Parental Deprivation- and Threat-Based Factors Associated with Youth Emotion-Based Neurocircuitry and Externalizing Behavior: A Systematic Review.

Parental factors, including negative parenting practices (e.g., family conflict, low monitoring), parental depression, and parental substance use, are associated with externalizing behaviors among youth. However, the ways in which these parental factors are associated with youth brain function and consequent externalizing behavior has been less studied. Both the dimensional and stress acceleration models provide frameworks for understanding how parental factors may be associated with frontolimbic and frontoparietal networks implicated in emotional attention and regulation processes. The current review builds upon this work by examining how deprivation- and threat-based parental factors are associated with youth neurocircuitry involved in emotional functioning and externalizing behaviors. A systematic review using PRISMA guidelines was completed and included five studies assessing parenting behaviors, six studies assessing parental depressive symptoms and/or diagnosis, and 12 studies assessing parental history of substance use. Synthesis of reviewed studies discusses support for the dimensional and stress acceleration models within the context of deprivation and threat. Further, a limited number of studies tested (i.e., six studies) and supported (i.e., three studies) youth neural structure and function as a mediator of the association between parental factors and youth externalizing behavior. Specific recommendations for future work include more deliberate planning related to sample composition, improved clarity related to parental constructs, consistency in methodology, and longitudinal study design in order to better understand associations between contextual parental influences and youth neural and behavioral functioning.

Acculturative Orientations Among Hispanic/Latinx Caregivers in the ABCD Study: Associations With Caregiver and Youth Mental Health and Youth Brain Function.

Background: Population-based neuroscience offers opportunities to examine important but understudied sociocultural factors such as acculturation. Acculturation refers to the extent to which an individual retains their cultural heritage and/or adopts the receiving society's culture and is particularly salient among Hispanic/Latinx immigrants. Specific acculturative orientations have been linked to vulnerability to substance use, depression, and suicide and are known to influence family dynamics between caregivers and their children. Methods: Using data from first- and second-generation Hispanic/Latinx caregivers in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N = 1057), we examined how caregivers' acculturative orientation affects their mental health, as well as the mental health and brain function of their children. Neuroimaging analyses focused on regions associated with self- and affiliation-based social processing (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, insula, and temporoparietal junction). Results: We identified 2 profiles of caregiver acculturation: bicultural (retains heritage culture while adopting U.S. culture) and detached (discards heritage culture and rejects U.S. culture). Bicultural caregivers exhibited fewer internalizing and externalizing problems than detached caregivers; furthermore, youth exhibited similar internalizing effects across caregiver profiles. In addition, youth with bicultural caregivers displayed increased resting-state brain activity (i.e., fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and regional homogeneity) in the left insula, which has been linked to psychopathology; however, differences in long-range functional connectivity were not significant. Conclusions: Caregiver acculturation is an important familial factor that has been linked to significant differences in youth mental health and insula activity. Future work should examine sociocultural and neurodevelopmental changes across adolescence to assess health outcomes and determine whether localized, corticolimbic brain effects are ultimately translated into long-range connectivity differences.

Neural systems underlying RDoC social constructs: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis.

Neuroscientists have sought to identify the underlying neural systems supporting social processing that allow interaction and communication, forming social relationships, and navigating the social world. Through the use of NIMH's Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework, we evaluated consensus among studies that examined brain activity during social tasks to elucidate regions comprising the "social brain". We examined convergence across tasks corresponding to the four RDoC social constructs, including Affiliation and Attachment, Social Communication, Perception and Understanding of Self, and Perception and Understanding of Others. We performed a series of coordinate-based meta-analyses using the activation likelihood estimate (ALE) method. Meta-analysis was performed on whole-brain coordinates reported from 864 fMRI contrasts using the NiMARE Python package, revealing convergence in medial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, temporoparietal junction, bilateral insula, amygdala, fusiform gyrus, precuneus, and thalamus. Additionally, four separate RDoC-based meta-analyses revealed differential convergence associated with the four social constructs. These outcomes highlight the neural support underlying these social constructs and inform future research on alterations among neurotypical and atypical populations.

