Testing emotional response coherence assumptions: Comparing emotional versus non-emotional states

Although central to theories of emotion, emotional response coherence, that is, coordination among various emotion response systems, has received inconsistent empirical support. This study tests a basic assumption of response coherence, that is, that it characterizes emotional states defining their beginning and end. To do so, we (a) compare response coherence between emotional versus non-emotional states and (b) examine how emotional coherence changes over time, before, during, and after an emotional episode. Seventy-nine participants viewed neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant film clips and rated continuously how pleasant they felt (experience) before (anticipation), during, and after (recovery) each clip. Autonomic physiological arousal responses (skin conductance level, heart rate; physiology) and facial expressions (corrugator, zygomatic activity; expression) were recorded. Within-person cross-correlations between all emotional response pairs were calculated for each phase. Analyses comparing coherence during emotional versus neutral film viewing showed that only experience-expression coherence was higher for emotional versus neutral films, indicating specificity for emotional states. Examining coherence across phases indicated that coherence increased from anticipation to emotional film viewing, as expected, for experience-expression and experience-physiology pairs (SCL only). Of those pairs, increased coherence returned to baseline during recovery, as theoretically assumed, only for experience-corrugator activity coherence. Current findings provide empirical support for theoretical views of response coherence as a defining feature of emotional episodes, but mostly for the coherence between experience and facial expressions. Further research needs to investigate the role of sympathetic arousal indices, as well as the role of response coherence in emotional recovery.

Introducing the Fear Learning and Anxiety Response (FLARe) app and web portal for the remote delivery of fear conditioning experiments

Experimental paradigms measuring key psychological constructs can enhance our understanding of mechanisms underlying human psychological well-being and mental health. Delivering such paradigms remotely affords opportunities to reach larger, more representative samples than is typically possible with in-person research. The efficiency gained from remote delivery makes it easier to test replication of previously established effects in well-powered samples. There are several challenges to the successful development and delivery of remote experimental paradigms, including use of an appropriate delivery platform, identifying feasible outcome measures, and metrics of participant compliance. In this paper, we present FLARe (Fear Learning and Anxiety Response), open-source software in the form of a smartphone app and web portal for the creation and delivery of remote fear conditioning experiments. We describe the benefits and challenges associated with the creation of a remote delivery platform for fear conditioning, before presenting in detail the resultant software suite, and one instance of deploying this using the FLARe Research infrastructure. We provide examples of the application of FLARe to several research questions which illustrate the benefits of the remote approach to experiment delivery. The FLARe smartphone app and web portal are available for use by other researchers and have been designed to be user-friendly and intuitive. We hope that FLARe will be a useful tool for those interested in conducting well-powered fear conditioning studies to inform our understanding of the development and treatment of anxiety disorders.

RecruitNet: A global database of plant recruitment networks

Plant recruitment interactions (i.e., what recruits under what) shape the composition, diversity, and structure of plant communities. Despite the huge body of knowledge on the mechanisms underlying recruitment interactions among species, we still know little about the structure of the recruitment networks emerging in ecological communities. Modeling and analyzing the community-level structure of plant recruitment interactions as a complex network can provide relevant information on ecological and evolutionary processes acting both at the species and ecosystem levels. We report a data set containing 143 plant recruitment networks in 23 countries across five continents, including temperate and tropical ecosystems. Each network identifies the species under which another species recruits. All networks report the number of recruits (i.e., individuals) per species. The data set includes >850,000 recruiting individuals involved in 118,411 paired interactions among 3318 vascular plant species across the globe. The cover of canopy species and open ground is also provided. Three sampling protocols were used: (1) The Recruitment Network (RN) protocol (106 networks) focuses on interactions among established plants ("canopy species") and plants in their early stages of recruitment ("recruit species"). A series of plots was delimited within a locality, and all the individuals recruiting and their canopy species were identified; (2) The paired Canopy-Open (pCO) protocol (26 networks) consists in locating a potential canopy plant and identifying recruiting individuals under the canopy and in a nearby open space of the same area; (3) The Georeferenced plot (GP) protocol (11 networks) consists in using information from georeferenced individual plants in large plots to infer canopy-recruit interactions. Some networks incorporate data for both herbs and woody species, whereas others focus exclusively on woody species. The location of each study site, geographical coordinates, country, locality, responsible author, sampling dates, sampling method, and life habits of both canopy and recruit species are provided. This database will allow researchers to test ecological, biogeographical, and evolutionary hypotheses related to plant recruitment interactions. There are no copyright restrictions on the data set; please cite this data paper when using these data in publications.

