Kids

Researchers have shown that when our brain is exposed to the social or emotional stimuli depicted in a specific film, it reacts differently from infancy to maturity.

Throughout the first 20 years of life, there are significant changes in our capacity to detect and recall the world around us. Although it is well acknowledged that older children and adults are better able to comprehend and analyse their environment and foresee future events, the alterations in brain activity that underlie this phase of knowledge acquisition are not entirely understood. According to the primary author, Samantha S. Cohen, Postdoctoral Scientist, Department of Psychology, Columbia University, US, “In adults, viewing a movie produces synchronised brain responses across different persons, reflecting how they perceive, comprehend, and remember the movie.”

There is little knowledge of how internal representations of complex narrative stimuli emerge with age, enabling us to comprehend predictable and naturalistic events in the world, such as the plot of a Hollywood film, despite the fact that many studies have examined changes in knowledge during development.

Because there are no models that can anticipate how the entire brain will react to these kinds of stimuli, analysing how the brain reacts to complicated stories or movies is difficult. Inter-subject correlation (ISC), which assesses the similarity of brain responses in a particular area of the brain among moviegoers, is an alternative, model-free method.

Children and young adults saw a brief video animation comprising both social and emotional learning, and the researchers used a sizable publicly accessible dataset of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans taken during that time.

Also Read: Gardening can promote better mental health: Study

They assessed the ISC for kids in the same age range as one another as well as for kids of different ages for the youngest (5-8 years) and oldest (16-19 years) age groups.

They discovered that whereas brain reactions to the film are often constant across kids of the same age, as kids get older and become young adults, these reactions alter. Brain areas that track coarse narrative information are no longer employed to internally recognise events in stories; instead, those regions are now used to internally recognise sensory details and the mental states of the characters.

Comparing how children and adults notice and interpret the major events that make up a story is one technique to research how children and adults respond to tales.

Children and adults were asked to indicate in the tale where they thought there were significant scene shifts. Children as young as seven split up the plot in the same way that adults did, but older kids’ brains were better able to foresee what will happen next in a movie. Surprisingly, younger children responded more strongly to the story’s transitions between events in the hippocampus, a region crucial for memory formation. This might be because they are still developing their knowledge of how the world works.

According to a lead author Christopher Baldassano’s findings, “brain reactions to tales do not just get more synchronised among children as they develop, but rather alter in dynamics and timing to become more adult-like.

“Moreover, the study provides the groundwork for assessing how children acquire schematic knowledge about the world and learn how to deploy that knowledge at the appropriate time.”

Follow Medically Speaking on Twitter Instagram Facebook

In a recent study, a team of experts found that youngsters with a rare skull tumour instance can forego surgery.

Researchers from Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian, Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, University of Texas Southwestern, University of British Columbia, and McGovern Medical School conducted the study. The New England Journal of Medicine reported the study’s findings.

A series of diseases known as Langerhans-cell histiocytosis (LCH) are characterised by immune cells called Langerhans cells that overproliferate and damage or create lesions in the tissue.

Children appear with a painful skull mass when this, also known as solitary eosinophilic granuloma, affects the skull in an isolated manner. Neurosurgeons typically treat these tumours or lumps, which are not cancerous. Historically, these tumours have been removed surgically, and the affected area of the skull has been rebuilt. A multicenter prospective research was started because certain retrospective case studies suggested that these lesions could go away without surgery. The findings, which were detailed in a letter to the editor that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on June 30, indicated that the lesions spontaneously resolved in 88 percent of the individuals who were monitored.

28 kids with LCH were enrolled in the trial between September 2012 and January 2020 at eight hospitals by the researchers. The researchers decided that, as a precaution, patients in this group would be given surgery if their lesions expanded quickly or for more than two months, didn’t diminish within three months, or caused discomfort. While 11 children and their parents opted for surgical or other procedures, 17 patients and their parents preferred to take part in the study’s observation-only group. All 17 lesions in the observation-only group shrank or vanished after two months. According to the authors, 15 out of 17 patients had totally recovered from their lesions after a year.

Of the 11 patients who chose treatment, ten got surgery to remove their lesions, two received chemotherapy to help the lesions shrink, one had a glucocorticoid injection inside the lesion, and six underwent a second operation to fix the skull defect caused by the mass or surgery. According to the authors, after roughly two months had passed and the lesion on one kid who had initially been in the observation group had decreased but not entirely vanished, the child’s parents changed their minds and decided to have surgery.

