Improving Our Understanding of Impaired Social Problem-Solving in Children and Adolescents with Conduct Problems: Implications for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

In cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) children and adolescents with conduct problems learn social problem-solving skills that enable them to behave in more independent and situation appropriate ways. Empirical studies on psychological functions show that the effectiveness of CBT may be further improved by putting more emphasis on (1) recognition of the type of social situations that are problematic, (2) recognition of facial expressions in view of initiating social problem-solving, (3) effortful emotion regulation and emotion awareness, (4) behavioral inhibition and working memory, (5) interpretation of the social problem, (6) affective empathy, (7) generation of appropriate solutions, (8) outcome expectations and moral beliefs, and (9) decision-making. To improve effectiveness, CBT could be tailored to the individual child's or adolescent's impairments of these psychological functions which may depend on the type of conduct problems and their associated problems

Electrode montage-dependent intracranial variability in electric fields induced by cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is an increasingly popular tool to investigate the involvement of the cerebellum in a variety of brain functions and pathologies. However, heterogeneity and small effect sizes remain a common issue. One potential cause may be interindividual variability of the electric fields induced by tDCS. Here, we compared electric field distributions and directions between two conventionally used electrode montages (i.e., one placing the return electrode over the ipsilateral buccinator muscle and one placing the return electrode [25 and 35 cm2 surface area, respectively] over the contralateral supraorbital area; Experiment 1) and six alternative montages (electrode size: 9 cm2; Experiment 2) targeting the right posterior cerebellar hemisphere at 2 mA. Interindividual and montage differences in the achieved maximum field strength, focality, and direction of current flow were evaluated in 20 head models and the effects of individual differences in scalp–cortex distance were examined. Results showed that while maximum field strength was comparable for all montages, focality was substantially improved for the alternative montages over inferior occipital positions. Our findings suggest that compared to several conventional montages extracerebellar electric fields are significantly reduced by placing smaller electrodes in closer vicinity of the targeted area

Aggressive Motivation: An Introduction and Overview

This article introduces a special issue on Aggressive Motivation. After briefly considering some important concepts and definitions in the psychological study of aggression and aggressive motivation, this article provides short summaries of the 8 contributions to this special issue

Effects of tDCS during inhibitory control training on performance and PTSD, aggression and anxiety symptoms: a randomized-controlled trial in a military sample

Background. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and impulsive aggression are linked to transdiagnostic neurocognitive deficits. This includes impaired inhibitory control over inappropriate responses. Prior studies showed that inhibitory control can be improved by modulating the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in combination with inhibitory control training. However, its clinical potential remains unclear. We therefore aimed to replicate a tDCS-enhanced inhibitory control training in a clinical sample and test whether this reduces stress-related mental health symptoms. Methods. In a preregistered double-blind randomized-controlled trial, 100 active-duty military personnel and post-active veterans with PTSD, anxiety, or impulsive aggression symptoms underwent a 5-session intervention where a stop-signal response inhibition training was combined with anodal tDCS over the right IFG for 20 min at 1.25 mA. Inhibitory control was evaluated with the emotional go/no-go task and implicit association test. Stress-related symptoms were assessed by self-report at baseline, post-intervention, and after 3-months and 1-year follow-ups. Results. Active relative to sham tDCS neither influenced performance during inhibitory control training nor on assessment tasks, and did also not significantly influence self-reported symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, impulsive aggression, or depression at post-assessment or follow-up. Conclusions. Our results do not support the idea that anodal tDCS over the right IFG at 1.25 mA enhances response inhibition training in a clinical sample, or that this tDCS-training combination can reduce stress-related symptoms. Applying different tDCS parameters or combining tDCS with more challenging tasks might provide better conditions to modulate cognitive functioning and stress-related symptoms

Cerebellar tDCS does not modulate language processing performance in healthy individuals

Clinical and neuroscientific studies have established that the cerebellum contributes to language processing. Yet most evidence is correlational and the exact role of the cerebellum remains unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of the right cerebellum in language comprehension and production using non-invasive brain stimulation. In this double-blind, sham-controlled experiment, thirty-six healthy participants received anodal or sham transcranial direct current (tDCS) stimulation to the right cerebellum while performing a lexical decision, sentence comprehension, verbal fluency and a non-language control task. Active tDCS did not modulate performance in any of the tasks. Additional exploratory analyses suggest difficulty-specific performance modulation in the sentence comprehension and lexical decision task, with tDCS improving performance in easy trials of the sentence comprehension task and difficult trials in the lexical decision task. Overall, our findings provide no evidence for the involvement of the right posterior cerebellum in language processing. Further research is needed to dissociate the influence of task difficulty of the underlying cognitive processes

