Bored? Don't blame your job, the traffic or your mindless chores. Battling boredom, researchers say, means finding focus, living in the moment and having something to live for.

Anna Gosline || Scientific American Mind || December 2007

Newly published research in the journal Science confirms that institutionalized orphans placed into foster care have much better intellectual development than those who remain behind. The authors say the results have implications for countries "grappling with how best to care for abandoned, orphaned and maltreated young children."

A team of researchers including Nathan Fox, a professor of human development (College of Education) at the University of Maryland, has been studying a randomly chosen group of 136 abandoned children from six institutions in Bucharest, Romania for a number of years. The Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) tracked the children out to 54 months of age. Also involved in the study are Charles Nelson of Harvard University; Dr. Charles Zeanah and Anna Smyke of Tulane University, and Peter Marshall of Temple University. The research was supported by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on "Early Experience and Brain Development."

The Importance of Early Intervention
Earlier evidence from the intervention project showed that young children who remain institutionalized suffered intellectual, emotional, psychiatric and brain development problems. Prof. Fox says, "They are deprived of typical social and emotional stimulation and interaction, as well as typical cognitive and language stimulation." Knowing this, the primary question researchers had was, is there a "best time" when intervention can help prevent these children from becoming psychologically deprived - when damage can be prevented. The Bucharest Early Intervention Project was designed to look at this issue of timing as it related to early deprivation.

The study accomplished this by randomly assigning children into two groups of children that were abandoned at or shortly after birth. "Children at the time of entry into the study ranged in age from 6-29 months of age," says Fox. Half the children remained in the institution, the other half were placed into foster care. All children were the subject of follow-up assessments that included not only cognitive development, but also standardized intelligence tests. Timing related to the intervention was looked at closely. A third group of children - who were being reared by their biological families in Bucharest - served as a base group.

The study was conducted with the full approval of the Government of Romania and was conducted as a way to help guide that nation's child welfare policy. Before this study, there was a bias in the child welfare community towards institutionalized care. In fact, the BEIP had to create its own foster care program as part of the study because the government of Romania's foster care program was limited to "about one family." As part of the study's ethical guidelines, no child placed into foster care was returned to an institution.

Methodology and Results
Fox and the other American researchers wanted to see if they could show there was improvement through specific tests of these institutionalized children.

After random assignment, the average age of children placed into foster care was 21 months of age. Testing was conducted prior to placement, at 30 months and 42 months using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID II), and at 54 months with the Weschsler Preschool Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-R) test. The BSID II test looks at a wide range of abilities, while the WPPSI-R test is more focused assessment of a child's cognitive abilities. Romanian psychologists administered these tests.

The main findings from the study confirmed earlier results that "children reared in institutions showed greatly diminished intellectual performance relative to children reared in their families of origin." Further, children who were randomly assigned to foster care experienced "significant gains in cognitive function." Finally, on the importance of timing when pursuing intervention, Prof. Fox says, "the results show that the age point where things mattered was 24 months of age." The report adds that "there was a continuing 'cost' to children who remained in the institution over the course of the study. The findings say it would take a larger study to really determine if there is a true "sensitive period" for intervention.

Media presentations of terrorism contribute to posttraumatic stress disorder

20 December 2007 – A new report published in Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice reveals that children exposed to terrorist attacks show elevated symptoms of mental health problems, including posttraumatic stress disorder, separation anxiety disorder, and general anxiety disorder.

Statistically speaking, it is unlikely that the majority of youth will ever experience direct exposure to a terrorist attack. Following a terrorist attack, however, youth are exposed to a substantial amount of attack-related media coverage. Within this present climate of heightened awareness about terrorism, many children are exposed to what the authors termed “second-hand terrorism,” in which media disproportionately focus on the possibility of being a direct victim of future terrorism. This sets the stage for insecurity, countless false alarms, and persistent anxiety. Technological advances provide a stage from which terrorist acts can reach a truly vast audience, and news networks further afford unprecedented coverage of terrorism on a global scale. Media-based contact with terrorism can result in substantial amounts of distress in exposed youth.

“Researching youth in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, as well as youth exposed to media presentations about terrorism, is critical to inform service delivery and public policy, and to ensure that the mental health needs of youth are afforded ample resources,” the authors note.

9 December 2007 — You study the menu at a restaurant and decide to order the steak rather than the salmon. But when the waiter tells you about the lobster special, you decide lobster trumps steak. Without reconsidering the salmon, you place your order—all because of a trait called “transitivity.”

“Transitivity is the hallmark of rational economic choice,” says Camillo Padoa-Schioppa, a postdoctoral researcher in HMS Professor of Neurobiology John Assad’s lab. According to transitivity, if you prefer A to B and B to C, then you ought to prefer A to C. Or, if you prefer lobster to steak, and steak to salmon, then you will prefer lobster to salmon.

Padoa-Schioppa is lead author on a paper that suggests this trait might be encoded at the level of individual neurons. The study, which appears online Dec. 9 in Nature Neuroscience, shows that some neurons in a part of the brain called the orbitofrontal cortex encode economic value in a “menu invariant” way. That is, the neurons respond the same to steak regardless if it’s offered against salmon or lobster.

