Background: Many young people (YP) struggle with their mental health and look online for help. To capitalise on their digital presence, we need to better understand how and where they seek information online and what they think of what they find.
Method: We recruited 24 YP (aged 13-18 years).
People with anorexia nervosa (AN) commonly exhibit elevated anxiety and atypical reward responsiveness. To examine multivariate neural patterns associated with reward and the impact of anxiety on reward, we analyzed fMRI data from a monetary reward task using representational similarity analysis, a multivariate approach that measures trial-by-trial consistency of neural responses. Twenty-five adolescent girls with AN and 22 mildly anxious controls lacking any history of AN were presented personalized anxiety-provoking or neutral words before receiving a reward, and neural response patterns in reward regions were analyzed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Individuals with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) perceive distortions in their appearance, which could be due to imbalances in global and local visual processing. The vertical occipital fasciculus connects dorsal and ventral visual stream regions, integrating global and local information, yet the role of this structural connection in BDD has not been explored. Here, we investigated the vertical occipital fasciculus's white matter microstructure in those with BDD and healthy controls and tested associations with psychometric measures and effective connectivity while viewing their face during fMRI.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe metalloids boron and arsenic are ubiquitous and difficult to remove during water treatment. As chemical pretreatment using strong base and oxidants can increase their rejection during membrane-based nanofiltration (NF), we examined a nature-based pretreatment approach using benthic photosynthetic processes inherent in a unique type of constructed wetland to assess whether analogous gains can be achieved without the need for exogenous chemical dosing. During peak photosynthesis, the pH of the overlying clear water column above a photosynthetic microbial mat (biomat) that naturally colonizes shallow, open water constructed wetlands climbs from circumneutral to approximately 10.
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