For isolated LCH skull lesions, this pioneering prospective research supports a nonsurgical treatment strategy. The benefit of this strategy is that it avoids surgery and all related dangers with removal.

In 2019, UBC researchers reported that utilising an oral immunotherapy treatment, pre-schoolers may safely overcome peanut allergies. They now have evidence that the earlier pre-schoolers start therapy, the better.

The study’s findings were published in the ‘Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.’ In Practice focuses on infants under the age of 12 months and finds that not only is oral immunotherapy helpful against peanut allergies, but it is also safer for this age group than it is for toddlers and older preschoolers.

“This treatment is affordable, very safe and highly effective, particularly if we can get the treatment going before the infant is 12 months old,” said Dr Edmond Chan, the study’s senior author who is also a clinical professor and head of allergy and immunology in UBC’s department of paediatrics at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute.

The study focused on the outcomes of 69 newborns among a broader study sample of 452 children aged five and under.

Oral immunotherapy is a therapeutic regimen in which a patient takes tiny amounts of the allergic food—in this example, peanut flour—with the dose progressively increasing to a maximum quantity established. The goal is to desensitise the youngster to the point when they can consume a complete meal of peanut protein without experiencing a hazardous response. To maintain their immunity, the youngster must consume peanut products on a regular basis.

Children in this research attended a paediatric allergist in a community or hospital clinic every two weeks to obtain their peanut dosage. Between clinic sessions, parents administered the same daily dose at home. After eight to eleven clinic visits, the children had reached a “maintenance dosage” of 300 milligrammes of peanut protein, or around 1.3 grammes of peanuts.

Clinicians documented any signs or reactions and counselled parents on how to handle them at home. The build-up period and one year of maintenance dosage were completed by 42 babies. At the end of the programme, none of them had more than a minor response to a 4,000-gram dosage of peanut protein, compared to 7.7 percent of the children aged one to five who finished it.

Also Read: IMA writes to Maharashtra’s health minister over ‘impractical’ changes to nursing home registration standards

Along the way, seven babies died. Four others had more severe responses, but none required epinephrine injections. Another 20 people were not tested for peanut allergy towards the end, either by choice or due to extensive wait lists.

Even before beginning the treatment, infants were shown to be at less risk than toddlers and pre-schoolers. In initial testing, only 33.9 per cent of infants had a reaction beyond mild, in comparison to 53.7 per cent of one-to-five-year-olds.

“Despite infants showing the best safety, we were still very satisfied with the safety of this treatment for older pre-schoolers. The risk of a severe reaction is much lower than it is for school-age kids,” Dr Chan noted.

“Many of the interventions we use in medicine, such as medications or surgical procedures, carry a small amount of risk that is outweighed by the benefit. If this treatment is performed by well-trained allergists and clinicians then I’m really comfortable with the risk. It’s actually very safe.”

In terms of efficacy, the medication was equally beneficial for both age groups. After a year of eating one peanut per day, almost 80% of the youngsters had built a tolerance for 4,000 mg of peanut protein in one sitting—the equivalent of around 15 entire peanuts.

At about six months of age, the first step in attempting to avoid peanut allergies in at-risk children is to introduce them to age-appropriate peanut-containing foods such as peanut butter or peanut flour.

If the newborn develops a peanut allergy, Dr. Chan’s study implies that oral immunotherapy may be a viable option to avoiding allergens for the rest of one’s life. Attempting to avoid allergies entirely entails a number of dangers, including decreased quality of life, social isolation, and anxiety.

Follow Medically Speaking on Instagram

In a big multinational research, 31.4 percent of teenagers in 13 European and Asian nations reported feeling unsafe at school.

The findings, which were published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, highlighted disparities in ensuring a safe educational environment for pupils in different nations. Between 2011 and 2017, 21,688 teenagers aged 13 to 15 from 13 countries completed self-administered questionnaires. Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Japan, China, Singapore, Vietnam, and Russia participated in the study.

The percentage of females who felt uncomfortable ranged from 11.5 percent in Finland to 69.8 percent in Japan, whereas the percentage of boys who felt dangerous ranged from 7.7 percent in Norway to 68.2 percent in Japan. The survey also discovered that there were significant differences across schools in several nations, demonstrating educational inequality within the country.

