Teens who don't date are less depressed and have better social skills

September 6, 2019

Science Daily/University of Georgia

Adolescents who were not in romantic relationships during middle and high school had good social skills and low depression, and fared better or equal to peers who dated.

Dating, especially during the teenage years, is thought to be an important way for young people to build self-identity, develop social skills, learn about other people, and grow emotionally.

Yet new research from the University of Georgia has found that not dating can be an equally beneficial choice for teens. And in some ways, these teens fared even better.

The study, published online in The Journal of School Health, found that adolescents who were not in romantic relationships during middle and high school had good social skills and low depression, and fared better or equal to peers who dated.

"The majority of teens have had some type of romantic experience by 15 to 17 years of age, or middle adolescence," said Brooke Douglas, a doctoral student in health promotion at UGA's College of Public Health and the study's lead author.

"This high frequency has led some researchers to suggest that dating during teenage years is a normative behavior. That is, adolescents who have a romantic relationship are therefore considered 'on time' in their psychological development."

If dating was considered normal and essential for a teen's individual development and well-being, Douglas began to wonder what this suggested about adolescents who chose not to date.

"Does this mean that teens that don't date are maladjusted in some way? That they are social misfits? Few studies had examined the characteristics of youth who do not date during the teenage years, and we decided we wanted to learn more," she said.

To do this, Douglas and study co-author Pamela Orpinas examined whether 10th grade students who reported no or very infrequent dating over a seven-year period differed on emotional and social skills from their more frequently dating peers.

They analyzed data collected during a 2013 study led by Orpinas, which followed a cohort of adolescents from Northeast Georgia from sixth through 12th grade. Each spring, students indicated whether they had dated, and reported on a number of social and emotional factors, including positive relationships with friends, at home, and at school, symptoms of depression, and suicidal thoughts. Their teachers completed questionnaires rating each student's behavior in areas that included social skills, leadership skills and levels of depression.

Non-dating students had similar or better interpersonal skills than their more frequently dating peers. While the scores of self-reported positive relationships with friends, at home, and at school did not differ between dating and non-dating peers, teachers rated the non-dating students significantly higher for social skills and leadership skills than their dating peers.

Students who didn't date were also less likely to be depressed. Teachers' scores on the depression scale were significantly lower for the group that reported no dating. Additionally, the proportion of students who self-reported being sad or hopeless was significantly lower within this group as well.

"In summary, we found that non-dating students are doing well and are simply following a different and healthy developmental trajectory than their dating peers," said Orpinas, a professor of health promotion and behavior.

"While the study refutes the notion of non-daters as social misfits, it also calls for health promotion interventions at schools and elsewhere to include non-dating as an option for normal, healthy development," said Douglas.

"As public health professionals, we can do a better job of affirming that adolescents do have the individual freedom to choose whether they want to date or not, and that either option is acceptable and healthy," she said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190906134007.htm

Young adults exposed to incarceration as children prone to depression

Anxiety high among this population

September 4, 2019

Science Daily/Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago

Young adults with childhood history of both parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement were nearly three times more likely to have depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) compared to peers without any experience with the criminal justice system, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. They also were nearly twice as likely to have anxiety compared to young adults without childhood exposure to incarceration.

"This is a particularly vulnerable and understudied population. Incarceration impacts families across generations, and youth who had a parent in jail or prison more often find themselves in the juvenile justice system," says lead author Nia Heard-Garris, MD, MSc, a pediatrician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Instructor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "Young adults with histories of both juvenile incarceration and parental incarceration as children had a strong association with poor mental health outcomes in young adulthood."

Five million U.S. children have had a parent incarcerated, and those children are estimated to be involved in the juvenile justice system at three times the rate of their peers without a history of parental incarceration.

To examine the association between childhood history of incarceration (parental incarceration plus juvenile justice involvement) and mental health outcomes, Dr. Heard-Garris and co-lead author, Kaitlyn Sacotte, MD, a former medical student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and current pediatric resident physician at Oregon Health Science University, and colleagues, used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to Adult Health.

Out of 13,083 participants, 1,247 (9 percent) had childhood history of parental incarceration, 492 (4.5 percent) had juvenile justice involvement, and 141 (1 percent) had a childhood history of both parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement. Black individuals accounted for over 33 percent of participants who reported both parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement, and Latinx participants accounted for over 17 percent.

