Nandita Vijayakumar

Positive parenting predicts the development of adolescent brain structure: a longitudinal study.

Highlights • Positive parenting predicts development of adolescent amygdala and prefrontal cortex.• Positive parenting has a unique influence on adolescent brain development.• Positive and negative parenting are not opposite sides of a continuum.• Parenting interventions may promote healthy adolescent brain development.

Childhood Maltreatment and Psychopathology Affect Brain Development During Adolescence

OBJECTIVE The hippocampus and amygdala have received much attention with regard to the deleterious effects of childhood maltreatment. However, it is not known if and when these effects emerge during adolescence and whether comorbid psychopathology is more likely to explain these effects. This study investigated whether childhood maltreatment was associated with hippocampal and amygdala development from early to midadolescence and whether the experience of psychopathology during this period mediated the relation. METHOD One hundred seventeen (60 male) adolescents, recruited as part of a broader adolescent development study, participated in magnetic resonance imaging assessments during early and midadolescence (mean age at baseline 12.62 years, SD 0.44 years; mean follow-up period 3.78 years, SD 0.20 years), and completed self-report measurements of childhood maltreatment and diagnostic interviews assessing DSM-IV mental disorders. RESULTS Childhood maltreatment was associated with larger baseline left hippocampal volumes and retarded growth of the left amygdala over time and was indirectly associated, through the experience of psychopathology, with retarded growth of the left hippocampus and accelerated growth of the left amygdala over time. Exploratory cortical analysis showed that maltreatment influenced thickening of the superior parietal region through the experience of psychopathology. CONCLUSIONS Childhood maltreatment was associated with altered brain development during adolescence. The experience of Axis I psychopathology during adolescence may be one mechanism by which childhood maltreatment has continuing effects on brain development during the adolescent years. These findings highlight the importance of early intervention for individuals who have experienced childhood maltreatment.

Prism adaptation overcomes pseudoneglect for the greyscales task

Visuomotor adaptation to left-shifting prisms can affect performance for a variety of tasks in neurologically intact (normal) participants. This study examined whether visuomotor adaptation affects performance on the greyscales task in normal participants. Forty-two normal participants completed a greyscales task before and after adaptation to either: left-shifting prisms, right-shifting prisms or control spectacles that did not shift the visual scene. Participants demonstrated a leftward bias (i.e., selected the stimulus that was darker on the left as being darker overall) that was reversed by a short period of visuomotor adaptation to left-shifting prisms. In contrast, this bias was unaffected by adaptation to right-shifting prisms and control spectacles. The findings demonstrate that a simple visuomotor task can alter the distribution of spatial attention for the greyscales task in normal participants.

Brain development during adolescence: A mixed-longitudinal investigation of cortical thickness, surface area, and volume

What we know about cortical development during adolescence largely stems from analyses of cross‐sectional or cohort‐sequential samples, with few studies investigating brain development using a longitudinal design. Further, cortical volume is a product of two evolutionarily and genetically distinct features of the cortex ‐ thickness and surface area, and few studies have investigated development of these three characteristics within the same sample. The current study examined maturation of cortical thickness, surface area and volume during adolescence, as well as sex differences in development, using a mixed longitudinal design. 192 MRI scans were obtained from 90 healthy (i.e., free from lifetime psychopathology) adolescents (11‐20 years) at three time points (with different MRI scanners used at time 1 compared to 2 and 3). Developmental trajectories were estimated using linear mixed models. Non‐linear increases were present across most of the cortex for surface area. In comparison, thickness and volume were both characterised by a combination of non‐linear decreasing and increasing trajectories. While sex differences in volume and surface area were observed across time, no differences in thickness were identified. Furthermore, few regions exhibited sex differences in the cortical development. Our findings clearly illustrate that volume is a product of surface area and thickness, with each exhibiting differential patterns of development during adolescence, particularly in regions known to contribute to the development of social‐cognition and behavioral regulation. These findings suggest that thickness and surface area may be driven by different underlying mechanisms, with each measure potentially providing independent information about brain development. Hum Brain Mapp 37:2027–2038, 2016.

Thinning of the lateral prefrontal cortex during adolescence predicts emotion regulation in females.

Adolescence is a crucial period for the development of adaptive emotion regulation strategies. Despite the fact that structural maturation of the prefrontal cortex during adolescence is often assumed to underlie the maturation of emotion regulation strategies, no longitudinal studies have directly assessed this relationship. This study examined whether use of cognitive reappraisal strategies during late adolescence was predicted by (i) absolute prefrontal cortical thickness during early adolescence and (ii) structural maturation of the prefrontal cortex between early and mid-adolescence. Ninety-two adolescents underwent baseline and follow-up magnetic resonance imaging scans when they were aged approximately 12 and 16 years, respectively. FreeSurfer software was used to obtain cortical thickness estimates for three prefrontal regions [anterior cingulate cortex; dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC); ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC)]. The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire was completed when adolescents were aged approximately 19 years. Results showed that greater cortical thinning of the left dlPFC and left vlPFC during adolescence was significantly associated with greater use of cognitive reappraisal in females, though no such relationship was evident in males. Furthermore, baseline left dlPFC thickness predicted cognitive reappraisal at trend level. These findings suggest that cortical maturation may play a role in the development of adaptive emotion regulation strategies during adolescence.

Development of temperamental effortful control mediates the relationship between maturation of the prefrontal cortex and psychopathology during adolescence: a 4-year longitudinal study.

