Psychology Commons^™

Exercise Engagement And Longitudinal Change In Alzheimer's Disease Biomarkers, Regional Brain Structure, And Cognitive Functioning, Marta Stojanovic

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Preschool Executive Function Predicts Childhood Resting State Functional Connectivity And Adhd And Depression, Elizabeth Hawkey

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: Measures of executive function (EF), such as the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function, distinguish children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) from control children, but less work has examined relationships to depression or brain network organization. This study examined whether early childhood EF predicted a new onset or worsening of ADHD and/or depression, and examined how early childhood EF related to functional connectivity of brain networks at school age. Methods: Participants were 247 children, enrolled at ages 3-6, from a prospective study of emotion development. The BRIEF Global Executive Composite (BRIEF-GEC) was used as the measure of EF in early …

Emotion Dysregulation And Functional Connectivity In Children With And Without A History Of Major Depressive Disorder, Katherine Lopez

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent interest has emerged in understanding the neural mechanisms by which deficits in emotion regulation (ER) may relate to the development of depression. Cortico-limbic alterations reported in emotion dysregulation and depression may be one possible link. We examined the relationships between emotion dysregulation in school age, corticolimbic resting state functional connectivity (rs-FC) in preadolescence, and depressive symptoms in adolescence. Participants were 143 children from a longitudinal preschool onset depression study who completed the Children Sadness Management Scale (CSMS), Child Depression Inventory (CDI), and two resting state MRI scans. We examined rs-FC between four primary regions of interest (ROIs; bilateral dorsolateral …

Relationships Between Age And White Matter Integrity In Children With Phenylketonuria, Erika M. Wesonga

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Objective: Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a hereditary metabolic disorder associated with cognitive compromise. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has allowed detection of poorer microstructural white matter integrity in children with PKU, with decreased mean diffusivity (MD) in comparison with healthy children. However, very little research has been conducted to examine the trajectory of white matter development in this population. The present study investigated potential differences in the developmental trajectory of MD between children with early- and continuously-treated PKU and healthy children across a range of brain regions.

Methods: Children with PKU (n = 31, mean age = 12.2 years) were …

Breaking Apart The Reinforcement Learning Deficit In Schizophrenia, Adam Culbreth

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reinforcement learning deficits have long been associated with schizophrenia. However, tasks traditionally used to assess these deficits often rely on multiple processing streams leaving the etiology of these task deficits unclear. In the current study, we borrowed a recent framework from computational neuroscience, which separates reinforcement-learning into two distinct systems, model-based and model-free. Under this framework, the model-free system learns about the value of actions in the immediate context, while the model-based system learns about the value of actions in both immediate and subsequent states that may be encountered as a result of their actions. Using a decision task that …