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Background: Many different sedation concepts for magnetic resonance imaging have been described for prematurely and term‐born infants, ranging from "no sedation" to general anesthesia. Dexmedetomidine is an alpha‐2 receptor agonist that is frequently used to sedate older children, because the anesthesiologist can easily adjust sedation depth, the patient maintains spontaneous breathing, and awakens rapidly afterwards. Aims: The present study evaluates whether dexmedetomidine could safely be used as the sole sedative for prematurely and term‐born infants less than 60 weeks postconceptional age undergoing diagnostic procedures. Methods: We performed a retrospective monocentric analysis of n = 39 prematurely and term‐born infants (<60 weeks postconceptional age or a body weight <5 kg) who were sedated with dexmedetomidine for an MRI at a German university hospital from August 2016 to November 2018. Results: Successful imaging was achieved in all cases. The median initial bolus of dexmedetomidine administered over 10 min was 1.39 μg kg−1 body weight (range 0.34–3.64 μg kg−1), followed with a continuous infusion at a median rate of 1.00 μg kg−1 h−1 (range 0.5–3.5 μg kg−1 h−1); however, 3 patients (7%) needed some additional sedation (ketamine or propofol). All patients, including 10 infants who had previously required respiratory support, underwent the procedure without any relevant desaturation or apnea. Bradycardia was observed in up to 15 out of 39 cases (38.5%), but only four (10.3% in total and 26.7% of bradycardia) required atropine. Conclusions: These results indicate that dexmedetomidine can be safely used for procedural sedation in the high‐risk cohort of prematurely and term‐born infants less than 60 weeks postconceptional age. Apnea during procedural sedation and subsequent stay in the recovery room is avoided, but bradycardia remains a relevant risk that may require treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been suggested that altered processing of emotion during cognitive control plays an important role in the etiology of depressive symptoms. The current study investigates the influence of emotional stimuli on working memory (WM) in adolescents with dysphoric symptomatology (DS). Twenty-five adolescents with DS and 40 adolescents with no dysphoric symptomatology (NDS) completed a memory-guided eye movement task. This task assessed the influence of irrelevant affective information on WM processes during high and low cognitive load. Latency analyses showed that, in the high load WM condition, negative distractors disturbed WM performance in adolescents with NDS, but not in adolescents with DS. Accuracy analyses revealed that adolescents with NDS had higher accuracy rates in the presence of positive distractors relative to negative and neutral distractors, and in comparison to adolescents with DS. The findings indicated altered WM performance in the context of emotional distractors in adolescents with DS and may contribute to theoretical knowledge and early prevention of youth depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]