Neurodevelopmental disorders and family quality of life: emerging trends and future research directions.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are the most prevalent neurodevelopmental disorders. There is a growing body of literature investigating factors affecting quality of life in families (FQoL) with a child with these disorders. However, there are no studies that trace their knowledge anatomy. Thus, we conducted a scientometric analysis to describe this literature, detect certain variables that could be related to FQoL, and identify tendencies and open questions for future research. A literature search in the Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus was run and identified 3281 publications published between 1975 and 2022. The results suggest an increase in the quantity of publications on FQoL in ASD and ADHD over the last few years (14% and 12%, respectively). For both research fields, the USA published the highest number of documents, showing that the production related to ADHD and FQoL is concentrated in just a few countries. Thematic analysis revealed several clusters, considering quality of life and children as core themes that are still setting trend lines. Moreover, it would be worthwhile to describe and analyze FQoL not only during the childhood of children with ASD and ADHD but also during their adolescence. IMPACT: Although the relationship between family quality of life and neurodevelopmental disorders could be considered novel, there is a growing interest from an interdisciplinary perspective. Family quality of life should be monitored not only during the childhood of children with ASD and ADHD, but also during their adolescence and adulthood. The analysis of the family quality of life in first-degree relatives and its relationship with protective factors (e.g., resilience and social support) should be explored in future studies.

Pilot study on the effectiveness of the socialmind program for the rehabilitation of social cognition following acquired brain injury.

Background: People with acquired brain injury (ABI) often have Social Cognition (SC) deficits. Impairment of SC causes the individual to have difficulties in daily functioning and can lead to social isolation. Research aimed at rehabilitation of SC in individuals with ABI is scarce and almost always addresses only one component of this ability. Objective: This pilot study aimed to assess the effectiveness of the new "SocialMind" program in improving all core components of SC in people with ABI. Method: The study included 31 participants with ABI, divided into experimental and control groups. The study spanned 44 weeks, involving an initial meeting, evaluation, training, and final assessment phases. The SocialMind program, structured into four modules, each with a duration of 30 h, targeted each SC component through tailored exercises. The program addressed emotion recognition, social awareness, ToM, and empathy. Results: The SocialMind group demonstrated significant improvements in emotion recognition (p = 0.017), social knowledge (p < 0.001), and empathy (p = 0.001) compared to the control group. ToM also showed a notable improvement that approached significance (p = 0.057). Conclusion: This pilot study suggests that the SocialMind program effectively enhances three of the four core components of SC in individuals with ABI.

Brain changes following mindfulness: Reduced caudate volume is associated with decreased positive urgency.

Mindfulness training has been shown to improve psychological health and general well-being. However, it is unclear which brain and personality systems may be affected by this practice for improving adaptive behavior and quality of life. The present study explores the effects of a 5-week mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) at the neuroanatomical level and its relationship with dispositional mindfulness and impulsivity. Sixty-six risky drivers were quasi-randomly assigned to a mindfulness training group (MT) or a control group (N). Participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging and completed the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and the UPPS-P impulsivity scale twice, at baseline and after receiving the MBI. We observed that MBI changes dispositional mindfulness in the non-reactivity and observing facets. Further, we observed that the magnitude of change in impulsivity was associated with the change in dispositional mindfulness. Whole-brain voxel-wise analysis revealed that the volume of the right caudate nucleus of the MT group (n = 27) showed a reduction compared to that of the control group (n = 33), which increased in terms of the pre-post measurement (MT=-1.76 mm3; N = 6.31 mm3). We also observed that reduced caudate nucleus volume correlated with decreased positive urgency in the MT group. Taken together, our results show that MBI improves the skills of observing and non-reactivity to inner experience, while producing changes in the structure of the caudate nucleus. These structural changes are associated with a reduction in impulsivity levels, decreasing the tendency to act rashly in situations that generate positive emotions and thus facilitating more adaptive behavior.

Sleep Behaviors and the Shape of Subcortical Brain Structures in Children with Overweight/Obesity: A Cross-Sectional Study.

