The interaction between Greek affiliation and religiosity on problem drinking in college students.

Objective: Greek affiliation is associated with increased problem drinking in college, while religiosity typically offers protective benefits. The current study examined the interaction between Greek status and religiosity-both public (e.g., religious attendance) and private (e.g., prayer frequency)-on problem drinking. Participants and Methods: Undergraduates (N = 477) completed an online survey battery in late spring 2019, at the end of their freshman year. Results: Analyses focused on prayer frequency were not significant; however, the two-way interaction between Greek affiliation and religious attendance was significant. There was no difference in problem drinking across Greek and non-Greek students when religious attendance was low. As frequency of religious attendance increased, Greek students engaged in increased problem drinking compared to non-Greek students. Conclusions: Greek involvement may undermine the protective authority of religious practices on problem drinking, in part through moral licensing, whereby morally sound behaviors (i.e., religious attendance) may justify past or future problem drinking.

Neurostructural brain imaging study of trait dissociation in healthy children.

BACKGROUND: Trait dissociation has not been examined from a structural human brain mapping perspective in healthy adults or children. Non-pathological dissociation shares some features with daydreaming and mind-wandering, but also involves subtle disruptions in affect and autobiographical memory. AIMS: To identify neurostructural biomarkers of trait dissociation in healthy children. METHOD: Typically developing 9- to 15-year-olds (n = 180) without psychological or behavioural disorders were enrolled in the Developmental Chronnecto-Genomics (DevCoG) study of healthy brain development and completed psychological assessments of trauma exposure and dissociation, along with a structural T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. We conducted univariate ANCOVA generalised linear models for each region of the default mode network examining the effects of trait dissociation, including scanner site, age, gender and trauma as covariates and correcting for multiple comparison. RESULTS: We found that the precuneus was significantly larger in children with higher levels of trait dissociation but this was not related to trauma exposure. The inferior parietal volume was smaller in children with higher levels of trauma but was not related to dissociation. No other regions of interest, including frontal and limbic structures, were significantly related to trait dissociation even before multiple comparison correction. CONCLUSIONS: Trait dissociation reflects subtle cognitive disruptions worthy of study in healthy people and warrants study as a potential risk factor for psychopathology. This neurostructural study of trait dissociation in healthy children identified the precuneus as an essential brain region to consider in future dissociation research.

Attention bias variability and posttraumatic stress symptoms: the mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties.

Growing literature has linked attention bias variability (ABV) to the experience and treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Unlike assessments of attention bias in only one direction, ABV captures dynamic fluctuations in attention toward and away from threat. While mechanisms underlying the ABV-PTSD relations are unclear, some research implicates emotion regulation difficulties. The current study examined in community women with varying PTSD symptom severity, the amount of variance in the association between ABV and PTSD accounted for by emotion regulation difficulties. The full sample (N = 74) was comprised of 59% community women with PTSD due to domestic and/or sexual violence, and 41% community women without PTSD. All participants completed self-report questionnaires including the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-16, which assessed emotion regulation. ABV was calculated following a computerised dot probe task. The indirect effect of ABV on PTSD symptom severity through emotion regulation difficulties was statistically significant, while the direct effect between ABV and PTSD symptom severity was not significant. Findings replicated after controlling for total trauma exposure. Clinical implications and literature suggesting how ABV may perpetuate emotion regulation difficulties associated with PTSD symptomology are discussed.

Hippocampal and parahippocampal volumes vary by sex and traumatic life events in children

Background: Childhood trauma is reliably associated with smaller hippocampal volume in adults; however, this finding has not been shown in children, and even less is known about how sex and trauma interact to affect limbic structural development in children. Methods: Typically developing children aged 9 to 15 years who completed a trauma history questionnaire and structural T1-weighted MRI were included in this study (n = 172; 85 female, 87 male). All children who reported 4 or more traumas (n = 36) composed the high trauma group, and all children who reported 3 or fewer traumas (n = 136) composed the low trauma group. Using multivariate analysis of covariance, we compared FreeSurfer-derived structural MRI volumes (normalized by total intracranial volume) of the amygdalar, hippocampal and parahippocampal regions by sex and trauma level, controlling for age and study site. Results: We found a significant sex × trauma interaction, such that girls with high trauma had greater volumes than boys with high trauma. Follow-up analyses indicated significantly increased volumes for girls and generally decreased volumes for boys, specifically in the hippocampal and parahippocampalregions for the high trauma group; we observed no sex differences in the low trauma group. We noted no interaction effect for the amygdalae. Limitations: We assessed a community sample and did not include a clinical sample. We did not collect data about the ages at which children experienced trauma. Conclusion: Results revealed that psychological trauma affects brain development differently in girls and boys. These findings need to be followed longitudinally to elucidate how structural differences progress and contribute to well-known sex disparities in psychopathology.