Diffuse ultrasound computed tomography.

An alternative approach to acquire transmission travel time data is proposed, exploiting the geometry of devices commonly used in ultrasound computed tomography for medical imaging or non-destructive testing with ultrasonic waves. The intent is to (i) shorten acquisition time for devices with a large number of emitters, (ii) to eliminate the calibration step, and (iii) to suppress instrument noise. Inspired by seismic ambient field interferometry, the method rests on the active excitation of diffuse ultrasonic wavefields and the extraction of deterministic travel time information by inter-station correlation. To reduce stochastic errors and accelerate convergence, ensemble interferograms are obtained by phase-weighted stacking of observed and computed correlograms, generated with identical realizations of random sources. Mimicking an imaging setup, the accuracy of the travel time measurements as a function of the number of emitters and random realizations can be assessed both analytically and with spectral-element simulations for phantoms mimicking the model parameter distribution. The results warrant tomographic reconstructions with straight- or bent-ray approaches, where the effect of inherent stochastic fluctuations can be made significantly smaller than the effect of subjective choices on regularisation. This work constitutes a first conceptual study and a necessary prelude to future implementations.

Adolescent harm avoidance as a longitudinal predictor of maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation in adulthood: The mediating role of inhibitory control.

The current study investigates the effect of adolescent harm avoidance (HA) on maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies (mCER) in early adulthood. The mediating role of inhibitory control and the moderating effect of gender on this link were also examined. Longitudinal data from 261 adolescents (147 female) were collected in three phases (T0, T1 and T2) over approximately 10 years. Results revealed that, after controlling for HA in adulthood (T2), female adolescents' HA (T0) significantly predicted mCER strategies after 10 years (T2), whereas male adolescents' HA only predicted catastrophizing. In addition, attentional impulsivity (T1) significantly mediated the relation between HA and mCER, though only among women. There was no significant indirect effect for emotional interference and stop-signal reaction time. Results revealed gender and measure specific associations between HA and inhibitory control and suggest that HA could induce inhibitory deficits leading to mCER.

Neuroticism developmental courses--implications for depression, anxiety and everyday emotional experience; a prospective study from adolescence to young adulthood.

BACKGROUND: Neuroticism is frequently discussed as a risk factor for psychopathology. According to the maturity principle, neuroticism decreases over the course of life, but not uniformly across individuals. However, the implications of differences in personality maturation on mental health have not been well studied so far. Hence, we hypothesized that different forms of neuroticism development from adolescence to young adulthood are associated with differences in depression, anxiety and everyday emotional experience at the age of 25. METHODS: A sample of 266 adolescents from the general population was examined three times over ten years (age at T0: 15, T1: 20 and T2: 25) using questionnaires, interviews and ecological momentary assessment (EMA). At all measurement points, neuroticism was assessed with the NEO inventory. At T2, diagnoses of major depression and anxiety disorders were captured with a structured clinical interview (M-CIDI). Phone-based EMA was used to assess emotional experience and affective instability over a two-week period at T2. RESULTS: The best fitting model was a latent class growth analysis with two groups of neuroticism development. Most individuals (n = 205) showed moderate values whereas 61 participants were clustered into a group with elevated neuroticism levels. In both groups neuroticism significantly changed during the ten year period with a peak at the age of 20. Individuals with a higher absolute level were at 14-fold increased risk for depression and 7-fold risk for anxiety disorders at the age of 25. In EMA, increased negative affect and arousal as well as decreased positive emotions were found in this high group. CONCLUSIONS: Other than expected, personality did not mature in our sample. However, there was a significant change of neuroticism values from adolescence to young adulthood. Further, over 20% of our participants showed a neuroticism development which was associated with adverse outcomes such as negatively toned emotional experience and a heightened risk to suffer from depressive and anxiety disorders in young adulthood. These high-risk persons need to be identified early to provide interventions supporting continuous personality maturation.

Longitudinal transmission pathways of borderline personality disorder symptoms: from mother to child?

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that the borderline symptomatology of the mother longitudinally predicts the number of borderline criteria met by the children. However, possible underlying mechanisms have rarely been examined. In line with transactional models of borderline personality disorder (BPD), we analyzed a broad concept of maladaptive mother-child interactions of mothers with BPD symptoms towards their children, including insensitive parenting and mother-child discrepancies, in reporting the child's psychopathological behavior. SAMPLING/METHODS: The sample was drawn from the population-based Greifswald Family Study and consisted of 295 children and their biological mothers. Both were examined at two points in time, first when the children were about 15 years old (T0) and again 5 years later (T1), using path analyses. RESULTS: Maladaptive mother-child interactions (especially an overprotective and rejecting parenting style and high discrepancies regarding internalizing problems) mediate the longitudinal transmission of borderline symptoms from mother to child. Furthermore, our data revealed that this result is consistent for various youth symptoms which are associated with BPD such as impulsivity or dissociation. CONCLUSION: The data of the current study imply that the transmission of borderline symptoms from mother to child is mediated by maladaptive mother-child interactions. For this reason early and professional support may be useful to prevent these children from developing severe psychopathology.

The association between depressive symptoms and emotion recognition is moderated by emotion regulation.

In this study, we examined the associations between depression and aspects of emotional functioning, namely emotion recognition, affectivity and interpersonal problems. Particularly, the moderating role of emotion regulation in these interrelations was tested in a sample of 85 women, who exhibited a wide range of depressive symptoms (Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)). Emotion recognition was assessed with a paradigm displaying a widely used set of photographs of the six basic emotions in graded intensities. Further, participants were examined regarding emotion regulation (Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ)), interpersonal problems (Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-Circumplex (IIP-C)) and affectivity (Affect Intensity Measure (AIM), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS)). Besides correlation analyses, Johnson-Neyman technique for probing interactions in linear regression models was applied to test for possible moderating effects. Depressive symptoms were positively correlated with error rates in anger recognition, but not with the other basic emotions. This association was moderated by suppression in that regard that more severely depressed women who more frequently used suppression showed superior recognition of angry faces than those with lower suppression values. Further, suppression was associated with an affective imbalance and interpersonal problems in women with current depressive disorder. In sum, our results emphasize the importance of differentiating subtypes of depression depending on emotion regulation capabilities for research on or treatment of emotional functioning in depression.

Maternal transmission of borderline personality disorder symptoms in the community-based Greifswald Family Study.

The authors longitudinally investigated the familial transmission of mothers' BPD symptoms to their offspring, taking maternal depression into consideration. The sample consisted of 323 offspring and their mothers from the community-based Greifswald Family Study. These families were examined for the first time when the children were about 15 years old (T(0)), and again 5 years later (T(1)), using self-ratings and interviews. Regression analyses revealed that maternal BPD symptoms and depression at T(0) were significant predictors of a number of BPD criteria that offspring met at T(1). Furthermore, the analyses also predicted offspring's general psychopathology. In sum, the authors' findings provide evidence for familial aggregation of BPD symptoms and heightened levels of general psychopathology in offspring of mothers with high levels of BPD features, pointing to the need for providing early intervention for this high-risk group.

Associations between the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and "mind-reading" in humans--an exploratory study.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: The application of intranasal oxytocin enhances facial emotion recognition in normal subjects and in subjects with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In addition, various features of social cognition have been associated with variants of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR). Therefore, we tested for associations between mind-reading, a measure for social recognition and OXTR polymorphisms. METHODS: 76 healthy adolescents and young adults were tested for associations between OXTR rs53576, rs2254298, rs2228485 and mind-reading using the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test" (RMET). RESULTS: After Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons, rs2228485 was associated with the number of incorrect answers when subjects evaluated male faces (P =0.000639). There were also associations between OXTR rs53576, rs2254298 and rs2228485 and other RMET dimensions according to P <0.05 (uncorrected). CONCLUSION: This study adds further evidence to the hypothesis that genetic variations in the OXTR modulate mind-reading and social behaviour.

[Prevalence and familiarity of personality disorders in Germany: results of the Greifswald family study]. / Prävalenz und Familiarität von Persönlichkeitsstörungen in Deutschland: Ergebnisse der Greifswalder Familienstudie.

