ADHD /ADD: Long Term Ritalin Treatment alters the density of the Dopamine Transporter

Long-term treatment of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with certain stimulant medications may alter the density of the dopamine transporter, according to research published May 15 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Gene-Jack Wang and colleagues from Brookhaven National Laboratory and the intramural program at NIH.

ADHD is commonly treated using drugs to target dysfunctional dopamine signaling in the brain, such as methylphenidate (commonly known as Ritalin).

The researchers found that adults with ADHD who had been prescribed the drug methylphenidate for a period of 12 months had a 24% increase in the density of the dopamine transporter in some brain regions, which after treatment was significantly higher than in adults without ADHD who had not been treated with the drug.

Prior to the 12-month treatment, there were no significant differences in the two groups' dopamine transporter levels.

The authors conclude that the elevated dopamine transporter density, suggested by some as a biological test for diagnosis of ADHD, may be a consequence of chronic treatment rather than a marker for the disorder.

These findings may offer an explanation for discrepancies in the literature describing dopamine transporter levels in ADHD patients, as differences in dopamine transporter levels in the brain may be due to differences in prior treatment.

Many studies have shown that an acute increase in dopamine signaling while on methylphenidate treatment can improve ADHD symptoms in the short term, but this is the first study to analyze the long-term effects of treatment.

More information:
Wang G-J, Volkow ND, Wigal T, Kollins SH, Newcorn JH, et al. (2013) Long-Term Stimulant Treatment Affects Brain Dopamine Transporter Level in Patients with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. PLoS ONE 8(5): e63023. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063023

How to Avoid the Talk-Persuade-Argue-Yell-Hit Trap

Many adults enter parenthood with visions of "picture perfect" children. 

They imagine a warm and loving home, as well as respectful and polite kids, all eagerly doing whatever is asked with only an occasional explanation from Mom or Dad.

These people are living in Rainbow Town.

As a veteran parent, you know this is not reality but many parents have the idea that kids are just smaller versions of adults: reasonable and unselfish. This is the "Little Adult Assumption."

Moms and Dads who embrace this myth often prefer the "modern method" of discipline—talking and reasoning.

Unfortunately, words and reasons alone can prove unsuccessful. Sometimes they have no impact at all, and then parent and child fall into the trap known as the Talk-Persuade-Argue-Yell-Hit Trap.

This tragic sequence results from the very best of parental intentions. Your child is doing something you don't like. You tell her to stop. She continues with her mis-behaviour, so you try persuading her to see things your way.

When persuasion fails, you start arguing. When arguing is not successful, you yell. Yelling fails, so, feeling there is nothing left to do some parents turn to hitting.

The two biggest parenting mistakes, too much talking and too much emotion, trigger the Talk-Persuade-Argue-Yell-Hit Syndrome.

Changing Kids’ Behaviour Begins By Changing Your Expectations
If you have a child who is doing something you don't like, get real upset about it on a regular basis and sure enough he'll repeat it for you.

Too much yelling and too much anger on the part of a parent are destructive for several reasons. First, they move the focus off of the child's misbehavior and on to the parent's own outburst.

Second, many children take the emotional eruption of a parent as a challenge to a fight, and there are plenty of kids who love a good fight.

Third, parents who over explain and give three, four or five reasons to a child to encourage right behaviour are almost saying "You really don't have to behave unless I can give a number of good arguments as to why you should."

This is not discipline, it is begging, and the shrewd enough child will simply take issue with the parent's reasons.

Changing children's behaviour often begins by changing parents' expectations of their children. Trying to teach young children appropriate behaviour is actually closer to training than it is to teaching "little adults."

This means choosing a method and repeating it consistently until the "trainee" does what the trainer wants. Very little of the training involves extensive verbal explanations.

Most important, the trainer remains calm, patient and gentle, but also persistent and firm. Keep in mind, children need consistency and repetition in a warm and loving environment.

Take Care of Your Own Behaviour First!
Check your own behaviour. If remaining calm, patient and gentle is most often a struggle for you, perhaps your life needs a little work. It’s very hard to be a good parent, especially if you don’t take good care of your own behaviour first!

Depression in Adolescent Girls linked to Father Absence

New research from the Children of the 90s study at the UK University of Bristol shows that girls whose fathers were absent during the first five years of life were more likely to develop depressive symptoms in adolescence than girls whose fathers left when they were aged five to ten years or than boys in both age groups (0-5 and 5-10). 

This finding has been found to be true, even after a range of factors was taken into account.

While previous studies have looked at the effect of childhood separation and divorce on the risk of depression in adolescence, this new research, published 15 May in Psychological Medicine, is one of only a few studies to look specifically at the effect of a father's absence and the timing of his departure on adolescents' mental health.