Evidence for distinct genetic and environmental influences on fear acquisition and extinction

BACKGROUND

Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent with an early age of onset. Understanding the aetiology of disorder emergence and recovery is important for establishing preventative measures and optimising treatment. Experimental approaches can serve as a useful model for disorder and recovery relevant processes. One such model is fear conditioning. We conducted a remote fear conditioning paradigm in monozygotic and dizygotic twins to determine the degree and extent of overlap between genetic and environmental influences on fear acquisition and extinction.

METHODS

In total, 1937 twins aged 22-25 years, including 538 complete pairs from the Twins Early Development Study took part in a fear conditioning experiment delivered remotely via the Fear Learning and Anxiety Response (FLARe) smartphone app. In the fear acquisition phase, participants were exposed to two neutral shape stimuli, one of which was repeatedly paired with a loud aversive noise, while the other was never paired with anything aversive. In the extinction phase, the shapes were repeatedly presented again, this time without the aversive noise. Outcomes were participant ratings of how much they expected the aversive noise to occur when they saw either shape, throughout each phase.

RESULTS

Twin analyses indicated a significant contribution of genetic effects to the initial acquisition and consolidation of fear, and the extinction of fear (15, 30 and 15%, respectively) with the remainder of variance due to the non-shared environment. Multivariate analyses revealed that the development of fear and fear extinction show moderate genetic overlap (genetic correlations 0.4-0.5).

CONCLUSIONS

Fear acquisition and extinction are heritable, and share some, but not all of the same genetic influences.

The Interoceptive Sensitivity and Attention Questionnaire: Evaluating Aspects of Self-Reported Interoception in Patients With Persistent Somatic Symptoms, Stress-Related Syndromes, and Healthy Controls

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to validate the Interoceptive Sensitivity and Attention Questionnaire (ISAQ), a 17-item self-report measure assessing sensitivity and attention to interoceptive signals.

METHODS

In study 1, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was performed in a student convenience sample (n = 1868). In study 2, ISAQ data of a healthy sample (n = 144) and various patient groups experiencing stress-related syndromes (overstrain, n = 63; burnout, n = 37; panic disorder [PD]. n = 60) and/or persistent somatic symptoms in daily life (irritable bowel syndrome, n = 38; fibromyalgia and/or chronic fatigue syndrome, n = 151; medically unexplained dyspnea [MUD], n = 29) were compared.

RESULTS

Three subscales were revealed: (F1) sensitivity to neutral bodily sensations, (F2) attention to unpleasant bodily sensations, and (F3) difficulty disengaging from unpleasant bodily sensations. Overall, patients with fibromyalgia and/or chronic fatigue syndrome and patients with MUD scored significantly higher on F1 (p = .009 and p = .027, respectively) and F2 (p = .002 and p < .001, respectively) than healthy controls. Patients with PD had higher scores on subscales F2 (p < .001) and F3 (p < .001) compared with healthy controls, as well as higher scores on F2 compared with all other patient groups (pPD versus MUD = .008; all other p values < .001).

CONCLUSIONS

Interoceptive sensibility-the self-reported aspect of interoception-is not a homogeneous or unitary construct. The subscales of the ISAQ differentiate healthy controls from patients with persistent somatic and/or stress-related complaints in daily life and distinguish different patient groups. The ISAQ can be used as a concise, reliable, and clinically relevant research tool to further disentangle adaptive and maladaptive aspects of interoceptive ability.

Large-scale remote fear conditioning: Demonstration of associations with anxiety using the FLARe smartphone app

OBJECTIVES

We aimed to examine differences in fear conditioning between anxious and nonanxious participants in a single large sample.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We employed a remote fear conditioning task (FLARe) to collect data from participants from the Twins Early Development Study (n = 1,146; 41% anxious vs. 59% nonanxious). Differences between groups were estimated for their expectancy of an aversive outcome towards a reinforced conditional stimulus (CS+) and an unreinforced conditional stimulus (CS-) during acquisition and extinction phases.

