The flanker task is a widely used measure of cognitive control abilities. Drift-diffusion modeling of flanker task behavior can yield separable parameters of cognitive control-related subprocesses, but the parameters' psychometrics are not well-established. We examined the reliability and validity of four behavioral measures: (1) raw accuracy, (2) reaction time (RT) interference, (3) NIH Toolbox flanker score, and (4) two drift-diffusion model (DDM) parameters-drift rate and boundary separation-capturing evidence accumulation efficiency and speed-accuracy trade-off, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaladaptive responses to peer acceptance and rejection arise in numerous psychiatric disorders in adolescence; yet, homogeneity and heterogeneity across disorders suggest common and unique mechanisms of impaired social function. We tested the hypothesis that social feedback is processed similarly to other forms of feedback (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study examined whether impairments in cognitive and neural factors at baseline (ages 9-10) predict initial levels or changes in psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) and whether such impairments generalize to other psychopathology symptoms (i.e., internalizing and externalizing symptoms).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMoral injury is a particular response to profoundly distressing life events that manifests in damage to basic human/relational capacities, such as trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy. This paper describes and presents preliminary outcomes of "Reclaiming Experiences And Loss," or "REAL," which is an innovative moral injury group therapy that was developed collaboratively by Veterans Affairs mental health and spiritual care providers. Clinical outcome measures collected pre- and post-group indicates that REAL is effective at reducing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdolescence is characterized by vulnerability to the onset of major depressive disorder (MDD). The goal of this preregistered study was to assess neural correlates of depression symptoms in young adolescents, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. The default mode network (DMN) is believed to support internal attention towards self-referential thoughts, while the fronto-parietal network (FPN) is theorized to support cognitive control and regulation of attention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging
January 2022
Background: Early low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with poor outcomes in childhood, many of which endure into adulthood. It is critical to determine how early low SES relates to trajectories of brain development and whether these mediate relationships to poor outcomes. We use data from a unique 17-year longitudinal study with five waves of structural brain imaging to prospectively examine relationships between preschool SES and cognitive, social, academic, and psychiatric outcomes in early adulthood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding longitudinal associations between problematic peer relations and psychopathology are needed to inform public health. Three models have been proposed: poor peer relations i) lead or are a risk factor for psychopathology; ii) lag or are a consequence of psychopathology; iii) both lead and lag psychopathology. Another model is that poor peer relations lead or lag psychopathology depending upon the developmental period.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough certain risk factors can identify individuals who are most likely to develop chronic pain, few interventions to prevent chronic pain have been identified. To facilitate the identification of preventive interventions, an IMMPACT meeting was convened to discuss research design considerations for clinical trials investigating the prevention of chronic pain. We present general design considerations for prevention trials in populations that are at relatively high risk for developing chronic pain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPoverty and threat exposure (TE) predict deficits in emotion regulation (ER). Effective cognitive ER (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurosci Biobehav Rev
November 2020
Problems with interpersonal relationships are often a chief complaint among those seeking psychiatric treatment; yet heterogeneity and homogeneity across disorders suggests both common and unique mechanisms of impaired interpersonal relationships. Basic science research has begun yielding insights into how the brain responds to social feedback. Understanding how these processes differ as a function of psychopathology can begin to inform the mechanisms that give rise to such interpersonal dysfunction, potentially helping to identify differential treatment targets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Reward system dysfunction is a well-known correlate and predictor of depression in adults and adolescents, with depressed individuals showing blunted (hyporeactive) striatal response to monetary rewards. Furthermore, studies of remitted depression suggest network-wide hyporeactivity of striatal (caudate, putamen, nucleus accumbens) and cortical (insula, anterior cingulate cortex [ACC]) regions even in the absence of current symptoms. Thus, it remains unclear which patterns of hyporeactivity represent a trait-like indicator of depression and which represent a current depressed state.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdolescence is a sensitive period for the development of adaptive social behaviors and social anxiety, possibly due to aspects of brain development. However, research is needed to examine interactions among age, social anxiety, and social dynamics previously shown to influence neural responding. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study examines brain function in 8-18 year-olds with varying levels of social anxiety.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeer victimization (or bullying) is a known risk factor for depression, especially among youth. However, the mechanisms connecting victimization experience to depression symptoms remains unknown. As depression is known to be associated with neural blunting to monetary rewards, aberrant responsiveness to social rewards may be a key deficit connecting socially stressful experiences with later depression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Socially anxious adolescents report distress during social decision-making, wherein their favorable view of peers directly conflicts with their expectation to be viewed negatively by peers; a phenomenon we refer to as "mismatch bias." The present study utilizes a novel paradigm with dynamic social stimuli to explore the correlates of mismatch biases in anxious and healthy youth.
