Toward the Development of New Strategies to Assess the Needs of Children and Adolescents with Severely Mentally Ill Parents

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S38-S39
Author(s):  
K. Abel
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Life Trajectories ◽  
Young Infants ◽  
The Individual

Up to 10% of mothers and 5% of fathers in Europe have mental illness. Family, educational and social lives of children and adolescents with parental with mental illness (CAPRI) are disrupted by deprivation & repeated hospitalization. This is an urgent political & public health concern: The European Union's CAMHEE report recommends better information on CAPRI risks and resilience and to enable interventions to target the highest risk. This is important because although large numbers of children are in the riskset, most remain resilient. Research needs to support delivery of the CAMHEE initiative by understanding who is at risk and how we can target them early before their life trajectories are fatally disrupted.To do this, we aim to create groundbreaking cross- national datasets providing robust data on CAPRI prevalence & life trajectories needed to plan future services.But epidemiology alone cannot expose how risk creates effects at the individual level. We need to know which CAPRI to target with potentially expensive, time-consuming specialist servicesPowerful neuroscience techniques such as functional near infrared spectroscopy are now available with which we can link epidemiological risk to elucidate effects of exposure within individual infant brain. This unique interdisciplinary approach yokes robust epidemiological evidence to cutting-edge optical imaging that can be undertaken in very young infants.This allows us to target developments in clinical interventions for CAPRI to those in greatest need and potentially to those most vulnerable with the future aim to identify early biomarkers of abnormality for targeting intervention in CAPRI.Disclosure of interestThe author declares that he has no competing interest.

scholarly journals A Synchrony-Based Classification Approach for Predicting Attitudes Using fNIRS

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Macrina C Dieffenbach ◽  
Grace S R Gillespie ◽  
Shannon M Burns ◽  
Ian A McCulloh ◽  
Daniel L Ames ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Near Infrared ◽  
Neural Synchrony ◽  
Reference Groups ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Neuroscience Research ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Dispositional Differences

Abstract Social neuroscience research has demonstrated that those who are like-minded are also “like-brained.” Studies have shown that people who share similar viewpoints have greater neural synchrony with one another, and less synchrony with people who “see things differently.” Although these effects have been demonstrated at the group level, little work has been done to predict the viewpoints of specific individuals using neural synchrony measures. Furthermore, the studies that have made predictions using synchrony-based classification at the individual level used expensive and immobile neuroimaging equipment (e.g. fMRI) in highly controlled laboratory settings, which may not generalize to real-world contexts. Thus, this study uses a simple synchrony-based classification method, which we refer to as the neural reference groups approach, to predict individuals’ dispositional attitudes from data collected in a mobile “pop-up neuroscience” lab. Using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data, we predicted individuals’ partisan stances on a sociopolitical issue by comparing their neural timecourses to data from two partisan neural reference groups. We found that partisan stance could be identified at above-chance levels using data from dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). These results indicate that the neural reference groups approach can be used to investigate naturally-occurring, dispositional differences anywhere in the world.

scholarly journals Genetic variation in the oxytocin system and its link to social motivation in human infants

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Marie Krol ◽  
Nauder Namaky ◽  
Mikhail Monakhov ◽  
Poh San Lai ◽  
Richard Ebstein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Variation ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Social Motivation ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Brain Asymmetry ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Frontal Asymmetry ◽  
Frontal Brain ◽  
The Individual

