As many parents know, children of
all ages can be irritable at times. Yet
while some irritability in children is normal, very high levels of irritability
(or even very low levels) may put kids at risk for mental illness. While we know that children with behavioral
problems are at risk for mental illness later in life, we don’t know why irritability in particular puts kids at risk.
Susan
Perlman, Ph.D., a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh School of
Medicine, is researching irritability in young kids (ages 3-6) in order to
determine if these children will be “just fine” or if their irritability levels
will predict future behavioral and psychological issues. I.e., she wants to know, “why do some
irritable kids end up with mental illness, and others just become irritable but
normally functioning adults?”
Dr. Perlman’s work involves
imaging the brains of children with varying levels of irritability while they
perform tasks that generally provoke intense emotional reactions, in order to
determine if neuroimaging can predict which children will develop normally and
which children are on a trajectory towards psychopathology. The technique she uses to image the brains of
young children is called
near-infrared spectroscopy
(fNIRS).
The way this is done is by having
kids wear what looks like a headband or swim cap– this device sends light into
the brain while kids perform certain tasks on a computer. It’s as safe as spending 20 minutes outside
on a sunny day and measures bloodflow, similar to the measurement of a
functional MRI, but it’s less sensitive to movement. Plus, it is easy for the kids to use and fun,
given that the kids play computer games, or interact with parents or a member
of the research team, while wearing the device.
In a
study
published online this week in the journal
NeuroImage, Dr. Perlman found that in a sample of children from
community (kids not presenting with psychiatric problems), an area of the brain
called the lateral prefrontal cortex is active during frustration. But, most
importantly, the more parents reported high levels of irritability in their
child, the more they used this region of the brain, which is associated with emotional
control, when frustrated.
“We expected the opposite,” noted
Dr. Perlman. “We thought kids who were
irritable wouldn’t be using the part of the brain that controls emotion. But
our findings suggest kids with active lateral prefrontal cortexes may be less
likely to develop mental illness because that area of the brain is working
well. In children diagnosed with
psychiatric disorders, we expect dysfunction of this area during frustration.”
By
characterizing the biological mechanisms underlying the wide range of
irritability observed in early childhood, Dr. Perlman and colleagues hope to discover
dysfunctional brain circuitry in irritable preschoolers which might predispose
some irritable children towards a trajectory of mental illness as they enter
the critical school years. Her current studies use similar methodology to explore neural mechanisms for
irritability in clinical samples across childhood.
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In a study
published online this week in the journal NeuroImage, Dr. Perlman found that in a sample of children from
community (kids not presenting with psychiatric problems), an area of the brain
called the lateral prefrontal cortex is active during frustration. But, most
importantly, the more parents reported high levels of irritability in their
child, the more they used this region of the brain, which is associated with emotional
control, when frustrated.