Brain white matter development, associations to maternal perinatal psychological distress and emotional attention at the age of 5 years

Development of the brain white matter (WM) is highly plastic, and myelination continues from the second trimester into early adulthood which predisposes the brain to effects of both adverse and supporting factors during early life. Maternal perinatal psychological distress is acknowledged as an important contributor to the offspring’s development. Furthermore, sex is known to affect the WM microstructure as well as the emergence of psychopathologies. Understanding the normal variation of microstructure in the developing brain WM is a prerequisite for recognizing alterations inflicted by early adversity that have possible long-term programming effects on behavioral and socio-emotional outcomes. This study aimed to 1) investigate the incidence, risk factors and consequences of incidental findings in brain magnetic resonance imaging of infants; 2) optimize data acquisition parameters and pre-processing pipeline of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) protocol applied with children; 3) describe the normal microstructural features of WM in infants and 5-year-old children; 4) investigate the associations between WM integrity and exposure to maternal perinatal psychological distress; 5) explore the associations of WM integrity and child’s emotional attention. Vacuum assistance and vaginal birth were observed to increase the risk for subdural hemorrhages (incidence 6.9%) with no effects on early neurological development. In 5-year-olds, higher WM integrity in widespread regions was observed in girls, and we found marked asymmetry in the WM, resembling patterns previously shown in adults. Maternal perinatal psychological distress showed sexand timing-specific associations with WM integrity: prenatal symptoms predicting higher integrity in boys and postnatal symptoms lower integrity in girls. Maternal postpartum anxiety increased girls’ vigilance toward fearful faces, which was also associated with reduced WM integrity. The results imply that maternal psychological distress affects WM development with effects especially on girls. Collectively, these studies provide fundamental insight for future studies addressing the mediating mechanisms and longer-term effects between the observed associations.Aivojen valkean aineen kehitys, äidin raskauden ympärillä esiintyvän psykologisen stressin vaikutus ja tunneperäinen huomion kohdentaminen 5-vuotiailla Aivojen valkean aineen kehitys jatkuu toiselta raskauskolmannekselta varhaiseen aikuisuuteen, mikä altistaa sen muovautuvuutensa vuoksi sekä epäsuotuisten että tukevien tekijöiden vaikutukselle varhaisen elämän aikana. Äidin raskauden ympärillä esiintyvä psykologinen stressi on tunnettu jälkeläisten kehitykseen vaikuttava tekijä. Lisäksi sukupuoli vaikuttaa valkean aineen rakenteeseen ja psykiatristen häiriöiden ilmaantuvuuteen. Kehittyvien aivojen rakenteen normaalivaihtelun ymmärtäminen on oleellista, jotta voidaan tunnistaa aikaisten vastoinkäymisten aiheuttamia muutoksia sekä niiden mahdollisia pitkäaikaisia ohjelmoivia vaikutuksia käytökseen ja tunnepohjaisiin toimintoihin. Tämän väitöskirjan tavoitteena oli 1) raportoida vastasyntyneiden aivojen magneettikuvien sattumalöydösten esiintyvyyttä, riskitekijöitä ja neurologisia seurauksia; 2) optimoida lasten diffuusiotensorikuvantamisaineiston keräämistä ja esikäsittelyä; 3) tarkastella 5-vuotiaiden valkean aineen normaalipiirteitä; 4) tutkia äidin raskauden ympärillä esiintyvän psykologisen stressin vaikutusta jälkeläisten valkean aineen rakenteeseen; ja 5) selvittää valkean aineen yhteyksiä lapsen tunnepohjaiseen huomion kohdentamiseen silmänliikemittausten avulla. Imukuppiavustus ja alatiesynnytys lisäsivät sattumalöydöksinä havaittujen kovakalvonalaisten vuotojen (6.9 %) riskiä, mutta eivät vaikuttaneet varhaiseen neurologiseen kehitykseen. 5-vuotiaiden tyttöjen valkean aineen integriteetti oli laajaalaisesti korkeampi poikiin verrattuna, ja epäsymmetrisyys vastasi aiemmin aikuisilla havaittua rakennetta. Äidin psykologinen stressi liittyi jälkeläisten valkean aineen integriteettiin sukupuoli- ja ajankohtariippuvaisesti: pojilla raskaudenaikainen altistus lisäsi valkean aineen integriteettiä, kun taas tytöillä raskaudenjälkeinen altistus vähensi sitä. Äidin raskauden jälkeinen ahdistus lisäsi tyttöjen tarkkaavaisuutta pelokkaisiin ilmeisiin, joka liittyi myös alentuneeseen valkean aineen integriteettiin. Aiempia tutkimustuloksia tukien äidin psykologisen stressin havaittiin muovaavan valkean aineen kehitystä etenkin tytöillä, ja tämä luo pohjaa mekanismien ja kausaliteetin tarkastelulle myös tulevissa tutkimuksissa

Emotion Processing in Children and Adolescents with Anxiety Disorders and Typically Developing Youth.

