Grant will allow U-M researchers to study how poverty affects the brain

“University of Michigan researchers have won a $6.7 million grant to study how poverty-related adversity might affect the development of threat and reward systems in the brain, and how that developmental process might increase the risk for people to develop anxiety and depression.” Read the full story 

Antisocial behavior associated with abnormal white matter brain structure in men with callous-unemotional traits

“A study published in NeuroImage: Clinical provides new insights into the neurobiological underpinnings of antisocial behaviors. The research indicates that the combination of antisocial behavior and callous-unemotional traits is associated with alterations in neural networks involved in fear conditioning, reward processing, and inhibitory control.” Read the full story

Antisocial behaviors in children linked to parenting

“Researchers at the University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania and Michigan State University studied 227 pairs of identical twins. They analyzed small differences in the parenting that each twin experienced to determine whether these differences predict the likelihood of antisocial behaviors emerging.” Read the full story 

Nature and nurture of the terrible twos: New insights into later behavior problems

“Researchers from the University of Michigan, Penn State University, the University of Oregon and several other universities have found new clues identifying which children may be at risk for the worst antisocial outcomes and the source of these early problems.” Read the full story 

Is it the ‘terrible twos’ or the beginnings of anti-social behavior?

“A new nationwide study of 561 adopted children and their families has revealed a set of behaviors that identify which children are at risk for severe antisocial behavior later in life. These behaviors are strongly inherited through our genes, the study found, but they can be offset by positive parent-child interactions.” Read the full story 

Nature and nurture both matter for children’s early behavior problems

“Now a team of researchers from Penn State and seven other universities has discovered new clues identifying which children may be at risk for the worst antisocial outcomes and the source of these early problems.” Read the full story 

Predicting which misbehaving teens may become troubled adults

“To determine which types of behaviors and traits overlap—which could improve the odds of predicting behavioral outcomes—researchers evaluated children’s antisocial behavior based on the age they started the conduct, whether or not they lacked empathy and had shallow emotions, and the amount of aggression versus rule-breaking symptoms.” Read the full story 

Too Much Praise Promotes Narcissism

Dr. Hyde provides commentary in Scientific American on an article about the first longitudinal study in children supporting the theory that parents with unrealistically positive views of their kids foster narcissistic qualities. Read the full story 

Dr. Hyde discusses new publication

Along with collaborators Daniel Shaw, Alex Burt, Erika Forbes, and Brent Donnellan, Dr. Hyde recently published a paper in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. examining the overlap and predictive strength of various approaches to subtyping teens high on antisocial behavior. Click here to hear his discussion of the paper with a local radio show.

Psychopathic or just antisocial? A key brain difference tells the tale

“Though psychopaths and antisocial people may seem similar, what occurs in their brains isn’t..” Read the full story

Radio Interview with Dr. Waller

Education Today Radio: Dr. Waller talks with Education Today about her recent publication in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry entitled “Differential associations of early callous-unemotional, oppositional, and ADHD behaviors: multiple domains within early-starting conduct problems.” Listen for a discussion of the current research from an education and implementation perspective. Listen to the full interview

Preschoolers with low empathy at risk for continued problems

A toddler who doesn’t feel guilty after misbehaving or who is less affectionate or less responsive to affection from others might not raise a red flag to parents, but these behaviors may result in later behavior problems. The findings come from a new University of Michigan study led by Dr. Rebecca Waller that identifies different types of early child problems.

Michigan News: Read the full story                      Science Daily: Read the full story

Will institutionalizing interdisciplinary neuroscience research work?

Science 2.0: Academic researchers are already bogged down in a sea of government and institutional bureaucracy, committee meetings, guidelines, unspoken rules and lengthy regulations. Will they embrace a formalized top-down process for collaborating? A group of scholars in communications, neuroscience, psychology, population studies, statistics, biomedical engineering and pediatrics hope so. Read full story

Lying in childhood a dangerous trend

The Times of India: Using the hi-tech tools of a new field called neurogenetics and a few simple questions for parents, a University of Michigan researcher is beginning to understand which boys are simply being boys and which may be headed for trouble. Read full story

New route to understanding bad boys

Voice of Russia Radio: They say that everybody loves a bad boy… at least until they get hurt by one. But what makes a boy go bad? Is it sociological, enviornmental, genetic? Now, a new study by University of Michigan’s Dr. Luke Hyde attempts to dig into the biological underpinnings using the high-tech tools of a new field called neurogenetics. Read full story and hear interview