RESULTS

During acquisition, the anxious group (vs. nonanxious group) showed greater expectancy towards the CS-. During extinction, the anxious group (vs. nonanxious group) showed greater expectancy to both CSs. These comparisons yielded effect size estimates (d = 0.26-0.34) similar to those identified in previous meta-analyses.

CONCLUSION

The current study demonstrates that remote fear conditioning can be used to detect differences between groups of anxious and nonanxious individuals, which appear to be consistent with previous meta-analyses including in-person studies.

TRAF3 can interact with GMEB1 and modulate its anti-apoptotic function

Background

Members of Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF) Receptor-Associated Factors (TRAFs) family interact with the cytoplasmic tails of TNF receptor family members to mediate signal transduction processes. TRAF3 has a major immunomodulatory function and TRAF3 deficiency has been linked to malignancies, such as multiple myeloma and lymphoid defects. In order to characterize the molecular mechanisms of TRAF3 signaling, the yeast two-hybrid system was used to identify proteins that interact with TRAF3.

Results

The yeast two-hybrid screen of a human B cell cDNA library with TRAF3 as bait, identified Glucocorticoid Modulatory Element-Binding Protein 1 (GMEB1) as a TRAF3-interacting protein. Previous studies indicated that GMEB1 functions as a potent inhibitor of caspase activation and apoptosis. The interaction of TRAF3 and GMEB1 proteins was confirmed in mammalian cells lines, using immunoprecipitation assays. The RING and TRAF-C domains of TRAF3 were not essential for this interaction. The overexpression of TRAF3 protein enhanced the anti-apoptotic function of GMEB1 in HeLa cells. On the other hand, downregulation of TRAF3 by RNA interference decreased significantly the ability of GMEB1 to inhibit apoptosis. In addition, LMP1(1–231), a truncated form of the EBV oncoprotein LMP1, that can interact and oligomerize with TRAF3, was also able to cooperate with GMEB1, in order to inhibit apoptosis.

Conclusions

Our protein-interaction experiments demonstrated that TRAF3 can interact with GMEB1, which is an inhibitor of apoptosis. In addition, cell viability assays showed that overexpression of TRAF3 enhanced the anti-apoptotic activity of GMEB1, supporting a regulatory role of TRAF3 in GMEB1-mediated inhibition of apoptosis. Better understanding of the molecular mechanism of TRAF3 function will improve diagnostics and targeted therapeutic approaches for TRAF3-associated disorders.

Validating the use of a smartphone app for remote administration of a fear conditioning paradigm

Fear conditioning models key processes related to the development, maintenance and treatment of anxiety disorders and is associated with group differences in anxiety. However, laboratory administration of tasks is time and cost intensive, precluding assessment in large samplesnecessary for the analysis of individual differences. This study introduces a newly developed smartphone app that delivers a fear conditioning paradigm remotely using a loud human scream as an aversive stimulus. Three groups of participants (total n = 152) took part in three studies involving a differential fear conditioning experiment to assess the reliability and validity of a smartphone administered fear conditioning paradigm. This comprised of fear acquisition, generalisation, extinction, and renewal phases during which online US-expectancy ratings were collected during every trial with evaluative ratings of negative affect at three time points. We show that smartphone app delivery of a fear conditioning paradigm results in a pattern of fear learning comparable to traditional laboratory delivery and is able to detect individual differences in performance that show comparable associations with anxiety to the prior group differences literature.

Interventions for gestational diabetes prevention: An umbrella review of meta-analyses of RCTs

Background

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a common pregnancy complication, defined as glucose intolerance with onset or first recognition during pregnancy, in women without diabetes history during pregnancy. It is a major cause for adverse maternal and fetal outcomes and affects around 15% of all pregnancies. GDM is considered to be a risk factor for future metabolic conditions and cardiovascular disease.

