Foster Care Leads to Lower Irritability Among Adolescents with a History of Early Psychosocial Deprivation.

Irritability reflects a propensity for frustration and anger, and is a transdiagnostic symptom of both externalizing and internalizing psychopathology. While early adverse experiences are associated with higher levels of irritability, experiences of early psychosocial deprivation and whether family-based placements can mitigate the impact on subsequent irritability, remain underexplored. The current study examined irritability in 107 16-year-olds with a history of institutional care from a randomized controlled trial of foster care as an alternative to institutional care and 49 community comparison children. At age 16 years, irritability was assessed using parent- and self-report forms of the Affective Reactivity Index. Compared to community adolescents, those with a history of institutional care exhibited significantly elevated irritability levels. Among those who experienced institutional care, those randomized to foster care had lower levels of irritability compared to participants randomized to the care-as-usual group, and this effect persists after controlling for baseline negative emotionality. These findings suggest a causal link between high-quality foster care and lower irritability following psychosocial deprivation. Additionally, longer duration in institutional care and non-family placement at age 16 years were associated with higher levels of irritability, highlighting the role of caregiving in explaining variation in irritability in adolescence. Policies that support long-term, high-quality family placements for children without regular caregivers should be prioritized.

Mental health and job stress of nurses in surgical system: what should we care.

BACKGROUND: Job stress has significant influence on the mental health of health care providers. The mental health and job stress of operating room nurses remain unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the mental health and job stress of nurses in surgical system in China, to provide evidences for clinical nurse management and care. METHODS: The nurses in the surgical system of our hospital were investigated by questionnaire in December 2022. The general information questionnaire, symptom check list 90 (SCL-90) and nurses' job stressor scale (NJSS) were used for data collection. Pearson correlation and logistic analysis were conducted to evaluate the related influencing factors. RESULTS: A total of 171 nurses in surgical system were investigated. The mental health level of nurses in operating room was low. The job pressure of the nurses in the operating room was in the middle level. The nursing profession and work, workload and distribution, working environment and resources, patient care, management and interpersonal relationship were all positively correlated with SCL-90 score of nurses in operating room. Logistic regression analysis indicated that age, year of work experience, professional ranks and titles both are the influencing factors of SCL-90 score and of nurses in operating room. CONCLUSIONS: The mental health of nurses in surgical system is affected by work pressure, ages, working years and professional titles. These factors should be considered in the psychological intervention of nurses in operating room in order to improve the health of clinical nurses.

Phonemic mismatch negativity mediates the association between phoneme awareness and character reading ability in young Chinese children.

Poor phonological awareness is associated with greater risk for reading disability. The underlying neural mechanism of such association may lie in the brain processing of phonological information. Lower amplitude of auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) has been associated with poor phonological awareness and with the presence of reading disability. The current study recorded auditory MMN to phoneme and lexical tone contrast with odd-ball paradigm and examined whether auditory MMN mediated the associations between phonological awareness and character reading ability through a three-year longitudinal study in 78 native Mandarin-speaking kindergarten children. Hierarchical linear regression and mediation analyses showed that the effect of phoneme awareness on the character reading ability was mediated by the phonemic MMN in young Chinese children. Findings underscore the key role of phonemic MMN as the underlying neurodevelopmental mechanism linking phoneme awareness and reading ability.

Context and domain matter: the error-related negativity in peer presence predicts fear of negative evaluation, not global social anxiety, in adolescents.

BACKGROUND: Social anxiety symptoms are most likely to emerge during adolescence, a developmental window marked by heightened concern over peer evaluation. However, the neurocognitive mechanism(s) underlying adolescent social anxiety remain unclear. Emerging work points to the error-related negativity (ERN) as a potential neural marker of exaggerated self/error-monitoring in social anxiety, particularly for errors committed in front of peers. However, social anxiety symptoms are marked by heterogeneity and it remains unclear exactly what domain(s) of social anxiety symptoms are associated with ERN variation in peer presence, particularly within the adolescent period. METHODS: To advance and deepen the mechanistic understanding of the ERN's putative role as a neural marker for social anxiety in adolescence, we leveraged a social manipulation procedure and assessed a developmentally salient domain of social anxiety during adolescence - fear of negative evaluation (FNE). Adolescents residing in Hanzhong, a small city in the southwestern region of mainland China, had EEG recorded while performing a flanker task, twice (peer presence/absence); FNE, as well as global social anxiety symptoms, was assessed. RESULTS: Overall ERN increases in peer presence. FNE specifically, but not global levels of social anxiety symptoms, predicted ERN in peer presence. CONCLUSIONS: These data are the first demonstration that the ERN relates to a specific domain of social anxiety in adolescents, as well as the first evidence of such relations within a non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) sample. Results have important implications for theory and research into adolescent social anxiety.

Construction and Application of Standardized Postoperative Pain-Management Procedure for Patients With Perianal Abscess: A Retrospective Study.