"Our analyses highlight that a history of both parental incarceration and juvenile justice involvement occurs for 1 out of every 100 U.S. children overall and is disproportionally more common among youth of color," says Dr. Heard-Garris.

Although Black and Latinx individuals were more highly represented, researchers found that the group with dual incarceration exposure had higher odds of poor mental health outcomes that are independent of other factors, such as race or ethnicity, age, family structure, parental education, receipt of public assistance, and residence in the city, suburbs or rural areas.

The researchers additionally found that a history parental incarceration or juvenile justice involvement alone was also associated with worse mental health outcomes compared to peers without incarceration exposure.

"Currently parental incarceration is considered an adverse childhood experience, but juvenile justice involvement is not," says Dr. Heard-Garris. "Given the increased risk for poor mental health outcomes we found in our study, perhaps we should also consider juvenile justice involvement an adverse childhood experience and start screening youth for any incarceration exposure during typical healthcare visits. This would allow us to further support vulnerable patients by connecting them with appropriate resources."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190904113208.htm

Overweight kids actually eat less right after stressful events

September 3, 2019

Science Daily/University of Michigan

A new study recently found that overweight adolescents -- considered particularly susceptible to stress eating -- actually ate less when exposed to a lab stressor.

People often react to stress by binging on sweets or fattening comfort foods, cravings fueled by the appetite-stimulating stress hormone cortisol.

But overweight adolescents -- considered particularly susceptible to stress eating -- actually ate less when exposed to a lab stressor, and the foods they eschewed were the high fat and sugar options, according to a University of Michigan study.

Even more surprising, kids who produced the most cortisol after the stressor saw the biggest appetite reduction, eating about 35% fewer calories in the two hours after the stressor, said principal investigator Rebecca Hasson, associate professor of movement science at the U-M School of Kinesiology.

Results were similar whether adolescents in the study were monitoring their food intake or not. This matters because people who restrict calories are more likely to stress eat.

That didn't happen among these dieters, and the results suggest that a biological response -- such as the flood of cortisol or the satiety hormone leptin -- drove the adolescents' reduced appetite.

Hasson and colleague Matthew Nagy, the study's first author and an alumnus of the U-M School of Public Health, wanted to understand how biology and behavior impacted the eating patterns of overweight kids.

"These are really exciting findings because they give us a chance to observe eating patterns when adults are exposed to stress, which is a very important factor in childhood obesity, long-term cardiovascular risk and type 2 diabetes risk," said Hasson, who also leads the U-M Childhood Disparities Research Lab and is an associate professor of nutritional sciences in the School of Public Health.

"This doesn't mean stress kids out and they'll lose weight. This is in the short term only. They may eat more calories later. Typically, many kids did say they turned to food when stressed, so maybe this was a time effect."

Also, even if the cortisol spike didn't cause overeating, it's still metabolically unhealthy, she said.

The study, which appears in Psychosomatic Medicine, involved about 60 kids.

Hasson said much work remains to see who's susceptible to big cortisol spikes and the long-term effects of stress. Previous studies have found that overweight adults with high cortisol responses after stress also experience short-term calorie reduction.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190903084044.htm

Early life environment may lead to high blood pressure in children

High outdoor temperatures, low city walkability and BPA exposure associated with higher risk of hypertension in children

September 2, 2019

Science Daily/American College of Cardiology

Where a mother lives and the temperature outside while she is pregnant, among other environmental factors, can impact whether her child is prehypertensive or hypertensive during childhood, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Exposure to negative lifestyle factors in pregnancy, such as obesity, physical inactivity, poor diet, and alcohol and tobacco consumption have long been established as heart disease risk factors for mothers. Only in recent years have studies begun to link these risk factors to prehypertensive status in children and their likelihood of developing hypertension, or high blood pressure, later in life.

The study included data from a total of 1,277 mother-child pairs from the Human Early-Life Exposome (HELIX) project, which pooled data of six European birth cohorts from the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Lithuania, Norway and Greece. The selected children were between the ages of 6 to 11, had stored blood and urine samples available and had no prior health problems. At the time of the examination, 10 percent of the children could be classified as prehypertensive or hypertensive.

Researchers evaluated a total of 89 prenatal maternal exposures and 128 postnatal child exposures. Of these, four broader environmental factors were determined to influence blood pressure status in children: Built environment (where the mother was living during pregnancy), outdoor temperature, fish intake and exposure to chemicals.

