Autism, ADHD and OCD have common symptoms and are linked by some of the same genes. Yet historically they have been studied as separate disorders...

Common brain changes found in children with autism, ADHD and OCD:

MRI study shows shared brain biology is linked to symptoms that occur across different conditions.

A team of Toronto scientists has found similarities in brain impairments in children with autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

The study, published this month in the American Journal of Psychiatry, involved brain imaging of white matter in 200 children with autism, ADHD, OCD or no diagnosis. White matter is made up of bundles of nerve fibers that connect cell bodies across the brain, and enable communication between different brain regions.

"We found impairments in white matter in the main tract connecting the right and left hemispheres of the brain in children with either autism, ADHD or OCD, when compared to healthy children in the control group," says Dr. Stephanie Ameis, first author on the study and clinician-scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health's (CAMH's) Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute. This particular white matter tract, the corpus callosum, is the largest in the brain and among the first to develop.

The research team, from CAMH, the Hospital for Sick Children and Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, also found children with autism and ADHD showed more severe impairments affecting more of the brain's white matter than those with OCD. This finding may reflect the fact that both autism and ADHD typically have an onset at a much younger age than OCD, and at a time when a number of different white matter tracts are going through rapid development, says Dr. Ameis.

Autism, ADHD and OCD have common symptoms and are linked by some of the same genes. Yet historically they have been studied as separate disorders. Together, these three neurodevelopmental disorders affect roughly 15 per cent of children and youth.

The study is part of a major Ontario initiative, the Province of Ontario Neurodevelopmental Disorders Network (POND) that is examining various childhood brain-related disorders collectively, to better understand their similarities and differences, and develop more effective and targeted therapies.

Brain-behavior link

Many of the behaviours that contribute to impairment in autism, ADHD, and OCD, such as attention problems or social difficulties, occur across these conditions, and differ in severity from person to person. The researchers found that the brain's white matter structure was associated with a spectrum of behavioral symptoms present across these diagnoses. Children with greater brain impairment also had higher impairments in functioning in daily life, regardless of their diagnosis, said Dr. Ameis, who is also appointed at the Hospital for Sick Children.

This finding has implications for our understanding of the nature of brain-related disorders, notes senior author Dr. Evdokia Anagnostou of Holland Bloorview Rehabilitation Hospital and head of the POND Network. By providing biological evidence that brain structure relates to a spectrum of behavioural symptoms that cut across different developmental conditions, it highlights the shared biology among such conditions. And it points to the potential that treatments targeting a spectrum of behaviours may be relevant for all three conditions.

From: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160727110911.htm

The environments children are in, including how much and what kinds of stimulation they are exposed to, influence what and how they learn. One important task for children is...

Background noise may hinder toddlers' ability to learn words:

The environments children are in, including how much and what kinds of stimulation they are exposed to, influence what and how they learn. One important task for children is zeroing in on the information that's relevant to what they're learning and ignoring what isn't. A new study has found that the presence of background noise in the home or at school makes it more difficult for toddlers to learn new words. The study also found that providing additional language cues may help young children overcome the effects of noisy environments.

Conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the research appears in the journal Child Development.

"Learning words is an important skill that provides a foundation for children's ability to achieve academically," notes Brianna McMillan, doctoral student in psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the study.

"Modern homes are filled with noisy distractions such as TV, radio, and people talking that could affect how children learn words at early ages. Our study suggests that adults should be aware of the amount of background speech in the environment when they're interacting with young children."

Studies on the impact of environmental noise suggest that too much noise can affect children both cognitively and psycho-physiologically, as seen in more negative school performance and increased levels of cortisol and heart rate. However, most studies of word learning are conducted in quiet laboratory settings. This study focused on word learning but attempted to replicate the noisy environments children may inhabit at home and at school. In the study, 106 children ages 22 to 30 months took part in three experiments in which they were taught names for unfamiliar objects and then tested on their ability to recognize the objects when they were labeled. First, toddlers listened to sentences featuring two new words.

Then they were taught which objects the new names corresponded to. Finally, the toddlers were tested on their ability to recall the words.

In the first experiment, 40 toddlers (ages 22 to 24 months) heard either louder or quieter background speech when learning the new words. Only toddlers who were exposed to the quieter background speech successfully learned the words. In the second experiment, a different group of 40 toddlers (ages 28 to 30 months) was tested to determine whether somewhat older children could better overcome the effects of background noise. Again, only when background noise was quieter could the older toddlers successfully learn the new words.

