The influence of cardiorespiratory fitness on the modulation of cognitive control was assessed in preadolescent children separated into higher- and lower-fit groups. Participants completed compatible and incompatible stimulus-response conditions of a modified flanker task, consisting of congruent and incongruent arrays, while ERPs and task performance were concurrently measured. Findings revealed decreased response accuracy for lower- relative to higher-fit participants with a selectively larger deficit in response to the incompatible stimulus-response condition, requiring the greatest amount of cognitive control. In contrast, higher-fit participants maintained response accuracy across stimulus-response compatibility conditions. Neuroelectric measures indicated that higher-fit, relative to lower-fit, participants exhibited global increases in P3 amplitude and shorter P3 latency, as well as greater modulation of P3 amplitude between the compatible and incompatible stimulus-response conditions. Similarly, higher-fit participants exhibited smaller error-related negativity (ERN) amplitudes in the compatible condition, and greater modulation of the ERN between the compatible and incompatible conditions, relative to lower-fit participants who exhibited large ERN amplitudes across both conditions. These findings suggest that lower-fit children may have more difficulty than higher-fit children in the flexible modulation of cognitive control processes to meet task demands.

This open pilot study of vagus nerve stimulation (VNS ™ ) in 60 patients with treatment-resistant major depressive episodes (MDEs)

Aerobically fit children outperform less fit peers on cognitive control challenges that involve inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and working memory. The aim of this study was to determine whether, compared with less fit children, more fit 9- and 10-year-old pre-adolescents exhibit superior performance on a modified compatible and incompatible flanker task of cognitive control at the initial time of fitness testing and approximately one year later. We found that more fit children demonstrated increased flanker accuracy at both test sessions, coupled with a superior ability to flexibly allocate strategies during task conditions that required different amounts of cognitive control, relative to less fit children. More fit children also gained a speed benefit at follow-up testing. Structural MRI data were also collected to investigate the relationship between basal ganglia volume and task performance. Bilateral putamen volumes of the dorsal striatum and globus pallidus volumes predicted flanker performance at initial and follow-up testing one year later. The present findings suggest that childhood aerobic fitness and basal ganglia volumes relate to cognitive control at the time of fitness testing and may play a role in cognitive performance in the future. We hope that this research will encourage public health and educational changes that will promote a physically active lifestyle in children.

No abstract

A bold new effort to disrupt every gene in the mouse genome necessitates systematic, interdisciplinary approaches to analyzing patterning defects in the mouse embryo. We present a novel, rapid, and inexpensive method for obtaining high-resolution virtual histology for phenotypic assessment of mouse embryos. Using osmium tetroxide to differentially stain tissues followed by volumetric X-ray computed tomography to image whole embryos, isometric resolutions of 27 μm or 8 μm were achieved with scan times of 2 h or 12 h, respectively, using mid-gestation E9.5–E12.5 embryos. The datasets generated by this method are immediately amenable to state-of-the-art computational methods of organ patterning analysis. This technique to assess embryo anatomy represents a significant improvement in resolution, time, and expense for the quantitative, three-dimensional analysis of developmental patterning defects attributed to genetically engineered mutations and chemically induced embryotoxicity.