Secular trend of childhood nutritional status in Calabria (Italy) and the United States: the spread of obesity.

The number of children who are overweight has been increasing worldwide, including in Mediterranean countries. Based on this, we hypothesized that the weights of Italian children from Calabria have also increased across the years, approaching even the levels of their North American counterparts. This cross-sectional study, which was conducted at 3 time points (1992, 2004, and 2013/2014) with Calabrian children between the ages of 9 and 10 years, aimed to (1) examine a 20-year trend of growth and weight in Calabrian children and (2) compare these trends to those of children from the United States within a similar period.

Association of Prepubertal and Adolescent Androgen Concentrations With Timing of Breast Development and Family History of Breast Cancer.

Importance: Early breast development is a risk factor for breast cancer, and girls with a breast cancer family history (BCFH) experience breast development earlier than girls without a BCFH.

Objectives: To assess whether prepubertal androgen concentrations are associated with timing of breast development (analysis 1) and to compare serum androgen concentrations in girls with and without a BCFH (analysis 2).

Design, Setting, And Participants: Prospective cohort study of 104 girls aged 6 to 13 years at baseline using data collected between August 16, 2011, and March 24, 2016, from the Lessons in Epidemiology and Genetics of Adult Cancer From Youth (LEGACY) Girls Study, New York site.

Operational momentum for magnitude ordering in preschool children and adults.

When adding or subtracting quantities, adults tend to overestimate addition outcomes and underestimate subtraction outcomes. They also shift visuospatial attention to the right when adding and to the left when subtracting. These operational momentum phenomena are thought to reflect an underlying representation in which small magnitudes are associated with the left side of space and large magnitudes with the right side of space.

Adolescent Changes in Cellular Proliferation in the Dentate Gyrus of Male and Female C57BL/6N Mice Are Resilient to Chronic Oral Corticosterone Treatments.

Adolescent development is marked by significant changes in neurobiological structure and function. One such change is the substantial adolescent-related decline in cellular proliferation and neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampal formation. Though the behavioral implications of these developmental shifts in cell proliferation are unclear, these changes might contribute to the altered cognitive and emotional functions associated with puberty and adolescence.

Synaptojanin and Endophilin Mediate Neck Formation during Ultrafast Endocytosis.

Ultrafast endocytosis generates vesicles from the plasma membrane as quickly as 50 ms in hippocampal neurons following synaptic vesicle fusion. The molecular mechanism underlying the rapid maturation of these endocytic pits is not known. Here we demonstrate that synaptojanin-1, and its partner endophilin-A, function in ultrafast endocytosis.

The metamorphosis of adolescent hormonal stress reactivity: A focus on animal models.

As adolescents transition from childhood to adulthood, many physiological and neurobehavioral changes occur. Shifts in neuroendocrine function are one such change, including the hormonal systems that respond to stressors. This review will focus on these hormonal changes, with a particular emphasis on the pubertal and adolescent maturation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.

Neuroendocrine stress reactivity of male C57BL/6N mice following chronic oral corticosterone exposure during adulthood or adolescence.

Adolescence is associated with the maturation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the major neuroendocrine axis mediating the hormonal stress response. Adolescence is also a period in development marked by a variety of stress-related vulnerabilities, including psychological and physiological dysfunctions. Many of these vulnerabilities are accompanied by a disrupted HPA axis.

Observation of directional storybook reading influences young children's counting direction.

Even before formal schooling, children map numbers onto space in a directional manner. The origin of this preliterate spatial-numerical association is still debated. We investigated the role of enculturation for shaping the directionality of the association between numbers and space, focusing on counting behavior in 3- to 5-year-old preliterate children.

Differential effects of stress on fear learning and activation of the amygdala in pre-adolescent and adult male rats.

Adolescence is accompanied by the maturation of several stress-responsive areas of the brain including the amygdala, a key region for the acquisition and expression of conditioned fear. These changes may contribute to the development of stress-related disorders in adolescence, such as anxiety and depression, and increase the susceptibility to these psychopathologies later in life. Here, we assessed the effects of acute restraint stress on fear learning and amygdala activation in pre-adolescent and adult male rats.

Function of Metallothionein-3 in Neuronal Cells: Do Metal Ions Alter Expression Levels of MT3?

A study of factors proposed to affect metallothionein-3 (MT3) function was carried out to elucidate the opaque role MT3 plays in human metalloneurochemistry. Gene expression of and was examined in tissues extracted from the dentate gyrus of mouse brains and in human neuronal cell cultures. The whole-genome gene expression analysis identified significant variations in the mRNA levels of genes associated with zinc homeostasis, including and .

Chronic Corticosterone Treatment During Adolescence Has Significant Effects on Metabolism and Skeletal Development in Male C57BL6/N Mice.