In the third experiment, 26 older toddlers were first exposed to two word labels in a quiet environment. Next, the toddlers were taught the meanings of four word labels -- two they had just heard and two new ones. Toddlers were taught the meanings of all these labels in the same noisy environment that impaired learning in the second experiment. The children learned the new words and their meanings only when they had first heard the labels in a quiet environment, suggesting that experience with the sounds of the words without distracting background noise helps children subsequently map those sounds to meaning.

In sum, the study shows that while louder background speech hindered toddlers' ability to learn words, cues in the environment helped them overcome this difficulty. "Hearing new words in fluent speech without a lot of background noise before trying to learn what objects the new words corresponded to may help very young children master new vocabulary," suggests Jenny Saffran, College of Letters & Science Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who coauthored the study. "But when the environment is noisy, drawing young children's attention to the sounds of the new word may help them compensate."

Children will rarely be in a completely quiet environment when learning. Parents and teachers may find that reducing background noise or highlighting important information can help children learn even when there is background noise. These suggestions may be especially important for low-income households because research shows that such homes on average have higher noise levels due to urban settings and crowding.

From: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160721072605.htm

What our findings tell us is that children's brains need to get enough and healthy activation even before they enter pre-school...

Infantile memory study points to critical periods in early-life learning for brain development:

A new study on infantile memory formation in rats points to the importance of critical periods in early-life learning on functional development of the brain. The research, conducted by scientists at New York University's Center for Neural Science, reveals the significance of learning experiences over the first two to four years of human life; this is when memories are believed to be quickly forgotten -- a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia.

"What our findings tell us is that children's brains need to get enough and healthy activation even before they enter pre-school," explains Cristina Alberini, a professor in NYU's Center for Neural Science, who led the study. "Without this, the neurological system runs the risk of not properly developing learning and memory functions."

The other authors of the study, conducted in collaboration with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, included: Alessio Travaglia, a post-doctoral researcher at NYU; Reto Bisaz, an NYU research scientist at the time of the study; Eric Sweet, a post-doctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai; and Robert Blitzer, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai.

In their study, which appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the researchers examined the mechanisms of infantile memory in rats -- i.e., memories created 17 days after birth. This is the equivalent of humans under the age of three and when memories of who, what, when, and where -- known as episodic memories -- are rapidly forgotten. The phenomenon, referred as to "infantile or childhood amnesia," is in fact the inability of adults to retrieve episodic memories that took place during the first two to four years of life.

In addressing this matter, Alberini and her colleagues compared rats' infantile memory with that when they reached 24 days old -- that is, when they are capable of forming and retaining long-term memories and at an age that roughly corresponds to humans at six to nine years old.

The episodic memory tested in the rodents was the memory of an aversive experience: a mild foot shock received upon entering in a new place. Adult rats, like humans, remember unpleasant or painful experiences that they had in specific places, and then avoid returning to them.

To do so, rodents were placed in a box divided into two compartments: a "safe" compartment and a "shock" compartment. During the experiment, each rat was placed in the safe compartment with its head facing away from the door. After 10 seconds, the door separating the compartments was automatically opened, allowing the rat access to the shock compartment. If the rat entered the shock compartment, it received a mild foot shock.

The first set of results was not surprising. The authors found infantile amnesia for the 17 day-old rats, which showed avoidance of the "shock" compartment right after the experience, but lost this memory very rapidly: a day later these rats quickly returned to this compartment. In contrast, the rats exposed to the shock compartment at 24 days of life learned and retained the memory for a long time and avoided this place -- revealing a memory similar to that of adult rats.

However, remarkably, the younger rats, which had apparently forgotten the initial experience, subsequently showed they actually had kept a trace of the memory. When, later in life, these rats were prompted with reminders -- i.e., they were presented with recollections of the context and the foot shock -- they indicated having a specific memory, which was revealed by their avoidance of the specific context in which they received a shock at day 17 of life. These findings show how early life experience, although not expressed or remembered, can influence adult life behavior.

The findings raised the following question: what is occurring -- neurologically -- that explains why memories are retained by the younger rats only in a latent form but are stored and expressed long-term by older ones? Or, more specifically, what occurs during development that enhances the ability to form lasting memories?