BACKGROUND: There are only few data about the prevalence and familiarity of personality disorders (PD) in population based samples in Germany. Moreover, nearly no information exists for the prevalence of PDs among young adults. Thus, in the current study we examined the prevalence, familiarity and psychopathology of PDs, whereby middle-aged adults (about 45 years old) as well as the adult children of these persons (about 20 years old) were examined. METHODS: Participants were interviewed with the Structured Clinical Interview for Personality Disorders (SCID-II) which is based on the DSM-IV criteria for PDs and with the SCL-90. The sample consisted of 411 parents and their adolescent children (n=334). RESULTS: The prevalence for PDs was 11.2% in the parent sample and 14.7% in the adolescent sample. Cluster-B personality disorders (Cluster-B-PDs) were more often diagnosed in the adolescent sample, in particular. Moreover, we did find an elevated risk for children of parents with a PD than for children of parents without a PD to develop a PD where the former group also displayed elevated values with regard to their psychopathology. CONCLUSIONS: This study underlines the importance of PDs in community-based samples. The implications of our findings for treatment and classification of PDs are discussed.

The influence of parental drinking behaviour and antisocial personality disorder on adolescent behavioural problems: results of the Greifswalder Family Study.

AIM: Contradictory results have been produced by previous research on the question to what extent do children of alcoholics (COAs) differ in measures of externalizing symptoms from children of non-alcoholic parents. The goal of this study was to determine whether COAs are characterized by more behavioural problems than non-COAs, and also to determine the influence of a paternal antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) in this context. METHODS: In this study, 340 children and adolescents between the ages of 11 and 18 years and their parents were included. Of this sample, 76 adolescents showed a positive family history of alcoholism (FHalc) and 47 adolescents a positive history of a paternal ASPD (FHaspd). Externalizing symptoms, which where measured on the basis of maternal ratings and self-assessments, were analysed with a two-factorial MANCOVA with FHalc and FHaspd as independent factors. RESULTS: The results of the MANCOVA revealed that only children with paternal ASPD showed significant higher scores in attentional problems, self-rated aggression/delinquency and disruptive behaviour, while there were no differences for FHalc and the interaction effect. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show that the higher of behavioural problems relates primarily to a higher prevalence in both cases of ASPD among fathers. These results were discussed regarding the mediating role of a paternal ASPD for the differences in behavioural problems in COAs and non-COAs. Furthermore, children with FHalc and/or FHaspd represent high-risk groups and should be the focus of prevention and intervention measures.

[Observed, pursued, disintegrated--mental disorders among victims of non-criminal repressions in the former GDR]. / Beobachtet, verfolgt, zersetzt--psychische Erkrankungen bei Betroffenen nichtstrafrechtlicher Repressionen in der ehemaligen DDR.

OBJECTIVE: While there are numerous studies on the mental sequelae of political imprisonment in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), there is little knowledge about the prevalence of mental disorders in victims of other forms of political persecution. METHODS: 74 individuals, who were subject to non-criminal repressions in the GDR, were investigated by means of a standardized psychiatric interview. RESULTS: They had been exposed to a variety of reprisals such as observations, purposeful indiscretions, arranged professional failure and other forms of social marginalization. At least one mental disorder was found in 60 % of the participants. Affective disorders were the most common ones with a lifetime prevalence of 38 %, followed by anxiety (23 %) and somatoform disorders (28 %). CONCLUSIONS: The frequency of mental disorders in our sample of politically persecuted people was higher than in the general population and similar to that of political prisoners, who only show higher rates of anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorders.

Do alcohol expectancies and peer delinquency/substance use mediate the relationship between impulsivity and drinking behaviour in adolescence?

AIMS: To investigate (1). whether aggressive and delinquent behaviour problems predict subsequent adolescent drinking behaviour; and (2). to what extent this association is mediated by alcohol expectancies and/or peer delinquency/substance use. METHODS: 147 adolescents (approximately 15 years old) were interviewed with regard to their drinking behaviour. In addition, several self-rating questionnaires were given to gather information regarding the peers of these children. RESULTS: As proposed by the Acquired Preparedness Model (APM), we found that behavioural problems were related to quantity and frequency of alcohol consumed, and that this relationship was mediated by alcohol expectancies. Regarding peer relations, we found positive correlations between drinking behaviour and peer delinquency/substance use, aggression/delinquency and alcohol expectancies. Furthermore, the association between behavioural problems and drinking decreased dramatically if peer delinquency/substance use was accounted for. A hierarchical regression analysis revealed that both alcohol expectancies and peer delinquency/substance use predicted alcohol consumption of adolescents at the 1-year follow-up above and beyond the effects of age, sex, family history of alcoholism and aggression/delinquency of respondents. CONCLUSIONS: Alcohol expectancies and peer delinquency/substance use are both crucial to the amount and frequency of adolescent alcohol use. They should be considered in designing prevention and intervention strategies in this age group.