Synthesis of fluorosugar reagents for the construction of well-defined fluoroglycoproteins.

2-Deoxy-2-fluoroglycosyl iodides are privileged glycosyl donors for the stereoselective preparation of 1-Nu-β-fluorosugars, which are useful reagents for chemical site-selective protein glycosylation. Ready access to such β-fluorosugars enables the mild and efficient construction of well-defined fluoroglycoproteins.We thank the European Commission (Marie Curie CIG, O.B. and G.J.L.B.), MICINN, Spain (Juan de la Cierva Fellowship, O.B.), MINECO, Spain (CTQ2011-22872BQU) and Generalitat de Catalunya (M.S.) for generous financial support. We also thank Mr. Adrià Cardona-Benages (URV) for technical assis-tance. G.J.L.B. thanks the Royal Society (University Research Fellowship), Fundação para a Ciência a Tecnologia, Portugal (FCT Investigator), and the EPSRC for funding.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from ACS via http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.orglett.5b01259

Effects of fluoxetine on functional outcomes after acute stroke (FOCUS): a pragmatic, double-blind, randomised, controlled trial

Background Results of small trials indicate that fluoxetine might improve functional outcomes after stroke. The FOCUS trial aimed to provide a precise estimate of these effects. Methods FOCUS was a pragmatic, multicentre, parallel group, double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial done at 103 hospitals in the UK. Patients were eligible if they were aged 18 years or older, had a clinical stroke diagnosis, were enrolled and randomly assigned between 2 days and 15 days after onset, and had focal neurological deficits. Patients were randomly allocated fluoxetine 20 mg or matching placebo orally once daily for 6 months via a web-based system by use of a minimisation algorithm. The primary outcome was functional status, measured with the modified Rankin Scale (mRS), at 6 months. Patients, carers, health-care staff, and the trial team were masked to treatment allocation. Functional status was assessed at 6 months and 12 months after randomisation. Patients were analysed according to their treatment allocation. This trial is registered with the ISRCTN registry, number ISRCTN83290762. Findings Between Sept 10, 2012, and March 31, 2017, 3127 patients were recruited. 1564 patients were allocated fluoxetine and 1563 allocated placebo. mRS data at 6 months were available for 1553 (99·3%) patients in each treatment group. The distribution across mRS categories at 6 months was similar in the fluoxetine and placebo groups (common odds ratio adjusted for minimisation variables 0·951 [95% CI 0·839–1·079]; p=0·439). Patients allocated fluoxetine were less likely than those allocated placebo to develop new depression by 6 months (210 [13·43%] patients vs 269 [17·21%]; difference 3·78% [95% CI 1·26–6·30]; p=0·0033), but they had more bone fractures (45 [2·88%] vs 23 [1·47%]; difference 1·41% [95% CI 0·38–2·43]; p=0·0070). There were no significant differences in any other event at 6 or 12 months. Interpretation Fluoxetine 20 mg given daily for 6 months after acute stroke does not seem to improve functional outcomes. Although the treatment reduced the occurrence of depression, it increased the frequency of bone fractures. These results do not support the routine use of fluoxetine either for the prevention of post-stroke depression or to promote recovery of function. Funding UK Stroke Association and NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme

Biased recognition of happy facial expressions in social anxiety

Abstract: Recognizing emotional expressions is central to understanding the feelings and intentions of other people. Little is known about how social anxiety affects the recognition of emotional expressions. Recent research finds a recognition advantage for happy expressions over negative expressions. In two experiments, social anxiety moderated the recognition advantage of happy faces. People low and high in social anxiety recognized sad faces (Experiment 1) and angry faces (Experiment 2) equally quickly, but people high in social anxiety took longer to recognize happy faces. Both groups showed a significant recognition advantage for happy faces, although the advantage was at least twice as large in the low social-anxiety group. The discussion focuses on mechanisms connecting social anxiety to face processing and on the role of expression recognition in other emotionalprocessing biases

Emotion concepts and self-focused attention: Exploring parallel effects of emotional states and emotional knowledge. Motivation and Emotion