The study is one of the largest of its kind (5,631 children) and because Children of the 90s has charted the health and well-being of its participants since birth, it is one of only a few able to demonstrate a strong link between early childhood father absence and teenage girls' risk of depressive symptoms.

The finding has been found to be true, even after a wide range of other factors that can contribute to depression – including home ownership, social status, financial problems, family size, parental conflict, the mother's educational background and history of depression – are taken into account.

The authors say their findings are in line with previous studies suggesting that young children are more likely to suffer depression because they have developed fewer 'coping mechanisms' than older children, who also have more opportunities and resources to cope, as well as more social support networks, e.g. friends, outside the family.

Previous studies suggest that the stronger negative effect of father absence on the mental health of teenage girls over boys could be because girls are more vulnerable to negative interpersonal and family life events.

Iryna Culpin, the paper's lead author, said: "These findings indicate a need to include fathers in research related to child and adolescent mental health issues."

She also suggests that support for depression could be aimed at teenage girls whose father left before the age of five.

The authors highlight that it does not necessarily follow that a teenage girl who experiences depression as a teenager will continue to be affected later in life.

They also point out that the study did not examine the level of contact nor the quality of the relationship between a child and an absent father, all of which could influence the risk of depression.

More information: Culpin, I. et al. Father absence and depressive symptoms in adolescence: findings from a UK cohort, Psychological Medicine.

Dyslexia: Grade Retention is Holding Back Pupils

If your child struggles in school, it is likely that at some point a teacher or school official will recommend that he be retained and repeat a grade.

Grade retention is almost Never a good idea for a child with dyslexia, as the possible negative consequences far outweigh the benefits.

Dyslexia is not something that can be outgrown or cured by waiting for a child to mature; repeating the same curriculum a second time around will not help your child improve his basic skills.

What the Research Shows
Retention is far more likely to hurt your child than help him; this is especially true in the early elementary years.

Dozens of research studies conducted over 25 years show that students who are retained because they are performing poorly usually fall even further behind over time.

Children who are promoted despite concerns about their academic skills may still have difficulties, but their performance is usually somewhat better than their counterparts who have been retained.

FACT:
Studies show that grade retention increases the likelihood, by as much as 40 percent, that your child will not complete high school; if your child is retained more than once, there is an almost 100 percent likelihood that he will later drop out.

Studies of middle and high school students also demonstrate a high social cost of retention; students who are old for their grade level reported higher levels of emotional distress, substance abuse, involvement with violence, and suicidal thoughts.

No matter how well-intentioned, holding a child back a year can send the message that he is a failure and that the teachers do not believe him capable of keeping up with his peers.

Read the full article here

Stop Climbing, Start Swimming: The hidden advantages of dyslexia: Johnathan Buchanan

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group.

UK Government Fails to Find A better way to prevent child abuse

New research at The University of Nottingham is calling for changes to a government scheme which engages community nurses in the prevention of child abuse and neglect in the home as part of a maternal and child health care programme.

The study, published online by the Journal of Public Health, has found that despite being set up to help reduce the numbers of child abuse cases, the £10 million Family Nurse Partnership will only be able to tackle around 10% of families involved in child maltreatment.

And, the researchers say, by using different, less common risk factors to identify vulnerable children, the scheme could reach three times the number of abusive families using a similar number of health visitors.

The research was carried out by Professor Kevin Browne, Professor of Forensic Psychology and Child Health, and Vicki Jackson, Lecturer in Forensic Psychology, at the University's Centre for Forensic and Family Psychology.

Professor Browne said: "The claims made about FNP to reduce child maltreatment in England have been over exaggerated.

Careful consideration needs to be given to other prevention programmes that are tailored to the needs and vulnerabilities of the family".

The Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) was an American idea adopted by the past two UK governments who invested £10 million in a pilot scheme in ten areas of England.

It was a response to the increasing numbers of children being maltreated or neglected. A year ago nearly 170,000 children in England were registered as 'children in need' because of abuse or neglect.

The scheme is designed to offer disadvantaged new parents tailored help and support from a specialist nurse in the home in the weeks and months after childbirth.

The aim has been to give many more vulnerable children across the country a better start in life and to teach new parents the skills to cope with parenthood and childrearing.

The Government recently published a national review on health visiting and families at risk, as well as revisions in primary health-care services to promote child health and welfare.

The report, Early Intervention: The Next Steps, authored by Nottingham North MP Graham Allen, acknowledged that a proactive approach is crucial to the prevention of child abuse and neglect.

He championed the use of the American-style FNP on the basis that in the States there was evidence to suggest that it leads to a reduction in child abuse and neglect and improves outcomes for children in vulnerable families.

Professor Browne added: "It is vital that families with a history of domestic violence are not ignored by health professionals as it regularly presents the highest relative risk for child maltreatment. It is also cited in 46% of child abuse and neglect referrals to police child protection units."

