Self-Reported and Observed Punitive Parenting Prospectively Predicts Increased Error-Related Brain Activity in Six-Year-Old Children.

The error-related negativity (ERN) is a negative deflection in the event-related potential (ERP) occurring approximately 50 ms after error commission at fronto-central electrode sites and is thought to reflect the activation of a generic error monitoring system. Several studies have reported an increased ERN in clinically anxious children, and suggest that anxious children are more sensitive to error commission--although the mechanisms underlying this association are not clear. We have previously found that punishing errors results in a larger ERN, an effect that persists after punishment ends. It is possible that learning-related experiences that impact sensitivity to errors may lead to an increased ERN. In particular, punitive parenting might sensitize children to errors and increase their ERN. We tested this possibility in the current study by prospectively examining the relationship between parenting style during early childhood and children's ERN approximately 3 years later. Initially, 295 parents and children (approximately 3 years old) participated in a structured observational measure of parenting behavior, and parents completed a self-report measure of parenting style. At a follow-up assessment approximately 3 years later, the ERN was elicited during a Go/No-Go task, and diagnostic interviews were completed with parents to assess child psychopathology. Results suggested that both observational measures of hostile parenting and self-report measures of authoritarian parenting style uniquely predicted a larger ERN in children 3 years later. We previously reported that children in this sample with anxiety disorders were characterized by an increased ERN. A mediation analysis indicated that ERN magnitude mediated the relationship between harsh parenting and child anxiety disorder. Results suggest that parenting may shape children's error processing through environmental conditioning and thereby risk for anxiety, although future work is needed to confirm this hypothesis.

Increased error-related brain activity in six-year-old children with clinical anxiety.

Anxiety disorders are the most frequently diagnosed form of psychopathology in children and often result in chronic impairment that persists into adulthood. Identifying neurobehavioral correlates of anxiety that appear relatively early in life would inform etiological models of development and allow intervention and prevention strategies to be implemented more effectively. The error-related negativity (ERN), a negative deflection in the event-related potential at fronto-central sites approximately 50 ms following the commission of errors, has been consistently found to be larger among anxious adults. The current study sought to extend these findings to even younger individuals: the ERN was elicited by a Go/NoGo task in 48 six year-old children with a clinical anxiety disorder assessed by diagnostic interview and 48 age-matched controls. In addition to child anxiety disorder, the ERN was examined in relation to maternal history of anxiety disorder, which was previously related to a smaller ERN. Anxious children were characterized by a larger (i.e., more negative) ERN and maternal history of anxiety disorder was associated with a smaller ERN. Thus, the relationship between an increased ERN and clinical anxiety is evident by age 6, and this effect appears independent from an opposing influence of maternal anxiety history on the ERN. These findings support the ERN as a promising neurobehavioral marker of anxiety, and implications are discussed.

Error-related brain activity in young children: associations with parental anxiety and child temperamental negative emotionality.

BACKGROUND: There is increasing interest in error-related brain activity in anxiety disorders. The error-related negativity (ERN) is a negative deflection in the event-related potential approximately 50 ms after errors compared to correct responses. Recent studies suggest that the ERN may be a biomarker for anxiety, as it is positively associated with anxiety disorders and traits in adults and older youth. However, it is not known if the ERN in young children is related to risk for anxiety disorders. We addressed this by examining the association of six-year olds' ERNs with two established risk factors for anxiety: parental anxiety disorder and child temperamental negative emotionality (NE). METHOD: The ERN was assessed using a Go/No-Go task in a community sample of 413 six-year olds. In a prior assessment at age 3, child temperament was evaluated using a laboratory observational measure and parental psychopathology was assessed using semi-structured diagnostic interviews. RESULTS: Children of mothers with anxiety disorders and children with greater temperamental NE (particularly fearfulness) exhibited significantly smaller ERNs than their peers. Paternal psychopathology, maternal mood and substance use disorders, and child positive emotionality were not associated with children's ERNs. CONCLUSION: Both maternal anxiety disorders and child NE (particularly fearfulness) were significantly associated with children's ERNs. However, the direction of these associations was opposite to the relations between ERNs and anxiety in older youth and adults. These results suggest that there may be a difference between risk and disorder status in the relation of error-related brain activity to anxiety between early childhood and late childhood/ early adolescence.

