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Inhibitory control, a core executive function, emerges in infancy and develops rapidly across childhood. Methodological limitations have meant that studies investigating the neural correlates underlying inhibitory control in infancy are rare. Employing functional near-infrared spectroscopy alongside a novel touchscreen task that measures response inhibition, this study aimed to uncover the neural underpinnings of inhibitory control in 10-month-old infants (N = 135). We found that when inhibition was required, the right prefrontal and parietal cortices were more activated than when there was no inhibitory demand. This demonstrates that inhibitory control in infants as young as 10 months of age is supported by similar brain areas as in older children and adults. With this study we have lowered the age-boundary for localising the neural substrates of response inhibition to the first year of life.

While advances in behavioural and neuroimaging methods suitable for use with infants have greatly increased our understanding of infant brain function, cognition and behaviour in recent years, relatively little is known about the rapid period of development during the last trimester of pregnancy and first weeks and months after birth, as well as the roles that the social environment and stress play in shaping this development. This protocol paper outlines The UK Perinatal Imaging in Partnership with Families (PIPKIN) Study, a unique, multi-method, longitudinal cohort study investigating the early development of fetal and infant neurocognitive function and behaviour, and how the infant’s social and family environment shapes this development. The study follows families from a range of socio-economic backgrounds who participate at ten timepoints, from the third trimester of pregnancy until their infant is nine months old, with three visits taking place during the infant’s first postnatal month. The study harnesses recent methodological advances coupled with the drive for more ecologically valid data collection by undertaking many of these visits in families’ homes. Methods include measures of fetal behaviour using 4D ultrasound scanning; infant brain imaging using fNIRS and EEG; a full-day video recording of the home environment from the infant’s perspective, with physiological measures; measures of recent stress in both infant and mother; questionnaires relating to the home environment as well as parents’ feelings, attitudes, health and parenting routines; and standardised measures of infant behaviour and development. Specific aims are to investigate: i) individual differences in basic sensory, behavioural and motor processing between late prenatal and early postnatal periods; ii) rapid change in cortical functions over the first month, particularly for brain networks that support social behaviour; iii) effects of social interaction on developing brain function; and iv) individual differences in developmental trajectories associated with poverty-related contextual factors.

IntroductionA mobile app, BlueIce, was codesigned with young people with a history of self-harm to provide them with more accessible and available evidence-based support at times of distress. A preliminary evaluation found that BlueIce was acceptable, safe and used by young people and helped to reduce self-harm. The present study is designed to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of adding BlueIce to usual Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).Methods and analysisThis study is a single-blind, randomised controlled trial comparing usual CAMHS care with usual care plus BlueIce. A total of 138 adolescents aged 12–17 with current or a history of self-harm will be recruited through the Oxford Health National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust via their CAMHS clinician. The primary outcome is self-harm at 12 weeks assessed using the Risk Taking and Self-Harm Inventory for Adolescents. Secondary outcomes include mood, anxiety, hopelessness, general behaviour, sleep and impact on everyday life at 12 weeks and 6 months. Health-related quality of life and healthcare resource utilisation data will be collected at baseline, 12 weeks and 6 months. Postuse interviews at 12 weeks will determine the acceptability, safety and usability of BlueIce.Ethics and disseminationThe study was approved by the NHS South Central—Oxford B NHS Research Ethics Committee (19/SC/0212) and by the Health Research Authority (HRA) and Health and Care Research Wales. Findings will be disseminated in peer review open-access journals and at academic conferences.Trial registration numberISRCTN10541045.

Self-harm is a growing issue with increasing prevalence rates; however, individuals who self-harm do not often receive treatment. Mobile health (mHealth) interventions are a possible solution to some of the barriers that individuals face when seeking support, and they have also been found to be effective in improving mental health. Thus far, reviews of mHealth interventions for self-harm have been limited by study type. Therefore, we determined that a broader scoping review will provide a more exhaustive understanding of mHealth interventions for self-harm. This scoping review aims to identify mHealth interventions for self-harm within the literature, understand the types and features of interventions that have been developed and evaluated, highlight research findings around mHealth interventions for self-harm, and determine what outcomes are typically used to assess the efficacy of interventions. A search was conducted using Embase, PubMed, PsycINFO, PsycEXTRA, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library. Studies were included if they described an mHealth intervention designed to have a direct (ie, if the intervention was designed for self-harm or for people who self-harm) or indirect (ie, if self-harm was measured as an outcome) treatment effect and if the paper was available in English. There were no exclusion criteria based on the study design. A total of 36 papers were included in the review, and most of them were randomized controlled trials published within the last 4 years. The interventions were mostly smartphone apps and calling or texting services, with 62% (21/34) having underlying therapeutic models to inform the intervention content. They were generally shown to be promising and appealing, but only 5 were widely available for use. Outcomes focused on a reduction of self-harm and suicidality, mood, and the users' experiences of the intervention. Samples were typically nondiverse, and there was limited variety in the study designs and in the measurements of self-harm recovery. Promising and appealing mHealth interventions have been developed but are not widely available. Research could benefit from greater diversity as well as a broader and more nuanced understanding of recovery from self-harm.

