Caltech neuroscientists discovered the amygdalae, two almond-shaped clusters of tissue located in the medial temporal lobes appear to be involved with emotions related to money.

The finding, described in the latest online issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), offers insight into economic behavior.

Traditionally, the amygdala is known to be involved in emotional reactions and is implicated in depression, anxiety, and autism.

The study involved an examination of two patients whose amygdalae had been destroyed due to a very rare genetic disease. Those patients, along with individuals without amygdala damage, volunteered to participate in a simple “experimental economics task.”

The research team that made these findings consists of Benedetto de Martino, first author on the study; Colin Camerer, and Ralph Adolphs.

In the task, the subjects were asked whether they were willing to accept a variety of monetary gambles, each with a different possible gain or loss. For example, participants were asked whether they would take a gamble in which there was an equal probability they’d win $20 or lose $5 (a risk most people will choose to accept) and if they would take a 50/50 gamble to win $20 or lose $20 (a risk most people will not choose to accept).

They were also asked if they’d take a 50/50 gamble on winning $20 or losing $15—a risk most people will reject, “even though the net expected outcome is positive,” Adolphs says.

Both of the amygdala-damaged patients took risky gambles much more often than subjects of the same age and education who had no amygdala damage. In fact, the first group showed no aversion to monetary loss whatsoever, in sharp contrast to the control subjects.

“Monetary-loss aversion has been studied in behavioral economics for some time, but this is the first time that patients have been reported who lack it entirely,” says de Martino.

“We think this shows that the amygdala is critical for triggering a sense of caution toward making gambles in which you might lose,” explains Camerer. This function of the amygdala, he says, may be similar to its role in fear and anxiety.

“Loss aversion has been observed in many economic studies, from monkeys trading tokens for food to people on high-stakes game shows,” he adds, “but this is the first clear evidence of a special brain structure that is responsible for fear of such losses.”

Source: California Institute of Technology

The research is published online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The study suggests that women with financial hardship may benefit from psychosocial interventions that are designed to accommodate their unique needs.

While research suggests that education and financial status, also known as socioeconomic status, can affect mental and physical health, few studies have examined its impact on psychological adjustment following a major stressor such as being diagnosed with a potentially serious medical condition.

To investigate, Janet de Moor, MPH, PhD, of The Ohio State University College of Public Health and colleagues looked at whether socioeconomic status affects the development of feelings of anxiety and depression in women after they are diagnosed with DCIS.

The investigators also explored whether social support might impact the effects of socioeconomic status on distress in these women.

During the study, 487 women with newly diagnosed DCIS completed questions about sociodemographic, psychosocial, and clinical characteristics at the time of enrollment and again nine months after their diagnosis.

The researchers found that financial status was inversely associated with distress at the nine-month followup point: Women with financial hardship reported higher levels of anxiety and depression than women with no financial hardship.

Financial status also predicted change in anxiety and depression. Women with medium to high levels of financial hardship reported an increase in their feelings of anxiety and depression during the study period, while women with no financial hardship reported a decrease in their feelings of anxiety and depression over time.

In addition, the probability of exhibiting signs of clinical depression increased with increasing financial hardship.

The researchers noted that a woman’s education level did not appear to have an impact on whether she developed anxiety or depression.

Also, the presence of social support did not explain the association between financial status and change in distress, and social support did not buffer the effect of low socioeconomic status on anxiety and depression.

“Women with medium or low socioeconomic status are forced to manage competing stressors: the stress of financial hardship and the stress of a major health event,” said Dr. de Moor.

“Because these concomitant stressors leave women vulnerable to escalating distress after their DCIS diagnosis, women with medium or low financial status may benefit from psychosocial interventions.”

Source: American Cancer Society

Investigators found that people who ate a Mediterranean-like diet were less likely to have brain infarcts, or small areas of dead tissue linked to thinking problems.

The Mediterranean diet includes high intake of vegetables, legumes, fruits, cereals, fish and monounsaturated fatty acids such as olive oil; low intake of saturated fatty acids, dairy products, meat and poultry; and mild to moderate amounts of alcohol.

For the study, researchers assessed the diets of 712 people in New York and divided them into three groups based on how closely they were following the Mediterranean diet. Then they conducted MRI brain scans of the people an average of six years later. A total of 238 people had at least one area of brain damage.

Those who were most closely following a Mediterranean-like diet were 36 percent less likely to have areas of brain damage than those who were least following the diet. Those moderately following the diet were 21 percent less likely to have brain damage than the lowest group.

