The relationships between expressed emotion, cortisol, and EEG alpha asymmetry

Families can express high criticism, hostility and emotional over-involvement towards a person with or at risk of mental health problems. Perceiving such high expressed emotion (EE) can be a major psychological stressor for individuals, especially those at risk of mental health problems. To reveal the biological mechanisms underlying the effect of EE on health, this study investigated physiological response (salivary cortisol, frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA)) to verbal criticism and their relationship to anxiety and perceived EE. Using a repeated-measures design, healthy participants attended three testing sessions on non-consecutive days. On each day, participants listened to one of three types of auditory stimuli, namely criticism, neutral or praise, and Electroencephalography (EEG) and salivary cortisol were measured. Results showed a reduction in cortisol following criticism but there was no significant change in FAA. Post-criticism cortisol concentration negatively correlated with perceived EE after controlling for baseline mood. Our findings suggest that salivary cortisol change responds to criticism in non-clinical populations might be largely driven by individual differences in the perception of criticism (e.g., arousal and relevance). Criticisms expressed by audio comments may not be explicitly perceived as an acute emotional stressor, and thus, physiological change responds to criticisms could be minimum

Towards Explainable Abnormal Infant Movements Identification: A Body-part Based Prediction and Visualisation Framework

Providing early diagnosis of cerebral palsy (CP) is key to enhancing the developmental outcomes for those affected. Diagnostic tools such as the General Movements Assessment (GMA), have produced promising results in early diagnosis, however these manual methods can be laborious. In this paper, we propose a new framework for the automated classification of infant body movements, based upon the GMA, which unlike previous methods, also incorporates a visualization framework to aid with interpretability. Our proposed framework segments extracted features to detect the presence of Fidgety Movements (FMs) associated with the GMA spatiotemporally. These features are then used to identify the body-parts with the greatest contribution towards a classification decision and highlight the related body-part segment providing visual feedback to the user. We quantitatively compare the proposed framework's classification performance with several other methods from the literature and qualitatively evaluate the visualization's veracity. Our experimental results show that the proposed method performs more robustly than comparable techniques in this setting whilst simultaneously providing relevant visual interpretability

Comparing the effects of two distinct eccentric modalities to traditional resistance training in resistance trained, higher functioning older adults

BackgroundThe effects of eccentric resistance exercise are of interest in the older adult cohort, but to our knowledge, there is no research on the relative effects of different eccentric modalities on a range of outcomes in higher functioning, resistance trained older adults.Methods33 resistance-trained older adults (aged 67 ± 4.5 years) were randomized into one of three supervised training groups: traditional (TRE), eccentric only (ERE) or eccentrically biased resistance exercise (EBRE) on a 45°, plate-loaded leg press machine. Participants trained twice per week with maximal strength, functional capacity, body composition and blood biomarkers measured before and after the eight-week intervention.ResultsBoth eccentric and concentric strength, and important functional tasks for independent living significantly improved independent of group. Body composition and blood biomarkers were found to significantly improve in the EBRE group only however, no statistical differences were found between groups.ConclusionCompared to traditional resistance training, the two eccentric modalities investigated here were equally effective for improvements in maximum muscular strength, functional capacity, body composition and metabolic biomarkers. When training the resistance trained older adult, very heavy isoinertial external loads (at least 70% of one repetition maximum) are effective irrespective of contraction mode. With heavy strength training, resistance trained older adults can continue to expect improvements in health and function

The relationships between expressed emotion, cortisol, and EEG alpha asymmetry

Families can express high criticism, hostility and emotional over-involvement towards a person with or at risk of mental health problems. Perceiving such high expressed emotion (EE) can be a major psychological stressor for individuals, especially those at risk of mental health problems. To reveal the biological mechanisms underlying the effect of EE on health, this study investigated physiological response (salivary cortisol, frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA)) to verbal criticism and their relationship to anxiety and perceived EE. Using a repeated-measures design , healthy participants attended three testing sessions on non-consecutive days. On each day, participants listened to one of three types of auditory stimuli, namely criticism, neutral or praise, and Electroencephalography (EEG) and salivary cortisol were measured. Results showed a reduction in cortisol following criticism but there was no significant change in FAA. Post-criticism cortisol concentration negatively correlated with perceived EE after controlling for baseline mood. Our findings suggest that salivary cortisol change responds to criticism in non-clinical populations might be largely driven by individual differences in the perception of criticism (e.g., arousal and relevance). Criticisms expressed by audio comments may not be explicitly perceived as an acute emotional stressor, and thus, physiological change responds to criticisms could be minimum