“People make choices by assigning values to different options. If the values are menu invariant preferences will be transitive. The activity of these neurons does not vary with the menu options, suggesting that these neurons could be responsible for transitivity,” Padoa-Schioppa explains.

“This study provides a key insight into the biology of our frontal lobes and the neural circuits that underlie decision-making,” Assad adds. “Despite the maxim, we in fact can compare apples to oranges, and we do it all the time. Camillo’s research sheds light on how we make these types of choices.”

Frontal lobe damage has been linked to “choice deficits” such as eating disorders, compulsive gambling and abnormal social behavior. For example, in the first documented case of brain injury impacting behavior, the infamous railroad construction foreman Phineas Gage became unsociable after a tamping iron passed through his skull in 1848, damaging his frontal lobes. This area of the brain has also been implicated in drug abuse.

Labs are just beginning to probe normal decision-making at the level of individual neurons, venturing into a new field called neuroeconomics. Such research might eventually help to explain choice deficits associated with frontal lobe functions.

The new study builds on an April 2006 Nature paper in which Padoa-Schioppa and Assad identified neurons that encode the value macaque monkeys assign to juice they choose independent of its type, providing a common currency of comparison for the brain.

In that study, the scientists found that although monkeys generally prefer grape juice to apple juice, sometimes they choose the latter, if it is offered in large amounts. When presented with 3 units of apple juice and 1 unit of grape juice, for example, a monkey might take the grape juice only 50 percent of the time. This indicates that the value of the grape juice is 3 times that of the apple juice. A particular group of neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex fire at roughly the same rate, regardless of the monkey’s decision because the animal values both choices equally. These neurons also fire at the same rate if the monkey chooses 6 units of apple juice or 2 units of grape juice. Thus, these neurons encode the value the monkey receives in each trial.

Now, by adding a third juice to the mix, the team has tested whether these neurons reflect transitivity. The three juices were offered to a monkey in pairs dozens of times over the course of a session, the quantity of each juice varying from trial to trial.

In general, monkeys preferred 1 unit of juice A to 1 unit of juice B, 1B to 1C, and 1A to 1C. During each session, Padoa-Schioppa recorded the activity of a handful of neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex, and he discovered their firing rate did not depend on whether B was offered against A or against C, indicating that these neurons respond in a menu invariant way.

“The stability of these neurons could help to explain why we make decisions that are consistent over the short term,” Padoa-Schioppa says. “In our study, the neural circuit was not influenced by the short-term behavioral context.”

Padoa-Schioppa is now examining the possibility that value-encoding neurons may adapt to different value scales over longer periods of time.

Albert Bandura, the David Starr Jordan Professor, has been awarded the 2008 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology, a $200,000 prize. He was selected from among 31 nominations in five countries for his groundbreaking work in social cognitive theory and self-efficacy.

Bandura's ideas have helped define the way today's psychologists understand the mind and human behavior, the judges said. He was the first to prove that self-efficacy, a belief in one's capabilities, affects the tasks one chooses, how much effort is put into them and how one feels while doing them. Bandura also found that people learn not only as a result of their own beliefs and expectations but also by "modeling" or observing others, an idea that led to the development of modern social cognition theory. "He has had enormous impact not only on psychology, but on other disciplines as well," the award committee stated. In 2002, a survey in the Review of General Psychology ranked Bandura as the fourth most eminent psychologist of the 20th century, behind B. F. Skinner, Jean Piaget and Sigmund Freud.

The Grawemeyer Foundation at the University of Louisville in Kentucky annually awards $1 million—divided equally into five prizes—for accomplishments in psychology, music composition, ideas improving world order, education and religion. The prize recognizes powerful ideas or creative works in the sciences, arts and humanities. Bandura will receive the award next spring and deliver a public lecture about his work in Louisville.

Charles Grawemeyer, who died in 1993, was an industrialist, entrepreneur and University of Louisville alumnus.

Stanford Report, 5 December 2007

"When the Virtual You Changes the Real You"
60-Second Psych from Scientific American podcasts
November 22, 2007

As food prices rise, the costs of lower-calorie foods are rising the fastest, according to a University of Washington study appearing in the December issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. As the prices of fresh fruit and vegetables and other low-calorie foods have jumped nearly 20 percent in the past two years, the UW researchers say, a nutritious diet may be moving out of the reach of some American consumers.

UW researchers Dr. Adam Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition, and Dr. Pablo Monsivais, a research fellow in the center, studied food prices at grocery stores around the Seattle area in 2004. They found that the foods which are less energy-dense -- generally fresh fruits and vegetables -- are much more expensive per calorie than energy-dense foods -- such as those high in refined grains, added sugars, and added fats.

