Background: Infants requiring high acuity care within a Paediatric Intensive Care Unit are at multifactorial risk of neurological injury to the immature brain, resulting in long-term developmental difficulties. In 2020, Queensland Children's Hospital implemented an individualised family-centred developmental care program, 'Baby Liberation', to address an identified service gap for critically unwell infants, aimed at optimising early neuroprotective strategies and minimising risk of suboptimal developmental outcomes.
Aim: To implement Baby Liberation for infants admitted to a quaternary paediatric intensive care referral centre.
Children who undergo open-heart surgery in the first year of life for congenital heart disease (CHD) are at high-risk for impaired development across multiple domains. International recommendations include systematic periodic developmental surveillance into adolescence and the establishment of long-term follow-up programmes. This article describes the establishment and evolution of the Queensland Paediatric Cardiac Service neurodevelopmental follow-up programme - CHD LIFE (Long-term Improvement in Functional hEalth).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSetting: Canadian youth (aged 15-29 years) are more diverse, educated, connected and socially engaged than ever before. However, many face health-related challenges, including mental health problems (10-20%), substance use concerns (14%) and obesity (45%).
Intervention: The Young Canadians Roundtable on Health (YCRH) was created in 2013 to be Canada's youth voice on health.
Background: Early identification of infants with CHD at heightened risk of developmental delays can inform surveillance priorities. This study investigated pre-operative and post-operative neuromotor performance in infants undergoing open-heart surgery, and their developmental status at 6 months of age, to identify risk factors and inform care pathways.
Methods: Infants undergoing open-heart surgery before 4 months of age were recruited into a prospective cohort study.
Aim: Assessing the neurodevelopmental status of infants with congenital heart disease before surgery provides a means of identifying those at heightened risk of developmental delay. This study aimed to investigate factors impacting clinical feasibility of pre-operative neurodevelopmental assessment of infants undergoing early open heart surgery.
Methods: Infants who underwent open heart surgery prior to 4 months of age participated in this cross-sectional study.
Background: White matter (WM) integrity may represent a shared biomarker for emotional disorders (ED). Aims: To identify transdiagnostic biomarkers of reduced WM by meta-analysis of findings across multiple EDs.
Method: Web of Science was searched systematically for studies of whole brain analysis of fractional anisotropy (FA) in adults with major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, social anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder or posttraumatic stress disorder compared with a healthy control (HC) group.
Bulimia nervosa (BN) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) co-occur at greater rates than chance and may have shared mechanisms of dysfunction. One of these proposed mechanisms is a hyper-responsive aversive system as indicated by heightened startle response to aversive stimuli. The present study examined this hypothesis using 2 types of aversive stimuli: disorder specific (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAppetitive and defensive motivation account for a good deal of variance in personality and mental health, but whether individual differences in these systems are correlated or orthogonal has not been conclusively established. Previous investigations have generally relied on self-report and have yielded conflicting results. We therefore assessed the relation between psychophysiological indices of appetitive and defensive motivation during elicitation of these motivational states: specifically, frontal electroencephalogram asymmetry during reward anticipation and startle response during anticipation of predictable or unpredictable threat of shock.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo emotional/motivational constructs that have been posited to underlie anxiety and depressive disorders are heightened sensitivity to threat and reduced sensitivity to reward, respectively. It is unclear, though, whether these constructs are only epiphenomena or also connote risk for these disorders (and relatedly, whether they connote risk for separate disorders). Using family history of psychopathology as an indicator of risk, the present study examined whether biomarkers of sensitivity to threat (startle potentiation) and reward (frontal EEG asymmetry) were associated with similar or different familial liabilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch suggests that lower respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is associated with greater aversive responding. One physiological indicator of aversive responding is startle potentiation. While a few studies have demonstrated an inverse association between RSA and startle potentiation, no study to date has distinguished whether this relation is similar for predictable versus unpredictable aversive stimuli.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIndividuals with anxiety disorders have previously demonstrated abnormal habituation to aversiveness over time. As anxiety sensitivity (AS), or an individuals' propensity to fear of anxiety-related sensations, has been shown to be a risk factor for anxiety disorders (particularly panic disorder), the present study examined whether AS was also associated with abnormal habituation. This association was examined in two independent samples of undergraduates (Ntotal=178).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvidence suggests that respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) may be an important indicator of physiological flexibility. However, few studies have examined the relation between RSA and defensive habituation, a process contingent on physiological flexibility. In three independent samples, habituation was defined as the time course of 9 startle responses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHeightened sensitivity to threat and reduced sensitivity to reward are potential mechanisms of dysfunction in anxiety and depressive disorders, respectively. However, few studies have simultaneously examined whether these mechanisms are unique or common to these disorders. In this study, sensitivity to predictable and unpredictable threat (measured by startle response during threat anticipation) and sensitivity to reward (measured by frontal electroencephalographic [EEG] asymmetry during reward anticipation) were assessed in 4 groups (N = 191): those with (1) panic disorder (PD) without a lifetime history of depression, (2) major depression (MDD) without a lifetime history of an anxiety disorder, (3) comorbid PD and MDD, and (4) controls.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Individuals with chronic depression exhibit heterogeneous responses to treatment. Important individual differences may therefore exist within this particularly difficult to treat population that act as moderators of treatment response.
Method: The present study examined whether pretreatment levels of dysfunctional attitudes (DA) moderated treatment response in a large sample of chronically depressed individuals.
The approach-withdrawal model posits that depression and anxiety are associated with a relative right asymmetry in frontal brain activity. Most studies have tested this model using measures of cortical brain activity such as electroencephalography. However, neuropsychological tasks that differentially use left versus right frontal cortical regions can also be used to test hypotheses from the model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrevious studies have examined the effects of heating on teeth; however, none have identified characteristics that allow analysts to differentiate traumatic from heat-induced fractures. This study examined our ability to discern notable differences in preincineration traumatic fractures and heat-induced fractures in postincineration dentition. Twelve anterior dental specimens were subjected to blunt force trauma while a second set were not.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn important characteristic of aversive stimuli that determines emotional responses is whether the stimuli are predictable. Human laboratory studies in this area have typically operationalized predictability as being able to predict the occurrence of aversive events, but animal studies suggest that being able to predict other characteristics of the stimuli may also play a role in aversive responding. To examine this, the present study examined two characteristics: the timing and intensity of aversive stimuli.
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