How sleep helps teens deal with social stress

Adequate sleep can help teens navigate challenging social situations

February 25, 2020

Science Daily/Michigan State University

Study found that adequate sleep allowed students to cope with discrimination and challenges associated with ethnic or racial bias. It also helps them problem-solve more effectively and seek peer support when faced with hardships

A new Michigan State University study found that a good night's sleep does adolescents good -- beyond helping them stay awake in class. Adequate sleep can help teens navigate challenging social situations.

The study, which focused on ninth grade students, found that adequate sleep allowed students to cope with discrimination and challenges associated with ethnic or racial bias. It also helps them problem-solve more effectively and seek peer support when faced with hardships.

"Findings of this study have important implications," said Yijie Wang, assistant professor of human development and family studies at MSU. "Understanding how sleep helps adolescents negotiate social challenges may consequently elucidate how promoting sleep may improve adolescent adjustment during high school and beyond."

Published in Child Development, this is the first study to identify the timing in which sleep helps with adolescents cope with stress.

Compared to adults and children, high school students are particularly at risk for insufficient sleep due to early school times, busy schedules and increased social stressors. The transition to high school also introduces more diversity to their social environment and relationships.

Via this study, Wang and co-author Tiffany Yip of Fordham University wanted to pinpoint the effect sleep has on coping with discrimination. They found that if a teen has a good night of sleep, they are able to cope with harsh experiences -- like discrimination -- better.

"This study did not treat sleep as a consequence of discrimination," Wang said. "However, our team did identify the influence of discrimination on same-day sleep in other studies. These studies showed that, on days when adolescents experienced ethnic or racial discrimination, they slept less and also took longer to actually fall asleep."

Participants in the study wore an actigraphy watch, which tracked physical activities in one-minute intervals and determined their sleep-wake state, every day for two weeks. The students were also asked to complete a survey each day before bed, reporting their daytime experiences such as ethnic or racial discrimination, how they responded to stress and their psychological well-being.

A surprising finding in the study was that peers, not parents, were the immediate support that help adolescents cope with discrimination.

"Compared to parents, peers are likely to be witnessing and involved in adolescents' experiences of ethnic or racial discrimination on a daily basis," Wang said. "As such, they're more of an immediate support that backs up adolescents and comforts them when discrimination occurs."

Still, parents have an important role in helping their children cope with both sleep and social situations. Beyond getting the recommended eight hours, the quality of sleep is just as important. That includes having a regular bedtime, limiting media use and providing a quiet, less crowded sleep environment.

While encouraging good sleep habits in adolescents can be a struggle, said Wang that the benefits of a routine help them cope with the challenges of life in high school and beyond.

"The promotive effect of sleep is so consistent," Wang said. "It reduces how much adolescents ruminate, it promotes their problem solving and it also helps them to better seek support from their peers."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200225143511.htm

Want to live longer? Stay in school

February 20, 2020

Science Daily/Yale University

A multi-institution study has attempted to tease out the relative impact of two variables most often linked to life expectancy -- race and education -- by combing through data about 5,114 black and white individuals in four US cities.

Life expectancy in the United States has been in decline for the first time in decades, and public health officials have identified a litany of potential causes, including inaccessible health care, rising drug addiction and rates of mental health disorders, and socio-economic factors. But disentangling these variables and assessing their relative impact has been difficult.

Now, a multi-institution study led by the Yale School of Medicine and University of Alabama-Birmingham has attempted to tease out the relative impact of two variables most often linked to life expectancy -- race and education -- by combing through data about 5,114 black and white individuals in four U.S. cities.

The lives and deaths among this group of people -- who were recruited for a longevity study approximately 30 years ago, when they were in their early 20s, and are now in their mid-50s -- shows that the level of education, and not race, is the best predictor of who will live the longest, researchers report Feb. 20 in the American Journal of Public Health. The individuals were part of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study.

Among the 5,114 people followed in the study, 395 had died.

"These deaths are occurring in working-age people, often with children, before the age of 60," said Yale's Brita Roy, assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology and corresponding author of the paper.

The rates of death among individuals in this group did clearly show racial differences, with approximately 9% of blacks dying at an early age compared to 6% of whites. There were also differences in causes of death by race. For instance, black men were significantly more likely to die by homicide and white men from AIDS. The most common causes of death across all groups over time were cardiovascular disease and cancer.

But there were also notable differences in rates of death by education level. Approximately 13% of participants with a high school degree or less education died compared with only approximately 5% of college graduates.

Strikingly, note the researchers, when looking at race and education at the same time, differences related to race all but disappeared: 13.5% of black subjects and 13.2% of white subjects with a high school degree or less died during the course of the study. By contrast, 5.9% of black subjects and 4.3% of whites with college degrees had died.

To help account for differences in age-related mortality, the researchers used a measure called Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL), calculated as projected life expectancy minus actual age at death. This measure not only captures numbers of deaths, but also how untimely they were. For example, someone who dies at age 25 from homicide accrues more YPLL than someone who dies at age 50 from cardiovascular disease. It would take two deaths at age 50 to equal the YPLL from a single death at age 25.

Even after accounting for the effects of other variables such as income, level of education was still the best predictor of YPLL. Each educational step obtained led to 1.37 fewer years of lost life expectancy, the study showed.

"These findings are powerful," Roy said. "They suggest that improving equity in access to and quality of education is something tangible that can help reverse this troubling trend in reduction of life expectancy among middle-aged adults."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200220193449.htm

Stress in small children separated from their parents may alter genes

February 18, 2020

Science Daily/SAGE

Several studies show that small children cared for outside the home, especially in poor quality care and for 30 or more hours per week, have higher levels of cortisol than children at home.

Experts in the emotional needs of small children say increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol in babies and small children who are separated from their parents, especially their mothers, could have a long-term genetic impact on future generations. In a commentary published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the authors say that several studies show that small children cared for outside the home, especially in poor quality care and for 30 or more hours per week, have higher levels of cortisol than children at home.

Professor Sir Denis Pereira Gray, Emeritus Professor of General Practice at the University of Exeter, and President of the children's charity 'What About the Children?' who wrote the paper with two colleagues, said: "Cortisol release is a normal response to stress in mammals facing an emergency and is usually useful. However, sustained cortisol release over hours or days can be harmful."

The authors say that raised cortisol levels are a sign of stress and that the time children spend with their parents is biologically more important than is often realised. Stress has been associated with children, particularly boys, acting aggressively. Not all children are affected, but an important minority are. Raised cortisol levels are associated with reduced antibody levels and changes in those parts of the brain which are associated with emotional stability.

"Environmental factors interact with genes, so that genes can be altered, and once altered by adverse childhood experiences, can pass to future generations. Such epigenetic effects need urgent study," say the authors.

Sir Denis added: "Future research should explore the links between the care of small children in different settings, their cortisol levels, DNA, and behaviour."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200218131850.htm

Reshaping modern play spaces for children's health

February 14, 2020

Science Daily/University of South Australia

A world first review of the importance of nature play could transform children's play spaces, supporting investment in city and urban parks, while also delivering important opportunities for children's physical, social and emotional development.

Conducted by the University of South Australia the systematic review explored the impacts of nature play on the health and development of children aged 2-12 years, finding that nature play improved children's complex thinking skills, social skills and creativity.

