Identification of structural brain alterations in adolescents with depressive symptomatology

Introduction: Depressive symptoms can emerge as early as childhood and may lead to adverse situations in adulthood. Studies have examined structural brain alternations in individuals with depressive symptoms, but findings remain inconclusive. Furthermore, previous studies have focused on adults or used a categorical approach to assess depression. The current study looks to identify grey matter volumes (GMV) that predict depressive symptomatology across a clinically concerning sample of adolescents. Methods: Structural MRI data were collected from 338 clinically concerning adolescents (mean age = 15.30 SD=2.07; mean IQ = 101.01 SD=12.43; 132 F). Depression symptoms were indexed via the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ). Freesurfer was used to parcellate the brain into 68 cortical regions and 14 subcortical regions. GMV was extracted from all 82 brain areas. Multiple linear regression was used to look at the relationship between MFQ scores and region-specific GMV parameter. Follow up regressions were conducted to look at potential effects of psychiatric diagnoses and medication intake. Results: Our regression analysis produced a significant model (R2 = 0.446, F(86, 251) = 2.348, p \u3c 0.001). Specifically, there was a negative association between GMV of the left parahippocampal (B = -0.203, p = 0.005), right rostral anterior cingulate (B = -0.162, p = 0.049), and right frontal pole (B = -0.147, p = 0.039) and a positive association between GMV of the left bank of the superior temporal sulcus (B = 0.173, p = 0.029). Follow up analyses produced results proximal to the main analysis. Conclusions: Altered regional brain volumes may serve as biomarkers for the development of depressive symptoms during adolescence. These findings suggest a homogeneity of altered cortical structures in adolescents with depressive symptoms

From perpetrator to peacebuilder: rethinking education in conflict-affected societies

This chapter explores the nexus between education and confict, positioning education as a contested domain that shapes, and is shaped by, a broad range of social, political, economic and cultural dynamics in confict-afected societies. On the one hand, violent conficts and structural violence have detrimental efects on educational processes and outcomes. On the other hand, education itself can (re)produce structural violence in society. Bringing together the felds of social science and cognitive neuroscience, this chapter provides a multi-faceted lens through which to address the challenges of education in diferent confict contexts from around the world, highlighting that the search for a collective peaceful future is complex

Annual Report 2020-2022: Evidence-based Nebraska Pre-and-Post Assessment Tool

This annual report is an evaluation of the effectiveness of Mental Health, Mentoring, Promotion/Prevention, School-based Interventions, and Afterschool programs funded by Community-based Aid (CBA). The program type analysis includes referrals to programs from July 1, 2020 – February 28, 2022, reported by programs to the Juvenile Case Management System (JCMS). This evaluation also includes data collected with the EB-NE Pre-and-post Assessment Tool co-created with Dr. Karina Blair at Boys Town Research Hospital

Neuroimaging alterations of the suicidal brain and its relevance to practice: an updated review of MRI studies

Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States. Historically, scientific inquiry has focused on psychological theory. However, more recent studies have started to shed light on complex biosignatures using MRI techniques, including task-based and resting-state functional MRI, brain morphometry, and diffusion tensor imaging. Here, we review recent research across these modalities, with a focus on participants with depression and Suicidal Thoughts and Behavior (STB). A PubMed search identified 149 articles specific to our population of study, and this was further refined to rule out more diffuse pathologies such as psychotic disorders and organic brain injury and illness. This left 69 articles which are reviewed in the current study. The collated articles reviewed point to a complex impairment showing atypical functional activation in areas associated with perception of reward, social/affective stimuli, top-down control, and reward-based learning. This is broadly supported by the atypical morphometric and diffusion-weighted alterations and, most significantly, in the network-based resting-state functional connectivity data that extrapolates network functions from well validated psychological paradigms using functional MRI analysis. We see an emerging picture of cognitive dysfunction evident in task-based and resting state fMRI and network neuroscience studies, likely preceded by structural changes best demonstrated in morphometric and diffusion-weighted studies. We propose a clinically-oriented chronology of the diathesis-stress model of suicide and link other areas of research that may be useful to the practicing clinician, while helping to advance the translational study of the neurobiology of suicide

Individual associations of adolescent alcohol use disorder versus cannabis use disorder symptoms in neural prediction error signaling and the response to novelty

Two of the most commonly used illegal substances by adolescents are alcohol and cannabis. Alcohol use disorder (AUD) and cannabis use disorder (CUD) are associated with poorer decision-making in adolescents. In adolescents, level of AUD symptomatology has been negatively associated with striatal reward responsivity. However, little work has explored the relationship with striatal reward prediction error (RPE) representation and the extent to which any augmentation of RPE by novel stimuli is impacted. One-hundred fifty-one adolescents participated in the Novelty Task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this task, participants learn to choose novel or non-novel stimuli to gain monetary reward. Level of AUD symptomatology was negatively associated with both optimal decision-making and BOLD response modulation by RPE within striatum and regions of prefrontal cortex. The neural alterations in RPE representation were particularly pronounced when participants were exploring novel stimuli. Level of CUD symptomatology moderated the relationship between novelty propensity and RPE representation within inferior parietal lobule and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. These data expand on an emerging literature investigating individual associations of AUD symptomatology levels versus CUD symptomatology levels and RPE representation during reinforcement processing and provide insight on the role of neuro-computational processes underlying reinforcement learning/decision-making in adolescents

On pseudo-Riemannian manifolds with recurrent concircular curvature tensor

It is proved that every concircularly recurrent manifold must be necessarily a recurrent manifold.Comment: 5 page

Brain-based classification of youth with anxiety disorders: transdiagnostic examinations within the ENIGMA-Anxiety database using machine learning

Neuroanatomical findings on youth anxiety disorders are notoriously difficult to replicate, small in effect size, and have limited clinical relevance. These concerns have prompted a paradigm shift towards highly powered (i.e., big data) individual-level inferences, which are data-driven, transdiagnostic, and neurobiologically informed. Hence, we uniquely built/validated supervised neuroanatomical machine learning (ML) models for individual-level inferences, using the largest up to date neuroimaging database on youth anxiety disorders: ENIGMA Anxiety Consortium (N=3,343; Age: 10-25 years; Global Sites: 32). Modest, yet robust, brain-based classifications were achieved for specific anxiety disorders (Panic Disorder), but also transdiagnostically for all anxiety disorders when patients were subgrouped according to their sex, medication status, and symptom severity (AUC’s 0.59-0.63). Classifications were driven by neuroanatomical features (cortical thickness/surface area, subcortical volumes) in fronto-striato-limbic and temporo-parietal regions. This benchmark study provides estimates on individual-level classification performances that can be realistically achieved with ML using neuroanatomical data, within a large, heterogenous, and multi-site sample of youth with anxiety disorders