Handling traumatic grief reactions in children and adolescents post-9/11

October 1, 2019

Science Daily/Elsevier

In the wake of the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001 (9/11), researchers defined the 'traumatically bereaved' as those who experienced the loss of a mother, father, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, other family member, friend, and/or someone else after 9/11 happened. A new study reports that this disorder warrants separate clinical attention.

Grief reactions in traumatically bereaved youth, particularly in relation to a shared trauma, constitute a unique aspect of psychological distress. A new study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), published by Elsevier, reports that this disorder warrants separate clinical attention.

In the wake of the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001 (9/11), researchers from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), New York defined the "traumatically bereaved" as those who experienced the loss of a mother, father, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, other family member, friend, and/or someone else after 9/11 happened.

"Study findings support the potential clinical relevance of a new bereavement disorder during sensitive developmental periods spanning from middle childhood to late-adolescence," said lead author Lupo Geronazzo-Alman, PhD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medical Psychology, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, CUMC. "Grief reactions have added clinical value and merit clinical attention, because they describe maladaptive reactions after 9/11 that are not adequately captured by other disorders such as posttraumatic stress and major depression."

The findings, based on The World Trade Center (WTC) Board of Education (WTC-BOE) Study, are comprised of responses taken from a sample of 8,236 youth in grades 4 to 12, who answered a questionnaire six months after 9/11. It is representative of 715,966 New York City (NYC) public school students at the time of assessment.

The 277 youth (3.36 percent of the sample) experienced death of a family member; 576 (6.99 percent) and 1,003 (12.18 percent) youth experienced the death of a friend and of someone else they knew, respectively. In total, 1,696 youth were traumatically bereaved on 9/11, representing 133,446 (18.71 percent) 4th- through 12th-graders attending NYC public schools 6 months after 9/11.

The following five items selected from the UCLA Grief Screening Scale queried bereaved youth about the intensity of grief reactions during the previous month: missing the deceased person; continuing to feel connected to them; avoiding conversations; avoiding activities; and unhelpful rumination about the deceased person.

Symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) were assessed with the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC-IV) Predictive Scales (DPS), a screening measure derived from the DISC-IV.

To establish whether a new bereavement disorder warrants a place in psychiatric nosology, the researchers provided four types of convergent evidence showing that the (1) predictors (i.e., non-loss-related trauma versus traumatic bereavement); (2) clinical correlates (new health problems since 9/11, functional impairment); (3) factorial structure; and (4) phenomenology of grief reactions are independent of, and distinct from, other common types of post-disaster child and adolescent psychopathology, and capture a unique aspect of bereavement-related distress.

Grief reactions, PTSD, and MDD all have different predictors; traumatic bereavement was associated with grief independently of PTSD and MDD but was not associated with PTSD and MDD after adjusting for grief reactions.

After controlling for PTSD and MDD, grief reactions were significantly associated with functional impairment. Furthermore, a factor analysis showed that grief reactions loaded on one factor, which was distinct from factors underlying PTSD and MDD symptoms. Finally, youth with severe grief reactions could be grouped into two classes characterized by (i) negligible and (ii) only moderate probability of co-occurring PTSD and MDD symptoms, respectively.

"A primary benefit of including a new definition of bereavement disorder into the main text of the DSM-V will fill in a current gap in how clinicians are able to describe and explain reactions to traumatic bereavement, allowing us to better predict and prescribe the most appropriate treatment," concluded Dr. Geronazzo-Alman.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191001084005.htm

Better sleep habits lead to better college grades

Data on MIT students underscore the importance of getting enough sleep; bedtime also matters

October 1, 2019

Science Daily/Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Two MIT professors have found a strong relationship between students' grades and how much sleep they're getting. What time students go to bed and the consistency of their sleep habits also make a big difference. And no, getting a good night's sleep just before a big test is not good enough -- it takes several nights in a row of good sleep to make a difference.

Those are among the conclusions from an experiment in which 100 students in an MIT engineering class were given Fitbits, the popular wrist-worn devices that track a person's activity 24/7, in exchange for the researchers' access to a semester's worth of their activity data. The findings -- some unsurprising, but some quite unexpected -- are reported today in the journal Science of Learning in a paper by MIT postdoc Kana Okano, professors Jeffrey Grossman and John Gabrieli, and two others.