"This study is the first to simultaneously consider the possible effects of exposure to hundreds of environmental factors during early life on blood pressure in children," said Charline Warembourg, PhD, the study's main author from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal). "Exposures were assessed through a mix of predictive modeling from home address and questionnaire and through determination of biological samples from the mother and child."

Mothers who lived in a walkable environment with access to green spaces, shops, restaurants and public transportation during pregnancy were associated with normal blood pressure in their children. Alternatively, the mothers who did not live in an urban or highly walkable environment had higher blood pressure. The researchers hypothesized that the lower blood pressure that resulted from living in an urban setting was due to the higher amount of physical activity during pregnancy.

Exposure to a higher outdoor temperature during the time of the blood pressure assessment was associated with lower diastolic blood pressure in children. Outdoor temperature has been proven in previous studies to be a known environmental factor to affect blood pressure in both adults and children.

Both low and high fish intake during pregnancy were associated with an increase in blood pressure in children. While the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish are beneficial for overall cardiovascular health, fish contaminated by chemicals or metals could reduce any positive effects of omega-3 fatty acids.

Exposure to bisphenol-A (BPA) concentrations -- a chemical found in various consumer plastics -- during pregnancy resulted in higher blood pressure in children, as did exposure to perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) concentrations -- a chemical found in cosmetics, household cleaners or clothing. Children who had been exposed to copper during childhood also had a higher blood pressure.

"In this study, the researchers presented a comprehensive analysis of the association of early-life environmental exposures with blood pressure in children," said Andrea A. Baccarelli, MD, PhD, chair and Leon Hess professor of environmental health sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, in an accompanying editorial comment. "Due to the innovation shown by the researchers, this study provides a model that may greatly advance investigations of the influences of environmental exposures on human health."

This study has several limitations, including exposure misclassification and the small sample size given the large number of exposures investigated. While the present study remains at risk of false positives or negatives, it highlights that environmental exposures early in life have potentially important effects on blood pressure in children.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190902142020.htm

Millennials, think you're digitally better than us? Yes, according to science

Study one of the first to examine IT switching prowess phenomenon in the 'net generation' with some unexpected results

August 28, 2019

Science Daily/Florida Atlantic University

Legend has it that millennials, specifically the 'Net Generation,' masterfully switch from one technology to the next. They claim that it's easy and that they can do it better than older generations. Research, so far, hasn't proven this claim. A new study provides some of the first results on whether or not ''Net Genners'' are developing greater digital literacy than generations before them, and if this has enriched them with an ability to switch their attention more efficiently.

Emails, instant messaging, app notifications, RSS feeds, and a plethora of social networks inundate almost every aspect of daily life from work to home or just keeping in touch socially. Some people average more than four information technology (IT) switches per minute. This barrage of IT interruptions makes it increasingly difficult to focus on the task-at-hand.

Legend has it that millennials, specifically the "Net Generation," use many technologies simultaneously, masterfully switching from one to the next. They claim that it's easy and that they can do it much better than older generations. Research, so far, hasn't proven this claim and the consequences of these incessant interruptions on attention and performance.

Florida Atlantic University researchers in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science are one of the first to examine this phenomenon in college-age students. The study provides some of the first results on whether or not "Net Genners," who have grown up with widespread access to technology, are developing greater digital literacy than generations before them, and if this has enriched them with an ability to switch their attention more efficiently.

For the study, researchers simulated a typical working environment, complete with IT interruptions, to allow them to track the effects on participants' inhibitory processes. One hundred and seventy-seven mostly college-age participants were divided into three groups: those who received IT interruptions; those who did not, and a control group. Researchers compared the three groups' accuracy and response time on completing tasks, gauging their level of anxiety.

Results, published in the journal Applied Neuropsychology: Adult, indicate that there is no need to "pardon these interruptions," at least for this younger generation.

Findings show that switching between technologies did not deplete or diminish performance in the group that had the IT interruptions compared to the control group or the group that did not receive IT interruptions. Unexpectedly, however, researchers discovered diminished performance in the participants from the group that did not receive any IT interruptions.

All three groups reported low levels of anxiety during the study. Seventy-five percent of two of the groups reported their anxiety as "not at all" or "a little bit," and the researchers did not find any significant differences between groups.

