Brain scans might predict future criminal behavior

Low anterior cingulate activity linked to repeat offenses ALBUQUERQUE, NM and DURHAM, NC--A new study conducted by The Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, N.M., shows that neuroimaging data can predict the likelihood of whether a criminal will reoffend following release from prison. The paper, which is to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, studied impulsive and antisocial behavior and centered on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a portion of the brain that deals with regulating behavior and impulsivity. You can view the paper by clicking here: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1219302110. The study demonstrated that inmates with relatively low anterior cingulate activity were twice as likely to reoffend than inmates with high-brain activity in this region. "These findings have incredibly significant ramifications for the future of how our society deals with criminal justice and offenders," said Dr. Kent A. Kiehl, who was senior author on the study and is director of mobile imaging at MRN and an associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico. "Not only does this study give us a tool to predict which criminals may reoffend and which ones will not reoffend, it also provides a path forward for steering offenders into more effective targeted therapies to reduce the risk of future criminal activity." The study looked at 96 adult male criminal offenders aged 20-52 who volunteered to participate in research studies. This study population was followed over a period of up to four years after inmates were released from prison. "These results point the way toward a promising method of neuroprediction with great practical potential in the legal system," said Dr. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics in the Philosophy Department and the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, who collaborated on the study. "Much more work needs to be done, but this line of research could help to make our criminal justice system more effective." The study used the Mind Research Network's Mobile Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) System to collect neuroimaging data as the inmate volunteers completed a series of mental tests. "People who reoffended were much more likely to have lower activity in the anterior cingulate cortices than those who had higher functioning ACCs," Kiehl said. "This means we can see on an MRI a part of the brain that might not be working correctly -- giving us a look into who is more likely to demonstrate impulsive and anti-social behavior that leads to re-arrest." The anterior cingulate cortex of the brain is "associated with error processing, conflict monitoring, response selection, and avoidance learning," according to the paper. People who have this area of the brain damaged have been "shown to produce changes in disinhibition, apathy, and aggressiveness. Indeed, ACC-damaged patients have been classed in the 'acquired psychopathic personality' genre." Kiehl says he is working on developing treatments that increase activity within the ACC to attempt to treat the high-risk offenders. ### The four-year study was supported by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and pilot funds by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project. The study was conducted in collaboration with the New Mexico Corrections Department. ABOUT THE MIND RESEARCH NETWORK The Mind Research Network (MRN), headquartered in Albuquerque, N.M., is committed to advancing the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness and other brain disorders. MRN is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization consisting of an interdisciplinary association of scientists located at universities, national laboratories and research centers around the world and is focused on imaging technology and its emergence as an integral element of neuroscience investigation. The Mind Research Network is a part of the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute family of companies Professional Counselor Continuing Education Learn more at http://www.mrn.org

