Increased feelings with increased body signals

Since the beginning of psychology as a scientific endeavour, the question of whether the body plays a role in how a person experiences emotion has been the centre of emotion research. Patients with structural gastrointestinal disorders, such as Crohn's disease, provide an intriguing opportunity to study the influence of body signals on emotions and feelings. In the present study, emotionally salient films were presented to participants with Crohn's disease in either the active state (Crohn's-active, CA) or silent state (Crohn's-silent, CS), and to normal comparison (NC) participants. We hypothesized that CA participants would have increased feelings, compared with CS and NC participants, when viewing emotional films designed to elicit happiness, disgust, sadness and fear. Gastric myoelectrical activity (electrogastrogram, or EGG) was measured during the films, and after each film was presented, participants rated emotion intensity (arousal) and pleasantness (valence). All groups labelled the emotions similarly. In support of the hypothesis, CA participants showed an increase in subjective arousal for negative emotions compared with CS and NC participants. The CA participants also showed increased EGG during emotional film viewing, as well as a strong positive correlation of EGG with arousal ratings. Together, these findings can be taken as evidence that aberrant feedback from the gastrointestinal system up-regulates the intensity of feelings of negative emotions

Low- versus standard-dose alteplase in acute lacunar ischemic stroke: the ENCHANTED trial - online supplemental

Objective: To determine any differential efficacy and safety of low- versus standard-dose intravenous alteplase for lacunar versus non-lacunar acute ischemic stroke (AIS), we performed post-hoc analyzes from the Enhanced Control of Hypertension and Thrombolysis Stroke Study (ENCHANTED) alteplase dose-arm. Methods: In a cohort of 3297 ENCHANTED participants, we identified those with lacunar or non-lacunar AIS with different levels of confidence (definite/probable/possible) according to pre-specified definitions based on clinical and adjudicated imaging findings. Logistic regression models were used to determine associations of lacunar AIS with 90-day outcomes (primary, modified Rankin scale [mRS] scores 2-6; secondary, other mRS scores, intracerebral hemorrhage [ICH], and early neurologic deterioration [END] or death) and treatment effects of low- versus standard-dose alteplase across lacunar and non-lacunar AIS with adjustment for baseline covariables. Results: Of 2588 participants with available imaging and clinical data, we classified cases as definite/probable lacunar (n=490) or non-lacunar AIS (n=2098) for primary analyses. Regardless of alteplase dose received, lacunar AIS participants had favorable functional (mRS 2-6, adjusted odds ratio [95% CI] 0.60 [0.47-0.77]) and other clinical or safety outcomes, compared to participants with non-lacunar AIS. Low-dose alteplase (versus standard) had no differential effect on functional outcomes (mRS 2-6, 1.04 [0.87-1.24]) but reduced the risk of symptomatic ICH in all included participants. There were no differential treatment effects of low- versus standard-dose alteplase on all outcomes across lacunar and non-lacunar AIS (all Pinteraction ≥0.07). Conclusions: We found no evidence from the ENCHANTED trial that low-dose alteplase had any advantages over standard-dose for definite/probable lacunar AIS