Oxytocin response to youth-mother interactions in clinically anxious youth is associated with separation anxiety and dyadic behavior.

BACKGROUND: Anxiety disorders are common in youth and cause significant distress and impairment to the individual and family. Oxytocin (OT), a nine amino acid peptide, is implicated in anxiety regulation and modulation of close interpersonal and attachment behavior. Anxiety disorders have been linked to low levels of salivary OT in youth. Research has also linked oxytocinergic functioning to social support, warm contact, and bonding, and indicated that contact with attachment figures stimulates OT response. We examined OT response to a brief, positive youth-mother interaction in clinically anxious youth. We investigated whether quality of the youth-mother interaction as well as the presence of particular anxiety disorders, are associated with youth OT response. METHOD: Salivary OT from 41 youth with primary DSM-5 anxiety disorders was assayed before and after a 7-min youth-mother interaction that was later systematically coded by two reliable coders. Youth and mothers also completed rating scales of youth anxiety symptoms. RESULTS: Affective touch, maternal sensitivity, maternal intrusiveness, youth engagement, and youth initiative all contributed significantly to predicting youth OT response. Repeated measures analyses showed that when affective touch was high youth had greater OT response. OT response was positively associated with the presence of separation anxiety disorder (SAD) and with child ratings of separation anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: The findings highlight the importance of maternal and dyadic behavior patterns to oxytocinergic response in clinically anxious youth, shed light on the association between OT and SAD, and point to possible intervention strategies.

Responding to threat: Associations between neural reactivity to and behavioral avoidance of threat in pediatric anxiety.

BACKGROUND: Despite broad recognition of the central role of avoidance in anxiety, a lack of specificity in its operationalization has hindered progress in understanding this clinically significant construct. The current study uses a multimodal approach to investigate how specific measures of avoidance relate to neural reactivity to threat in youth with anxiety disorders. METHODS: Children with anxiety disorders (ages 6-12 years; n = 65 for primary analyses) completed laboratory task- and clinician-based measures of avoidance, as well as a functional magnetic resonance imaging task probing neural reactivity to threat. Primary analyses examined the ventral anterior insula (vAI), amygdala, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). RESULTS: Significant but distinct patterns of association with task- versus clinician-based measures of avoidance emerged. Clinician-rated avoidance was negatively associated with right and left vAI reactivity to threat, whereas laboratory-based avoidance was positively associated with right vAI reactivity to threat. Moreover, left vAI-right amygdala and bilateral vmPFC-right amygdala functional connectivity were negatively associated with clinician-rated avoidance but not laboratory-based avoidance. LIMITATIONS: These results should be considered in the context of the restricted range of our treatment-seeking sample, which limits the ability to draw conclusions about these associations across children with a broader range of symptomatology. In addition, the limited racial and ethnic diversity of our sample may limit the generalizability of findings. CONCLUSION: These findings mark an important step towards bridging neural findings and behavioral patterns using a multimodal approach. Advancing understanding of behavioral avoidance in pediatric anxiety may guide future treatment optimization by identifying individual-specific targets for treatment.

Affective language spreads between anxious children and their mothers during a challenging puzzle task.

Humans influence each other's emotions. The spread of emotion is well documented across behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuroscientific levels of analysis, but might this influence also be evident in language (e.g., are people more likely to use emotion words after hearing someone else use them)? The current study tests whether mothers and children influence each other's use of affective language. From 2018 to 2020, children aged 6-12 who met diagnostic criteria for anxiety disorders and their mothers (N = 93 dyads) completed a challenging puzzle task while being video recorded. Analyses of transcriptions revealed that mothers and children indeed influenced each other's language. Bidirectional influence was observed for use of negative affect words: Mothers were more likely to use negative affect words if their child had just used negative affect words (over and above mothers' own language on their previous turn), and children were similarly influenced by mother affect word use. A similar bidirectional relation emerged for linguistic distance, a measure related to effective emotion regulation and mental health. However, the significance of the child-to-mother direction of influence for these two variables varied depending on correction threshold and should thus be verified in future research. Nonetheless, these findings extend understanding of emotional influence by showing turn-by-turn relations between the use of affective language. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A high-quality pseudo-phased genome for Melaleuca quinquenervia shows allelic diversity of NLR-type resistance genes.

BACKGROUND: Melaleuca quinquenervia (broad-leaved paperbark) is a coastal wetland tree species that serves as a foundation species in eastern Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and New Caledonia. While extensively cultivated for its ornamental value, it has also become invasive in regions like Florida, USA. Long-lived trees face diverse pest and pathogen pressures, and plant stress responses rely on immune receptors encoded by the nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) gene family. However, the comprehensive annotation of NLR encoding genes has been challenging due to their clustering arrangement on chromosomes and highly repetitive domain structure; expansion of the NLR gene family is driven largely by tandem duplication. Additionally, the allelic diversity of the NLR gene family remains largely unexplored in outcrossing tree species, as many genomes are presented in their haploid, collapsed state. RESULTS: We assembled a chromosome-level pseudo-phased genome for M. quinquenervia and described the allelic diversity of plant NLRs using the novel FindPlantNLRs pipeline. Analysis reveals variation in the number of NLR genes on each haplotype, distinct clustering patterns, and differences in the types and numbers of novel integrated domains. CONCLUSIONS: The high-quality M. quinquenervia genome assembly establishes a new framework for functional and evolutionary studies of this significant tree species. Our findings suggest that maintaining allelic diversity within the NLR gene family is crucial for enabling responses to environmental stress, particularly in long-lived plants.

Parent-Based Treatment as Efficacious as Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Childhood Anxiety: A Randomized Noninferiority Study of Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions.

OBJECTIVE: Treatment for childhood anxiety disorders is insufficient in many cases. Parent involvement has been examined to augment child-based cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), but no studies have compared the efficacy of stand-alone parent-based treatment to CBT. Research implicates family accommodation in the maintenance and course of childhood anxiety. Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) is a parent-based treatment that reduces accommodation of childhood anxiety. This study compared SPACE to CBT in a noninferiority trial. METHOD: Participants were children with primary anxiety disorders (N = 124; 7-14 years of age; 53% female participants; 83% white), randomly assigned to either SPACE (n = 64) with no direct child-therapist contact, or CBT (n = 60) with no parent treatment. A total of 97 participants (78%) completed all treatment sessions and assessments. Attrition did not differ significantly between groups. Primary anxiety outcomes included diagnostic interview and clinician-rated scales. Secondary outcomes included parent and child ratings of anxiety severity, family accommodation, and parenting stress. Noninferiority margins were determined based on statistical and clinical considerations. Change in family accommodation and parenting stress were examined using mixed models analyses. RESULTS: SPACE was noninferior, relative to CBT, on primary and secondary anxiety outcomes, and based on ratings provided by independent evaluators, parents, and children. Family accommodation and parenting stress were significantly reduced in both treatments, with significantly greater reduction in family accommodation following SPACE compared to CBT. Treatment credibility and satisfaction were high. CONCLUSION: SPACE is an acceptable and efficacious treatment for childhood anxiety disorders, is noninferior to CBT, and provides an alternative strategy for treating anxiety in children. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION INFORMATION: Explanatory Clinical Trial of a Novel Parent Intervention for Childhood Anxiety (SPACE); https://clinicaltrials.gov; NCT02310152.