46 research outputs found
Relations Between Hippocampal Volume and Story Recall in Early Childhood
Research in adults and children suggest the hippocampus plays an important role in verbal memory (Ezzati et al., 2015; Gold & Trauner, 2014). However, links between verbal memory and the hippocampus in younger children remain relatively under investigated. This relation is important to study during early childhood (i.e., before 6 years) for at least two reasons. First, memory changes rapidly during this time and second, research in children suggests that age- related differences exist between memory and hippocampal subregion volumes (e.g. Riggins et al., 2015; Allard, Canada, & Riggins, March 2019). The current study addresses a gap in the literature by investigating the potential relation between hippocampal subregion volumes and verbal memory in early childhood.
A total of 200 children, aged 4-8 years old (mean age=6.21 years, SD=0.11), were enrolled in a larger study on hippocampal memory development. Of these, 177 provided usable
behavioral and MRI data. To assess verbal memory performance in these children, the stories subtest of the Children's Memory Scale was administered (Cohen, 1997). In the task, participants heard two stories read aloud by a researcher and were then asked to recall those stories immediately after hearing them, again one hour later, and again one week later. For the current study, analyses focused on the hour-delay performance in order to assess long term memory without the additional prompting that happened before the week-delay performance. Performance on the task was determined by the number of remembered verbatim story units. The maximum number of stories units to be remembered was 57 for both stories heard. Approximately one week following the verbal memory task, a T1-weighted structural MRI scan (0.9 mm3) was obtained. Hippocampal volumes were estimated via Freesurfer v5.1 (Fischl, 2012) and refined using ASAT (Wang et al., 2011). Hippocampal volumes were then divided into subregions (head, body, tail) using standard anatomical landmarks (Weiss, Dewitt, Goff, Ditman, & Heckers, 2005; Watson et al., 1992).
Initial analyses examining hippocampal volume and verbal memory performance was non- significant. However, when a median age split was conducted, preliminary findings assessing relations between recall and hippocampal volumes revealed that younger (4- 6.13 years), but not older children (6.14-9 years) showed a significant positive relation between number of story units recalled and volume of the left hippocampal body (r=0.244, n=79, p=0.028).
These findings are consistent with previous research that suggests developmental differences exist in brain-behavior relations during early childhood. It also supports the notion that a mature hippocampus is not necessarily larger in size (Riggins et al., 2015). These results reinforce an emerging body of work that propose age-related differences in associations between memory and hippocampal subregion volumes during development. Specifically, these results are consistent with previous findings that showed age-related differences between hippocampal body and performance on a visual spatial memory task and source memory in younger but not older children (Allard, Canada, & Riggins, March 2019; Riggins et al., 2015).Neurocognitive Development Lab and NIH Grant RO1 5205310 (TR)
Spectroscopic analysis of LiTm F
The absorption spectra of Tm3+ in LiTmF4 have been measured at 2, 10, 30, and 50 K in the spectral interval 4000-25 000 cm-1. The energy levels of the ground-state configuration were calculated by diagonalizing the Hamiltonian of the electron-electron interaction, the spin-orbit coupling, and the crystal field in a basis of the whole configuration. The electrostatic parameter F2, the spin-orbit parameter ζ, and the crystal-field parameters Bkq were varied to obtain the best agreement with the experimentally observed levels. As the model does not account for configuration mixing and minor magnetic effects, it was necessary after optimizing F2 and ζ to match the centers of gravity for the multiplets before the final adjustment of the B parameters. When this was done, the standard deviation was lowered from 170 to 12 cm-1. The B parameters obtained for Tm3+ have been compared to those of Tb3+, Ho3+, and Er3+ in LiLnF4, and they follow a common trend. The intensities of the transitions from the ground state were calculated in the Judd-Ofelt scheme, fitting six complex intensity parameters A(kqλ) for best agreement with the experimentally observed intensities. The model was only able to give a rough estimate of the transition probabilities. The obtained relative standard deviation was 1.1. Contrary to what was found in the case of the energy calculations, it was important for the intensity calculations that the B parameters were allowed to take complex values. The imaginary part of the A parameters was not important to the intensities
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Sleep, Stress, and Academic Achievement in Female Undergraduates During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Does Ethnicity Matter?
Although the adverse effects of the Coronavirus 2019 pandemic are widely recognized, relatively little attention has been paid to their specific effects on undergraduates, especially in relation to characteristics that directly impact academic achievement. The current study examined sleep, stress, and grade-point average in a large sample of ethnically-diverse female undergraduates. Given well-documented evidence of the negative impact of poor sleep and high stress on academic achievement, it was important to ascertain whether these associations existed during the pandemic and varied across ethnic groups who may have been differentially impacted by the pandemic and pandemic-related stress. Participants completed an online questionnaire in Fall 2020 about themselves, their sleep, and stress. GPA was obtained by the University at the end of the Fall 2020 quarter. Latinas reported poorer sleep and had lower GPAs than Asian and White participants, but the groups did not differ in perceived stress. Across groups, stress was negatively related to GPA, particularly when combined with poor sleep. When considered separately by ethnic group, stress itself was associated with lower GPA in Latinas, whereas the combination of poor sleep and stress was associated with lower GPAs for White participants. Overall, findings highlight the need for greater consideration of how multiple intersecting identities and experiences, particularly those affecting sleep and stress, may shape academic achievement so that interventions can be targeted more appropriately