The study explored children's experience of triangulation in their families. In all, 15 children aged 11-16 years, who were attending an early intervention family therapy service, participated in the study. The children's understandings and emotional experience of triangulation were explored by comparing their responses to pictures from the Separation Anxiety Test (SAT) and a set of pictures designed for the study depicting a variety of triangulation conflicts in families. An interview regarding the children's personal family experiences of triangulation was also undertaken and clinical information about the children's family contexts was also utilised. Statistical analysis was conducted based on eight of children for whom a full data set was available. This indicated that children showed greater levels of anxiety in response to the triangulation as opposed to the separation scenarios. Qualitative analysis supported this finding and revealed that many of the children felt 'invisible' due to parents' pre-occupation with marital conflict, felt caught in the middle of conflicts and coerced to take sides. Although able to describe their reactions and showing greater negative emotional responses to the triadic pictures, they were not consciously aware of the negative impacts of triangulation on their sense of well-being. Clinical implications are discussed with a focus on encouraging child-centred approaches to family therapy.

The identification of meaningful functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) biomarkers requires measures that reliably capture brain performance across different subjects and over multiple scanning sessions. Recent developments in fMRI acquisition, such as the introduction of multiband (MB) protocols and in‐plane acceleration, allow for increased scanning speed and improved temporal resolution. However, they may also lead to reduced temporal signal to noise ratio and increased signal leakage between simultaneously excited slices. These methods have been adopted in several scanning modalities including diffusion weighted imaging and fMRI. To our knowledge, no study has formally compared the reliability of the same resting‐state fMRI (rs‐fMRI) metrics (amplitude of low‐frequency fluctuations; seed‐to‐voxel and region of interest [ROI]‐to‐ROI connectivity) across conventional single‐band fMRI and different MB acquisitions, with and without in‐plane acceleration, across three sessions. In this study, 24 healthy older adults were scanned over three visits, on weeks 0, 1, and 4, and, on each occasion, underwent a conventional single band rs‐fMRI scan and three different rs‐fMRI scans with MB factors 4 and 6, with and without in‐plane acceleration. Across all three rs‐fMRI metrics, the reliability scores were highest with MB factor 4 with no in‐plane acceleration for cortical areas and with conventional single band for subcortical areas. Recommendations for future research studies are discussed.

Leading Eigenvector Dynamics Analysis (LEiDA) is an analytic approach that characterizes brain activity recorded with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) as a succession of discrete phase-locking patterns, or states, that consistently recur over time across all participants. LEiDA allows for the extraction of three state-related measures which have previously been key to gaining a better understanding of brain dynamics in both healthy and clinical populations: the probability of occurrence of a given state, its lifetime and the probability of switching from one state to another. The degree to which test-retest reliability of the LEiDA measures may be affected by increasing MRI multiband (MB) factors in comparison with single band sequences is yet to be established. In this study, 24 healthy older adults were scanned over three sessions, on weeks 0, 1, and 4. On each visit, they underwent a conventional single band resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) scan and three different MB rs-fMRI scans, with MB factors of 4, with and without in-plane acceleration, and 6 without in-plane acceleration. We found test-retest reliability scores to be significantly higher with MB factor 4 with and without in-plane acceleration for most cortical networks. These findings will inform the choice of acquisition parameters for future studies and clinical trials.

Significance There is an acknowledged need for improved service provision in the context of autism spectrum disorders. Previous studies have demonstrated the positive role drum training can play in improving behavioral outcomes for children and adolescents with emotional and behavioral difficulties. However, to date, none of these studies has explored how these behavioral changes translate at the neural level. Our study provides strong evidence that drumming not only reduces hyperactivity and inattention in autistic adolescents but also strengthens functional connectivity in brain regions responsible for inhibitory control and action outcome monitoring.

Reliability and test-retest reproducibility of simple and advanced diffusion metrics were evaluated in healthy older adults. Advanced models such as Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging, White Matter Tract Integrity, Neurite Orientation Dispersion and Density Imaging and other multi-compartment methods have greater specificity but lower reliability and reproducibility than simple models such as DTI and spherical harmonic metrics. All models nevertheless had good or acceptable reproducibilty and reliability in certain cases. Particular care may be given when planning clinical research applications with advanced metrics, as greater sample sizes and/or improved data quality may be needed.