Electrocortical and behavioral measures of response monitoring in young children during a Go/No-Go task.

The current study examined behavioral measures and response-locked event-related brain potentials (ERPs) derived from a Go/No-Go task in a large (N = 328) sample of 5- to 7-year-olds in order to better understand the early development of response monitoring and the impact of child age and sex. In particular, the error-related negativity (ERN, defined on both error trials alone and the difference between error and correct trials, or ΔERN), correct response negativity (CRN), and error positivity (P(e)) were examined. Overall, the ERN, CRN, and the P(e) were spatially and temporally similar to those measured in adults and older children. Even within our narrow age range, older children were faster and more accurate; a more negative ΔERN and a more positive P(e) were associated with: increasing age, increased accuracy, and faster reaction times on errors, suggesting these enhanced components reflected more efficient response monitoring of errors over development. Girls were slower and more accurate than boys, although both genders exhibited comparable ERPs. Younger children and girls were characterized by increased posterror slowing, although they did not demonstrate improved posterror accuracy. Posterror slowing was also related to a larger P(e) and reduced posterror accuracy. Collectively, these data suggest that posterror slowing may be unrelated to cognitive control and may, like the P(e), reflect an orienting response to errors.

Do positive and negative temperament traits interact in predicting risk for depression? A resting EEG study of 329 preschoolers.

Researchers have long been interested in whether particular temperamental traits in childhood connote risk for depressive disorders. For example, children characterized as having high negative emotionality (NE; sadness, fear, anger) and low positive emotionality (PE; anhedonia, listlessness, and lack of enthusiasm) are hypothesized to be at risk for depression. Few studies, however, have examined whether (and how) these two temperamental dimensions interact to confer risk. In a sample of 329 preschoolers, the present study addressed this question by examining the relation between PE and NE and asymmetry in resting EEG activity in frontal and posterior regions, which are putative biomarkers for depression. Using a laboratory battery to define temperament, we found an interaction of PE and NE on posterior asymmetry. Specifically, when PE was high, NE was associated with greater relative right activity. When PE was low, NE was not related to posterior asymmetry. These results were driven by differences in EEG activity in right posterior regions, an area associated with emotional processing and arousal, and were specific to girls. We found no relation between temperament and frontal asymmetry. These findings suggest that, at least for girls, PE and NE may have an interactive effect on risk for depression.

An examination of error-related brain activity and its modulation by error value in young children.

The error-related negativity (ERN) is an event-related brain potential observed in adults when errors are committed, and which appears to be sensitive to error value. Recent work suggests that the ERN can also be elicited in relatively young children using simple tasks and that ERN amplitude might be sensitive to error value. The current study employed a Go No-Go paradigm in which 5-7-year-old children (N = 18) earned low or high points for correct responses. Results indicated that errors were associated with an ERN; however, the size was not reliably moderated by error value.

Chronic depression: update on classification and treatment.

A significant proportion of patients with depressive disorders suffer from chronic conditions. The DSM-IV recognizes several forms of chronic depression. Chronic depressions differ from nonchronic major depressive disorder (MDD) on many clinical, psychosocial, and familial variables. However, less support exists for current distinctions between the various forms of chronic depression. Antidepressant medications and at least some forms of psychotherapy are efficacious in treating chronic depression, and the combination of pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy appears to be superior to either monotherapy alone. Still, chronic depression is often inadequately treated, and many patients fail to respond or continue to experience residual symptoms after treatment. An important direction for future research is to elucidate the multiple pathways to chronic depression and to tailor treatments to specific etiopathogenetic subgroups.

Retrospective reports of parenting in depressed adults with and without comorbid panic disorder and social anxiety disorder.

