Table I.

Summary of Studies Illustrating the Utility of MRI Methods for Pediatric Psychology Research

Study	Sample type	Comparison group	N	Age	MRI purpose	Summary of findings	Utility of MRI
Aye et al. (2011)	Children with type 1 diabetes	Age- and sex-matched healthy controls	41	3–10 years	Examine whether early signs of neuroanatomic variation existed in young children with type 1 diabetes.	Significant age-by-diagnosis interaction in white matter volume in children with type 1 diabetes.	Provides insight into the mechanism by which cognitive impairment occurs in children with chronic illness.
Batterink et al. (2010)	Overweight adolescent females	Normal-weight female controls	29	M age = 15.7; SD = 0.93	Examine how overweight adolescent girls responded to appetizing food images using a food go/no-go task.	Overweight adolescents showed less activation in frontal brain regions associated with inhibitory control and higher activation in regions associated with food reward.	Provides insight regarding adolescent’s cognitive control and reward sensitivity in relation to food stimuli.
Bruce et al. (2010)	Obese adolescents	Age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy weight controls	20	10–17 years	Examine brain activation in response to food stimuli in obese adolescents.	Obese adolescents were hyper-responsive toward food stimuli compared with healthy-weight children, even after eating.	Provides insight regarding adolescent’s neural sensitivity to food rewards.
Castro-Fornieles et al. (2010)	Adolescents with anorexia nervosa (AN)	Age-matched controls	28	11–18 years	Examine brain activation during a working memory task in adolescent patients with anorexia before and after weight recovery.	Adolescents with AN exhibited greater activation in temporal and parietal brain regions when completing a working memory task; after treatment, there was difference in brain activation across study groups.	fMRI findings may provide insight into the effectiveness of interventions in adolescents.
Davis et al. (2011)	Overweight, inactive children	Age- and sex- matched controls	20	7–11 years	Examine how an exercise intervention can alter brain activation during an executive function task.	The exercise group showed increased prefrontal cortex activity and decreased activity in posterior parietal cortex as compared with a no-exercise control.	fMRI findings may provide insight into the effectiveness of weight-loss interventions in adolescents.
Hershey et al. (2010)	Children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes	Sibling controls	95	7–17 years	Examine whether hypo- or hyperglycemia during brain development affected hippocampal volumes.	Severe hypoglycemia (but not hyperglycemia) was longitudinally associated with larger hippocampal volumes.	Allows one to study the progression of chronic illness across development.
O’Hare et al. (2009)	Children and adolescents with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders	Typically developing controls	40	7–15 years	Examine the neural basis of verbal working memory in children and adolescents with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.	Children and adolescents with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders perform similar to peers on working memory tasks, but demonstrated increased activation in frontal, parietal, and temporal brain regions.	fMRI has potential to elucidate brain functioning in children and adolescents that is undetected by neuropsychological tests.