Social re-orientation and brain development: An expanded and updated view.

Social development has been the focus of a great deal of neuroscience based research over the past decade. In this review, we focus on providing a framework for understanding how changes in facets of social development may correspond with changes in brain function. We argue that (1) distinct phases of social behavior emerge based on whether the organizing social force is the mother, peer play, peer integration, or romantic intimacy; (2) each phase is marked by a high degree of affect-driven motivation that elicits a distinct response in subcortical structures; (3) activity generated by these structures interacts with circuits in prefrontal cortex that guide executive functions, and occipital and temporal lobe circuits, which generate specific sensory and perceptual social representations. We propose that the direction, magnitude and duration of interaction among these affective, executive, and perceptual systems may relate to distinct sensitive periods across development that contribute to establishing long-term patterns of brain function and behavior

Cross-sectional associations between variations in ankle shape by statistical shape modeling, injury history, and race : the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project

Rheumatology Research Foundation Medical Student Preceptorship Award (Lateef/Nelson), NIAMS K23 AR061406 (Nelson); NIH/NIAMS P60AR064166 and U01DP003206 (Jordan/Renner), NIH/NIAMS R01AR067743 (Golightly). The funders had no role in study design; collection, analysis, or interpretation of data; writing the manuscript or the decision to submit for publication.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Probing the Neural Correlates of Anticipated Peer Evaluation in Adolescence

Neural correlates of social cognition were assessed in 9-to-17-year-olds using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants appraised how unfamiliar peers they had previously identified as being of high or low interest would evaluate them for an anticipated online chat session. Differential age- and sex-related activation patterns emerged in several regions previously implicated in affective processing. These included the ventral striatum, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and insula. In general, activation patterns shifted with age in older relative to younger females, but showed no association with age in males. Relating these neural response patterns to changes in adolescent social-cognition enriches theories of adolescent social development through enhanced neurobiological understanding of social behavior

General anesthesia does not have persistent effects on attention in rodents

Background: Studies in animals have shown that general anesthesia can cause persistent spatial memory impairment, but the influence of anesthetics on other cognitive functions is unclear. This study tested whether exposure to general anesthesia without surgery caused a persistent deficit in attention in rodents.Methods: To evaluate whether anesthesia has persistent effects on attention, rats were randomized to three groups. Group A was exposed for 2 h to isoflurane anesthesia, and tested the following seven days for attentional deficits. Group B was used as a control and received room air before attentional testing. Since there is some evidence that a subanesthetic dose of ketamine can improve cognition and reduce disorders of attention after surgery, rats in group C were exposed to isoflurane anesthesia in combination with a ketamine injection before cognitive assessment. Attention was measured in rats using the 5-Choice Serial Reaction Time Task, for which animals were trained to respond with a nose poke on a touchscreen to a brief, unpredictable visual stimulus in one of five possible grid locations to receive a food reward. Attention was analyzed as % accuracy, % omission, and premature responses.Results: Evaluating acute attention by comparing baseline values with data from the day after intervention did not reveal any differences in attentional measurements. No significant differences were seen in % accuracy, % omission, and premature responses for the three groups tested for 7 consecutive days.Conclusion: These data in healthy rodents suggest that general anesthesia without surgery has no persistent effect on attention and the addition of ketamine does not alter the outcome

Assessing the Readability and Usability of Online H-E-L-P Intervention for IPV Survivors

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the readability and usability of an online HELP (Health, Education, and Legal Program) intervention for women experiencing IPV (Intimate Partner Violence) by asking graduate nursing students to review in class nine online HELP intervention modules. Design: A descriptive online survey administered to 15 graduate nursing students\ud was used to assess the readability and usability of an online HELP intervention. Methods: Participants were asked to perform the following activities: 1) reading the nine HELP modules on PowerPoint as posted on Blackboard (a web-based course management program), 2) filling in five blank lines under each heading (HEALTH, EDUCATION, LEGAL, and PROGRAM), by writing words or terms on the line after each heading, 3) ranking the words within each heading (with #1 as the highest and #5 as the lowest), 4) engaging in a class discussion of the rationale for the ranking, 5) re-ranking, and 6) voting on the ranking. The results were compiled to yield a master rank and vote order for each heading between 12 (received 12 votes) and 15 (received 15 votes) of the words that were ranked #1. Results: The words that were ranked #1 under each heading and the number of votes received were: Under HEALTH: Depression (15), Anger (14), Anxiety (13), and Pain (12); EDUCATION: Safety (15), Injury (14), Social Support (13) and Parenting/Child Care (12); LEGAL: Protection from Abuse (15), Attorney (14), Court/Hearing (13), and Rights (12); PROGRAM: Internet (15), Online (14), Intervention (13) and Resources (12). Conclusions: HELP intervention is readable and usable however, HELP needs to be piloted to ensure that survivors of IPV participants can access and benefit from HELP intervention

Neural Responses to Peer Rejection in Anxious Adolescents: Contributions from the Amygdala-Hippocampal Complex