Previous research has examined the role of parenting in the development of depression and anxiety disorders using retrospective reports of parenting behaviors. However, most studies have not considered comorbidity; the few that have did not differentially examine individual anxiety disorders and yielded inconsistent results. The present study compared retrospective parenting reports given by depressed individuals with no comorbid anxiety disorder, comorbid panic disorder, and comorbid social anxiety disorder. Results indicated that depressed men with panic disorder reported significantly greater maternal and nonsignificantly greater paternal protectiveness than depressed men without panic disorder but not than depressed women with and without panic disorder. No differences were found for the retrospective parenting reports given by depressed participants with or without social anxiety disorder. This work highlights the importance of examining specific anxiety disorders rather than grouping all depressed patients with any anxiety disorder together, as well as examining males and females separately when investigating the influence of parental behavior.

Emotional enhancement of perceptual priming is preserved in aging and early-stage Alzheimer's disease.

Perceptual priming for emotionally-negative and neutral scenes was tested in early-stage Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and healthy younger, middle-aged and older adults. In the study phase, participants rated the scenes for their arousal properties. In the test phase, studied and novel scenes were initially presented subliminally, and the exposure duration was gradually increased until a valence categorization was made. The difference in exposure duration required to categorize novel versus studied items was the dependent measure of priming. Aversive content increased the magnitude of priming, an effect that was preserved in healthy aging and AD. Results from an immediate recognition memory test showed that the priming effects could not be attributable to enhanced explicit memory for the aversive scenes. These findings implicate a dissociation between the modulatory effect of emotion across implicit and explicit forms of memory in aging and early-stage AD.

Impact of healthy aging on awareness and fear conditioning.

Fear conditioning has provided a useful model system for studying associative emotional learning, but the impact of healthy aging has gone relatively unexplored. The present study investigated fear conditioning across the adult life span in humans. A delay discrimination task was employed using visual conditioned stimuli and an auditory unconditioned stimulus. Awareness of the reinforcement contingencies was assessed in a postexperimental interview. Compared with young adult participants, middle-aged and older adults displayed reductions in unconditioned responding, discriminant conditioning, and contingency awareness. When awareness and overall arousability were taken into consideration, there were no residual effects of aging on conditioning. These results highlight the importance of considering the influence of declarative knowledge when interpreting age-associated changes in discriminative conditioned learning.

Non-invasive monitoring of functionally distinct muscle activations during swallowing.

OBJECTIVES: Dysphagia is an important consequence of many diseases. As some of the muscles of deglutition tend to be deep to the surface, needle electrodes are typically used, but this limits the number of muscles that can be simultaneously recorded. Since control of swallowing involves central pattern generators (CPGs) which distribute commands to several muscles, monitoring several muscles simultaneously is desirable. Here we describe a novel method, based on computing the independent components (ICs) of the simultaneous sEMG recordings (Muscle Nerve Suppl 9 (2000) 9) to detect the underlying functional muscle activations during swallowing using only surface EMG (sEMG) electrodes. METHODS: Seven normal subjects repeatedly swallowed liquids of varying consistency while sEMG was recorded from 15 electrodes from the face and throat. Active areas of EMG were excised from the recordings and the ICs of the sEMG were calculated. RESULTS: The ICs demonstrated less swallow-to-swallow variability than the raw sEMG. The ICs, each consisting of a unique temporal waveform and a spatial distribution, provided a means to segregate the complex sequence of muscle activation into rigorously defined separate functional units. The temporal profiles of the ICs and their spatial distribution were consistent with prior needle EMG studies of the cricopharyngeal, superior pharyngeal constrictor, submental and possibly arytenoid muscles. Other components appeared to correspond to EKG artifact contaminating the EMG recordings, laryngeal excursion, tongue movement and activation of the buccal and/or masseter musculature At least two of the components were affected by the consistency of the liquids swallowed. Re-testing one subject a week later demonstrated good intertrial reliability. CONCLUSIONS: We propose that the ICs of the sEMG provide a non-invasive means to assess the complex muscle sequence activation of deglutition.