Differential reconfiguration of brain networks in children in response to standard versus rewarded go/no-go task demands.

Response inhibition and sustained attention are critical for higher-order cognition and rely upon specific patterns of functional brain network organization. This study investigated how functional brain networks reconfigure to execute these cognitive processes during a go/no-go task with and without the presence of rewards in 26 children between the ages of 8 and 12 years. First, we compared task performance between standard and rewarded versions of a go/no-go task.

Brain Engagement During a Cognitive Flexibility Task Relates to Academic Performance in English Learners.

English Learners (ELs), students from non-English-speaking backgrounds, are a fast-growing, understudied, group of students in the U.S. with unique learning challenges.

Brain connectivity and academic skills in English learners.

English learners (ELs) are a rapidly growing population in schools in the United States with limited experience and proficiency in English. To better understand the path for EL's academic success in school, it is important to understand how EL's brain systems are used for academic learning in English. We studied, in a cohort of Hispanic middle-schoolers (n = 45, 22F) with limited English proficiency and a wide range of reading and math abilities, brain network properties related to academic abilities.

Brain tissue iron neurophysiology and its relationship with the cognitive effects of dopaminergic modulation in children with and without ADHD.

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) exhibit impairments in response inhibition. These impairments are ameliorated by modulating dopamine (DA) via the administration of rewards or stimulant medication like methylphenidate (MPH). It is currently unclear whether intrinsic DA availability impacts these effects of dopaminergic modulation on response inhibition.

Resting-state cortical hubs in youth organize into four categories.

During childhood, neural systems supporting high-level cognitive processes undergo periods of rapid growth and refinement, which rely on the successful coordination of activation across the brain. Some coordination occurs via cortical hubs-brain regions that coactivate with functional networks other than their own. Adult cortical hubs map into three distinct profiles, but less is known about hub categories during development, when critical improvement in cognition occurs.

Effect of methylphenidate on functional controllability: a preliminary study in medication-naïve children with ADHD.

Methylphenidate (MPH) is the recommended first-line treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). While MPH's mechanism of action as a dopamine and noradrenaline transporter blocker is well known, how this translates to ADHD-related symptom mitigation is still unclear. As functional connectivity is reliably altered in ADHD, with recent literature indicating dysfunctional connectivity dynamics as well, one possible mechanism is through altering brain network dynamics.

Error-signaling in the developing brain.

While learning from mistakes is a lifelong process, the rate at which an individual makes errors on any given task decreases through late adolescence. Previous fMRI adult work indicates that several control brain networks are reliably active when participants make errors across multiple tasks. Less is known about the consistency and localization of error processing in the child brain because previous research has used single tasks.

Pediatric ADHD symptom burden relates to distinct neural activity across executive function domains.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent childhood disorder marked by inattention and/or hyperactivity symptoms. ADHD may also relate to impaired executive function (EF), but is often studied in a single EF task per sample. The current study addresses the question of unique vs.

Functional Connectivity Fingerprints at Rest Are Similar across Youths and Adults and Vary with Genetic Similarity.

Distinguishing individuals from brain connectivity, and studying the genetic influences on that identification across different ages, improves our basic understanding of functional brain network organization. We applied support vector machine classifiers to two datasets of twins (adult, pediatric) and two datasets of repeat-scan individuals (adult, pediatric). Classifiers were trained on resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fcMRI) data and used to predict individuals and co-twin pairs from independent data.

How Does Motivation Modulate the Operation of the Mentalizing Network in Person Evaluation?

The mentalizing network is theorized to play a central role in making sense of people (compared with nonsocial targets), but is its involvement affected when we make sense of people in a nondispassionate manner (e.g., favoritism toward others on the basis of group membership)? First, mixed findings and small samples have prevented strong conclusions about whether intergroup evaluation increases or decreases activation regions associated with the mentalizing network.

Brain activity in struggling readers before intervention relates to future reading gains.

Neural markers for reading-related changes in response to intervention could inform intervention plans by serving as a potential index of the malleability of the reading network in struggling readers. Of particular interest is the role of brain activation outside the reading network, especially in executive control networks important for reading comprehension. However, it is unclear whether any intervention-related executive control changes in the brain are specific to reading tasks or reflect more domain general changes.

Dynamic neural architecture for social knowledge retrieval.

Social behavior is often shaped by the rich storehouse of biographical information that we hold for other people. In our daily life, we rapidly and flexibly retrieve a host of biographical details about individuals in our social network, which often guide our decisions as we navigate complex social interactions. Even abstract traits associated with an individual, such as their political affiliation, can cue a rich cascade of person-specific knowledge.

Dissociable frontostriatal white matter connectivity underlies reward and motor impulsivity.

Dysfunction of cognitive control often leads to impulsive decision-making in clinical and healthy populations. Some research suggests that a generalized cognitive control mechanism underlies the ability to modulate various types of impulsive behavior, while other evidence suggests different forms of impulsivity are dissociable, and rely on distinct neural circuitry. Past research consistently implicates several brain regions, such as the striatum and portions of the prefrontal cortex, in impulsive behavior.

Individual differences in white matter microstructure predict semantic control.

In everyday conversation, we make many rapid choices between competing concepts and words in order to convey our intent. This process is termed semantic control, and it is thought to rely on information transmission between a distributed semantic store in the temporal lobes and a more discrete region, optimized for retrieval and selection, in the left inferior frontal gyrus. Here, we used diffusion tensor imaging in a group of neurologically normal young adults to investigate the relationship between semantic control and white matter tracts that have been implicated in semantic memory retrieval.