“The relationship between this type of brain damage and the Mediterranean diet was comparable with that of high blood pressure,” said study author Nikolaos Scarmeas, MD, MSc, of Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

“In this study, not eating a Mediterranean-like diet had about the same effect on the brain as having high blood pressure.”

Previous research by Scarmeas and his colleagues showed that a Mediterranean-like diet may be associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease and may lengthen survival in people with Alzheimer’s disease. According to the present study, these associations may be partially explained by fewer brain infarcts.

Source: American Academy of Neurology

Scientists developed a tool to study the relationship between color choice and mood. The instrument, termed the Manchester Color Wheel, documents an individual’s preferred pigment in relation to their state of mind.

Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Medical Research Methodology describe how they developed the color chart.

Peter Whorwell, professor of medicine and gastroenterology at University Hospital South Manchester, worked with a team of researchers from the University of Manchester, UK, to create an instrument that would allow people a choice of colors in response to questions.

He said, “Colors are frequently used to describe emotions, such as being ‘green with envy’ or ‘in the blues.’ Although there is a large, often anecdotal, literature on color preferences and the relationship of color to mood and emotion, there has been relatively little serious research on the subject.”

The researchers created a wheel of colors of various intensities, including shades of gray. They then asked a control group of non-anxious, non-depressed people to describe which color they felt most drawn to, which was their favorite and whether any of the colors represented their current mood.

When the test was repeated with anxious and depressed people, most chose the same ‘drawn to’ color as the healthy participants, yellow, and the same favorite color, blue. When asked which color represented their mood, however, most chose gray, unlike the healthy subjects who tended to pick a shade of yellow.

A separate group of healthy volunteers were also asked whether they associated any of the colors with positive or negative moods.

According to Whorwell, “When we used these results to separate colors into positive, negative and neutral groups, we found that depressed individuals showed a striking preference for negative colors compared to healthy controls. Anxious individuals gave results intermediate to those observed in depression, with negative colors being chosen more frequently as well as positive colors being chosen less frequently than in the control test.”

The Color Wheel provides a unique way of asking patients about their condition that dispenses with the need for language.

Source: BioMed Central

The disorders are believed to result from a chemical imbalance in the brain with environmental factors often triggering or buttressing outbreaks.

Researchers are now focusing on these neurobiological mechanisms with the initiative the centerpiece of a new Center of Excellence located at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

“We need to link those discoveries to a better way to treat the disease. In the new center, we’ll be able to combine high-level care with research,” says Jair Soares, M.D., co-director of the center and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

“All of us, if we don’t have a family member with a mood disorder, we have a friend or co-worker who suffers from one,” said Soares, who is executive director of the UT Harris County Psychiatric Center and chief of psychiatry at LBJ General Hospital and Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center.

“New research is showing that a mood disorder has nothing to do with will. These conditions are brain diseases.”

“Mood disorders ruin lives; break up families; shorten lives through suicide and medical illnesses. Every phase of life is affected by mood disorders,” said Alan Swann, M.D., professor and co-director of the UT Center on Mood Disorders.

“There’s a tremendous need for this center. We will evaluate people, treat and conduct research in a single place. We will be able to educate our students and residents, our patients and their families, and the general public.”

Giovana Zunta-Soares, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the medical school, said researchers including those at the UT Medical School at Houston are beginning to learn more about the relationship between changes in the brain and mood disorders.

“We know bipolar patients have subtle abnormalities in key brain regions involved in modulation of emotions, but we don’t know why,” Zunta-Soares said.

“We would like to eventually have a way to diagnose the disease physiologically just as we do in other diseases such as high blood pressure, for example.”

The new Center will focus research on area including brain imaging, cognitive neuropsychology, neurophysiology and genetics. Specifically the Center will address:
.

• Adult patients with bipolar disorder. They are being recruited for an imaging study that will look for changes in the brain that may indicate how mood-stabilizing medications help them.
• Children ages 7 to 17 who either have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder or aFor an imaging study looking at the anatomy and biology of important areas of the developing brain, researchers are seeking children ages 7 to 17 who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as well as healthy children of the same age. The children with bipolar disease will be treated with mood-stabilizing medications.

  – A double-blind, placebo-controlled medication trial is studying uridine, a naturally occurring chemical made by the liver that is involved in many of the body’s processes, including the use of energy by cells. Researchers are testing uridine for safety and to assess whether it is beneficial for the depressive symptoms of bipolar disease in adults.

