Brain development and imaging
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Working memory deficits may compromise cognitive flexibility in OCD
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterised by recurrent intrusive thoughts and/or behaviours. These traits imply deficits in cognitive flexibility in affected patients, but it is unclear at what stage of information processing these deficits might emerge. To address this question, Nicole Wolff and colleagues asked 25 adolescents with OCD and 25 matched healthy controls to complete a computer-based task switching paradigm.
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Cognitive flexibility in OCD: challenging the paradigm
Data from a new study by Nicole Wolff and colleagues suggest that cognitive flexibility can be better in children with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) than typically developing controls.
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Cortical thickness can differentiate conduct disorder subtypes
A study by Graeme Fairchild and colleagues has used a neuroimaging approach to compare the structural organization (or “covariance”) of brain regions between youths with different subtypes of conduct disorder (CD) and healthy controls (HC).
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Cortical hyperarousal in children may predict insomnia in adolescence
Read about the first developmental study to examine whether increased beta EEG activity in childhood precedes the onset of pathological insomnia symptoms in adolescence.
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MEG confirms hyper-vigilance followed by threat avoidance in children with anxiety disorder
A key etiological factor of anxiety disorders is an altered pattern of threat processing, but its neurobiological basis is relatively unclear.
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Accelerated cortical thinning correlates with early signs of depression
The brain undergoes structural changes as it develops over childhood, but whether abnormal structural changes are associated with emerging depressive symptoms in adolescence is unknown. Now, a longitudinal study that enrolled 205 participants aged 8-25 years without signs of depression has used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to monitor these brain changes over adolescence.
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Targeting the neural task-control circuitry to enhance self-regulatory control in bulimia nervosa
Previous research has found that bulimia nervosa is associated with dysregulated self-regulatory control, as a result of anatomical and functional disturbances to the neural task-control circuitry in the brain.
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Brain firing, but not wiring, is different in children with ADHD
When in a relaxed state, the brains of children and adolescents with ADHD tend to fire differently to those without the disorder, although there don’t seem to be changes in the physical connections or ‘wiring’ of their brains.
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