Recognition of facial emotions among maltreated children with high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine processing of facial emotions in a sample of maltreated children showing high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Maltreatment during childhood has been associated independently with both atypical processing of emotion and the development of PTSD. However, research has provided little evidence indicating how high rates of PTSD might relate to maltreated children's processing of emotions.

Specificity of facial expression labeling deficits in childhood psychopathology.

Background: We examined whether face-emotion labeling deficits are illness-specific or an epiphenomenon of generalized impairment in pediatric psychiatric disorders involving mood and behavioral dysregulation.

Method: Two hundred fifty-two youths (7-18 years old) completed child and adult facial expression recognition subtests from the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA) instrument. Forty-two participants had bipolar disorder (BD), 39 had severe mood dysregulation (SMD; i.

Attention alters neural responses to evocative faces in behaviorally inhibited adolescents.

Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a risk factor for anxiety disorders. While the two constructs bear behavioral similarities, previous work has not extended these parallels to the neural level. This study examined amygdala reactivity during a task previously used with clinically anxious adolescents.

Responses to conflict and cooperation in adolescents with anxiety and mood disorders.

This study examined patterns of behavioral and emotional responses to conflict and cooperation in adolescents with anxiety/mood disorders and healthy peers. We compared performance on and emotional responses to the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) game, an economic exchange task involving conflict and cooperation, between adolescents with anxiety/depressive disorders (A/D) (N=21) and healthy comparisons (n = 29). Participants were deceived to believe their co-player (a pre-programmed computer algorithm) was another study participant.

Cognitive flexibility in phenotypes of pediatric bipolar disorder.

Objective: Clinicians and researchers debate whether children with chronic, nonepisodic irritability should receive the diagnosis of bipolar disorder (BD). To address this debate, we evaluated cognitive flexibility, or the ability to adapt to changing contingencies, in three groups of children: narrow-phenotype BD (NP-BD; full-duration manic episodes of elevated/expansive mood; N = 50; 13.1 +/- 2.

Neural circuitry engaged during unsuccessful motor inhibition in pediatric bipolar disorder.

Objective: Deficits in motor inhibition may contribute to impulsivity and irritability in children with bipolar disorder. Studies of the neural circuitry engaged during failed motor inhibition in pediatric bipolar disorder may increase our understanding of the pathophysiology of the illness. The authors tested the hypothesis that children with bipolar disorder and comparison subjects would differ in ventral prefrontal cortex, striatal, and anterior cingulate activation during unsuccessful motor inhibition.

Abnormal attention modulation of fear circuit function in pediatric generalized anxiety disorder.

Context: Considerable work implicates abnormal neural activation and disrupted attention to facial-threat cues in adult anxiety disorders. However, in pediatric anxiety, no research has examined attention modulation of neural response to threat cues.

Objective: To determine whether attention modulates amygdala and cortical responses to facial-threat cues differentially in adolescents with generalized anxiety disorder and in healthy adolescents.

fMRI predictors of treatment outcome in pediatric anxiety disorders.

Introduction: A growing number of studies have found evidence that anxiety and depressive disorders are associated with atypical amygdala hyperactivation, which decreases with effective treatment. Interest has emerged in this phenomenon as a possible biological marker for individuals who are likely to benefit from tailored treatment approaches.

Objective: The present study was designed to examine relationships between pretreatment amygdala activity and treatment response in a sample of anxious children and adolescents.

Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activation and attentional bias in response to angry faces in adolescents with generalized anxiety disorder.

Objective: While adolescent anxiety disorders represent prevalent, debilitating conditions, few studies have explored their brain physiology. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a behavioral measure of attention to angry faces, the authors evaluated differences in response between healthy adolescents and adolescents with generalized anxiety disorder.

Method: In the primary trials of interest, 18 adolescents with generalized anxiety disorder and 15 comparison subjects of equivalent age/gender/IQ viewed angry/neutral face pairs during fMRI acquisition.

Limbic hyperactivation during processing of neutral facial expressions in children with bipolar disorder.

Reflecting a paradigm shift in clinical neuroscience, many chronic psychiatric illnesses are now hypothesized to result from perturbed neural development. However, most work in this area focuses on schizophrenia. Here, we extend this paradigm to pediatric bipolar disorder (BD), thus demonstrating traction in the developmental psychobiology perspective.

Increased amygdala activity during successful memory encoding in adolescent major depressive disorder: An FMRI study.

Background: Although major depressive disorder (MDD) represents one of the most serious psychiatric problems afflicting adolescents, efforts to understand the neural circuitry of adolescent MDD have lagged behind those of adult MDD. This study tests the hypothesis that adolescent MDD is associated with abnormal amygdala activity during evocative-face viewing.

Methods: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), between-group differences among MDD (n = 10), anxious (n = 11), and non-psychiatric comparisons (n = 23) were examined during successful vs.

Emotion recognition deficits in pediatric anxiety disorders: implications for amygdala research.

Introduction: Anxiety disorders in adults involve aberrant processing of emotional information that is hypothesized to reflect perturbations in the amygdala. This study examines the relationship between face-emotion recognition and anxiety in a sample of children and adolescents participating in a brain-imaging study of amygdala structure and function.