One of the surprises was that individuals who went to bed after some particular threshold time -- for these students, that tended to be 2 a.m., but it varied from one person to another -- tended to perform less well on their tests no matter how much total sleep they ended up getting.

The study didn't start out as research on sleep at all. Instead, Grossman was trying to find a correlation between physical exercise and the academic performance of students in his class 3.091 (Introduction to Solid-State Chemistry). In addition to having 100 of the students wear Fitbits for the semester, he also enrolled about one-fourth of them in an intense fitness class in MIT's Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation, with the help of assistant professors Carrie Moore and Matthew Breen, who created the class specifically for this study. The thinking was that there might be measurable differences in test performance between the two groups.

There wasn't. Those without the fitness classes performed just as well as those who did take them. "What we found at the end of the day was zero correlation with fitness, which I must say was disappointing since I believed, and still believe, there is a tremendous positive impact of exercise on cognitive performance," Grossman says.

He speculates that the intervals between the fitness program and the classes may have been too long to show an effect. But meanwhile, in the vast amount of data collected during the semester, some other correlations did become obvious. While the devices weren't explicitly monitoring sleep, the Fitbit program's proprietary algorithms did detect periods of sleep and changes in sleep quality, primarily based on lack of activity.

These correlations were not at all subtle, Grossman says. There was essentially a straight-line relationship between the average amount of sleep a student got and their grades on the 11 quizzes, three midterms, and final exam, with the grades ranging from A's to C's. "There's lots of scatter, it's a noisy plot, but it's a straight line," he says. The fact that there was a correlation between sleep and performance wasn't surprising, but the extent of it was, he says. Of course, this correlation can't absolutely prove that sleep was the determining factor in the students' performance, as opposed to some other influence that might have affected both sleep and grades. But the results are a strong indication, Grossman says, that sleep "really, really matters."

"Of course, we knew already that more sleep would be beneficial to classroom performance, from a number of previous studies that relied on subjective measures like self-report surveys," Grossman says. "But in this study the benefits of sleep are correlated to performance in the context of a real-life college course, and driven by large amounts of objective data collection."

The study also revealed no improvement in scores for those who made sure to get a good night's sleep right before a big test. According to the data, "the night before doesn't matter," Grossman says. "We've heard the phrase 'Get a good night's sleep, you've got a big day tomorrow.' It turns out this does not correlate at all with test performance. Instead, it's the sleep you get during the days when learning is happening that matter most."

Another surprising finding is that there appears to be a certain cutoff for bedtimes, such that going to bed later results in poorer performance, even if the total amount of sleep is the same. "When you go to bed matters," Grossman says. "If you get a certain amount of sleep -- let's say seven hours -- no matter when you get that sleep, as long as it's before certain times, say you go to bed at 10, or at 12, or at 1, your performance is the same. But if you go to bed after 2, your performance starts to go down even if you get the same seven hours. So, quantity isn't everything."

Quality of sleep also mattered, not just quantity. For example, those who got relatively consistent amounts of sleep each night did better than those who had greater variations from one night to the next, even if they ended up with the same average amount.

This research also helped to provide an explanation for something that Grossman says he had noticed and wondered about for years, which is that on average, the women in his class have consistently gotten better grades than the men. Now, he has a possible answer: The data show that the differences in quantity and quality of sleep can fully account for the differences in grades. "If we correct for sleep, men and women do the same in class. So sleep could be the explanation for the gender difference in our class," he says.

More research will be needed to understand the reasons why women tend to have better sleep habits than men. "There are so many factors out there that it could be," Grossman says. "I can envision a lot of exciting follow-on studies to try to understand this result more deeply."

"The results of this study are very gratifying to me as a sleep researcher, but are terrifying to me as a parent," says Robert Stickgold, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Harvard Medical School, who was not connected with this study. He adds, "The overall course grades for students averaging six and a half hours of sleep were down 50 percent from other students who averaged just one hour more sleep. Similarly, those who had just a half-hour more night-to-night variation in their total sleep time had grades that dropped 45 percent below others with less variation. This is huge!"