Led by UniSA masters student Kylie Dankiw and researcher Associate Professor Katherine Baldock, this study is the first to provide evidence that supports the development of innovative nature play spaces in childcare centres and schools.

"In recent years, nature play has become more popular with schools and childcare centres, with many of them re-developing play spaces to incorporate natural elements, such as trees, plants and rocks. But as they transition from the traditional 'plastic fantastic' playgrounds to novel nature-based play spaces, they're also looking for empirical evidence that supports their investments," Dankiw says.

"Our research is the first to rigorously, transparently and systematically review the body of work on nature play and show the impact it has on children's development. We're pleased to say that the findings indicate a positive connection between nature play and children's development.

"For early childhood educators, health practitioners, policymakers and play space designers, this is valuable information that may influence urban play environments and re-green city scapes."

Comprising a systematic review of 2927 peer-reviewed articles, the research consolidated 16 studies that involved unstructured, free play in nature (forest, green spaces, outdoors, gardens) and included natural elements (highly vegetated, rocks, mud, sand, gardens, forests, ponds and water) to determine the impact of nature play on children's health and development.

It found that nature play improved children's levels of physical activity, health-related fitness, motor skills, learning, and social and emotional development. It also showed that nature play may deliver improvements in cognitive and learning outcomes, including children's levels of attention and concentration, punctuality, settling in class (even after play), constructive play, social play, as well as imaginative and functional play.

"Nature play is all about playing freely with and in nature. It's about making mud pies, creating stick forts, having an outdoor adventure, and getting dirty," Dankiw says.

"These are all things that children love to do, but unfortunately, as society has become more sedentary, risk averse and time-poor, fewer children are having these opportunities.

"By playing in nature, children can build their physical capabilities -- their balance, fitness, and strength. And, as they play with others, they learn valuable negotiation skills, concepts of sharing and friendships, which may contribute to healthy emotional and social resilience."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200214134713.htm

Love matters: How parents' love shapes children's lives

February 12, 2020

Science Daily/University of Michigan

Parents often put their own relationship on the back burner to concentrate on their children, but a new study shows that when spouses love each other, children stay in school longer and marry later in life.

Research about how the affection between parents shapes their children's long-term life outcomes is rare because the data demands are high. This study uses unique data from families in Nepal to provide new evidence. The study, co-authored by researchers at the University of Michigan and McGill University in Quebec, was published in the journal Demography.

"In this study, we saw that parents' emotional connection to each other affects child rearing so much that it shapes their children's future," said co-author and U-M Institute for Social Research researcher William Axinn. "The fact that we found these kinds of things in Nepal moves us step closer to evidence that these things are universal."

The study uses data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study in Nepal. The survey launched in 1995, and collected information from 151 neighborhoods in the Western Chitwan Valley. Married couples were interviewed simultaneously but separately, and were asked to assess the level of affection they had for their partner. The spouses answered "How much do you love your (husband/wife)? Very much, some, a little, or not at all?"

The researchers then followed the children of these parents for 12 years to document their education and marital behaviors. The researchers found that the children of parents who reported they loved each other either "some" or "very much" stayed in school longer and married later.

"Family isn't just another institution. It's not like a school or employer. It is this place where we also have emotions and feelings," said lead author Sarah Brauner-Otto, director of the Centre on Population Dynamics at McGill University. "Demonstrating and providing evidence that love, this emotional component of family, also has this long impact on children's lives is really important for understanding the depth of family influence on children."

Nepal provides an important backdrop to study how familial relationships shape children's lives, according to Axinn. Historically, in Nepal, parents arranged their children's marriage, and divorce was rare. Since the 1970s, that has been changing, with more couples marrying for love, and divorce still rare, but becoming more common.

Education has also become more widespread since the 1970s. In Nepal, children begin attending school at age 5, and complete secondary school after grade 10, when they can take an exam to earn their "School-Leaving Certificate." Fewer than 3% of ever-married women aged 15-49 had earned an SLC in 1996, while nearly a quarter of women earned an SLC in 2016. Thirty-one percent of men earned SLCs in 2011. By 2016, 36.8% of men had.

The researchers say that their next important question will be to identify why parental love impacts children in this way. The researchers speculate that when parents love each other, they tend to invest more in their children, leading to children remaining in education longer. The children's home environments may also be happier when parents report loving each other, so the children may be less likely to escape into their own marriages. Children may also view their parents as role models, and take longer to seek similar marriages.

These findings still stood after researchers considered other factors that shape a married couple's relationship and their children's transition to adulthood. These include caste-ethnicity; access to schools; whether the parents had an arranged marriage; the childbearing of the parents; and whether the parents had experience living outside their own families, possibly being influenced by Western ideas of education and courtship.

"The result that these measures of love have independent consequences is also important," Axinn said. "Love is not irrelevant; variations in parental love do have a consequence."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200212150134.htm

Sitting still linked to increased risk of depression in adolescents

February 11, 2020

Science Daily/University College London

Too much time sitting still -- sedentary behaviour -- is linked to an increased risk of depressive symptoms in adolescents, finds a new UCL-led study.

The Lancet Psychiatry study found that an additional 60 minutes of light activity (such as walking or doing chores) daily at age 12 was associated with a 10% reduction in depressive symptoms at age 18.

"Our findings show that young people who are inactive for large proportions of the day throughout adolescence face a greater risk of depression by age 18. We found that it's not just more intense forms of activity that are good for our mental health, but any degree of physical activity that can reduce the time we spend sitting down is likely to be beneficial," said the study's lead author, PhD student Aaron Kandola (UCL Psychiatry).

"We should be encouraging people of all ages to move more, and to sit less, as it's good for both our physical and mental health."

The research team used data from 4,257 adolescents, who have been participating in longitudinal research from birth as part of the University of Bristol's Children of the 90s cohort study. The children wore accelerometers to track their movement for at least 10 hours over at least three days, at ages 12, 14 and 16.

The accelerometers reported whether the child was engaging in light activity (which could include walking or hobbies such as playing an instrument or painting), engaging in moderate-to-physical activity (such as running or cycling), or if they were sedentary. The use of accelerometers provided more reliable data than previous studies which have relied on people self-reporting their activity, which have yielded inconsistent results.

Depressive symptoms, such as low mood, loss of pleasure and poor concentration, were measured with a clinical questionnaire. The questionnaire measures depressive symptoms and their severity on a spectrum, rather than providing a clinical diagnosis.

Between the ages of 12 and 16, total physical activity declined across the cohort, which was mainly due to a decrease in light activity (from an average of five hours, 26 minutes to four hours, five minutes) and an increase in sedentary behaviour (from an average of seven hours and 10 minutes to eight hours and 43 minutes).

The researchers found that every additional 60 minutes of sedentary behaviour per day at age 12, 14 and 16 was associated with an increase in depression score of 11.1%, 8% or 10.5%, respectively, by age 18. Those with consistently high amounts of time spent sedentary at all three ages had 28.2% higher depression scores by age 18.

Every additional hour of light physical activity per day at age 12, 14 and 16 was associated with depression scores at age 18 that were 9.6%, 7.8% and 11.1% lower, respectively.

The researchers found some associations between moderate-to-vigorous activity at earlier ages and reduced depressive symptoms, although they caution that their data was weaker due to low levels of activity of such intensity in the cohort (averaging around 20 minutes per day), so the findings do not clarify whether moderate-to-vigorous activity is any less beneficial than light activity.

