BACKGROUND:The transition to adulthood is a major developmental milestone; a time of self-discovery and increased independence. For young adults (YA) with intellectual disabilities (ID), however, this period is especially challenging. The increased incidence of mental health disorders in this population, such as depression and anxiety, make this transition even more difficult, increasing caregiver burden at a time when the young adult would traditionally be gaining independence. It is not clear, however, why YA with ID are more susceptible and what factors may predict mental health symptoms.METHOD:Potential risk and protective factors (demographic variables, coping styles, sense of hopelessness, unmet achievement of adulthood milestones, self-reflection and insight) of anxiety and depression symptoms were assessed in 55 YA with ID and a sample of age-matched controls.RESULTS:Insight was the strongest predictor of anxiety (with gender in the controls) for YA with and without ID, with increased insight predicting fewer anxiety symptoms. However, YA with ID had significantly less insight than their aged-matched counterparts and significantly higher levels of anxiety. They were also less likely to have achieved traditional adulthood milestones. Maladaptive coping was the strongest predictor of depression for YA with ID. In comparison, both maladaptive coping and insight predicted depression in controls. More maladaptive coping predicted increased depressive symptoms in both populations, whilst increased insight predicted fewer depressive symptoms in controls.CONCLUSIONS:Insight and maladaptive coping are potential targets in the treatment of anxiety and depression among YA with ID. Longitudinal intervention studies exploring the efficacy of such targeted programmes in reducing mental health symptoms and improving the transition to adulthood for these young people are recommended.

This study examined the adjustment of siblings of children with mental health problems. The participants had brothers or sisters receiving treatment at a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service within the Hunter New England Health Service, New South Wales, Australia. Seventy-five siblings completed questionnaires on their self-concept, quality of life and family functioning. Their carers completed questionnaires on the sibling's behaviours, family demographics and family functioning. The diagnosis and severity of disability of index children were attained from the treating clinician. The study revealed the siblings had significantly higher rates of psychopathology, poorer quality of life and lived in more dysfunctional families than normally developing children. Regression modelling predicted variables related to the three main behaviour scales of the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL). Family functioning, family communication and the extreme ends of family cohesion and balance, were the most significant contributors to regression model. The sibling self-concept domains of global self-worth, athletic competence and behavioural conduct, contributed to the model. Additionally, a smaller family size was associated with more internalising behaviour disorders in the siblings. The diagnosis and severity of mental health problem of the index child and other family demographic factors did not impact on the sibling's behavioural functioning. This study highlights that siblings of children with mental health difficulties are a group vulnerable to adjustment difficulties regardless of the index child's diagnosis or the severity of impairment. Overall, family functioning had a greater impact on the siblings than other factors.

In this work, we have study the EEG signals of birds during the first 6 weeks of life. The aim of the article is to perform a quantitative analysis of the dynamical changes observed in these signals due to the brain maturation effects. The signals' long scaling behaviour is study by Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MFDFA). This method allows the multifractal characterization of these EEG nonstationary time series and characterize the different stage of bird brain maturation.

Recent experimental results suggest that basal electroencephalogram (EEG)changes reflect the widespread functional evolution in neuronal circuits, occurring in chicken brain during the “synapse maturation” period, between 3 and 8 weeks’ posthatch. In present work a quantitative analysis based on the Algorithmic Complexity (Lempel and Ziv Complexity) is performed. It is shown that this complexity presents a peak at week 2 posthatch 2, and a tendency to stabilize its values after the week 5 posthatch.

Cannabis use has been associated with the onset, course and relapse of psychosis. Population studies and data from samples of young people at high risk for psychosis have indicated that cannabis use may be related to the onset of psychosis. Cannabis use has also been found to have a deleterious impact on psychotic symptom severity and has emerged as the strong predictor of psychotic relapse. To date, there has been little collaboration between neuroscience and clinical research groups examining the link between cannabis use and psychosis, despite the potential for these fi elds to inform the other. This symposium seeks to begin to redress this gap.

The Australian EEG Database is a web-based de-identified searchable database of 18,500 EEG records recorded at a regional public hospital over an 11-year period. Patients range in age from a premature infant born at 24 weeks gestation, through to people aged over 90 years. This paper will describe the history of the database, the range of patients represented in the database, and the nature of the text-based and digital data contained in the database. Preliminary results of the first two studies undertaken using the database are presented. Plans for sharing data from the Australian EEG database with researchers are discussed. We anticipate that such data will be useful in not only helping to answer clinical questions but also in the field of mathematical modeling of the EEG.

This study aimed to examine the background electroencephalography (EEG) in children with childhood absence epilepsy, a condition whose presentation has strong developmental links. EEG hallmarks of absence seizure activity are widely accepted and there is recognition that the bulk of inter-ictal EEG in this group is normal to the naked eye. This multidisciplinary study aimed to use the normalized total wavelet entropy (NTWS) (Signal Processing 83 (2003) 1275) to examine the background EEG of those patients demonstrating absence seizure activity, and compare it with children without absence epilepsy. This calculation can be used to define the degree of order in a system, with higher levels of entropy indicating a more disordered (chaotic) system. Results were subjected to further statistical analyses of significance. Entropy values were calculated for patients versus controls. For all channels combined, patients with absence epilepsy showed (statistically significant) lower entropy values than controls. The size of the difference in entropy values was not uniform, with certain EEG electrodes consistently showing greater differences than others.