To address this, the scientists focused on the brain's hippocampus, which previous scholarship has shown is necessary for encoding new episodic memories. Here, in a series of experiments similar to the box tests, they found that if the hippocampus was inactive, the ability of younger rats to form latent memories and recall them later by reminders as they got older was diminished. They then found that mechanisms of "critical periods" are fundamental for establishing these infantile memories.

A critical period is a developmental stage during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to environmental stimuli. If, during this period, the organism does not receive the appropriate stimuli required to develop a given function, it may be difficult or even impossible to develop that function later in life. Well-known examples of critical period-based functions are sensory functions, like vision, and language acquisition.

The study shows that there is a critical period for episodic learning and that during this period the hippocampus learns to become able to efficiently process and store memories long-term.

"Early in life, while the brain cannot efficiently form long-term memories, it is 'learning' how to do so, making it possible to establish the abilities to memorize long-term," explains Alberini. "However, the brain needs stimulation through learning so that it can get in the practice of memory formation -- without these experiences, the ability of the neurological system to learn will be impaired."

These studies, the researchers observe, suggest that using learning and environmental interventions during a critical period may significantly help to address learning disabilities.

The research was supported, in part, by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (R01-MH074736, R01-NS072359), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the Geneva-based Agalma Foundation.

From: 

Stress contagion possible amongst students, teachers. "It is clear from a number of recent research studies that teaching is one of the most stressful professions, and that teachers need adequate resources and support in their jobs in order to battle burnout and alleviate stress in the...

Teacher burnout and student stress may be linked, according to a University of British Columbia study.

The study is the first of its kind to examine the connection between teacher burnout and students' cortisol levels, which are a biological indicator of stress.

Researchers collected saliva samples from over 400 elementary school children and tested their cortisol levels. They found that in classrooms in which teachers experienced more burnout, or feelings of emotional exhaustion, students' cortisol levels were elevated. Higher cortisol levels in elementary school children have been linked to learning difficulties as well as mental health problems.

"This suggests that stress contagion might be taking place in the classroom among students and their teachers," said Eva Oberle, the study's lead author and newly appointed assistant professor with the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) at UBC's school of population and public health. "It is unknown what came first -- elevated cortisol or teacher burnout. We consider the connection between student and teacher stress a cyclical problem in the classroom."

Oberle said a stressful classroom climate could be a result of inadequate support for teachers, which may impact teachers' ability to effectively manage their students. A poorly managed classroom can contribute to students' needs not being met and increasing stress. This could be reflected in elevated cortisol levels in students.

Alternatively, stress could originate from students, who may be more challenging to teach because of increases in anxiety, behavioural problems, or special needs. In this scenario, teachers could feel overwhelmed and report higher levels of burnout.

"Our study is a reminder of the systemic issues facing teachers and educators as classroom sizes increase and supports for teachers are cut," said Oberle.

"It is clear from a number of recent research studies that teaching is one of the most stressful professions, and that teachers need adequate resources and support in their jobs in order to battle burnout and alleviate stress in the classroom," said UBC education professor Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, the study's co-author and director of HELP. "If we do not support teachers, we risk the collateral damage of students."

From: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160627124928.htm?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

Children from families who are not socially well-connected risk falling even further behind their...

Family connections 'as important as money' to help children succeed:

Children from families who are not socially well-connected risk falling even further behind their more advantaged peers, experts warn, following a new report highlighting the lack of opportunities available to disadvantaged young people.

New data released from youth charity The Prince’s Trust suggests the “social bank of mum and dad” can be as important as financial backing, since many young people find work experience or their first job through family contacts.

Speaking at a TeachFirst conference in Leeds on Tuesday, Alan Milburn, Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, called for new social mobility tests to be put into place in education to help reduce the divide.

He said: “Over recent years there has been a growing sense that we have become an ‘us’ and ‘them’ society - where a few unfairly entrench power and wealth to themselves”.

Mr Milburn highlighted that with the current rates of progress it would take at least 30 years for the educational attainment gap in schools between poorer and better-off children to even halve.

For the gap in access to university to completely close, it would take more than 50 years.

He told the conference: “The truth about our country is that over decades Britain has become wealthier but we have struggled to become fairer.”

