RESUMEN
AIM: We examined associations among injury severity, white matter structural connectivity within functionally defined brain networks and psychosocial/adaptive outcomes in children with traumatic brain injury (TBI). METHOD: Participants included 58 youths (39 male) with complicated-mild TBI (cmTBI; n = 12, age = 12.6 ± 2.0), moderate/severe TBI (msTBI; n = 16, age = 11.4 ± 2.9) and a comparison group with orthopedic injury (OI; n = 24, age = 11.7 ± 2.1), at least 1 year post-injury. Participants underwent diffusion tensor imaging and parents rated children's behavioral and adaptive function on the CBCL and ABAS-3, respectively. Probabilistic tractography quantified streamline density. Group differences were analyzed for structural connectivity and behavioral outcomes. RESULTS: Groups differed in structural connectivity within regions of the default mode and central executive networks (ps < .05, FDR corrected). The msTBI group displayed decreased connectivity relative to cmTBI and OI, whereas the cmTBI group displayed increased connectivity relative to msTBI and OI. Similar patterns emerged in several behavioral domains. Ordinary least squares path analyses showed that structural connectivity mediated the relationship between injury severity and multiple parent-reported outcomes for msTBI. INTERPRETATION: White matter structural connectivity may explain unique variance in long-term psychosocial and adaptive outcome in children with TBI, particularly in cases of moderate-to-severe injury.
RESUMEN
Maternal depression is a predictor of the emergence of depression in the offspring. Attention bias (AB) to negative emotional stimuli in children may serve as a risk factor for children of depressed parents. The present study aimed to examine the effect of maternal major depressive disorder (MDD) history on AB to emotional faces in children at age four, before the age of onset for full-blown psychiatric symptoms. The study also compared AB patterns between mothers and their offspring. Fifty-eight mothers and their four-year-old children participated in this study, of which 27 high-risk (HR) children had mothers with MDD during their children's lifetime. Attention to emotional faces was measured in both children and their mothers using an eye-tracking visual search task. HR children exhibited faster detection and longer dwell time toward the sad than happy target faces. The low-risk (LR) children also displayed a sad bias but to a lesser degree. Children across both groups showed AB towards angry target faces, likely reflecting a normative AB pattern. Our findings indicate that AB to sad faces may serve as an early marker of depression risk. However, we provided limited support for the mother-child association of AB. Future research is needed to examine the longitudinal intergenerational transmission of AB related to depression and possible mechanisms underlying the emergence of AB in offspring of depressed parents.