OBJECTIVES: To examine the relationship between sleep and subcortical brain structures using a shape analysis approach. METHODS: A total of 98 children with overweight/obesity (10.0 ± 1.1 y, 59 boys) were included in the cross-sectional analyses. Sleep behaviors (i.e., wake time, sleep onset time, total time in bed, total sleep time, sleep efficiency, and wakening after sleep onset) were estimated with wrist-worn accelerometers. The shape of the subcortical brain structures was acquired by magnetic resonance imaging. A partial correlation permutation approach was used to examine the relationship between sleep behaviors and brain shapes. RESULTS: Among all the sleep variables studied, only total time in bed was significantly related to pallidum and putamen structure, such that those children who spent more time in bed had greater expansions in the right and left pallidum (211-751 voxels, all p's <0.04) and right putamen (1783 voxels, p = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that more time in bed was related to expansions on two subcortical brain regions in children with overweight/obesity.

Investigating the Alcohol Effects on the Response to Strenuous Exercise Training: Protocol for a Multidisciplinary Intervention Study in Young Healthy Adults-The BEER-HIIT Study.

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a time-efficient strategy to improve fitness and performance. Whereas the multiple and negative effects of high intake of alcohol have been widely studied, the effect of moderate alcohol doses after exercise is not clear, and it is currently under debate. For that, a total of 80 young healthy adults are studied and allocated into 5 groups, each including 16 participants. Four groups follow a HIIT program, while the fifth group is a control non-training group. The training groups will be randomized according to the characteristics of the ingested beverage (alcohol beer, beer 0.0%, sparkling water, or ethanol). The effects of HIIT on several aspects of physical performance and mental health in young healthy adults are evaluated, also the concomitant effect of daily and moderate alcohol consumption. The novelty of this study lies in the continuous measurement of the psychological parameters associated with carrying out a highly demanding training program in conjunction with alcohol consumption in moderate quantities, reflecting real-life conditions.

The Effects of High-Intensity Interval Training and Moderate Alcohol Consumption on Cognitive Performance-A Multidisciplinary Intervention in Young Healthy Adults.

BACKGROUND: The main purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) intervention in the context of moderate alcohol consumption on cognitive performance in healthy young adults. METHODS: We conducted a 10-week HIIT program along with four types of beverages with/without alcohol content. A total of 75 healthy adults (18-40 years old; 46% female) were allocated to either a control Non-Training group or an HIIT program group (2 days/week). Using block randomization, participants in the HIIT group were further allocated to an HIIT-Alcohol group (alcohol beer or sparkling water with vodka added, 5.4%) or an HIIT-NonAlcohol group (sparkling water or non-alcohol beer, 0.0%). The control group was instructed to maintain an active lifestyle but did not undergo any regular training. A comprehensive neuropsychological battery was used to evaluate cognitive performance (i.e., memory, working memory, processing speed, inhibitory control, and verbal fluency). Changes from baseline to week 10 were included in the main analyses. RESULTS: All groups improved in all neuropsychological measures (all p ≤ 0.001), independent of sex and alcohol consumption, with no statistical differences between groups (all p > 0.05). Furthermore, larger increases in maximal oxygen uptake were associated with greater improvements in processing speed, inhibitory control, and verbal fluency (all p < 0.050). CONCLUSIONS: Although the improvements found in cognitive performance cannot be attributed to the HIIT intervention, no significant impairments in cognitive functions were noted due to moderate alcohol intake. Furthermore, our results confirmed that exercise-induced physical fitness improvements were associated with cognitive performance enhancements in young healthy adults.

The effects of physical activity on white matter microstructure in children with overweight or obesity: The ActiveBrains randomized clinical trial.