  – Researchers will analyze blood levels from the new Serum Markers of Ilness Pathophysiology in Mood Disorders, a repository of samples, in search of biochemical and genetic abnormalities to help understand biological conditions associated with bipolar disorder.

  – Anatomical and biochemical measurements of certain brain regions will be taken in an imaging study looking at the differences along the bipolar spectrum, which includes bipolar disorder type I, bipolar disorder type II, cyclothymia and bipolar disorder not otherwise specified.

  – Two studies will look at families. The first is enrolling parents diagnosed with bipolar disease and their children age 7 to 17 regardless of whether the children have the disease. The second is recruiting a family member with bipolar disease and a non-affected, first-degree relative (sibling, parent or child).

  – Researchers will investigate neurophysiological and neurochemical studies of bipolar disorder and its relationships to impulsivity, personality disorders and substance-use disorders. In addition to mood disorders, the faculty practice at UT Physicians’ clinics of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences treats patients with anxiety disorders, childhood disorders, personality disorders, schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia and substance-related disorders.

Source: University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Researchers from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia report family therapy had stronger and faster reduction of symptoms when compared to standard treatment in the community.

The findings are found in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Adolescents with suicidal thoughts and elevated depression had stronger and faster reduction of symptoms when treated with family therapy than with standard treatment in the community.

According to background information in the article, suicide is the third leading cause of death in American adolescents, accounting for more than 1,300 deaths in youths between the ages of 12 and 18 in 2005.

An additional one million teens attempt suicide each year, leading to high emotional and financial costs to families and the health care system. Unfortunately, very few treatment studies have focused on this vulnerable age group or identified treatments with proven results.

In this study, Attachment-based Family Therapy (ABFT), found that patients with severe suicidal thinking were at least four times more likely to have no suicide thinking at the end of the treatment or three months after treatment, than patients treated in the community.

Patients in ABFT also showed a more rapid decrease in depression symptoms and were retained in treatment longer than in community care, even with additional supports provided by the study. This is the first treatment study for teen suicidal ideation to show robust and statistically significant improvement over treatment as usual.

“Most treatment models mainly work with the adolescents alone, helping them to learn new coping and problem solving strategies,” says study leader Guy S. Diamond, Ph.D., director of the Center for Family Intervention Science at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“But adolescents are highly influenced by their parents. Family conflict, chaos, and strife can contribute to youth suicide, while at the same time family love, trust, and communication can buffer against it. This therapy aims to resolve family conflicts and promote family strengths so that the appropriate bond of attachment can protect youth from self harm.”

The researchers studied 66 children between the ages of 12 and 17 who presented in primary care or emergency rooms with severe suicidal thinking and depressive symptoms. The average age was 15, about three quarters were African American and 83 percent were female. Parent participation was required.

“Parents are not viewed as the problem, but as the curative medicine,” Diamond says.

“They are the key to keeping lines of communication open in order to monitor against suicidal behavioral. And while no treatment is perfect for all patients, helping any family through a youth’s suicide crisis is important.”

Diamond says his team’s future studies will focus on a broader population of patients, stronger comparison treatments, and long term outcomes to better assess treatment benefits.

Source: The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

Scientists also found that women who are aggressive and disruptive in their own teen years are more likely to become depressed in pregnancy, so that the moms’ history predicts their own children’s antisocial behavior.

The findings emanate from a longitudinal study conducted by researchers at Cardiff University, King’s College London, and the University of Bristol.

The research appears in the January/February 2010 issue of the journal Child Development.

The study considered the role of mothers’ depression during pregnancy by looking at 120 British youth from inner-city areas.

“Much attention has been given to the effects of postnatal depression on young infants,” notes Dale F. Hay, professor of psychology at Cardiff University in Wales, who worked on the study, “but depression during pregnancy may also affect the unborn child.”

The youths’ mothers were interviewed while they were pregnant, after they gave birth, and when their children were 4, 11, and 16 years old.

The study found that mothers who became depressed when pregnant were four times as likely to have children who were violent at 16. This was true for both boys and girls. The mothers’ depression, in turn, was predicted by their own aggressive and disruptive behavior as teens.

The link between depression in pregnancy and the children’s violence couldn’t be explained by other factors in the families’ environments, such as social class, ethnicity, or family structure; the mothers’ age, education, marital status, or IQ; or depression at other times in the children’s lives.

“Although it’s not yet clear exactly how depression in pregnancy might set infants on a pathway toward increased antisocial behavior, our findings suggest that women with a history of conduct problems who become depressed in pregnancy may be in special need of support,” according to Hay.