While the researchers cannot confirm that the activity levels caused changes to depressive symptoms, the researchers accounted for potentially confounding factors such as socioeconomic status, parental history of mental health, and length of time wearing the accelerometer, and avoided the possibility of reverse causation by adjusting their analysis to account for people with depressive symptoms at the study outset.

"Worryingly, the amount of time that young people spend inactive has been steadily rising for years, but there has been a surprising lack of high quality research into how this could affect mental health. The number of young people with depression also appears to be growing and our study suggests that these two trends may be linked," Kandola added.

The study's senior author, Dr Joseph Hayes (UCL Psychiatry and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust), said: "A lot of initiatives promote exercise in young people, but our findings suggest that light activity should be given more attention as well."

"Light activity could be particularly useful because it doesn't require much effort and it's easy to fit into the daily routines of most young people. Schools could integrate light activity into their pupils' days, such as with standing or active lessons. Small changes to our environments could make it easier for all of us to be a little bit less sedentary," he added.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200211193051.htm

Study takes a stand against prolonged sitting

Solutions to lower health risks for students and faculty include stretch breaks, more open classrooms

February 6, 2020

Science Daily/University of California - Los Angeles

A new study shows classrooms remain overlooked when it comes to the health risks of sitting still for too long. Researchers found most students don't realize the health risks can't be counteracted by later exercise, and perhaps unsurprisingly, students feel it is socially unacceptable to take a walk while the professor is still leading class. The researchers have solutions like building open classrooms and offering instructor-led stretch breaks.

In many workplaces, standing desks and walking meetings are addressing the health dangers of sitting too long each day, but for universities, the natural question is how to make such adjustments for classrooms.

The question appealed to emerita dance professor Angelia Leung from the UCLA Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance. Sitting too long was never an issue for Leung's students. But for most college students, desk time is more common than dance time. In an unusual collaboration between the arts and sciences, Leung partnered with Burt Cowgill, an assistant adjunct professor with the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, to find ways to help students stand up.

The team's research, published in the Journal of American College Health on Feb. 6, hit upon solutions that students and faculty can agree on. However, all the solutions, the researchers said, would work best if joined with an effort to raise awareness about the health risks of extended sitting, aimed at shifting cultural expectations and norms about classroom etiquette.

Studies have linked prolonged sitting with health concerns such as heart disease, cancer, depression, diabetes and obesity. Research shows that breaking up long periods of sitting with movement at least once an hour reduces those risks, while regular exercise at other times of day does not. Despite those risks, the UCLA research found that more than half of students interviewed considered it socially unacceptable to stand up and stretch in the middle of class, and nearly two-thirds felt the same about doing so during smaller discussion sections.

"A cultural change has to take place -- that it's OK to take a stretch break, to stand up during a lecture, to fidget when needed -- it's 'good' for health's sake," Leung said. "My students have an advantage because dance classes naturally involve movement, but we can extend these benefits to any class on campus with something as simple as short stretching breaks -- no dancing required."

Some of the recommendations are simple: Take hourly breaks to stand and stretch during long classes; include more small-group activities that require moving to switch desks; and create more open classrooms with space to walk without squeezing past fellow students and room to install standing desk areas.

To overcome social stigma, the researchers emphasized that professors and instructors will have to take the lead in offering group breaks at specific times rather than suggesting students can get up any time they wish. They also recommended that professors encourage students to get up and move during their breaks; and suggested that university administrators establish policies that call for building more open classrooms and adding features such as adjustable desks.

The research was funded by the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center at UCLA, a campuswide effort to make the healthy choice the easy choice, and to promote wellness through education and research. For the study, moderators conducted eight focus-group interviews and guided discussions with 66 UCLA students, roughly half undergraduates and half graduate students. The researchers also interviewed eight faculty members. The researchers looked at how much students and faculty knew about the health risks of sitting, investigated whether the participants could avoid prolonged sitting in class, and gathered ideas for feasible solutions.

"We need to change the way we teach so that we can offer more standing breaks, create opportunities for in-class movement, and even change the built environment so that there's more room for moving around," Cowgill said.

But even though the study found that students and faculty were broadly supportive of making changes, Cowgill said he doubts people will, ahem, stand up against the status quo if there isn't also an effort to raise awareness about the health risks. Social norms and the physical classroom environment are barriers, but awareness is the biggest obstacle.

Cowgill said he was surprised to learn that many of the participants were not aware of the health problems that prolonged sitting can cause, even for people who are otherwise active. "Many people thought they would be fine if they also squeezed in a 30-minute jog, and that's just not what research shows us."

The researchers expect the study will shed light on misconceptions about the health risks of extended sitting, and help faculty and students learn the ways they can work together to stand up and stretch.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200206132339.htm

Children's mental health is affected by sleep duration

February 4, 2020

Science Daily/University of Warwick

Depression, anxiety, impulsive behaviour and poor cognitive performance in children is affected by the amount of sleep they have, researchers from the University of Warwick have found.

Sleep states are active processes that support reorganisation of brain circuitry. This makes sleep especially important for children, whose brains are developing and reorganizing rapidly.

In the paper 'Sleep duration, brain structure, and psychiatric and cognitive problems in children,' published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, 11,000 children aged 9-11 from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development dataset had the relationship between sleep duration and brain structure examined by researchers Professor Jianfeng Feng, Professor Edmund Rolls, Dr. Wei Cheng and colleagues from the University of Warwick's Department of Computer Science and Fudan University.

Measures of depression, anxiety, impulsive behaviour and poor cognitive performance in the children were associated with shorter sleep duration. Moreover, the depressive problems were associated with short sleep duration one year later.

Lower brain volume of brain areas involved the orbitofrontal cortex, prefrontal and temporal cortex, precuneus, and supramarginal gyrus was found to be associated with the shorter sleep duration by using big data analysis approach.

Professor Jianfeng Feng, from the University of Warwick's Department of Computer Science comments:

"The recommended amount of sleep for children 6 to 12 years of age is 9-12 hours. However, sleep disturbances are common among children and adolescents around the world due to the increasing demand on their time from school, increased screen time use, and sports and social activities.

A previous study showed that about 60% of adolescents in the United States receive less than eight hours of sleep on school nights.

"Our findings showed that the behaviour problems total score for children with less than 7 hours sleep was 53% higher on average and the cognitive total score was 7.8% lower on average than for children with 9-11 hours of sleep. It highlights the importance of enough sleep in both cognition and mental health in children."

Professor Edmund Rolls from the University of Warwick's Department of Computer Science also commented:

"These are important associations that have been identified between sleep duration in children, brain structure, and cognitive and mental health measures, but further research is needed to discover the underlying reasons for these relationships."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200204094726.htm

Kids diagnosed with ADHD often don't take medication regularly

February 3, 2020

Science Daily/Murdoch Childrens Research Institute

Children diagnosed with ADHD inconsistently take their prescribed medication, going without treatment 40 per cent of the time, a new study has found.

The research, led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, shows the average medication coverage, the total time on drug between the first and the last redeemed prescription, was just 60 per cent.

Lead author and MCRI Associate Professor Daryl Efron said medication use was relatively high in the first few months, then progressively decreased, only increasing again after five or six years of treatment.

Additionally, children from socially disadvantaged families who were prescribed ADHD medication were less likely to consistently take it.

