Reassessing the role of language dominance in n-2 language repetition costs as a marker of inhibition in multilingual language switching.

Speaking two or more languages shows bilingual flexibility, but flexible switching requires language control and often incurs performance costs. We examined inhibitory control assessing -2 repetition costs when switching three languages (L1 [German], L2 [English], L3 [French]). These costs denote worse performance in -2 repetitions (e.

Multimodal hyperscanning reveals that synchrony of body and mind are distinct in mother-child dyads.

Hyperscanning studies have begun to unravel the brain mechanisms underlying social interaction, indicating a functional role for interpersonal neural synchronization (INS), yet the mechanisms that drive INS are poorly understood. The current study, thus, addresses whether INS is functionally-distinct from synchrony in other systems - specifically the autonomic nervous system and motor behavior. To test this, we used concurrent functional near-infrared spectroscopy - electrocardiography recordings, while N = 34 mother-child and stranger-child dyads engaged in cooperative and competitive tasks.

Differentiating brain function of punishment versus reward processing in conduct disorder with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Objectives: Conduct disorder (CD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are reported to co-occur in about 30-50% of affected individuals. Research suggests that poor reinforcement-based decision-making may contribute to impaired social functioning in both youths with CD and ADHD. Considering its frequent co-occurrence this raises the question whether decision-making deficits in both disorders have a disorder-specific and/or shared neurobiological basis.

BDNF levels in adolescent patients with anorexia nervosa increase continuously to supranormal levels 2.5 years after first hospitalization.

Background: Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) influences brain plasticity and feeding behaviour, and it has been linked to anorexia nervosa in numerous studies. Findings in mostly adult patients point to reduced serum BDNF levels in the acute stage of anorexia nervosa and rising levels with weight recovery. However, it is unclear whether this increase leads to normalization or supranormal levels, a difference that is potentially important for the etiology of anorexia nervosa and relapse.

Sex differences in psychiatric comorbidity and clinical presentation in youths with conduct disorder.

Background: Conduct disorder (CD) rarely occurs alone but is typically accompanied by comorbid psychiatric disorders, which complicates the clinical presentation and treatment of affected youths. The aim of this study was to investigate sex differences in comorbidity pattern in CD and to systematically explore the 'gender paradox' and 'delayed-onset pathway' hypotheses of female CD.

Methods: As part of the FemNAT-CD multisite study, semistructured clinical interviews and rating scales were used to perform a comprehensive phenotypic characterization of 454 girls and 295 boys with CD (9-18 years), compared to 864 sex- and age-matched typically developing controls.

Auditory and Visual Response Inhibition in Children with Bilateral Hearing Aids and Children with ADHD.

Children fitted with hearing aids (HAs) and children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often have marked difficulties concentrating in noisy environments. However, little is known about the underlying neural mechanism of auditory and visual attention deficits in a direct comparison of both groups. The current functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) study was the first to investigate the behavioral performance and neural activation during an auditory and a visual go/nogo paradigm in children fitted with bilateral HAs, children with ADHD and typically developing children (TDC).

Investigating Sex Differences in Emotion Recognition, Learning, and Regulation Among Youths With Conduct Disorder.

Objective: Conduct disorder (CD) is a serious neurodevelopmental disorder marked by notably higher prevalence rates for boys than girls. Converging evidence suggests that CD is associated with impairments in emotion recognition, learning, and regulation. However, it is not known whether there are sex differences in the relationship between CD and emotion dysfunction.

Conducting Hyperscanning Experiments with Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.

Concurrent brain recordings of two or more interacting persons, an approach termed hyperscanning, are gaining increasing importance for our understanding of the neurobiological underpinnings of social interactions, and possibly interpersonal relationships. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is well suited for conducting hyperscanning experiments because it measures local hemodynamic effects with a high sampling rate and, importantly, it can be applied in natural settings, not requiring strict motion restrictions. In this article, we present a protocol for conducting fNIRS hyperscanning experiments with parent-child dyads and for analyzing brain-to-brain synchrony.

Like mother, like child? Maternal determinants of children's early social-emotional development.

Social-Emotional competencies evolve early in life. For example, early emotion regulation is learned primarily in the context of mother-child interaction, which may allow for maternal influences to shape children's social-emotional development. The aim of the current study was to longitudinally examine maternal determinants of children's early social-emotional development in a community-based sample of first-time mothers (N = 61, aged 22-39 years).

Performance in Sound-Symbol Learning Predicts Reading Performance 3 Years Later.

To master the task of reading, children need to acquire a coding system representing speech as a sequence of visual symbols. Recent research suggested that performance in the processing of artificial script that relies on the association of sound and symbol may be associated with reading skill. The current longitudinal study examined the predictive value of a preschool sound-symbol paradigm (SSP) of reading performance 3 years later.

Brain-to-brain synchrony in parent-child dyads and the relationship with emotion regulation revealed by fNIRS-based hyperscanning.

