Brain Imaging and Behavior
April 1, 2025
Jovan Jande, Isaac N Treves, Samantha L Ely et al.
4 citations
This systematic narrative review examines neuroimaging studies that investigated the neural correlates of mindfulness-based interventions in youth (ages 0-18). We extracted 13 studies with a total of 467 participants aged 5-18 years from the MEDLINE database on February 21st, 2024. These studies included both typically developing youth and those at risk of developing or recovering from...
Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science
November 1, 2024
Isaac N Treves, Hilary A Marusak, Alexandra Decker et al.
7 citations
Trait mindfulness-the tendency to attend to present-moment experiences without judgment-is negatively correlated with adolescent anxiety and depression. Understanding the neural mechanisms that underlie trait mindfulness may inform the neural basis of psychiatric disorders. However, few studies have identified brain connectivity states that are correlated with trait mindfulness in adolescence,...
Brain Connectivity
August 1, 2024
Clara G. Zundel, Samantha L Ely, Cole Brokamp et al.
Background: Air pollution exposure has been associated with adverse cognitive and mental health outcomes in children, adolescents, and adults, although youth may be particularly susceptible given ongoing brain development. However, the neurodevelopmental mechanisms underlying the associations among air pollution, cognition, and mental health remain unclear. We examined the impact of particulate...
Mental health science
June 1, 2023
Lana Ruvolo Grasser, Hilary A Marusak
15 citations
As the prevalence of childhood and adolescent anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns continues to rise, there has been an unprecedented increase in support of mind-body practices like yoga, dance, meditation, mindfulness, aerobic exercise, and more-in part driven by the mental health burden imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. While a growing body of evidence supports the safety and...
Journal of Adolescent Health
June 2023
Aneesh Hehr, Edward D Huntley, Hilary A Marusak
Sleep plays an important role in healthy neurocognitive development, and poor sleep is linked to cognitive and emotional dysfunction. Studies in adults suggest that shorter sleep duration and poor sleep quality may disrupt core neurocognitive networks, particularly the default mode network (DMN)-a network implicated in internal cognitive processing and rumination. Here, we examine the...
Biological Psychiatry
May 1, 2023
S. Rogers, Mariya Matsko, J. Evanski et al.
Background: Physical activity (PA) has shown to have beneficial effects on children's health and development. However, a reduced focus on PA programming in schools and home environments may contribute to the increasing prevalence of mental health problems among youth, particularly following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we report preliminary findings from an ongoing randomized...
Journal of Neuroscience Research
October 13, 2022
Mohammed M Faraj, J. Evanski, Clara G. Zundel et al.
Cannabis use among pregnant people has increased over the past decade. This is of concern as prenatal cannabis exposure (PCE) is associated with cognitive, motor, and social deficits among offspring. Here, we examined resting‐state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the salience network (SN)—a core neurocognitive network that integrates emotional and sensory information—in children with (vs....
Pediatric blood & cancer
October 1, 2022
Aneesh Hehr, Allesandra Iadipaolo, Austin Morales et al.
Mounting evidence demonstrates that meditation can lower pain and emotional distress in adults, and more recently, in children. Children may benefit from meditation given its accessibility across a variety of settings (e.g., surgical preparation). Recent neuroimaging studies in adults suggest that meditation techniques are neurobiologically distinct from other forms of emotion regulation, such...
Pain Medicine
November 26, 2021
Mohammed M Faraj, Nina M Lipanski, Austin Morales et al.
Standard of care for opioid use disorder (OUD) includes medication and counseling. However, there is an unmet need for complementary approaches to treat OUD patients coping with pain; furthermore, few studies have probed neurobiological features of pain or its management during OUD treatment. This preliminary study examines neurobiological and behavioral effects of a virtual reality-based...
Psychopharmacology
June 2020
Christine A Rabinak, Ashley Blanchette, Nicole L Zabik et al.
Excessive fear and anxiety, coupled with corticolimbic dysfunction, are core features of stress- and trauma-related psychopathology, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Interestingly, low doses of ∆9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) can produce anxiolytic effects, reduce threat-related amygdala activation, and enhance functional coupling between the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex and...
Neuropharmacology
December 2018
Christine A Rabinak, Craig A Peters, Hilary A Marusak et al.
We have previously demonstrated that an acute dose of Δ9-tetrahydrocanninbinol (THC), administered prior to extinction learning, facilitates later recall of extinction learning and modulates the underlying neural circuitry, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), hippocampus (HPC), and amygdala (AMYG). It remains unknown whether THC-induced changes in fear-extinction neural...
Behavioural Brain Research
January 15, 2018
Hilary A Marusak, Farrah Elrahal, Craig A Peters et al.
Interventions that promote mindfulness consistently show salutary effects on cognition and emotional wellbeing in adults, and more recently, in children and adolescents. However, we lack understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying mindfulness in youth that should allow for more judicious application of these interventions in clinical and educational settings. Using multi-echo...
Aneesh Hehr, Allesandra Iadipaolo, Austin Morales et al.
Background: Mounting evidence demonstrates that meditation can lower pain and emotional distress in adults, and more recently, in children. Meditation may be an effective form of emotion regulation in children because it is easily accessible and more easily done across a variety of settings in which toys may not be available, for e.g., settings requiring a “clean” environment (e.g., surgical...