The Social Mobility Commission has called on the government to set a new target for a least half of children from the poorest background to achieve five good GCSEs by 2020. 

“This would be prioritised by the government giving equal importance to closing the gap between pupils from poorer backgrounds and their wealthier peers as increasing overall results,” the group states, as part of a measure implemented by Ofsted inspection and school league table measures.

Teaching groups have expressed their hesitations over the effectiveness of such policies, however, arguing that schools are under increasing amounts of pressure to produce top results despite lack of funding.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “This government is focused on making Britain a country that works for everyone."

”We are determined that every child, regardless of background, gender or ability, has an equal opportunity to reach their full potential. The pupil premium, now worth £2.5bn a year, is being spent to improve the education provided to children from the poorest backgrounds.”

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/family-connections-money-children-succeed-jobs-employment-work-a7157166.html

This study shows that helping children develop social and emotional skills is one of the most important things we can do to prepare them for..

Science says parents of successful kids have these 11 things in common:

Psychology research has pointed to a handful of factors that predict success. 

Any good parent wants their kids to stay out of trouble, do well in school, and go on to do awesome things as adults. 

And while there isn't a set recipe for raising successful children, psychology research has pointed to a handful of factors that predict success.

Unsurprisingly, much of it comes down to the parents.

Here's what parents of successful kids have in common:

1. They make their kids do chores:

"If kids aren't doing the dishes, it means someone else is doing that for them," Julie Lythcott-Haims, former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and author of "How to Raise an Adult" said during a TED Talks Liveevent. 

"And so they're absolved of not only the work, but of learning that work has to be done and that each one of us must contribute for the betterment of the whole," she said. 

"By making them do chores — taking out the garbage, doing their own laundry — they realize I have to do the work of life in order to be part of life," she tells Tech Insider.

2. They teach their kids social skills:

Researchers from Pennsylvania State University and Duke University tracked more than 700 children from across the US between kindergarten and age 25 and found a significant correlation between their social skills as kindergartners and their success as adults two decades later.

The 20-year study showed that socially competent children who could cooperate with their peers without prompting, be helpful to others, understand their feelings, and resolve problems on their own, were far more likely to earn a college degree and have a full-time job by age 25 than those with limited social skills.

Those with limited social skills also had a higher chance of getting arrested, binge drinking, and applying for public housing.

"

This study shows that helping children develop social and emotional skills is one of the most important things we can do to prepare them for a healthy future," said Kristin Schubert, program director at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the research, in a release.

"From an early age, these skills can determine whether a child goes to college or prison, and whether they end up employed or addicted."

3. They have high expectations:

Using data from a national survey of 6,600 children born in 2001, University of California at Los Angeles professor Neal Halfon and his colleagues discovered that the expectations parents hold for their kids have a huge effect on attainment. 

"Parents who saw college in their child's future seemed to manage their child toward that goal irrespective of their income and other assets," he said in a statement.

The finding came out in standardized tests: 57% of the kids who did the worst were expected to attend college by their parents, while 96% of the kids who did the best were expected to go to college.

This falls in line with another psych finding: The Pygmalion effect, which states "that what one person expects of another can come to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy." 

In the case of kids, they live up to their parents' expectations.

4. They have healthy relationships with each other:

Children in high-conflict families, whether intact or divorced, tend to fare worse than children of parents that get along, according to a University of Illinois study review.

Robert Hughes Jr., professor and head of the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of Illinois and the study review author, also notes that some studies have found children in nonconflictual single-parent families fare better than children in conflictual two-parent families.

The conflict between parents prior to divorce also affects children negatively, while post-divorce conflict has a strong influence on children's adjustment, Hughes says.

One study found that, after divorce, when a father without custody has frequent contact with his kids and there is minimal conflict, children fare better. But when there is conflict, frequent visits from the father are related to poorer adjustment of children.

Yet another study found that 20-somethings who experienced divorce of their parents as children still report pain and distress over their parent's divorce ten years later. Young people who reported high conflict between their parents were far more likely to have feelings of loss and regret.

5. They've attained higher educational levels:

A 2014 study lead by University of Michigan psychologist Sandra Tang found that mothers who finished high school or college were more likely to raise kids that did the same.

Pulling from a group of over 14,000 children who entered kindergarten in 1998 to 2007, the study found that children born to teen moms (18 years old or younger) were less likely to finish high school or go to college than their counterparts.