Parent-child synchrony, the coupling of behavioral and biological signals during social contact, may fine-tune the child's brain circuitries associated with emotional bond formation and the child's development of emotion regulation. Here, we examined the neurobiological underpinnings of these processes by measuring parent's and child's prefrontal neural activity concurrently with functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning. Each child played both a cooperative and a competitive game with the parent, mostly the mother, as well as an adult stranger.

Cognitive development in children of adolescent mothers: The impact of socioeconomic risk and maternal sensitivity.

Background: Adolescent motherhood is accompanied by a constellation of risk factors that translate into developmental risk for the off-spring. Socioeconomic risk that is associated with adolescent motherhood as well as maternal interactive behaviors may contribute to the impact of adolescent motherhood on children's developmental outcome.

Objective: Therefore, the aim of the current study was to investigate differences in children's cognitive development between children of adolescent and adult mothers in their first two years of life and to examine whether socioeconomic risk (e.

Effects of Early-Life Adversity on Hippocampal Structures and Associated HPA Axis Functions.

Early-life adversity (ELA) is one of the major risk factors for serious mental and physical health risks later in life. ELA has been associated with dysfunctional neurodevelopment, especially in brain structures such as the hippocampus, and with dysfunction of the stress system, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Children who have experienced ELA are also more likely to suffer from mental health disorders such as depression later in life.

[Attention and reading performance in children with ADHD, reading disorder and the combined condition].

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Dyslexia co-occur more often than expected by chance. Both disorders can have severe negative impact on children’s development. The aim of the present study was to compare attention and reading performance in children with ADHD, dyslexia and the comorbid condition.

Multidimensional assessment of neuroendocrine and psychopathological profiles in maltreated youth.

It has been debated whether children who have experienced early life stress (ELS), such as early caregiver separation show elevated risk for stress-related psychiatric disorders and a multi-symptom psychopathological profile that is not fully reflected in categorical assessments. In this study, we investigated dimensional measures of stress-related psychopathology in children in permanent out-of-home care, taking into account potential neuroendocrine interactions. In the current study, 25 children who had been placed in permanent out-of-home care before age 3 (years) and 26 controls (aged 10.

Developmental refinement of cortical systems for speech and voice processing.

Development typically leads to optimized and adaptive neural mechanisms for the processing of voice and speech. In this fMRI study we investigated how this adaptive processing reaches its mature efficiency by examining the effects of task, age and phonological skills on cortical responses to voice and speech in children (8-9years), adolescents (14-15years) and adults. Participants listened to vowels (/a/, /i/, /u/) spoken by different speakers (boy, girl, man) and performed delayed-match-to-sample tasks on vowel and speaker identity.

Kindergarteners' performance in a sound-symbol paradigm predicts early reading.

The current study examined the role of serial processing of newly learned sound-symbol associations in early reading acquisition. A computer-based sound-symbol paradigm (SSP) was administered to 243 children during their last year of kindergarten (T1), and their reading performance was assessed 1 year later in first grade (T2). Results showed that performance on the SSP measured before formal reading instruction was associated with later reading development.

Sustained selective attention to competing amplitude-modulations in human auditory cortex.

Auditory selective attention plays an essential role for identifying sounds of interest in a scene, but the neural underpinnings are still incompletely understood. Recent findings demonstrate that neural activity that is time-locked to a particular amplitude-modulation (AM) is enhanced in the auditory cortex when the modulated stream of sounds is selectively attended to under sensory competition with other streams. However, the target sounds used in the previous studies differed not only in their AM, but also in other sound features, such as carrier frequency or location.

Task-dependent decoding of speaker and vowel identity from auditory cortical response patterns.

Selective attention to relevant sound properties is essential for everyday listening situations. It enables the formation of different perceptual representations of the same acoustic input and is at the basis of flexible and goal-dependent behavior. Here, we investigated the role of the human auditory cortex in forming behavior-dependent representations of sounds.

Nonword reading and Stroop interference: what differentiates attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and reading disability?

Background: Attention deficits and impaired reading performance co-occur more often than expected by chance; however, the underlying mechanism of this association still remains rather unexplored.

Method: In two consecutive studies, children aged 8 to 12 years with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and children with reading disability (RD) were examined using a 2 (ADHD versus no ADHD) × 2 (RD versus no RD) factorial design. To further delineate deficient interference control from reading processes, we used a newly developed self-paced word/nonword reading task (Experiment 1, n = 68) and a modified computerized Stroop paradigm, including an orthographic phonological neighbor (OPN) condition (Experiment 2, n = 84).

Identifying brain systems for gaze orienting during reading: fMRI investigation of the Landolt paradigm.

The Landolt reading paradigm was created in order to dissociate effects of eye movements and attention from lexical, syntactic, and sub-lexical processing. While previous eye-tracking and behavioral findings support the usefulness of the paradigm, it remains to be shown that the paradigm actually relies on the brain networks for occulomotor control and attention, but not on systems for lexical/syntactic/orthographic processing. Here, 20 healthy volunteers underwent fMRI scanning while reading sentences (with syntax) or unconnected lists of written stimuli (no syntax) consisting of words (with semantics) or pseudowords (no semantics).