Background: Emerging research supports the idea that physical activity benefits brain development. However, the body of evidence focused on understanding the effects of physical activity on white matter microstructure during childhood is still in its infancy, and further well-designed randomized clinical trials are needed. Aim: This study aimed: (i) to investigate the effects of a 20-week physical activity intervention on global white matter microstructure in children with overweight or obesity, and (ii) to explore whether the effect of physical activity on white matter microstructure is global or restricted to a particular set of white matter bundles. Methods: In total, 109 children aged 8 to 11 years with overweight or obesity were randomized and allocated to either the physical activity program or the control group. Data were collected from November 2014 to June 2016, with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data processing and analyses conducted between June 2017 and November 2021. Images were pre-processed using the Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of the Brain´s Software Library (FSL) and white matter properties were explored by probabilistic fiber tractography and tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS). Results: Intention-to-treat analyses were performed for all children who completed the pre-test and post-test DTI assessment, with good quality DTI data (N = 89). Of them, 83 children (10.06±1.11 years, 39 % girls, intervention group=44) met the per-protocol criteria (attended at least 70 % of the recommended sessions). Our probabilistic fiber tractography analysis did not show any effects in terms of global and tract-specific fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) in the per-protocol or intention-to-treat analyses. Additionally, we did not observe any effects on the voxel-wise DTI parameters (i.e., FA and MD) using the most restricted TBSS approach (i.e., per protocol analyses and p-corrected image with a statistical threshold of p < 0.05). In the intention-to-treat analysis, we found that our physical activity program had a borderline effect (p-corrected image with a statistical threshold of p < 0.1) on 7 different clusters, including a cluster in the corpus callosum. Conclusion: We conclude that a 20-week physical activity intervention was not enough to induce changes in global and tract-specific white matter during childhood. The effects of physical activity on white matter microstructure could be restricted to local changes in several white matter tracts (e.g., the body of the corpus callosum). However, our results were not significant, and more interventions are needed to determine whether and how physical activity affects white matter microstructure during childhood.

Effect of Abutment Height on Marginal Bone Loss Around Dental Implants: A Systematic Review.

PURPOSE: To analyze the influence of abutment height (AH) on marginal bone loss (MBL). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A literature search was performed for human studies (RCTs, prospective and retrospective cohorts) reporting on AH and MBL. The data obtained-including clinical outcomes, treatment covariates, and patient characteristics-were analyzed. Meta-regression was performed on the effect size of the differences between the shorter and larger AHs on the MBL of each study. The estimation was done using the restricted maximum likelihood method. RESULTS: The initial screening and full-text analysis resulted in 7,936 and 46 articles, respectively. Finally, 14 articles were included in the systematic review, reporting a total of 1,606 implants. An overall high-to-moderate risk of bias was determined among the included investigations. Meta-regression analysis revealed that AH had a significant effect on MBL (b = -1.630, P < .003), demonstrating that longer abutments were correlated with less MBL. No effects were observed for the study type (P = .607), the number of stages (P = .510), or the elapsed time (P = .491). CONCLUSIONS: The height of the abutment has a significant impact on MBL. As such, increased AH is related to less MBL. Nevertheless, the role of confounding variables remains to be studied and determined.

El procesamiento de compuestos estimulares en juicios de causalidad / Processing of coumpound stimuli in causality judgements

Our research focuses on learning about causal relationships between events when a candidate cause is a compound integrated by several individual causes. In two experiments, wecompared the predictions of the Associative Models of Rescorla and Wagner (1972) and Pearce(1994), the Inductive Models of Cheng and Novick (1992) and Novick and Cheng (2004). In contrast with previous research about this topic, in these experiments, a causality judgments task was used in which the information about the presence/absence of the causes and the effect was presented through small samples of cases. Our results showed that the learning mechanismsinvolved in compound cue processing could be associative in origin.

Nuestra investigación se centra en el estudio del aprendizaje de relaciones causales en las que un compuesto estimular es una causa fiable de un efecto. En dos experimentos, hemoscontrastado las predicciones derivadas de los Modelos Asociativos de Rescorla y Wagner (1972) y Pearce (1994), y los Modelos Inductivos de Cheng y Novick (1992) y Novick y Cheng(2004). En claro contraste con la investigación previa sobre este tema, en nuestros experimentos, hemos utilizado una tarea de juicios de causalidad en la que la información sobre la presencia/ausencia de las causas potenciales y el efecto se presentó mediante muestras o agrupaciones de casos. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto que los mecanismos de aprendizaje involucrados en el procesamiento de compuestos podrían ser de origen asociativo.