Understanding the typical development of neural circuitry involved in emotion processing has the potential to inform our understanding of the atypical development of this circuitry in populations such as pediatric anxiety disorder patients, and vice versa. The aim of this dissertation is to examine cross-sectional changes with age in prefrontal cortex-amygdala circuitry in typically developing children and adolescents and how functioning of this circuitry is altered in pediatric anxiety disorder patients. The first chapter reviews what is currently known about changes occurring in prefrontal cortex-amygdala circuitry across childhood and adolescence and discusses how knowledge of the development of neural circuitry can help link developmental influences such as genes and environment to outcomes of interest such as symptoms and disorders. The following three chapters provide original research examining this circuitry and its role in emotion processing in typical and atypical child and adolescent populations. In the second chapter, I examine the relation between prefrontal cortex-amygdala structural connectivity and function in typically developing youth. The third chapter aims to further elucidate abnormalities in amygdala function in pediatric anxiety disorder patients. In the fourth chapter, I examine prefrontal cortex function in pediatric anxiety disorder patients during a task that manipulates attention to emotional stimuli. In the fifth chapter, I discuss how this original research informs a model of the typical and atypical development of prefrontal cortex-amygdala circuitry across childhood and adolescence and how this model can be applied in future research to generate novel approaches to examining the development and treatment of anxiety disorders.PHDPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100073/1/jrswartz_1.pd

A sensorimotor control framework for understanding emotional communication and regulation

JHGW and CFH are supported by the Northwood Trust. TEVR was supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Early Career Fellowship (1088785). RP and MW were supported by the the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders (CE110001021)Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Investigating sex differences in structural and functional neuroimaging correlates of empathy in conduct disorder

Conduct Disorder (CD) is a childhood psychiatric disorder characterised by antisocial and aggressive behaviours. The overarching aim of this thesis was to investigate potential sex differences in the structural and functional neuroimaging correlates of empathy in CD. Studies in chapters 5 and 6 showed that youths with CD had decreased structural covariance between the anterior insula (AI) and thalamus compared to TD (typically developing) youths, but the groups did not differ in grey matter volume and no interactions with sex were observed. Studies in chapters 7 and 8 revealed that youths with CD exhibited reduced brain response in the AI and cerebellum when viewing others in pain. A sex-by-group interaction was also observed in the amygdala whereby females with CD had reduced brain response compared to TD females, with no differences between males with CD and TD males. Youths with CD exhibited decreased functional connectivity between the AI and the occipital lobe, but increased connectivity between the cerebellum and amygdala compared to TD youths. These findings suggest that structural and functional abnormalities in the AI are key features of both males and females with CD, while only females exhibit functional abnormalities in the amygdala when processing pain in others

Socioemotional functioning in youth with borderline personality disorder

This thesis makes an original contribution to our understanding of socioemotional functioning in borderline personality disorder (BPD) by critically examining social cognition and emotion regulation BPD research from a developmental perspective. It also extends on previous research, making a novel and important contribution to our understanding of sociocognitive functioning and emotion regulation ability in youth with first presentation BPD. This was achieved via two critical narrative reviews of the existing literature and two empirical studies, which examined aspects of social cognition and emotion regulation considered key to interpersonal functioning in BPD. The empirical studies assessed, 1) unconscious simulation processes, a key aspect of affective empathy, and 2) the application of two emotion regulation strategies, expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal, in the regulation of negative and positive affect, in a standard laboratory context, as well as in the context of social rejection. The reviews demonstrated that despite their shared diagnosis, important differences between young people and adults with BPD, in terms of their sociocognitive functioning and emotion regulation abilities, are evident. Future research and reviews should avoid conflating developmental age and stage of disorder. Instead, these processes, which are central to interpersonal functioning, need to be better understood over the course of BPD, especially early in its course. The empirical studies demonstrated that socioemotional functioning in youth with first presentation BPD is not uniformly affected. Specifically, rapid facial mimicry was unimpaired, contradicting predictions that heightened unconscious motor mimicry leads to heightened emotional contagion, and associated emotion regulation difficulties. Future research is needed to determine whether this finding also holds true for adults and young people later in the course of the disorder. Future research should also explore other factors that might lead to heightened emotional contagion and associated emotion regulation difficulties in BPD. Emotion regulation ability was largely preserved in youth with first presentation BPD, and functioning was mostly similar to that of typically developing young people. Specifically, for the most part, they could apply expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal, to regulate both positive and negative affect (felt subjectively and expressed behaviourally), in a standard laboratory context and in the context of social rejection, with similar effectiveness to that of healthy youth. However, youth with first presentation BPD were not only unable to apply cognitive reappraisal to regulate the behavioural expression of negative emotions in the context of social rejection, but its application in this context intensified their facial expression of negative affect. They also demonstrated a pattern of pervasively blunted positive affect, relative to healthy youth, across indices and contexts. Further research is needed to better understand whether the effectiveness of cognitive reappraisal can be improved in this context, or whether it is contraindicated. Given that social rejection is commonly experienced by this group, and given the common application of cognitive strategies in therapy, future research is clearly needed to better understand the effectiveness and consequences of this, and alternative strategies, for use in the context of social rejection by youth with first presentation BPD. Finally, while positive affect has often been neglected in BPD research, the evident pervasive blunting clearly needs greater research and clinical attention in this group