Explore the vast range of titles available.

This review summarizes the case for investing in adolescence as a period of rapid growth, learning, adaptation, and formational neurobiological development. Adolescence is a dynamic maturational period during which young lives can pivot rapidly—in both negative and positive directions. Scientific progress in understanding adolescent development provides actionable insights into windows of opportunity during which policies can have a positive impact on developmental trajectories relating to health, education, and social and economic success. Given current global changes and challenges that affect adolescents, there is a compelling need to leverage these advances in developmental science to inform strategic investments in adolescent health. Insights into windows of opportunity that will have strong positive impacts on the trajectories of health, education, social and economic success of adolescents are reviewed. Economic essence of adolescence Adolescence is a distinctive developmental period involving rapid growth, learning and neurobiological changes, with the potential for both positive and negative outcomes. This Perspective summarizes our current understanding of developmental processes that occur during adolescence, as well as the learning needed to develop the skills and self-regulatory capacity necessary for becoming independent and integrating into adult society. A more nuanced understanding of the distinctive features of adolescence, especially the enhanced social learning and exploration, may inform policy and interventions seeking to maximize windows of opportunity for shaping the future trajectories of the health, wellbeing and economic success of adolescents.

Wrist-worn smart watches and fitness monitors (ie, wearables) have become widely adopted by consumers and are gaining increased attention from researchers for their potential contribution to naturalistic digital measurement of health in a scalable, mobile, and unobtrusive way. Various studies have examined the accuracy of these devices in controlled laboratory settings (eg, treadmill and stationary bike); however, no studies have investigated the heart rate accuracy of wearables during a continuous and ecologically valid 24-hour period of actual consumer device use conditions. The aim of this study was to determine the heart rate accuracy of 2 popular wearable devices, the Apple Watch 3 and Fitbit Charge 2, as compared with the gold standard reference method, an ambulatory electrocardiogram (ECG), during consumer device use conditions in an individual. Data were collected across 5 daily conditions, including sitting, walking, running, activities of daily living (ADL; eg, chores, brushing teeth), and sleeping. One participant, (first author; 29-year-old Caucasian male) completed a 24-hour ecologically valid protocol by wearing 2 popular wrist wearable devices (Apple Watch 3 and Fitbit Charge 2). In addition, an ambulatory ECG (Vrije Universiteit Ambulatory Monitoring System) was used as the gold standard reference method, which resulted in the collection of 102,740 individual heartbeats. A single-subject design was used to keep all variables constant except for wearable devices while providing a rapid response design to provide initial assessment of wearable accuracy for allowing the research cycle to keep pace with technological advancements. Accuracy of these devices compared with the gold standard ECG was assessed using mean error, mean absolute error, and mean absolute percent error. These data were supplemented with Bland-Altman analyses and concordance class correlation to assess agreement between devices. The Apple Watch 3 and Fitbit Charge 2 were generally highly accurate across the 24-hour condition. Specifically, the Apple Watch 3 had a mean difference of -1.80 beats per minute (bpm), a mean absolute error percent of 5.86%, and a mean agreement of 95% when compared with the ECG across 24 hours. The Fitbit Charge 2 had a mean difference of -3.47 bpm, a mean absolute error of 5.96%, and a mean agreement of 91% when compared with the ECG across 24 hours. These findings varied by condition. The Apple Watch 3 and the Fitbit Charge 2 provided acceptable heart rate accuracy (<±10%) across the 24 hour and during each activity, except for the Apple Watch 3 during the daily activities condition. Overall, these findings provide preliminary support that these devices appear to be useful for implementing ambulatory measurement of cardiac activity in research studies, especially those where the specific advantages of these methods (eg, scalability, low participant burden) are particularly suited to the population or research question.

Understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of childhood maltreatment is vital given consistent links with poor mental health. Dimensional models of adversity purport that different types of adversity likely have distinct neurobiological consequences. Adolescence is a key developmental period, during which deviations from normative neurodevelopment may have particular relevance for mental health. However, longitudinal work examining links between different forms of maltreatment, neurodevelopment, and mental health is limited. In the present study, we explored associations between abuse, neglect, and longitudinal development of within-network functional connectivity of the salience (SN), default mode (DMN), and executive control network in 142 community residing adolescents. Resting-state fMRI data were acquired at age 16 (T1; = 16.46 years, s.d. = 0.52, 66F) and 19 (T2; mean follow-up period: 2.35 years). Mental health data were also collected at T1 and T2. Childhood maltreatment history was assessed prior to T1. Abuse and neglect were both found to be associated with increases in within-SN functional connectivity from age 16 to 19. Further, there were sex differences in the association between neglect and changes in within-DMN connectivity. Finally, increases in within-SN connectivity were found to mediate the association between abuse/neglect and lower problematic substance use and higher depressive symptoms at age 19. Our findings suggest that childhood maltreatment is associated with altered neurodevelopmental trajectories, and that changes in salience processing may be linked with risk and resilience for the development of depression and substance use problems during adolescence, respectively. Further work is needed to understand the distinct neurodevelopmental and mental health outcomes of abuse and neglect.

COVID-19 emerged in November 2019 leading to a global pandemic that has not only resulted in widespread medical complications and loss of life, but has also impacted global economies and transformed daily life. The current rapid response study in a convenience online sample quickly recruited 2,065 participants across the United States, Canada, and Europe in late March and early April 2020. Cross-sectional findings indicated elevated anxiety and depressive symptoms compared to historical norms, which were positively associated with COVID-19 concern more strongly than epidemiological data signifying risk (e.g., world and country confirmed cases). Employment loss was positively associated with greater depressive symptoms and COVID-19 concern, and depressive symptoms and COVID-19 concern were significantly associated with more stringent self-quarantine behavior. The rapid collection of data during the early phase of this pandemic is limited by under-representation of non-White and middle age and older adults. Nevertheless, these findings have implications for interventions to slow the spread of COVID-19 infection.

In this article, we examine the concept of emotional inertia as a fundamental property of the emotion dynamics that characterize psychological maladjustment. Emotional inertia refers to the degree to which emotional states are resistant to change. Because psychological maladjustment has been associated with both emotional underreactivity and ineffective emotion-regulation skills, we hypothesized that its overall emotion dynamics would be characterized by high levels of inertia. We provide evidence from two naturalistic studies that, using different methods, showed that the emotional fluctuations of individuals who exhibited low self-esteem (Study I) and depression (Study 2) were characterized by higher levels of inertia in both positive and negative emotions than the emotional fluctuations of people who did not exhibit low self-esteem and depression. We also discuss the usefulness of the concept of emotional inertia as a hallmark of maladaptive emotion dynamics.

Limited attention has been directed toward the influence of non-abusive parenting behaviour on brain structure in adolescents. It has been suggested that environmental influences during this period are likely to impact the way that the brain develops over time. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between aggressive and positive parenting behaviors on brain development from early to late adolescence, and in turn, psychological and academic functioning during late adolescence, using a multi-wave longitudinal design. Three hundred and sixty seven magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were obtained over three time points from 166 adolescents (11-20 years). At the first time point, observed measures of maternal aggressive and positive behaviors were obtained. At the final time point, measures of psychological and academic functioning were obtained. Results indicated that a higher frequency of maternal aggressive behavior was associated with alterations in the development of right superior frontal and lateral parietal cortical thickness, and of nucleus accumbens volume, in males. Development of the superior frontal cortex in males mediated the relationship between maternal aggressive behaviour and measures of late adolescent functioning. We suggest that our results support an association between negative parenting and adolescent functioning, which may be mediated by immature or delayed brain maturation.

