'I Once Stared at Myself in the Mirror for Eleven Hours.' Exploring mirror gazing in participants with body dysmorphic disorder

This study provides insight into the lived experience of mirror gazing using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and Photo Elicitation. A total of 10 participants who identified themselves as suffering from body dysmorphic disorder took photographs that related to their body dysmorphic disorder experience. Photographs were discussed in interviews. It was found that mirror gazing in body dysmorphic disorder is an embodied phenomenon. Motivations for mirror gazing were confusing, complex and masochistic. Overall, participants described mirrors as being controlling, imprisoning and disempowering forces that had a crippling and paralysing effect on life. It is argued that health psychologists must ask clients about their embodied experiences when looking in the mirror

Modelling the propagation of adult male muscle dysmorphia in Spain: economic, emotional and social drivers

This is an author's accepted manuscript of an article published in: “Applied Economics"; Volume 47, Issue 12, 2015; copyright Taylor & Francis; available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2013.870657Males aged over 40 do more gym practice to improve their body image as a way of reinforcing their personal self-esteem and sexual appeal. Cases when self-image becomes an obsession may result in a body dysmorphic disorder named ‘muscle dysmorphia’ (MD). The combination of psychological, environmental and biological drivers determines the appearance and development of this disorder. In this article, we developed a discrete population mathematical model to forecast the rate of prevalence of males who are noncompetitive bodybuilders at risk of suffering MD in Spain in forthcoming years. Economic, emotional, sociological and psychological motivations were taken into account to quantify the dynamic behaviour of Spanish noncompetitive bodybuilders. The impact of the unemployment is reflected in the construction of two coefficients, αu and α21, which explain subpopulation transits due to the economy. Sociological influences, such as human herding and social propagation, were also considered. Our results predict an increase in Spanish noncompetitive bodybuilders suffering MD from 1% in 2011 to around 11% in 2015. Our model can be applied to any other western country where data are available and to another study period when the hypotheses are applicable.De La Poza, E.; Jódar Sánchez, LA.; Alkasadi, M. (2015). Modelling the propagation of adult male muscle dysmorphia in Spain: economic, emotional and social drivers. Applied Economics. 47(12):1159-1169. https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2013.870657S115911694712Blashfield, R. K., Sprock, J., & Fuller, A. K. (1990). Suggested guidelines for including or excluding categories in the DSM-IV. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 31(1), 15-19. doi:10.1016/0010-440x(90)90049-xBoyda, D., & Shevlin, M. 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Frequent dieting among adolescents: psychosocial and health behavior correlates. American Journal of Public Health, 85(5), 695-701. doi:10.2105/ajph.85.5.695García, I., Jódar, L., Merello, P., & Santonja, F.-J. (2011). A discrete mathematical model for addictive buying: Predicting the affected population evolution. Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 54(7-8), 1634-1637. doi:10.1016/j.mcm.2010.12.012González-Martí, I., Bustos, J. G. F., Jordán, O. R. C., & Mayville, S. B. (2012). Validation of a Spanish version of the Muscle Appearance Satisfaction Scale: Escala de Satisfacción Muscular. Body Image, 9(4), 517-523. doi:10.1016/j.bodyim.2012.05.002Greenberg, J. L., Markowitz, S., Petronko, M. R., Taylor, C. E., Wilhelm, S., & Wilson, G. T. (2010). Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Adolescent Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 17(3), 248-258. doi:10.1016/j.cbpra.2010.02.002Hildebrandt, T., Schlundt, D., Langenbucher, J., & Chung, T. (2006). 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The Features and Phenomenology of Muscle Dysmorphia. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 9(5), 254-259. doi:10.1080/hrp.9.5.254.259Olivardia, R., Pope, H. G., & Hudson, J. I. (2000). Muscle Dysmorphia in Male Weightlifters: A Case-Control Study. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157(8), 1291-1296. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.157.8.1291Phillips, K. A. (2009)Understanding Body Dysmorphic Disorder an Essential Guide, 49, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.Phillips, K. A., Wilhelm, S., Koran, L. M., Didie, E. R., Fallon, B. A., Feusner, J., & Stein, D. J. (2010). Body dysmorphic disorder: some key issues for DSM-V. Depression and Anxiety, 27(6), 573-591. doi:10.1002/da.20709Pompper, D. (2010). Masculinities, the Metrosexual, and Media Images: Across Dimensions of Age and Ethnicity. Sex Roles, 63(9-10), 682-696. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9870-7Pope, H. G., Gruber, A. J., Choi, P., Olivardia, R., & Phillips, K. A. (1997). Muscle Dysmorphia: An Underrecognized Form of Body Dysmorphic Disorder. 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Paramagnetic Meissner Effect in Multiply-Connected Superconductors

