Short-term effects of a multi-disciplinary cardiac rehabilitation programme on psychological well-being, exercise capacity and weight in a sample of obese in-patients with coronary heart disease: a practice-level study

Given that many patients referred to cardiac rehabilitation (CR) are obese, diet therapy, exercise training, nutritional and psychological counselling for both obesity and psychological distress should be included as important components in all CR programmes. In this practice-level, observational study we evaluated the short-term within-group effects of a four-week multi-factorial inpatient CR programme specifically addressed to weight loss, fitness improvement and psychological health increase on 176 obese in-patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). Outcome measures were exercise capacity measured with estimated metabolic equivalents (METs), body mass index (BMI) and psychological well-being (PGWBI). Results show statistically significant improvements in all the PGWBI sub-scales and total score, except in general health (p = 0.393). No moderation effects were found for BMI class, age, diabetes and ejection fraction (EF). METs significantly increased by 30.3% (p < 0.001) and BMI decreased by 1.37 points (p < 0.001). Significant correlations were found between BMI and weight reductions with PGWBI anxiety and total score improvements. This multi-disciplinary CR programme including diet therapy, exercise training and psychological counselling provides indication for short-term within-group effectiveness on functional exercise capacity, BMI and PGWBI in a sample of obese in-patients with CHD. However, controlled studies are needed to corroborate the results we found.     

The Bears Family Projective Test: evaluating stories of children with emotional difficulties

The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the storytelling of children with emotional difficulties. Forty children with emotional and relational difficulties (inhibited and impulsive), ages between 5.5 and 9.4 years old, were assessed by a multiaxial procedure and the bears family projective test. The bears family test is a constructive-thematic-projective method based on an anthropomorphic family of bears that children can manipulate to tell a story. The stories of 40 children without emotional difficulties (matched by IQ, socio-economic status, and gender) and 322 typically developing children, aged between four and 10 years old, were used as a reference for comparisons. Results indicated that the stories of children with emotional difficulties showed many unsolved problematic events, unclear characters, negative relationships, and negative behaviors. Unlike the stories of children without emotional difficulties, positive contents didn't prevail over negative, and there wasn't a positive compensation for negative elements.     

Corticospinal excitability during the observation of social behavior

Evidence suggests that the observation of an action induces in the observers an enhancement of motor evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded by the observer’s muscles corresponding to those involved in the observed action. Although this is a well-studied phenomenon, it remains still unclear how the viewer’s motor facilitation is influenced by the social content characterizing the observed scene. In the present study we investigated the facilitation of the corticospinal system during the observation of either an action that does not imply a social interaction (i.e., an actor throwing a ball against a wall), or an action which implies a social interaction (i.e., an actor passing a ball to a partner). Results indicate that MEPs amplitude is enhanced during the observation of a social rather than an individual action. We contend that the increase in MEPs activation might reflect an enhancement of the simulative activity stemming from the mirror system during the observation of social interactions. Altogether these findings show that the human corticospinal system is sensitive to social interactions and may support the role of the mirror neurons system in social cognition.     

Stimulus-specific dynamics of learning in conjunction search tasks

We investigated the time course of learning in visual search for within-dimension conjunctions in homogeneous (inverted V in Vs) or heterogeneous distractors (L in 90° counterclockwise-rotated Ls and 180° rotated Ls), and for across-dimension conjunctions search (green\in green/s and red\s). Two learning sessions of 10 and 5 blocks each took place three months apart. In the first session, the reduction in mean search time was greater for within-dimension conjunctions with heterogeneous distractors. Learning endured from one session to the other for all stimuli, suggesting that learning can be long-term in search for feature conjunctions. However, when the positional regularity between elements was perturbed, the effect of prior learning was reduced for homogeneous within-dimension conjunctions. This suggests that, for these stimuli, learning facilitates grouping by positional regularity. Finally, the learning effect with homogeneous withindimension conjunctions disappeared when both target and distractors were rotated to modify the orientation of conjunction patterns. This suggests that learning improves a grouping mechanism selective for the relative orientations of combined form features.     