"We were really surprised to find impaired performance in the group that did not receive any information technology interruptions. It appears that the Net Generation thrives on switching their attention and they can do it more efficiently because information technology is woven throughout their daily lives," said Mónica Rosselli, Ph.D., senior author, professor and assistant chair of psychology in FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, and a member of the FAU Brain Institute (I-BRAIN), one of the University's four research pillars. "Because younger generations are so accustomed to using instant messaging, pop-ups like the ones we used for our study, may blend into the background and may not appear surprising or unplanned, and therefore may not produce anxiety."

Prior research in the general population has found that it takes about 25 minutes to return to an original task following an IT interruption and 41 percent of these interruptions result in discontinuing the interrupted task altogether. Emails alone cause about 96 interruptions in an eight-hour day with an added one-and-a-half hours of recovery time per day.

Results of the new FAU study sheds light on younger generations who have commonly used instant messaging as a major communication tool and this communication preference may reveal a perception gap between generations.

"How we adapt to technology and leverage it to our advantage by deciding what information we attend to at any given moment has substantial implications on our ability to remain valuable and productive in our respective work and education domains," said Deven M. Christopher, co-author and a graduate psychology student at FAU. "Results from our study may provide a basis for further research, especially because younger generations are developing in a more connected world than preceding generations."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190828092457.htm

Parental burnout can lead to harmful outcomes for parent and child

August 28, 2019

Science Daily/Association for Psychological Science

When the daily stress of parenting becomes chronic it can turn into parental burnout, an intense exhaustion that leads parents to feel detached from their children and unsure of their parenting abilities, according to research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. This type of burnout can have serious consequences for both parent and child, increasing parental neglect, harm, and thoughts about escape.

"In the current cultural context, there is a lot of pressure on parents," says lead researcher Moïra Mikolajczak of UCLouvain. "But being a perfect parent is impossible and attempting to be one can lead to exhaustion. Our research suggests that whatever allows parents to recharge their batteries, to avoid exhaustion, is good for children."

Mikolajczak and coauthors James J. Gross of Stanford University and Isabelle Roskam of UCLouvain became interested in the issue through their clinical encounters with good parents who, as a result of their exhaustion, had become the opposite of what they were trying to be. Although previous research had explored the causes of parental burnout, relatively little was known about its consequences. The researchers decided to directly examine the outcomes associated with parental burnout in two studies that followed parents over time.

In the first study, Mikolajczak and colleagues recruited parents through social networks, schools, pediatricians, and other sources to participate in research on "parental well-being and exhaustion." The parents, mostly French-speaking adults in Belgium, completed three batches of online surveys spaced about 5.5 months apart.

The surveys included a 22-item measure of parental burnout that gauged parents' emotional exhaustion, emotional distancing, and feelings of inefficacy; a six-item measure that gauged their thoughts about escaping their family; a 17-item measure that gauged the degree to which they neglected their childrens' physical, educational and emotional needs; and a 15-item measure that gauged their tendency to engage in verbal, physical, or psychological violence.

Because many of the questions asked about sensitive topics, the researchers also measured participants' tendency to choose the most socially desirable responses when confronted with probing questions.

A total of 2,068 parents participated in the first survey, with 557 still participating at the third survey.

Participants' data revealed a strong association between burnout and the three variables -- escape ideation, parental neglect, and parental violence -- at each of the three time points.

Parental burnout at the first and second survey was associated with later parental neglect, parental violence, and escape ideation. The researchers found that parental burnout and parental neglect had a circular relationship: Parental burnout led to increased parental neglect, which led to increased burnout, and so on. Parental violence appeared to be a clear consequence of burnout.

Importantly, all of these patterns held even when the researchers took participants' tendency toward socially desirable responding into account.

A second online study with mostly English-speaking parents in the UK produced similar findings.

Together, the data suggest that parental burnout is likely the cause of escape ideation, parental neglect, and parental violence.

"We were a bit surprised by the irony of the results," says Mikolajczak. "If you want to do the right thing too much, you can end up doing the wrong thing. Too much pressure on parents can lead them to exhaustion which can have damaging consequences for the parent and for the children."

Additional studies are needed to confirm and extend these findings with broader samples and measures. Nonetheless, the robust pattern of results suggests that there are important lessons to be learned from these findings, the researchers say.

