Saliva Testing Predicts Aggression in Boys

A new study indicates that a simple saliva test could be an effective tool in predicting violent behaviour.

The pilot study, led by Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and published this week online in the journal Psychiatric Quarterly, suggests a link between salivary concentrations of certain hormones and aggression.

Drew Barzman

Researchers, led by Drew Barzman, MD, a child and adolescent forensic psychiatrist at Cincinnati Children's, collected saliva samples from 17 boys ages 7-9 admitted to the hospital for psychiatric care to identify which children were most likely to show aggression and violence.

The samples, collected three times in one day shortly after admission, were tested for levels of three hormones: testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and cortisol.

The severity and frequency of aggression correlated with the levels of these hormones.

Barzman's team focused on rapid, real-time assessment of violence among child and adolescent inpatients, a common problem in psychiatric units, but he believes a fast and accurate saliva test could eventually have several other applications.

"We believe salivary hormone testing has the potential to help doctors monitor which treatments are working best for their patients," said Barzman. "And because mental health professionals are far more likely to be assaulted on the job than the average worker, it could offer a quick way to anticipate violent behaviour in child psychiatric units. Eventually, we hope this testing might also provide a tool to help improve safety in schools."

For this study, the saliva test was used in combination with other aggressive behavior tools, including the Brief Rating of Aggression by Children and Adolescents (BRACHA) questionnaire, an assessment tool also developed by Barzman's team to predict aggression and violence in the hospital.

"This study sample, while small, gives us the data we need to move forward," added Barzman. "We have more studies planned before we can reach a definitive conclusion, but developing a new tool to help us anticipate violent behaviour is our ultimate goal."

Reference
The Association Between Salivary Hormone Levels and Children’s Inpatient Aggression: A Pilot Study. Psychiatric Quarterly, 2013; DOI: 10.1007/s11126-013-9260-8

Brain Structure of Infants predicts Language Skills at one year

Using a brain-imaging technique that examines the entire infant brain, researchers have found that the anatomy of certain brain areas – the hippocampus and cerebellum – can predict children's language abilities at 1 year of age. 

The University of Washington study is the first to associate these brain structures with future language skills. 

The results are published in the January issue of the journal Brain and Language.

"The brain of the baby holds an infinite number of secrets just waiting to be uncovered, and these discoveries will show us why infants learn languages like sponges, far surpassing our skills as adults," said co-author Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the UW's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.

Children's language skills soar after they reach their first birthdays, but little is known about how infants' early brain development seeds that path.

Identifying which brain areas are related to early language learning could provide a first glimpse of development going awry, allowing for treatments to begin earlier.

"Infancy may be the most important phase of postnatal brain development in humans," said Dilara Deniz Can, lead author and a UW postdoctoral researcher.

"Our results showing brain structures linked to later language ability in typically developing infants is a first step toward examining links to brain and behavior in young children with linguistic, psychological and social delays."

In the study, the researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to measure the brain structure of a mix of 19 boys and girls at 7 months of age.

The researchers used a measurement called voxel-based morphometry to determine the concentration of gray matter, consisting of nerve cells, and of white matter, which make up the network of connections throughout the brain.

The study is the first to relate the outcomes of this whole-brain imaging technique to predict future ability in infants.

The whole-brain approach freed the researchers from having to select a few brain regions for study ahead of time, ones scientists might have expected to be involved based on adult data.

Read the full article at: Medical Express

Dyslexia: Brain connectivity predicts reading skills

The growth pattern of long-range connections in the brain predicts how a child’s reading skills will develop, according to research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Literacy requires the integration of activity in brain areas involved in vision, hearing and language. These areas are distributed throughout the brain, so efficient communication between them is essential for proficient reading.

Jason Yeatman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University in California, and his colleagues studied how the development of reading ability relates to growth in the brain’s white-matter tracts, the bundles of nerve fibres that connect distant regions of the brain.

They tested how the reading skills of 55 children aged between 7 and 12 years old developed over a three-year period.

There were big differences in reading ability between the children, and these differences persisted — the children who were weak readers relative to their peers at the beginning of the study were still weak three years later.

The researchers also scanned the brains of 39 of the children at least three times during the same period, to visualise the growth of two major white-matter tracts: the arcuate fasciculus, which conects the brain's language centres, and the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, which links the language centres with the parts of the brain that process visual information.

Differences in the growth of both tracts could predict the variations in reading ability. Strong readers started off with a weak signal in both tracts on the left side of the brain, which got stronger over the three years. Weaker readers exhibited the opposite pattern.

Read the full article here