"We know low socio economic families can find it more difficult to attend medical appointments, with factors including appointment costs, transport difficulties and missed work all potentially contributing," he said.

The study showed the average medication coverage was 81 per cent in the first 90 days dropping to 54 per cent after 90 days.

Associate Professor Efron said little had been known about the longer term adherence to medication by children with ADHD until now.

"About 90 per cent of children with ADHD respond well to at least one of the stimulant ADHD medications," he said.

"ADHD is a chronic condition and so there is a strong argument that treatment should be provided consistently for several years in most cases. But adherence with ADHD medications is often inconsistent."

The study of 3,537 children looked at all redeemed ADHD prescriptions of the three frontline treatments, methylphenidate, dexamphetamine, and atomoxetine, by participants in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.

The study found that 166 children (3.6 per cent) had ever redeemed a prescription for an ADHD medication. Boys were four times more likely to be prescribed ADHD medication than girls.

Associate Professor Efron said the findings have important clinical implications.

About one in 20 children in Australia has ADHD, according to ADHD Australia.

"Effort should be made to continue to engage children who stop taking medications and their families to ensure they are able to access appropriate interventions, which may include medication alongside other interventions such as mental health and educational supports," Associate Professor Efron said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200203104447.htm

Students' feelings about high school are mostly negative

January 30, 2020

Science Daily/Yale University

In a nationwide US survey of 21,678 US high school students, researchers found that nearly 75% of the students' self-reported feelings related to school were negative.

Ask a high school student how he or she typically feels at school, and the answer you'll likely hear is "tired," closely followed by "stressed" and "bored."

In a nationwide survey of 21,678 U.S. high school students, researchers from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the Yale Child Study Center found that nearly 75% of the students' self-reported feelings related to school were negative.

The study, which appeared in the January edition of the Journal of Learning and Instruction, also involved a second, "experience sampling" study in which 472 high school students in Connecticut reported their feelings at distinct moments throughout the school day. These momentary assessments told the same story: High school students reported negative feelings 60% of the time.

"It was higher than we expected," said co-author and research scientist Zorana Ivcevic. "We know from talking to students that they are feeling tired, stressed, and bored, but were surprised by how overwhelming it was."

Students were recruited for the survey through email lists of partner schools and through social media channels from nonprofits like the Greater Good Science Center and Born this Way Foundation. The students represent urban, suburban, and rural school districts across all 50 states and both public and private schools. The researchers found that all demographic groups reported mostly negative feelings about school, but girls were slightly more negative than boys.

"Overall," said co-author Marc Brackett, "students see school as a place where they experience negative emotions."

In the first online survey, students were asked to "think about the range of positive and negative feelings you have in school" and provide answers in three open text boxes. They were also asked to rate on a scale of 0 (never) to 100 (always) how often they felt 10 emotions: happy, proud, cheerful, joyful, lively, sad, mad, miserable, afraid, scared, stressed and bored.

In the open-ended responses, the most common emotion students reported was tired (58%). The next most-reported emotions -- all just under 50% -- were stressed, bored, calm, and happy. The ratings scale supported the findings, with students reporting feeling stressed (79.83%) and bored (69.51%) the most.

When those feelings are examined with more granularity, said Ivcevic, they reveal something interesting. The most-cited positive descriptions -- calm and happy -- are vague.

"They are on the positive side of zero," Ivcevic said, "but they are not energized or enthusiastic." Feeling "interested" or "curious," she noted, would reveal a high level of engagement that is predictive of deeper and more enduring learning.

She added that many of the negative feelings may be interrelated, with tiredness, for example, contributing to boredom or stress. "Boredom is in many ways similar to being tired," she said. "It's a feeling of being drained, low-energy. Physical states, such as being tired, can be at times misattributed as emotional states, such as boredom."

The researchers noted that the way students feel at school has important implications in their performance and their overall health and well-being. "Students spend a lot of their waking time at school," Ivcevic said. "Kids are at school to learn, and emotions have a substantial impact on their attention. If you're bored, do you hear what's being said around you?"

Public attention has turned recently to early start times for high schools in the U.S. and how that contributes to sleep deprivation among students, which is associated with a number of other health risks -- including weight gain, depression, and drug use -- and poor academic performance. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that high schools start at 8:30 a.m. or later, but the vast majority start earlier.

"It is possible that being tired is making school more taxing," Ivcevic said, "so that it is more difficult for students to show curiosity and interest. It is like having an extra weight to carry."

Unfortunately, she added, decisions about school start times are often not made with students' health and wellbeing in mind. "There has been a movement in recent years to move school start times later," she said. "The reasons for not moving it have nothing to do with students' wellbeing or their ability to learn." Instead, these decisions are often driven by concerns about athletic programs, extracurricular activities, and transportation.

At the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where Brackett is founding director and lead developer of RULER, an evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning, the goal is to give students and staff the tools to use their emotions wisely. RULER doesn't claim to prevent tiredness and boredom, but it is designed to help students to find an outlet for their feelings and to support teachers and students in developing emotion skills to promote greater engagement and enhance academic performance.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200130173558.htm

Letting your child pick their snack may help you eat better

January 30, 2020

Science Daily/University of Alberta

Giving in to your kid's desire for an unhealthy snack may improve your own eating choices, a new University of Alberta study shows.

The research, published in Appetite, showed that parents and other adult caregivers such as babysitters tended to make better food choices for themselves if they accommodated the youngster's request for a particular snack -- whether that snack was healthy or not.

It was a "striking finding" that shows the psychological impacts of decision-making, said lead researcher Utku Akkoc, a lecturer in the Alberta School of Business and a consumer behaviour expert who did the study for his PhD.

Through a series of experiments and a field study, Akkoc, along with co-author and U of A business professor Robert Fisher, measured how powerful caregivers felt and what foods they consumed after making decisions in various scenarios, such as when they packed a treat the child had asked for in a school lunch.

Caregivers who listened to their children's preferences ate a lower number of unhealthy foods themselves. In one experiment, participants who granted a child's snack request ate on average 2.7 fewer unhealthy snacks and 1.9 more healthy snacks than those who imposed their own preferences on the child.

The reason likely lies in how the caregivers feel about their decision, Akkoc said.

"Our theory is that moms who accommodate the child's preferences against their better judgment would end up feeling less powerful, compared to moms who successfully impose their own food choices on their children. This happens because accommodation involves a passive and less stressful willingness to yield to the child. When people feel less powerful, they make more inhibited, healthier choices like a dieter would."

By contrast, adults imposing their own choices involves "an active exercise of persuasion in trying to get the child to eat that healthy fruit salad, not a piece of chocolate cake. You feel powerful after that, because you succeeded, and you feel licensed to reward yourself with treats," Akkoc said, noting that the same was also true for caregivers who successfully imposed unhealthy food choices on their child.

The research also showed the caregivers were influenced in their personal choices if they were eating together with their child, consuming the same healthy or unhealthy food.

"We believe it's because people would feel hypocritical if they ate cake in front of a child that's made to eat fruit," Akkoc said.

The findings offer an "effective, simple recipe" in tackling the problems of poor eating and obesity, Akkoc believes.

