Background: Maternal acetaminophen use during pregnancy is associated with increased risk of ADHD in the child. This could reflect causal influence of acetaminophen on fetal neurodevelopment or could be due to confounding factors. The aim of the current study was to examine unmeasured familial confounding factors of this association. Methods: We used data from 26,613 children from 12,902 families participating in the prospective Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). The MoBa was linked to the Norwegian Medical Birth Register and the Norwegian Patient Registry. Siblings discordant for prenatal acetaminophen exposure were compared regarding risk of having an ADHD diagnosis. Results: Children exposed to acetaminophen up to 28 days during pregnancy did not have increased risk of receiving an ADHD diagnosis compared to unexposed children. The adjusted Hazard ratio (aHR) was 0.87 (95% C.I. = 0.70-1.08) for exposureThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BACKGROUND: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has brought about advances in the fields of brain plasticity and lifespan brain change, that might be of special interest for cognitive rehabilitation research and, eventually, in clinical practice. Parallel, intensive cognitive training studies show promising results for the prospect of retraining some of the impaired functioning following acquired brain injury. OBJECTIVES: However, cognitive training research is largely performed without concurrent assessments of brain structural change and reorganization, which could have addressed possible mechanisms of training-related neuroplasticity. METHODS: Criticism of cognitive training studies is often focused on lack of ecologically valid, daily-living assessments of treatment effect, and on whether the applied cognitive measures overlap too much with the training exercises. Yet, the present paper takes another point of view, where the relevance of recent MRI research of brain plasticity to the field of cognitive rehabilitation is examined. RESULTS: Arguably, treatment ought to be measured at the same level of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health model, as it is targeting. In the case of cognitive training that will be the "body structure" and "body function" levels. CONCLUSIONS: MRI has shown promise to detect macro-and microstructural activity-related changes in the brain following intensive training.

Background: Maternal infections during pregnancy are common events that have been suggested to be risk factors for Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in offspring. Only a few studies have been conducted to date and results are conflicting. The current study investigates the associations between specific groups of prenatal maternal infections and offspring ADHD, considering timing of exposure and the role of fever. Methods: We used data from the prospective Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa), including more than 112,000 pregnancies, linked with data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway and the Norwegian Patient Registry to estimate odds ratios for the likelihood that children develop ADHD after being exposed to maternal infections during gestation. Results: Children exposed to any maternal infection during pregnancy showed increased risk of receiving an ADHD diagnosis (OR = 1.15, CI = 1.03-1.27). Specifically, increased ADHD risk was observed after exposure to genitourinary infections in second (OR = 1.42, CI = 1.06-1.90) or third trimester (OR = 2.04, CI = 1.19-3.49), and to respiratory infections in second trimester (OR = 1.31, Ted Reichborn-Kjennerud and Helga Ask are joint senior authors.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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