Conspiracy, Emotion regulation, Emotion differentiation

The study investigates the association between conspiracist ideation, and emotion differentiation/regulation

A randomized trial that compared brain activity, efficacy and plausibility of open-label placebo treatment and cognitive repappraisal for reducing emotional distress

Abstract Placebo pills can reduce emotional distress even when recipients have been informed about the inert nature of the treatment. However, before such open-label placebos (OLPs) can be recommended for general clinical use, their efficacy and acceptability need to be further investigated and compared with established methods for emotion regulation, such as cognitive reappraisal (CR). The current study with functional magnetic resonance imaging compared the effects of an OLP pill with CR for reducing a specific form of emotional distress: disgust. Participants (150 healthy females) were randomly allocated to one of three groups, all of which were exposed to disgusting and neutral images (OLP, CR, PV: passive viewing). It was tested whether the three groups would differ in brain activity and reported disgust. Ratings for the perceived efficacy and plausibility of treatment were also compared between OLP and CR. Both OLP and CR increased the activity in a cognitive control region, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Relative to PV and OLP, CR reduced activity in the putamen and pallidum. These regions play an important role in decoding disgust signals from different modalities. Self-reports indicated that CR was perceived as a more effective and plausible intervention strategy than OLP. In conclusion, CR was a superior method for disgust regulation compared to OLP, both on the subjective as well as the neurobiological level. Future OLP studies are needed to test whether the observed effects generalize to other forms of emotional distress

Facial Emotion Recognition in Parkinson's Disease: An fMRI Investigation.

Findings of behavioral studies on facial emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease (PD) are very heterogeneous. Therefore, the present investigation additionally used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in order to compare brain activation during emotion perception between PD patients and healthy controls.We included 17 nonmedicated, nondemented PD patients suffering from mild to moderate symptoms and 22 healthy controls. The participants were shown pictures of facial expressions depicting disgust, fear, sadness, and anger and they answered scales for the assessment of affective traits. The patients did not report lowered intensities for the displayed target emotions, and showed a comparable rating accuracy as the control participants. The questionnaire scores did not differ between patients and controls. The fMRI data showed similar activation in both groups except for a generally stronger recruitment of somatosensory regions in the patients.Since somatosensory cortices are involved in the simulation of an observed emotion, which constitutes an important mechanism for emotion recognition, future studies should focus on activation changes within this region during the course of disease

Overview of descriptive data for patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and the control group (CG).

<p>f: female, m: male; TEDD: Test for Early Detection of Dementia; QADP: Questionnaire for the Assessment of Disgust Proneness; BDI: Beck Depression Inventory; STAI: State Trait Anxiety Inventory (trait scale); STAXI: State Trait Anger Inventory (trait scale).</p><p>Overview of descriptive data for patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and the control group (CG).</p