. (2006). Emotion concepts and selffocused attention: Exploring parallel effects of emotional states and emotional knowledge. Motivation and Emotion, 30,[225][226][227][228][229][230][231] Made available courtesy of Springer Verlag: http://www.springer.com/psychology/journal/11031 The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com ***Note: Figures may be missing from this format of the document Abstract: Many experiments have found that emotional experience affects self-focused attention. Several approaches to cognition and emotion predict that conscious emotional experience may be unnecessary for this effect. To test this hypothesis, two experiments primed emotion concepts without affecting emotional experience. In Experiment 1, subliminal exposure to sad faces (relative to happy faces and neutral faces) increased selffocused attention but not subjectively experienced affect. In Experiment 2, a scrambled-sentences task that primed happy and sad emotion concepts increased self-focused attention relative to a neutral task. Thus, simply activating knowledge about emotions was sufficient to increase self-focused attention. The discussion considers implications for research on how emotional states affect self-awareness. Keywords Emotion -Self-awareness -Emotion concepts -Self-focused attention -Cognition and emotion Article: Many studies find that manipulating emotional states causes changes in self-focus Are emotions necessary for emotional effects on self-focused attention? All of the models of emotions and self-focus assume that the subjective experience of emotion affects selffocused attention. Recent research in cognition and emotion, however, suggests that these effects could appear without conscious affective experience. Models of affect-as-information Models of unconscious affect also predict emotional effects on cognition in the absence of consciously experienced emotion. Finally, research on emotion concepts suggests that semantic priming processes could cause emotion-like effects on self-focused attention. People's knowledge about emotions-their semantic concepts of emotionscontain information about what emotions are like, the kinds of circumstances associated with certain emotions, and similarities between emotions (Innes- The present experiments Three related areas of research-affect as information, unconscious affect, and emotion concepts-suggest that subjective emotional experience isn't necessary for emotional effects on cognition and action. The present experiments tested whether emotional knowledge can affect self-awareness in the absence of emotional experience. In each study, participants completed a task that primed happiness or sadness, or they completed or a neutral task that did not prime emotions. Emotion concepts were primed with subliminal facial expressions of emotion (Experiment 1) or with a scrambled sentence task (Experiment 2). The priming tasks should not affect subjective emotional experience, but they should activate emotion-specific knowledge. Self-awareness and emotional experience were measured after the priming tasks. We expect (1) that priming happy and sad emotion concepts, relative to neutral priming, will increase self-focused attention, and (2) that this effect will appear despite no changes in subjective emotional experience. Experiment 1 Method Participants and design Seventy people enrolled in general psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) participated and received credit toward a research option. Five participants were excluded-one person had heard about the subliminal manipulation from a prior participant, another person saw the subliminal faces, and three people failed to understand or follow the instructions. This left a final sample of 65 participants (52 females and 13 males). Each participant was randomly assigned to one of three between-person conditions: happy priming, neutral priming, or sad priming. Procedure Each person participated individually. The experimenter explained that the experiment was about personality and cognition. People expected to complete cognitive tasks followed by some measures of personality. A pretask baseline measure of mood was obtained with the Brief Mood Introspection Survey (BMIS; People worked on a computer-based perceptual matching task, in which they indicated whether two letters were the same or different (e.g., Proctor & Rao, 1983). This filler task provided a context for repeatedly presenting facial expressions of emotion. The experimenter explained that the study was interested in how mild distractions affected cognitive performance. Thus, each trial would begin with a fixation cross, a brief random pattern as an ostensible distraction, and then the letter-matching trial. In fact, following the fixation cross, a face was presented for 13 ms and then followed by a random pattern mask for 200 ms. Four happy, neutral, and sad facial expressions (half male, half female) were taken from the Ekman and Friesen (1978) set. Participants completed 54 trials, and a face was presented before each trial. The presentation and timing were controlled with SuperLab Pro (Version 2.0.4; Cedrus, 2003). Dependent measures Self-focused attention. Following the priming manipulation, people completed a -second cognitive task,‖ actually a measure of self-focus. The -Linguistic Implications Form‖ has 20 incomplete sentences that must be completed by choosing one of three pronouns Subjective emotional experience. To assess possible changes in mood as a function of the priming manipulation, we administered the BMIS after the measure of self-focused attention. This enabled an analysis of change in PA and NA as a function of the priming manipulation. Results Priming effects on self-focused attention If priming emotion concepts influences self-awareness, then people in the happy priming and sad priming conditions should be more self-focused than people in the neutral priming condition. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a planned contrast that compared the happy priming and sad priming conditions against the neutral priming condition (weights: 1, 1, −2). This contrast was not significant, t(62)=1.43, p < .16. Because the planned pattern did not appear, we conducted a one-way ANOVA, which found significant variability between the groups, F(2, 62)=2.96, p < .059. Priming effects on subjective experience Did the priming manipulation affect subjectively experienced affect? A 3 (priming manipulation: happy, neutral, sad) by 2 (time: pre, post) by 2 (affect: PA, NA) ANOVA assessed whether PA and NA changed over the experiment due to the priming manipulation. This analysis found only a main effect for affect (F(1, 62)=111, p < .001) and a main effect for time (F(1, 62)=8.41, p < .005). All other effects were not significant, Fs < 1. The time main effect reflected an overall decline in both PA and NA over the course of the experiment, probably because of boredom; the affect main effect reflected higher PA than NA at both time periods. Discussion Experiment 1 offered qualified support for our predictions. First, congruent with our predictions, activating emotion concepts with subliminal exposure to emotional expressions did not affect subjective emotional experience. Second, priming sad concepts significantly increased self-focus relative to neutral concepts. No effect was found for the happy priming condition, however, and we had expected that both the happy and sad conditions would show higher self-focus than the neutral condition. The asymmetry between happy and sad concepts might stem from the use of faces to prime emotional information. Recent research shows that happy faces are easier to process than other expressions Experiment 2 Experiment 2 conceptually replicated Experiment 1 by using a different priming manipulation. Happy, sad, and neutral emotion concepts were primed with a semantic priming task that did not involve facial expressions. Participants completed a scrambled-sentences task that was developed to prime happy and sad emotion concepts As before, we predicted that priming happy and sad emotion concepts would increase self-focused attention. Method Participants and design Sixty undergraduate women enrolled in general psychology at UNCG participated as part of a research option. Two people were excluded for not speaking English natively or for not adhering to the instructions, leaving a final sample of 58. Each person was randomly assigned to one of three between-subject conditions: happy priming, neutral priming, or sad priming. Procedure People participated in groups of six to eight. A female experimenter explained that the study was about -how people process complex and ambiguous language.‖ The participants expected to complete two -linguistic tasks‖ along with other questions. People first completed a single-item bipolar mood scale. This item asked -How would you describe your current mood?‖ People responded using an 11-point scale ranging from −5 to +5 (endpoints: very negative, very positive). A brief measure was used to avert suspicion about the study's true purposes. The first -linguistic task‖ was the manipulation of emotion priming. Participants completed a scrambledsentences task developed by Innes-Ker and Niedenthal Dependent measures All participants completed the 20-item pronoun-selection measure of self-focused attention upon finishing the scrambled sentences task Results Data reduction Self-focus scores were computed as the percentage of sentences completed with the self-focused option. The distribution of scores deviated from normality, and the variances differed significantly between some conditions (see Priming effects on self-focused attention If priming emotion concepts influences self-awareness, then people in the happy priming and sad priming conditions should be more self-focused than people in the neutral priming condition. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a planned contrast that compared the happy priming and sad priming conditions against the neutral priming condition (weights: 1, 1, −2), using the rank-transformed self-awareness scores. This contrast was significant, t(53)=2.64, p < .011. Mann-Whitney nonparametric tests examined the pattern of effects. People in the happy priming condition were more self-focused relative to people in the neutral condition, M-W Z=2.11, p < .035. Furthermore, people in the sad priming condition were more self-focused relative to people in the neutral condition, M-W Z=2.26, p < .024. The happy priming and sad priming conditions did not differ, M-W Z < 1, ns. Priming happy and sad emotion concepts thus increased self-awareness relative to priming neutral concepts. Priming effects on emotional experience Did priming emotional concepts affect emotional experience? We first analyzed the bipolar measure of affect (see Discussion Experiment 2 fully supported our predictions. As expected, priming happy and sad emotion concepts increased self-focused attention relative to priming neutral concepts. Moreover, the priming manipulation did not affect subjective emotional experience. Thus, evidence was found for a conceptual effect of emotional knowledge on self-focused attention. General discussion Positive and negative emotions reliably increase self-awareness The present experiments were designed to examine the possibility of conceptual effects on self-focus, not to decisively distinguish between the three possible explanations for why emotion priming could affect selffocused attention. The experiments and their findings, however, suggest that some of the explanations are more plausible than others. The affect-as-information model Models of emotion concepts seem to be the most promising of the three explanations. If people's concepts of emotions contain information about the self, then activating the emotion concepts should increase the activation of self-relevant information. As a result, activating emotional knowledge should incidentally activate selfknowledge, which would appear as higher scores on measures of self-focused attention. This approach fits both experiments, and it offers the most straightforward explanation for why emotion priming should affect selffocused attention. Nevertheless, the present experiments did not directly contrast the three possible explanations, so it remains for future research to examine how conceptual and experiential aspects of emotion influence self-focused attention. Acknowledgments We thank Åse Innes-Ker and Paula Niedenthal for providing the scrambled sentences used in Experiment 2 and Will Krause for assistance with data collection. This research was presented at the 2004 meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association and at the 2005 meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. The measures of self-awareness are available a