"It shows some ways parents and other adults can increase their own healthy eating by dining together with their children after making healthy choices for them," he said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200130144408.htm

Brain networks come 'online' during adolescence to prepare teenagers for adult life

Brain networks come 'online' during adolescence to prepare teenagers for adult life

January 29, 2020

Science Daily/University of Cambridge

New brain networks come 'online' during adolescence, allowing teenagers to develop more complex adult social skills, but potentially putting them at increased risk of mental illness, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Adolescence is a time of major change in life, with increasing social and cognitive skills and independence, but also increased risk of mental illness. While it is clear that these changes in the mind must reflect developmental changes in the brain, it has been unclear how exactly the function of the human brain matures as people grow up from children to young adults.

A team based in the University of Cambridge and University College London has published a major new research study that helps us understand more clearly the development of the adolescent brain.

The study collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data on brain activity from 298 healthy young people, aged 14-25 years, each scanned on one to three occasions about 6 to 12 months apart. In each scanning session, the participants lay quietly in the scanner so that the researchers could analyse the pattern of connections between different brain regions while the brain was in a resting state.

The team discovered that the functional connectivity of the human brain -- in other words, how different regions of the brain 'talk' to each other -- changes in two main ways during adolescence.

The brain regions that are important for vision, movement, and other basic faculties were strongly connected at the age of 14 and became even more strongly connected by the age of 25. This was called a 'conservative' pattern of change, as areas of the brain that were rich in connections at the start of adolescence become even richer during the transition to adulthood.

However, the brain regions that are important for more advanced social skills, such as being able to imagine how someone else is thinking or feeling (so-called theory of mind), showed a very different pattern of change. In these regions, connections were redistributed over the course of adolescence: connections that were initially weak became stronger, and connections that were initially strong became weaker. This was called a 'disruptive' pattern of change, as areas that were poor in their connections became richer, and areas that were rich became poorer.

By comparing the fMRI results to other data on the brain, the researchers found that the network of regions that showed the disruptive pattern of change during adolescence had high levels of metabolic activity typically associated with active re-modelling of connections between nerve cells.

Dr Petra Vértes, joint senior author of the paper and a Fellow of the mental health research charity MQ, said: "From the results of these brain scans, it appears that the acquisition of new, more adult skills during adolescence depends on the active, disruptive formation of new connections between brain regions, bringing new brain networks 'online' for the first time to deliver advanced social and other skills as people grow older."

Professor Ed Bullmore, joint senior author of the paper and head of the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge, said: "We know that depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders often occur for the first time in adolescence -- but we don't know why. These results show us that active re-modelling of brain networks is ongoing during the teenage years and deeper understanding of brain development could lead to deeper understanding of the causes of mental illness in young people."

Measuring functional connectivity in the brain presents particular challenges, as Dr František Váša, who led the study as a Gates Cambridge Trust PhD Scholar, and is now at King's College London, explained.

"Studying brain functional connectivity with fMRI is tricky as even the slightest head movement can corrupt the data -- this is especially problematic when studying adolescent development as younger people find it harder to keep still during the scan," he said. "Here, we used three different approaches for removing signatures of head movement from the data, and obtained consistent results, which made us confident that our conclusions are not related to head movement, but to developmental changes in the adolescent brain."

The study was supported by the Wellcome Trust.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200129104705.htm

Young children prefer to learn from confident people

January 27, 2020

Science Daily/University of British Columbia

Researchers found that young children between the age of four and five not only prefer to learn from people who appear confident, they also keep track of how well the person's confidence has matched with their knowledge and accuracy in the past (a concept called 'calibration') and avoid learning new information from people who have a history of being overconfident.

At a time when scams seem all around us and fake news appears to be on the rise, you might be relieved to know that even young children show some impressive skills when it comes to identifying poor sources of information, suggests new research from the University of British Columbia.

In a new study published today in the Public Library of Science ONE (PLOS ONE), researchers found that young children between the age of four and five not only prefer to learn from people who appear confident, they also keep track of how well the person's confidence has matched with their knowledge and accuracy in the past (a concept called 'calibration') and avoid learning new information from people who have a history of being overconfident. This is the first research of its kind to demonstrate that children track a person's calibration.

"We now know that children are even more savvy at social learning, learning from others, than we previously thought," said Susan Birch, the study's lead author and a UBC psychology associate professor. "They don't just prefer to learn from anyone who is confident; they avoid learning from people who have confidently given wrong information in the past."

Birch says this ability makes children less likely to fall prey to misinformation and ultimately ensures they are learning the most accurate information.

Interestingly, despite these sophisticated reasoning abilities in young children, they still don't have an adult-like understanding of confidence, and its opposite hesitancy, even by eight years old.

"Children appear to treat hesitancy as separate from, rather than the opposite of, confidence," said Birch. "They don't fully understand what it means to be hesitant and the inferences they apply to whether a person's confidence is justified don't get applied to hesitancy."

For example, adults recognize responding hesitantly is justified when you don't know the answer to something, but the children in their experiments did not recognize this.

Across three experiments, the researchers tested 662 children between the ages of three and 12. The researchers showed them pre-recorded videos of actors displaying justified and unjustified confidence as well as justified and unjustified hesitancy and then documented who the children preferred to learn new words from and who they found smarter.

The researchers say that the children may be quicker to learn that a person's confidence can be justified (match with their level of knowledge) than to learn that a person's hesitancy can also be justified, because their brains are wired to attend more to clues than misinformation. In other words, learning to trust people when they are justifiably hesitant may be harder than learning to mistrust people when they are unjustifiably confident. More research will need to be conducted to find out when children start having a better understanding of hesitancy.

As a result of this study, researchers recommend that parents and educators should not only pay attention to what they're communicating to children but also how they're doing it, as it may undermine their credibility in the long term.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200127145459.htm

High air pollution exposure in 1-year-olds linked to structural brain changes at age 12

January 24, 2020

Science Daily/Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

A new study suggests that significant early childhood exposure to traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) is associated with structural changes in the brain at the age of 12.

The Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center study found that children with higher levels of TRAP exposure at birth had reductions at age 12 in gray matter volume and cortical thickness as compared to children with lower levels of exposure.

"The results of this study, though exploratory, suggest that where you live and the air you breathe can affect how your brain develops, says Travis Beckwith, PhD, a research fellow at Cincinnati Children's and lead author of the study. "While the percentage of loss is far less than what might be seen in a degenerative disease state, this loss may be enough to influence the development of various physical and mental processes."

Gray matter includes regions of the brain involved in motor control as well as sensory perception, such as seeing and hearing. Cortical thickness reflects the outer gray matter depth. The study found that specific regions in the frontal and parietal lobes and the cerebellum were affected with decreases on the order of 3 to 4 percent.

"If early life TRAP exposure irreversibly harms brain development, structural consequences could persist regardless of the time point for a subsequent examination," says Dr. Beckwith.

The researchers on the study, which is published online in PLOS One, used magnetic resonance imaging to obtain anatomical brain images from 147 12 year olds. These children are a subset of the Cincinnati Childhood Allergy and Air Pollution Study (CCAAPS), which recruited volunteers prior to the age of six months to examine early childhood exposure to TRAP and health outcomes.

The volunteers in the CCAAPS had either high or low levels of TRAP exposure during their first year of life. The researchers estimated exposure using an air sampling network of 27 sites in the Cincinnati area, and 24/7 sampling was conducted simultaneously at four or five sites over different seasons. Participating children and their caregivers completed clinic visits at ages 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 12.