Introduction. Variability in the motivation to approach or withdraw from others displayed in infancy is thought to have long-term effects on human social development. Frontal brain asymmetry has been linked to motivational processes in infants and adults, with greater left frontal asymmetry reflecting motivation to approach and greater right frontal asymmetry reflecting motivation to withdraw. We examined the hypothesis that variability in infants’ social motivation is linked to genetic variation in the endogenous oxytocin system. Specifically, we measured infants’ frontal brain asymmetry and later looking preferences to smiling and frowning individuals and assayed a single-nucleotide polymorphism in the CD38 gene (rs3796863) linked to autism spectrum disorder and reduced peripheral oxytocin levels. Methods. 77 11-month-old infants’ (36 female) brain responses were measured via functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while viewing four individuals display either smiles or frowns directed toward or away from them. This was followed by a person preference test using eyetracking. Results. Frontal brain asymmetry patterns evoked by direct-gaze faces significantly differed as a function of CD38 genotype. Specifically, while non-risk A-allele carriers displayed greater left lateralization to smiling faces (approach) and greater right lateralization to frowning faces (withdrawal), infants with the CC (ASD risk) genotype displayed withdrawal from smiling faces. During eyetracking, A-allele carriers showed a heightened preference for the individual who smiled, while CC infants preferred the individual who frowned.Conclusions. Our findings demonstrate that, from early in human ontogeny, genetic variation in the oxytocin system is linked to variability in brain and behavioral markers of social motivation.

scholarly journals Prefrontal Cortex and Supplementary Motor Area Activation During Robot-Assisted Weight-Supported Over-Ground Walking in Young Neurological Patients: A Pilot fNIRS Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hubertus J. A. van Hedel ◽  
Agata Bulloni ◽  
Anja Gut
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Functional Outcome ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Supplementary Motor Area ◽  
Motor Area ◽  
Hemodynamic Responses ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Over Ground Walking

Introduction: Rehabilitation therapy devices are designed for practicing intensively task-specific exercises inducing long-term neuroplastic changes underlying improved functional outcome. The Andago enables over-ground walking with bodyweight support requiring relatively high cognitive demands. In this study, we investigated whether we could identify children and adolescents with neurological gait impairments who show increased hemodynamic responses of the supplementary motor area (SMA) or prefrontal cortex (PFC) measured with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) when walking in Andago compared to walking on a treadmill. We further assessed the practicability and acceptability of fNIRS.Methods: Thirteen participants (two girls, 11 boys, age 8.0–15.7 years) with neurological impairments walked in the Andago and on a treadmill under comparable conditions. We measured hemodynamic responses over SMA and PFC during 10 walks (each lasting 20 s.) per condition and analyzed the data according to the latest recommendations. In addition, we listed technical issues, stopped the time needed to don fNIRS, and used a questionnaire to assess acceptability.Results: Hemodynamic responses varied largely between participants. Participants with a typical hemodynamic response (i.e., increased oxygenated hemoglobin concentration) showed large cortical activations during walking in Andago compared to treadmill walking (large effect sizes, i.e., for SMA: r = 0.91, n = 4; for PFC: r = 0.62, n = 3). Other participants showed atypical (SMA: n = 2; PFC: n = 4) or inconclusive hemodynamic responses (SMA: n = 5; PFC: n = 4). The median time for donning fNIRS was 28 min. The questionnaire indicated high acceptance of fNIRS, despite that single participants reported painful sensations.Discussion: Repetitive increased activation of cortical areas like the SMA and PFC might result in long-term neuroplastic changes underlying improved functional outcome. This cross-sectional pilot study provides first numbers on hemodynamic responses in SMA and PFC during walking in Andago in children with neurological impairments, reveals that only a small proportion of the participants shows typical hemodynamic responses, and reports that fNIRS requires considerable time for donning. This information is needed when designing future longitudinal studies to investigate whether increased brain activation of SMA and PFC during walking in Andago could serve as a biomarker to identify potential therapy responders among children and adolescents undergoing neurorehabilitation.

Selective Cortical Mapping of Biological Motion Processing in Young Infants

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 2521-2532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Lloyd-Fox ◽  
Anna Blasi ◽  
Nick Everdell ◽  
Clare E. Elwell ◽  
Mark H. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Biological Motion ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Cortical Activation ◽  
Cortical Mapping ◽  
Motion Processing ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Young Infants ◽  
Manual Movements