Stickgold says "a full quarter of the variation in grades was explained by these sleep parameters (including bedtime). All students need to not only be aware of these results, but to understand their implication for success in college. I can't help but believe the same is true for high school students." But he adds one caution: "That said, correlation is not the same as causation. While I have no doubt that less and more variable sleep will hurt a student's grades, it's also possible that doing poorly in classes leads to less and more variable sleep, not the other way around, or that some third factor, such as ADHD, could independently lead to poorer grades and poorer sleep."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191001083956.htm

Early life racial discrimination linked to depression, accelerated aging

September 30, 2019

Science Daily/Georgia State University

Early life stress from racial discrimination puts African Americans at greater risk for accelerated aging, a marker for premature development of serious health problems and perhaps a shorter life expectancy, according to a study led by a Georgia State University psychology researcher.

Sierra Carter, an assistant professor of psychology at Georgia State, and her collaborators used data based on questionnaires as well as blood samples to examine aging at the cellular level.

"What we found was for these African American youth, experiences of early life racial discrimination was influencing an accelerated aging process within the body," said Carter.

"The stress of racial discrimination can be thought of as a chronic stressful stimulus that can wear and tear down body systems," she said. "By following these individuals over time, we can see that this stressor is influencing a physiological weathering process that results in premature aging of body systems. This accelerated weathering process that we see from the stress of racial discrimination could be influencing some of the racial health disparities that we see for African American populations, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease."

Carter and her collaborators used data from The Family and Community Health Study (FACHS), a longitudinal study of more than 800 African American families conducted in multiple cities, starting in 1996. The ongoing study, supported by the National Institutes of Health and housed at the University of Georgia, focuses on of the effect of parental support and discipline styles, family interactions, neighborhood characteristics and other contextual factors affecting African American parents and their children.

Data, including self-reported questionnaires, were collected every two to three years and expanded in 2015 to include blood draws to assess participants' risks for heart disease and diabetes and to test for biomarkers that predict the early onset of these diseases. Carter included data from 368 people in her analyses.

"What we found was that experiences of racial discrimination were related to elevated depressive symptoms at age 10-15 and 20-29, even when controlling for health behaviors like smoking and alcohol use," Carter said. "So, we are looking at this elevation in depressive symptoms over many years that's really influencing accelerated aging. So, our results are suggesting that early life experiences of racial discrimination is related to accelerated aging, but really the mechanism that could be driving a part of this is depressive symptoms. We might want to think about how these mental and physical health factors intertwine."

Carter is planning the next steps of the study to focus more closely on accelerated aging processes, resiliency, life course trajectories toward depression and possible early life interventions.

The ultimate goal for society would be to prevent racial discrimination from happening, she said, but in addition to a wide range of systematic changes to accomplish that goal, the field of psychology can integrate with other disciplines to play a stronger role in thinking about intervention strategies.

"We do have evidence-based treatments for mental health conditions like depression" Carter said. "As a clinical psychologist, I think it is important that we start acknowledging within our treatments that the stress of racism can influence both mental and physical health symptoms at an early age in life. I'm hoping that this research will help us to think critically about racism as an impactful stressor on health and ways that culturally-informed intervention strategies can aid in reducing the long-term impact of this stressor."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190930161920.htm

Teenagers less likely to respond to mothers with controlling tone of voice

New study showed adolescents were less likely to want to engage with schoolwork when mothers spoke with a pressurising tone

September 26, 2019

Science Daily/Cardiff University

Teenagers are less likely to cooperate and put effort into their mother's requests when they are said in a controlling tone of voice, researchers have found.

Speaking to a son or daughter in a pressurising tone is also accompanied by a range of negative emotions and less feelings of closeness, a new study has discovered.

The experimental study involving over 1000 adolescents aged 14-15 is the first to examine how subjects respond to the tone of voice when receiving instructions from their mothers, even when the specific words that are used are exactly the same.