Previous studies of TRAP suggest that it contributes to neurodegenerative diseases and neurodevelopmental disorders. This work supports that TRAP changes brain structure early in life.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200124155107.htm

Many youth living with undiagnosed chronic fatigue syndrome

January 23, 2020

Science Daily/DePaul University

Most youth living with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) have not been diagnosed, according to a new prevalence study from researchers at DePaul University and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, published by the journal Child & Youth Care Forum. Leonard A. Jason, a professor of psychology at DePaul University, led the seven-year study to screen more than 10,000 children and teenagers in the Chicago area.

The researchers found that less than 5% of youth in the study who tested positive for ME/CFS had been previously diagnosed with the illness. Of the children assessed, African American and Latinx youth were twice as likely to be living with undiagnosed ME/CFS. The study was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, one of the National Institutes of Health. Jason has been studying ME/CFS for more than 30 years and says the illness can affect all aspects of a child's life, from physical functioning to attending school and participating in extracurricular activities.

"When you're talking about a condition that's as debilitating as this one, the health care response has not been good," said Jason. "There aren't that many physicians who are trained and skilled at diagnosing and treating this illness, and our health care system has not done a great job at trying to help people who are affected," said Jason, director of DePaul's Center for Community Research.

Working with Jason as co-principal investigator is Dr. Ben Z. Katz, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. Katz is also a professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He has collaborated with Jason and his group since the late 1990s.

"Our finding that most youth with ME/CFS have not been previously diagnosed is comparable to findings in adults," said Katz. "We definitely need better ways to identify people with this illness and to develop effective interventions for them. In particular, we need to reach African American and Hispanic youth, since in our study these groups had higher prevalence of ME/CFS. "

The prevalence of pediatric ME/CFS has been in dispute, so Jason and Katz set out to include a diverse sample of ethnic, socio-economic and demographic backgrounds. Other ME/CFS prevalence studies have drawn from tertiary care centers, which can exclude those without access to health care, explained Jason. The researchers tailored their approach by including a thorough medical and psychiatric examination, offering access to high-quality screening for those at-risk of having the illness.

Researchers screened a random sample of 10,119 youth ages 5-17 from 5,622 households. The first stage was a phone interview with parents and caretakers about the health and behavior of their children and teens. Missing school because of fatigue was one of the common symptoms among youth who showed a higher risk of having ME/CFS, and was a red flag for parents, said Jason.

Of those who screened positive over the phone, 165 youth went on to medical and psychiatric examinations. Following evaluations, a team of physicians made final diagnoses. Youth were given a diagnosis of ME/CFS if they met criteria for case definitions. Of the 42 youth diagnosed with ME/CFS, only 2 (4.8%) had been previously diagnosed with the illness.

Prevalence of pediatric ME/CFS was 0.75%, which is a bit less than 1%, with a higher prevalence among African American and Latinx youth compared to their Caucasian peers. "Clearly people of color do get this illness, and there are some myths that you have to be white middle class to have ME/CFS," said Jason.

A lack of access to health care, and therefore less opportunity for an earlier diagnosis, could explain this racial disparity, according to Jason. "There are barriers to researchers gaining access to underserved populations. They may not trust institutions as easily, and they may not also have time to bring their children into appointments," said Jason.

And, there is still stigma and misunderstanding about ME/CFS among health care providers. "They may not believe this is a condition, or might attribute it to fatigue," said Jason.

The findings point to the need for better ways to identify and diagnose youth with this illness, said Jason, who has secured more than $46 million in research grant support during his 45-year professional career at DePaul. Co-authors of the study are DePaul University graduate students Madison Sunnquist, Chelsea Torres, Joseph Cotler and Shaun Bhatia.

"We're trying to help people who have this illness have information that could be used to argue for more resources for diagnosis and treatment," said Jason.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200123152453.htm

Cyberbullying Linked to Increased Depression and PTSD

January 22, 2020

Science Daily/University of Miami Miller School of Medicine

Cyberbullying had the impact of amplifying symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder in young people who were inpatients at an adolescent psychiatric hospital, according to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. The study addressed both the prevalence and factors related to cyberbullying in adolescent inpatients.

"Even against a backdrop of emotional challenges in the kids we studied, we noted cyberbullying had an adverse impact. It's real and should be assessed," said Philip D. Harvey, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, who co-authored the paper "Cyberbullying and Its Relationship to Current Symptoms and History of Early Life Trauma."

He says children with a history of being abused were found to be more likely to be cyberbullied, suggesting that assessments for childhood trauma should also include assessments for cyberbullying. Likewise, children who report being cyberbullied should be assessed for a history of childhood trauma.

"Cyberbullying is possibly more pernicious than other forms of bullying because of its reach," Dr. Harvey says. "The bullying can be viral and persistent. To really be bullying, it has to be personal -- a directly negative comment attempting to make the person feel bad."

The study helped to confirm other facts about cyberbullying:

• Being online regularly or the amount of time spent on social media weren't determining factors in who was cyberbullied.

• Cyberbullying cuts across all economic classes and ethnic backgrounds.

• Adolescents who have been bullied in the past had a higher risk of being bullied again.

Studying Cyberbullying's Impact on an Inpatient Psychiatric Population

The study of 50 adolescent psychiatric inpatients ages 13 to 17 examined the prevalence of cyberbullying and related it to social media usage, current levels of symptoms and histories of adverse early life experience.

Conducted from September 2016 to April 2017 at a suburban psychiatric hospital in Westchester County, New York, the study asked participants to complete two childhood trauma questionnaires and a cyberbullying questionnaire.

Twenty percent of participants reported that they had been cyberbullied within the last two months before their admission. Half of the participants were bullied by text messages and half on Facebook. Transmitted pictures or videos, Instagram, instant messages and chat rooms were other cyberbullying vehicles.

Those who had been bullied had significantly higher severity of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anger, and fantasy dissociation than those who were not bullied.

Links to Childhood Trauma

Participants who reported being cyberbullied also reported significantly higher levels of lifetime emotional abuse on the study's Childhood Trauma Questionnaire than those who were not bullied. These same young people did not report a significantly higher level of other types of trauma (physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect or physical neglect).

Further studies are needed to establish whether there may be some unique consequence of childhood emotional abuse that makes troubled teens more likely to experience or report cyberbullying.

Conclusions

While all of the participants in this study were psychiatric inpatients, those who had been bullied had significantly higher scores on PTSD, depression, anger, and dissociation scales than those who were not bullied. Dr. Harvey says this finding is consistent with past research.

Dr. Harvey encourages psychologists, psychiatrists and other counselors to routinely ask young people if they were abused or traumatized when they were younger and whether they are being bullied now.

He says adding these questions to the clinical evaluation of adolescents may bring to light symptoms that may have otherwise been ignored. Additionally, factors that may be causing or contributing to those symptoms can be targeted for specific intervention.

Parents and adolescents can take action to discourage bullying, Dr. Harvey says. "It's not hard to block someone on the Internet, whether it's texting, Facebook, Twitter, or sending pictures. Ask why are people choosing you to bully? If it's something you're posting, assess that and make a change."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200122080526.htm

Rich rewards: Scientists reveal ADHD medication's effect on the brain

Researchers scan the brain to uncover how medication for ADHD affects the brain's reward system

January 17, 2020

Science Daily/Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University

Researchers have identified how certain areas of the human brain respond to methylphenidate -- a stimulant drug which is used to treat symptoms of ADHD. The work may help researchers understand the precise mechanism of the drug and ultimately develop more targeted medicines for the condition.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurobiological disorder characterized by symptoms of hyperactivity, inattention and impulsivity. People with the condition are often prescribed a stimulant drug called methylphenidate, which treats these symptoms. However, scientists do not fully understand how the drug works.

