in neural responses to experiences of social acceptance and rejection, and multiple pathways for responding to social context. The Leiden Consortium on Individual Development (L-CID) provides a comprehensive approach towards understanding the longitudinal developmental pathways of, and social enrichment effects on, social competence, taking into account potential differential effects of such enrichment. Using Neurosynth based brain maps we point towards the medial prefrontal cortex as an important region integrating social cognition, self-referential processing and self-control for learning to respond flexibly to changing social contexts. Based on their role in social evaluation processing, we suggest to examine medial prefrontal cortex connections with lateral prefrontal cortex and the ventral striatum as potential neural differential susceptibility markers, in addition to previously established markers of differential susceptibility.

Robust longitudinal multi-cohort results: The development of self-control during adolescence

Longitudinal data from multiple cohorts may be analyzed by Bayesian research synthesis. Here, we illustrate this approach by investigating the development of self-control between age 13 and 19 and the role of sex therein in a multi-cohort, longitudinal design. Three Dutch cohorts supplied data: the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR; N = 21,079), Research on Adolescent Development and Relationships-Young (RADAR-Y; N = 497), and Tracking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS; N = 2229). Self-control was assessed by one measure in NTR and RADAR-Y, and three measures in TRAILS. In each cohort, we evaluated evidence for competing informative hypotheses regarding the development of self-control. Subsequently, we aggregated this evidence over cohorts and measures to arrive at a robust conclusion that was supported by all cohorts and measures. We found robust evidence for the hypothesis that on average self-control increases during adolescence (i.e., maturation) and that individuals with lower initial self-control often experience a steeper increase in self-control (i.e., a pattern of recovery). From self-report, boys have higher initial self-control levels at age 13 than girls, whereas parents report higher self-control for girls.

Differential Behavioral and Neural Profiles in Youth With Conduct Problems During Risky Decision-Making

Neuroimaging work has examined neural processes underlying risk taking in adolescence, yet predominantly in low-risk youth. To determine whether we can extrapolate from current neurobiological models, this functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigated risk taking and peer effects in youth with conduct problems (CP; N = 19) and typically developing youth (TD; N = 25). Results revealed higher real-life risk taking, lower risky decisions, and no peer effects on a risk-taking task in CP youth. CP youth showed greater ventral striatum (VS) activity during safe than risky decisions, whereas TD youth showed greater VS activation during risky decisions. Differential VS activity explained higher real-life risk taking in CP youth. Findings provide preliminary evidence that risk-taking behavior in youth with CD problems is characterized by differential neural patterns.

Fostering Self-Control Development With a Designed Intervention in Physical Education: A Two-Year Class-Randomized Trial

This study evaluated whether a theory-based intervention in physical education (PE) designed to train self-control may positively impact children's quick-temperedness and disruptiveness and whether changes in executive functions (EFs) may be a correlate or antecedent of such effects. One hundred and sixteen children aged 8-9 years participated in a 2-year intervention and completed three assessments at baseline, 6- and 18-month follow-ups in quick-temperedness and disruptiveness, hot and cool EFs. After the intervention, children in the intervention group showed lower quick-temperedness and disruptiveness and improvement in hot EF. Changes over the intervention period were moderately associated and showed marginal evidence of causal ordering, suggesting that designed PE may benefit self-control through a possible linkage to hot EF improvement.

Using neuroimaging to predict brain age: insights into typical and atypical development and risk for psychopathology

Childhood and adolescence are characterized by complex patterns of changes in brain structure and function. Recently, Truelove-Hill et al. (Truelove-Hill M, Erus G, Bashyam V, Varol E, Sako C, Gur RC, Gur RE, Koutsouleris N, Zhuo C, Fan Y, Wolf DH, Satterthwaite TD, Davatzikos C. J Neurosci 40: 1265-1275, 2020) used a novel machine learning algorithm to capture the subtle nuances of brain maturation during adolescence in two indices based on predicted brain age. In this article, we present an overview of the brain age prediction model used, provide further insight into the utility of this multimodal index to explore typical and atypical development, and discuss avenues for future research.

