wiggins He is an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University and lives in Hillcrest. She will discuss this topic in more detail. TEDxSan Diego Community Speaker Series on wednesday David and Dorothea Garfield Theater in La Jolla.The lecture begins at 7 p.m.
We are now fighting for the future of our children’s mental health. The U.S. Surgeon General has declared a youth mental health crisis, and the pandemic has only made the situation worse. However, there are major obstacles to resolving this crisis. Typically, when parents bring their children to the doctor’s office with anxiety or depression, psychologists and psychiatrists try a long list of possible treatments through trial and error until something works. Masu.
This approach is truly inefficient, expensive, and leaves children and parents exhausted each time treatment fails. And it’s not because doctors are trying to be insensitive. They just don’t yet have the ability to look inside the child’s brain to see what’s wrong and decide which children need what treatment.
I’m the president of San Diego State University. Translational Affective Neuroscience Development (TEND) Lab. I’m a pioneer in a scientific movement that leverages brain imaging to address the mental health crisis in young people.
As you may be familiar with, traditional MRI takes still images of the brain. This can be compared to looking under the hood of a car while the car is stopped.
At TEND Lab, we use functional MRI, a specialized form of brain imaging, to see “inside” in a way that goes completely beyond just static images. Children who come to our lab lie in an MRI and learn how they feel when they win or lose money, how they react when people are angry or happy. Play specially designed video games that tap into psychological processes such as when and when. they are annoyed. With functional MRI, the images are dynamic and show the brain activating in response to these emotional events.
This study allows us to peek under the hood of a car while driving to find out what kinds of brain signatures predict which children will do better after established psychological treatments, and which can help predict. Now we can identify if we can spot brain signatures. Children who only have mild emotional problems will recover and recover on their own. Understanding the brain mechanisms associated with risk for mental health problems allows us to target them with novel and innovative preventive interventions and new personalized treatments.
One of the best evidence-based treatments is called Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT). In TF-CBT, children talk through their experiences with a therapist and learn how to soothe and cope with themselves. On average, symptoms improve after TF-CBT, but for about one in three people it is not effective. Therefore, it was necessary to investigate what was different in the brains of children who improved and those who did not.
What we found was that children whose symptoms did not improve had something in common. It’s how your brain reacts when you get a reward and when you don’t. Additionally, the brains of children whose symptoms did not improve despite trauma treatment were found to respond completely inappropriately to receiving rewards and being denied rewards. Compared to the children who eventually improved, they showed the opposite activation pattern. This suggests that some fundamental problem with the way these children’s brains value and respond to rewards may be preventing them from healing from trauma.
These are exciting times for researchers. We’ve only just begun to peek inside to see how the brain works, and we’re currently working on larger studies to make sure our findings can be replicated and extended. . Imagine a future where doctors order lab tests based on MRIs of children’s brains, rather than trying treatments until something works. Based on the results of the laboratory test, a treatment tailored to the child will be prescribed.
When scientists were studying electricity centuries ago, they could not have imagined that their research would lead to the cell phones, computers, and technology we have today. Similarly, I will probably never live to see the full impact of my work, but my team and I are forging a path to a better future for children’s mental health.
