scholarly journals Early childhood stress exposure, reward pathways, and adult decision making

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (51) ◽  
pp. 13549-13554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasmus M. Birn ◽  
Barbara J. Roeber ◽  
Seth D. Pollak
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Life Stress ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Community Sample ◽  
Reward Processing ◽  
Stress Exposure ◽  
Childhood Stress ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Life Circumstances

Individuals who have experienced chronic and high levels of stress during their childhoods are at increased risk for a wide range of behavioral problems, yet the neurobiological mechanisms underlying this association are poorly understood. We measured the life circumstances of a community sample of school-aged children and then followed these children for a decade. Those from the highest and lowest quintiles of childhood stress exposure were invited to return to our laboratory as young adults, at which time we reassessed their life circumstances, acquired fMRI data during a reward-processing task, and tested their judgment and decision making. Individuals who experienced high levels of early life stress showed lower levels of brain activation when processing cues signaling potential loss and increased responsivity when actually experiencing losses. Specifically, those with high childhood stress had reduced activation in the posterior cingulate/precuneus, middle temporal gyrus, and superior occipital cortex during the anticipation of potential rewards; reduced activation in putamen and insula during the anticipation of potential losses; and increased left inferior frontal gyrus activation when experiencing an actual loss. These patterns of brain activity were associated with both laboratory and real-world measures of individuals’ risk taking in adulthood. Importantly, these effects were predicated only by childhood stress exposure and not by current levels of life stress.

scholarly journals Early life stress, FK506 binding protein 5 gene (FKBP5) methylation, and inhibition-related prefrontal function: A prospective longitudinal study

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 1895-1903 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeline B. Harms ◽  
Rasmus Birn ◽  
Nadine Provencal ◽  
Tobias Wiechmann ◽  
Elisabeth B. Binder ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Life Stress ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Binding Protein ◽  
Early Life Stress ◽  
Stress Exposure ◽  
Childhood Stress ◽  
Fk506 Binding Protein ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Prospective Longitudinal

AbstractIndividuals who have experienced high levels of childhood stress are at increased risk for a wide range of behavioral problems that persist into adulthood, yet the neurobiological and molecular mechanisms underlying these associations remain poorly understood. Many of the difficulties observed in stress-exposed children involve problems with learning and inhibitory control. This experiment was designed to test individuals' ability to learn to inhibit responding during a laboratory task. To do so, we measured stress exposure among a community sample of school-aged children, and then followed these children for a decade. Those from the highest and lowest quintiles of childhood stress exposure were invited to return to our laboratory as young adults. At that time, we reassessed their life stress exposure, acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging data during an inhibitory control task, and assayed these individuals' levels of methylation in the FK506 binding protein 5 (FKBP5) gene. We found that individuals who experienced high levels of stress in childhood showed less differentiation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex between error and correct trials during inhibition. This effect was associated only with childhood stress exposure and not by current levels of stress in adulthood. In addition, FKBP5 methylation mediated the association between early life stress and inhibition-related prefrontal activity. These findings are discussed in terms of using multiple levels of analyses to understand the ways in which adversity in early development may affect adult behavioral adaptation.

scholarly journals The Dual Impact of Early and Concurrent Life Stress on Adults’ Diurnal Cortisol Patterns: A Prospective Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (5) ◽  
pp. 739-747 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan S. Young ◽  
Allison K. Farrell ◽  
Elizabeth A. Carlson ◽  
Michelle M. Englund ◽  
Gregory E. Miller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Stress ◽  
High Stress ◽  
Early Life Stress ◽  
Stress Exposure ◽  
Childhood Stress ◽  
Major Life ◽  
Diurnal Cortisol ◽  
A Prospective Study ◽  
Cumulative Model

Major life stress often produces a flat diurnal cortisol slope, an indicator of potential long-term health problems. Exposure to stress early in childhood or the accumulation of stress across the life span may be responsible for this pattern. However, the relative impact of life stress at different life stages on diurnal cortisol is unknown. Using a longitudinal sample of adults followed from birth, we examined three models of the effect of stress exposure on diurnal cortisol: the cumulative model, the biological-embedding model, and the sensitization model. As its name implies, the cumulative model focuses on cumulative life stress. In contrast, the biological-embedding model implicates early childhood stress, and the sensitization model posits that current life stress interacts with early life stress to produce flat diurnal cortisol slopes. Our analyses are consistent with the sensitization model, as they indicate that the combination of high stress exposure early in life and high current stress predict flat diurnal cortisol slopes. These novel findings advance understanding of diurnal cortisol patterns and point to avenues for intervention.

scholarly journals Apples to apples? Neural correlates of emotion regulation differences between high and low risk adolescents

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael T. Perino ◽  
Joao F Guassi Moreira ◽  
Ethan McCormick ◽  
Eva H. Telzer
Keyword(s):  
Risk Taking ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Community Sample ◽  
Behavioral Regulation ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Behavioral History ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
At Risk Populations ◽  
Appetitive Cues ◽  
Most At Risk Populations

Adolescence has been noted as a period of increased risk taking. The literature on normative neurodevelopment implicates aberrant activation of affective and regulatory regions as key to inhibitory failures. However, many of these studies have not included adolescents engaging in high rates of risky behavior, making generalizations to the most at-risk populations potentially problematic. We conducted a comparative study of non-delinquent community (N=24, Mage = 15.8 years, 12 female) and delinquent adolescents (N=24, Mage = 16.2 years, 12 female) who completed a cognitive control task during fMRI, where behavioral inhibition was assessed in the presence of appetitive and aversive socioaffective cues. Community adolescents showed poorer behavioral regulation to appetitive relative to aversive cues, whereas the delinquent sample showed the opposite pattern. Recruitment of the inferior frontal gyrus, medial prefrontal cortex, and tempoparietal junction differentiated community and high-risk adolescents, as delinquent adolescents showed significantly greater recruitment when inhibiting their responses in the presence of aversive cues, while the community sample showed greater recruitment when inhibiting their responses in the presence of appetitive cues. Accounting for behavioral history may be key in understanding when adolescents will have regulatory difficulties, highlighting a need for comparative research into normative and non-normative risk-taking trajectories.

scholarly journals Apples to apples? Neural correlates of emotion regulation differences between high- and low-risk adolescents

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 827-836 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael T Perino ◽  
João F Guassi Moreira ◽  
Ethan M McCormick ◽  
Eva H Telzer
Keyword(s):  
Risk Taking ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Community Sample ◽  
Behavioral Regulation ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Behavioral History ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
At Risk Populations ◽  
Appetitive Cues ◽  
Most At Risk Populations

Abstract Adolescence has been noted as a period of increased risk taking. The literature on normative neurodevelopment implicates aberrant activation of affective and regulatory regions as key to inhibitory failures. However, many of these studies have not included adolescents engaging in high rates of risky behavior, making generalizations to the most at-risk populations potentially problematic. We conducted a comparative study of nondelinquent community (n = 24, mean age = 15.8 years, 12 female) and delinquent adolescents (n = 24, mean age = 16.2 years, 12 female) who completed a cognitive control task during functional magnetic resonance imaging, where behavioral inhibition was assessed in the presence of appetitive and aversive socioaffective cues. Community adolescents showed poorer behavioral regulation to appetitive relative to aversive cues, whereas the delinquent sample showed the opposite pattern. Recruitment of the inferior frontal gyrus, medial prefrontal cortex, and tempoparietal junction differentiated community and high-risk adolescents, as delinquent adolescents showed significantly greater recruitment when inhibiting their responses in the presence of aversive cues, while the community sample showed greater recruitment when inhibiting their responses in the presence of appetitive cues. Accounting for behavioral history may be key in understanding when adolescents will have regulatory difficulties, highlighting a need for comparative research into normative and nonnormative risk-taking trajectories.

scholarly journals Alexithymia is associated with lower confidence in both perceptual and emotion recognition tasks

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Torunsky ◽  
Iris Vilares
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Community Sample ◽  
Emotional Awareness ◽  
Poor Mental Health ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Affective Component ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Task Types ◽  
Metacognitive Ability

Emotions play an important role in everyday decision-making, but emotional awareness can vary greatly between people. Alexithymia, a trait characterized by little or no awareness of one’s emotions, is broadly associated with poor mental health and increased risk of suicide. Alexithymia is fairly common, affecting as much as 10% of people in Western cultures. Understanding how alexithymia relates to decision-making may therefore have wide-reaching impacts on the quality of life for many individuals. We designed and preregistered a study that examined the relationship between alexithymia and decision-making across different task-types. Data were collected from a community sample (N = 123) and participants completed a social, an emotional, and a perceptual decision-making task, as well as a short alexithymia questionnaire. For each task, we considered multiple aspects of the decision-making process, examining participants’ accuracy, confidence, and metacognitive ability (i.e. the ability to retrospectively distinguish between correct and incorrect responses). We found no relationship between alexithymia and performance or metacognitive ability in any task. However, alexithymia was negatively correlated with confidence in both the perceptual and emotional tasks. Furthermore, confidence in one’s decision was strongly, positively correlated across task types, but both accuracy and metacognitive ability showed no relationship between tasks. These results suggest that confidence may be a trait-like, affective component of decision-making, while performance and metacognitive sensitivity appear more task-specific. Furthermore, our results challenge the current limitations of the alexithymia construct, suggesting that alexithymia may have consequences on cognitive processes beyond emotion recognition alone.

Neural Response to Rewards in Youths with Insomnia

SLEEP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiefan Ling ◽  
Xuanyi Lin ◽  
Xiao Li ◽  
Ngan Yin Chan ◽  
Jihui Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Time Window ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Reward Processing ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Reward Positivity ◽  
Insomnia Disorder ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Behavioural Adjustment

Abstract Study Objectives Insomnia and depression are common comorbid conditions in youths. Emerging evidence suggests that disrupted reward processing may be implicated in the association between insomnia and the increased risk for depression. Reduced reward positivity (RewP) as measured by event-related potential (ERP) has been linked to depression, but has not been tested in youths with insomnia. Methods Twenty-eight participants with insomnia disorder and without any comorbid psychiatric disorders and 29 healthy sleepers aged between 15-24 completed a monetary reward task, the Cued Door task, whilst electroencephalographic activity was recorded. RewP (reward minus non-reward difference waves) was calculated as the mean amplitudes within 200ms to 300ms time window at FCz. Two analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) were conducted with age as a covariate on RewP amplitude and latency, respectively. Results Participants with insomnia had a significantly lower RewP amplitude regardless of cue types (Gain, Control, and Loss) than healthy sleepers, F (1, 51) = 4.95, p = .031, indicating blunted reward processing. On the behavioural level, healthy sleepers were more prudential (slower reaction time) in decision making towards Loss/Gain cues than their insomnia counterparts. Trial-by-trial behavioural adjustment analyses showed that, compared with healthy sleepers, participants with insomnia were less likely to dynamically change their choices in response to Loss cues. Conclusions Dysfunctional reward processing, coupled with inflexibility of behavioural adjustment in decision-making, is associated with insomnia disorder among youth, independent of mood disorders. Future studies with long-term follow-up are needed to further delineate the developmental trajectory of insomnia-related reward dysfunctions in youth.

scholarly journals Learning to Play It Safe (or Not): Stable and Evolving Neural Responses during Adolescent Risky Decision-making

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren E. Kahn ◽  
Shannon J. Peake ◽  
Thomas J. Dishion ◽  
Elizabeth A. Stormshak ◽  
Jennifer H. Pfeifer
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Sensation Seeking ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Reward Processing ◽  
Simulation Game ◽  
Risky Decision Making ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Risky Decision ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Risky Decisions

Adolescent decision-making is a topic of great public and scientific interest. However, much of the neuroimaging research in this area contrasts only one facet of decision-making (e.g., neural responses to anticipation or receipt of monetary rewards). Few studies have directly examined the processes that occur immediately before making a decision between two options that have varied and unpredictable potential rewards and penalties. Understanding adolescent decision-making from this vantage point may prove critical to ameliorating risky behavior and improving developmental outcomes. In this study, participants aged 14–16 years engaged in a driving simulation game while undergoing fMRI. Results indicated activity in ventral striatum preceded risky decisions and activity in right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) preceded safe decisions. Furthermore, participants who reported higher sensation-seeking and sensitivity to reward and punishment demonstrated lower rIFG activity during safe decisions. Finally, over successive games, rIFG activity preceding risky decisions decreased, whereas thalamus and caudate activity increased during positive feedback (taking a risk without crashing). These results indicate that regions traditionally associated with reward processing and inhibition not only drive risky decision-making in the moment but also contribute to learning about risk tradeoffs during adolescence.

Neurobiological Reward-Related Abnormalities Across Mood Disorders

2019 ◽  
pp. 222-238
Author(s):  
Alexis E. Whitton ◽  
Michael T. Treadway ◽  
Manon L. Ironside ◽  
Diego A. Pizzagalli
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Mood Disorders ◽  
Treatment Strategies ◽  
Reward Processing ◽  
Reward Learning ◽  
Symptom Presentation ◽  
Psychiatric Symptomatology ◽  
Symptom Dimensions ◽  
Psychotherapeutic Interventions ◽  
Primary Focus

This chapter provides a critical review of recent behavioral and neuroimaging evidence of reward processing abnormalities in mood disorders. The primary focus is on the neural mechanisms underlying disruption in approach motivation, reward learning, and reward-based decision-making in major depression and bipolar disorder. Efforts focused on understanding how reward-related impairments contribute to psychiatric symptomatology have grown substantially in recent years. This has been driven by significant advances in the understanding of the neurobiology of reward processing and a growing recognition that disturbances in motivation and hedonic capacity are poorly targeted by current pharmacological and psychotherapeutic interventions. As a result, numerous studies have sought to test the presence of reward circuit dysfunction in psychiatric disorders that are marked by anhedonia, amotivation, mania, and impulsivity. Moreover, as the field has increasingly eschewed categorical diagnostic boundaries in favor of symptom dimensions, there has been a parallel rise in studies seeking to identify transdiagnostic neural markers of reward processing dysfunction that may transcend disorders. The thesis of this chapter is twofold: First, evidence indicates that specific subcomponents of reward processing map onto partially distinct neurobiological pathways. Second, specific subcomponents of reward processing, including reward learning and effort-based decision-making, are impaired across different mood disorder diagnoses and may point to dimensions in symptom presentation that possess more reliable behavioral and neural correlates. The potential for these findings to inform the development of prevention and treatment strategies is discussed.

scholarly journals A survey of methods for evaluating mini-publics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takeuchi Ayano
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Sufficient Information ◽  
Practical Case ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Political Decision Making

AbstractPublic participation has become increasingly necessary to connect a wide range of knowledge and various values to agenda setting, decision-making and policymaking. In this context, deliberative democratic concepts, especially “mini-publics,” are gaining attention. Generally, mini-publics are conducted with randomly selected lay citizens who provide sufficient information to deliberate on issues and form final recommendations. Evaluations are conducted by practitioner researchers and independent researchers, but the results are not standardized. In this study, a systematic review of existing research regarding practices and outcomes of mini-publics was conducted. To analyze 29 papers, the evaluation methodologies were divided into 4 categories of a matrix between the evaluator and evaluated data. The evaluated cases mainly focused on the following two points: (1) how to maintain deliberation quality, and (2) the feasibility of mini-publics. To create a new path to the political decision-making process through mini-publics, it must be demonstrated that mini-publics can contribute to the decision-making process and good-quality deliberations are of concern to policy-makers and experts. Mini-publics are feasible if they can contribute to the political decision-making process and practitioners can evaluate and understand the advantages of mini-publics for each case. For future research, it is important to combine practical case studies and academic research, because few studies have been evaluated by independent researchers.

scholarly journals COVID-19 and Its Symptoms’ Panoply: A Case-Control Study of 919 Suspected Cases in Locked-Down Ovar, Portugal

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Regina Sá ◽  
Tiago Pinho-Bandeira ◽  
Guilherme Queiroz ◽  
Joana Matos ◽  
João Duarte Ferreira ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Case Control Study ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Case Control ◽  
Case Definition ◽  
Suspected Case ◽  
Risk Characteristics ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Control Study

<b><i>Background:</i></b> Ovar was the first Portuguese municipality to declare active community transmission of SARS-CoV-2, with total lockdown decreed on March 17, 2020. This context provided conditions for a large-scale testing strategy, allowing a referral system considering other symptoms besides the ones that were part of the case definition (fever, cough, and dyspnea). This study aims to identify other symptoms associated with COVID-19 since it may clarify the pre-test probability of the occurrence of the disease. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> This case-control study uses primary care registers between March 29 and May 10, 2020 in Ovar municipality. Pre-test clinical and exposure-risk characteristics, reported by physicians, were collected through a form, and linked with their laboratory result. <b><i>Results:</i></b> The study population included a total of 919 patients, of whom 226 (24.6%) were COVID-19 cases and 693 were negative for SARS-CoV-2. Only 27.1% of the patients reporting contact with a confirmed or suspected case tested positive. In the multivariate analysis, statistical significance was obtained for headaches (OR 0.558), odynophagia (OR 0.273), anosmia (OR 2.360), and other symptoms (OR 2.157). The interaction of anosmia and odynophagia appeared as possibly relevant with a borderline statistically significant OR of 3.375. <b><i>Conclusion:</i></b> COVID-19 has a wide range of symptoms. Of the myriad described, the present study highlights anosmia itself and calls for additional studies on the interaction between anosmia and odynophagia. Headaches and odynophagia by themselves are not associated with an increased risk for the disease. These findings may help clinicians in deciding when to test, especially when other diseases with similar symptoms are more prevalent, namely in winter.

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