Source: Society for Research in Child Development

Researchers have known that children who are especially reactive to stress are more vulnerable to adversity and have more behavioral and health problems than their peers.

However, a new longitudinal study suggests that highly reactive children are also more likely to do well when they’re raised in supportive environments.

The study appears in the January/February 2010 issue of the journal Child Development.

“Parents and teachers may find that sensitive children, like orchids, are more challenging to raise and care for, but they can bloom into individuals of exceptional ability and strength when reared in a supportive, nurturing, and encouraging environment,” according to Jelena Obradović, an assistant professor in the School of Education at Stanford University.

A combined research team looked at 338 kindergarteners, as well as their teachers and families, to determine how family adversity and biological reactivity contribute to healthy development.

They found that children who had significantly stronger biological reactions to a series of mildly stressful tasks designed to look like challenges in their daily lives were more affected by their family contexts, both bad and good. This means that highly reactive children were more likely to have developmental problems when growing up in adverse, stressful family settings.

But contrary to expectation, such children were also more likely to thrive when they were raised in caring, low-stress families because of their sensitivities to the supportive and nurturing qualities of such environments.

“The study tells us that when children are highly susceptible to stress, it’s not always bad news, but rather should be considered in terms of the type of environment they live in,” explains Obradović.

Source: Society for Research in Child Development

“Depression during pregnancy is an issue of concern because it has negative effects on both the mother and the baby as well as the rest of the family,” said Dr. Schnyer, one of the study’s authors.

According to background information in the article, about 10 percent of pregnant women meet criteria for major depression and almost 20 percent have increased symptoms of depression during pregnancy.

The rates of depression in pregnant women are comparable to rates seen among similarly aged non-pregnant women and among women during the postpartum period, but there are far fewer treatment studies of depression during pregnancy than during the postpartum period.

Dealing with depression is difficult for pregnant women because the use of antidepressants poses concerns to the developing fetus and women are reluctant to take medications during pregnancy.

In the study, an evaluator-blinded randomized trial, 150 participants who met the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) criteria for Major Depressive Disorder were randomized to receive either acupuncture specific for depression (SPEC, n=52) or one of two active controls: control acupuncture (CTRL, n=49) or massage (MSSG, n=49).

Treatments lasted eight weeks (12 sessions). Junior acupuncturists masked to treatment assignment needled participants at points prescribed by senior acupuncturists. Massage therapists and patients were not blinded.

The primary outcome was the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, administered by blinded raters at baseline and after four and eight weeks of treatment. Data were analyzed using mixed effects models and by intent-to-treat.

The results showed that the women who received SPEC experienced a significantly greater decrease in depression severity compared to the combined controls.

“The results of our study show that the acupuncture protocol we tested could be a viable treatment option for depression during pregnancy,” said Dr. Schnyer.

Source: Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine

New research suggests a measure of retina function may serve as a method to predict individuals at high risk for the conditions.

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder affect tens of millions of millions of individuals around the world with the disorders typically beginning during the early 20s.

Most cases have a chronic or recurring course. Neither disorder has an objective biological marker than can be used to make diagnoses or to guide treatment.

Findings in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier suggest that electroretinography (ERG), a specialized measure of retinal function might be a useful biomarker of risk for these disorders.

Additionally, retinal deficits may contribute to the perceptual problems associated with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Over the past several years, research has suggested that cognitive impairments in schizophrenia might be linked to early stages of visual perception. This work is now drawing attention to the function of the retina, the component of the eye that detects light. Within the retina, rods are light sensors that respond to black and white, but not to color.

Rods are particularly important for maintaining vision under conditions of low light and for detecting stimuli at the periphery of vision. Cones are light sensors that detect color and perceive stimuli at the center of vision.

Using ERG, Canadian researchers Marc Hébert, Michel Maziade and their colleagues observed that the ability of light to activate rods was significantly reduced in currently healthy individuals who descended from multigenerational families that had members diagnosed with either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. In contrast, the response of their cones to light was normal.

“We take for granted that other people experience the world in the same way that we do. It is important to appreciate that for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as for colorblindness or selective hearing loss, people who appear to perceive the world normally may actually have subtle but important problems with perception, which may contribute to other adaptive impairments,” comments Dr. John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry.

Scientists are still searching for a valid biomarker for the heritable risk for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Although the current data are interesting, extensive testing is still needed before the utility of this measure as a risk biomarker can be evaluated.