More information: The paper, Community Intervention to Prevent Child Maltreatment in England: Evaluating the Contribution of the Family Nurse Partnership by Professor Kevin Browne and Dr Vicki Jackson, is available online on the website of the Journal of Public Health.

Depression: Patients Body Clocks are Altered at Cell Level

The researchers used gene expression patterns to try to predict the time of death for each person in the study (inner circles), and then compared it with the actual time of death (outer circles). 

The two matched closely in healthy people, as shown by the short lines between the two points in the left diagram. 

But in depressed people, the two were out of sync, as seen with the longer lines at right. 

Credit: Image courtesy of University of Michigan Health System

Every cell in our bodies runs on a 24-hour clock, tuned to the night-day, light-dark cycles that have ruled us since the dawn of humanity.

The brain acts as timekeeper, keeping the cellular clock in sync with the outside world so that it can govern our appetites, sleep, moods and much more.

But new research shows that the clock may be broken in the brains of people with depression -- even at the level of the gene activity inside their brain cells.

It's the first direct evidence of altered circadian rhythms in the brain of people with depression, and shows that they operate out of sync with the usual ingrained daily cycle.

The findings, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, come from scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School and other institutions.

The discovery was made by sifting through massive amounts of data gleaned from donated brains of depressed and non-depressed people.

With further research, the findings could lead to more precise diagnosis and treatment for a condition that affects more than 350 million people worldwide.

What's more, the research also reveals a previously unknown daily rhythm to the activity of many genes across many areas of the brain -- expanding the sense of how crucial our master clock is.

In a normal brain, the pattern of gene activity at a given time of the day is so distinctive that the authors could use it to accurately estimate the hour of death of the brain donor, suggesting that studying this "stopped clock" could conceivably be useful in forensics.

By contrast, in severely depressed patients, the circadian clock was so disrupted that a patient's "day" pattern of gene activity could look like a "night" pattern -- and vice versa.

Read more of this article here

Journal Reference:

1. Jun Z. Li, Blynn G. Bunney, Fan Meng, Megan H. Hagenauer, David M. Walsh, Marquis P. Vawter, Simon J. Evans, Prabhakara V. Choudary, Preston Cartagena, Jack D. Barchas, Alan F. Schatzberg, Edward G. Jones, Richard M. Myers, Stanley J. Watson, Jr., Huda Akil, and William E. Bunney. Circadian patterns of gene expression in the human brain and disruption in major depressive disorder. PNAS, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1305814110

Dyslexia, Autism and the Cerebellum: Frontal Lobes not the home of Intelligence

Given that Dyslexia and Autism are disorders of the Cerebellum, human intelligence cannot be explained by the size of the brain's frontal lobes, say researchers. 

Research into the comparative size of the frontal lobes in humans and other species has determined that they are not -- as previously thought -- disproportionately enlarged relative to other areas of the brain, according to the most accurate and conclusive study of this area of the brain.

It concludes that the size of our frontal lobes cannot solely account for humans' superior cognitive abilities.

The study by Durham and Reading universities suggests that supposedly more 'primitive' areas, such as the cerebellum, were equally important in the expansion of the human brain.

These areas may therefore play unexpectedly important roles in human cognition and its disorders, such as autism and dyslexia, say the researchers.

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) today.

The frontal lobes are an area in the brain of mammals located at the front of each cerebral hemisphere, and are thought to be critical for advanced intelligence.

Lead author Professor Robert Barton from the Department of Anthropology at Durham University, said: "Probably the most widespread assumption about how the human brain evolved is that size increase was concentrated in the frontal lobes."

"It has been thought that frontal lobe expansion was particularly crucial to the development of modern human behaviour, thought and language, and that it is our bulging frontal lobes that truly make us human. "

"We show that this is untrue: human frontal lobes are exactly the size expected for a non-human brain scaled up to human size."

"This means that areas traditionally considered to be more primitive were just as important during our evolution. "

"These other areas should now get more attention. In fact there is already some evidence that damage to the cerebellum, for example, is a factor in disorders such as autism and dyslexia."

The scientists argue that many of our high-level abilities are carried out by more extensive brain networks linking many different areas of the brain.

They suggest it may be the structure of these extended networks more than the size of any isolated brain region that is critical for cognitive functioning.

Previously, various studies have been conducted to try and establish whether humans' frontal lobes are disproportionately enlarged compared to their size in other primates such as apes and monkeys.

They have resulted in a confused picture with use of different methods and measurements leading to inconsistent findings.

Journal Reference:

1. Robert A. Barton and Chris Venditti. Human frontal lobes are not relatively large. PNAS, May 13, 2013 DOI:10.1073/pnas.1215723110

Fathers and Teenagers: Fathers' Previous Desire for Children Affects Relationship

The relationships of fathers to their teenage children are apparently influenced by the nature of their previous desire for children.

