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ObjectiveData on the neurodevelopmental and associated behavioral effects of light to moderate in utero alcohol exposure are limited. This retrospective investigation tested for associations between reported maternal prenatal alcohol use and psychological, behavioral, and neurodevelopmental outcomes in substance-naive youths.MethodsParticipants were 9,719 youths (ages 9.0 to 10.9 years) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. Based on parental reports, 2,518 (25.9%) had been exposed to alcohol in utero. Generalized additive mixed models and multilevel cross-sectional and longitudinal mediation models were used to test whether prenatal alcohol exposure was associated with psychological, behavioral, and cognitive outcomes, and whether differences in brain structure and resting-state functional connectivity partially explained these associations at baseline and 1-year follow-up, after controlling for possible confounding factors.ResultsPrenatal alcohol exposure of any severity was associated with greater psychopathology, attention deficits, and impulsiveness, with some effects showing a dose-dependent response. Children with prenatal alcohol exposure, compared with those without, displayed greater cerebral and regional volume and greater regional surface area. Resting-state functional connectivity was largely unaltered in children with in utero exposure. Some of the psychological and behavioral outcomes at baseline and at the 1-year follow-up were partially explained by differences in brain structure among youths who had been exposed to alcohol in utero.ConclusionsAny alcohol use during pregnancy is associated with subtle yet significant psychological and behavioral effects in children. Women should continue to be advised to abstain from alcohol consumption from conception throughout pregnancy.

Children with a history of behaviorally inhibited (BI) temperament face a heightened risk for anxiety disorders and often use control strategies that are less planful. Although these relations have been observed concurrently in early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence, few studies leverage longitudinal data to examine long-term prospective relations between cognitive control and anxiety. Using longitudinal data from 149 adolescents (55% female; from predominantly White middle-class families), we assessed temperament in toddlerhood and cognitive control and anxiety at 4, 12, 15, and 18 years of age. At age 4, separate measures of task switching and inhibitory control were obtained via the Dimensional Change Card Sort and Stroop tasks, respectively. At 12, 15, and 18 years of age, planful control was assessed with the AX-Continuous Performance Test, and anxiety symptoms were assessed via self-report. Growth curve models revealed that children with greater inhibitory control at age 4, regardless of BI status, experienced a sharper increase in anxiety symptoms across adolescence. Children with heightened BI during early childhood displayed lower levels of planful control at age 12, but experienced a more rapid improvement in these skills across adolescence. Children with greater task switching ability at age 4 displayed higher levels of planful control at age 12, but experienced a smaller increase in these skills across adolescence. Finally, children's growth rate for anxiety was unrelated to their growth rate for planful control. These findings reveal that early-life temperament, cognitive control, and anxiety remain interconnected across development, from toddlerhood to at least late adolescence. Public Significance Statement: This study indicates that temperament and executive function in early childhood predict the future development of anxiety and executive function across adolescence. However, changes in anxiety across adolescence did not relate to changes in executive function across the same period. Together, results suggest that early interventions may have the best chance of improving adolescents' anxiety trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Positive associations have been found between cortical thickness and measures of parasympathetic cardiac control (e.g., respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA) in adults, which may indicate mechanistic integration between neural and physiological indicators of stress regulation. However, it is unknown when in development this brain–body association arises and whether the direction of association and neuroanatomical localization vary across development. To investigate this, we collected structural magnetic resonance imaging and resting‐state respiratory sinus arrhythmia data from children in middle childhood (N = 62, Mage = 10.09, range: 8.28–12.14 years). Whole‐brain and exploratory ROI analyses revealed positive associations between RSA and cortical thickness in four frontal and parietal clusters in the left hemisphere and one cluster in the right. Exploratory ROI analyses revealed a similar positive association between cortical thickness and RSA, with two regions surviving multiple comparison correction, including the inferior frontal orbital gyrus and the Sylvian fissure. Prior work has identified these cortical areas as part of the central autonomic network that supports integrative regulation of stress response (e.g., autonomic, endocrine, and behavioral) and emotional expression. Our results suggest that the association between cortical thickness and resting RSA is present in middle childhood and is similar to the associations seen during adulthood. Future studies should investigate associations between RSA and cortical thickness among young children and adolescents. Positive correlations have been found between cortical thickness and parasympathetic nervous system functioning in adults. We show that these correlations between neural and physiological markers of emotional health may already be established during middle childhood, suggesting potential mechanistic pathways underlying emotional health development during middle childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral Inhibition is a temperament identified in the first years of life that enhances the risk for development of anxiety during late childhood and adolescence. Amongst children characterized with this temperament, only around 40 percent go on to develop anxiety disorders, meaning that more than half of these children do not. Over the past 20 years, research has documented within‐child and socio‐contextual factors that support differing developmental pathways. This review provides a historical perspective on the research documenting the origins of this temperament, its biological correlates, and the factors that enhance or mitigate risk for development of anxiety. We review as well, research findings from two longitudinal cohorts that have identified moderators of behavioral inhibition in understanding pathways to anxiety. Research on these moderators has led us to develop the Detection and Dual Control (DDC) framework to understand differing developmental trajectories among behaviorally inhibited children. In this review, we use this framework to explain why and how specific cognitive and socio‐contextual factors influence differential pathways to anxiety versus resilience. Read the Commentary on this article at doi: 10.1111/jcpp.13771. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of childhood experiences can lead to anxious/depressed (A/D) symptoms. The aim of the present study was to explore the brain morphological (cortical thickness and surface area) correlates of A/D symptoms and the extent to which these phenotypes vary depending on the quality of the parenting context in which children develop. Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were acquired on 45 children with Child Protective Services (CPS) involvement due to risk of not receiving adequate care (high-risk group) and 25 children without CPS involvement (low-risk group) (rangeage = 8.08–12.14; M age = 10.05) to assess cortical thickness (CT) and cortical surface area (SA). A/D symptoms were measured using the Child Behavioral Checklist. The association between A/D symptoms and CT, but not SA, differed by risk status such that high-risk children showed decreasing CT as A/D scores increased, whereas low-risk children showed increasing CT as A/D scores increased. This interaction was specific to CT in prefrontal, frontal, temporal, and parietal cortical regions. The groups had marginally different A/D scores, in the direction of higher risk being associated with lower A/D scores. Results suggest that CT correlates of A/D symptoms are differentially shaped by the quality of early caregiving experiences and should be distinguished between high- and low-risk children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human social decision-making is significantly modulated by previous decision outcomes. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined whether ERP components evoked by outcome feedback could serve as electrophysiological indices to examine the influence of current outcome evaluation on subsequent cooperative or aggressive decision-making. Thirty-four adult volunteers participated in a social game task, in which they were asked to choose between cooperation and aggression with an opponent player.Conventionally-averaged ERPs and temporospatial principal components analysis (PCA) factors were tested for their associations with subsequent decision-making. Results revealed that a central-parietal late positive potential (LPP) and central-parietal PCA factor approximating the classic LPP were related to changes of decision-making strategies on subsequent trials; however, the effect was significant only when the opponent selected 'cooperate' in the initial trial. The decision to cooperate in subsequent trials induced a larger LPP relative to the decision to aggress following opponent cooperation in the initial trial. Furthermore, we found that larger LPP amplitudes for an opponent's cooperative decision on the initial trial were associated with a higher probability of choosing cooperation on the subsequent trial. The results suggest that the amplitude of the central-parietal LPP is an electrophysiological index of the influence of initial outcome on subsequent social decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Past studies utilizing cognitive control tasks have noted that trials following errors are characterized by slowed reaction time. Despite the assumption long held by researchers that this slowing is compensatory (in the service of post‐error performance recovery), studies consistently show that post‐error trials are no more accurate than post‐correct trials. As a result, it has recently been proposed that post‐error slowing (PES) is merely part of an orienting response that serves no task‐relevant cognitive control purpose. Frontal midline theta (FMθ) oscillations represent another potential compensatory mechanism serving cognitive control processes, yet past studies relying on ERPs have failed to find an association between FMθ and post‐error accuracy. The present study investigated the potentially adaptive role of PES and FMθ oscillations during a flanker task using trial‐by‐trial comparisons. Results indicated that error‐related FMθ oscillations signal the need for enhanced top‐down cognitive control and that PES supports cognitive control by providing the added time needed to achieve greater confidence in judgment. Overall, findings provide convergent evidence that both error‐related FMθ and PES predict performance recovery following errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the brain correlates of decisionmaking and outcome evaluation of generalized trust (i.e. trust in unfamiliar social agents)--a core component of social capital which facilitates civic cooperation and economic exchange. We measured 18 (9male) Chinese participants' event-related potentials while they played the role of the trustor in a one-shot trust game with unspecified social agents (trustees) allegedly selected from a large representative sample. At the decisionmaking phase, greater N2 amplitudes were found for trustors' distrusting decisions compared to trusting decisions, which may reflect greater cognitive control exerted to distrust. Source localization identified the precentral gyrus as one possible neuronal generator of this N2 component. At the outcome evaluation phase, principal components analysis revealed that the so called feedback-related negativity was in fact driven by a reward positivity, which was greater in response to gain feedback compared to loss feedback. This reduced reward positivity following loss feedbackmay indicate that the absence of reward for trusting decisions was unexpected by the trustor. In addition, we found preliminary evidence suggesting that the decisionmaking processesmay differ between high trustors and low trustors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust is a risky social decision because betrayal may occur. It's not clear how individual differences in social risk-seeking propensity modulate brain processes of trusting strangers. We examined event-related potentials and time-frequency power to investigate this question while 40 participants played the one-shot trust game. Twenty high social risk-seekers (HSR) and 20 low social risk-seekers (LSR) made trusting or distrusting decisions regarding unknown trustees while their electroencephalogram activity was recorded. At the decision-making stage, HSR participants exhibited a larger N2 and increased ß power following distrusting decisions than trusting decisions, suggesting greater cognitive control exerted to distrust. By contrast, no such N2 and ß differences were found for LSR participants. At the outcome evaluation stage, LSR participants exhibited a more negative-going difference wave between loss feedback-related negativity (FRN) and gain FRN (dFRN) and increased β power (following losses compared to gains) than did HSR participants, indicating enhanced risk sensitivity of LSR people. Our findings provide insights into the mechanism by which social risk-taking facilitates trusting strangers. The results also shed light on the temporal course of brain activity involved in trust decision-making and outcome evaluation, as well as how individual differences modulate brain dynamics of trusting strangers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]