The Cerebellum and Disorders of Emotion

Neuropsychological and experimental brain research have provided independent lines of evidence in support of cerebellar involvement in disorders of emotion. Medial cerebellar structures and their connections to the limbic system are involved in visceral aspects and the generation of emotions, whereas the posterolateral cerebello-thalamo-cortical loops are implicated in emotion regulation and subjective sense of control. Disturbances within these cerebellar-centred circuits are proposed to underlie homeostatic dysregulation and suboptimal predictive coding that provide a transdiagnostic mechanism by which the cerebellum may contribute to the vulnerability and persistence of mental disorders

Current and Future Perspectives of the Cerebellum in Affective Neuroscience

The importance of the cerebellum in basic as well as higher order domains of affect processing in the brain has been vividly elaborated and specified by the contributions collected in this book. Indeed, according to increasingly precise research findings in functional neuroimaging and functional neurophysiology, individually delineable areas of the cerebellum play a role in virtually all process levels of the responsible networks of emotion perception, attribution, and experience via a variety of reciprocal connections to the limbic system and distinct areas of the parietal, temporal, and prefrontal cortex. The works in this book identify alternative perspectives in neuroscience research that offer new directions in future investigations. Important aspects will be to pin down the precise cerebellar processes in multiple sensory integration and allocation in cognitive and affective evaluation, and also cognitive-affective as well as motor behavioral responses. In this context, imaging and electrophysiological techniques will highlight the spatial and temporal, and thus the topographic and topological, specificities of the cerebellar areas to the respective networks. In the final chapter, questions and suggestions for future neuroscientific investigations are identified, from whose developments several fields of neurological and psychological disciplines could benefit in order to open up therapeutic avenues for people with cerebellar disorders

Introduction into the Role of the Cerebellum in Emotion

The cerebellum is well known for its contribution to motor performance, but less for its involvement to cognitive and affective processing. The growing interest of clinical and neuroscientific research has resulted in a fascinating focus on the cerebellar mechanisms of emotion. Advances in functional neuroimaging and noninvasive stimulation protocols have successively delineated circumscribed cerebellar areas with its functional and topographic connections to the conventionally predominating cerebral cortex in basic as well as high order emotion processing. This encompasses all information processing stages which include perception and attention, and the evaluation and integration of emotion cues to the trajectories in motor, cognitive, and affective behavior. Not surprisingly, research has identified the cerebellum being part of the brain's network associated with art, morality, and social cognition. This book will provide an overview of the details of these intriguing issues, supporting a contemporary understanding of the fundamental as well as specific features of cerebellar functions within emotion processes

Increasing Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Conduct Problems in Children and Adolescents: What Can We Learn from Neuroimaging Studies?

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is particularly relevant for children from 7 years on and adolescents with clinical levels of conduct problems. CBT provides these children and adolescents with anger regulation and social problem-solving skills that enable them to behave in more independent and situation appropriate ways. Typically, CBT is combined with another psychological treatment such as behavioral parent training in childhood or an intervention targeting multiple systems in adolescence. The effectiveness of CBT, however, is in the small to medium range. The aim of this review is to describe how the effectiveness of CBT may be improved by paying more attention to a series of psychological functions that have been shown to be impaired in neuroimaging studies: (1) anger recognition, (2) the ability to generate situation appropriate solutions to social problems, (3) reinforcement-based decision making, (4) response inhibition, and (5) affective empathy. It is suggested that children and adolescents first become familiar with these psychological functions during group CBT sessions. In individual sessions in which the parents (and/or child care workers in day treatment and residential treatment) and the child or adolescent participate, parents then learn to elicit, support, and reinforce their child’s use of these psychological functions in everyday life (in vivo practice). In these individual sessions, working on the psychological functions is tailored to the individual child’s characteristic impairments of these functions. CBT therapists may also share crucial social-learning topics with teachers with a view to creating learning opportunities for children and adolescents at school

Lower cerebello-cortical functional connectivity in veterans with reactive aggression symptoms: A pilot study

A significant number of veterans experience irritability and aggression symptoms as a result of being exposed to extremely stressful and life-threatening situations. In addition to the well-established involvement of the brain's cortico-subcortical circuit in aggression-related behaviours, a role of the deep cerebellar nuclei (DCN) in reactive aggression has been suggested. In the present study, seed-based resting-state functional connectivity between the DCN and cortico-subcortical areas was explored in veterans with and without reactive aggression symptoms. Nineteen male veterans with reactive aggression symptoms and twenty-two control veterans without reactive aggression symptoms underwent 3T resting-state functional MRI scans. Region-of-interest (ROI) analyses that included the amygdala, hypothalamus and periaqueductal grey as ROIs did not yield significant group-related differences in resting-state functional connectivity with the DCN. However, exploratory whole-brain analysis showed that veterans with reactive aggression symptoms exhibited lower functional connectivity between the DCN and the orbitofrontal cortex compared to control veterans. Our findings provide preliminary evidence for the possible involvement of a cerebello-prefrontal pathway in reactive aggression in male veterans