Charting the development of emotion comprehension and abstraction from childhood to adulthood using observer-rated and linguistic measures

This study examined two facets of emotion development: emotion word comprehension (knowing the meaning of emotion words such as "anger" or "excitement") and emotion concept abstraction (representing emotions in terms of internal psychological states that generalize across situations). Using a novel emotion vocabulary assessment, we captured how a cross-sectional sample of participants aged 4-25 (N = 196) defined 24 emotions. Smoothing spline regression models suggested that emotion comprehension followed an emergent shape: Knowledge of emotion words increased across childhood and plateaued around age 11. Human coders rated the abstractness of participants' responses, and these ratings also followed an emergent shape but plateaued significantly later than comprehension, around age 18. An automated linguistic analysis of abstractness supported coders' perceptions of increased abstractness across age. Finally, coders assessed the definitional strategies participants used to describe emotions. Young children tended to describe emotions using concrete strategies such as providing example situations that evoked those emotions or by referring to physiological markers of emotional experiences. Whereas use of these concrete strategies decreased with age, the tendency to use more abstract strategies such as providing general definitions that delineated the causes and characteristics of emotions or by providing synonyms of emotion words increased with age. Overall, this work (a) provides a tool for assessing definitions of emotion terms, (b) demonstrates that emotion concept abstraction increases across age, and (c) suggests that adolescence is a period in which emotion words are comprehended but their level of abstraction continues to mature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

A Longitudinal Person-Centered Examination of Affinity for Aloneness Among Children and Adolescents

Affinity for aloneness among youth often is viewed negatively. However, some youth may enjoy solitude for positive reasons, rather than because of social anxiety. The prevalence and adjustment over time of youth with high affinity for aloneness is unclear. Groups of children (N = 605, M_age  = 9.29) and adolescents (N = 596, M_age  = 12.20) were identified using affinity for aloneness and social anxiety scores, and group differences in adjustment were assessed. Latent class analyses revealed four groups at T1 and T2 for both samples. Among these were Normative (Low.affinity_for_aloneness-Low.social_anxiety) and Affinity for Aloneness (High.affinity_for_aloneness-LowMod.social_anxiety) groups. These groups did not differ longitudinally in adjustment. Having elevated levels of affinity for aloneness without high social anxiety is relatively benign.

Sex Differences in Internalizing Symptoms and Amygdala Functional Connectivity in Neurotypical Youth

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Internalizing symptoms in neurotypical youth relate to amygdala connectivity.

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Greater modulation is observed in females than in males.

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Connectivity might be a symptom of or a risk factor for disorders.

Amygdala resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) is altered in adolescents with internalizing disorders, though the relationship between rsFC and subclinical symptomatology in neurotypical youth remains unclear. Here we examined whether amygdala rsFC varied across a continuum of internalizing symptoms in 110 typically-developing (TD) youths 8 to 17 years old using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We assessed overall internalizing symptoms, as well as anxious-depressed, withdrawn-depressed, and somatic complaints. Given known sex differences in the prevalence of internalizing disorders, we compared connectivity between males and females. As compared to males, females with greater internalizing, anxious-depressed, and somatic symptoms displayed greater connectivity with the cingulate gyrus, insula, and somatosensory cortices. In contrast, males with greater anxious-depressed symptoms demonstrated weaker connectivity with the subcallosal prefrontal cortex. Sex differences in rsFC in relation to symptom severity were evident for the whole amygdala and for two of its subnuclei (centromedial and superficial amygdala). Overall, results suggest that, for females, higher internalizing symptoms are associated with greater rsFC between the amygdala and regions implicated in emotional and somatosensory processing, salience detection, and action selection. Future longitudinal investigations are needed to determine whether this hyperconnectivity may confer resilience to, or pose risk for, the development of internalizing disorders.

