The effects of intelligence on exposure to combat and posttraumatic stress disorder across multiple deployments.

Introduction: Past work relates intelligence quotient (IQ) to risk for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among soldiers. We gathered data over multiple deployments to assess how IQ relates to the rate of symptom development both directly and through increasing the risk for traumatic combat exposure.

Methods: Male infantry soldiers from a maneuver brigade (N = 582) were followed over the 3-year period of their mandatory military service.

Subjective affective experience under threat is shaped by environmental affordances.

In this pre-registered study, we ask how people's emotional responses under threat may be causally affected by what is available to them in the environment, i.e. environmental affordances.

Threat Appraisal and Pediatric Anxiety: Proof of Concept of a Latent Variable Approach.

Elevated threat appraisal is a postulated neurodevelopmental mechanism of anxiety disorders. However, laboratory-assessed threat appraisals are task-specific and subject to measurement error. We utilized latent variable analysis to integrate youth's self-reported threat appraisals across different experimental tasks; we next examined associations with pediatric anxiety as well as behavioral and psychophysiological task indices.

From deconstruction to reconstruction: A search for natural kinds in developmental psychopathology.

A "natural kind" is a specific classification that identifies some structure of truth and reality, a delimited entity. Psychiatric disorders are not natural kinds. As one moves from physics and chemistry to biology and medicine, natural kinds degrade, and the boundaries of differentiating phenomena become less clear.

Extending insights from LeDoux: using movies to study subjective, clinically meaningful experiences in neuroscience.

Neuroscience research with public health relevance to emotional disorders examines brain-behavior relations. Joe LeDoux's legacy advances these efforts in ways that remain truly unique. While recognized for his basic science research, he also inspires applied researchers, guiding an agenda for clinical scientists: understanding the pathophysiology of altered subjective experiences in emotional disorders.

Using mobile eye-tracking to evaluate gaze behavior during a speech in pediatric anxiety disorders.

Background: Altered gaze in social settings is a hallmark of social anxiety; however, little research directly examines gaze in anxiety-provoking contexts among youth with anxiety disorders, limiting mechanistic insight into pediatric anxiety. The present study leveraged mobile eye-tracking technology to examine gaze behavior during a naturalistic stressor in a clinical developmental sample.

Methods: Sixty-one youth (ages 8-17 years; 28 with anxiety disorders, 33 non-anxious controls) completed a naturalistic social stress task (public speaking in front of a videotaped classroom audience) while wearing eye-tracking glasses.

Neural activation changes following attention bias modification treatment or a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor for social anxiety disorder.

Background: Delineation of changes in neural function associated with novel and established treatments for social anxiety disorder (SAD) can advance treatment development. We examined such changes following selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) and attention bias modification (ABM) variant - gaze-contingent music reward therapy (GC-MRT), a first-line and an emerging treatments for SAD.

Methods: Eighty-one patients with SAD were allocated to 12-week treatments of either SSRI or GC-MRT, or waitlist (s = 22, 29, and 30, respectively).

Altered associations between white matter structure and psychopathology in previously institutionalized adolescents.

Previously institutionalized adolescents show increased risk for psychopathology, though placement into high-quality foster care can partially mitigate this risk. White matter (WM) structure is associated with early institutional rearing and psychopathology in youth. Here we investigate associations between WM structure and psychopathology in previously institutionalized youth.

Eye-tracking measurement of attention bias to social threat among youth: A replication and extension study.

Attentional bias to social threat cues has been linked to heightened anxiety and irritability in youth. Yet, inconsistent methodology has limited replication and led to mixed findings. The current study aims to 1) replicate and extend two previous pediatric studies demonstrating a relationship between negative affectivity and attentional bias to social threat and 2) examine the test-retest reliability of an eye-tracking paradigm among a subsample of youth.

Longitudinal relations among temperament, cognitive control, and anxiety: From toddlerhood to late adolescence.

Children with a history of behaviorally inhibited (BI) temperament face a heightened risk for anxiety disorders and often use control strategies that are less planful. Although these relations have been observed concurrently in early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence, few studies leverage longitudinal data to examine long-term prospective relations between cognitive control and anxiety. Using longitudinal data from 149 adolescents (55% female; from predominantly White middle-class families), we assessed temperament in toddlerhood and cognitive control and anxiety at 4, 12, 15, and 18 years of age.

Task-Rest Reconfiguration Efficiency of the Reward Network Across Adolescence and Its Association With Early Life Stress and Depressive Symptoms.

Objective: Adolescents face significant changes in many domains of their daily lives that require them to flexibly adapt to changing environmental demands. To shift efficiently among various goals, adolescents must reconfigure their brains, disengaging from previous tasks and engaging in new activities.

Method: To examine this reconfiguration, we obtained resting-state and task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans in a community sample of 164 youths.

Associations Between Neighborhood Resources and Youths' Response to Reward Omission in a Task Modeling Negatively Biased Environments.

Objective: Neighborhoods provide essential resources (eg, education, safe housing, green space) that influence neurodevelopment and mental health. However, we need a clearer understanding of the mechanisms mediating these relationships. Limited access to neighborhood resources may hinder youths from achieving their goals and, over time, shape their behavioral and neurobiological response to negatively biased environments blocking goals and rewards.