Fat-free See-through Brain Bares All

Method Enables 3-D Analysis of Fine Structure and Connections – NIH-funded Study Slicing optional. Scientists can now study the brain’s finer workings, while preserving its 3-D structure and integrity of its circuitry and other biological machinery. A breakthrough method, called CLARITY, developed by National Institutes of Health-funded researchers, opens the intact postmortem brain to chemical, genetic and optical analyses that previously could only be performed using thin slices of tissue. By replacing fat that normally holds the brain’s working components in place with a clear gel, they made its normally opaque and impenetrable tissue see-through and permeable. This made it possible to image an intact mouse brain in high resolution down to the level of cells and molecules. The technique was even used successfully to study a human brain. “CLARITY has the potential to unmask fine details of brains from people with brain disorders without losing larger-scale circuit perspective,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., whose NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award Program helped to fund the research, along with a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health NIMH. “CLARITY will help support integrative understanding of large-scale, intact biological systems, explained Karl Deisseroth, M.D., Ph.D., of Stanford University in California. “It provides access to subcellular proteins and molecules, while preserving the continuity of intact neuronal structures such as long-range circuit projections, local circuit wiring and cellular spatial relationships.” Deisseroth, Kwanghun Chung, Ph.D., and other Stanford colleagues report on their findings April 10, 2013 in the journal Nature. “This feat of chemical engineering promises to transform the way we study the brain’s anatomy and how disease changes it,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. “No longer will the in-depth study of our most important three-dimensional organ be constrained by two-dimensional methods.” Until now, researchers seeking to understand the brain’s fine structure and connections have been faced with tradeoffs. To gain access to deeply buried structures and achieve high enough resolution to study cells, molecules and genes, they had to cut brain tissue into extremely thin sections (each a fraction of a millimeter thick), deforming it. Loss of an intact brain also makes it difficult to relate such micro-level findings to more macro-level information about wiring and circuitry, which cuts across slices. In tackling this challenge, the researchers saw opportunity in the fact that the fats, or lipids, that physically support the brain’s working components, such as neurons and their connections, also block chemical probes and the passage of light. So replacing the lipids with something clear and permeable – that would also hold everything else in place – might make it possible to perform the same tests in an intact brain that previously could only be done with brain tissue slices. Deisseroth’s team infused into brain a high-tech cocktail, including a plastic-like material and formaldehyde. When heated, it formed a transparent, porous gel that biochemically integrated with, and physically supported, the brain’s working tissue – while excluding the lipids, which were safely removed via an electrochemical process. The result was a brain transformed for optimal accessibility. They called the new method Clear Lipid-exchanged Anatomically Rigid Imaging/immunostaining-compatible Tissue Hydrogel – CLARITY, for short. Using CLARITY, the researchers imaged the entire brain of a mouse that had been genetically engineered to express a fluorescent protein. A conventional microscope revealed glowing details, such as proteins embedded in cell membranes and individual nerve fibers, while an electron microscope resolved even ultra-fine structures, such as synapses, the connections between neurons. In a series of experiments using CLARITY in mouse brain, the researchers demonstrated that, for the first time, standard immune- and genetics-based tests can be performed repeatedly in the same intact brain. Tracer molecules, such as antibodies, can be readily delivered for staining tissue – or removed – leaving brain tissue undisturbed. The researchers found that CLARITY outperformed conventional methods across a range of previously problematic technical challenges. When they used CLARITY to analyze a post-mortem human brain of a person who had autism, even though it had been hardening in formaldehyde for six years, they were able to trace individual nerve fibers, neuronal cell bodies and their extensions. Free continuing education course material at Aspira Continuing Education Online Courses

Autism early intervention found to normalize brain activity in children as young as 18 months

