Basal ganglia correlates of fatigue in young adults

Although the prevalence of chronic fatigue is approximately 20% in healthy individuals, there are no studies of brain structure that elucidate the neural correlates of fatigue outside of clinical subjects. We hypothesized that fatigue without evidence of disease might be related to changes in the basal ganglia and prefrontal cortex and be implicated in fatigue with disease. We aimed to identify the white matter structures of fatigue in young subjects without disease using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Healthy young adults (n = 883; 489 males and 394 females) were recruited. As expected, the degrees of fatigue and motivation were associated with larger mean diffusivity (MD) in the right putamen, pallidus and caudate. Furthermore, the degree of physical activity was associated with a larger MD only in the right putamen. Accordingly, motivation was the best candidate for widespread basal ganglia, whereas physical activity might be the best candidate for the putamen. A plausible mechanism of fatigue may involve abnormal function of the motor system, as well as areas of the dopaminergic system in the basal ganglia that are associated with motivation and reward

The Relationship Between the Five-Factor Model of Personality and Symptoms of Clinical Disorders: a Meta-analysis

This paper describes a meta-analysis of 33 studies that examined the relationship between the Five-Factor Model and symptoms of clinical disorders. The typical pattern found associated with clinical disorders or measures of clinical disorders was high Neuroticism, low Conscientiousness, low Agreeableness, and low Extraversion. Comparisons of diagnostic groups and norm groups showed higher levels of Neuroticism and lower levels of Extraversion than did studies of correlations between measures of the level of a disorder and measures of the five factors. Studies of observer ratings of the five factors showed lower levels of Neuroticism and Openness than did studies of self-report ratings. These and other findings relating to type of scale and type of comparison group have possible clinicalimplications and raise several questions worthy of further research

The five-factor model of personality and smoking: a meta-analysis

This article describes a meta-analysis of the relationship between the Five-Factor Model of personality and smoking. The results, based on nine studies and a total of 4,730 participants, show that smoking was associated with the following five-factor traits: low conscientiousness, low agreeableness, and high neuroticism. Smokers outside Canada and the United States had significantly higher extraversion than nonsmokers, while extraversion was not significantly related to smoking in Canada and the United States. The results, which for the first time quantified precisely through meta-analysis the association between the five-factor model of personality and smoking, provide support for the relevance of the Five-Factor Model to an important behavior and for the trait element of Gilbert's (1995) Situation-Trait-Adaptation-Response model of smoking. The results also suggest possible avenues for smoking prevention and treatment and for further smoking research

Command Style and Team Performance in Dynamic Decision-Making Tasks

Real-world tasks involving dynamic decision making are commonly distributed among a number of people, the organizational structure being typically hierarchical in nature. However, the optimal way to divide the responsibility for decision making among team members is not obvious. Should leaders make all decisions and communicate specific actions for subordinates to carry out? Or should decision-making responsibility be shared, with leaders communicating their intentions to subordinates, who then decide upon appropriate actions and carry these out? This is fundamentally an issue of the relative effectiveness of contrasting command styles. This chapter addresses this issue by reporting a study using teams of three persons (a leader and two subordinates) in a computer-simulated forestfirefighting task. The results indicate a marked performance advantage for teams in which the leader is required to command by the communication of intentions rather than by the communication of orders for specific actions. An intention-based command style, which creates a more even distribution of decision-making responsibility across ranks, was found to result in a more equal distribution of the cognitive workload, to take greater advantage of subordinates' local knowledge, and to allow for greater overall team productivity

Stress und soziale Unterstützung im ersten Jahr einer Berufsausbildung

Stress ist in entwickelten Ländern einer der bedeutendsten Risikofaktoren für die psychische und physische Gesundheit. Zahlreiche Studien weisen auf Zusammenhänge zwischen arbeitsbedingten Stressoren und dem psychischen Befinden von Arbeitnehmern hin (Steinmann 2005). Gerade junge Arbeitnehmer sind stark von Belastungssituationen am Arbeitsplatz betroffen. Jugendliche und junge Erwachsene, welche in einer Berufsausbildung sind, kristallisieren sich in verschiedenen Studien als vulnerable Gruppe heraus. So zeigte zum Beispiel eine Studie von Strandh et al. (2014), dass sich Jugendliche in einer sensiblen Entwicklungsphase befinden, und deshalb mehr unter Arbeitsstress leiden. Brändle und Müller (2014) betonten, dass eine schlechte Passung bei der Berufswahl negative Auswirkungen auf die Motivation der Jugendlichen hat. In diesem Lebensabschnitt sind viele Veränderungen und Herausforderungen auf der psychologischen, sozialen und kognitiven Ebene zu bewältigen. Dazu kommt bei Auszubildenden die Transition von der Schule ins Berufsleben, was eine zusätzliche Herausforderung darstellt (Steinmann 2005). Die vorliegende Studie beschäftigt sich mit dem Stresserleben von Lernenden zu Beginn ihrer Berufsausbildung. In einem Querschnittsdesign wurden 736 Auszubildende aus zwei verschiedenen Jahrgängen befragt. Die Befragung fand im ersten Lehrjahr statt, und die Auszubildenden waren alle in einem Schweizer Betrieb angestellt. In unserer Stichprobe konnte das erhöhte Stresserleben von Auszubildenden nicht bestätigt werden; es zeigte sich jedoch, dass soziale Unterstützung als Schutzfaktor gegenüber Stresserleben bezeichnet werden kann. Auszubildende aus den Balkanländern berichteten von mehr Stress als die übrigen Befragten. Ebenfalls zeigten Auszubildende, die eine Ausbildung mit einem geringeren Anforderungsprofil abschließen, mehr Stress