When the researchers surveyed prices again in 2006, the found that the disparity in food prices only worsened with time. Lower-calorie foods jumped in price by about 19.5 percent in that two-year period, while the prices of very calorie-rich foods stayed stable or even dropped slightly, the researchers found. The general rate of food price inflation in the United States was about 5 percent during that period, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

"That the cost of healthful foods is outpacing inflation is a major problem," said Drewnowski. "The gap between what we say people should eat and what they can afford is becoming unacceptably wide. If grains, sugars and fats are the only affordable foods left, how are we to handle the obesity epidemic""

Research conducted by Drewnowski and others at the UW Center for Obesity Research had previously shown that per calorie food costs were much higher for fresh produce and other recommended foods than for fats and sweets. Those studies were based on prevailing food prices in the United States and in Europe.

This project was the first of its kind to track the change in prices over time not by food group, but by food quality. The Labor Department monitors food prices by tracking the cost of an average "food basket," which is calculated based on what American consumers purchase at the grocery store. However, the researchers argue, the inflation rate of the overall basket may drastically underestimate the rising cost of the healthiest foods.

The UW study looked at price inflation in foods grouped by energy density, or calories per gram of food. Energy density is one measure of food quality, since many energy-dense foods also tend to be low in nutrients. People who eat energy-dense foods may consume more calories than they need.

"We are an overfed but undernourished nation," said Drewnowski.

Drewnowski and Monsivais argue that the study provides yet another piece of evidence that obesity isn't just a personal problem -- it's an economic one.

"We need to focus on bigger-scale changes, like the farm bill or other policy measures that can address the disparity in food costs," Monsivais said.

The project was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in the National Institutes of Health.

Children learn by imitating adults—so much so that they will rethink how an object works if they observe an adult taking unnecessary steps when using that object, according to a Yale study today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Even when you add time pressure, or warn the children not to do the unnecessary actions, they seem unable to avoid reproducing the adult’s irrelevant actions,” said Derek Lyons, doctoral candidate, developmental psychology, and first author of the study. “They have already incorporated the actions into their idea of how the object works.”

Learning by imitation occurs from the simplest preverbal communication to the most complex adult expertise. It is the basis for much of our success as a species, but the benefits are less clear in instances of “over-imitation,” where children copy behavior that is not needed, Lyons said.

It has been theorized that children over-imitate just to fit in, or out of habit. The Yale team found in this study that children follow the adults’ steps faithfully to the point where they actually change their mind about how an object functions.

The study included three-to-five-year-old children who engaged in a series of exercises. In one exercise, the children could see a dinosaur toy through a clear plastic box. The researcher used a sequence of irrelevant and relevant actions to retrieve the toy, such as tapping the lid of the jar with a feather before unscrewing the lid.

The children then were asked which actions were silly and which were not. They were praised when they pinpointed the actions that had no value in retrieving the toy. The idea was to teach the children that the adult was unreliable and that they should ignore his unnecessary actions.

Later the children watched adults retrieve a toy turtle from a box using needless steps. When asked to do the task themselves, the children over-imitated, despite their prior training to ignore irrelevant actions by the adults.

“What of all of this means,” Lyons said, “is that children’s ability to imitate can actually lead to confusion when they see an adult doing something in a disorganized or inefficient way. Watching an adult doing something wrong can make it much harder for kids to do it right.”

Columbia scientists use fMR technology, find brain changes when viewing violent media

Violence is a frequent occurrence in television shows and movies, but can watching it make you behave differently? Although research has shown some correlation between exposure to media violence and real-life violent behavior, there has been little direct neuroscientific support for this theory until now.

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center’s Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Research Center have shown that watching violent programs can cause parts of your brain that suppress aggressive behaviors to become less active.

In a paper in the Dec. 5 on-line issue of PLoS ONE (published by the Public Library of Science), Columbia scientists show that a brain network responsible for suppressing behaviors like inappropriate or unwarranted aggression (including the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex, or right ltOFC, and the amygdala) became less active after study subjects watched several short clips from popular movies depicting acts of violence. These changes could render people less able to control their own aggressive behavior. Indeed the authors found that, even among their own subjects, less activation in this network was characteristic of people reporting an above average tendency to behave aggressively. This characteristic was measured through a personality test.

A secondary finding was that after repeated viewings of violence, an area of the brain associated with planning behaviors became more active. This lends further support to the idea that exposure to violence diminishes the brain’s ability to inhibit behavior-related processing.None of these changes in brain activity occurred when subjects watched non-violent but equally engaging movies depicting scenes of horror or physical activity.

“These changes in the brain’s behavioral control circuits were specific to the repeated exposure to the violent clips,” said Joy Hirsch, Ph.D., professor of Functional Neuroradiology, Psychology, and Neuroscience and Director of the Center for fMRI at CUMC, and the PLoS ONE paper’s senior author. “Even when the level of action in the control movies was comparable, we just did not observe the same changes in brain response that we did when the subjects viewed the violent clips.”

“Depictions of violent acts have become very common in the popular media,” said Christopher Kelly, the first author on the paper and a current CUMC medical student. “Our findings demonstrate for the first time that watching media depictions of violence does influence processing in parts of the brain that control behaviors like aggression. This is an important finding, and further research should examine very closely how these changes affect real-life behavior.”