Telomere Erosion and Depressive Symptoms Across Development Following Institutional Care.

Objective: A large literature has identified exposure to early caregiving adversities as a potent risk for developing affective psychopathology, with depression, in particular, increasing across childhood into adolescence. Evidence suggests telomere erosion, a marker of biological aging, may underlie associations between adverse early-life experiences and later depressive behavior; yet, little is understood about this association during development.

Method: The current accelerated longitudinal study examined concurrent telomere length and depressive symptoms concurrently, 2 and 4 years later, from the preschool period through adolescence among children exposed (n =116) and not exposed (n = 242) to early previous institutional (PI) care.

Age-related change in task-evoked amygdala-prefrontal circuitry: A multiverse approach with an accelerated longitudinal cohort aged 4-22 years.

The amygdala and its connections with medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) play central roles in the development of emotional processes. While several studies have suggested that this circuitry exhibits functional changes across the first two decades of life, findings have been mixed - perhaps resulting from differences in analytic choices across studies. Here we used multiverse analyses to examine the robustness of task-based amygdala-mPFC function findings to analytic choices within the context of an accelerated longitudinal design (4-22 years-old; N = 98; 183 scans; 1-3 scans/participant).

Longitudinal changes in amygdala, hippocampus and cortisol development following early caregiving adversity.

Although decades of research have shown associations between early caregiving adversity, stress physiology and limbic brain volume (e.g., amygdala, hippocampus), the developmental trajectories of these phenotypes are not well characterized.

Parental presence switches avoidance to attraction learning in children.

Attachment-related learning (that is, forming preferences for cues associated with the parent) defies the traditional rules of learning in that it seems to occur independently of apparent reinforcement-young children prefer cues associated with their parent, regardless of valence (rewarding or aversive), despite the diversity of parenting styles. This obligatory attraction for parental cues keeps the child nearby and safe to explore the environment; thus, it is critical for survival and sets the foundation for normal human cognitive-emotional behaviour. Here we examined the learning underlying this attraction in preschool-age children.

Working memory moderates the association between early institutional care and separation anxiety symptoms in late childhood and adolescence.

Adverse caregiving, for example, previous institutionalization (PI), is often associated with emotion dysregulation that increases anxiety risk. However, the concept of developmental multifinality predicts heterogeneity in anxiety outcomes. Despite this well-known heterogeneity, more work is needed to identify sources of this heterogeneity and how these sources interact with environmental risk to influence mental health.

Decreased Amygdala Reactivity to Parent Cues Protects Against Anxiety Following Early Adversity: An Examination Across 3 Years.

Background: The human brain remains highly plastic for a protracted developmental period. Thus, although early caregiving adversities that alter amygdala development can result in enduring emotion regulation difficulties, these trajectories should respond to subsequent enriched caregiving. Exposure to high-quality parenting can regulate (i.

Mind and gut: Associations between mood and gastrointestinal distress in children exposed to adversity.

Gastrointestinal and mental disorders are highly comorbid, and animal models have shown that both can be caused by early adversity (e.g., parental deprivation).

Diurnal cortisol after early institutional care-Age matters.

Several studies have shown that young children who have experienced early caregiving adversity (e.g. previously institutionalization (PI)) exhibit flattened diurnal cortisol slopes; however, less is known about how these patterns might differ between children and adolescents, since the transition between childhood and adolescence is a time of purported plasticity in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.

Positive valence bias and parent-child relationship security moderate the association between early institutional caregiving and internalizing symptoms.

Institutional caregiving is associated with significant deviations from species-expected caregiving, altering the normative sequence of attachment formation and placing children at risk for long-term emotional difficulties. However, little is known about factors that can promote resilience following early institutional caregiving. In the current study, we investigated how adaptations in affective processing (i.

Maternal buffering of human amygdala-prefrontal circuitry during childhood but not during adolescence.

Mature amygdala-prefrontal circuitry regulates affect in adulthood but shows protracted development. In altricial and semialtricial species, caregivers provide potent affect regulation when mature neurocircuitry is absent. The present investigation examined a potential mechanism through which caregivers provide regulatory influences in childhood.

Early experience shapes amygdala sensitivity to race: an international adoption design.

In the current study, we investigated how complete infant deprivation to out-group race impacts behavioral and neural sensitivity to race. Although monkey models have successfully achieved complete face deprivation in early life, this is typically impossible in human studies. We overcame this barrier by examining youths with exclusively homogenous racial experience in early postnatal development.

Indiscriminate amygdala response to mothers and strangers after early maternal deprivation.

Background: In altricial species, maternal stimuli have powerful effects on amygdala development and attachment-related behaviors. In humans, maternal deprivation has been associated with both "indiscriminate friendliness" toward non-caregiving adults and altered amygdala development. We hypothesized that maternal deprivation would be associated with reduced amygdala discrimination between mothers and strangers and increased parent report of indiscriminate friendliness behaviors.

A developmental shift from positive to negative connectivity in human amygdala-prefrontal circuitry.

Recent human imaging and animal studies highlight the importance of frontoamygdala circuitry in the regulation of emotional behavior and its disruption in anxiety-related disorders. Although tracing studies have suggested changes in amygdala-cortical connectivity through the adolescent period in rodents, less is known about the reciprocal connections within this circuitry across human development, when these circuits are being fine-tuned and substantial changes in emotional control are observed. The present study examined developmental changes in amygdala-prefrontal circuitry across the ages of 4-22 years using task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Amygdala sensitivity to race is not present in childhood but emerges over adolescence.

Neuroimaging research in adults has consistently found that differential perception of race is associated with increased amygdala activity. We hypothesized that such neural biases unlikely reflect innate processes but instead emerge over development. In the current study, we used fMRI to examine the neurodevelopmental trajectory of the amygdala in response to race across childhood and adolescence ranging from 4 to 16 years.

Amygdala response to mother.

In altricial species, like the human, the caregiver, very often the mother, is one of the most potent stimuli during development. The distinction between mothers and other adults is learned early in life and results in numerous behaviors in the child, most notably mother-approach and stranger wariness. The current study examined the influence of the maternal stimulus on amygdala activity and related circuitry in 25 developing children (n = 13) and adolescents (n = 12), and how this circuitry was associated with attachment-related behaviors.

Construct validity of the Miller assessment for preschoolers and the pediatric examination of educational readiness for children.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the construct validity of the Miller Assessment for Preschoolers (MAP) and the Pediatric Examination of Educational Readiness (PEER), two assessment tools that occupational therapists and physical therapists can use for early identification of children with developmental disabilities. The sample included 84 Israeli children who were tested on the MAP (42 children with pre-academic problems and 42 typically developing children), and 70 children who were tested on the PEER (35 children with pre-academic problems and 35 typically developing children). Out of this pool of subjects, 30 typically developing children and 30 children with pre-academic problems were tested on both tests and the results were used for additional data analysis.