Magnetoencephalography in pediatric neuroimaging

Neural currents give rise to electroencephalogram (EEG) and magnetoencephalogram (MEG). MEG has selective sensitivity to tangential currents (from fissural cortex), and less distorted signals compared with EEG. A major goal of MEG is to determine the location and timing of cortical generators for event‐related responses, spontaneous brain oscillations or epileptiform activity. MEG provides a spatial accuracy of a few mm under optimal conditions, combined with an excellent submillisecond temporal resolution, which together enable spatiotemporal tracking of distributed neural activities, e.g. during cognitive tasks or epileptic discharges. While the present focus of pediatric MEG is on tailored epilepsy surgery, the complete noninvasiveness of MEG also provides unlimited possibilities to study the brain functions of healthy and developmentally deviant children.     

Infrared imaging technology and biological applications

Temperature is the most frequently measured physical quantity, second only to time. Infrared (IR) technology has been utilized successfully in astronomy (for a summary, see Hermans-Killam, 2002b) and in industrial and research settings (Gruner, 2002; Madding, 1982, 1989; Wolfe & Zissis, 1993) for decades. However, fairly recent innovations have reduced costs, increased reliability, and resulted in noncontact IR sensors offering mobile, smaller units of measurement (EOI, 2002; Flir, 2000, 2001, 2002). The advantages of using IR imaging are (1) rapidity in the millisecond range, facilitating measurement of moving targets, (2) noncontact procedures, allowing measurements of hazardous or physically inaccessible objects, (3) no interference and no energy lost from the target, (4) no risk of contamination, and (5) no mechanical effect on the surface of the object. All these factors have led to IR technology’s becoming an area of interest for new kinds of applications and users. In both manufacturing and quality control, temperature plays an important role as an indicator of the condition of a product or a piece of machinery (EOI, 2002; Flir, 2000, 2001, 2002; Raytek, 2002). In medical and veterinary applications, IR thermometry is increasingly used in organ diagnostics, in the evaluation of sports injuries and the progression of therapy, in disease evaluation (e.g., breast cancer, arthritis, and SARS; Flir, 2003), and in injury and inflammation examinations in horses, livestock (Tivey & Banhazi, 2002), and zoo animals (Hermans-Killam, 2002a; Thiesbrummel, 2002). Lastly, physiological expressions of life processes in animals (Kastberger, Winder, & Steindl, 2001; Stabentheiner, Kovac, & Hagmüller, 1995; Stabentheiner, Kovac, & Schmaranzer, 2002; Stabentheiner & Schmaranzer, 1987) and plants (Bermadinger-Stabentheiner & Stabentheiner, 1995) can be monitored. The most recent field in which IR technology has been applied is animal behavior. This article focuses on the practical options for noncontact IR thermometry— in particular, in biological applications.     

Multilevel modeling: overview and applications to research in counseling psychology

Multilevel modeling (MLM) is rapidly becoming the standard method of analyzing nested data, for example, data from students within multiple schools, data on multiple clients seen by a smaller number of therapists, and even longitudinal data. Although MLM analyses are likely to increase in frequency in counseling psychology research, many readers of counseling psychology journals have had only limited exposure to MLM concepts. This paper provides an overview of MLM that blends mathematical concepts with examples drawn from counseling psychology. This tutorial is intended to be a first step in learning about MLM; readers are referred to other sources for more advanced explorations of MLM. In addition to being a tutorial for understanding and perhaps even conducting MLM analyses, this paper reviews recent research in counseling psychology that has adopted a multilevel framework, and it provides ideas for MLM approaches to future research in counseling psychology.     

Transcranial magnetic stimulation: neurophysiological applications and safety

TMS is a non-invasive tool for measuring neural conduction and processing time, activation thresholds, facilitation and inhibition in brain cortex, and neural connections in humans. It is used to study motor, visual, somatosensory, and cognitive functions. TMS does not appear to cause long-term adverse neurological, cardiovascular, hormonal, motor, sensory, or cognitive effects in healthy subjects. Single-pulse (<1Hz) TMS is safe in normal subjects. High frequency, high-intensity repetitive TMS (rTMS) can elicit seizures even in normal subjects. Safety guidelines for using rTMS have been published.     