Methods

An umbrella review was performed to identify systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials for GDM prevention in order to summarize evidence and evaluate the validity of the interventions. We searched PubMed, the Cochrane library and ISI Web of Science from inception to March 2019. For each meta-analysis we estimated the summary effect size by random-effects and fixed-effects models, the 95% confidence interval, the 95% prediction interval, the between-study heterogeneity expressed by I2, evidence of small-study effects and evidence of excess significance bias.

Results

Six-teen eligible papers were identified providing data on 39 associations. Eighteen (46%) associations had nominally statistically significant findings at P &lt; 0.05, while only one (3%) remain significant at P &lt; 10-6 under the random-effects model. Eight (21%) associations had large or very large heterogeneity. Evidence for small-study effects and excess significance bias was found in 5 (13%) and 2 (5%) associations, respectively. Only one intervention presented robust evidence for a convincing association: prenatal exercise compared with no exercise (RR 0.62, 95% CI: 0.52-0.75). It was supported by &gt; 500 cases, 95% prediction intervals excluding the null, no large heterogeneity, small-study effects, or excess of significance.

Conclusions

Prenatal exercise shows the strongest consistent evidence. The findings from our study highlight the importance of patient education about lifestyle modifications to reduce risk of GDM.

Key messages

Prenatal exercise could lower the risk of GDM based on solid epidemiologic evidence. Obesity, pregnancy hypertension and other metabolic conditions could be prevented as well.

Psychophysiological and self-reported reactivity associated with social anxiety and public speaking fear symptoms: Effects of fear versus distress

This study examines psychophysiological and subjective reactivity to anxiety-provoking situations in relation to social anxiety and public speaking fear. We hypothesized that social anxiety symptoms would be associated with similar reactivity across types of imaginary anxiety scenes and not specifically to social anxiety-related scenes. This would be attributed to co-existing depression symptoms. Public speaking fear was expected to be associated with more circumscribed reactivity to survival-threat scenes, due to its association with fearfulness. Community participants imagined standardized anxiety situations, including social anxiety and animal fear scenes, while their physiological reactivity and self-reported emotions were assessed. Findings supported that social anxiety was associated with undifferentiated physiological reactivity across anxiety-provoking situations, except with regards to skin conductance level, which was higher during social anxiety imagery. Public speaking fear was associated with increased reactivity to animal phobia and panic scenes. Covariance analyses indicated that the lack of response specificity associated with social anxiety could be attributed to depression levels, while the specificity associated with public speaking fear could be explained by fearfulness. Findings highlight the need to assess not only primary anxiety symptoms but also depression and fearfulness, which likely predict discrepant reactions of individuals to anxiogenic situations.

Emotion dysregulation in alexithymia: Startle reactivity to fearful affective imagery and its relation to heart rate variability

Alexithymia is associated with deficiencies in recognizing and expressing emotions and impaired emotion regulation, though few studies have verified the latter assertion using objective measures. This study examined startle reflex modulation by fearful imagery and its associations with heart rate variability in alexithymia. Fifty-four adults (27 alexithymic) imagined previously normed fear scripts. Startle responses were assessed during baseline, first exposure, and reexposure. During first exposure, participants, in separate trials, engaged in either shallow or deep emotion processing, giving emphasis on descriptive or affective aspects of imagery, respectively. Resting heart rate variability was assessed during 2 min of rest prior to the experiment, with high alexithymic participants demonstrating significantly higher LF/HF (low frequency/high frequency) ratio than controls. Deep processing was associated with nonsignificantly larger and faster startle responses at first exposure for alexithymic participants. Lower LF/HF ratio, reflecting higher parasympathetic cardiac activity, predicted greater startle amplitude habituation for alexithymia but lower habituation for controls. Results suggest that, when exposed to prolonged threat, alexithymics may adjust poorly, showing a smaller initial defensive response but slower habituation. This pattern seems related to their low emotion regulation ability as indexed by heart rate variability.

Healing Words: Using Affect Labeling to Reduce the Effects of Unpleasant Cues on Symptom Reporting in IBS Patients

PURPOSE

The present study aimed to induce elevated symptom reports through the presentation of unpleasant cues in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and examine whether applying an emotion regulation technique (affect labeling) can reduce symptom reporting in patients.