The human visual system is able to extract an object from its surrounding using a number of cues. These include foreground/background gradients in disparity, motion, texture, colour, and luminance. We have investigated normal subjects' ability to detect objects defined by either motion, texture, or luminance gradients. The effects of manipulating cue density and cue foreground/background gradient on both detection and recognition accuracy were also investigated. The results demonstrate a simple additive relationship between cue density and cue gradient across forms defined by motion, luminance, and texture. The results are interpreted as evidence for the notion that form parsing is achieved via a similar algorithm across anatomically distinct processing streams.

The study of learning and memory using the chicken model has relied on three learning paradigms, passive avoidance learning, imprinting and the pebble floor task. Passive avoidance learning and imprinting have been used predominantly in very young chickens and cannot be used to access learning and memory in older chickens. We have established a new behavioural learning paradigm, Discriminative Taste Aversion Learning (DTAL), that can be used with both young and older animals. The task requires chickens to discriminate between food crumbs dyed either red or yellow with one colour being associated with the aversive tasting substance, methylanthranilate. Learning can be tested at various times after the training session by presenting chickens with the coloured food crumbs without an aversive taste. Both chickens tested at 5 and 15days post-hatch learned to avoid the aversive crumbs. Furthermore, the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin (30mM; 10μl per hemisphere) injected into the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale 15min pre-training or 45min post-training blocked long-term memory for the DTAL task when tested 24h later. Memory for the task was unaffected by anisomycin injection 120min post-training or in control animals injected with saline at similar times. The timing of the cellular processes of protein synthesis needed for consolidation of the DTAL appears to be similar to those described for the other behavioural paradigms in young chickens.

Fifty-nine special needs adolescents [mild intellectual disability (n=16, 9 males and 7 females); moderate intellectual disability (n=33, 14 males and 19 females) and, learning disability (n=10, 7 males and 3 females) aged 16-19 years were administered the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale – Third edition (WAIS-III) to examine how comparable the profiles of Australian special needs adolescents were (a) to each other and (b) to those of their US counterparts. ANOVA and t-test analyses suggested differences among the profiles of the special needs groups. As the severity of the intellectual disability increased IQ scores were lowered progressively and the decreases were apparent across in a wider range of intelligence measures. Cross-cultural differences among the profiles were also evident with Australian developmentally disabled adolescents scoring higher and Australian learning disabled adolescents scoring lower than their US counterparts did respectively.

Signal Detection tasks typically involve within-subject signal changes. Such a procedure does not lend itself to event-related potential (ERP) experiments where the need for averaging necessitates the maintenance of consistent stimulus parameters. In the present ERP study we adopt a novel approach to thresholding that allows within-subject signal manipulation. The Signal Detection task required the identification of letter targets, formed from dots, in a random dot field. ERP waveforms were segmented into three windows corresponding to N1, N2, and P300 components. Analysis shows that ERP variations are dependent on both task demands and response characteristics for N1, N2, and P300 components.

The psychometric characteristics of the Faces Pain Scale (FPS) were evaluated in three groups of preschool and school-aged children (3.5–4.5; 4.5–5.5 and 5.5–6.5 years, respectively). The FPS was adequately comprehended by even young children. It was easily administered and was valid and discriminating. It did not, however, possess the linear scalability claimed by its authors.

This paper provides data on a family in which three members, all female, have been diagnosed as having agenesis of the corpus callosum. That all three acallosal individuals came from the same family and showed relatively uniform neuropsychological impairment and could be compared in similar terms with their “callosal” siblings, also female, provides a unique sample. Inter-hemispheric transfer, psychometric measures, and motor and cognitive function were examined in the acallosal individuals, all of whom had borderline to low-average intelligence, with results compared to their non-acallosal siblings. The data indicated that all acallosal individuals exhibited deficits with the cognitive tests indicating difficulties of inter-hemispheric transfer of tactile information, difficulties in some areas of memory and, at least as far as the children are concerned, a marked difference in Verbal IQ and Performance IQ.

Scalp-applied recording electrodes were used to monitor changes in basal EEG patterns in chickens during posthatch development. Frequency spectra produced by Fast Fourier Transform show a biphasic morphology in all chickens with one peak at about 6 Hz and another at 26 Hz. Changes in the lower frequency band show progressive development and provide a possible index of brain development. Both amplitude and dominant frequency of the spectra decrease between Weeks 3 and 8 posthatch, reaching adult levels between Weeks 5 and 7. These results suggest that modifications of basal EEG reflect the widespread functional changes in neuronal circuits occurring in chicken during the "synapse maturation" period between 3 and 8 weeks' posthatch.

A number of case reviews and observations have reported on the effects, on counsellors, of working with victims of violence. In this study two groups of counsellors, sexual assault counsellors (n = 41) and counsellors from a range of other therapy areas (n = 32), were compared on a number of measures including the Maslach Burnout Inventory, Ways of Coping Scale and a Beliefs and Values Questionnaire. The results indicate chat sexual assault counsellors experience greater emotional exhaustion and use more escape/avoidance coping strategies. Responses concerning beliefs and values are discussed in terms of McCann and Pearlman's constructivist self-development model and indicate support for the concept of vicarious traumatization. Implications of these findings for Sexual Assault Services are discussed.