Principal Investigator:  Beth Goodlin-Jones, Ph.D.

During the first few years of life, dramatic changes take place in the child's ability to regulate their attention, affect, movement, and interaction with others.  The nature of these changes and their integration depend largely upon the caregiving context.  For some infants, development proceeds within a well-balanced relationship and the infant exhibits no difficulties in physical, behavioral, or emotional regulation.  Other infants experience less synchrony in the parent-infant relationship and develop regulatory problems in sleeping, eating or digesting, and soothing.  These behavioral problems may also be indicators of developmental disabilities along with relationship difficulties.  Early detection and diagnosis of these regulatory problems and their cause are important for alleviating the distress in the infant-parent relationship and for providing appropriate intervention as soon as possible.

Principal Investigator:  Robert Hendren, D.O.

Dr. Hendren is the principal investigator on nine (9) industry-sponsored clinical drug trials and one investigator-initiated "innovative treatment trial". Pediatric studies include a placebo control trial of aripiprazole for biplolar disorder and for schizophrenia and an extension study; a placebo controlled study of quetiapine for bipolar disorder or for schizophrenia and an extension study, a placebo controlled study of escitalopram for depression and an extension study and sertraline for PTSD. An FDA and IRB approved placebo cross over study of subcutaneous methyl cobalamine (B12) in young children with autism is ongoing and funded from a small MIND Institute grant. A NICAM grant application is in preparation.

Principal Investigator:  Robert Hendren, D.O.

A pilot study using genetic microarrays for children with autism to find differential patterns between those who respond favorably to risperidone is currently underway funded by a small grant from the MIND Institute.

Principal Investigator:  Robert Hendren, D.O.

Children with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or autism ppectrum disorder are being studied using structural MRI and MR spectroscopy and selected neuropsychological tests to subtype their symptoms into meaningful symptom domains. Current domains include affective instability and cognitive disorganization. This line of inquiry follows an NIMH RO1 and two Foundation grants to Dr. Hendren.

Principal Investigator:  Julie Schweitzer, Ph.D.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most common childhood psychiatric disorder, affecting daily functioning in approximately 3 to 7 percent of school-aged children in the United States. Estimates for the prevalence of adult ADHD suggest that 4.4 percent of the population in the United States may have the disorder.  The broad objectives of the ADHD program are to further the understanding of the basic mechanisms underlying the disorder and use those findings to develop interventions to prevent and treat the disorder. One current project in our lab examines work memory impairments in ADHD, which can affect academic, social, and occupational functioning. The overall hypothesis of this proposal is that individuals with ADHD engage an altered neural system when performing working memory tasks. We are investigating working memory in children with ADHD to: 1) define the neural correlates of working memory deficits in ADHD children using subtraction techniques in conjunction with a visual serial addition task; 2) identify the relationship between BOLD signal changes generated during a working memory task and behavior (response time, error type; ADHD ratings); and 3) compare ADHD children with the combined subtype to the inattentive subtype to identify the working memory neural strategies associated with each. A better understanding of strategies used in ADHD has potential educational implications for how children with ADHD learn and targets for treatment.

Principal Investigator:  Julie Schweitzer, Ph.D.

Individuals with ADHD have been defined as making "spur-of-the-moment", risky decisions without planning or thought of future consequences of their actions. Successful planning requires evaluating performance and modifying behavior dependent upon current success defined by both internal goals as well as environmental cues. This flexible interplay between stimulus- and internally-driven processes may be problematic for individuals with ADHD.

ADHD is characterized according to subtypes, the two most common being the combined (i.e. symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity & impulsivity) and primarily inattentive subtypes (i.e., inattentive symptoms). Previous studies of performance monitoring in ADHD suggest that although these individuals are aware that they have made an error, they do not display the normal pattern of post-error slowing that is usually indicative of behavior correction. Our pilot data suggest differences between ADHD subtypes in their ability to use environmental cues to influence behavior; although the performance of typically developing children and combined type children both improved when they were given a warning cue to prepare a response, inattentive type children did not.

The goal of this proposal is to examine the dynamics of attention control and response modification given cues and feedback in ADHD in comparison to typically developing adolescents; to examine the interplay between internally (e.g., PFC) and stimulus-driven (e.g., cingulate) processes to elucidate the brain recruitment pattern involved in each subtype; to examine the temporal dynamics between regions implementing control. Performance between typically developing, ADHD-combined and inattentive type adolescents performing a cued arrow flanker paradigm are compared in this study. Occasional response-conflicting, incongruent stimuli are presented to engender conflict. Cues are introduced for some incongruent stimuli in order to examine response-preparation processes.  Findings from this project can inform us about how future diagnostic and intervention techniques can be designed to optimally benefit different ADHD subtypes depending upon the ability to utilize endogenous resources and environmental cues.