Better childhood health and nutrition, extensions to education, delays in family formation, and new technologies offer the possibility of this being the healthiest generation of adolescents ever. But these are also the ages when new and different health problems related to the onset of sexual activity, emotional control, and behaviour typically emerge. Global trends include those promoting unhealthy lifestyles and commodities, the crisis of youth unemployment, less family stability, environmental degradation, armed conflict, and mass migration, all of which pose major threats to adolescent health and wellbeing.

Researchers have increasingly begun to use consumer wearables or wrist-worn smartwatches and fitness monitors for measurement of cardiovascular psychophysiological processes related to mental and physical health outcomes. These devices have strong appeal because they allow for continuous, scalable, unobtrusive, and ecologically valid data collection of cardiac activity in “big data” studies. However, replicability and reproducibility may be hampered moving forward due to the lack of standardization of data collection and processing procedures, and inconsistent reporting of technological factors (e.g., device type, firmware versions, and sampling rate), biobehavioral variables (e.g., body mass index, wrist dominance and circumference), and participant demographic characteristics, such as skin tone, that may influence heart rate measurement. These limitations introduce unnecessary noise into measurement, which can cloud interpretation and generalizability of findings. This paper provides a brief overview of research using commercial wearable devices to measure heart rate, reviews literature on device accuracy, and outlines the challenges that non-standardized reporting pose for the field. We also discuss study design, technological, biobehavioral, and demographic factors that can impact the accuracy of the passive sensing of heart rate measurements, and provide guidelines and corresponding checklist handouts for future study data collection and design, data cleaning and processing, analysis, and reporting that may help ameliorate some of these barriers and inconsistencies in the literature.

This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the efficacy of adolescent cognitive–behavioral sleep interventions. Searches of PubMed, PsycINFO, CENTRAL, EMBASE, and MEDLINE were performed from inception to May 1, 2016, supplemented with manual screening. Nine trials were selected ( n  = 357, mean age = 14.97 years; female = 61.74%). Main outcomes were subjective (sleep diary/questionnaire) and objective (actigraphy) total sleep time (TST), sleep onset latency (SOL), sleep efficiency (SE), and wake after sleep onset (WASO). There were a small number of randomized controlled trials (RCTs; n  = 4) and a high risk of bias across the RCTs; therefore, within sleep condition meta-analyses were examined ( n  = 221). At post-intervention, subjective TST improved by 29.47 min (95% CI 17.18, 41.75), SOL by 21.44 min (95% CI −30.78, −12.11), SE by 5.34% (95% CI 2.64, 8.04), and WASO by a medium effect size [ d  = 0.59 (95% CI 0.36, 0.82)]. Objective SOL improved by 16.15 min (95% CI −26.13, −6.17) and SE by 2.82% (95% CI 0.58, 5.07). Global sleep quality, daytime sleepiness, depression, and anxiety also improved. Gains were generally maintained over time. Preliminary evidence suggests that adolescent cognitive–behavioral sleep interventions are effective, but further high-quality RCTs are needed. Suggestions for further research are provided.

Background We now know that depression is associated with a chronic, low-grade inflammatory response and activation of cell-mediated immunity, as well as activation of the compensatory anti-inflammatory reflex system. It is similarly accompanied by increased oxidative and nitrosative stress (O&NS), which contribute to neuroprogression in the disorder. The obvious question this poses is ‘what is the source of this chronic low-grade inflammation?’ Discussion This review explores the role of inflammation and oxidative and nitrosative stress as possible mediators of known environmental risk factors in depression, and discusses potential implications of these findings. A range of factors appear to increase the risk for the development of depression, and seem to be associated with systemic inflammation; these include psychosocial stressors, poor diet, physical inactivity, obesity, smoking, altered gut permeability, atopy, dental cares, sleep and vitamin D deficiency. Summary The identification of known sources of inflammation provides support for inflammation as a mediating pathway to both risk and neuroprogression in depression. Critically, most of these factors are plastic, and potentially amenable to therapeutic and preventative interventions. Most, but not all, of the above mentioned sources of inflammation may play a role in other psychiatric disorders, such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism and post-traumatic stress disorder.