Neuroimaging research has implicated abnormalities in cortico-striatal-thalamic-cortical (CSTC) circuitry in pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In this study, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (R-fMRI) was used to investigate functional connectivity in the CSTC in adolescents with OCD. Imaging was obtained with the Human Connectome Project (HCP) scanner using newly developed pulse sequences which allow for higher spatial and temporal resolution. Fifteen adolescents with OCD and 13 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (ages 12-19) underwent R-fMRI on the 3T HCP scanner. Twenty-four minutes of resting-state scans (two consecutive 12-minute scans) were acquired. We investigated functional connectivity of the striatum using a seed-based, whole brain approach with anatomically-defined seeds placed in the bilateral caudate, putamen, and nucleus accumbens. Adolescents with OCD compared with controls exhibited significantly lower functional connectivity between the left putamen and a single cluster of right-sided cortical areas including the orbitofrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, insula, and operculum. Preliminary findings suggest that impaired striatal connectivity in adolescents with OCD in part falls within the predicted CSTC network, and also involves impaired connections between a key CSTC network region (i.e., putamen) and key regions in the salience network (i.e., insula/operculum). The relevance of impaired putamen-insula/operculum connectivity in OCD is discussed.
This manuscript is an outgrowth of an invited panel presentation at the national Association for Psychologists in Academic Health Centers Conference in 2017 on Interprofessional Education (IPE). IPE is a structured and transformative educational strategy designed to provide active learning experiences where trainees from diverse healthcare professions gain shared content knowledge plus collaboration skills as they learn about, from, and with each other. Collaboration skills include understanding professional role distinctions and overlap, effective team-based communication, shared values/ethics and respect for each other's expertise, and teamwork dynamics. It is increasingly important to expand training beyond the intraprofessional activities in which psychology trainees engage to prepare them to participate in interprofessional collaborative care. As healthcare systems move to team-based collaborative practice and value-based reimbursement models, the profession of psychology needs leaders at every academic health center to facilitate the design and/or implementation of IPE activities. The panel of psychologists presented roles that psychologists play in IPE institutional program design and implementation, graduate training programs, and the perspectives of an early career psychologist and psychology trainee. Opportunities and challenges are highlighted, culminating in a call to action. Psychologists must embrace their identity as health professionals and engage their learners in IPE so that the emerging cognitive schemata of healthcare that is developed includes the profession of psychology. Otherwise, healthcare teams and health professionals will not understand the value, roles, or potential contributions of psychologists in enhancing patient care outcomes, ultimately jeopardizing psychologists' referrals, involvement in healthcare delivery, and career opportunities.
Objective: Foundational knowledge on neural circuitry underlying pediatric obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD) and how it changes during standard treatment is needed to provide the basis for conceptualization and development of novel, targeted treatments. This study explored the effects of sertraline, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, on resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) in cortico-striatal-thalamic-cortical circuits in pediatric OCD. Method: Medication-free youths with OCD (n=14) and healthy controls (n=14) were examined at baseline and 12 weeks with resting-state fMRI. Between scan sessions, participants with OCD received 12 weeks of sertraline. For each scan, we conducted seed-based whole-brain RSFC analyses with 6 striatal seeds. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) examined the interaction between group and time on striatal connectivity, including cluster-based thresholding to correct for multiple tests. Connectivity changes within circuits identified in group analyses were correlated with clinical change. Results: Two significant group x time effects in the OCD group showed increased striatal connectivity from baseline to 12 weeks compared with controls. Circuits demonstrating this pattern included right putamen with left frontal cortex/insula and left putamen with left frontal cortex and pre-and post-central cortices. Increase in connectivity in left putamen circuit was significantly correlated with clinical improvement on Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (r = −0.58, p = .03). Conclusion: Sertraline appears to affect specific striatal-based circuits in pediatric OCD, and in part, these changes may account for clinical improvement. Future work is needed to confirm these
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