The acute effects of alcohol on state rumination in the laboratory (article)

This is the final version. Available on open access from Springer via the DOI in this recordThe dataset associated with this article is located in ORE at: https://doi.org/10.24378/exe.3205Rationale: Rumination is a repetitive, negative, self-focused thinking style associated with various forms of psychopathology. Recent studies suggest that rumination increases craving for alcohol and predicts harmful drinking and alcohol-related problems. However, the acute effects of alcohol on rumination have not been previously studied. It is proposed that alcohol may reduce ruminative thinking through decreasing negative mood. Objectives: In the present study, we aimed to test the previously unexplored effects of acute alcohol consumption on rumination in a hazardous drinking population. Methods: We conducted a randomised placebo-controlled laboratory study to examine the effect of low (0.4 g kg−1) and high doses (0.8 g kg−1) of alcohol on state rumination compared to placebo. Participants completed a rumination induction task prior to receiving drinks. We then measured state rumination and mood at repeated time points; 30 min, 60 min and 90 min post-drinks consumption. Results: We found a significant decrease in state rumination in the low-dose alcohol group compared to placebo at 30 min post-alcohol consumption, but no difference was observed between the high-dose alcohol and placebo groups. Mediation analysis provided evidence for an indirect effect of alcohol on state rumination through concurrent changes in negative mood. Conclusions: These findings suggest that acute alcohol consumption can regulate negative mood and concurrently rumination, providing preliminary evidence for the role of rumination in alcohol use disorders. Rumination may be a treatment target in alcohol use disorders.Society for the Study of AddictionUniversity of Exete

The acute effects of alcohol on state rumination in the laboratory (dataset)

SPSS data from the acute effects of alcohol on state rumination studyThe article associated with this dataset is located in ORE at: http://hdl.handle.net/10871/125196This is the dataset used for the Mollaahmetoglu et al. (2021) article "The acute effects of alcohol on state rumination in the laboratory" published in Psychopharmacology.Society for the Study of AddictionUniversity of Exete

Adjunctive Ketamine With Relapse Prevention-Based Psychological Therapy in the Treatment of Alcohol Use Disorder

OBJECTIVE: Early evidence suggests that ketamine may be an effective treatment to sustain abstinence from alcohol. The authors investigated the safety and efficacy of ketamine compared with placebo in increasing abstinence in patients with alcohol use disorder. An additional aim was to pilot ketamine combined with mindfulness-based relapse prevention therapy compared with ketamine and alcohol education as a therapy control. METHODS: In a double-blind placebo-controlled phase 2 clinical trial, 96 patients with severe alcohol use disorder were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: 1) three weekly ketamine infusions (0.8 mg/kg i.v. over 40 minutes) plus psychological therapy, 2) three saline infusions plus psychological therapy, 3) three ketamine infusions plus alcohol education, or 4) three saline infusions plus alcohol education. The primary outcomes were self-reported percentage of days abstinent and confirmed alcohol relapse at 6-month follow-up. RESULTS: Ninety-six participants (35 women; mean age, 44.07 years [SD=10.59]) were included in the intention-to-treat analysis. The treatment was well tolerated, and no serious adverse events were associated with the study drug. Although confidence intervals were wide, consistent with a proof-of-concept study, there were a significantly greater number of days abstinent from alcohol in the ketamine group compared with the placebo group at 6-month follow-up (mean difference=10.1%, 95% CI=1.1, 19.0), with the greatest reduction in the ketamine plus therapy group compared with the saline plus education group (15.9%, 95% CI=3.8, 28.1). There was no significant difference in relapse rate between the ketamine and placebo groups. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated that treatment with three infusions of ketamine was well tolerated in patients with alcohol use disorder and was associated with more days of abstinence from alcohol at 6-month follow-up. The findings suggest a possible beneficial effect of adding psychological therapy alongside ketamine treatment.Not heldaccepted version (12 month embargo