Investigating Neural Correlates of Emotional Regulation as a Function of Age, Race, and Socioeconomic Status.

Older adults often show improved emotional regulation with age, a phenomenon known as the aging paradox. This age-related increase in emotional regulation capacity is attributed to enhanced prefrontal cortex control over amygdala reactivity. However, because racial discrimination and economic disadvantage cause chronic stress, typical age-related neural associations may be altered in marginalized groups.

Do trajectories of self- and interpersonal functioning identify a core underlying developmental pathway for personality pathology in late adolescence and early adulthood?

The Alternative Model for Personality Disorders is a dimensional model of personality disorder that describes difficulties in self- and interpersonal functioning as the common core of personality disorder and its hypothesized developmental pathway. However, empirical evidence in support of this developmental pathway is lacking, and the unique developmental relevance of self- and interpersonal functioning for the emergence of personality pathology independent from internalizing and externalizing psychopathology remains unknown. The aim of this preregistered study (which can be found in the additional online materials at https://osf.

Childhood behavioral inhibition and overcontrol: Risk for psychiatric and peer outcomes.

Behavioral inhibition (BI), a temperamental trait; the error-related negativity (ERN), a marker of performance monitoring measured via electroencephalogram; and overcontrol, a phenotype characterized by perfectionism and inflexibility, all show associations with childhood anxiety, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and social functioning. However, the independent and combined risk for psychiatric and social functioning of these factors is unknown. The present study examined how childhood BI, ERN, and overcontrol independently predict longitudinal psychiatric symptoms and peer functioning.

Passive sensing of anhedonia and amotivation in a transdiagnostic sample.

Anhedonia and avolition are core clinical features of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder, which have been traditionally assessed using clinical rating scales. However, recent developments in mobile technology allow for measurement of anhedonia and amotivation using passive sensors (e.g.

Relationships between cognition and symptoms across mood and psychotic disorders.

Cognitive impairments are common across mood and psychotic disorders; however, it is unclear whether different diagnoses show the same level of impairment. Further, it is unclear whether cognition is related to similar symptom domains across diagnostic groups. Differences in working memory, processing speed, vocabulary, and cognitive control were examined in schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder (SCZ), bipolar disorder (BD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and healthy controls (HC).

The neuroimaging correlates of depression established across six large-scale datasets.

Neuroimaging data offers noninvasive insights into the structural and functional organization of the brain and is therefore commonly used to study the neuroimaging correlates of depression. To date, a substantial body of literature has suggested reduced size of subcortical regions and abnormal functional connectivity in frontal and default mode networks linked to depression. However, recent meta analyses have failed to identify significant converging correlates of depression across the literature such that a conclusive mapping of the neuroimaging correlates of depression remains elusive.

Cognitive effort-based decision making in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder: Associations with clinical symptoms and cognitive performance.

Individuals frequently make decisions about how much cognitive effort to expend for specific tasks. For a given reward, individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder choose to exert less effort than comparison subjects, which contributes to motivational deficits common in these disorders. One component of motivation is an analysis in which potential rewards are discounted by the costs, such as effort, associated with that reward.

Preschool Big Five Personality Traits Predict Childhood Peer Relationships and BPD but Not MDD in Late Adolescence.

Growing literatures highlight shared childhood predictors for future borderline personality disorder (BPD) and major depressive disorder (MDD). However, few longitudinal studies have examined both BPD and MDD as simultaneous outcomes. Childhood personality traits and poor peer relationships constitute transdiagnostic phenomena that could impact risk for later BPD and MDD.

Human thalamocortical structural connectivity develops in line with a hierarchical axis of cortical plasticity.

Human cortical development follows a hierarchical, sensorimotor-to-association sequence. The brain's capacity to enact this sequence indicates that it relies on unknown mechanisms to regulate regional differences in the timing of cortical maturation. Given evidence from animal systems that thalamic axons mechanistically regulate periods of cortical plasticity, here we evaluate in humans whether the development of structural connections between the thalamus and cortex aligns with cortical maturational heterochronicity.

Addressing artifactual bias in large, automated MRI analyses of brain development.

Large, population-based magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of adolescents promise transformational insights into neurodevelopment and mental illness risk. However, youth MRI studies are especially susceptible to motion and other artifacts that introduce non-random noise. After visual quality control of 11,263 T1 MRI scans obtained at age 9-10 years through the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, we uncovered bias in measurements of cortical thickness and surface area in 55.

Preadolescent Benefits of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Emotion Development for Preschool Depression: 4-Year Follow-up.

Objective: Childhood depression can arise as early as age 3 years and is a chronic and relapsing disorder, with high rates of comorbidity and functional impairment. Previous research demonstrated a high rate of sustained gains in remission from preschool depression 18 weeks after completion of a novel intervention for depression, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy-Emotion Development (PCIT-ED). However, there have been no data regarding longer-term outcomes.

Common Neural Deficits in Social and Monetary Reinforcement Learning in Schizophrenia.

