A biopsychosocial therapeutic approach in a private outpatient clinic in Portugal

Patients with chronic stress and ambiguous symptoms are likely to be more frequent in primary care. Somatizers represent 75.8% of the patients in this study and executives 56% of the sample. Job stressors were present in 78.3% of executive men. This scenario suggests that the primary care physician has to be academically better prepared to fully understand and deal with stress problems in daily clinical practice. The physician must have skills to deal with stress at a curative and preventive level, extending those skills to the workplace.     

Perceived reachability in hemispace

A common observation in studies of perceived (imagined) compared to actual movement in a reaching paradigm is the tendency to overestimate. Of the studies noted, reaching tasks have been presented in the general midline range. In the present study, strong right-handers were asked to judge the reachability of visual targets projected onto a table surface at midline, right- (RVF), and left-visual fields (LVF). Midline results support those of previous studies, showing an overestimation bias. In contrast, participants revealed the tendency to underestimate their reachability in RVF and LVF. These findings are discussed from the perspective of actor 'confidence' (a cognitive state) possibly associated with visual information, perceived ability, and perceived task demands.     

Synaptic plasticity in the lateral amygdala: a cellular hypothesis of fear conditioning

Fear conditioning is a form of associative learning in which subjects come to express defense responses to a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) that is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US). Considerable evidence suggests that critical neural changes mediating the CS-US association occur in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA). Further, recent studies show that associative long-term potentiation (LTP) occurs in pathways that transmit the CS to LA, and that drugs that interfere with this LTP also disrupt behavioral fear conditioning when infused into the LA, suggesting that associative LTP in LA might be a mechanism for storing memories of the CS-US association. Here, we develop a detailed cellular hypothesis to explain how neural responses to the CS and US in LA could induce LTP-like changes that store memories during fear conditioning. Specifically, we propose that the CS evokes EPSPs at sensory input synapses onto LA pyramidal neurons, and that the US strongly depolarizes these same LA neurons. This depolarization, in turn, causes calcium influx through NMDA receptors (NMDARs) and also causes the LA neuron to fire action potentials. The action potentials then back-propagate into the dendrites, where they collide with CS-evoked EPSPs, resulting in calcium entry through voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs). Although calcium entry through NMDARs is sufficient to induce synaptic changes that support short-term fear memory, calcium entry through both NMDARs and VGCCs is required to initiate the molecular processes that consolidate synaptic changes into a long-term memory.     

Presymptomatic Testing for Neurogenetic Diseases in Brazil: Assessing Who Seeks and Who Follows through with Testing

Diagnostic tests are available to detect several mutations related to adult-onset, autosomal dominant, neurodegenerative diseases. We aimed to describe our experience in a presymptomatic testing program run by the Brazilian Public Health System from 1999 to 2009. A total of 184 individuals were eligible for presymptomatic testing due to a risk for spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA) - SCA3 (80%), Huntington’s disease (11.9%), familial amyloidotic neuropathy (4.3%), SCA1, SCA2, SCA6, or SCA7. Most were women (70%), married (54%), and had children prior to presymptomatic testing (67%). Their mean age at entrance was 34 (SD = 11 years). Educational level was above the average Brazilian standard. After receipt of genetic counseling, 100 individuals (54%) decided to undergo testing; of these, 51 were carriers. Since no individual returned for post-test psychological evaluation, we conducted a subsequent survey, unrelated to test disclosures. We contacted 57 individuals of whom 31 agreed to participate (24 had been tested, 7 had not). Several ascertainment concerns relating to these numerous losses prevented us from generalizing our results from this second survey. We concluded that: decision-making regarding presymptomatic testing seems to be genuinely autonomous, since after genetic counseling half the individuals who asked for presymptomatic testing decided in favor and half decided against it; general characteristics of Brazilians who sought presymptomatic testing were similar to many European samples studied previously; and individuals at risk for SCA3 may be at greater risk of depression. Although no clear-cut reason emerged for rejection of follow-up psychological sessions after presymptomatic testing, this finding suggests adjustments to our presymptomatic testing program are necessary.     

Paternal Positivity and Child Mental Health: A Meta-Analysis

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Children whose mothers display more positivity during interactions tend to have better mental health. Some studies investigating associations between...     

Negative internal causal attributions of a specific offense and forgiveness

Causal attributions are important social‐cognitive predictors of forgiveness. This article presents the Transgression Attribution Questionnaire (TAQ), a measure of one's negative internal causal attributions of a specific offense. In 4 studies, scores on the TAQ showed initial evidence of estimated internal consistency, temporal stability, and construct validity. Negative internal attributions for the cause of a transgression predicted lower levels of empathy and forgiveness. Furthermore, scores on the TAQ predicted forgiveness over and above the hurtfulness of the offense, relationship commitment, and a general measure of internal causal attributions in relationships. The current research bridges research on internal causal attributions and forgiveness. Implications for the social‐cognitive study of forgiveness and the measurement of causal attributions are discussed.     

Learning a complex motor skill from video and point-light demonstrations

The aim of this study was to compare the learning process of a highly complex ballet skill following demonstrations of point-light and video models. 16 participants divided into point-light and video groups (ns = 8) performed 160 trials of a pirouette, equally distributed in blocks of 20 trials, alternating periods of demonstration and practice, with a retention test a day later. Measures of head and trunk oscillation, coordination disparity from the model, and movement time difference showed similarities between video and point-light groups; ballet experts' evaluations indicated superiority of performance in the video over the point-light group. Results are discussed in terms of the task requirements of dissociation between head and trunk rotations, focusing on the hypothesis of sufficiency and higher relevance of information contained in biological motion models applied to learning of complex motor skills.