Methods: This study recruited 15 children and adolescents with ongoing anxiety disorders and 11 psychiatrically healthy comparisons group-matched on age, gender, and IQ.

Deficits in social cognition and response flexibility in pediatric bipolar disorder.

Objective: Little is known about neuropsychological and social-cognitive function in patients with pediatric bipolar disorder. Identification of specific deficits and strengths that characterize pediatric bipolar disorder would facilitate advances in diagnosis, treatment, and research on pathophysiology. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that youths with bipolar disorder would perform more poorly than matched healthy comparison subjects on measures of social cognition, motor inhibition, and response flexibility.

Classical fear conditioning in the anxiety disorders: a meta-analysis.

Fear conditioning represents the process by which a neutral stimulus comes to evoke fear following its repeated pairing with an aversive stimulus. Although fear conditioning has long been considered a central pathogenic mechanism in anxiety disorders, studies employing lab-based conditioning paradigms provide inconsistent support for this idea. A quantitative review of 20 such studies, representing fear-learning scores for 453 anxiety patients and 455 healthy controls, was conducted to verify the aggregated result of this literature and to assess the moderating influences of study characteristics.

Amygdala and nucleus accumbens in responses to receipt and omission of gains in adults and adolescents.

Adolescents' propensity for risk-taking and reward-seeking behaviors suggests a heightened sensitivity for reward, reflected by greater feedback-related activity changes in reward circuitry (e.g., nucleus accumbens), and/or a lower sensitivity to potential harm reflected by weaker feedback-related activity changes in avoidance circuitry (e.

Memory and learning in pediatric bipolar disorder.

Objective: To test the hypothesis that patients with pediatric bipolar disorder (PBPD) would demonstrate impairment relative to diagnosis-free controls of comparable age, gender, and IQ on measures of memory functioning.

Method: The authors administered a battery of verbal and visuospatial memory tests to 35 outpatients with PBPD and 20 healthy controls who participated as volunteers in this study. Groups did not differ on age, gender, or IQ.

The social re-orientation of adolescence: a neuroscience perspective on the process and its relation to psychopathology.

Background: Many changes in social behavior take place during adolescence. Sexuality and romantic interests emerge during this time, and adolescents spend more time with peers and less time with parents and family. While such changes in social behavior have been well documented in the literature, relatively few neurophysiological explanations for these behavioral changes have been presented.

Experience-dependent plasticity for attention to threat: Behavioral and neurophysiological evidence in humans.

Biased attention to threat represents a key feature of anxiety disorders. This bias is altered by therapeutic or stressful experiences, suggesting that the bias is plastic. Charting on-line behavioral and neurophysiological changes in attention bias may generate insights on the nature of such plasticity.

Choice selection and reward anticipation: an fMRI study.

We examined neural activations during decision-making using fMRI paired with the wheel of fortune task, a newly developed two-choice decision-making task with probabilistic monetary gains. In particular, we assessed the impact of high-reward/risk events relative to low-reward/risk events on neural activations during choice selection and during reward anticipation. Seventeen healthy adults completed the study.

A developmental examination of gender differences in brain engagement during evaluation of threat.

Background: Females appear to be more sensitive and responsive to social cues, including threat signals, than are males. Recent theoretical models suggest that developmental changes in brain functioning play important roles in the emergence of such gender differences.

Methods: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine developmental and gender differences in activation of neural structures thought to mediate attention to emotional faces depicting varying degrees of threat.

A neuroimaging method for the study of threat in adolescents.

Little is understood about the brain basis of anxiety, particularly among youth. However, threat paradigms with animals are delineating the relationship between anxietylike behaviors and brain function. We adapted a threat paradigm for adolescents using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Neuropsychological performance in pediatric bipolar disorder.

Background: Growing awareness of childhood bipolar disorder necessitates further cognitive neuroscience research to determine unique developmental differences between pediatric and adult onset bipolar disorder. We sought to examine whether neuropsychological function in children with bipolar disorder resembles that in adults with the illness and to extend our knowledge about cognitive function in pediatric bipolar disorder.

Methods: We administered a computerized neuropsychological test battery known as the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery to a sample of 21 children and adolescents with bipolar disorder and compared them with 21 age- and gender-matched controls.

Developmental differences in neuronal engagement during implicit encoding of emotional faces: an event-related fMRI study.

Background: Prior studies document strong interactions between emotional and mnemonic processes. These interactions have been shown to vary across development and psychopathology, particularly mood and anxiety disorders.

Methods: The present study used functional neuroimaging to assess the degree to which adolescents and adults differ in patterns of neuronal engagement during implicit encoding of affective stimuli.

Adolescent immaturity in attention-related brain engagement to emotional facial expressions.

Selective attention, particularly during the processing of emotionally evocative events, is a crucial component of adolescent development. We used functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI) with adolescents and adults to examine developmental differences in activation in a paradigm that involved selective attention during the viewing of emotionally engaging face stimuli. We evaluated developmental differences in neural activation for three comparisons: (1) directing attention to subjective responses to fearful facial expressions relative to directing attention to a nonemotional aspect (nose width) of fearful faces, (2) viewing fearful relative to neutral faces while attending to a nonemotional aspect of the face, and (3) viewing fearful relative to neutral faces while attention was unconstrained (passive viewing).