Interpersonal-relational psychoanalysis: An introduction and overview of contemporary implications and applications

Abstract

For half a century Interpersonal psychoanalysis has developed relatively independent of the tradition of Freud and his followers. The Interpersonal movement was founded by Harry Stack Sullivan, Clara Thompson and others who believed that the psyche could not be understood as an entity that evolves without input from the external environment. The Interpersonal view is that interactions between people influence every aspect of the individual's experience, and that no person can be studied without simultaneously noting the ongoing impact between the observer and the observed. This line of thought has led to conclusions concerning personality, psychopathology and clinical technique that depart from traditional psychoanalysis. The paper illustrates a number of these differences, emphasizing that the current emergence of the “two-person model” of the psychoanalytic situation offers a potential rapprochement between the Interpersonal and more classical views.     

Advances in functional brain imaging technology and developmental neuro‐psychology: their applications in the Jungian analytic domain

Analytical psychology shares with many other psychotherapies the important task of repairing the consequences of developmental trauma. The majority of analytic patients come from compromised early developmental backgrounds: they may have experienced neglect, abuse, or failures of empathic resonance from their carers. Functional brain imagery techniques including Quantitative Electroencephalogram (QEEG), and functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery (fMRI), allow us to track mental processes in ways beyond verbal reportage and introspection. This independent perspective is useful for developing new psychodynamic hypotheses, testing current ones, providing diagnostic markers, and monitoring treatment progress. Jung, with the Word Association Test, grasped these principles 100 years ago. Brain imaging techniques have contributed to powerful recent advances in our understanding of neurodevelopmental processes in the first three years of life. If adequate nurturance is compromised, a range of difficulties may emerge. This has important implications for how we understand and treat our psychotherapy clients. The paper provides an overview of functional brain imaging and advances in developmental neuropsychology, and looks at applications of some of these findings (including neurofeedback) in the Jungian psychotherapy domain.     

Fiber tracking using magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging and its applications to human brain development

Diffusion tensor imaging is unique in its ability to noninvasively visualize white matter fiber tracts in the human brain in vivo. Diffusion is the incoherent motion of water molecules on a microscopic scale. This motion is itself dependent on the micro-structural environment that restricts the movement of the water molecules. In white matter fibers there is a pronounced directional dependence on diffusion. With white matter fiber tracking or tractography, projections among brain regions can be detected in the three-dimensional diffusion tensor dataset according to the directionality of the fibers. Examples of developmental changes in diffusion, tracking of major fiber tracts, and examples of how diffusion tensor tractography and functional magnetic resonance imaging can be combined are provided. These techniques are complimentary and allow both the identification of the eloquent areas of the brain involved in specific functional tasks, and the connections between them. The noninvasive nature of magnetic resonance imaging will allow these techniques to be used in both longitudinal developmental and diagnostic studies. An overview of the technique and preliminary applications are presented, along with its current limitations.     

Research design issues for the use of magnetic resonance imaging machines in brain studies of psychological/psychiatric variables

The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine itself has an impact on the likelihood of obtaining successful measurements of brain size in certain groups of subjects. The differential selection and attrition in both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, therefore, indicate that the MRI coincidentally serves as a screen for the anatomical structure of the brains that are successfully scanned. This screening effect introduces confounds in experiments whose very hypotheses are focused on comparing anatomical differences in subjects who differ, for example, in their reactions to anxiety-inducing situations. Here, behavioral interventions and possible statistical models are presented in order to reduce attrition and other effects of the confounds introduced by the MRI measurement process in research. Child and adolescent research—particularly in the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder research area—is used as an example to clarify and delineate the general research principles presented in the present article.     