Background And Hypothesis: Individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) have well-documented behavioral and neural deficits to reinforcement learning (RL) from monetary feedback. Although they have a range of social functioning deficits, limited research has examined neural processes related to learning from social feedback. The present study examined how neural activation to social RL in SZ compares to activation to monetary RL.

Ambient Pollution Components and Sources Associated with Hippocampal Architecture and Memory in Pre-Adolescents.

Background: Ambient air pollution poses significant risks to brain health. Hippocampal structure and function are particularly vulnerable, yet the extent to which they are associated with air pollution in children remains unclear. We therefore conducted multi-pollutant mixture analyses to examine how air pollution influences hippocampal architecture and memory performance in late childhood.

Stimulant medications affect arousal and reward, not attention.

Prescription stimulants such as methylphenidate are being used by an increasing portion of the population, primarily children. These potent norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitors promote wakefulness, suppress appetite, enhance physical performance, and are purported to increase attentional abilities. Prior functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have yielded conflicting results about the effects of stimulants on the brain's attention, action/motor, and salience regions that are difficult to reconcile with their proposed attentional effects.

Structure-function coupling in the first month of life: Associations with age and attention.

How brain structure relates to function is a critical and open question in neuroscience. Here, we characterize regional variation in structure-function coupling, capturing the degree to which a cortical region's structural connections relate to patterns of coordinated neural activity in healthy, term-born neonates ( = 239). Regional structure-function coupling is heterogeneously patterned across the cortex, with higher coupling in the auditory, lateral prefrontal, and inferior parietal cortices.

Prenatal Adversity and Neonatal White Matter Microstructure Independently Relate to Language Outcomes at Age 2 Years.

Objective: To examine the mediating and moderating associations between prenatal exposure to adversity and neonatal white matter (WM) development on language outcomes at age 2 years.

Study Design: This longitudinal study includes 160 infants (gestational ages 41 - 39 weeks, n = 83; 38 - 37 weeks, n = 62; 36 - 34 weeks, n = 15) with neonatal diffusion MRI and language assessments at age 2 years using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development-III. Prenatal social disadvantage (PSD) and maternal psychosocial stress were assessed throughout the prenatal period.

The generalizability of cortical area parcellations across early childhood.

The cerebral cortex consists of distinct areas that develop through intrinsic embryonic patterning and postnatal experiences. Accurate parcellation of these areas in neuroimaging studies improves statistical power and cross-study comparability. Given significant brain changes in volume, microstructure, and connectivity during early life, we hypothesized that cortical areas in 1- to 3-year-olds would differ markedly from neonates and increasingly resemble adult patterns as development progresses.

Neonatal Brain Volumes and Early Parenting Behavior as Mediators in Associations Between Prenatal Social Disadvantage and Socioemotional Problems in Toddlers.

Background: Social disadvantage has been associated with early socioemotional difficulties. In this study, we examined mechanisms that relate prenatal social disadvantage (PSD) to the development of early socioemotional problems by testing whether these associations were mediated by 1) neonatal brain volumes (BVs) and/or 2) early parenting behaviors.

Methods: Women were recruited early in their pregnancies and followed prospectively.

Higher motivation and pleasure scores predict more reliance on model-free decision making.

Decision making is driven by factors such as motivation, pleasure, and cognitive skill. The current study evaluates how these factors are related to decision making in a community population. In recent years, work in the field of reinforcement learning has identified two main pathways that drive decision making: model-based and model-free learning.

Parsing Clinical and Neurobiological Sources of Heterogeneity in Depression.

Background: Patients with depression vary from one another in their clinical and neuroimaging presentation, but the relationship between clinical and neuroimaging sources of variation is poorly understood. Determining sources of heterogeneity in depression is important to gain insights into its diverse and complex neural etiology. In this study, we aimed to test whether depression heterogeneity is characterized by subgroups that differ both clinically and neurobiologically and/or whether multiple neuroimaging profiles give rise to the same clinical presentation.

Prenatal Adversity and Neonatal Brain Connectivity Relate to Emerging Executive Function at Age 2 Years.

Objective: Early life adversity alters the structure and function of higher-order brain networks that subserve executive function (EF). The extent that prenatal exposure to adversity and neonatal white matter (WM) microstructure and resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc) underlie problems in emerging EF remains unclear.

Method: This prospective study includes 164 infants (45% female, 85% term-born) who were recruited prenatally and underwent neonatal diffusion and rs-fc magnetic resonance imaging scans.

Test-retest reliability of computational parameters versus manifest behavior for decisional flexibility in psychosis.

Computational psychiatry aims to quantify individual patients' psychiatric pathology by measuring behavior during psychophysical tasks and characterizing the neurocomputational parameters underlying specific decision-making systems. While this approach has great potential for informing us about specific computational processes associated with psychopathology, the fundamental psychometric properties of computational assessments remain understudied. Optimizing these psychometric properties, including test-retest reliability, is essential for clinical utility.