The relationship between self-reported oral symptoms and life-events

Abstract

This paper investigates whether eight specific life-events were related to self-reported chronic (persistent trouble over the last 12 months) and acute (trouble in the last 14 days) oral symptoms in a sample of 3861 civil servants aged 35-44 years. The results of a logistic regression analysis taking age, social class and gender into account showed that a range of life-events—marital or family problems other than divorce, death of a relative, personal serious illness, serious illness of a close relative, major financial difficulty and mugging and robbery—were significantly associated with either acute or chronic oral symptoms. Further analysis showed that marital or family problems other than divorce was found to be the most important life event studied. The results support the argument that marital dissatisfaction leads to poorer physical and psychological health.     

The precuneus and the insula in self-attributional processes

Attributions are constantly assigned in everyday life. A well-known phenomenon is the self-serving bias: that is, people’s tendency to attribute positive events to internal causes (themselves) and negative events to external causes (other persons/circumstances). Here, we investigated the neural correlates of the cognitive processes implicated in self-serving attributions using social situations that differed in their emotional saliences. We administered an attributional bias task during fMRI scanning in a large sample of healthy subjects (n = 71). Eighty sentences describing positive or negative social situations were presented, and subjects decided via buttonpress whether the situation had been caused by themselves or by the other person involved. Comparing positive with negative sentences revealed activations of the bilateral posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Self-attribution correlated with activation of the posterior portion of the precuneus. However, self-attributed positive versus negative sentences showed activation of the anterior portion of the precuneus, and self-attributed negative versus positive sentences demonstrated activation of the bilateral insular cortex. All significant activations were reported with a statistical threshold of p ≤ .001, uncorrected. In addition, a comparison of our fMRI task with data from the Internal, Personal and Situational Attributions Questionnaire, Revised German Version, demonstrated convergent validity. Our findings suggest that the precuneus and the PCC are involved in the evaluation of social events with particular regional specificities: The PCC is activated during emotional evaluation, the posterior precuneus during attributional evaluation, and the anterior precuneus during self-serving processes. Furthermore, we assume that insula activation is a correlate of awareness of personal agency in negative situations.     

Observing the transformation of experience into memory

The ability to remember one's past depends on neural processing set in motion at the moment each event is experienced. Memory formation can be observed by segregating neural responses according to whether or not each event is recalled or recognized on a subsequent memory test. Subsequent memory analyses have been performed with various neural measures, including brain potentials extracted from intracranial and extracranial electroencephalographic recordings, and hemodynamic responses from functional magnetic resonance imaging. Neural responses can predict which events, and which aspects of those events, will be subsequently remembered or forgotten, thereby elucidating the neurocognitive processes that establish durable episodic memories.     

Emotion regulation difficulties in anorexia nervosa: Relationship to self-perceived sensory sensitivity

Changes in sensation (e.g., prickly skin) are crucial constituents of emotional experience, and the intensity of perceived changes has been linked to emotional intensity and dysregulation. The current study examined the relationship between sensory sensitivity and emotion regulation among adults with anorexia nervosa (AN), a disorder characterised by disturbance in the experience of the body. Twenty-one individuals with AN, 20 individuals with AN who were weight–restored, and 23 typical controls completed self-report measures of sensory sensitivity and emotion regulation. AN participants reported heightened sensory sensitivity and greater difficulty regulating emotions relative to controls. Self-perceived sensory sensitivity was associated with greater emotion dysregulation. Weight-restored AN participants reported greater ability to regulate emotions than their currently underweight counterparts, despite heightened sensitivity. Findings suggest that hypersensitivity may be a persisting feature in AN, and that weight restoration may involve improved ability to cope with sensation.     

Comparison of Rorschach anatomy responses from psychosomatic out-patients and a matched group of psychiatric controls.

35 out-patient Ss with demonstrable psychosomatic symptoms were matched with 35 psychiatric out-patients with "milder" forms of psychopathology, i.e., neurosis, personality disorders and latent schizophrenia. The psychosomatic group showed significantly more anatomy responses on the Rorschach but there was much overlap, leading to the conclusion that anatomy does not directly reflect simply psychosomatic disturbances but, rather, is associated with psychodynamics which tend to underlie psychosomatic illnesses.     

Parameters of digitally averaged potentials of individual motor units]

Of sixty normal subjects of different age six different muscles each were examined electromyographically. The activity pattern was recorded for moderate voluntary innervation and superposed digitally. The parameters of digitally averaged summation action potentials were compared with those of manually assessed potentials. The two methods gave identical results: The duration of potentials was between 5 and 10 ms. It increased in the younger and older age groups and showed only slight changes in middle-aged persons. Only minor differences were found between the muscles of one age group, an exception being the orbicularis oris muscle. The results obtained are compared with values reported in the literature.