The effects of unitization on familiarity-based source memory: testing a behavioral prediction derived from neuroimaging data

Performance on tests of source memory is typically based on recollection of contextual information associated with an item. However, recent neuroimaging results have suggested that the perirhinal cortex, a region thought to support familiarity-based item recognition, may support source attributions if source information is encoded as a feature of the relevant item (i.e., "unitized"). The authors hypothesized that familiarity may contribute to source memory performance if item and source information are unitized during encoding, whereas performance may rely more heavily on recollection if source information is encoded as an arbitrary contextual association. Three source recognition experiments examining receiver operating characteristics and response deadline performance indicated that familiarity makes a greater contribution to source memory if source and item information are unitized during encoding. These findings suggest that familiarity can contribute to source recognition and that its contribution depends critically on the way item and source information are initially processed.     

Improving clinical outcomes in psychiatric care with touch-screen technology

Patient-focused research, which uses clinical characteristics to predict outcomes, is a field in which information technology has been effectively integrated with practice. The present research used touch-screen technology to monitor the daily self-report measures of 1,308 consecutive inpatients and day patients participating in a 2-week cognitive-behavioral therapy group. Providing regular feedback was effective in reducing symptoms for patients at risk of poor outcomes (Newnham, Hooke, & Page, 2010b). The use of touch screens in psychiatric monitoring encourages a collaborative dialogue between patients and therapists and promotes engagement in the process of progress monitoring and treatment evaluation.     

Apathy in frontotemporal dementia: behavioral and neuroimaging correlates

We investigated the occurrence of goal-directed motivational change in the form of apathy in patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), particularly those with behavioral variant social and executive deficits (bvFTD). Standardized behavioral inventory was employed to survey and compare apathy ratings from patients and caregivers. In cases of bvFTD, apathy ratings were further related to measures of social cognition, executive function, and atrophy on brain MRI. Results indicated that caregivers rated bvFTD patients as having significantly elevated apathy scores though patient self-ratings were normal. Caregiver and self-ratings of FTD samples with progressive nonfluent aphasia and semantic dementia did not differ from healthy controls and their informants. In the bvFTD sample, caregiver apathy scores were not correlated with general cognitive screening or depression scores, but were significantly correlated with social cognition and executive function measures. Voxel-based morphometry revealed that apathy ratings in bvFTD were related to prominent atrophy in the right caudate (including the ventral striatum), the right temporo-parietal junction, right posterior inferior and middle temporal gyri, and left frontal operculum- anterior insula region. Findings suggest that bvFTD is associated with a significant breakdown in goal-directed motivated behavior involving disruption of cortical-basal ganglia circuits that is also related to social and executive function deficits.     

Community applications of instructional technology: training low-income proctors

A community education system might be most effectively implemented in low-income communities if it were deliverable by neighborhood residents. A proctor training manual, designed to teach neighborhood residents how to administer standardized learning units to their peers, was analyzed in two experiments. The results of Experiment I showed that the percentage of occurrence of proctor behaviors increased after completion of the manual. Supplementary data suggest that specified proctor behaviors generalize to actual instructional situations. The results of Experiment II showed that the percentage of occurrence of trainee behaviors was higher when instructional packages were administered by trained proctors than when administered by untrained proctors. This study demonstrates an effective procedure for training low-income community residents to serve as proctors for a community education system.     

Functional magnetic resonance imaging: Overview and methods for psychological research

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allows noninvasive imaging of hemodynamic changes related to neural activity. This technique can be used in single-subject designs and can provide millimeter spatial resolution and temporal resolution in the range of 5–10 sec. This paper provides a brief introduction to MRI techniques and their application to functional neuroimaging, focusing on methodological issues that are of particular concern to psychologists, including methods for presenting computerized stimuli to subjects without disrupting the scanner, experimental design issues, and statistical analysis and image processing procedures. To illustrate methodological issues, recent results from a series of studies looking at the topographic organization of visual cortex are presented. General issues concerning limitations in this technique, future directions in its development, its relationship to other neuroimaging techniques, and the role of functional neuroimaging in psychological research are addressed in the Discussion.