Now, researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have identified how certain areas of the human brain respond to methylphenidate. The work may help researchers understand the precise mechanism of the drug and ultimately develop more targeted medicines for the condition.

Previous research suggests that people with ADHD have different brain responses when anticipating and receiving rewards, compared to individuals without ADHD. Scientists at OIST have proposed that in those with ADHD, neurons in the brain release less dopamine -- a 'feel-good' neurotransmitter involved in reward-motivated behavior -- when a reward is expected, with dopamine neurons firing more when a reward is given.

"In practice, what this means is that children, or even young adults, with ADHD may have difficulty engaging in behavior that doesn't result in an immediate positive outcome. For example, children may struggle to focus on schoolwork, as it may not be rewarding at the time, even though it could ultimately lead to better grades. Instead, they get distracted by external stimuli that are novel and interesting, such as a classmate talking or traffic noises," said Dr Emi Furukawa, first author of the study and a researcher in the OIST Human Developmental Neurobiology Unit, led by Professor Gail Tripp.

Scientists believe that methylphenidate helps people with ADHD maintain focus by influencing dopamine availability in the brain. Therefore, Dr Furukawa and her colleagues set out to examine how the drug affects a brain region called the ventral striatum, which is a vital component of the reward system and where dopamine is predominantly released.

"We wanted to take a look at how methylphenidate affects the ventral striatum's responses to reward cues and delivery," said Furukawa.

The study, which was recently published in the journal Neuropharmacology, was jointly conducted with scientists at D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The collaboration allowed the researchers to combine expertise across multiple disciplines and provided access to IDOR's functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) facility.

Delving into the brain

The researchers used fMRI to measure brain activity in young adults with and without ADHD as they played a computer game that simulated a slot machine. The researchers scanned individuals in the ADHD group on two separate occasions -- once when they took methylphenidate and another time when they took a placebo pill. Each time the reels of the slot machine spun, the computer also showed one of two cues, either the Japanese character み (mi) or そ (so). While familiarizing themselves with the game before being scanned, the participants quickly learned that when the slot machine showed み, they often won money, but when the slot machine showed そ, they didn't. The symbol み therefore acted as a reward-predicting cue, whereas そ acted as a non-reward-predicting cue.

The researchers found that when individuals with ADHD took the placebo, neuronal activity in the ventral striatum was similar in response to both the reward predicting and non-reward predicting cue. However, when they took methylphenidate, activity in the ventral striatum increased only in response to the reward cue, showing that they were now able to more easily discriminate between the two cues.

The researchers also explored how neuronal activity in the striatum correlated with neuronal activity in the medial prefrontal cortex -- a brain region involved in decision-making that receives information from the outside world and communicates with many parts of the brain, including the striatum.

When the individuals with ADHD took placebo instead of methylphenidate, neuronal activity in the striatum correlated strongly with activity in the prefrontal cortex at the exact moment the reward was delivered, and the participants received money from the slot machine game. Therefore, the researchers believe that in people with ADHD, the striatum and the prefrontal cortex communicate more actively, which may underline their increased sensitivity to rewarding external stimuli. In participants who took methylphenidate, this correlation was low, as it was in people without ADHD.

The results implicate a second neurotransmitter, norepinephrine, in the therapeutic effects of methylphenidate. Norepinephrine is released by a subset of neurons common in the prefrontal cortex. Researchers speculate that methylphenidate might boost levels of norepinephrine in the prefrontal cortex, which in turn regulates dopamine firing in the striatum when rewards are delivered.

"It's becoming clear to us that the mechanism by which methylphenidate modulates the reward response is very complex," said Furukawa.

Tailoring New Therapies for ADHD

Despite the complexity, the scientists believe that further research could elucidate methylphenidate's mechanism of action, which could benefit millions of people worldwide.

Pinning down how methylphenidate works may help scientists develop better therapies for ADHD, said Furukawa. "Methylphenidate is effective but has some side effects, so some people are hesitant to take the medication or give it to their children," she explained. "If we can understand what part of the mechanism results in therapeutic effects, we could potentially develop drugs that are more targeted."

Furukawa also hopes that understanding how methylphenidate impacts the brain could help with behavioral interventions. For example, by keeping in mind the difference in brain responses when children with ADHD anticipate and receive rewards, parents and teachers could instead help children with ADHD stay focused by praising them frequently and reducing the amount of distracting stimuli in the environment.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200117100257.htm

Mix of stress and air pollution may lead to cognitive difficulties in children

January 16, 2020

Science Daily/Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health

Children with elevated exposure to early life stress in the home and elevated prenatal exposure to air pollution exhibited heightened symptoms of attention and thought problems, according to researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia Psychiatry. Early life stress is common in youth from disadvantaged backgrounds who also often live in areas with greater exposure to air pollution.

Air pollution has negative effects on physical health, and recent work has begun to also show negative effects on mental health. Life stress, particularly early in life, is one of the best-known contributors to mental health problems. The new study is one of the first to examine the combined effects of air pollution and early life stress on school-age children. Results appear in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

"Prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a neurotoxicant common in air pollution, seems to magnify or sustain the effects of early life social and economic stress on mental health in children," says first author David Pagliaccio, PhD, assistant professor of clinical neurobiology in psychiatry at Columbia Psychiatry.

"Air pollutants are common in our environment, particularly in cities, and given socioeconomic inequities and environmental injustice, children growing up in disadvantaged circumstances are more likely to experience both life stress and exposure to neurotoxic chemicals," says senior author Amy Margolis, PhD, assistant professor of medical psychology in psychiatry at Columbia Psychiatry.

"These exposures have a combined effect on poor mental health outcomes and point to the importance of public health programs that try to lessen exposure to these critical risk factors, to improve not only physical, but psychological health," says Julie Herbstman, PhD, associate professor of environmental health science and director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.

Data were from the CCCEH Mothers and Newborns longitudinal birth cohort study in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx, which includes many participants who self-identify as African American or Dominican. Mothers wore an air monitoring backpack during the third trimester of pregnancy to measure exposure to air pollutants in their daily lives. When their children were 5 years old, mothers reported on stress in their lives, including neighborhood quality, material hardship, intimate partner violence, perceived stress, lack of social support, and general distress levels. Mothers then reported on their child's psychiatric symptoms at ages 5, 7, 9 and 11.

The combined effect of air pollution and early life stress was seen across several measures of thought and attention problems/ADHD at age 11. (Thought problems included obsessive thoughts and behaviors or thoughts that others find strange.) The effects were also linked to PAH-DNA adducts -- a dose-sensitive marker of air pollution exposure.

The researchers say PAH and early life stress may serve as a "double hit" on shared biological pathways connected to attention and thought problems. Stress likely leads to wide-ranging changes in, for example, epigenetic expression, cortisol, inflammation, and brain structure and function. The mechanism underlying the effects of PAH is still being interrogated; however, alterations in brain structure and function represent possible shared mechanistic pathways.