Objective: The present study explored the construction and application of a standardized postoperative pain-management procedure for patients with perianal abscess. Methods: Two study groups (the observation group and the intervention group) were established retrospectively. The observation group comprised 46 patients with perianal abscess who enrolled in this study between June 2019 and June 2020. The intervention group comprised 48 patients who enrolled in the study between July 2020 and July 2021. All patients were enrolled using the convenience sampling method. A pain-management team was established, and standardized procedure management was implemented in the intervention group, while routine pain management was implemented in the observation group. Indices related to the patients' postoperative pain-control satisfaction and rehabilitation were compared between the two groups. Results: The patients' pain-control satisfaction, wound edema score, edema disappearance time, urinary retention, and defecation difficulty following intervention were better in the intervention group than in the observation group, and the differences were statistically significant (P < 0.05 for all). Conclusion: The implementation of the standardized postoperative pain-management procedure in patients with perianal abscess can effectively improve the patient's level of pain and satisfaction and promote rehabilitation.

A practical introduction to EEG Time-Frequency Principal Components Analysis (TF-PCA).

This EEG methods tutorial provides both a conceptual and practical introduction to a promising data reduction approach for time-frequency representations of EEG data: Time-Frequency Principal Components Analysis (TF-PCA). Briefly, the unique value of TF-PCA is that it provides a data-reduction approach that does not rely on strong a priori constraints regarding the specific timing or frequency boundaries for an effect of interest. Given that the time-frequency characteristics of various neurocognitive process are known to change across development, the TF-PCA approach is thus particularly well suited for the analysis of developmental TF data. This tutorial provides the background knowledge, theory, and practical information needed to allow individuals with basic EEG experience to begin applying the TF-PCA approach to their own data. Crucially, this tutorial article is accompanied by a companion GitHub repository that contains example code, data, and a step-by-step guide of how to perform TF-PCA: https://github.com/NDCLab/tfpca-tutorial. Although this tutorial is framed in terms of the utility of TF-PCA for developmental data, the theory, protocols and code covered in this tutorial article and companion GitHub repository can be applied more broadly across populations of interest.

Maternal diabetes-mediated RORA suppression in mice contributes to autism-like offspring through inhibition of aromatase.

Retinoic acid-related orphan receptor alpha (RORA) suppression is associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) development, although the mechanism remains unclear. In this study, we aim to investigate the potential effect and mechanisms of RORA suppression on autism-like behavior (ALB) through maternal diabetes-mediated mouse model. Our in vitro study in human neural progenitor cells shows that transient hyperglycemia induces persistent RORA suppression through oxidative stress-mediated epigenetic modifications and subsequent dissociation of octamer-binding transcription factor 3/4 from the RORA promoter, subsequently suppressing the expression of aromatase and superoxide dismutase 2. The in vivo mouse study shows that prenatal RORA deficiency in neuron-specific RORA null mice mimics maternal diabetes-mediated ALB; postnatal RORA expression in the amygdala ameliorates, while postnatal RORA knockdown mimics, maternal diabetes-mediated ALB in offspring. In addition, RORA mRNA levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells decrease to 34.2% in ASD patients (n = 121) compared to the typically developing group (n = 118), and the related Receiver Operating Characteristic curve shows good sensitivity and specificity with a calculated 84.1% of Area Under the Curve for ASD diagnosis. We conclude that maternal diabetes contributes to ALB in offspring through suppression of RORA and aromatase, RORA expression in PBMC could be a potential marker for ASD screening.

Maternal Diabetes-Induced Suppression of Oxytocin Receptor Contributes to Social Deficits in Offspring.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a group of neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by impaired skills in social interaction and communication in addition to restricted and repetitive behaviors. Many different factors may contribute to ASD development; in particular, oxytocin receptor (OXTR) deficiency has been reported to be associated with ASD, although the detailed mechanism has remained largely unknown. Epidemiological study has shown that maternal diabetes is associated with ASD development. In this study, we aim to investigate the potential role of OXTR on maternal diabetes-mediated social deficits in offspring. Our in vitro study of human neuron progenitor cells showed that hyperglycemia induces OXTR suppression and that this suppression remains during subsequent normoglycemia. Further investigation showed that OXTR suppression is due to hyperglycemia-induced persistent oxidative stress and epigenetic methylation in addition to the subsequent dissociation of estrogen receptor ß (ERß) from the OXTR promoter. Furthermore, our in vivo mouse study showed that maternal diabetes induces OXTR suppression; prenatal OXTR deficiency mimics and potentiates maternal diabetes-mediated anxiety-like behaviors, while there is less of an effect on autism-like behaviors. Additionally, postnatal infusion of OXTR partly, while infusion of ERß completely, reverses maternal diabetes-induced social deficits. We conclude that OXTR may be an important factor for ASD development and that maternal diabetes-induced suppression of oxytocin receptor contributes to social deficits in offspring.