We have measured a paramagnetic Meissner effect in Nb-Al2O3-Nb Josephson junction arrays using a scanning SQUID microscope. The arrays exhibit diamagnetism for some cooling fields and paramagnetism for other cooling fields. The measured mean magnetization is always less than 0.3 flux quantum (in terms of flux per unit cell of the array) for the range of cooling fields investigated. We demonstrate that a new model of magnetic screening, valid for multiply-connected superconductors, reproduces all of the essential features of paramagnetism that we observe and that no exotic mechanism, such as d-wave superconductivity, is needed for paramagnetism.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, LaTe

Dancers entrain more effectively than non-dancers to another actor's movements

For many everyday sensorimotor tasks, trained dancers have been found to exhibit distinct and sometimes superior (more stable or robust) patterns of behavior compared to non-dancers. Past research has demonstrated that experts in fields requiring specialized physical training and behavioral control exhibit superior interpersonal coordination capabilities for expertise-related tasks. To date, however, no published studies have compared dancers’ abilities to coordinate their movements with the movements of another individual—i.e., during a so-called visual-motor interpersonal coordination task. The current study was designed to investigate whether trained dancers would be better able to coordinate with a partner performing short sequences of dance-like movements than non-dancers. Movement time series were recorded for individual dancers and non-dancers asked to synchronize with a confederate during three different movement sequences characterized by distinct dance styles (i.e., dance team routine, contemporary ballet, mixed style) without hearing any auditory signals or music. A diverse range of linear and nonlinear analyses (i.e., Cross-correlation, Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA), and Cross-Wavelet analysis) provided converging measures of coordination across multiple time scales. While overall levels of interpersonal coordination were influenced by differences in movement sequence for both groups, dancers consistently displayed higher levels of coordination with the confederate at both short and long time scales. These findings demonstrate that the visual-motor coordination capabilities of trained dancers allow them to better synchronize with other individuals performing dance-like movements than non-dancers. Further investigation of similar tasks may help to increase the understanding of visual-motor entrainment in general, as well as provide insight into the effects of focused training on visual-motor and interpersonal coordination

A tunable zinc finger-based framework for Boolean logic computation in mammalian cells

The ability to perform molecular-level computation in mammalian cells has the potential to enable a new wave of sophisticated cell-based therapies and diagnostics. To this end, we developed a Boolean logic framework utilizing artificial Cys2–His2 zinc finger transcription factors (ZF-TFs) as computing elements. Artificial ZFs can be designed to specifically bind different DNA sequences and thus comprise a diverse set of components ideal for the construction of scalable networks. We generate ZF-TF activators and repressors and demonstrate a novel, general method to tune ZF-TF response by fusing ZF-TFs to leucine zipper homodimerization domains. We describe 15 transcriptional activators that display 2- to 463-fold induction and 15 transcriptional repressors that show 1.3- to 16-fold repression. Using these ZF-TFs, we compute OR, NOR, AND and NAND logic, employing hybrid promoters and split intein-mediated protein splicing to integrate signals. The split intein strategy is able to fully reconstitute the ZF-TFs, maintaining them as a uniform set of computing elements. Together, these components comprise a robust platform for building mammalian synthetic gene circuits capable of precisely modulating cellular behavior

Empathy, engagement, entrainment: the interaction dynamics of aesthetic experience

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer

At-risk elementary school children with one year of classroom music instruction are better at keeping a beat

Temporal processing underlies both music and language skills. There is increasing evidence that rhythm abilities track with reading performance and that language disorders such as dyslexia are associated with poor rhythm abilities. However, little is known about how basic time-keeping skills can be shaped by musical training, particularly during critical literacy development years. This study was carried out in collaboration with Harmony Project, a non-profit organization providing free music education to children in the gang reduction zones of Los Angeles. Our findings reveal that elementary school children with just one year of classroom music instruction perform more accurately in a basic finger-tapping task than their untrained peers, providing important evidence that fundamental time-keeping skills may be strengthened by short-term music training. This sets the stage for further examination of how music programs may be used to support the development of basic skills underlying learning and literacy, particularly in at-risk populations which may benefit the most

The pathophysiology of fluid and electrolyte balance in the older adult surgical patient

Background & aims: Age-related physiological changes predispose even the healthy older adult to fluid and electrolyte abnormalities which can cause morbidity and mortality. The aim of this narrative review is to highlight key aspects of age-related pathophysiological changes that affect fluid and electrolyte balance in older adults and underpin their importance in the perioperative period. Methods: The Web of Science, MEDLINE, PubMed and Google Scholar databases were searched using key terms for relevant studies published in English on fluid balance in older adults during the 15 years preceding June 2013. Randomised controlled trials and large cohort studies were sought; other studieswere used when these were not available. The bibliographies of extracted papers were also searched for relevant articles. Results: Older adults are susceptible to dehydration and electrolyte abnormalities, with causes ranging from physical disability restricting access to fluid intake to iatrogenic causes including polypharmacy and unmonitored diuretic usage. Renal senescence, as well as physical and mental decline, increase this susceptibility. Older adults are also predisposed to water retention and related electrolyte abnormalities, exacerbated at times of physiological stress. Positive fluid balance has been shown to be an independent risk factor for morbidity and mortality in critically ill patients with acute kidney injury. Conclusions: Age-related pathophysiological changes in the handling of fluid and electrolytes make older adults undergoing surgery a high-risk group and an understanding of these changes will enable better management of fluid and electrolyte therapy in the older adult

Non-invasive Predictors of Human Cortical Bone Mechanical Properties: T2-Discriminated 1H NMR Compared with High Resolution X-ray

Recent advancements in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have enabled clinical imaging of human cortical bone, providing a potentially powerful new means for assessing bone health with molecular-scale sensitivities unavailable to conventional X-ray-based diagnostics. To this end, 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and high-resolution X-ray signals from human cortical bone samples were correlated with mechanical properties of bone. Results showed that 1H NMR signals were better predictors of yield stress, peak stress, and pre-yield toughness than were the X-ray derived signals. These 1H NMR signals can, in principle, be extracted from clinical MRI, thus offering the potential for improved clinical assessment of fracture risk

Immunochip analysis identifies multiple susceptibility loci for systemic sclerosis

In this study, 1,833 systemic sclerosis (SSc) cases and 3,466 controls were genotyped with the Immunochip array. Classical alleles, amino acid residues, and SNPs across the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region were imputed and tested. These analyses resulted in a model composed of six polymorphic amino acid positions and seven SNPs that explained the observed significant associations in the region. In addition, a replication step comprising 4,017 SSc cases and 5,935 controls was carried out for several selected non-HLA variants, reaching a total of 5,850 cases and 9,401 controls of European ancestry. Following this strategy, we identified and validated three SSc risk loci, including DNASE1L3 at 3p14, the SCHIP1-IL12A locus at 3q25, and ATG5 at 6q21, as well as a suggested association of the TREH-DDX6 locus at 11q23. The associations of several previously reported SSc risk loci were validated and further refined, and the observed peak of association in PXK was related to DNASE1L3. Our study has increased the number of known genetic associations with SSc, provided further insight into the pleiotropic effects of shared autoimmune risk factors, and highlighted the power of dense mapping for detecting previously overlooked susceptibility loci