Towards an integrated account of the development of self-regulation from a neurocognitive perspective: A framework for current and future longitudinal multi-modal investigations

Self-regulation is the ability to monitor and modulate emotions, behaviour, and cognition in order to adapt to changing circumstances. Developing adequate self-regulation is associated with better social coping and higher educational achievement later in life; poor self-regulation has been linked to a variety of detrimental developmental outcomes. Here, we focus on the development of neurocognitive processes essential for self-regulation. We outline a conceptual framework emphasizing that this is inherently an integrated, dynamic process involving interactions between brain maturation, child characteristics (genetic makeup, temperament, and pre- and perinatal factors) and environmental factors (family characteristics, parents and siblings, peers, and broader societal influences including media development). We introduce the Consortium of Individual Development (CID), which combines a series of integrated large-scale, multi-modal, longitudinal studies to take essential steps towards the ultimate goal of understanding and supporting this process.

Neuromodulation of brain activation associated with addiction: A review of real-time fMRI neurofeedback studies

Real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback (rtfMRI-nf) has emerged in recent years as an imaging modality used to examine volitional control over targeted brain activity. rtfMRI-nf has also been applied clinically as a way to train individuals to self-regulate areas of the brain, or circuitry, involved in various disorders. One such application of rtfMRI-nf has been in the domain of addictive behaviors, including substance use. Given the pervasiveness of substance use and the challenges of existing treatments to sustain abstinence, rtfMRI-nf has been identified as a promising treatment tool. rtfMRI-nf has also been used in basic science research in order to test the ability to modulate brain function involved in addiction. This review focuses first on providing an overview of recent rtfMRI-nf studies in substance-using populations, specifically nicotine, alcohol, and cocaine users, aimed at reducing craving-related brain activation. Next, rtfMRI-nf studies targeting reward responsivity and emotion regulation in healthy samples are reviewed in order to examine the extent to which areas of the brain involved in addiction can be self-regulated using neurofeedback. We propose that future rtfMRI-nf studies could be strengthened by improvements to study design, sample selection, and more robust strategies in the development and assessment of rtfMRI-nf as a clinical treatment. Recommendations for ways to accomplish these improvements are provided. rtfMRI-nf holds much promise as an imaging modality that can directly target key brain regions involved in addiction, however additional studies are needed in order to establish rtfMRI-nf as an effective, and practical, treatment for addiction.

Does cognitive control ability mediate the relationship between reward-related mechanisms, impulsivity, and maladaptive outcomes in adolescence and young adulthood?

Neurobiological models explain increased risk-taking behaviours in adolescence and young adulthood as arising from staggered development of subcortical reward networks and prefrontal control networks. In this study, we examined whether individual variability in impulsivity and reward-related mechanisms is associated with higher level of engagement in risky behaviours and vulnerability to maladaptive outcomes and whether this relationship is mediated by cognitive control ability. A community sample of adolescents, young adults, and adults (age = 15-35 years) completed self-report measures and behavioural tasks of cognitive control, impulsivity, and reward-related mechanisms, and self-reported level of maladaptive outcomes. Behavioural, event-related potential (ERP), and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) measures of proactive control were derived from a task-switching paradigm. Adolescents, but not young adults, reported higher levels of impulsivity, reward-seeking behaviours and maladaptive outcomes than adults. They also had lower cognitive control ability, as measured by both self-report and task-based measures. Consistent with models of risk-taking behaviour, self-reported level of cognitive control mediated the relationship between self-reported levels of impulsivity and psychological distress, but the effect was not moderated by age. In contrast, there was no mediation effect of behavioural or EEG-based measures of cognitive control. These findings suggest that individual variability in cognitive control is more crucial to the relationship between risk-taking/impulsivity and outcomes than age itself. They also highlight large differences in measurement between self-report and task-based measures of cognitive control and decision-making under reward conditions, which should be considered in any studies of cognitive control.