METHODS

Patients diagnosed with IBS (N = 29) and healthy controls (N = 26) were presented with six picture series (three pleasant, three unpleasant) under three within-subject conditions: merely viewing, emotional labeling, or content (non-emotional) labeling. Each picture viewing trial was followed by affect ratings and a symptom checklist, consisting of general arousal and IBS-specific symptoms.

RESULTS

Viewing unpleasant pictures led to overall increased symptom reports, both for arousal and gastrointestinal symptoms, in both groups. Labeling the pictures did not reduce these effects significantly, although a trend toward less arousal symptoms after unpleasant cues emerged in the patient group only, especially during emotional labeling.

CONCLUSIONS

Current findings indicate that the mere presentation of unpleasant cues can induce elevated symptom reports in IBS patients. The results of the labeling manipulation provide modest support for the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies in reversing these effects of unpleasant cues in patients suffering from functional syndromes. Methodological issues that may have confounded present results are discussed.

Do alexithymic individuals avoid their feelings? Experiential avoidance mediates the association between alexithymia, psychosomatic, and depressive symptoms in a community and a clinical sample

OBJECTIVE

Alexithymia is defined as the trait associated with difficulty in identifying and describing feelings as well as poor fantasy and imagery. While alexithymia is related to psychopathology in general, it has been associated with increased reporting of medically unexplained symptoms and depression in particular. This study attempts to assess the extent to which alexithymia represents a learned, avoidant coping strategy against unwanted emotions. In this way the study aims to identify a potential mechanism that may elucidate the relationship between alexithymia and psychological symptoms.

METHOD

Alexithymia is examined in two different samples, students from two universities in Cyprus and intensive outpatients/residents in an American anxiety disorder treatment program. We examine whether alexithymia predicts psychosomatic and depressive symptoms respectively through the mediating role of experiential avoidance, a coping mechanism believed to be reinforced because of the immediate relief it provides.

RESULTS

Experiential avoidance was found to correlate strongly with alexithymia, especially its difficulty in identifying feelings factor, while the mediation hypothesis was supported in all models tested. Furthermore, results from the clinical sample suggest that clinical improvement in depression was associated with a decrease in alexithymia, especially difficulty in identifying feelings, mediated by decreased experiential avoidance.

CONCLUSIONS

Alexithymia, and more specifically its difficulty in identifying feelings aspect, may be a learned behavior used to avoid unwanted emotions. This avoidant behavior may form the link between alexithymia and psychopathology. Implications for alexithymia theory and treatment are discussed.

Can words heal? Using affect labeling to reduce the effects of unpleasant cues on symptom reporting

Processing unpleasant affective cues induces elevated momentary symptom reports, especially in persons with high levels of symptom reporting in daily life. The present study aimed to examine whether applying an emotion regulation strategy, i.e. affect labeling, can inhibit these emotion influences on symptom reporting. Student participants (N = 61) with varying levels of habitual symptom reporting completed six picture viewing trials of homogeneous valence (three pleasant, three unpleasant) under three conditions: merely viewing, emotional labeling, or content (non-emotional) labeling. Affect ratings and symptom reports were collected after each trial. Participants completed a motor inhibition task and self-control questionnaires as indices of their inhibitory capacities. Heart rate variability was also measured. Labeling, either emotional or non-emotional, significantly reduced experienced affect, as well as the elevated symptoms reports observed after unpleasant picture viewing. These labeling effects became more pronounced with increasing levels of habitual symptom reporting, suggesting a moderating role of the latter variable, but did not correlate with any index of general inhibitory capacity. Our findings suggest that using an emotion regulation strategy, such as labeling emotional stimuli, can reverse the effects of unpleasant stimuli on symptom reporting and that such strategies can be especially beneficial for individuals suffering from medically unexplained physical symptoms.