The more acute that this feeling is, the more closely fathers engage with their children at an everyday level.

This is the conclusion of a study conducted by the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Basel.

This is the first time that a study has examined the perspectives of both fathers and teenagers regarding their relationship.

Diana Baumgarten

For her investigation, the sociologist and gender researcher Dr. Diana Baumgarten conducted a detailed evaluation of long interviews with eight fathers between the ages of 46 and 58, as well as with eight children between 16 and 21 years of age.

The respondents live in a common household in German-speaking Switzerland.

The questions to the men concentrated on approaches to fatherhood, everyday arrangements, and relationships with teenagers.

The teenagers had to report on the details of their daily lives and their relationships with their fathers.

"Equivalent," "Supplementary," and "Satellite" Fathers
One result of the study is that the fathers' earlier desire for children played a significant role in their relationships with their children.

The more aware the father was of his desire for children, the clearer perception the father has today of his relationship to the child.

Such "equivalent" fathers assume more restrictions and burdens upon themselves, such as a career trajectory that develops more slowly.

They are also more likely to see the teenager as an individual counterpart than those that the author describes as "supplementary" and "satellite" fathers.

Activities and Exchange of Views
In the relationship between fathers and their teenage children, the author encountered the "activity norm."

Especially fathers who are less present for their children on an everyday level have the entitlement to do as much as possible with their children.

While mothers tend to live their relationships with their children on an everyday level, fathers operate under the norm that they must always develop their relationship through special and extraordinary activities.

Another notable result is the great value accorded to communication and exchanges of views. Prior studies have made this point for mother-child relationships, and have disregarded the communicative value of fathers.

The author also found through interviews with fathers and teenagers that motherhood is depicted as the model of parental care and is often measured against fatherhood.

However, distinct concepts of fatherhood are also expressed in the study and thus, also concepts of masculinity.

Journal Reference:

1. Diana Baumgarten, Väter von Teenagern. Sichtweisen von Vätern und ihren jugendlichen Kindern auf ihre Beziehung. Budrich Unipress, 2013

Youth Drinking Cultures, Social Networking and Alcohol Marketing

Preventing alcohol abuse, especially among young people, has long been a focus of public-health campaigns.

But despite the well-publicised social and medical consequences of drinking too much it's clear that for many, heavy drinking has become a normal part of life.

And now, public-health professionals have a new force to contend with in their battle against the bottle: social-networking sites (SNS).

Writing in a recent issue of Critical Public Heath, researchers from New Zealand consider the extensive, and not entirely positive, impact SNS may have on their efforts to encourage more responsible youth drinking (McCreanor et al., 2013).

The authors argue that although SNS users benefit from creating and sharing content, the sites are "quintessentially commercial platforms" which provide entirely new vehicles for alcohol marketing.

The very characteristics that make SNS popular;

• blurring boundaries between public and private spaces, 
• acting as extensions of face-to-face relationships and 
• being regularly viewed and updated -- 

also contribute to their commercial potential by bringing alcohol producers and consumers closer together.

The researchers note that site owners also have extensive access to valuable information about users' preferences, habits and interests, providing a bonanza for alcohol-marketing dataminers.

Evidence suggests that alcohol producers and sellers are already embracing SNS as an effective marketing tool.

Diageo, which has expanded its SNS marketing in recent years, has entered into a deal with Facebook, with over one billion users; other UK brands also employ a range of strategies including games, competitions and "branded conversation stimulus" in Tweets and wall posts.

Well-known brands and alcohol-related events generate vast numbers of "friends," and alcohol-related apps thrive.

The effect of all of this, the authors write, is to "normalise alcohol within both banal and special occasions in the everyday lives of SNS users."

And then there is user-generated content. Millions of wall posts, profiles and photos revolving around alcohol play a big role in normalising drinking within young adults' lives and cultural words.

But the biggest challenge posed by SNS is that "they are effectively beyond the domain of public authority, essentially unregulated and possibly uncontrollable."

The authors call for more research into the impact of SNS on youth drinking patterns, as even this initial survey gives a strong indication of how they may come to play a major role in maintaining pro-alcohol environments.

On the positive side, the Critical Public Health study also points out that SNS can be used to encourage young drinkers to change their practices in a more positive way.

Unfortunately for public-health practitioners however, photos of people drinking responsibly aren't nearly so much fun to put up on Facebook.

Journal Reference:

1. Tim McCreanor, Antonia Lyons, Christine Griffin, Ian Goodwin, Helen Moewaka Barnes, Fiona Hutton. Youth drinking cultures, social networking and alcohol marketing: implications for public health. Critical Public Health, 2013; 23 (1): 110 DOI:10.1080/09581596.2012.748883