Neuropsychological development in adolescents: Longitudinal associations with white matter microstructure

Important neuropsychological changes during adolescence coincide with the maturation of white matter microstructure. Few studies have investigated the association between neuropsychological development and white matter maturation longitudinally. We aimed to characterize developmental trajectories of inhibition, planning, emotion recognition and risk-taking and examine whether white matter microstructural characteristics were associated with neuropsychological development above and beyond age. In an accelerated longitudinal cohort design, n = 112 healthy adolescents between ages 9 and 16 underwent cognitive assessment and diffusion MRI over three years. Fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) were extracted for major white matter pathways using an automatic probabilistic reconstruction technique and mixed models were used for statistical analyses. Inhibition, planning and emotion recognition performance improved linearly across adolescence. Risk-taking developed in a quadratic fashion, with stable performance between 9 and 12 and an increase between ages 12 and 16. Including cingulum and superior longitudinal fasciculus FA slightly improved model fit for emotion recognition across age. We found no evidence that FA or MD were related to inhibition, planning or risk-taking across age. Our results challenge the additional value of white matter microstructure to explain neuropsychological development in healthy adolescents, but more longitudinal research with large datasets is needed to identify the potential role of white matter microstructure in cognitive development.

DIY-NAMIC Behavior: A High-Throughput Method to Measure Complex Phenotypes in the Homecage

Complex behavioral assessment is necessary to comprehensively assess in vivo manipulations in rodent models for neuropsychiatric disorders. Operant behavioral paradigms provide rich datasets and allow for the careful analysis of behavioral phenotypes. However, one major limitation in these studies is the expense and work-load that are required using traditional methods. The equipment for commercial operant boxes can be prohibitively expensive, and the daily experimenter effort and mouse costs required for these studies is extensive. Rodents are generally trained on task-specific paradigms for months, tested every day for 5–7 d/week. Additionally, appetitive paradigms usually require food restriction and are also commonly run in the non-active light phase of the rodent circadian rhythm. These limitations make operant behavioral testing especially difficult during adolescence, a time period of interest with regards to the development of adult-like phenotypes and a high-risk period for the development of neuropsychiatric disorders, including those which involve impulsive behavior. In order to address these issues, we developed an automated, inexpensive, open-source method which allows the implementation of most standard operant paradigms in the homecage of rodents in shorter time frames without food restriction, and with much less experimenter effort. All construction and code for the do-it-yourself Nautiyal Automated Modular Instrumental Conditioning (DIY-NAMIC) system are open source. We demonstrate their utility here by measuring impulsive behavior in a pharmacology experiment, as well as in adolescent mice.

Autistic traits in young adults who gamble

BACKGROUND.

Little is known about the relationship between autistic traits and addictive behaviors such as problem gambling. Thus, the present study examined clinical characteristics and multiple facets of cognition in young adults who gamble and have autistic traits.

METHODS.

A total of 102 young adults who gamble were recruited from two Mid-Western university communities in the United States using media advertisements. Autistic traits were examined using the brief Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ-10). Clinician rating scales, questionnaires, and cognitive tests were completed. Relationships between AQ10 scores and demographic, gambling symptom, and neurocognitive measures were evaluated.

RESULTS.

Autistic traits were correlated with disordered gambling symptoms, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, trait impulsivity, and some types of obsessive-compulsive symptoms. In regression, ADHD no longer significantly related to autistic traits once disordered gambling symptoms were accounted for; whereas the link between autistic traits and disordered gambling symptoms was robust even controlling for ADHD.

CONCLUSIONS.

These data suggest a particularly strong relationship between autistic traits and problem gambling symptoms, as well as certain aspects of impulsivity and compulsivity. The link between ADHD and autistic traits in some prior studies may have been attributable to disordered gambling symptoms, which was likely not screened for, and since individuals may endorse ADHD instruments due to other impulsive/compulsive symptom types (eg, gambling). The contribution of autistic traits to the emergence and chronicity of disordered gambling now requires further scrutiny, not only in community samples (such as this) but also in clinical settings.