Irritability, Negative Life Events and the Course of Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms in a Clinical Sample of Youth: A Longitudinal Study.

Objective: Irritability, the tendency to react with anger, and the experience of negative life events (NLE) have independently been associated with the emergence of anxiety and depression. Here, we investigate how irritability and cumulative effects of NLE interactively predict the course of anxiety and depression in the context of common psychiatric disorders.

Method: 432 youth with no psychiatric diagnosis, or a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD), participated in this study.

Neural Correlates of Novelty-Evoked Distress in 4-Month-Old Infants: A Synthetic Cohort Study.

Background: Observational assessments of infant temperament have provided unparalleled insight into prediction of risk for social anxiety. However, it is challenging to administer and score these assessments alongside high-quality infant neuroimaging data. In the current study, we aimed to identify infant resting-state functional connectivity associated with both parent report and observed behavioral estimates of infant novelty-evoked distress.

Sex-Specific Distributed White Matter Microarchitectural Alterations in Preadolescent Youths With Anxiety Disorders: A Mega-Analytic Study.

Objective: Anxiety disorders are among the most common psychiatric disorders in youths and emerge during childhood. This is also a period of rapid white matter (WM) development, which is critical for efficient neuronal communication. Previous work in preadolescent children with anxiety disorders demonstrated anxiety disorder-related reductions in WM microstructural integrity (fractional anisotropy [FA]) in the uncinate fasciculus (UF), the major WM tract facilitating prefrontal cortical-limbic structural connectivity.

Modeling Shared and Specific Variances of Irritability, Inattention, and Hyperactivity Yields Novel Insights Into White Matter Perturbations.

Objective: Irritability, inattention, and hyperactivity, which are common presentations of childhood psychopathology, have been associated with perturbed white matter microstructure. However, similar tracts have been implicated across these phenotypes; such non-specificity could be rooted in their high co-occurrence. To address this problem, we use a bifactor approach parsing unique and shared components of irritability, inattention, and hyperactivity, which we then relate to white matter microstructure.

Multivariate Assessment of Inhibitory Control in Youth: Links With Psychopathology and Brain Function.

Inhibitory control is central to many theories of cognitive and brain development, and impairments in inhibitory control are posited to underlie developmental psychopathology. In this study, we tested the possibility of shared versus unique associations between inhibitory control and three common symptom dimensions in youth psychopathology: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, and irritability. We quantified inhibitory control using four different experimental tasks to estimate a latent variable in 246 youth (8-18 years old) with varying symptom types and levels.

Current and Future Approaches to Pediatric Anxiety Disorder Treatment.

This overview critically appraises the literature on the treatment of pediatric anxiety disorders. The two established treatments for these conditions comprise cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and antidepressant medications. Many youths receiving these treatments fail to achieve remission, which creates a need for new treatments.

Irritability in Youths: A Critical Integrative Review.

Irritability, defined as proneness to anger that may impair an individual's functioning, is common in youths. There has been a recent upsurge in relevant research. The authors combine systematic and narrative review approaches to integrate the latest clinical and translational findings and provide suggestions for addressing research gaps.

Sleepless nights, sour moods: daily sleep-irritability links in a pediatric clinical sample.

Background: Sleep, or a lack thereof, is strongly related to mood dysregulation. Although considerable research uses symptom scales to examine this relation, few studies use longitudinal, real-time methods focused on pediatric irritability. This study leveraged an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol, assessing bidirectional associations between momentary irritability symptoms and daily sleep duration in a transdiagnostic pediatric sample enriched for irritability.

Brain Functional Connectivity and Anatomical Features as Predictors of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Outcome for Anxiety in Youths.

Background: Because pediatric anxiety disorders precede the onset of many other problems, successful prediction of response to the first-line treatment, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), could have major impact. However, existing clinical models are weakly predictive. The current study evaluates whether structural and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging can predict post-CBT anxiety symptoms.

Intrusive Traumatic Re-Experiencing Domain: Functional Connectivity Feature Classification by the ENIGMA PTSD Consortium.

Background: Intrusive traumatic re-experiencing domain (ITRED) was recently introduced as a novel perspective on posttraumatic psychopathology, proposing to focus research of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on the unique symptoms of intrusive and involuntary re-experiencing of the trauma, namely, intrusive memories, nightmares, and flashbacks. The aim of the present study was to explore ITRED from a neural network connectivity perspective.

Methods: Data were collected from 9 sites taking part in the ENIGMA (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) PTSD Consortium ( 584) and included itemized PTSD symptom scores and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) data.

Evaluating the development and well-being assessment (DAWBA) in pediatric anxiety and depression.

Enhancing screening practices and developing scalable diagnostic tools are imperative in response to the increasing prevalence of youth mental health challenges. Structured lay psychiatric interviews have emerged as one such promising tool. However, there remains limited research evaluating structured psychiatric interviews, specifically their characterization of internalizing disorders in treatment-seeking youth.