Source: Elsevier

Oregon State University chemists have applied for a patent on the compound with research findings published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Additional animal studies and eventually, human clinical trials are required before the compound could be approved for human medical use.

“Based on our results so far, this promises to be one of the most effective antidepressants yet developed,” said James White, a professor emeritus of chemistry at OSU.

“It may have efficacy similar to some important drugs being used now, but with fewer side effects.”

Early antidepressants such as tricyclic antidepressants, White said, often had undesirable effects such as constipation, dry mouth, drowsiness and hypotension, or low blood pressure. They worked by helping the body to raise levels of such neurotransmitter compounds as serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine and others.

A second generation of antidepressants, which included the drugs Prozac and Zoloft, were more selective and produced only minor side effects, but often took weeks to become effective and sometimes didn’t help patients adequately.

“The prototype of the third-generation drug in this field is Cymbalta, which tries to better balance the inhibited re-uptake of serotonin and norepinephrine, further reducing side effects and offering more immediate efficacy,” White said.

“It’s been extremely popular.”

The new compound developed at OSU, however, has properties similar to Cymbalta in some ways, but in laboratory and animal studies does a better job at balancing body chemistry.

“Our compound is 10 times better than Cymbalta at inhibiting the re-uptake of norepinephine and comes close to the holy grail of a perfectly balanced antidepressant,” White said.

“It should produce even fewer side effects, such as concerns with constipation and hypotension. Final results, of course, won’t be known until the completion of human clinical trials.”

The OSU research has been supported by the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse – an agency interested in improved antidepressants, White said, because they are often used in treatment of alcoholism. The work has been done in collaboration with the University of Indiana.

Source: Oregon State University

University of Leeds psychologists found striking evidence that some users have developed a compulsive Internet habit, whereby they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites.

The results suggest that this type of addictive surfing can have a serious impact on mental health.

Lead author Dr. Catriona Morrison, from the University of Leeds, said: “The Internet now plays a huge part in modern life, but its benefits are accompanied by a darker side.

“While many of us use the Internet to pay bills, shop and send emails, there is a small subset of the population who find it hard to control how much time they spend online, to the point where it interferes with their daily activities.”

These ‘Internet addicts’ spent proportionately more time browsing sexually gratifying websites, online gaming sites and online communities. They also had a higher incidence of moderate to severe depression than non-addicted users.

“Our research indicates that excessive Internet use is associated with depression, but what we don’t know is which comes first – are depressed people drawn to the Internet or does the Internet cause depression?

“What is clear, is that for a small subset of people, excessive use of the Internet could be a warning signal for depressive tendencies.”

Incidents such as the spate of suicides among teenagers in the Welsh town of Bridgend in 2008 led many to question the extent to which social networking sites can contribute to depressive thoughts in vulnerable teenagers.

In the Leeds study, young people were more likely to be Internet-addicted than middle-aged users, with the average age of the addicted group standing at 21 years.

“This study reinforces the public speculation that over-engaging in websites that serve to replace normal social function might be linked to psychological disorders like depression and addiction,” added Dr. Morrison.

“We now need to consider the wider societal implications of this relationship and establish clearly the effects of excessive Internet use on mental health.”

This was the first large-scale study of Western young people to consider the relationship between Internet addiction and depression. The Internet use and depression levels of 1,319 people aged 16-51 were evaluated for the study, and of these, 1.2 percent were classed as being Internet-addicted.

While small, this figure is larger than the incidence of gambling in the UK, which stands at 0.6 percent.

The research paper ‘The relationship between excessive internet use and depression: a questionnaire-based study of 1,319 young people and adults,’ will be published in the journal Psychopathology.

Source: University of Leeds

In fact, watching a good deed often gives us a warm and fuzzy feeling. The continued effects of the emotional enhancement, known as elevation, is the focus of a new research study.

Psychological scientists wanted to investigate the influence of elevation on behavior so they studied a group of volunteers who viewed either a neutral TV clip (showing scenes from a nature documentary) or an uplifting TV clip (a segment from “The Oprah Winfrey Show” showing musicians thanking their mentors). The Oprah piece was designed to induce feelings of elevation and after the show, volunteers were asked to write an essay describing what they watched.

As they received their payment and a receipt, they were to indicate if they would be willing to participate in an additional study.

The results revealed that participants who watched the uplifting TV clip were more likely to volunteer for another research study than volunteers who saw the neutral TV clip, suggesting that elevation may make us more willing to help others.

However, anybody can say they will volunteer for a subsequent study or would be willing to help another person. The researchers wanted to see if elevation can result in actual helping behavior.