Lead author of the study Dr Netta Weinstein, from Cardiff University, said: "If parents want conversations with their teens to have the most benefit, it's important to remember to use supportive tones of voice. It's easy for parents to forget, especially if they are feeling stressed, tired, or pressured themselves."

The study showed that subjects were much more likely to engage with instructions that conveyed a sense of encouragement and support for self-expression and choice.

The results, whilst of obvious interest to parents, could also be of relevance to schoolteachers whose use of more motivational language could impact the learning and well-being of students in their classrooms.

"Adolescents likely feel more cared about and happier, and as a result they try harder at school, when parents and teachers speak in supportive rather than pressuring tones of voice," Dr Weinstein continued.

The new study, published today in the journal Developmental Psychology, involved 486 males and 514 females, aged 14-15.

In the experiment each of the subjects was randomly assigned to groups that would hear identical messages delivered by mothers of adolescents in either a controlling, autonomy-supportive, or neutral tone of voice.

Expressions of control impose pressure and attempt to coerce or push listeners to action. In contrast, those that express 'autonomy support' convey a sense of encouragement and support for listeners' sense of choice and opportunity for self-expression.

Each of the mothers delivered 30 sentences that centred around school work, and included instructions such as: "It's time now to go to school," "you will read this book tonight," and "you will do well on this assignment."

After the delivery of the messages, each student undertook a survey and answered questions about how they would feel if their own mother had spoken to them in that particular way.

The findings showed that the tone of voice used by mothers can impact significantly on teenagers' emotional, relational, and behavioural intention responses.

Across most outcomes, adolescents who listened to mothers making motivational statements in a controlling tone of voice responded in undesirable ways. In contrast, autonomy-supportive tones elicited positive reactions from listeners as compared to listening to mothers who used a neutral tone of voice to deliver their motivational sentences.

Co-author of the study Professor Silke Paulmann, of the University of Essex, added: "These results nicely illustrate how powerful our voice is and that choosing the right tone to communicate is crucial in all of our conversations."

The researchers now intend to take their work a step further by investigating how tone of voice can impact physiological responses, such as heart rates or skin conductance responses, and how long lasting these effects may be.

The study was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and involved researchers from Ghent University and the University of Essex.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190926202307.htm

Kids in poor, urban schools learn just as much as others

September 25, 2019

Science Daily/Ohio State University

Schools serving disadvantaged and minority children teach as much to their students as those serving more advantaged kids, according to a new nationwide study.

The results may seem surprising, given that student test scores are normally higher in suburban and wealthier school districts than they are in urban districts serving mostly disadvantaged and minority children.

But those test scores speak more to what happens outside the classroom than how schools themselves are performing, said Douglas Downey, lead author of the new study and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University.

"We found that if you look at how much students are learning during the school year, the difference between schools serving mostly advantaged students and those serving mostly disadvantaged students is essentially zero," Downey said.

"Test scores at one point in time are not a fair way to evaluate the impact of schools."

Downey conducted the study with David Quinn of the University of Southern California and Melissa Alcaraz, a doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State. Their study was published online recently in the journal Sociology of Education and will appear in a future print edition.

Many school districts have moved away from evaluating schools by test scores, instead using a "growth" or "value-added" measure to see how much students learn over a calendar year.

While these growth models are considered by the researchers to be a big improvement over using test scores at one point in time, they still don't account for the summers, during which kids from advantaged areas don't backtrack in their learning the way children from disadvantaged areas often do.

This "summer loss" for disadvantaged students isn't surprising, given the difficulties they face with issues like family instability and food insecurity, Downey said.

"What is remarkable is not what happens in summer, but what happens when these disadvantaged students go back to school: The learning gap essentially disappears. They tend to learn at the same rate as those from the wealthier, suburban schools," he said.

"That is shocking to a lot of people who just assume that schools in disadvantaged areas are not as good."

Downey and his colleagues used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study -- Kindergarten Cohort 2010-2011, which involved more than 17,000 students in 230 schools around the country. This study used a subsample of about 3,000 of the children who participated.

Children took reading tests at the beginning and end of kindergarten and near completion of their first and second grades.

That allowed the researchers to calculate how much children learned during three school periods and compare that to what happened during the summers.

This approach is similar to how new drugs are sometimes tested in medical research, Downey explained. In drug trials, researchers compare how patients fare while they are taking a drug to when they are not.

"In our case, we think of schools as the treatment and the summers as the control period when the students aren't receiving treatment," he said.

The results showed that children in schools serving disadvantaged students, on average, saw their reading scores rise about as much during the school year as did those in more advantaged schools.

That doesn't mean all schools were equally good, Downey said. But the findings showed that the "good" schools weren't all concentrated in the wealthier areas and the "bad" schools in the poor areas.

Downey said there are limitations to this study, most importantly that the data doesn't allow researchers to see what happens to students in later grades.

But this isn't the first time Downey and his colleagues have found that schools in advantaged and disadvantaged areas produce similar learning. A 2008 study, also published in the Sociology of Education, found similar results, but with less comprehensive data than this new research.

Downey said he has been somewhat surprised that the 2008 study and this new research hasn't engaged education researchers more.

"The field has not responded as energetically as I expected. I think our findings undermine a lot of social science assumptions about what role schools play in promoting disadvantage," he said.

Instead of being "engines of inequality" -- as some have argued -- this new research suggests schools are neutral or even slightly compensate for inequality elsewhere.

Disadvantaged kids start with poorer home environments and neighborhoods and begin school behind students who come from wealthier backgrounds, Downey said.

"But when they go to school they stop losing ground. That doesn't agree with the traditional story about how schools supposedly add to inequality," he said.

"We are probably better off putting more energy toward addressing the larger social inequalities that are producing these large gaps in learning before kids even enter school."

Downey emphasized that the results don't mean that school districts don't need to invest in disadvantaged schools.

"As it stands, schools mostly prevent inequality from increasing while children are in school," he said.

"With more investments, it may be possible to create schools that play a more active role in reducing inequality."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190925115109.htm

Studies link air pollution to mental health issues in children

September 25, 2019

Science Daily/Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

Three new studies by scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Cincinnati, highlight the relationship between air pollution and mental health in children.

A study to be published Sept. 25 in Environmental Health Perspectives found that short-term exposure to ambient air pollution was associated with exacerbations of psychiatric disorders in children one to two days later, as marked by increased utilization of the Cincinnati Children's emergency department for psychiatric issues. The study also found that children living in disadvantaged neighborhoods may be more susceptible to the effects of air pollution compared to other children, especially for disorders related to anxiety and suicidality.

The lead authors of this study are Cole Brokamp, PhD, and Patrick Ryan, PhD. They are researchers in the division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at Cincinnati Children's.

"This study is the first to show an association between daily outdoor air pollution levels and increased symptoms of psychiatric disorders, like anxiety and suicidality, in children," says Dr. Brokamp. "More research is needed to confirm these findings, but it could lead to new prevention strategies for children experiencing symptoms related to a psychiatric disorder. The fact that children living in high poverty neighborhoods experienced greater health effects of air pollution could mean that pollutant and neighborhood stressors can have synergistic effects on psychiatric symptom severity and frequency."

Two other Cincinnati Children's studies were recently published that also link air pollution to children's mental health:

 ·      A study published in Environmental Research found an association between recent high traffic related air pollution (TRAP) exposure and higher generalized anxiety. The study is believed to be the first to use neuroimaging to link TRAP exposure, metabolic disturbances in the brain, and generalized anxiety symptoms among otherwise healthy children. The study found higher myoinositol concentrations in the brain -- a marker of the brain's neuroinflammatory response to TRAP.

·      The lead authors of this study are Kelly Brunst, PhD, a researcher in the department of Environmental Health at the University of Cincinnati, and Kim Cecil, PhD, a researcher at Cincinnati Children's.

·      A study published in Environmental Research found that exposure to TRAP during early life and across childhood was significantly associated with self-reported depression and anxiety symptoms in 12 year olds. Similar findings have been reported in adults, but research showing clear connections between TRAP exposure and mental health in children has been limited.

The lead authors of the study are Kimberly Yolton, PhD, director of research in the division of General and Community Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's, and Dr. Ryan.

"Collectively, these studies contribute to the growing body of evidence that exposure to air pollution during early life and childhood may contribute to depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems in adolescence," says Dr. Ryan. "More research is needed to replicate these findings and uncover underlying mechanisms for these associations."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190925075731.htm

Teens sleep 43 more minutes per night after combo of two treatments

September 25, 2019

Science Daily/Stanford Medicine

Teenagers got 43 more minutes of sleep a night after a four-week intervention that reset their body clocks and helped them go to bed earlier, a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine has shown.

The treatment had two components: brief, early morning flashes of bright, broad-spectrum white light to reset the teens' circadian clocks, and cognitive behavioral therapy that motivated them to try earlier bedtimes. The findings will be published online Sept. 25 in JAMA Network Open.

"Using a passive light therapy during sleep, we can help teens get an extra 43 minutes of sleep every single night," said senior author Jamie Zeitzer, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

The light was delivered by a device in the teens' bedrooms that was programmed to deliver 3-millisecond flashes of light every 20 seconds during the last few hours of sleep. The brief flashes of light did not wake the teens. Zeitzer's previous research on jet lag had shown that exposure to short flashes of light can trick the brain into adjusting to a new time zone, even during sleep.

Chronic sleep deprivation is common in teenagers, Zeitzer said. The body's circadian clock, which controls daily rhythms of when we sleep and when we're awake, is naturally set later in teens than in children or in adults, meaning that teens often don't feel sleepy until late at night. Teens might also stay up late because of such social influences as homework and electronic device use. Early school start times often require them to wake up before they're fully rested, further contributing to sleep deprivation.

Prior studies tested whether cognitive behavioral therapy alone could help teens go to sleep earlier. Successes were modest: After the treatments, teens went to sleep 10 to 15 minutes sooner, on average. But these interventions might have put participants at odds with their own body clocks, asking them to try to fall asleep before they were tired, a behavior that is difficult to sustain, Zeitzer said.

"We have a biological drive to stay awake in the hours before we normally go to sleep," he said. "So our team wondered if we could adjust the circadian timing, having the teens essentially move their brains to Denver while they're living in California."

In the first four-week portion of the new study, researchers tested light therapy alone in a group of 72 teenagers. For four weeks, half the participants were exposed to the frequent brief light flashes during the final three hours of their normal sleep period. The remaining participants received a sham light therapy treatment, consisting of three bright flashes of light per hour -- too little to reset their body clocks.

Although the light therapy caused the teens who were exposed to it to feel more tired earlier at night, they still stayed up late. Using the light alone was not enough to increase the amount of time they slept.

"We had to convince teens to try to go to sleep earlier," Zeitzer said.

So, in the second four-week phase of the study, researchers recruited 30 teens; half of them received light therapy during their final two hours of sleep, and half had sham light therapy.

But in this phase of the study, all of the teens also participated in four one-hour sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy to encourage them to go to sleep earlier. Therapists worked with each teen to identify areas of their lives they cared about that would be better if they had more sleep -- such as academics, physical appearance or athletic performance -- and used these to help motivate the teens. The cognitive behavioral therapy also included giving them information about the body clock, sleep hygiene and strategies for waking up earlier on weekends.

In addition to the extra sleep, participants who received both light therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy went to bed an average of 50 minutes earlier than participants who had only cognitive behavioral therapy. In addition, the participants receiving both therapies were six times more successful than those receiving only cognitive behavioral therapy at maintaining consistent bedtimes.

Prior studies of light therapy for resetting the circadian clock have shown that the early morning flashes of light must continue daily to be effective, Zeitzer said. "The cool part, for an intervention teens would potentially have to live with for years, is that it is completely passive. We set up the flashing light in the person's bedroom and put it on a timer; they don't have to wear a device, remember to turn it on, or do anything else."

The flashing light used in the study was a programmable bridge beacon; it is not marketed as a sleep aid, Zeitzer said.

The next step, he said, is to figure out the best way to deliver brief cognitive behavioral therapy for improving sleep duration to large numbers of people.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190925113000.htm

Do children's brains really get thinner?

Neuroscientists provide striking results that suggest the brains of children likely do not thin as much as expected

September 26, 2019

Science Daily/Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

The brains of young children get thinner as they grow. At least that's what scientists used to believe. For decades, the debate has been about how and why that happens. Now neuroscientists suggest that it may be partly an illusion.

Using state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques, Vaidehi Natu at Stanford University in California, along with her colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, provide striking results that suggest the brains of children likely do not thin as much as expected. Rather, it seems there is an increase of myelin, which is the fatty sheath insulating nerve fibers.

Stepping back a bit, studies have shown repeatedly that certain regions of the cerebral cortex (the outer-most layer of the brain) get thinner as children develop. And at a mere 3mm thick, on average, studies have reported that kids can apparently lose close to 1mm of gray matter by adulthood. Various hypotheses have been put forth to explain these huge losses. For example, it is established that gray matter cells and their connections can be naturally 'pruned', presumably to promote a more efficient brain. So perhaps extensive pruning in young brains could explain the thinning. Alternatively, we know that our brains expand during development. Perhaps the cortex gets stretched in the process? The new research certainly does not rule out these processes, and in fact finds evidence for the latter. However, the new work does suggest that a prominent change has gone undetected, due to limitations of prior measurements.

More specifically, the present study shows that when measured with quantitative MRI (or qMRI), it appears that young brains are actually becoming more myelinated. That's a good thing, but it may be messing up estimates of cortical thickness (the gray matter). Myelin is the 'white' in white matter. It's a fatty sheath that insulates many nerve fibers and allows faster neurotransmission. The problem is, measurements of gray matter thickness critically depend on detecting the border between white and gray matter. As Natu and Kirilina have found out, this limit can be obscured and cortical thickness underestimated if myelination increases during development. The researchers obtained these results by examining adults and children using state-of-the-art quantitative MRI techniques.

Evgeniya Kirilina, who is working in the department of Neurophysics at MPI CBS, offers a word of caution. 'The fact that the cortex thins during development is well established, even with histological methods. We are not claiming that thinning does not occur. But estimates may be off in some cases due to concurrent myelination.'

The team was actually looking at three specialized patches of brain in higher visual cortex. Despite their close proximity, each showed a unique developmental pattern, underlining the need for cautious interpretation. The face and word recognition areas showed the myelination effect described above, whereas the place recognition area showed apparent thinning but no indication of myelination. Instead, it seemed to structurally change, stretching over time. Highlighting the important link between structure and function, the differences in myelination of these functionally specialized regions were confirmed in post mortem brains of adults, using both ultra-high field MRI and histology.

The implications of these new findings are quite broad. Decades of work will need to be revisited and assessed for accuracy. For example, there is a rich literature suggesting that the thickness of the cortex changes when learning new skills. It will now need to be determined whether myelination also plays a role. Further, degradation of myelin can lead to debilitating diseases. This is exactly what occurs in Multiple Sclerosis. More accurate measurement techniques like qMRI promise to improve our detection, monitoring, and treatment of such conditions.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190926092418.htm

Even mother's mild depressive symptoms affect the child's emotional well-being

September 23, 2019

Science Daily/National Institute for Health and Welfare

Even mild long-term depressive symptoms among mothers are connected with emotional problems among small children such as hyperactivity, aggressiveness and anxiet

According to recent research, even mild long-term depressive symptoms among mothers are connected with emotional problems among small children such as hyperactivity, aggressiveness and anxiety.

The study investigated how the depressive symptoms of both parents affected the child by the age of two and five.

The father's depressive symptoms affected the child's emotional problems only if the mother was depressed as well. The mother's symptoms, however, affected the child even if the father was not depressed.

Moderate depressive symptoms can be observed in over 20% of parents in Finland. Most serious symptoms are seen in less than 9% of mothers and around 2.5% of fathers.

"Depression among parents both during and after pregnancy not only affects the person suffering from depression but also has a long-term impact on the well-being of the newborn child. Even in cases of mild depression, it is important that the symptoms are identified and the parents are offered support as early as possible, if necessary already during the pregnancy," explains Visiting Researcher Johanna Pietikäinen from the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL).

"In families, depression experienced by the mother has a key impact on the child's well-being. In Finland, the maternity clinic system functions well, but attention should be paid to depressive symptoms among mothers over a longer period: from the pregnancy through to the end of the child's first year of age," she adds.

One parent's depression also puts the other at risk

The depression of one parent is a factor that can put the other parent at risk of depression as well. In addition, depressive symptoms among mothers and fathers are quite long-term: they can start already during pregnancy and continue past the child's first birthday.

"It is important to monitor the mental well-being of both parents during pregnancy and after the birth of the child, and if one parent shows symptoms of depression then the symptoms of the other parent should also be examined. Currently, however, fathers' psychological well-being is not necessarily covered by depression questionnaires in maternity clinics, for example," Pietikäinen points out.

Prior depression is the most significant risk factor

Long-term depression is an indication that the depression may have been experienced already before the pregnancy. Previous experience of depression was, in fact, one of the key risk factors for moderate or severe depressive symptoms.

Other significant risk factors included sleep deprivation during pregnancy, stress, anxiety and a bad family environment. These most prominent risk factors were predictors for depression among both mothers and fathers.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190923111249.htm

Staying at elementary school for longer associated with higher student attainment

September 20, 2019

Science Daily/Taylor & Francis Group

A new study has discovered that US students achieve better results in reading and mathematics tests when they stay in elementary school for grades six (age 11-12) and seven (age 12-13), rather than transfer to middle school. In contrast, students in grade eight (age 13-14) achieve better results in middle school than high school.

"The current study adds to the growing body of research that experiencing a school transition during early adolescence is associated with detrimental outcomes," said lead researcher Marisa Malone from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Malone and her colleagues report their findings in School Effectiveness and School Improvement.

In the US, there are various ways that students can transfer between schools as they age, with the span of grades covered by different schools known as grade configuration. One of the most common configurations is to go to elementary school up to grade five, and then to middle school from grades six to eight, and then to high school from grade nine onwards. But several studies have found that academic motivation and achievement tend to fall in middle school, with sixth-grade students in middle schools more likely to exhibit lower academic competency, more disciplinary problems and poorer attendance than those who stay in elementary schools.

Most of these studies focused on student performance, but to gain a slightly different perspective on the issue, Malone and her colleagues decided to focus on school performance. This also allowed them to take account of various school-level factors that can affect academic performance, including school size, racial composition, socioeconomic status, and whether the school is in an urban, suburban or rural location. They also considered sixth, seventh and eighth grade students, whereas most studies only focus on sixth and seventh grade students.

They conducted their study on 573 public schools in Virginia, which adopts various grade configurations. Most students transfer to middle school for grades six, seven and eight, but in some areas, students stay in elementary school until grade six or seven and then transfer straight to high school, missing out middle school.

All schools in Virginia conduct mandatory tests of reading and mathematics from grade three onwards. Malone and her colleagues recorded the pass rates for these tests in grades six, seven and eight for each school over three years, and then compared the pass rates between the different configurations. They found that the pass rates for these tests were significantly higher for sixth and seventh grade students at elementary schools when compared to middle schools, although the effect was more pronounced for sixth grade students than seventh grade. For eighth grade students, the pass rate was higher in middle schools than high schools.

Together, these results suggest that students struggle with the transfer between schools, especially in early adolescence, adversely affecting their academic achievement. Malone and her colleagues therefore recommend that eliminating middle schools should be considered as an option, in order to limit the number of school transfers.

Although this study looked solely at US schools, Malone says transferring between schools may well affect the academic achievement of students in other countries. "Early adolescence is a challenging time for youth; these individuals are experiencing a host of physiological, psychological and social-emotional changes. At the same time, they experience the transition to middle school, which is structured very differently than elementary schools. For example, students in American middle schools have many teachers throughout the day, which means that they need to learn the rules and expectations for multiple classrooms, versus just one. Class and school sizes also tend to be larger in middle schools. If these structural changes are similar in other countries, then we may suspect that students in other countries may experience similar challenges adjusting to the new school environment."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190920081908.htm