Feasibility and preliminary efficacy of the Balance Program to reduce pain-related disability in pediatric sickle cell disease.

Background: Sickle cell disease (SCD) pain is associated with functional impairment, and treatment is often limited to pharmacological approaches with unwanted side effects. Although behavioral interventions exist for non-SCD pain populations, interventions designed to address pain-related impairment in SCD are lacking.

Methods: Twenty youth (9-17 years) with SCD completed a four-week telemedicine pain intervention (NCT04388241).

Cognitive Functioning and Educational Support Plans in Youth With Sickle Cell Disease.

Children with sickle cell disease (SCD) face academic challenges because of direct and indirect disease-related events. This study examined the proportion of youth with SCD with educational plans and whether cognitive functioning is associated with educational support. Ninety-one youth (7 to 16 y) with SCD completed the WISC-V; caregivers reported educational support (504 Plan/Individualized Education Program) and completed the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function.

Neurocognitive and psychological effects of persistent pain in pediatric sickle cell disease.

Background: Pain is a major complication of sickle cell disease (SCD), spanning vaso-occlusive crises and persistent pain. Although it is known that persistent pain is associated with considerable impairment in youth without SCD, little is known about the functional effects of persistent pain in SCD. The current study aimed to (a) characterize persistent pain in youth with SCD and (b) determine the extent to which youth with SCD and persistent pain differ in disease morbidity, functional impairment, and neurocognitive and psychological functioning.

Reduced striatal activation in females with major depression during the processing of affective stimuli.

The extent to which affective reactivity and associated neural underpinnings are altered by depression remains equivocal. This study assessed striatal activation in fifty-one unmedicated female participants meeting DSM-IV criteria for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and 61 age-matched healthy females (HC) aged 17-63 years. Participants completed an affective reactivity functional magnetic resonance imaging task.

Attention bias to threat faces in severe mood dysregulation.

Background: We used a dot-probe paradigm to examine attention bias toward threat (i.e., angry) and happy face stimuli in severe mood dysregulation (SMD) versus healthy comparison (HC) youth.

Neural mechanisms of frustration in chronically irritable children.

Objective: Irritability is common in children and adolescents and is the cardinal symptom of disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, a new DSM-5 disorder, yet its neural correlates remain largely unexplored. The authors conducted a functional MRI study to examine neural responses to frustration in children with severe mood dysregulation.

Method: The authors compared emotional responses, behavior, and neural activity between 19 severely irritable children (operationalized using criteria for severe mood dysregulation) and 23 healthy comparison children during a cued-attention task completed under nonfrustrating and frustrating conditions.

A developmental study of the neural circuitry mediating motor inhibition in bipolar disorder.

Objective: Despite increased interest in the developmental trajectory of the pathophysiology mediating bipolar disorder, few studies have compared adults and youths with bipolar disorder. Deficits in motor inhibition are thought to play an important role in the pathophysiology of the illness across the age spectrum. The authors compared the neural circuitry mediating this process in bipolar youths relative to bipolar adults and in healthy volunteers.

Striatal dysfunction during failed motor inhibition in children at risk for bipolar disorder.

Background: A better understanding of the neural underpinnings of bipolar disorder (BD) can be obtained by examining brain activity in symptom-free individuals at risk for BD. This study examined the neural correlates of motor inhibition in a sample of symptom-free youths at familial risk for BD.

Methods: 19 euthymic youths with BD, 13 asymptomatic youths with a first-degree relative with BD, and 21 healthy comparison children completed the stop signal task in a 3 T scanner.

Neural correlates of cognitive flexibility in children at risk for bipolar disorder.

Background: Youth with bipolar disorder (BD) show behavioral and neural deficits in cognitive flexibility; however, whether such deficits exist among youths at risk for BD has not been explored.

Methods: The current fMRI study examined the neural basis of cognitive flexibility in BD youth (n = 28), unaffected youth at risk for BD (AR; n = 13), and healthy volunteer youth (HV; n = 21) by comparing brain activation patterns while participants performed the change task. On change trials, subjects must inhibit a prepotent response and execute an alternate one.

Neural recruitment during failed motor inhibition differentiates youths with bipolar disorder and severe mood dysregulation.

Controversy exists about whether non-episodic irritability (operationalized as severe mood dysregulation, SMD) should be considered a developmental presentation of pediatric bipolar disorder (BD). While assessments of brain function may address this controversy, only one fMRI study has compared BD versus SMD. We compared neural activation in BD, SMD, and controls during a motor inhibition task, since motor disinhibition is an important clinical feature in both BD and SMD.

Contrasting effects of systemic and central sibutramine administration on the intake of a palatable diet in the rat.

Sibutramine hydrochloride monohydrate is the only centrally active weight-modifying agent currently approved by the FDA for long-term use in the treatment of obesity. Systemic sibutramine treatment has been shown to reduce food intake in humans and rodent models in a manner that is consistent with the enhancement of satiety mechanisms. Although it is generally assumed that the hypophagic effects of the drug are mediated by actions within the brain, the locus or loci of these effects remains unclear.

Selective serotonin receptor stimulation of the medial nucleus accumbens causes differential effects on food intake and locomotion.

Substantial evidence suggests that pharmacological manipulations of neural serotonin pathways influence ingestive behaviors. Despite the known role of the nucleus accumbens in directing appetitive and consummatory behavior, there has been little examination of the influences that serotonin receptors may play in modulating feeding within nucleus accumbens circuitry. In these experiments, the authors examined the effects of bilateral nucleus accumbens infusions of the 5-HT1/7 receptor agonist 5-CT (at 0.