Earlier studies making use of the same longitudinal cohort data found that prenatal exposure to air pollution combines with material hardship to significantly increase ADHD symptoms in children. A separate study found a combination of air pollution and poverty lowered child IQ.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200116155436.htm

Flame retardants and pesticides overtake heavy metals as biggest contributors to IQ loss

January 14, 2020

Science Daily/New York University

Adverse outcomes from childhood exposures to lead and mercury are on the decline in the United States, likely due to decades of restrictions on the use of heavy metals, a new study finds.

Despite decreasing levels, exposure to these and other toxic chemicals, especially flame retardants and pesticides, still resulted in more than a million cases of intellectual disability in the United States between 2001 and 2016. Furthermore, as the target of significantly fewer restrictions, experts say, flame retardants and pesticides now represent the bulk of that cognitive loss.

NYU Grossman School of Medicine researchers found that IQ loss from the toxic chemicals analyzed in their study dropped from 27 million IQ points in 2001 and 2002 to 9 million IQ points in 2015 and 2016.

While this overall decline is promising, the researchers say, their findings also identify a concerning shift in which chemicals represent the greatest risk. Among toxin-exposed children, the researchers found that the proportion of cognitive loss that results from exposure to chemicals used in flame retardants, called polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PDBEs), and organophosphate pesticides increased from 67 percent to 81 percent during the same study period.

"Our findings suggest that our efforts to reduce exposure to heavy metals are paying off, but that toxic exposures in general continue to represent a formidable risk to Americans' physical, mental, and economic health," says lead study investigator Abigail Gaylord, MPH, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone. "Unfortunately, the minimal policies in place to eliminate pesticides and flame retardants are clearly not enough."

The substances analyzed are found in household products from furniture upholstery to tuna fish, and can build up in the body to damage organs, researchers say. Heavy metals, lead and mercury in particular, are known to disrupt brain and kidney function. In addition, they, along with flame retardants and pesticides, can interfere with the thyroid, which secretes brain-developing hormones. Experts say exposure at a young age to any of these toxins can cause learning disabilities, autism, and behavioral issues.

In their investigation, the researchers found that everyday contact with these substances during the 16-year study period resulted in roughly 1,190,230 children affected with some form of intellectual disability. Overall childhood exposures cost the nation $7.5 trillion in lost economic productivity and other societal costs.

"Although people argue against costly regulations, unrestricted use of these chemicals is far more expensive in the long run, with American children bearing the largest burden," says senior study author Leonardo Trasande, MD, MPP, the Jim G. Hendrick, MD Professor at NYU Langone Health.

Publishing online Jan. 14 in the journal Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology, the new study is the only long-term neurological and economic investigation of its kind, the authors say. The investigators analyzed PBDE, organophosphate, lead, and methylmercury exposures in blood samples from women of childbearing age and 5-year-olds. Data on women and children was obtained from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The researchers used results from several previous environmental health studies to estimate the annual number of IQ points lost per unit of exposure to each of the four main chemicals in the study. Then, they estimated the lost productivity and medical costs over the course of the children's lives linked to long-term intellectual disability using a second algorithm, which valued each lost IQ point at $22,268 and each case of intellectual disability at $1,272,470.

While exposure to these chemicals persists despite tightened regulations, experts say Americans can help limit some of the effects by avoiding the use of household products or foods that contain them.

"Frequently opening windows to let persistent chemicals found in furniture, electronics, and carpeting escape, and eating certified organic produce can reduce exposure to these toxins," says Trasande, who also serves as chief of environmental pediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics at NYU Langone.

Trasande notes that the impact of these chemicals may be worse than their study can capture since there are far more hazards that affect brain development than the four highlighted in the investigation, and other potential consequences beyond IQ loss. "All the more reason we need closer federal monitoring of these substances," she says.

The study authors say they plan to explore the cost of exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals in other countries.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200114101724.htm

Risk of lead exposure linked to decreased brain volume in adolescents

January 13, 2020

Science Daily/Children's Hospital Los Angeles

In a study using brain scans from nearly 10 thousand adolescents across the country, investigators show that risk of lead exposure is associated with altered brain anatomy and cognitive deficits in children from low income families.

Though leaded gas and lead-based paint were banned decades ago, the risk of lead exposure is far from gone. A new study led by Elizabeth Sowell, PhD, shows that living in neighborhoods with high risk of lead exposure is associated with differences in brain structure and cognitive performance in some children. Her findings, published by Nature Medicine, also show a deeper trend -- children in lower income families may be at increased risk.

Dr. Sowell and her team at The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles hypothesized that children in lower income families could be particularly vulnerable to the effects of living in high lead-risk environments. Their previous findings show that the socioeconomic status of families affects brain development. Here, they examined the association of lead exposure risk with cognitive scores and brain structure in more than 9,500 children.

Dr. Sowell's laboratory is part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which has enrolled nearly 12,000 children from 21 sites across the United States. ABCD follows participants from the age of 9-10 into adulthood, collecting health and brain development information. It is the largest and most comprehensive study of its kind. The wealth of data collected through ABCD allows investigators like Dr. Sowell to ask questions about factors that affect adolescent brains.

Their results showed that an increased risk of lead exposure was associated with decreases in cognitive performance and in the surface area and volume of the cortex -- the surface of the brain, responsible for initiating conscious thought and action. But this was not true for children from mid- or high-income families.

No amount of lead is safe. Even at very low levels, cognitive deficits have been attributed to lead exposure. More than 72,000 neighborhoods in the United States have been assigned risk estimates for lead exposure, based on the age of homes and poverty rates. Though new houses haven't used lead-based paint since 1978, many older homes still contain lead hazards.

"Professional lead remediation of a home can cost $10,000," says Dr. Sowell, who is also a Professor of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. "So, family income becomes a factor in lead exposure." Indeed, as her study reveals, the associations between lead risk and decreases in cognitive performance and brain structure are more pronounced in lower income families.

"We were interested in how lead exposure influences brain anatomy and function," says Andrew Marshall, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in Dr. Sowell's lab and first author of the publication. "Cognition is affected by low-level lead exposure, but there weren't any published studies about brain structure in these children."

Decreased cognitive scores and structural brain differences were only observed in lower-income families. "What we're seeing here," says Dr. Marshall, "is that there are more pronounced relationships between brain structure and cognition when individuals are exposed to challenges like low income or risk of lead exposure." The ABCD study has not yet examined blood lead levels in these children, but the authors of this publication showed that risk of lead exposure is predictive of blood lead levels. Further studies are needed to determine the precise cause for these differences, such as whether lead exposure itself or other factors associated with living in a high lead-risk environment is contributing to this association, but the study unveils a clear correlation between family income and the effects of living in high lead-risk census tracts.

However, Dr. Sowell emphasizes that income and risk of lead exposure do not define a child. "It's absolutely not a foregone conclusion that these risks make you less intellectually capable," she says. "Many children who live in low-income, high-risk areas will be successful." Her goal is to promote awareness of how environmental toxins affect children. Understanding what our children face is the first step in helping them.

"Even though lead levels are reduced from three decades ago in the environment, it's still a highly significant public health issue," says Dr. Sowell. Despite this, there are kids in high-risk environments that do not show these deficits, indicating that it is possible to mitigate lead effects.

"The take home point is that this can be fixed," she says. "Lead does not have to be in the environment. We can remove it and really help kids get healthier."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200113111155.htm