Highlights • Longitudinal study investigating the relationship between development of cortical thickness and effortful control during adolescence.• Examined whether change in effortful control mediated the relationship between cortical development and change in socioemotional functioning, including psychopathology symptoms.• Greater cortical thinning of the left ACC was associated with superior development of effortful control.• Changes in effortful control mediated the relationship between greater thinning of the left ACC and improvements in socioemotional functioning.

A systematic review of adrenarche as a sensitive period in neurobiological development and mental health

Substantial hormonal and neurobiological changes occur during puberty, and are widely argued to render this period of life a sensitive period in terms of risk for mental health problems. However, there is a paucity of research focusing on adrenarche, the earlier phase of pubertal development. Furthermore, there is a limited understanding of the association between adrenarche and neural development during this phase of life. We systematically reviewed research examining human adrenarcheal development as operationalized by hormonal levels of DHEA and DHEA-S, in relation to indices of mental health (Systematic Review 1). We then reviewed the limited amount of literature that has examined the association between adrenarcheal development and brain structure or function (Systematic Review 2). In general, studies showed that earlier timing of adrenarche was associated with greater mental health symptoms, and there is emerging support that brain development plays a role in this relationship. However, several methodological inconsistencies were noted. We propose that future research in this area test a theoretical model of adrenarche as a sensitive period of neurobiological development, whereby timing of exposure to hormones interacts with brain development, biological sex, and psychosocial stress to influence environmental sensitivity and risk for mental health problems through adolescence.

Prefrontal structural correlates of cognitive control during adolescent development: A 4-year longitudinal study

Maturation of cognitive control abilities has been attributed to the protracted structural maturation of underlying neural correlates during adolescence. This study examined the relationship between development of two forms of cognitive control (proactive and reactive control) and structural maturation of the ACC, dorsolateral pFC, and ventrolateral pFC (vlPFC) between early and mid adolescence using a longitudinal design. Adolescents (n = 92) underwent baseline assessments when they were 12 years old and follow-up assessments approximately 4 years later. At each assessment, structural MRI scans were acquired, and a modified Stroop task was performed. Results showed longitudinal improvements in reactive control between early and mid adolescence. Furthermore, magnitude of the improvement in proactive control was associated with reduced thinning of the right vlPFC across the sample, whereas the magnitude of the improvements in reactive control was associated with reduced thinning of the left ACC in men alone. These findings suggest that individual differences in the maturation of ACC and vlPFC underlie the development of two distinct forms of cognitive control between early and mid adolescence as well as highlight sex differences in this relationship.

Observed Measures of Negative Parenting Predict Brain Development during Adolescence.

Limited attention has been directed toward the influence of non-abusive parenting behaviour on brain structure in adolescents. It has been suggested that environmental influences during this period are likely to impact the way that the brain develops over time. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between aggressive and positive parenting behaviors on brain development from early to late adolescence, and in turn, psychological and academic functioning during late adolescence, using a multi-wave longitudinal design. Three hundred and sixty seven magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were obtained over three time points from 166 adolescents (11–20 years). At the first time point, observed measures of maternal aggressive and positive behaviors were obtained. At the final time point, measures of psychological and academic functioning were obtained. Results indicated that a higher frequency of maternal aggressive behavior was associated with alterations in the development of right superior frontal and lateral parietal cortical thickness, and of nucleus accumbens volume, in males. Development of the superior frontal cortex in males mediated the relationship between maternal aggressive behaviour and measures of late adolescent functioning. We suggest that our results support an association between negative parenting and adolescent functioning, which may be mediated by immature or delayed brain maturation.

Neural correlates of social exclusion across ages: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of functional MRI studies

Abstract Given the recent surge in functional neuroimaging studies on social exclusion, the current study employed activation likelihood estimation (ALE) based meta‐analyses to identify brain regions that have consistently been implicated across different experimental paradigms used to investigate exclusion. We also examined the neural correlates underlying Cyberball, the most commonly used paradigm to study exclusion, as well as differences in exclusion‐related activation between developing (7–18 years of age, from pre‐adolescence up to late adolescence) and emerging adult (broadly defined as undergraduates, including late adolescence and young adulthood) samples. Results revealed involvement of the bilateral medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices, right precuneus and left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex across the different paradigms used to examine social exclusion; similar activation patterns were identified when restricting the analysis to Cyberball studies. Investigations into age‐related effects revealed that ventrolateral prefrontal activations identified in the full sample were driven by (i.e. present in) developmental samples, while medial prefrontal activations were driven by emerging adult samples. In addition, the right ventral striatum was implicated in exclusion, but only in developmental samples. Subtraction analysis revealed significantly greater activation likelihood in striatal and ventrolateral prefrontal clusters in the developmental samples as compared to emerging adults, though the opposite contrast failed to identify any significant regions. Findings integrate the knowledge accrued from functional neuroimaging studies on social exclusion to date, highlighting involvement of lateral prefrontal regions implicated in regulation and midline structures involved in social cognitive and self‐evaluative processes across experimental paradigms and ages, as well as limbic structures in developing samples specifically. HighlightsMeta‐analysis of studies examining the neural correlates of social exclusion.Recruits medial and lateral prefrontal, and midline posterior parietal cortices.Neural differences identified between developmental and emerging‐adult samples.Unique role of ventral striatum in developmental samples.