Social, Achievement, and Control Dimensions of Personality-Life Event Vulnerability to Depression

This study investigated whether Sociotropy and the subscales of Autonomy (i.e., Perfectionistic/Self-critical, Need for Control, and Defensive Separation) would show differential patterns of vulnerability to dysphoria in both retrospective and prospective designs. Each of these scales showed a predicted pattern of association with life goals and impact ratings for negative events in a retrospective design. In a prospective design, the scales showed differential associations with goal obtainment and cognitive-affective responses to life events but did not predict follow-up dysphoria independently of baseline dysphoria. These results are discussed in terms of the multidimensionality of personality vulnerability and depressogenic negative life events along social, achievement, and control dimensions

Perceived causal relations between anxiety, posttraumatic stress and depression:Extension to moderation, mediation, and network analysis

Background: Previous research demonstrates that posttraumatic memory reexperiencing, depression, anxiety, and guilt-shame are frequently co-occurring problems that may be causally related. Objectives: The present study utilized Perceived Causal Relations (PCR) scaling in order to assess participants’ own attributions concerning whether and to what degree these co-occurring problems may be causally interrelated. Methods: 288 young adults rated the frequency and respective PCR scores associating their symptoms of posttraumatic reexperiencing, depression, anxiety, and guilt-shame. Results: PCR scores were found to moderate associations between the frequency of posttraumatic memory reexperiencing, depression, anxiety, and guilt-shame. Network analyses showed that the number of feedback loops between PCR scores was positively associated with symptom frequencies. Conclusion: Results tentatively support the interpretation of PCR scores as moderators of the association between different psychological problems, and lend support to the hypothesis that increased symptom frequencies are observed in the presence of an increased number of causal feedback loops between symptoms. Additionally, a perceived causal role for the reexperiencing of traumatic memories in exacerbating emotional disturbance was identified

Neurofeedback tunes scale-free dynamics in spontaneous brain activity

Item does not contain fulltextBrain oscillations exhibit long-range temporal correlations (LRTCs), which reflect the regularity of their fluctuations: low values representing more random (decorrelated) while high values more persistent (correlated) dynamics. LRTCs constitute supporting evidence that the brain operates near criticality, a state where neuronal activities are balanced between order and randomness. Here, healthy adults used closed-loop brain training (neurofeedback, NFB) to reduce the amplitude of alpha oscillations, producing a significant increase in spontaneous LRTCs post-training. This effect was reproduced in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, where abnormally random dynamics were reversed by NFB, correlating with significant improvements in hyperarousal. Notably, regions manifesting abnormally low LRTCs (i.e., excessive randomness) normalized toward healthy population levels, consistent with theoretical predictions about self-organized criticality. Hence, when exposed to appropriate training, spontaneous cortical activity reveals a residual capacity for "self-tuning" its own temporal complexity, despite manifesting the abnormal dynamics seen in individuals with psychiatric disorder. Lastly, we observed an inverse-U relationship between strength of LRTC and oscillation amplitude, suggesting a breakdown of long-range dependence at high/low synchronization extremes, in line with recent computational models. Together, our findings offer a broader mechanistic framework for motivating research and clinical applications of NFB, encompassing disorders with perturbed LRTCs.12 p

The impact of cultural differences in self-representation on the neural substrates of posttraumatic stress disorder

A significant body of literature documents the neural mechanisms involved in the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, there is very little empirical work considering the influence of culture on these underlying mechanisms. Accumulating cultural neuroscience research clearly indicates that cultural differences in self-representation modulate many of the same neural processes proposed to be aberrant in PTSD. The objective of this review paper is to consider how culture may impact on the neural mechanisms underlying PTSD. We first outline five key affective and cognitive functions and their underlying neural correlates that have been identified as being disrupted in PTSD: (1) fear dysregulation; (2) attentional biases to threat; (3) emotion and autobiographical memory; (4) self-referential processing; and (5) attachment and interpersonal processing. Second, we consider prominent cultural theories and review the empirical research that has demonstrated the influence of cultural variations in self-representation on the neural substrates of these same five affective and cognitive functions. Finally, we propose a conceptual model that suggests that these five processes have major relevance to considering how culture may influence the neural processes underpinning PTSD. Highlights of the article