Freshwater resources around the world are under increasing pressure from agricultural activities. As a result, regulatory frameworks around on-farm environmental compliance have become more complex. Consequently, farm plans which have been used in New Zealand to identify risks to and develop mitigation strategies for freshwater quality can be time consuming and costly to develop and monitor. Using semi-structured interviews, this study investigated the views of the regulators working in environmental policy and implementation on the use of drones to increase the efficiency of on-farm environmental compliance. Results show that drones can improve process robustness by providing an aerial view, and that they are quicker and safer to use on steeper contoured farms. However, there is confusion around the permissions required in order to capture footage, its ownership and storage, and who has access rights to the footage. This ambiguity in the implementation of environmental regulations can lead to uncertainty on the part of policy implementors around how to integrate drones in on-farm environmental compliance. In addition, positive relationships between farmers and compliance officers are needed in order for the benefits of drone use to be realised for on-farm environmental compliance purposes.

Anterior prefrontal cortex (PFC, Brodmann area 10) activations are often, but not always, found in neuroimaging studies investigating deception, and the precise role of this area remains unclear. To explore the role of the PFC in face-to-face deception, we invited pairs of participants to play a card game involving lying and lie detection while we used functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to record brain activity in the PFC. Participants could win points for successfully lying about the value of their cards or for detecting lies. We contrasted patterns of brain activation when the participants either told the truth or lied, when they were either forced into this or did so voluntarily and when they either succeeded or failed to detect a lie. Activation in the anterior PFC was found in both lie production and detection, unrelated to reward. Analysis of cross-brain activation patterns between participants identified areas of the PFC where the lead player's brain activity synchronized their partner's later brain activity. These results suggest that during situations that involve close interpersonal interaction, the anterior PFC supports processing widely involved in deception, possibly relating to the demands of monitoring one's own and other people's behaviour. Key words: deception; fNIRS; anterior prefrontal cortex; hyperscanning; face-to-face social interactions

Anterior prefrontal cortex (PFC, Brodmann area 10) activations are often, but not always, found in neuroimaging studies investigating deception, and the precise role of this area remains unclear. To explore the role of the PFC in face-to-face deception, we invited pairs of participants to play a card game involving lying and lie detection while we used functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to record brain activity in the PFC. Participants could win points for successfully lying about the value of their cards or for detecting lies. We contrasted patterns of brain activation when the participants either told the truth or lied, when they were either forced into this or did so voluntarily and when they either succeeded or failed to detect a lie. Activation in the anterior PFC was found in both lie production and detection, unrelated to reward. Analysis of cross-brain activation patterns between participants identified areas of the PFC where the lead player's brain activity synchronized their partner's later brain activity. These results suggest that during situations that involve close interpersonal interaction, the anterior PFC supports processing widely involved in deception, possibly relating to the demands of monitoring one's own and other people's behaviour.

Anterior prefrontal cortex (PFC, Brodmann area 10) activations are often, but not always, found in neuroimaging studies investigating deception, and the precise role of this area remains unclear. To explore the role of the PFC in face-to-face deception, we invited pairs of participants to play a card game involving lying and lie detection while we used functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to record brain activity in the PFC. Participants could win points for successfully lying about the value of their cards or for detecting lies. We contrasted patterns of brain activation when the participants either told the truth or lied, when they were either forced into this or did so voluntarily and when they either succeeded or failed to detect a lie. Activation in the anterior PFC was found in both lie production and detection, unrelated to reward. Analysis of cross-brain activation patterns between participants identified areas of the PFC where the lead player’s brain activity synchronized their partner’s later brain activity. These results suggest that during situations that involve close interpersonal interaction, the anterior PFC supports processing widely involved in deception, possibly relating to the demands of monitoring one’s own and other people’s behaviour.

Neonates undergo rapid development, yet the examination of emerging brain markers across paradigms, cognitive domains, and diverse global populations remains limited. We investigated whether brain responses at 1 month of age could be interrogated across paradigms to offer deeper context-specific insights into neurodevelopment. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy was used to assess frontal and temporal brain responses during natural sleep in 181 infants from a low-income setting (rural Gambia) and 58 infants from a higher-income setting (Cambridge, United Kingdom) during three auditory paradigms: social selectivity, habituation and novelty detection, and functional connectivity. Paradigm-level brain responses were analyzed using threshold-free cluster enhancement and cross-paradigm comparisons of individual responses. Both Gambian and UK infants showed habituation but not novelty responses, higher inter- versus intra-hemispheric connectivity, stronger inter-hemispheric connectivity in temporal relative to frontal regions, stronger inter-regional connectivity between right temporal and left frontal regions, and nonvocal > vocal selectivity (UK infants only). Cross-cohort differences in the cross-paradigm analyses suggest that context-specific developmental markers are evident within the first month of life and show high individual variability. Cross-paradigm analyses revealed that greater vocal selectivity (UK) is associated with higher inter-hemispheric connectivity, potentially allowing us to identify biomarkers of more mature neurodevelopment within the first weeks of postnatal life.

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has advanced our understanding of early brain development, especially infant responses to social and auditory stimuli. Unlike older children and adults, very young infants are often assessed during natural sleep to reduce movement and ensure sufficient data quality. Yet the impact of sleep stage on fNIRS signals and how it might affect interpretations of early brain activation patterns remains unclear. This study investigates the effect of sleep stages on fNIRS-measured hemodynamic responses to two auditory paradigms across different global populations of one-month-old infants. In total, 46 Gambian and 40 UK infants in quiet or active sleep were tested using (1) social selectivity and (2) a habituation and novelty detection paradigms. In the UK cohort, active sleep was associated with a stronger initial response and greater habituation compared to quiet sleep. In contrast, Gambian infants in quiet sleep showed more widespread activation and evidence of habituation, while infants in active sleep showed no habituation. No sleep stage effects were observed for response in the social selectivity paradigm in either group. Different effects of sleep stages were observed across the two cohorts and paradigms and should be carefully considered in neuroimaging studies.