Prediction of adolescent depression from prenatal and childhood data from ALSPAC using machine learning.

Depression is a major cause of disability and mortality for young people worldwide and is typically first diagnosed during adolescence. In this work, we present a machine learning framework to predict adolescent depression occurring between ages 12 and 18 years using environmental, biological, and lifestyle features of the child, mother, and partner from the child's prenatal period to age 10 years using data from 8467 participants enrolled in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). We trained and compared several cross-sectional and longitudinal machine learning techniques and found the resulting models predicted adolescent depression with recall (0.

Clearing the air: A systematic review of studies on air pollution and childhood brain outcomes to mobilize policy change.

Climate change, wildfires, and environmental justice concerns have drawn increased attention to the impact of air pollution on children's health and development. Children are especially vulnerable to air pollution exposure, as their brains and bodies are still developing. The objective of this systematic review was to synthesize available empirical evidence on the associations between air pollution exposure and brain outcomes in developmental samples (ages 0-18 years old).

Adolescents' hair cortisol concentrations during COVID-19: Evidence from two longitudinal studies in the Netherlands and the United States.

Background: Prolonged stress exposure is associated with alterations in cortisol output. The COVID-19 pandemic represented a stressor for many, including children. However, a high-quality caregiving environment may protect against psychological problems and possibly against elevations in cortisol.

Understanding adolescent stress during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Longitudinal studies across the globe documented significant increases in psychological stress and mental health problems among adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health concerns, school disruptions, and social disconnection were major sources of stress. High levels of perceived stress predicted worse mental health outcomes, with girls, older adolescents, and socio-economically marginalized youth experiencing more pronounced mental health deteriorations.

The role of stress phenotypes in understanding childhood adversity as a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology.

Childhood adversity is a leading transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology, being associated with an estimated 31-62% of childhood-onset disorders and 23-42% of adult-onset disorders (Kessler et al., 2010). Major unresolved theoretical challenges stem from the nonspecific and probabilistic nature of the links between childhood adversity and psychopathology.

The Development of Shyness from Late Childhood to Adolescence: A Longitudinal Study of Mexican-origin Youth.

Shyness, the tendency to be inhibited and uncomfortable in novel social situations, is a consequential personality trait, especially during adolescence. The present study examined the development of shyness from late childhood (age 10) through adolescence (age 16) using data from a large, longitudinal study of Mexican-origin youth ( = 674). Using both self- and mother-reports of shyness assessed via the , we found moderate to high rank-order stabilities across two-year intervals and a mean-level decrease in shyness from age 10 to 16.

A review of mental health disparities during COVID-19: Evidence, mechanisms, and policy recommendations for promoting societal resilience.

Social and economic inequality are chronic stressors that continually erode the mental and physical health of marginalized groups, undermining overall societal resilience. In this comprehensive review, we synthesize evidence of greater increases in mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic among socially or economically marginalized groups in the United States, including (a) people who are low income or experiencing homelessness, (b) racial and ethnic minorities, (c) women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ+) communities, (d) immigrants and migrants, (e) children and people with a history of childhood adversity, and (f) the socially isolated and lonely. Based on this evidence, we propose that reducing social and economic inequality would promote population mental health and societal resilience to future crises.

Associations of air pollution with peripheral inflammation and cardiac autonomic physiology in children.

Climate change-related disasters have drawn increased attention to the impact of air pollution on health. 122 children ages 9-11 years old, M(SD) = 9.91(.

Associations between peripheral inflammatory markers and amygdala activity and connectivity in response to emotional faces in adolescents.

Research in adults suggests that higher peripheral inflammation is associated with increased threat-related amygdala activity and reduced cortico-amygdala connectivity. However, there is limited research in adolescents, which is striking given the major developmental changes that occur in cortico-amygdala circuitry during adolescence. In this study, we examine the association between peripheral inflammation and amygdala activity and connectivity to emotional faces in a community sample of adolescents.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of the association between parenting and child autonomic nervous system activity.

Parental socialization may influence the development of children's autonomic nervous system (ANS), a key stress-response system. However, to date no quantitative synthesis of the literature linking parenting and child ANS physiology has been conducted. To address this gap, we conducted a pre-registered meta-analysis.

Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia as a Physiological Resilience Marker for Children's Health.

Objective: The current study aimed to test parasympathetic nervous system activity, indexed through resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) as a resilience factor that moderates the associations between socioeconomic status (SES), circulating cytokines, and somatic health in children.

Methods: The sample included 181 parent-child dyads (mean [standard deviation] child age = 9.91 [0.

Caregiver subjective and physiological markers of stress and patient heart failure severity in family care dyads.

Greater family caregiver exposure to uncontrolled patient symptoms is predictive of greater caregiver psychological and physiological stress in dementia and other chronic illnesses, but these phenomena have not been well-studied in heart failure (HF) - a disease with high symptom burden. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that worse patient functional status (as reflected by increasing HF symptoms) would be associated with elevated psychological and physiological stress for the caregiver. This was a secondary analysis of data from 125 HF caregivers in the Caregiver Opportunities for Optimizing Lifestyle (COOL) study.

Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis Activity in Childhood Predicts Emotional Memory Effects and Related Neural Circuitry in Adolescent Girls.

Negative emotional experiences can be more difficult to forget than neutral ones, a phenomenon termed the "emotional memory effect." Individual differences in the strength of the emotional memory effect are associated with emotional health. Thus, understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of the emotional memory effect has important implications, especially for individuals at risk for emotional health problems.

Heart Rate Variability and Circulating Inflammatory Markers in Midlife.

Theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence suggest that the parasympathetic nervous system engages in active monitoring and moderating of inflammatory processes. A clearer understanding of the bidirectional communication between the parasympathetic nervous system and the immune system could lead to novel clinical interventions for inflammatory illnesses. The current study used a large ( = 836) nationally representative sample of adults in the United States to investigate the relations between resting parasympathetic modulation of the heart, indexed through both high frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) and low frequency heart rate variability (LF-HRV), and six markers of circulating inflammation.

Curvilinear associations between family income in early childhood and the cortisol awakening response in adolescence.

Previous evidence on cortisol output and socioeconomic status (SES) has been mixed, with studies finding that lower SES can be associated with higher or lower cortisol output, and null associations have also been reported. We hypothesized that these inconsistencies may be due to an underlying curvilinear, inverted-U pattern of association, such that low income is related to increased likelihood of both low and high cortisol output. We tested these curvilinear links among family income and cortisol indices in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (N = 803).

Adiposity, Inflammation, and Working Memory: Evidence for a Vicious Cycle.

Overweight and obesity constitute the fifth leading cause of preventable deaths worldwide. One pathway through which excess weight contributes to poor health outcomes is via inflammatory activity and changes in cognitive processes. Prior theory has proposed a vicious cycle whereby obesity potentiates inflammatory activity, which alters cognitive processes such as working memory, which in turn leads to a reduced ability to self-regulate and therefore manage weight.

Associations between peripheral inflammation and resting state functional connectivity in adolescents.

Relatively little is known about associations between peripheral inflammation and neural function in humans. Neuroimaging studies in adults have suggested that elevated peripheral inflammatory markers are associated with altered resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) in several brain networks associated with mood and cognition. Few studies have examined these associations in adolescents, yet scarce data from adolescents point to different networks than adult studies.

Children's altruism following acute stress: The role of autonomic nervous system activity and social support.

Altruistic behavior after stress exposure may have important health and psychological benefits, in addition to broader societal consequences. However, so far experimental research on altruism following acute stress has been limited to adult populations. The current study utilized an experimental design to investigate how altruistic donation behavior among children may be influenced by (a) exposure to an acute social stressor, the Trier Social Stress Test modified for use with children (TSST-M), (b) individual differences in stress physiology, and (c) social support from a parent.

Parenting matters: Parents can reduce or amplify children's anxiety and cortisol responses to acute stress.

Parents serve important functions in regulating children's responses to stress and challenge. However, the parental characteristics that modulate the effectiveness of parents as stress buffers remain to be fully characterized. To address this gap, this study examined parental characteristics and behaviors that may explain variation in parents' ability to buffer cortisol responses to acute stress of 180 children (ages 9-11 years old, M = 9.

Childhood Parental Warmth and Heart Rate Variability in Midlife: Implications for Health.

The current study investigated high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) as a potential mediator between childhood parental warmth and later health and mortality outcomes. Participants were 1,255 adults (56.9% female).

The Role of Childhood Executive Function in Explaining Income Disparities in Long-Term Academic Achievement.

This study utilized data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (N = 14,860) to examine whether early-life family income (age 0-5) predicted long-term academic achievement (age 16-18) and to investigate the role of executive function (EF) assessed multiple times across age 7-11 in explaining this association. Task-based EF was a significant mediator between early-life family income and later academic achievement in every model. This mediating pathway persisted when adjusting for a comprehensive panel of covariates including verbal IQ, sex, family income at ages 8 and 18, and early-life temperament.

Autonomic nervous system activity predicts increasing serum cytokines in children.

Unlabelled: Systemic inflammation is associated with increased risk for prevalent and costly diseases, and animal models implicate the autonomic nervous system in the control of inflammatory processes. In humans, research on autonomic-immune connections has been much more limited, and has focused on single branch autonomic measures (i.e.

Prenatal maternal stress and child hair cortisol four years later: Evidence from a low-income sample.

Background: Maternal stress during pregnancy can influence the trajectory of fetal development, shaping offspring physiology and health in enduring ways. Some research implicates fetal programming of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis as a mediator of these effects. The present study is the first to examine child hair cortisol concentration (HCC) and maternal stress during pregnancy in a diverse, low-income sample.