Peer rejection powerfully predicts adolescent anxiety. While cognitive differences influence anxious responses to social feedback, little is known about neural contributions. Twelve anxious and 12 age-, gender- and IQ-matched, psychiatrically-healthy adolescents received ‘not interested’ and ‘interested’ feedback from unknown peers during a Chatroom task administered in a neuroimaging scanner. No group differences emerged in subjective ratings to peer feedback, but all participants reported more negative emotion at being rejected (than accepted) by peers to whom they had assigned high desirability ratings. Further highlighting the salience of such feedback, all adolescents, independent of anxiety levels, manifested elevated responses in the amygdala-hippocampal complex bilaterally, during the anticipation of feedback. However, anxious adolescents differed from healthy adolescents in their patterns of persistent amygdala-hippocampal activation following rejection. These data carry interesting implications for using neuroimaging data to inform psychotherapeutic approaches to social anxiety

Chlamydia muridarum Genital and Gastrointestinal Infection Tropism Is Mediated by Distinct Chromosomal Factors

Some members of the genus Chlamydia, including the human pathogen Chlamydia trachomatis, infect multiple tissues, including the genital and gastrointestinal (GI) tracts. However, it is unknown if bacterial targeting to these sites is mediated by multifunctional or distinct chlamydial factors. We previously showed that disruption of individual large clostridial toxin homologs encoded within the Chlamydia muridarum plasticity zone were not critical for murine genital tract infection. Here, we assessed whether cytotoxin genes contribute to C. muridarum GI tropism. Infectivity and shedding of wild-type (WT) C. muridarum and three mutants containing nonsense mutations in different cytotoxin genes, tc0437, tc0438, and tc0439, were compared in mouse genital and GI infection models. One mutant, which had a nonsense mutation in tc0439, was highly attenuated for GI infection and had a GI 50% infectious dose (ID50) that was 1,000 times greater than that of the WT. GI inoculation with this mutant failed to elicit anti-chlamydial antibodies or to protect against subsequent genital tract infection. Genome sequencing of the tc0439 mutant revealed additional chromosomal mutations, and phenotyping of additional mutants suggested that the GI attenuation might be linked to a nonsense mutation in tc0600 The molecular mechanism underlying this dramatic difference in tissue-tropic virulence is not fully understood. However, isolation of these mutants demonstrates that distinct chlamydial chromosomal factors mediate chlamydial tissue tropism and provides a basis for vaccine initiatives to isolate chlamydia strains that are attenuated for genital infection but retain the ability to colonize the GI tract and elicit protective immune responses

Quantification of the whole-body burden of radiographic osteoarthritis using factor analysis

INTRODUCTION: Although osteoarthritis (OA) commonly involves multiple joints, no widely accepted method for quantifying whole-body OA burden exists. Therefore, our aim was to apply factor analytic methods to radiographic OA (rOA) grades across multiple joint sites, representing both presence and severity, to quantify the burden of rOA. METHODS: We used cross-sectional data from the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project. The sample (n = 2092) had a mean age of 65 ± 11 years, body mass index (BMI) 31 ± 7 kg/m2, with 33% men and 34% African Americans. A single expert reader (intra-rater κ = 0.89) provided radiographic grades based on standard atlases for the hands (30 joints, including bilateral distal and proximal interphalangeal [IP], thumb IP, metacarpophalangeal [MCP] and carpometacarpal [CMC] joints), knees (patellofemoral and tibiofemoral, 4 joints), hips (2 joints), and spine (5 levels [L1/2 to L5/S1]). All grades were entered into an exploratory common factor analysis as continuous variables. Stratified factor analyses were used to look for differences by gender, race, age, and cohort subgroups. RESULTS: Four factors were identified as follows: IP/CMC factor (20 joints), MCP factor (8 joints), Knee factor (4 joints), Spine factor (5 levels). These factors had high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's α range 0.80 to 0.95), were not collapsible into a single factor, and had moderate between-factor correlations (Pearson correlation coefficient r = 0.24 to 0.44). There were no major differences in factor structure when stratified by subgroup. CONCLUSIONS: The 4 factors obtained in this analysis indicate that the variables contained within each factor share an underlying cause, but the 4 factors are distinct, suggesting that combining these joint sites into one overall measure is not appropriate. Using such factors to reflect multi-joint rOA in statistical models can reduce the number of variables needed and increase precision

Developing a pressure ulcer risk factor minimum data set and risk assessment framework

AIM: To agree a draft pressure ulcer risk factor Minimum Data Set to underpin the development of a new evidenced-based Risk Assessment Framework.BACKGROUND: A recent systematic review identified the need for a pressure ulcer risk factor Minimum Data Set and development and validation of an evidenced-based pressure ulcer Risk Assessment Framework. This was undertaken through the Pressure UlceR Programme Of reSEarch (RP-PG-0407-10056), funded by the National Institute for Health Research and incorporates five phases. This article reports phase two, a consensus study.DESIGN: Consensus study.METHOD: A modified nominal group technique based on the Research and Development/University of California at Los Angeles appropriateness method. This incorporated an expert group, review of the evidence and the views of a Patient and Public Involvement service user group. Data were collected December 2010-December 2011.FINDINGS: The risk factors and assessment items of the Minimum Data Set (including immobility, pressure ulcer and skin status, perfusion, diabetes, skin moisture, sensory perception and nutrition) were agreed. In addition, a draft Risk Assessment Framework incorporating all Minimum Data Set items was developed, comprising a two stage assessment process (screening and detailed full assessment) and decision pathways.CONCLUSION: The draft Risk Assessment Framework will undergo further design and pre-testing with clinical nurses to assess and improve its usability. It will then be evaluated in clinical practice to assess its validity and reliability. The Minimum Data Set could be used in future for large scale risk factor studies informing refinement of the Risk Assessment Framework