Neural Cognitive Control Moderates the Relation between Negative Life Events and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents

Association between negative life events and suicidal behavior in adolescents: roles of core self-evaluation, depression and gender

PURPOSE

Negative life events are essential proximal factors that may induce suicidal behavior in adolescents, but the mechanisms connecting this link remain to further explored. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between negative life events (NLEs) and adolescents' suicidal behavior, and the roles of core self-evaluation, depression and gender playing between them.

METHODS

Using the whole-group sampling approach, 5296 Chinese adolescents (51.5% males, Meanage = 12.93) took part in this cross-sectional study in September 2021 and completed a battery of surveys including NLEs, suicidal behavior, CSE (core self-evaluation) and depression. Logistic regression and latent structural equation models were used to test the direct and indirect effects between NLEs and suicide behavior with multi-group path analysis, gender differences in this serial mediating effect were also tested.

RESULTS

After controlling for age and gender, NLEs were directly associated with adolescents' suicidal behavior. CSE and depression played significant serial mediating effects in this relationship. Moreover, significant gender differences were obtained in these serial mediating pathways, with stronger effects in girls.

CONCLUSION

Integrating the environmental, individual cognitive and emotional factors, our findings would be helpful in understanding the mechanism of these antecedents on adolescents' suicide behavior, which has specific practical significance for preventing and reducing suicidal behavior.

Abnormal amygdala volume moderates parenting and anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents with anxiety disorder

Anxiety disorders (AD) usually onset in childhood or adolescence and are related to brain development and early experiences during this period. As the hub of the fear circuit, the amygdala plays a crucial role in the development of emotional processing, and abnormalities in its structure and function are associated with anxiety disorders. We aim to uncover the amygdala volume's moderation between parenting and anxiety severity in children and adolescents with AD. 129 children and adolescents with anxiety and 135 age- and sex-matched Health controls (HC) using the publicly available Healthy Brain Network (HBN) dataset were included. Anxiety severity was measured using the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders Self-report (SCARED-SR) and parenting was measured using the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire Self-Report (APQ-SR). We investigated age-related differences in amygdala volume in children and adolescents with anxiety disorders. Further, we examined the role of amygdala volume in moderating the association between parental involvement, particularly the maternal involvement, and anxiety symptoms in this population. We found larger bilateral amygdala in the AD group compared with the HC among the age range of 7-12. And increases in amygdala volume tended to negatively moderate the linear relationships between maternal involvement and anxiety symptoms in the AD group. These findings provide new evidence of abnormal brain alteration in children and adolescents with anxiety and may reflect proactive adaptations of adolescent brain development.

Differential Associations of Adversity Profiles with Adolescent Cognitive Control and Psychopathology

Adverse childhood experiences are common and have long-term consequences for biological and psychosocial adjustment. We used a person-centered approach to characterize distinct profiles of adversity in early adolescence and examined associations with later cognitive control and psychopathology. The sample included 167 adolescents (47% female) and their primary caregivers who participated in a longitudinal study across four time points (approximately one year between assessments). At Time 1 (Mage = 14 years), we measured seven indicators of adversity: socioeconomic disadvantage, abuse, neglect, household chaos, parent substance use, parent depression, and negative life events. At Times 2-4, adolescents' behavioral performance and functional activation during a cognitive control task were measured. At Time 5, adolescents and their caregiver reported on adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptomatology. Using latent profile analysis, we identified four distinct adversity subgroups: a low exposure group, a neglect group, a household instability group, and a poly-adversity group. These groups significantly differed on subsequent levels of psychopathology, but not cognitive control. Specifically, the poly-adversity group reported significantly higher levels of both internalizing and externalizing symptomatology relative to the low exposure group, and the household instability group demonstrated elevated risk for externalizing symptomatology. When using a cumulative risk approach, higher levels of adversity exposure were associated with significantly worse cognitive control performance (but not neural activation). These results suggest that psychopathology outcomes may be differentially predicted by distinct patterns of risk, and that cognitive control impairment may be more strongly predicted by cumulative risk.

Neurobiological correlates of resilience during childhood and adolescence - A systematic review

Research examining the neurobiological mechanisms of resilience has grown rapidly over the past decade. However, there is vast heterogeneity in research study design, methods, and in how resilience is operationalized, making it difficult to gauge what we currently know about resilience biomarkers. This preregistered systematic review aimed to review and synthesize the extant literature to identify neurobiological correlates of resilience to adversity during childhood and adolescence. Literature searches on MEDLINE and PsycINFO yielded 3834 studies and a total of 49 studies were included in the final review. Findings were synthesized based on how resilience was conceptualized (e.g., absence of psychopathology, trait resilience), and where relevant, the type of outcome examined (e.g., internalizing symptoms, post-traumatic stress disorder). Our synthesis showed that findings were generally mixed. Nevertheless, some consistent findings suggest that resilience neural mechanisms may involve prefrontal and subcortical regions structure/activity, as well as connectivity between these regions. Given substantial heterogeneity in the definition and operationalization of resilience, more methodological consistency across studies is required for advancing knowledge in this field.

Conceptualizing psychological resilience through resting-state functional MRI in a mentally healthy population: a systematic review

Conceptualizations and operational definitions of psychological resilience vary across resilience neuroimaging studies. Data on the neural features of resilience among healthy individuals has been scarce. Furthermore, findings from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies were inconsistent across studies. This systematic review summarized resting-state fMRI findings in different modalities from various operationally defined resilience in a mentally healthy population. The PubMed and MEDLINE databases were searched. Articles that focused on resting-state fMRI in relation to resilience, and published before 2022, were targeted. Orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, insula and amygdala, were reported the most from the 19 included studies. Regions in emotional network was reported the most from the included studies. The involvement of regions like amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex indicated the relationships between emotional processing and resilience. No common brain regions or neural pathways were identified across studies. The emotional network appears to be studied the most in association with resilience. Matching fMRI modalities and operational definitions of resilience across studies are essential for meta-analysis.