In the next experiment, a different set of volunteers watched one of three TV clips: the neutral TV clip or the uplifting TV clip used previously, or a clip from a British comedy, intended to induce mirth. After they viewed the TV clip, the research assistant conducting the study pretended to have problems opening up a computer file that was required for the experiment.

She told the volunteers that they were free to leave but as they were leaving, she asked them if they would be willing to complete a questionnaire for another study (unbeknownst to the volunteers, the actual experiment was measuring whether or not they helped with the additional study). The researcher noted the questionnaire was boring and that the volunteers could leave whenever they wanted.

The results of this second experiment were striking — the participants who viewed the uplifting TV clip spent almost twice as long helping the research assistant than participants who saw the neutral TV clip or the comedy clip, indicating that elevation may lead to helping behavior.

The authors conclude that “by eliciting elevation, even brief exposure to other individuals’ prosocial behavior motivates altruism, thus potentially providing an avenue for increasing the general level of prosociality in society.”

The study is reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

A new study has found children and young adults are more likely to pursue sports, music or other pastimes when given an opportunity to nurture their own passion.

Université de Montréal researcher Geneviève Mageau performed a three-part study assessing if parental control would predict whether a child develops a harmonious or obsessive passion for a hobby.

Published in the latest Journal of Personality, the study was a collaboration with scientists from the Université de Montréal, the Université du Québec à Montreal and McGill University.

“We found that controlling adults can foster obsessive passion in their children by teaching them that social approval can only be obtained through excellence,” says Dr. Mageau.

“An activity then becomes highly important for self-protective reasons that don’t necessarily correspond with a child’s true desires.”

From children to adults

As part of the study, the research team evaluated 588 musicians and athletes from swimmers to skiers. Participants were between six and 38 years old and practiced hobbies at different levels: beginner, intermediate and expert.

Kids were recruited from high school or specialized summer camps, while adults were recruited at training camps and competitions. The scientific team used a Likert-type scale to measure how parents supported child autonomy and to evaluate child well-being regarding hobbies.

While parents do well to support their children to pursue an activity, such encouragement can graduate to unwelcome pressure.

“Children and teenagers who are allowed to be autonomous are more likely to actively engage in their activity over time,” says Dr. Mageau.

“Being passionate should not be viewed as a personality trait – it is a special relationship one develops with an activity.”

Source: University of Montreal

Now, scientists at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital have discovered anomalies in the brain’s reward system related to the neural circuits of motivation and gratification are associated with children with ADHD.

In children with ADHD, the degree of motivation when carrying out an activity is related to the immediacy with which the objectives of the activity are met. This would explain why their attention and hyperactivity levels differ depending on the tasks being carried out.

Models describing the origin of ADHD tend to emphasise the relevance of attention processes and of the cognitive functions which guide our mental processes in achieving proposed objectives.

Nevertheless, recent research has focused on neural gratification/pleasure circuits, which can be found in what is known as the brain’s reward system, with the nucleus accumbens as the central part of this system.

The nucleus accumbens is in charge of maintaining levels of motivation when commencing a task and continues to do so until reaching what experts name the “reinforcement”, the proposed objective.

This motivation can be maintained throughout time, even when the gratification obtained is not immediate. However, in children with ADHD motivational levels seem to drop rapidly and there is a need for immediate reinforcements to continue persisting in their efforts.

In this study, researchers selected a sample of 84 participants aged 6 to 18 years and divided them according to presence of ADHD symptoms, with one experimental group of 42 children with ADHD and one control group of 42 children with no signs of mental or behavioural anomalies, paired by sex and age.

Magnetic resonance images were taken of all participants to view the structure of their brains. Of these images, the cerebral region corresponding to the ventral striatum, which includes the nucleus accumbens, was demarcated.

Differences in the structure of the ventral striatum – particularly on the right-hand side – could be seen between those with ADHD and those without the disorder. Children with ADHD exhibited reduced volumes in this region. These differences were associated with symptoms of hyperactivity and impulsiveness.

The obtained data corroborate results from previous studies carried out with animals: the importance of the reward system, as well as the relation between nucleus accumbens, impulsive behaviour and the development of motor hyperactivity.

Consequently, study authors believe ADHD is not only caused by brain alterations affecting cognitive processes, but also by anomalies which cause motivational deficiencies.

This would explain the imbalance in levels of attention and hyperactivity in a child with ADHD depending on his or her motivation when engaged in a specific task and the immediacy of the gratification/pleasure while carrying it out.

Source: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona