Metacognition and headache: which Is the role in childhood and adolescence?

Headache, in particular migraine, is one of the most frequent neurological symptoms in children and adolescents and it affects about 60% of children and adolescents all over the world. Headache can affect several areas of child’s functioning, such as school, physical activities, peer, and family relationship. The global and severe burden of this disease requires a multidisciplinary strategy and an effective treatment addressed all of the patient’s needs and based on cutting-edge scientific research. In recent years, research has focused on cognitive factors specifically in functions called metacognitive processes. Metacognition can be defined as the knowledge, beliefs, and cognitive processes involved in monitoring, control, and assessment of cognition. Metacognition seems to be closely related to the ability of theory of mind, the ability to infer, and reason about the mental states of other people in order to predict and explain own behavior. Recent studies found a relationship between metacognitive skills and anxiety, depression, motivation, academic performance, human social interactions, and stress symptoms. This relationship is very interesting for headache treatment, because these factors are the most commonly reported triggers in this disorder and there is a high comorbidity with anxiety and depression in children and adolescents with headache. So, headache and these comorbidities, in particular anxiety and depression, may have in common persistent and maladaptive patterns of thinking which are related to maladaptive metacognitive beliefs. Further research should assess metacognitive processes of children and adolescents with headache in order to increase their ability to control their own cognitive processes and consequently monitor factors which may trigger the attacks

Headache and alexithymia in children and adolescents: what Is the connection?

Background: Headache is one of the most common complaints in children and adolescents and comorbidity rates are very high and the major associated diseases are depression, anxiety, atopic disorders, sleep, and behavioral disorders. In recent years, it has been highlighted that difficulties regulating emotions such as alexithymia have also been associated with diagnosis of somatization. Methods: We carried out a mini review analyzing the relation between alexithymia and primary headache (e.g., migraine and tension type headache) in children and adolescents by synthesizing the relevant studies in the literature on PubMed, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar. Search terms were "alexithymia" combined with the "primary headache," "migraine," "tension type headache," "children," and "adolescents." Results: All analyzed studies found higher levels of alexithymia in children and adolescents with headache than control groups but there are different opinions about the relationship between headache and alexithymia. For example, some studies suggest that the association between headache and alexithymia in children may be due to an incomplete development of emotive competency or a general immature cognitive development, instead other studies found a correlation between headache symptoms, insecure attachment, and alexithymia. There seems to be also differences between children with migraine compared to those with tension type headache (TTH). Conclusion: There are some studies on adults suffering from headache or migraine and alexithymia, but there is only a moderate amount of research on pediatric age with different opinions and theories about this relationship. Further studies on children and adolescents are necessary to effectively understand this relationship and to help children to reduce headache and improve emotional consciousness

Don't judge a book by its cover. factitious disorder imposed on children-report on 2 cases

Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA), also known as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP) is a very serious form of child abuse. The perpetrator, usually the mother, invents symptoms or causes real ones in order to make her child appear sick. Usually this is due to a maladaptive disorder or to an excessive of attention-seeking on her part. We report here two new cases of FDIA. The first one is a 9-year-old boy with a history of convulsive episodes, reduced verbal production, mild psychomotor disorder and urological problems who underwent several invasive procedures and hospitalizations before a diagnosis of FDIA was made. The second is a 12 year-old girl with headache, abdominal pain, lipothymic episodes, seizures and a gait impairment, who was hospitalized in several hospitals before an FDIA was diagnosed

The SXI telescope on board EXIST: scientific performances

The SXI telescope is one of the three instruments on board EXIST, a multiwavelength observatory in charge of performing a global survey of the sky in hard X-rays searching for Supermassive Black Holes. One of the primary objectives of EXIST is also to study with unprecedented sensitivity the most unknown high energy sources in the Universe, like high redshift GRBs, which will be pointed promptly by the Spacecraft by autonomous trigger based on hard X-ray localization on board. The recent addition of a soft X-ray telescope to the EXIST payload complement, with an effective area of ~950 cm2 in the energy band 0.2-3 keV and extended response up to 10 keV will allow to make broadband studies from 0.1 to 600 keV. In particular, investigations of the spectra components and states of AGNs and monitoring of variability of sources, study of the prompt and afterglow emission of GRBs since the early phases, which will help to constrain the emission models and finally, help the identification of sources in the EXIST hard X-ray survey and the characterization of the transient events detected. SXI will also perform surveys: a scanning survey with sky coverage of about 2pi and limiting flux of 5x10^{-14}cgs plus other serendipitous. We give an overview of the SXI scientific performance and also describe the status of its design emphasizing how it has been derived by the scientific requirements.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, to be published in Proc. of SPIE, vol 7435-11, 200

Quasi-simultaneous INTEGRAL, SWIFT, and NuSTAR Observations of the New X-Ray Clocked Burster 1RXS J180408.9-342058

We report the quasi-simultaneous INTEGRAL, SWIFT, and NuSTAR observations showing spectral state transitions in the neutron star low-mass X-ray binary 1RXS J180408.9−342058 during its 2015 outburst. We present results of the analysis of high-quality broad energy band (0.8–200 keV) data in three different spectral states: high/soft, low/very-hard, and transitional state. The broadband spectra can be described in general as the sum of thermal Comptonization and reflection due to illumination of an optically thick accretion disk. During the high/soft state, blackbody emission is generated from the accretion disk and the surface of the neutron star. This emission, measured at a temperature of kT_(bb) ~ 1.2 keV, is then Comptonized by a thick corona with an electron temperature of ~2.5 keV. For the transitional and low/very-hard state, the spectra are successfully explained with emission from a double Comptonizing corona. The first component is described by thermal Comptonization of seed disk/neutron star photons (kT_(bb) ~ 1.2 keV) by a cold corona cloud with kT_e ~ 8–10 keV, while the second one originates from lower temperature blackbody photons (kT_(bb) ≤ 0.1 keV) Comptonized by a hot corona (kT_e ~ 35 keV). Finally, from NuSTAR observations, there is evidence that the source is a new clocked burster. The average time between two successive X-ray bursts corresponds to ~7.9 and ~4.0 ks when the persistent emission decreases by a factor of ~2, moving from a very hard to transitional state. The accretion rate (~4 x 10⁻⁹ M⊙ yr ⁻¹) and the decay time of the X-ray bursts longer than ~30 s suggest that the thermonuclear emission is due to mixed H/He burning triggered by thermally unstable He ignition

Summary of the 13th IACHEC Meeting

We summarize the outcome of the 13th meeting of the International Astronomical Consortium for High Energy Calibration (IACHEC), held at Tenuta dei Ciclamini (Avigliano Umbro, Italy) in April 2018. Fifty-one scientists directly involved in the calibration of operational and future high-energy missions gathered during 3.5 days to discuss the current status of the X-ray payload inter-calibration and possible approaches to improve it. This summary consists of reports from the various working groups with topics ranging from the identification and characterization of standard calibration sources, multi-observatory cross-calibration campaigns, appropriate and new statistical techniques, calibration of instruments and characterization of background, and communication and preservation of knowledge and results for the benefit of the astronomical community.Comment: 12 page

The Proposed High Energy Telescope (HET) for EXIST

The hard X-ray sky now being studied by INTEGRAL and Swift and soon by NuSTAR is rich with energetic phenomena and highly variable non-thermal phenomena on a broad range of timescales. The High Energy Telescope (HET) on the proposed Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST) mission will repeatedly survey the full sky for rare and luminous hard X-ray phenomena at unprecedented sensitivities. It will detect and localize (<20", at 5 sigma threshold) X-ray sources quickly for immediate followup identification by two other onboard telescopes - the Soft X-ray imager (SXI) and Optical/Infrared Telescope (IRT). The large array (4.5 m^2) of imaging (0.6 mm pixel) CZT detectors in the HET, a coded-aperture telescope, will provide unprecedented high sensitivity (~0.06 mCrab Full Sky in a 2 year continuous scanning survey) in the 5 - 600 keV band. The large field of view (90 deg x 70 deg) and zenith scanning with alternating-orbital nodding motion planned for the first 2 years of the mission will enable nearly continuous monitoring of the full sky. A 3y followup pointed mission phase provides deep UV-Optical-IR-Soft X-ray and Hard X-ray imaging and spectroscopy for thousands of sources discovered in the Survey. We review the HET design concept and report the recent progress of the CZT detector development, which is underway through a series of balloon-borne wide-field hard X-ray telescope experiments, ProtoEXIST. We carried out a successful flight of the first generation of fine pixel large area CZT detectors (ProtoEXIST1) on Oct 9, 2009. We also summarize our future plan (ProtoEXIST2 & 3) for the technology development needed for the HET.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables, SPIE Conference "Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2010"; to appear in Proceedings SPIE (2010

A new bursting X-ray transient: SAX J1750.8-2900

We have analysed in detail the discovery measurements of the X-ray burster SAX J1750.8-2900 by the Wide Field Cameras on board BeppoSAX in spring 1997, at a position ~1.2 degrees off the Galactic Centre. The source was in outburst on March 13th when the first observation started and showed X-ray emission for ~ 2 weeks. A total of 9 bursts were detected, with peak intensities varying from ~ 0.4 to 1.0 Crab in the 2-10 keV range. Most bursts showed a fast rise time (~ 1s), an exponential decay profile with e-folding time of ~ 5s, spectral softening during decay, and a spectrum which is consistent with few keV blackbody radiation. These features identify them as type-I X-ray bursts of thermonuclear origin. The presence of type-I bursts and the source position close to the Galactic Centre favours the classification of this object as a neutron star low mass X-ray binary. X-ray emission from SAX J1750.8-2900 was not detected in the previous and subsequent Galactic bulge monitoring, and the source was never seen bursting again.Comment: 13 pages, 3 Postscript figures, aaspp4 styl