Evidence of Impaired Glucose Tolerance and Insulin Resistance in Patients With Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and diabetes rarely occur together, a finding that provides a possible clue as to the development of AD. Abnormal glucose metabolism is not limited to diabetes, but also can include impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, and hyperinsulinemia. AD patients have significantly varying insulin levels after drinking sugared sodas and thus may be classified as insulin resistant. After reviewing the literature on impaired glucose tolerance and insulin production in AD, we present several hypotheses as possible explanations for the relationship between insulin resistance and AD. Finally, we suggest future studies, including studies on use of thiazolidinediones (currently used in the treatment of diabetes) in AD.     

Emotional stability as a major dimension of happiness

Happiness is associated with both extraversion and neuroticism, and extraversion is generally considered the more important. A recent study of happy introverts has shown that extraversion is not always an essential correlate of happiness, and an extensive meta-analysis has found that neuroticism is a greater predictor of both happiness and life satisfaction. It is suggested that the reason for the importance of neuroticism having been overlooked in the past, is the difficulty of handling the idea that (positive) happiness is related to the absence of a (negative) construct. This difficulty could be resolved by the reversal of neuroticism into an alternative and positive concept of “emotional stability”. Happiness could then be regarded as being associated with two positive qualities. With this change of emphasis, a short empirical study has been made of the relationships between happiness as measured by the Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI) and extraversion and emotional stability. In bivariate and partial correlation, emotional stability was more strongly associated with happiness than extraversion, and accounted for more of the total variability in multiple regression. Emotional stability was also the greater correlate for a majority of the 29 items of the OHI, and the sole significant predictor of the happiness of younger people.     

Stronger suboptimal than optimal affective priming?

The finding of stronger affective priming in less conscious (suboptimal) conditions than in fully conscious (optimal) conditions (S. T. Murphy & R. B. Zajonc, 1993) is theoretically important because it contradicts notions that emotions are primarily reflected by conscious states. In 2 experiments, this pattern of results was obtained. Happy and angry faces were presented both optimally and suboptimally and were masked by unknown ideographs. In Experiment 1, instructions for the conscious and less conscious affective priming conditions were matched, and affective ratings of ideographs were determined. In Experiment 2, a more implicit affective measure (facial electromyography of musculus zygomaticus major and musculus corrugator supercilii) served as the dependent variable. Stronger suboptimal than optimal affective priming was found in both experiments. It is concluded that stronger suboptimal than optimal processing is characteristic for affective processing and that it can also be found when instructions are matched and when a more implicit measure is assessed.     

Development of lower extremity kinetics for balance control in infants and young children

Developmental changes in the kinematics and kinetics underlying balance control were studied in 61 children, 9 months to 10 years of age. The children were classified according to developmental milestones as standers; new, intermediate, and advanced walkers; runners-jumpers; hoppers; gallopers; and skippers. The children experienced support-surface translations of varying size and speed. Children with greater locomotor experience withstood larger balance threats without collapsing or stepping. Analyses of scaled trials (perturbations normalized in size to foot length and center of gravity height) revealed that improvement in balance was not related to initial configuration parameters surrounding the task (degree of crouch or lean). Children with advanced locomotor skills had faster recovery times and relatively larger muscle torques than children with less experience. Relative torque-time histories of the more experienced children began to match the adult response to similar perturbations. With increased experience and changing muscle torque regulatory abilities, balance skills became more robust.     

Kognitive Therapie des chronischen dekompensierten Tinnitus

Chronic earnoises lead to severe emotional disturbances in many individuals. At the moment, it is not possible to treat chronic tinnitus effectively on a medical basis. If the individual suffers strongly, psychological interventions can help reduce the degree of subjective tinnitus annoyance. Psychotherapists are often insecure when treating tinnitus sufferers, because of their tendency to strongly focus on the chronic earnoises. Knowledge about typical dysfunctional beliefs and systematic cognitive mistakes, that hinder the habituation process in tinnitus sufferers, help understand the patient and help find an anchor point for reducing tinnitus annoyance. In this paper, the most important cognitive characteristics of tinnitus sufferers are summarised and the cognitive modification process is systematically described.     

The effects of prior knowledge on the encoding of episodic contextual details

A positive relationship between prior knowledge and item memory is a consistent finding in the literature. In the present study, we sought to determine whether this relationship extends to episodic details that are present at the time of encoding, namely source memory. Using a novel experimental design, we were able to show both between- and within-subjects effects of prior knowledge on source memory. Specifically, the results revealed that the degree of prior knowledge positively predicted memory for source specifying contextual details. In addition, by including two conditions in which attention was divided either at encoding or retrieval, we were able to show that prior knowledge influences memory by affecting encoding processes. Overall, the data suggest that a priori knowledge within a specific domain allows attentional resources to be allocated toward the encoding of contextual details.     

“He Cursed, and I Got Angry:” Beliefs About Anger Among Adolescent Male Offenders in India

Cultural influences in the experience and expression of emotions have been widely recognized, although systematic studies of emotion-related beliefs in culturally diverse families have been scarce. The purpose of the present exploratory study was to examine beliefs about anger among a group of adolescent male offenders in India temporarily residing in a pre-sentencing institution. In particular, adolescent offenders (n = 14) were individually interviewed about their beliefs concerning causes and concomitants of, and behavioral responses to, one’s own and others’ anger, as well as family patterns of anger expression that are crucial in understanding socialization processes. Although some of the themes reflected in their narratives parallel the beliefs of educated, middle-class, non-offender youth in India (e.g., social inappropriateness of anger), as well as those of offenders in other parts of the world (e.g., aggressive behavior as a common response to anger), beliefs about various aspects of anger specific to this subculture of offender youth also emerged. In particular, perceived violations of family honor were cited as the most common elicitors of anger, and although anger was considered ‘bad’ it was expressed through aggression. The findings of this study highlight the need to develop a culturally informed theory of emotions, and relatedly, to develop culturally sensitive interventions for anger management that can be incorporated as a part of rehabilitation efforts for offender youth in India.     

Emotion regulation and aggression

This review considers the impact of deliberate emotion regulation on aggression, by integrating findings from recent emotion regulation research with a contemporary model of aggressive behavior, the General Aggression Model. First, it considers how individuals who under-regulate anger and other emotions may be more likely to behave aggressively in an attempt to repair, terminate, or avoid uncomfortable emotional states. Second, it explores how over-regulation of emotion may lead to aggressive behavior by increasing negative affect, reducing inhibitions against aggression, compromising decision making processes, diminishing social networks, increasing physiological arousal and hindering the resolution of difficult situations. Finally, it reviews three skills thought to underlie deliberate emotion regulation: emotional awareness, emotional acceptance and proficiency in a variety of emotion regulation strategies. Treatment encompassing all of these skills may improve an individual's ability to regulate difficult emotion states more adaptively and thereby lessen aggressive behavior.