Glucocorticoids are potent modulators of metabolic and behavioral function. Their role as mediators in the "stress response" is well known, but arguably their primary physiological function is in the regulation of cellular and organismal metabolism. Disruption of normal glucocorticoid function is linked to metabolic disease, such as Cushing syndrome.

Adolescent changes in hindbrain noradrenergic A2 neurons in male rats.

During adolescence, the increased susceptibility to stress-related dysfunctions (e.g., anxiety, drug use, obesity) may be influenced by changes in the hormonal stress response mediated by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.

Prophylactic Ketamine Attenuates Learned Fear.

Ketamine has been reported to be an efficacious antidepressant for major depressive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. Most recently, ketamine has also been shown to be prophylactic against stress-induced depressive-like behavior in mice. It remains unknown, however, when ketamine should be administered relative to a stressor in order to maximize its antidepressant and/or prophylactic effects.

Voluntary inhalation of methamphetamine: a novel strategy for studying intake non-invasively.

Rationale: The abuse of the psychostimulant methamphetamine (MA) is associated with substantial costs and limited treatment options. To understand the mechanisms that lead to abuse, animal models of voluntary drug intake are crucial.

Objectives: We aimed to develop a protocol to study long-term non-invasive voluntary intake of MA in mice.

Adolescence and the ontogeny of the hormonal stress response in male and female rats and mice.

Adolescent development is marked by many changes in neuroendocrine function, resulting in both immediate and long-term influences on an individual's physiology and behavior. Stress-induced hormonal responses are one such change, with adolescent animals often showing different patterns of hormonal reactivity following a stressor compared with adults. This review will describe the unique ways in which adolescent animals respond to a variety of stressors and how these adolescent-related changes in hormonal responsiveness can be further modified by the sex and previous experience of the individual.

Differential localization of PER1 and PER2 in the brain master circadian clock.

The hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), locus of the master circadian clock, bears many neuronal types. At the cellular-molecular level, the clock is comprised of feedback loops involving 'clock' genes including Period1 and Period2, and their protein products, PERIOD1 and PERIOD2 (PER1/2). In the canonical model of circadian oscillation, the PER1/2 proteins oscillate together.

The tendency for social submission predicts superior cognitive performance in previously isolated male mice.

The imposition of subordination may negatively impact cognitive performance in common social settings (e.g., the classroom), and likewise, laboratory studies of animals indicate that the stress associated with social defeat can impair cognitive performance.

The impact of stress on the structure of the adolescent brain: Implications for adolescent mental health.

Adolescent development is associated with major changes in emotional and cognitive functions, as well as a rise in stress-related psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression. It is also a time of significant maturation of the brain, marked by structural alterations in many limbic and cortical regions. Though many elegant human neuroimaging studies have described the adolescent-related changes in these regions, relatively little is known about these changes in non-human animals.

Stress-induced oxytocin release and oxytocin cell number and size in prepubertal and adult male and female rats.

Studies indicate that adolescent exposure to stress is a potent environmental factor that contributes to psychological and physiological disorders, though the mechanisms that mediate these dysfunctions are not well understood. Periadolescent animals display greater stress-induced hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis responses than adults, which may contribute to these vulnerabilities. In addition to the HPA axis, the hypothalamo-neurohypophyseal tract (HNT) is also activated in response to stress.

Somatic and Neuroendocrine Changes in Response to Chronic Corticosterone Exposure During Adolescence in Male and Female Rats.

Prolonged stress and repeated activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis can result in many sex-dependent behavioural and metabolic changes in rats, including alterations in feeding behaviour and reduced body weight. In adults, these effects of stress can be mimicked by corticosterone, a major output of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and recapitulate the stress-induced sex difference, such that corticosterone-treated males show greater weight loss than females. Similar to adults, chronic stress during adolescence leads to reduced weight gain, particularly in males.

Two Left Hands, Ten Interlaced Fingers: A New Rubber Hand Illusion.

A variation on the rubber hand paradigm elicits an illusion in which the participant's sense of body ownership can switch back and forth between two viewed prosthetic hands. The interlaced fingers paradigm involves three prosthetic left hands: Two are positioned in full view of the participant, with their fingers interlaced, and the fingers of a third prosthetic hand are interlaced with the fingers of the participant's left hand, which is hidden from view. The examiner alternates brushstrokes to the two viewed prosthetic hands, while administering synchronous brushstrokes to the participant's hidden hand.

Lack of host specificity leads to independent assortment of dipterocarps and ectomycorrhizal fungi across a soil fertility gradient.

Plants interact with a diversity of microorganisms, and there is often concordance in their community structures. Because most community-level studies are observational, it is unclear if such concordance arises because of host specificity, in which microorganisms or plants limit each other's occurrence. Using a reciprocal transplant experiment, we tested the hypothesis that host specificity between trees and ectomycorrhizal fungi determines patterns of tree and fungal soil specialisation.