The effect of prenatal drug exposure and caregiving context on children's performance on a task of sustained visual attention.

Objectives: Three groups of children from low-income, urban environments were examined to determine the effects of prenatal drug exposure (PDE) and caregiving environment on sustained visual attention (SVA) at 7 years of age.

Methods: Drug-exposed children remaining in maternal care (n = 43), drug-exposed children placed in nonmaternal care (n = 45), and community comparison (CC) children (n = 56) were administered a battery of neurocognitive tests, including the Conners' Continuous Performance Test (CPT).

Results: PDE children remaining in maternal care displayed more omission errors than CC children.

Associations between catastrophizing and endogenous pain-inhibitory processes: sex differences.

Unlabelled: Pain catastrophizing is among the most robust predictors of pain outcomes, and a disruption in endogenous pain-inhibitory systems is 1 potential mechanism that may account for increased pain among individuals who report higher pain catastrophizing. Pain catastrophizing may negatively influence diffuse noxious inhibitory controls (DNIC), a measure of endogenous pain inhibition, through complex anatomical circuitry linking cortical responses to pain with processes that modulate pain. The current study examined whether DNIC mediated the relationship between catastrophizing and pain among 35 healthy young adults and examined the moderating effects of sex to determine whether the magnitude or direction of associations differed among men and women.