How specialized is the infant brain for perceiving the facial and manual movements displayed by others? Although there is evidence for a network of regions that process biological motion in adults—including individuated responses to the perception of differing facial and manual movements—how this cortical specialization develops remains unknown. We used functional near-infrared spectroscopy [Lloyd-Fox, S., Blasi, A., & Elwell, C. Illuminating the developing brain: The past, present and future of functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 34, 269–284, 2010] to investigate the ability of 5-month-old infants to process differing biological movements. Infants watched videos of adult actors moving their hands, their mouth, or their eyes, all in contrast to nonbiological mechanical movements, while hemodynamic responses were recorded over the their frontal and temporal cortices. We observed different regions of the frontal and temporal cortex that responded to these biological movements and different patterns of cortical activation according to the type of movement watched. From an early age, our brains selectively respond to biologically relevant movements, and further, selective patterns of regional specification to different cues occur within what may correspond to a developing “social brain” network. These findings illuminate hitherto undocumented maps of selective cortical activation to biological motion processing in the early postnatal development of the human brain.

A Model of Being in Recovery as a Foundation for Recovery-Oriented Practice

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Davidson ◽  
Michael Rowe ◽  
Janis Tondora ◽  
Maria J. O'Connell ◽  
Martha Staeheli Lawless
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Serious Mental Illness ◽  
The Other ◽  
Service Development ◽  
Recovery Plan ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Services And Supports ◽  
The Individual

We begin this second chapter where we left off in the preceding one, with the question of what is involved in the work of recovery and how practitioners can best support this work. On one hand, we understand the answer to this question to be very much a work in progress. There is much still to learn about recovery and recovery-oriented care, and we consider the field—including our own efforts in this regard—to be in the very early stages of its development. On the other hand, we have begun to learn some things about what processes of recovery entail and what the provision of recovery-oriented care looks like in practice, as well as about some of the structural conditions necessary for this kind of care to be implemented. In this chapter, we share some of these lessons by describing components and processes of being in recovery that we have integrated into a model that can then serve as the foundation for developing recovery-oriented practices. The assumption of this approach, as we mentioned in the previous chapter, is that this form of recovery is primarily the responsibility of the person with a serious mental illness. What practitioners do should thus be oriented to supporting and facilitating the person’s own efforts. We describe this perspective as a “bottom up” approach to service development, as it begins with the needs, preferences, and goals of the person in recovery— not only at the individual level of a person’s “recovery plan” but also at the collective level of the system as a whole. What services and supports should a mental health system offer? Those, we suggest, that will enable persons with serious mental illness to lead safe, dignified, and gratifying lives beyond the illness—when possible— or, when that is not possible, within the boundaries imposed by the illness. Before turning to the question of what services and supports we need to offer to promote and sustain recovery, we need to understand better what being in recovery entails. To frame the question in this way is not to ignore the other form of recovery (i.e., recovery from mental illness).

scholarly journals ‘Hiding their troubles’: a qualitative exploration of suicide in Bhutanese refugees in the USA

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. L. Brown ◽  
T. Mishra ◽  
R. L. Frounfelker ◽  
E. Bhargava ◽  
B. Gautam ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Ecology ◽  
Ecological Model ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Bhutanese Refugees ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Past Experiences

Background.Suicide is a major global health concern. Bhutanese refugees resettled in the USA are disproportionately affected by suicide, yet little research has been conducted to identify factors contributing to this vulnerability. This study aims to investigate the issue of suicide of Bhutanese refugee communities via an in-depth qualitative, social-ecological approach.Methods.Focus groups were conducted with 83 Bhutanese refugees (adults and children), to explore the perceived causes, and risk and protective factors for suicide, at individual, family, community, and societal levels. Audio recordings were translated and transcribed, and inductive thematic analysis conducted.Results.Themes identified can be situated across all levels of the social-ecological model. Individual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are only fully understood when considering past experiences, and stressors at other levels of an individual's social ecology. Shifting dynamics and conflict within the family are pervasive and challenging. Within the community, there is a high prevalence of suicide, yet major barriers to communicating with others about distress and suicidality. At the societal level, difficulties relating to acculturation, citizenship, employment and finances, language, and literacy are influential. Two themes cut across several levels of the ecosystem: loss; and isolation, exclusion, and loneliness.Conclusions.This study extends on existing research and highlights the necessity for future intervention models of suicide to move beyond an individual focus, and consider factors at all levels of refugees’ social-ecology. Simply focusing treatment at the individual level is not sufficient. Researchers and practitioners should strive for community-driven, culturally relevant, socio-ecological approaches for prevention and treatment.

scholarly journals Interbrain Synchrony in the Expectation of Cooperation Behavior: A Hyperscanning Study Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingming Zhang ◽  
Huibin Jia ◽  
Mengxue Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Mirror Neuron System ◽  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Neural Substrates ◽  
Environmental Cues ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
The Individual

Expectation of others’ cooperative behavior plays a core role in economic cooperation. However, the dynamic neural substrates of expectation of cooperation (hereafter EOC) are little understood. To fully understand EOC behavior in more natural social interactions, the present study employed functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning to simultaneously measure pairs of participants’ brain activations in a modified prisoner’s dilemma game (PDG). The data analysis revealed the following results. Firstly, under the high incentive condition, team EOC behavior elicited higher interbrain synchrony (IBS) in the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) than individual EOC behavior. Meanwhile, the IBS in the IFG could predict the relationship between empathy/agreeableness and EOC behavior, and this prediction role was modulated by social environmental cues. These results indicate the involvement of the human mirror neuron system (MNS) in the EOC behavior and the different neural substrates between team EOC and individual EOC, which also conform with theory that social behavior was affected by internal (i.e., empathy/agreeableness) and external factors (i.e., incentive). Secondly, female dyads exhibited a higher IBS value of cooperative expectation than male dyads in the team EOC than the individual EOC in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), while in the individual EOC stage, the coherence value of female dyads was significantly higher than that of male dyads under the low incentive reward condition in the rIFG. These sex effects thus provide presumptive evidence that females are more sensitive to environmental cues and also suggest that during economic social interaction, females’ EOC behavior depends on more social cognitive abilities. Overall, these results raise intriguing questions for future research on human cooperative behaviors.

scholarly journals DIVERSITY, EUROPEAN IDENTITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-5
Author(s):  
Yolanda Zografova
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
European Identity ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Psychological Knowledge ◽  
The Individual

The wide range of transformations subsequent to the enlargements of the European community reverberate in all important spheres of the way of life. The individual and social psychic experience the important influence of the enlargement processes and so do the interhuman, intergroup and cross-cultural relations. To a mutual intergroup tolerance and the lacking conflicts integration of foreign citizens, of immigrants and refugees in a certain country, lead the importance of a collective European identity and the formation of commonly shared values, norms and rules. This is found to be a controversial and uneasy process. Social knowledge and social psychology in particular could help elaborate new models of relations on a supra-individual level directed toward research on collective phenomena through interdisciplinary approach.

scholarly journals Early prosocial development: a systematic review of evidence to support the integration of neurocognitive and cross cultural methods

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Katus ◽  
Gabrielle McHarg ◽  
Claire Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Longitudinal Research ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Prosocial Development ◽  
Young Infants ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Cross Cultural Research

Introduction. Within the relatively young field of social neuroscience, there is growing interest in the interplay between biological and social influences on early prosociality (which includes key constructs of helping, sharing and comforting). In particular, neuroimaging (electroencephalography [EEG], functional near infrared spectroscopy [fNIRS]) and eye tracking haven proven invaluable methods to study infants and young children. These measures are more easily adapted for use in different cultural settings than many behavioural paradigms and so hold great potential for implementation in cross- cultural research. Method. We conducted two searches of studies of prosocial development during infancy and early childhood, one with a focus on recent methodological advances and one to review studies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) over the past 20 years. Results. In total, we identified 15 studies that used neurocognitive methods; these had a strong focus on helping behaviour and conducted almost exclusively in high-income settings. We also identified 20 studies that investigated prosocial development in LMICs; these focussed primarily on sharing, and included just two eye-tracking studies and no studies using either EEG or fNIRS. Discussion. Several directions for future research emerged from this review. These include the need for: (i) longitudinal research to elucidate developmental trajectories; (ii) investigations involving young infants (<12 months); and (iii) the potential importance of applying EEG, fNIRS and eye tracking in cross cultural research into prosocial development.

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