Aspiration is at least partially responsible. In a 2009 longitudinal study of 856 people in semirural New York, Bowling Green State University psychologist Eric Dubow found that "parents' educational level when the child was 8 years old significantly predicted educational and occupational success for the child 40 years later."

6. They teach their kids maths early on:

A 2007 meta-analysis of 35,000 preschoolers across the US, Canada, and England found that developing math skills early can turn into a huge advantage.

"The paramount importance of early math skills — of beginning school with a knowledge of numbers, number order, and other rudimentary math concepts — is one of the puzzles coming out of the study," coauthor and Northwestern University researcher Greg Duncan said in a press release. "Mastery of early math skills predicts not only future math achievement, it also predicts future reading achievement."

7. They develop a relationship with their kids:

A 2014 study of 243 people born into poverty found that children who received "sensitive caregiving" in their first three years not only did better in academic tests in childhood, but had healthier relationships and greater academic attainment in their 30s.

As reported on PsyBlog, parents who are sensitive caregivers "respond to their child's signals promptly and appropriately" and "provide a secure base" for children to explore the world.

"This suggests that investments in early parent-child relationships may result in long-term returns that accumulate across individuals' lives," coauthor and University of Minnesota psychologist Lee Raby said in an interview.

8. They're less stressed:

According to recent research cited by Brigid Schulte at The Washington Post, the number of hours that moms spend with kids between ages 3 and 11 does little to predict the child's behavior, well-being, or achievement.

What's more, the "intensive mothering" or "helicopter parenting" approach can backfire.

"Mothers' stress, especially when mothers are stressed because of the juggling with work and trying to find time with kids, that may actually be affecting their kids poorly," study coauthor and Bowling Green State University sociologist Kei Nomaguchi told The Post.

Emotional contagion — or the psychological phenomenon where people "catch" feelings from one another like they would a cold — helps explain why. Research shows that if your friend is happy, that brightness will infect you; if she's sad, that gloominess will transfer as well. So if a parent is exhausted or frustrated, that emotional state could transfer to the kids.

9. They value effort over avoiding failure:

Where kids think success comes from also predicts their attainment.

Over decades, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has discovered that children (and adults) think about success in one of two ways. Over at the always-fantastic Brain Pickings, Maria Popova says they go a little something like this:

A "fixed mindset" assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens that we can't change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled.

A "growth mindset," on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of un-intelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities.

At the core is a distinction in the way you assume your will affects your ability, and it has a powerful effect on kids. If kids are told that they aced a test because of their innate intelligence, that creates a "fixed" mindset. If they succeeded because of effort, that teaches a "growth" mindset.

10. The mums work:

According to research out of Harvard Business School, there are significant benefits for children growing up with mothers who work outside the home.

The study found daughters of working mothers went to school longer, were more likely to have a job in a supervisory role, and earned more money — 23% more compared to their peers who were raised by stay-at-home mothers.

The sons of working mothers also tended to pitch in more on household chores and childcare, the study found — they spent seven-and-a-half more hours a week on childcare and 25 more minutes on housework.

"Role modeling is a way of signaling what's appropriate in terms of how you behave, what you do, the activities you engage in, and what you believe," the study's lead author, Harvard Business School professor Kathleen L. McGinn, told Business Insider.

"There are very few things, that we know of, that have such a clear effect on gender inequality as being raised by a working mother," she told Working Knowledge.

11. They have a higher socioeconomic status:

Tragically, one-fifth of American children grow up in poverty, a situation that severely limits their potential.

It's getting more extreme. According to Stanford University researcher Sean Reardon, the achievement gap between high- and low-income families "is roughly 30% to 40% larger among children born in 2001 than among those born 25 years earlier."

As "Drive" author Dan Pink has noted, the higher the income for the parents, the higher the SAT scores for the kids.

"Absent comprehensive and expensive interventions, socioeconomic status is what drives much of educational attainment and performance," he wrote.

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/science-says-parents-of-successful-kids-have-these-11-things-in-common-a6751951.html

Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or...

In Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality, the unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict.

Are you unconscious when you are sleeping?

Being asleep is not the same thing as being unconscious. A sleeping person will respond to loud noises or gentle shaking -- an unconscious person will not. Anunconscious person cannot cough or clear his or her throat. This can lead to death if the airway becomes blocked.