Extended functional connectivity of convergent structural alterations among individuals with PTSD: a neuroimaging meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating disorder defined by the onset of intrusive, avoidant, negative cognitive or affective, and/or hyperarousal symptoms after witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. Previous voxel-based morphometry studies have provided insight into structural brain alterations associated with PTSD with notable heterogeneity across these studies. Furthermore, how structural alterations may be associated with brain function, as measured by task-free and task-based functional connectivity, remains to be elucidated. METHODS: Using emergent meta-analytic techniques, we sought to first identify a consensus of structural alterations in PTSD using the anatomical likelihood estimation (ALE) approach. Next, we generated functional profiles of identified convergent structural regions utilizing resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) and meta-analytic co-activation modeling (MACM) methods. Finally, we performed functional decoding to examine mental functions associated with our ALE, rsFC, and MACM brain characterizations. RESULTS: We observed convergent structural alterations in a single region located in the medial prefrontal cortex. The resultant rsFC and MACM maps identified functional connectivity across a widespread, whole-brain network that included frontoparietal and limbic regions. Functional decoding revealed overlapping associations with attention, memory, and emotion processes. CONCLUSIONS: Consensus-based functional connectivity was observed in regions of the default mode, salience, and central executive networks, which play a role in the tripartite model of psychopathology. Taken together, these findings have important implications for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms associated with PTSD.

The role of temperament in alcohol use among college students.

Alcohol use and alcohol use disorder (AUD) among young adults are important public health concerns. The high prevalence and negative effects of alcohol use suggests that there is a need for improved understanding of the mechanisms underlying alcohol use. The current study utilizes the model of adult temperament proposed by Evans and Rothbart (2007) as the framework with which to examine the interplay among temperament domains and alcohol use. Specifically, we examined individual and interactive associations among self-report ratings of positive affect, negative affect, effortful control, orienting sensitivity and alcohol use patterns, among a large sample of college students. ANOVA and linear regression analyses indicated that positive affect was associated with engagement in hazardous alcohol use and binge drinking. Furthermore, effortful control was associated with reduced engagement in overall alcohol use. These results corroborate and extend previous work which suggests that positive affect and effortful control temperament domains are linked to alcohol use patterns in college-age young adults. These findings may serve as an important step for informed decision-making about prevention and intervention efforts related to problematic alcohol use in young adults.

The Roles of Salience and Value in Inattention Among Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Pilot Investigation.

Although inattention is a key symptom subdomain of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the mechanisms underlying this subdomain and related symptoms remain unclear. There is a need for more granular approaches that allow for greater specificity in linking disruptions in specific domains of cognitive performance (e.g., executive function and reward processing) with behavioral manifestations of ADHD. Such approaches may inform the development of more targeted therapeutic interventions. Here, we describe the results of a pilot study of elementary-aged children (ages 6-12years) with ADHD (n=50) and typically developing children (n=48) utilizing a cognitive science task designed to target two dissociable mechanisms of attentional selection: a goal-driven mechanism (i.e., reward/value-driven) and a salience-driven mechanism. Participants were asked to optimally extract and combine information about stimulus salience and value to maximize rewards. While results of this pilot study are ambiguous due to the small sample size and limited number of task trials, data suggest that neither participants with ADHD nor typically developing participants performed optimally to maximize rewards, though typically developing participants were somewhat more successful at the task (i.e., more likely to report high-value targets) regardless of task condition. Further, the manuscript examines several follow-up questions regarding group differences in task response times and group differences in task performance as related to sustained attention across the duration of the task. Finally, the manuscript examines follow-up questions related to heterogeneity in the ADHD group (i.e., age, DSM 5 presentation, and comorbid diagnosis) in predicting task performance.

The role of hedonics in the Human Affectome.

Experiencing pleasure and displeasure is a fundamental part of life. Hedonics guide behavior, affect decision-making, induce learning, and much more. As the positive and negative valence of feelings, hedonics are core processes that accompany emotion, motivation, and bodily states. Here, the affective neuroscience of pleasure and displeasure that has largely focused on the investigation of reward and pain processing, is reviewed. We describe the neurobiological systems of hedonics and factors that modulate hedonic experiences (e.g., cognition, learning, sensory input). Further, we review maladaptive and adaptive pleasure and displeasure functions in mental disorders and well-being, as well as the experience of aesthetics. As a centerpiece of the Human Affectome Project, language used to express pleasure and displeasure was also analyzed, and showed that most of these analyzed words overlap with expressions of emotions, actions, and bodily states. Our review shows that hedonics are typically investigated as processes that accompany other functions, but the mechanisms of hedonics (as core processes) have not been fully elucidated.