Breath holding duration as a measure of distress tolerance: examining its relation to measures of executive control

Recent research considers distress (in)tolerance as an essential component in the development of various forms of psychopathology. A behavioral task frequently used to assess distress tolerance is the breath holding task. Although breath holding time (BHT) has been associated with behavioral outcomes related to inhibitory control (e.g., smoking cessation), the relationship among breath holding and direct measures of executive control has not yet been thoroughly examined. The present study aims to assess (a) the BHT-task's test-retest reliability in a 1-year follow-up and (b) the relationship between a series of executive function tasks and breath holding duration. One hundred and thirteen students completed an initial BHT assessment, 58 of which also completed a series of executive function tasks [the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), the Parametric Go/No-Go task and the N-back memory updating task]. A subsample of these students (N = 34) repeated the breath holding task in a second session 1 year later. Test-retest reliability of the BHT-task over a 1-year period was high (r = 0.67, p < 0.001), but none of the executive function tasks was significantly associated with BHT. The rather moderate levels of unpleasantness induced by breath holding in our sample may suggest that other processes (physiological, motivational) besides distress tolerance influence BHT. Overall, the current findings do not support the assumption of active inhibitory control in the BHT-task in a healthy sample. Our findings suggest that individual differences (e.g., in interoceptive or anxiety sensitivity) should be taken into account when examining the validity of BHT as a measure of distress tolerance.

Inducing symptoms in high symptom reporters via emotional pictures: the interactive effects of valence and arousal

OBJECTIVE

Processing unpleasant emotional cues induces elevated reporting of physical symptoms, especially in people with high habitual symptom reporting. The present study examined the role of valence and arousal of emotional pictorial cues on this effect.

METHODS

Female participants (N=45; 21 high/24 low habitual symptom reporters) viewed six series of emotional pictures with a homogeneous affective content: low arousal/positive, high arousal/positive, low arousal/negative, high arousal/negative-disgust, high arousal/negative-threat and neutral. Heart rate (HR) and skin conductance level (SCL) were recorded during picture viewing and a symptom checklist and valence and arousal ratings were completed after each trial.

RESULTS

High habitual symptom reporters reported more symptoms than low habitual symptom reporters overall, but this difference was more pronounced when processing unpleasant high arousing cues. No group differences were found on physiological measures for any of the conditions, while perceived valence and arousal both moderated the relationship between habitual symptom reporting and symptom induction.

CONCLUSION

These findings show an interactive effect of unpleasantness and high arousal on elevated symptom reporting in high habitual symptom reporters, suggesting that different characteristics of emotional cues contribute to a somatic memory activation process leading to the experience of elevated symptoms.

Risky and aggressive driving in young adults: Personality matters

Young, novice drivers constitute a disproportionate percentage of fatalities and injuries in road traffic accidents around the world. This study, attempts to identify motivational factors behind risky driving behavior, and examines the role of personality, especially sensation seeking, impulsivity and sensitivity to punishment/reward in predicting negative driving outcomes (accident involvement and traffic offences) among young drivers. Gender and driver's age are additional factors examined in relation to driving outcomes and personality. Adopting the contextual mediated model of traffic accident involvement (Sümer, 2003), the study is based on the theory that personality, age and gender represent distal factors that predict accident involvement indirectly through their relationship with stable tendencies towards aberrant driving behavior. Results from correlations and Structural Equation Modeling using AMOS 6 indicated that direct personality effects on driving outcomes were few, whereas personality had significant correlations with aberrant driving behavior, showing that personality is a distal but important predictor of negative driving outcomes. These high risk traits appear to be at a peak among young male drivers. Thus, personality is important in understanding aggressive and risky driving by young adults and needs to be taken into consideration in designing targeted accident prevention policies.

The use of health risk assessment to estimate desirable sampling detection limits

The inclusion of non-detected chemicals in a health risk assessment may lead, in some cases, to estimated risks that exceed regulatory thresholds, because one must use the detection limit or half of the detection limit. This study presents a methodology which will allow one to estimate appropriate detection limits by conducting a health risk assessment prior to the source sampling program. The advantages and shortcomings of various levels of detail in the risk assessment to determine those detection limits are discussed. The application of the methodology is demonstrated with a case study of the potential health effects of power plant stack emissions.

Neuroleptic malignant syndrome

While on holiday in Zimbabwe, a forty-one year old woman with a long history of intermittent psychiatric illness developed what was diagnosed as neuroleptic malignant syndrome. She was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of Harare Central Hospital and was treated successfully with bromocriptine and dantrolene.