The motion aftereffect reloaded

The motion aftereffect is a robust illusion of visual motion resulting from exposure to a moving pattern. There is a widely accepted explanation of it in terms of changes in the response of cortical direction-selective neurons. Research has distinguished several variants of the effect. Converging recent evidence from different experimental techniques (psychophysics, single-unit recording, brain imaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation, visual evoked potentials and magnetoencephalography) reveals that adaptation is not confined to one or even two cortical areas, but occurs at multiple levels of processing involved in visual motion analysis. A tentative motion-processing framework is described, based on motion aftereffect research. Recent ideas on the function of adaptation see it as a form of gain control that maximises the efficiency of information transmission at multiple levels of the visual pathway.     

Analysis of toddlers' gait after six months of independent walking to identify autism: a preliminary study

This research analyzed gait in toddlers and tested the hypothesis that movement can be used as an early indicator of Autistic Disorder. It was proposed that an early identification method could indicate differences in the gait of toddlers with autism as opposed to those with typical development or with mental retardation. Observational methods were applied to retrospective home videos of 42 children after 6 mo. of independent walking. In particular, the Walking Observation Scale was used, which includes 11 items that analyze gait through three axes of foot movements, arm movements, and global movements. Analysis showed different distributions for the three groups, i.e., the autistic group differed from the other two on scores for the Walking Observation Scale and each axis. After 6 mo. of independent walking, different patterns in gait among groups were evident. These results agree with recently published evidence which acknowledges the importance of movement as an early indicator for differential diagnosis of autism.     

Habituation and migraine

The most reproducible and ubiquitous interictal abnormality of the migraineurs’ brain is lack of habituation in neuronal information processing. The underlying mechanisms are uncertain. Increased neuronal excitability, decreased inhibition or decreased pre-activation levels have all been proposed as possible culprits.The present review summarizes the available data on habituation in migraine patients obtained with different methodological approaches. We will discuss the change of habituation level over the migraine cycle and we will show that these data congruently indicate that the sensory cortices of migraineurs react excessively to repetitive, but not to a small series of stimuli.Although the precise cellular and molecular mechanisms of this hyper-responsivity must still be determined, we will describe experimental data suggesting that a dysrhythmic thalamo-cortical activity due to inadequate monoaminergic control might be a plausible explanation.     

Thanking in the times of the plague: The role of holistic thinking in meaning-making and gratitude

Two studies examined the role of holistic thinking in meaning-making and gratitude during the COVID-19 pandemic. Correlational and mediational evidence showed that participants with high holistic thinking tended to construct more meaning from the pandemic and feel grateful, compared to participants with low holistic thinking (Study 1). Experimental manipulation of holistic thinking elicited behavioral choice for books on life meaning, which predicted gratitude (Study 2). These results cannot be explained by individual differences in the perception of threat (Study 1) or distress (Studies 1–2) associated with the pandemic. They cannot be explained by demographic factors such as age or gender, or cultural constructs such as ethnicity, educational level, or religiosity (Studies 1–2). These findings push understanding forward. They strengthen interdisciplinary links, fusing positive psychology with the social cognition of thinking styles. We discuss promising directions for future research with cross-cultural implications.     

Anxiety and Depression in Patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Their Caregivers

A large number of studies have investigated a variety of psychological aspects in people with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, but there is still considerable uncertainty concerning the actual morbidity, in particular for anxiety. We aim to evaluate depression levels and anxiety disposition in ALS patients and their caregivers, in comparison to healthy controls. We conducted a cross-sectional comparison between people with ALS, their caregivers and a non-clinical control group in order to evaluate anxiety and depression levels. 40 ALS patients, their caregivers and 40 healthy adult subjects completed the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory—Y2 scale (STAI). We compared overall and single item scores in order to find differences between the three groups. BDI-II scores were significantly different between groups. Depression scores were higher for patients than for healthy controls, in both somatic and psychological sub-scales. Caregivers presented higher levels of psychological depression in comparison with healthy controls, and lower scores of somatic depression in comparison to patients. No differences were found in trait anxiety levels comparing the three groups. ALS patients and their caregivers developed more depression related symptomatology than the non-clinical sample. However, susceptibility to anxiety for both patients and caregivers seemed to be at a normal level.