An intensive early intervention therapy that is effective for improving cognition and language skills among very young children with autism also normalizes their brain activity, decreases their autism symptoms and improves their social skills, a nationwide study has found. The researchers said the study is the first to demonstrate that an autism early intervention program can normalize brain activity. "We know that infant brains are quite malleable and previously demonstrated that this therapy capitalizes on the potential of learning that an infant brain has in order to limit autism's deleterious effects," said study author Sally Rogers, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and a researcher with the UC Davis MIND Institute. "The findings on improved behavioral outcomes and the ability to normalize brain activity associated with social activities signify that there is tremendous potential for the brains of children with autism to develop and grow more normally," Rogers said. Published online today in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the randomized, case-controlled, multi-centered study titled "Early behavioral intervention is associated with normalized brain activity in young children with autism," found that the children who received the intervention exhibited greater brain activation when viewing faces rather than objects, a response that was typical of the normal children in the study, and the opposite of the children with autism who received other intervention counselor ceus The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 88 children born today will be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Hallmarks of the neurodevelopmental condition include persistent deficits in social communication and relatedness, and repetitive or restrictive patterns of interest that appear in early childhood and impair everyday functioning. Named the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM), the intervention method was developed by Rogers and Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer of the research and advocacy organization Autism Speaks. The therapy fuses a play-based, developmental, relationship-based approach and the teaching methods of applied behavioral analysis. "This may be the first demonstration that a behavioral intervention for autism is associated with changes in brain function as well as positive changes in behavior," said Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the study. "By studying changes in the neural response to faces, Dawson and her colleagues have identified a new target and a potential biomarker that can guide treatment development." For the present study, the researchers recruited 48 diverse male and female children diagnosed with autism between 18 and 30 months in Sacramento, Calif., and in Seattle, as well as typically developing case controls. The ratio of male-to-female participants was more than 3-to-1. Autism is five times more common among boys than girls. Approximately half of the children with autism were randomly assigned to receive the ESDM intervention for over two years. The participants received ESDM therapy for 20 hours each week, and their parents also were trained to deliver the treatment, a core feature of the intervention. The other participants with autism received similar amounts of various community-based interventions as well as evaluations, referrals, resource manuals and other reading materials. At the study's conclusion, the participants' brain activity was assessed using electroencephalograms (EEGs) that measured brain activation while viewing social stimuli -- faces -- and non-social stimuli -- toys. Earlier studies have found that typical infants and young children show increased brain activity when viewing social stimuli rather than objects, while children with autism show the opposite pattern. Twice as many of the children who received the ESDM intervention showed greater brain activation when viewing faces rather than when viewing objects -- a demonstration of normalized brain activity. Eleven of the 15 children who received the ESDM intervention, 73 percent, showed more brain activation when viewing faces than toys. Similarly, 12 of the 17 typically developing children, or 71 percent, showed the same pattern. But the majority -- 64 percent -- of the recipients of the community intervention showed the opposite, "autistic" pattern, i.e., greater response to toys than faces. Only 5 percent showed the brain activation of typical children. Further, the children receiving ESDM who had greater brain activity while viewing faces also had fewer social-pragmatic problems and improved social communication, including the ability to initiate interactions, make eye contact and imitate others, said MIND Institute researcher Rogers. Use of the ESDM intervention has been shown to improve cognition, language and daily living skills. A study published in 2009 found that ESDM recipients showed more than three times as much gain in IQ and language than the recipients of community interventions. "This is the first case-controlled study of an intensive early intervention that demonstrates both improvement of social skills and normalized brain activity resulting from intensive early intervention therapy," said Dawson, the study's lead author and professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "Given that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all 18- and 24-month-old children be screened for autism, it is vital that we have effective therapies available for young children as soon as they are diagnosed." "For the first time," Dawson continued, "parents and practitioners have evidence that early intervention can alter the course of brain and behavioral development in young children. It is crucial that all children with autism have access to early intervention which can promote the most positive long-term outcomes." Rogers, Dawson and Laurie J. Vismara, also a researcher with the MIND Institute, have authored two books on the intervention. One for professionals is titled "Early Start Denver Model for Young Children with Autism: Promoting Language, Learning, and Engagement" and one for parents titled "An Early Start for Your Child with Autism: Using Everyday Activities to Help Kids Connect, Communicate, and Learn." The ESDM intervention is available in Sacramento through the MIND Institute clinic and in a number of locations throughout the U.S. and other nations. Training in delivering the ESDM method is provided through the MIND Institute and the University of Washington. ### Other study authors include Emily J.H. Jones, Kaitlin Venema, Rachel Lowy, Susan Faja, Dana Kamara, Michale Murias, Jessica Greenson, Jamie Winter, Milani Smith and Sara J. Webb, all of the University of Washington, and Kristen Merkle of Vanderbilt University. The study was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health and by a postdoctoral fellowship to Jones from Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks is the world's leading autism science and advocacy organization. It is dedicated to funding research into the causes, prevention, treatments and a cure for autism; increasing awareness of autism spectrum disorders; and advocating for the needs of individuals with autism and their families. At the UC Davis MIND Institute, world-renowned scientists engage in collaborative, interdisciplinary research to find the causes of and develop treatments and cures for autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), fragile X syndrome, 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, Down syndrome and other neurodevelopmental disorders. For more information, visit mindinstitute.ucdavis.edu