Adolescent Vulnerability to Heightened Emotional Reactivity and Anxiety After Brief Exposure to an Obesogenic Diet

BACKGROUND

Emerging evidence demonstrates that diet-induced obesity disrupts corticolimbic circuits underlying emotional regulation. Studies directed at understanding how obesity alters brain and behavior are easily confounded by a myriad of complications related to obesity. This study investigated the early neurobiological stress response triggered by an obesogenic diet. Furthermore, this study directly determined the combined impact of a short-term obesogenic diet and adolescence on critical behavioral and molecular substrates implicated in emotion regulation and stress.

METHODS

Adolescent (postnatal day 31) or adult (postnatal day 81) Lewis rats were fed for 1 week with an experimental Western-like high-saturated fat diet (WD, 41% kcal from fat) or a matched control diet (CD, 13% kcal from fat). We used the acoustic fear-potentiated startle (FPS) paradigm to determine the effects of the WD on cued fear conditioning and fear extinction. We used c-Fos mapping to determine the functional influence of the diet and stress on corticolimbic circuits.

RESULTS

We report that 1-week WD consumption was sufficient to induce fear extinction deficits in adolescent rats, but not in adult rats. We identify fear-induced alterations in corticolimbic neuronal activation and demonstrate increased prefrontal cortex CRHR1 messenger RNA (mRNA) levels in the rats that consumed the WD.

CONCLUSION

Our findings demonstrate that short-term consumption of an obesogenic diet during adolescence heightens behavioral and molecular vulnerabilities associated with risk for anxiety and stress-related disorders. Given that fear extinction promotes resilience and that fear extinction principles are the foundation of psychological treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), understanding how obesogenic environments interact with the adolescent period to affect the acquisition and expression of fear extinction memories is of tremendous clinical relevance.

Developmental maturation of inhibitory control circuitry in a high-risk sample: A longitudinal fMRI study

Background

The goal of this work was to characterize the maturation of inhibitory control brain function from childhood to early adulthood using longitudinal data collected in two cohorts.

Methods

Functional MRI during a go/no-go task was conducted in 290 participants, with 88 % undergoing repeated scanning at 1- to 2-year intervals. One group entered the study at age 7–13 years (n = 117); the other entered at age 18–23 years (n = 173). 33.1 % of the sample had two parents with a substance use disorder (SUD), 43.8 % had one parent with an SUD, and 23.1 % had no parents with an SUD. 1162 scans were completed, covering ages 7–28, with longitudinal data from the cohorts overlapping across ages 16–21. A marginal model with sandwich estimator standard errors was used to characterize voxel-wise age-related changes in hemodynamic response associated with successful inhibitory control.

Results

There was significant positive linear activation associated with age in the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital cortices. No clusters survived thresholding with negative linear, positive or negative quadratic, or positive or negative cubic contrasts.

Conclusions

These findings extend previous cross-sectional and small-scale longitudinal studies that have observed positive linear developmental trajectories of brain function during inhibitory control.

Self-Regulatory Profiles and Conduct Problems in Youth Referred to Juvenile Diversion

The current study utilized a person-centered approach to explore how self-regulatory profiles relate to conduct problems in an ethnically diverse sample of 197 adolescents referred to juvenile diversion programming. Utilizing a multidomain, multimethod battery of self-regulation indicators, three common profiles emerged in a latent profile analysis. The profiles represented an Adaptive group, a Cognitively Inflexible group, and an Emotionally Dysregulated group. Group membership was associated with severity and type of conduct problems as well as callous and unemotional traits. The Adaptive group demonstrated lower severity conduct problems when compared to the other groups. The Emotionally Dysregulated group was more likely to commit violent offenses and demonstrated higher levels of some callous and unemotional traits than youth characterized by cognitive inflexibility.