Neuroplasticity, the Prefrontal Cortex, and Psychopathology-Related Deviations in Cognitive Control

A basic survival need is the ability to respond to, and persevere in the midst of, experiential challenges. Mechanisms of neuroplasticity permit this responsivity via functional adaptations (flexibility), as well as more substantial structural modifications following chronic stress or injury. This review focuses on prefrontally based flexibility, expressed throughout large-scale neuronal networks through the actions of excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters and neuromodulators. With substance use disorders and stress-related internalizing disorders as exemplars, we review human behavioral and neuroimaging data, considering whether executive control, particularly cognitive flexibility, is impaired premorbidly, enduringly compromised with illness progression, or both. We conclude that deviations in control processes are consistently expressed in the context of active illness but operate through different mechanisms and with distinct longitudinal patterns in externalizing versus internalizing conditions.

Resilience and young people's brain structure, function and connectivity: A systematic review

Although negative early life experiences are associated with an increased risk of developing psychopathology, some individuals exposed to childhood adversity demonstrate psychological resilience. Little is known about the neural correlates of resilience, especially in young people. To address this gap, we conducted a systematic review of neuroimaging studies of resilience in youth. The PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and PsycINFO databases were searched; 5,482 studies were identified. Following title/abstract screening, and full reading of the remaining articles, 22 studies based on 19 unique datasets were included. We found preliminary evidence that resilience is associated with structural, functional, and connectivity differences in young people, as assessed using structural and functional MRI and diffusion tensor imaging methods. Despite heterogeneity in definitions/assessment of resilience and a limited number of studies, the neuroimaging literature suggests some convergence across modalities regarding brain regions linked to resilience (especially the prefrontal cortex). Future studies would benefit from adopting longitudinal designs, broader conceptualisations of resilience that capture the impact of adversity exposure, and a dimensional approach to psychopathology.

The Roles of Physical Activity, Exercise, and Fitness in Promoting Resilience During Adolescence: Effects on Mental Well-Being and Brain Development

Adolescence is a critical yet vulnerable period for developing behaviors important for mental well-being. The existing literature suggests that physical activity (PA), exercise, and aerobic fitness promote well-being and reduce risk of mental health problems. In this review, we focus on PA, exercise, and fitness as modifiable resilience factors that may help promote self-regulation via strengthening of top-down control of bottom-up processes in the brain, thereby acting as a buffer against mental health problems during this period of vulnerability. First, we briefly review the link between PA, exercise, and aerobic fitness with mental well-being and reduced mental health problems in adolescence. Then we present how impairments in self-regulation, which involves top-down control to modulate bottom-up processes, are common across a wide range of mental health disorders. Finally, we use the extant neuroimaging literature to highlight how neural systems underlying top-down control continue to develop across adolescence, and propose that PA, exercise, and aerobic fitness may facilitate resilience through strengthening individual brain regions as well as large-scale neural circuits to improve emotional and behavioral regulation. Future neuroimaging studies assessing the effects of PA, exercise, and aerobic fitness at various developmental stages in each sex and studies considering the characteristics (e.g., frequency, intensity, type) and social context of PA and exercise are vital to better understand both macro- and microscale mechanisms by which these behaviors and attributes may facilitate mental health resilience during adolescent development.

The emotion regulation effect of cognitive control is related to depressive state through the mediation of rumination: An ERP study

Deficits in cognitive control have been found in depression, but how they contribute to depressive symptoms remains unknown. The present study investigated whether the regulatory efficacy of cognitive control on negative emotion varies with depression level and whether the regulatory efficacy affects depressive symptoms via the mediation of rumination. Fifty participants screened by the Zung Self-Rating Depressive Scale (SDS) with high and low depression levels were selected. They were instructed to controlled-process different semantic representations of aversive pictures, and the amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP) evoked by the pictures was used as the measure of electrocortical response. We found that controlled-processing neutral representations of aversive pictures significantly decreased the amplitude of LPP relative to that under controlled-processing unpleasant ones in an early window in the low depression group and that this regulatory effect was impaired in the high depression group. Furthermore, a mediation analyses indicated that the regulatory efficacy of controlled-processing different semantic representations was associated with SDS score via the mediation of rumination. These findings shed light on the mechanisms underlying the association between the function of cognitive control in emotion generation and depressive symptoms and indicated a pathway from the regulatory efficacy of cognitive control to depression via rumination.

Neuroimaging predictors of onset and course of depression in childhood and adolescence: A systematic review of longitudinal studies

Major depressive disorder (MDD) often emerges during adolescence with detrimental effects on development as well as lifetime consequences. Identifying neurobiological markers that are associated with the onset or course of this disorder in childhood and adolescence is important for early recognition and intervention and, potentially, for the prevention of illness onset. In this systematic review, 68 longitudinal neuroimaging studies, from 34 unique samples, that examined the association of neuroimaging markers with onset or changes in paediatric depression published up to 1 February 2019 were examined. These studies employed different imaging modalities at baseline; structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), functional MRI (fMRI) or electroencephalography (EEG). Most consistent evidence across studies was found for blunted reward-related (striatal) activity (fMRI and EEG) as a potential biological marker for both MDD onset and course. With regard to structural brain measures, the results were highly inconsistent, likely caused by insufficient power to detect complex mediating effects of genetic and environmental factors in small sample sizes. Overall, there were a limited number of samples, and confounding factors such as sex and pubertal development were often not considered, whereas these factors are likely to be relevant especially in this age range.