Early Childhood Mental Health: A Public Health Approach

Undiagnosed and untreated child mental health problems create a public health emergency in the United States (US). In the US the human suffering, burden of disability, and economic costs associated with mental illness are immense. Mental illness is the second leading cause of disease burden, directly resulting in substantial lost productivity. Behavioral health and prevention research highlight the effectiveness of interventions that reduce risk factors and enhance protective factors associated with mental illness. This focus on prevention and resilience reflects the relatively recent public health approach to mental health. The emphasis on promotion, prevention, and early intervention in a public health approach is especially relevant for young children. Likewise, the social-ecological perspective often used in public health interventions mirrors the multi-tiered influences on young children's social and emotional wellbeing. Finally, child development research shows young children can recover from early detection and early intervention for a mental health problem. One in five children and youth is estimated to experience symptoms of psychiatric disorder each year. Many of the mental health problems diagnosed in school aged children and teenagers originate in early childhood, but there are long delays before diagnosis and treatment are received. Approximately 10% of children experience mental problems to the point of impairment, yet less than 20% of those in need receive treatment. This unmet need in the population most likely to benefit from prevention and early treatment creates a problem of public health significance. Currently, there is little research linking public health approaches to mental health services for children birth to age five. This paper discusses the need for, and relevance of, a public health approach to young children's mental health, and makes recommendations for implementation of that approach

Dysfunction of the visual sensory thalamus in developmental dyslexia

Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a reading disorder with a prevalence of 5-10%. Neuroscientific research has typically focused on explaining DD symptoms based on pathophysiological changes in the cerebral cortex. However, DD might also be associated with alterations in sensory thalami – central subcortical stations of sensory pathways. A post-mortem study on the visual sensory thalamus (lateral geniculate nucleus, LGN) showed histopathological changes in the magnocellular (M-LGN), but not in the parvocellular (P-LGN), subdivisions. M-LGN and P-LGN have different functional properties and belong to two different visual systems. Whether M-LGN alterations also exist in DD in-vivo is unclear. Also, the potential relevance of M-LGN alterations to DD symptoms is unknown. This lack of knowledge is partly due to considerable technical challenges in investigating LGN subdivisions non-invasively in humans. Here, we employed recent advances in high-field 7 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map the M- and P-LGN in-vivo in DD adults (n=26) and matched controls (n=28). We show that (i) M-LGN responses differ between DD and control participants, (ii) these differences are more pronounced in male than in female DD participants, and (iii) M-LGN alterations predict a core symptom of DD in male DD participants only, i.e., rapid naming ability. Our results provide a first functional interpretation of M-LGN changes in DD and support DD theories that propose a direct relevance of sensory thalamus alterations for DD symptoms. In addition, the sex-specific behavioral relevance of M-LGN alterations within DD calls for taking sex differences into account when planning brain-based therapeutic interventions

Axon diameter measurements using diffusion MRI are infeasible

The feasibility of non-invasive axonal diameter quantification with diffusion MRI is a strongly debated topic due to the neuroscientific potential of such information and its relevance for the axonal signal transmission speed. It has been shown that under ideal conditions, the minimal diameter producing detectable signal decay is bigger than most human axons in the brain, even using the strongest currently available MRI systems. We show that resolving the simplest situations including multiple diameters is unfeasible even with diameters much bigger than the diameter limit. Additionally, the recently proposed effective diameter resulting from fitting a single value over a distribution is almost exclusively influenced by the biggest axons. We show how impractical this metric is for comparing different distributions. Overall, axon diameters currently cannot be quantified by diffusion MRI in any relevant way

Planar Waveguide from PPV Derivatives

Abstract. We report in this paper the result of thin film fabrication of MEH-PPV and MEH-PPB having good optical transparency and low surface roughness suitable for planar waveguide application. The linear optical properties of the polymers were characterized using reflectometry and prism coupling, while the non-linear optical property was measured by means of optical third harmonic generation (THG). The waveguide attenuation of the polymer films was determined by employing prism coupling set-up equipped with a photodiode array detector. The MEH-PPV waveguide film was shown to have a very low attenuation of 0.5 dB cm-1 at 1064 nm yielding an unprecedentedly high figure of merits of 11 at 1 GW/cm2. Pandu Gelombang Planar dari Turunan PPVSari. Dalam tulisan ini dilaporkan fabrikasi film tipis polimer MEH-PPV dan MEH-PPB yang mempunyai transparansi optik tinggi dan permukaan yang halus sehingga cocok untuk aplikasi pandu gelombang planar. Sifat optic linier dari polimer yang bersangkutan diukur dengan teknik reflektometri dan kopling prisma dan sifat optic nonlinier diukur dengan metoda third harmonic generation (THG). Selanjutnya, atenuasi pandu gelombang dari film polimer yang bersangkutan diukur dengan konfigurasi kopling prisma dan detector diode arrat. Film pandu gelombang yang dihasilkan dalam eksperimen ini memiliki atenuasi rendah sebesar 0.5 dB cm-1 pada panjang gelombang 1064 nm dan menghasilkan "figure of merits" (FOM) sebesar 11 pada intensitas 1 GW/cm2 yang merupakan nilai tertinggi sejauh ini

The Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program: Occupational Therapy’s Imperative Role in Interprofessional Education

This paper will expound on the findings discovered from efforts made by including an occupational therapist on an interprofessional education initiative charged with developing content to enhance knowledge of geriatrics for health care providers, community-dwelling older adults, and caregivers in medically underserved areas. We will describe the actions of the interprofessional team and present data about the impact of collaborative, systematic input on one educational program taught primarily by the occupational therapist. We will then describe the personal and professional growth opportunities experienced by the occupational therapist on this initiative, and impart the challenges faced and provide recommendations to overcome them. Finally, we will discuss practical implications for advancing interprofessional education and occupational therapy at other institutions

The Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program: Occupational Therapy’s Imperative Role in Interprofessional Education

This paper will expound on the findings discovered from efforts made by including an occupational therapist on an interprofessional education initiative charged with developing content to enhance knowledge of geriatrics for health care providers, community-dwelling older adults, and caregivers in medically underserved areas. We will describe the actions of the interprofessional team and present data about the impact of collaborative, systematic input on one educational program taught primarily by the occupational therapist. We will then describe the personal and professional growth opportunities experienced by the occupational therapist on this initiative, and impart the challenges faced and provide recommendations to overcome them. Finally, we will discuss practical implications for advancing interprofessional education and occupational therapy at other institutions

De-noising of diffusion-weighted MRI data by averaging of inconsistent input data in wavelet space

Diffusion Weighted Images datasets with high spatial resolution and strong diffusion weighting are often deteriorated with low SNR. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility of a recently presented repetition-free averaging based de-noising (AWESOME). That technique reduces noise by averaging over a series of N images with varying contrast in wavelet space and regains intensities and object features initially covered by noise. We show that high resolution DWIs are achievable in a quality that almost equals to that obtained from 6fold complex averaging