The aim is to foster favourable peer connections while also fostering healthy student-teacher relationships.

Kids who believed their instructors cared about them were more likely to feel comfortable at school, implying that teachers play a crucial role in creating students’ emotional sense of safety. According to our prior analysis, fair, clear, and consistent school policies are critical in ensuring school safety. When kids are bullied, they have a poorer sense of safety, which is reflected in their grades.

The findings revealed that feeling uncomfortable at school was linked to mental health issues that might last a lifetime. The findings emphasise the need of anti-bullying measures and mental health promotion in schools.

Preventive measures such as psychoeducation and social-emotional learning programmes should be included in the treatments to improve children’s good interactions and lessen behavioural difficulties. According to researcher Yuko Mori of the University of Turku’s Research Centre for Child Psychiatry, the findings revealed a clear need for initiatives to offer educational environments where all kids may feel safe, regardless of their background.

Doctor Andre Sourander, Professor in Child Psychiatry at the University of Turku agrees: “Physically, cognitively and emotionally safe school environment is essential for the development and educational success of children and young people. All children have the right to attend schools where they can feel safe and protected without fear or anxiety of any danger. In the wake of recent school shootings, we must take steps to enhance safety in educational settings and protect students from all forms of violence and abuse.

Transgender and non-binary kids, according to recent study, have a significantly greater risk of suicide ideation and attempts than their cisgender peers.

The research has been published in the journal, “Canadian Medical Association Journal” Suicide is the second leading cause of death in adolescents and young adults aged 15-24 years in Canada. Sexual minority youth — those attracted to the same gender or multiple genders or who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or queer — are also at increased risk of mental health issues, suicidal ideation (thoughts) and suicide attempts.

“The transition from adolescence to adulthood is a very stressful time for all young people, but particularly for gender and sexual minority teens. These findings, showing dramatic increases in suicide risk, should sound a clarion call that additional support is needed,” said Dr Ian Colman, a professor at the University of Ottawa and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway, with coauthors.

Researchers used data from the national 2019 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Kids to enhance the knowledge base on the risk of suicide ideation and attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth. The study included 6800 teenagers aged 15 to 17, the majority of whom (99.4%) were cisgender (meaning they identify with the gender assigned at birth) and 0.6 percent were transgender (meaning they identify with a gender not assigned at birth). The majority of respondents (78.6%) were heterosexual, with 14.7 percent attracted to several genders, 4.3 percent undecided, 1.6 percent of girls attracted to females, and 0.8 percent of boys attracted to boys.

Overall, 14% of teens experienced suicidal ideation within the previous year, and 6.8% had previously attempted suicide. Transgender youth were 5 times more likely to think about suicide and 7.6 times more likely to have ever attempted suicide than cisgender youth.

“A really concerning finding is that more than half of all transgender youth reported seriously considering suicide in the previous 12 months. This is a crisis, and it shows just how much more needs to be done to support transgender young people,” says coauthor Fae Johnstone, executive director, Wisdom2Action, who is a trans woman herself.

The researchers also discovered that the percentage of teenagers who expressed some level of attraction to more than one gender was significantly greater than in prior studies. This might be due to the fact that this poll looked at attraction to other genders rather than self-reported sexual identity, or it could be due to a decrease in the stigma associated with bisexuality. This group was also more than twice as likely to have considered suicide.

Overall, 4.3 percent of teenagers said they were unsure about their sexual desire, which is referred to as “questioning.”

“Given that the exploration of romantic and sexual relationships is a major developmental task of adolescence, it is perhaps unsurprising that many begin to question sexual attraction and orientation during this time,” says lead author Dr Mila Kingsbury, University of Ottawa.

The association between suicidality and being a sexual or gender minority was partially explained by bullying or cyberbullying experienced by those teens.

The study’s findings are similar to those from the only other nationally representative study on the topic, which reported a fivefold increased risk of suicide attempts among transgender adolescents in New Zealand.

“Suicide prevention programs specifically targeted to transgender, nonbinary and sexual minority adolescents, as well as gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents, may help reduce the burden of suicidality among this group.

Given that these associations were partially mediated through the experience of bullying, systemic change in the form of primary prevention programs aimed at public awareness and promoting inclusivity may lead to a reduction of the experience of minority stress among sexual minority and transgender youth, reducing their risk of poor mental health and suicidality,” said Johnstone.