"Parents need to know that self-care is good for the child and that when they feel severely exhausted, they should seek help. Health and child services professionals need to be informed about parental burnout so that they can accurately diagnose it and provide parents with the most appropriate care. And those engaged in policy and public health need to help raise awareness and lift the taboo on parental burnout, which will encourage parents to seek the help they need," Mikolajczak concludes.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190828080538.htm

Prenatal pesticide exposure linked to changes in teen's brain activity

New study is one of the first to use advanced brain imaging to reveal how exposure to these chemicals changes the brain

August 27, 2019

Science Daily/University of California - Berkeley

Prenatal exposure to the organophosphate pesticides has been linked to poorer cognition and behavior problems in children. A new study is one of the first to use advanced brain imaging to reveal how exposure can actually change brain activity. Teenagers estimated to have higher levels of prenatal exposure to organophosphates showed altered brain activity compared to their peers while performing tasks that require executive control, the study found.

Organophosphates are among the most commonly used classes of pesticides in the United States, despite mounting evidence linking prenatal exposure to the chemicals to poorer cognition and behavior problems in children.

A new study led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers is one of the first to use advanced brain imaging to reveal how exposure to these chemicals in the womb changes brain activity.

The study, which appeared this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used functional near-infrared imaging (fNIRS) to monitor blood flow in the brains of 95 teenagers born and raised in California's Salinas Valley, where agricultural spraying of pesticides is common.

Compared to their peers, teenagers estimated to have higher levels of prenatal exposure to organophosphates showed altered brain activity while performing tasks that require executive control, the study found.

"These results are compelling, because they support what we have seen with our neuropsychological testing, which is that organophosphates impact the brain," said Sharon Sagiv, associate adjunct professor of epidemiology at UC Berkeley and lead author on the study.

The teenagers were part of the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS), a longitudinal study examining the effects of pesticides and other environmental toxins on childhood development. The sudy was initiated by UC Berkeley investigators more than 20 years ago. Previous CHAMACOS work has linked prenatal organophosphate exposure with attention problems and lower IQ in children.

In the current study, the researchers used fNIRS to measure brain activation while teens ages 15 to 17 engaged in a variety of tasks requiring executive function, attention, social cognition and language comprehension.

The fNIRS technique uses infrared light to monitor blood flow in the outer regions, or cortex, of the brain. It provides similar information as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), but only requires a small cap of infrared light sources, rather than massive MRI tube, making it a more affordable and portable choice for research studies.

The researchers also used data from the California Pesticide Use Reporting program, which documents when and where agricultural pesticides are sprayed, to estimate their residential proximity to organophosphate application during pregnancy.

They found that teens with higher prenatal organophosphate exposure had less blood flow to the frontal cortex when engaged in tasks that test cognitive flexibility and visual working memory, and that they had more blood flow to the parietal and temporal lobes during tests of linguistic working memory.

"With fNIRS and other neuroimaging, we are seeing more directly the potential impact of organophosphate exposure on the brain, and it may be more sensitive to neurological deficit than cognitive testing," said Brenda Eskenazi, Professor of the Graduate School at UC Berkeley and senior author of the study.

Little is known about the relationship between pesticide exposure and the brain, so it's not clear why organophosphate exposure is associated with lower brain activity for some tasks and higher brain activity for others.

However, similar patterns have been observed in other conditions affecting the brain, including Type 1 diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, said Allan L. Reiss, the Howard C. Robbins Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a professor of radiology at Stanford University and co-author of the paper.

"The brain has a remarkable ability to utilize compensatory mechanisms to counteract long-term insults," Reiss said. "Higher activation may represent the recruitment and utilization of extra neural resources to address functional inefficiency related to a long-term insult, and lower activation, then, could be related to the eventual failure to recruit these resources after continued exposure or disease exhausts the brain's ability to bring compensatory responses online."

In the future, the team plans to repeat the brain imaging experiments on the more than 500 other participants in the CHAMACOS study to test if the associations hold.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190827123626.htm

Family-school engagement has specific perks for young students

Incentive for families to stay engaged with school

August 27, 2019

Science Daily/University of Missouri-Columbia

Both elementary school children and middle school children are less likely to have concentration problems and behavioral issues at the end of a school year if their parents made a greater effort to be engaged with their schooling earlier in the year.

With school in full swing, many parents might be considering how to get more involved with their child's schooling. Parent involvement and support can be beneficial for students of all ages, but new research shows that family-school involvement has specific perks for young students.

After surveying more than 3,170 students and 200 teachers, researchers at the University of Missouri found that families are less engaged with their child's schooling in middle school than they are when their child is in elementary school. However, the researchers also found a silver lining: Both elementary school children and middle school children are less likely to have concentration problems and behavioral issues at the end of a school year if their parents made a greater effort to be engaged with their schooling earlier in the year.