Method: The behavioral and neural correlates of mismatch biases were assessed in healthy (N = 17) and anxious (N = 14) youth during functional MRI.
The Screen for Child Anxiety and Related Emotional Disorder (SCARED) may be differentially sensitive to detecting specific or comorbid anxiety diagnoses in treatment-seeking and non-treatment-seeking youth. We assessed the SCARED's discriminant validity, diagnostic utility, and informant agreement using parent- and self-report from healthy and treatment-seeking anxious youth (Study 1, N=585) and from non-treatment-seeking anxious youth (Study 2, N=331) diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety disorder (SAD), or comorbid GAD+SAD. Among treatment-seeking youth, the SCARED showed good diagnostic utility and specificity, differentiating healthy, comorbid, and non-comorbid anxious youth.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study examined the associations between internalizing symptoms and adolescents' recognition of vocal socioemotional expressions produced by youth. Fifty-seven youth (8-17 years old, = 12.62, = 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Valid and reliable biomarkers can play an important role in clinical trials as indicators of biological or pathogenic processes or as a signal of treatment response. Currently, there are no biomarkers for pain qualified by the U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Sedation Consortium on Endpoints and Procedures for Treatment, Education, and Research, established by the Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations, Innovations, Opportunities, and Networks public-private partnership with the US Food and Drug Administration, convened a meeting of sedation experts from a variety of clinical specialties and research backgrounds with the objective of developing recommendations for procedural sedation research. Four core outcome domains were recommended for consideration in sedation clinical trials: (1) safety, (2) efficacy, (3) patient-centered and/or family-centered outcomes, and (4) efficiency. This meeting identified core outcome measures within the efficacy and patient-centered and/or family-centered domains.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Thorough assessment and reporting of adverse events (AEs) facilitates a detailed understanding of a treatment's risk-benefit profile. Although the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) 2004 statement provides recommendations regarding AE reporting, adherence to these standards is often inadequate. We investigated AE reporting in clinical trials of intravenous and invasive pain treatments published in 6 major anesthesiology and pain journals between 2000 to 2003 and 2006 to 2012.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: No treatments for axonal peripheral neuropathy are approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Although patient- and clinician-reported outcomes are central to evaluating neuropathy symptoms, they can be difficult to assess accurately. The inability to identify efficacious treatments for peripheral neuropathies could be due to invalid or inadequate outcome measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is tremendous interpatient variability in the response to analgesic therapy (even for efficacious treatments), which can be the source of great frustration in clinical practice. This has led to calls for "precision medicine" or personalized pain therapeutics (ie, empirically based algorithms that determine the optimal treatments, or treatment combinations, for individual patients) that would presumably improve both the clinical care of patients with pain and the success rates for putative analgesic drugs in phase 2 and 3 clinical trials. However, before implementing this approach, the characteristics of individual patients or subgroups of patients that increase or decrease the response to a specific treatment need to be identified.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClinical trial participants often require additional instruction to prevent idiosyncratic interpretations regarding completion of patient-reported outcomes. The Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations, Innovations, Opportunities, and Networks (ACTTION) public-private partnership developed a training system with specific, standardized guidance regarding daily average pain intensity ratings. A 3-week exploratory study among participants with low-back pain, osteoarthritis of the knee or hip, and painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy was conducted, randomly assigning participants to 1 of 3 groups: training with human pain assessment (T+); training with automated pain assessment (T); or no training with automated pain assessment (C).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough pain reduction is commonly the primary outcome in chronic pain clinical trials, physical functioning is also important. A challenge in designing chronic pain trials to determine efficacy and effectiveness of therapies is obtaining appropriate information about the impact of an intervention on physical function. The Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials (IMMPACT) and Outcome Measures in Rheumatology (OMERACT) convened a meeting to consider assessment of physical functioning and participation in research on chronic pain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article summarizes the results of a meeting convened by the Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials (IMMPACT) on key considerations and best practices governing the design of acute pain clinical trials. We discuss the role of early phase clinical trials, including pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) trials, and the value of including both placebo and active standards of comparison in acute pain trials. This article focuses on single-dose and short-duration trials with emphasis on the perioperative and study design factors that influence assay sensitivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF