ABSTRACT
Neural correlates of social-cognition were assessed in 9- to- 17-year-olds (N = 34) using functional magnetic resonance imaging. 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.
Subject(s)
Brain/physiology , Neural Pathways/physiology , Peer Group , Social Perception , Adolescent , Age Factors , Attitude , Basal Ganglia/physiology , Cerebral Cortex/physiology , Cognition/physiology , Communication , Female , Hippocampus/physiology , Humans , Hypothalamus/physiology , Internet , Interpersonal Relations , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Male , Motivation , Social BehaviorABSTRACT
Resilience and emotion regulation are crucial for optimal psychosocial functioning in children. This study assessed whether a group-based intervention, the Resilience Builder Program (RBP), improved student report of emotion regulation when administered in elementary schools. Sixty-seven students aged 9-12 years (M = 10.50, SD =.74; 82.1% male, 98.5% ethnic/racial minority) were randomly assigned to receive the RBP intervention immediately or following a semester delay. Participants reported their emotional control using the How I Feel scale. Students who received the RBP reported a significant increase in their emotional control and a significant decrease in negative emotion compared to those students in the delayed treatment sample who had not yet received the intervention. Further, students indicated a strongly positive perception of the therapy.
ABSTRACT
There is evidence for a genetic contribution to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), although no candidate genes have attained genome-wide significance to date. Given that the noradrenergic system has been implicated in ADHD, the gene for the α2-adrenergic receptor (ADRA2A) has been hypothesized to contribute to the pathogenesis of ADHD. The present investigation reports results from a meta-analysis of family-based studies that did not find a significant association between the MspI polymorphism of the ADRA2A gene and ADHD.
Subject(s)
Alleles , Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity/genetics , Deoxyribonuclease HpaII/genetics , Genetic Association Studies , Genetic Predisposition to Disease , Receptors, Adrenergic, alpha-2/genetics , Family , Humans , Models, GeneticABSTRACT
CONTEXT: Amygdala and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) dysfunction manifests in adolescents with anxiety disorders when they view negatively valenced stimuli in threatening contexts. Such fear-circuitry dysfunction may also manifest when anticipated social evaluation leads socially anxious adolescents to misperceive peers as threatening. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether photographs of negatively evaluated smiling peers viewed during anticipated social evaluation engage the amygdala and vlPFC differentially in adolescents with and without social anxiety. DESIGN: Case-control study. SETTING: Government clinical research institute. PARTICIPANTS: Fourteen adolescents with anxiety disorders associated with marked concerns of social evaluation and 14 adolescents without a psychiatric diagnosis matched on sex, age, intelligence quotient, and socioeconomic status. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Blood oxygenation level-dependent signal measured with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. Before and during neuroimaging scans, participants anticipating social evaluation completed peer- and self-appraisals. Event-related analyses were tailored to participants' ratings of specific peers. RESULTS: Participants classified 40 pictures of same-age peers as ones with whom they did or did not want to engage in a social interaction. Anxious adolescents showed greater amygdala activation than healthy adolescents when anticipating evaluation from peers previously rated as undesired for an interaction. Psychophysiological interaction connectivity analyses also revealed a significant positive association between amygdala and vlPFC activation in anxious vs healthy adolescents in response to these stimuli. CONCLUSIONS: Anticipating social evaluation from negatively perceived peers modulates amygdala and vlPFC engagement differentially in anxious and healthy adolescents. Amygdala and vlPFC dysfunction manifests in adolescent anxiety disorders in specific contexts of anticipated peer evaluation.