"In addition to being less likely to have emotional or behavioral issues in class, we also found that students with engaged parents ended the year with better social skills and were able to focus on tasks easier," said Tyler Smith, a senior research associate in the College of Education. "This means that when parents are more involved at school, the benefits to their child grow over time."

The researchers said that family-school engagement often drops from elementary to middle school for several reasons, including a change in student-teacher ratio and a desire to respect their child's growing sense of independence.

"Keeping in contact with multiple teachers can be more challenging for parents with children in middle school, but our study shows evidence that parents and teachers should continue to make an effort to connect," said Keith Herman, a professor in the College of Education and co-author on the study. "There are many options for parents to become more involved at both levels without feeling intrusive."

Herman suggests that parents can explore getting involved with their child's schooling in a variety of ways. Options outside of the home include attending school functions, volunteering at events and joining parent groups. However, parents and family members can also take a more active role by helping with homework and keeping in touch with the child's teacher(s).

Smith adds that teachers can also do their part in encouraging families to get more involved by providing opportunities for parents to connect with them.

"Teachers have a lot on their hands, obviously, but even small efforts to help build better family-teacher relationships can have big payoffs for everyone involved," Smith said. "Teachers might consider inviting parents to special events or giving students assignments that involve their parents so that the students can help begin to build that relationship naturally."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190827123536.htm

Mindfulness for middle school students

Focusing awareness on the present moment can enhance academic performance and lower stress levels

August 26, 2019

Science Daily/Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Two new studies from MIT suggest that mindfulness -- the practice of focusing one's awareness on the present moment -- can enhance academic performance and mental health in middle schoolers. The researchers found that more mindfulness correlates with better academic performance, fewer suspensions from school, and less stress.

"By definition, mindfulness is the ability to focus attention on the present moment, as opposed to being distracted by external things or internal thoughts. If you're focused on the teacher in front of you, or the homework in front of you, that should be good for learning," says John Gabrieli, the Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences, and a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

The researchers also showed, for the first time, that mindfulness training can alter brain activity in students. Sixth-graders who received mindfulness training not only reported feeling less stressed, but their brain scans revealed reduced activation of the amygdala, a brain region that processes fear and other emotions, when they viewed images of fearful faces.

Together, the findings suggest that offering mindfulness training in schools could benefit many students, says Gabrieli, who is the senior author of both studies.

"We think there is a reasonable possibility that mindfulness training would be beneficial for children as part of the daily curriculum in their classroom," he says. "What's also appealing about mindfulness is that there are pretty well-established ways of teaching it."

In the moment

Both studies were performed at charter schools in Boston. In one of the papers, which appears today in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience, the MIT team studied about 100 sixth-graders. Half of the students received mindfulness training every day for eight weeks, while the other half took a coding class. The mindfulness exercises were designed to encourage students to pay attention to their breath, and to focus on the present moment rather than thoughts of the past or the future.

Students who received the mindfulness training reported that their stress levels went down after the training, while the students in the control group did not. Students in the mindfulness training group also reported fewer negative feelings, such as sadness or anger, after the training.

About 40 of the students also participated in brain imaging studies before and after the training. The researchers measured activity in the amygdala as the students looked at pictures of faces expressing different emotions.

At the beginning of the study, before any training, students who reported higher stress levels showed more amygdala activity when they saw fearful faces. This is consistent with previous research showing that the amygdala can be overactive in people who experience more stress, leading them to have stronger negative reactions to adverse events.

"There's a lot of evidence that an overly strong amygdala response to negative things is associated with high stress in early childhood and risk for depression," Gabrieli says.

After the mindfulness training, students showed a smaller amygdala response when they saw the fearful faces, consistent with their reports that they felt less stressed. This suggests that mindfulness training could potentially help prevent or mitigate mood disorders linked with higher stress levels, the researchers say.

Evaluating mindfulness

In the other paper, which appeared in the journal Mind, Brain, and Education in June, the researchers did not perform any mindfulness training but used a questionnaire to evaluate mindfulness in more than 2,000 students in grades 5-8. The questionnaire was based on the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale, which is often used in mindfulness studies on adults. Participants are asked to rate how strongly they agree with statements such as "I rush through activities without being really attentive to them."

The researchers compared the questionnaire results with students' grades, their scores on statewide standardized tests, their attendance rates, and the number of times they had been suspended from school. Students who showed more mindfulness tended to have better grades and test scores, as well as fewer absences and suspensions.

"People had not asked that question in any quantitative sense at all, as to whether a more mindful child is more likely to fare better in school," Gabrieli says. "This is the first paper that says there is a relationship between the two."

The researchers now plan to do a full school-year study, with a larger group of students across many schools, to examine the longer-term effects of mindfulness training. Shorter programs like the two-month training used in the Behavioral Neuroscience study would most likely not have a lasting impact, Gabrieli says.

"Mindfulness is like going to the gym. If you go for a month, that's good, but if you stop going, the effects won't last," he says. "It's a form of mental exercise that needs to be sustained."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190826153630.htm

Stable home lives improve prospects for preemies

Medical challenges at birth less important than stressful home life in predicting future psychiatric health

August 26, 2019

Science Daily/Washington University School of Medicine

Researchers have found that as premature babies grow, their mental health may be related less to the medical challenges they face after birth than to the environment the babies enter once they leave the neonatal intensive care unit.

As they grow and develop, children who were born at least 10 weeks before their due dates are at risk for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder and anxiety disorders. They also have a higher risk than children who were full-term babies for other neurodevelopmental issues, including cognitive problems, language difficulties and motor delays.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who have been trying to determine what puts such children at risk for these problems have found that their mental health may be related less to medical challenges they face after birth than to the environment the babies enter once they leave the newborn intensive care unit (NICU).

In a new study, the children who were most likely to have overcome the complications of being born so early and who showed normal psychiatric and neurodevelopmental outcomes also were those with healthier, more nurturing mothers and more stable home lives.

The findings are published Aug. 26 in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

"Home environment is what really differentiated these kids," said first author Rachel E. Lean, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate in child psychiatry. "Preterm children who did the best had mothers who reported lower levels of depression and parenting stress. These children received more cognitive stimulation in the home, with parents who read to them and did other learning-type activities with their children. There also tended to be more stability in their families. That suggests to us that modifiable factors in the home life of a child could lead to positive outcomes for these very preterm infants."

The researchers evaluated 125 5-year-old children. Of them, 85 had been born at least 10 weeks before their due dates. The other 40 children in the study were born full-term, at 40 weeks' gestation.

The children completed standardized tests to assess their cognitive, language and motor skills. Parents and teachers also were asked to complete checklists to help determine whether a child might have issues indicative of ADHD or autism spectrum disorder, as well as social or emotional problems or behavioral issues.

It turned out the children who had been born at 30 weeks of gestation or sooner tended to fit into one of four groups. One group, representing 27% of the very preterm children, was found to be particularly resilient.

"They had cognitive, language and motor skills in the normal range, the range we would expect for children their age, and they tended not to have psychiatric issues," Lean said. "About 45% of the very preterm children, although within the normal range, tended to be at the low end of normal. They were healthy, but they weren't doing quite as well as the more resilient kids in the first group."

The other two groups had clear psychiatric issues such as ADHD, autism spectrum disorder or anxiety. A group of about 13% of the very preterm kids had moderate to severe psychiatric problems. The other 15% of children, identified via surveys from teachers, displayed a combination of problems with inattention and with hyperactive and impulsive behavior.

The children in those last two groups weren't markedly different from other kids in the study in terms of cognitive, language and motor skills, but they had higher rates of ADHD, autism spectrum disorder and other problems.

"The children with psychiatric problems also came from homes with mothers who experienced more ADHD symptoms, higher levels of psychosocial stress, high parenting stress, just more family dysfunction in general," said senior investigator Cynthia E. Rogers, MD, an associate professor of child psychiatry. "The mothers' issues and the characteristics of the family environment were likely to be factors for children in these groups with significant impairment. In our clinical programs, we screen mothers for depression and other mental health issues while their babies still are patients in the NICU."

Rogers and Lean believe the findings may indicate good news because maternal psychiatric health and family environment are modifiable factors that can be targeted with interventions that have the potential to improve long-term outcomes for children who are born prematurely.

"Our results show that it wasn't necessarily the clinical characteristics infants faced in the NICU that put them at risk for problems later on," Rogers said. "It was what happened after a baby went home from the NICU. Many people have thought that babies who are born extremely preterm will be the most impaired, but we really didn't see that in our data. What that means is in addition to focusing on babies' health in the NICU, we need also to focus on maternal and family functioning if we want to promote optimal development."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190826104830.htm

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