Although offspring of women exposed to childhood trauma exhibit elevated rates of psychopathology, many children demonstrate resilience to these intergenerational impacts. Among the variety of factors that likely contribute to resilience, epigenetic processes have been suggested to play an important role. The current study used a prospective design to test the novel hypothesis that offspring epigenetic aging – a measure of methylation differences that are associated with infant health outcomes – moderates the relationship between maternal exposure to childhood adversity and offspring symptomatology. Maternal childhood adversity was self-reported during pregnancy via the ACEs survey and the CTQ, which assessed total childhood trauma as well as maltreatment subtypes (i.e., emotional, physical, and sexual abuse). Offspring blood samples were collected at or shortly after birth and assayed on a DNA methylation microarray, and offspring symptomatology was assessed with the CBCL/1.5–5 when offspring were 2–4 years old. Results indicated that maternal childhood trauma, particularly sexual abuse, was predictive of offspring symptoms (ps = 0.003–0.03). However, the associations between maternal sexual abuse and offspring symptomatology were significantly attenuated in offspring with accelerated epigenetic aging. These findings further our understanding of how epigenetic processes may contribute to and attenuate the intergenerational link between stress and psychopathology.

Despite considerable academic attention to the role of family caregivers within the general population, little research has been conducted with Indigenous families. This qualitative study aims to fill that gap by focusing on the experiences of Metis caregivers providing care for older Metis adults. Focus groups and interviews were conducted with Metis family caregivers (n = 79), Metis Elders (n = 11) and formal caregivers (n = 8). Although there are considerable parallels in the caregiving experiences identified in this Metis study with those already documented in the literature, there are nonetheless important differences for providing culturally responsive care to Metis seniors.

Traditional ambulatory rhythm monitoring in children can have limitations, including cumbersome leads and limited monitoring duration. The ZioTM patch ambulatory monitor is a small, adhesive, single-channel rhythm monitor that can be worn up to 2 weeks. In this study, we present a retrospective cross-sectional analysis of the ZioTM monitor’s impact in clinical practice. Patients aged 0–18 years were included in the study. A total of 373 studies were reviewed in 332 patients. In all, 28.4% had structural heart disease, and 16.9% had a prior surgical, catheterisation, or electrophysiology procedure. The most common indication for monitoring was tachypalpitations (41%); 93.5% of these patients had their symptoms captured during the study window. The median duration of monitoring was 5 days. Overall, 5.1% of ZioTM monitoring identified arrhythmias requiring new intervention or increased medical management; 4.0% identified arrhythmias requiring increased clinical surveillance. The remainder had either normal-variant rhythm or minor rhythm findings requiring no change in management. For patients with tachypalpitations and no structural heart disease, 13.2% had pathological arrhythmias, but 72.9% had normal-variant rhythm during symptoms, allowing discharge from cardiology care. Notably, for patients with findings requiring intervention or increased surveillance, 56% had findings first identified beyond 24 hours, and only 62% were patient-triggered findings. Seven studies (1.9%) were associated with complications or patient intolerance. The ZioTM is a well-tolerated device that may improve what traditional Holter and event monitoring would detect in paediatric cardiology patients. This study shows a positive clinical impact on the management of patients within a paediatric cardiology practice.

A log-coffin excavated in the early nineteenth century proved to be well enough preserved in the early twenty-first century for the full armoury of modern scientific investigation to give its occupants and contents new identity, new origins and a new date. In many ways the interpretation is much the same as before: a local big man buried looking out to sea. Modern analytical techniques can create a person more real, more human and more securely anchored in history. This research team shows how.

We describe recent progress in our program of research that aims to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify and delineate the brain systems involved in social perception and to chart the development of those systems and their roles as mechanisms supporting the development of social cognition in children, adolescents, and adults with and without autism. This research program was initiated with the intention of further specifying the role of the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) region in the network of neuroanatomical structures comprising the social brain. Initially, this work focused on evaluating STS function when typically developing adults were engaged in the visual analysis of other people's actions and intentions. We concluded that that the STS region plays an important role in social perception via its involvement in representing and predicting the actions and social intentions of other people from an analysis of biological–motion cues. These studies of typically developing people provided a set of core findings and a methodological approach that informed a set of fMRI studies of social perception dysfunction in autism. The work has established that dysfunction in the STS region, as well as reduced connectivity between this region and other social brain structures including the fusiform gyrus and amygdala, play a role in the pathophysiology of social perception deficits in autism. Most recently, this research program has incorporated a developmental perspective in beginning to chart the development of the STS region in children with and without autism.

We investigated language representation in nine children (six male, three female; 5.6–17.7 years of age) who underwent surgical treatment of medically intractable epilepsy of the left hemisphere. Although interhemispheric reorganization has been previously documented in similar groups, this is the first study to systematically evaluate possible intrahemispheric effects of early insult. All cases had left hemisphere seizure foci and underwent extraoperative stimulation mapping (ESM) for language localization prior to receiving cortical resections. To compare ESM findings across subjects and to assess intrahemispheric reorganization, we developed a novel coregistration technique whereby independent raters plotted two-dimensional (2D) ESM findings in 3D standard space. Expressive language sites identified with ESM were compared with a structural probability map of pars opercularis, or Broca's area. The average difference between independent raters' estimates of 28 language sites was 3.9 mm (SD = 2.0), indicating excellent agreement; the coregistration procedure permitted assessment of 2D ESM findings in 3D standard space. We observed language sites in regions substantially anterior and superior to canonical Broca's area, possibly reflecting intrahemispheric reorganization. Findings suggest that left hemisphere insult in young children may result in anterior displacement of language within the frontal cortex. (JINS, 2007, 13, 505–516.)This study was drawn from a thesis submitted by D.S.K. in partial fulfillment of requirements of the MA degree through the Graduate Program in Psychology and the Collaborative Program in Neuroscience at the University of Toronto (Ontario, Canada).