Comparison of subthalamic unilateral and bilateral theta burst deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease

High-frequency, conventional deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) is usually applied bilaterally under the assumption of additive effects due to interhemispheric crosstalk. Theta burst stimulation (TBS-DBS) represents a new patterned stimulation mode with 5 Hz interburst and 200 Hz intraburst frequency, whose stimulation effects in a bilateral mode compared to unilateral are unknown. This single-center study evaluated acute motor effects of the most affected, contralateral body side in 17 PD patients with unilateral subthalamic TBS-DBS and 11 PD patients with bilateral TBS-DBS. Compared to therapy absence, both unilateral and bilateral TBS-DBS significantly improved (p < 0.05) lateralized Movement Disorder Society-Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale part III (MDS-UPDRS III) scores. Bilateral TBS-DBS revealed only slight, but not significant additional effects in comparison to unilateral TBS-DBS on total lateralized motor scores, but on the subitem lower limb rigidity. These results indicate that bilateral TBS-DBS has limited additive beneficial effects compared to unilateral TBS-DBS in the short term

Children with social anxiety disorder show blunted pupillary reactivity and altered eye contact processing in response to emotional faces: Insights from pupillometry and eye movements

Cognitive models and adult research associate social anxiety disorder (SAD) with hypervigilant-avoidant processing of social information, such as eye contact. However, processing biases in childhood SAD remain mostly unexplored. We examined 10- to 13-year-old children's eye contact processing and pupil dilation in response to happy, neutral, and angry faces in three groups: SAD (n = 31), mixed anxiety disorders (MAD; n = 30), and healthy controls (HC; n = 32). Compared to HC, SAD children showed faster first fixations on the eye region of neutral faces and shorter first fixation durations on the eye region of all faces. No differences between the two clinical groups emerged in eye movement results. SAD girls showed reduced pupil dilation in response to happy and angry faces compared to MAD and to happy faces compared to HC. SAD boys showed reduced pupil dilation in response to neutral faces compared to HC. Dimensionally, reduced pupil dilation was linked to social anxiety severity while eye movements were correlated with mixed anxiety and depressive severity. Results suggest that hypervigilant-avoidant eye contact processing and a blunted pupillary reactivity characterize children with SAD. Both transdiagnostic and disorder-specific processing biases are relevant for the understanding of childhood SAD

Similarities and differences in emotion regulation and psychopathology in Iranian and German school-children: A cross-cultural study

Background: Internalizing and externalizing disorders in children and adolescents have been described in many countries. This study was performed to better understand the effect of culture on emotion regulation, and aimed to identify the relationship between emotion regulation and psychopathology in children. Methods: Participants were 269 children from Iran and Germany who voluntarily agreed to participate. Groups were defined by cultural background, Participants completed the Children Emotion Management Scale (CEMS), Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), and the Youth self-report YSR questionnaires. Data were analyzed using Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) with post-hoc Scheffe tests conducted to identify the exact nature of group differences. Results: There were significant main effect of country (P < 0.001) and sex (P = 0.003). For CEMS, but no significant interaction For CERQ there was a significant main effect of country (P <0.001), but no main effect of sex nor an interaction. MANOVA analyses for internalizing and externalizing symptoms as measured by the YSR indicated significant main effects of country and sex, but the interaction did not reach significance (P=0.088). Conclusions: A main result of the study showed that children in Iran report more internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Culture and emotional expression may explain differences between Iranian and German children. It seems to be difficult for young children in Iran to express themselves, this may be because they are expected to show respect to maintain harmony in the family

Startling sweet temptations: hedonic chocolate deprivation modulates experience, eating behavior, and eyeblink startle.

Many individuals restrict their food intake to prevent weight gain. This restriction has both homeostatic and hedonic effects but their relative contribution is currently unclear. To isolate hedonic effects of food restriction, we exposed regular chocolate eaters to one week of chocolate deprivation but otherwise regular eating. Before and after this hedonic deprivation, participants viewed images of chocolate and images of high-calorie but non-chocolate containing foods, while experiential, behavioral and eyeblink startle responses were measured. Compared to satiety, hedonic deprivation triggered increased chocolate wanting, liking, and chocolate consumption but also feelings of frustration and startle potentiation during the intertrial intervals. Deprivation was further characterized by startle inhibition during both chocolate and food images relative to the intertrial intervals. Individuals who responded with frustration to the manipulation and those who scored high on a questionnaire of impulsivity showed more relative startle inhibition. The results reveal the profound effects of hedonic deprivation on experiential, behavioral and attentional/appetitive response systems and underscore the role of individual differences and state variables for startle modulation. Implications for dieting research and practice as well as for eating and weight disorders are discussed

Stress and emotion processing

The current study investigates the effect of a single episode of acute social stress on healthy children’s processing of facial expressions of emotion. Healthy nine- and ten-year-old boys (N = 39) underwent either a standardized psychosocial laboratory stressor (the Trier Social Stress Test for Children) or a control condition without exposure to socio-evaluative stress. Immediately thereafter, they classified pictures of faces displaying ambiguous facial expressions. Boys who had undergone the stress procedure were more likely to categorize ambiguously angry-fearful faces as fearful (and simultaneously less likely to categorize them as angry) relative to boys who had undergone the control condition. We suggest (i) that decreased sensitivity to anger cues following a stressful experience may represent an adaptive coping mechanism in healthy children, and/or (ii) that a heightened sensitivity to fearful cues may indicate the influence of children’s own emotional states on their interpretations of others’ emotional states.Arts, Faculty ofNon UBCPsychology, Department ofReviewedFacult

Number of calories consumed during manipulation check as a function of state (deprived, satiated) and food type (chocolate, food) (A).

<p>Six participants showed opposite effects of consuming more chocolate during satiation and were therefore excluded (B). No systematic deprivation effects were seen for consumption of non-chocolate foods in excluded or included participants (C).</p

Eyeblink startle magnitude (image – ITI) as a function of state (deprived, satiated) and food type (chocolate, food) (A).

<p>Startle magnitued, collapsed across food type, correlated negatively with state measures of frustration/depression (B), and attentional impulsiveness (BIS, Barrat Impulsiveness Scale) (C).</p

Subjective ratings as a function of state (deprived, satiated) and food type (chocolate, food): Picture-wise desire to eat (A), and palatability (B) ratings and block-wise ratings of frustration/depression (C).

<p>Subjective ratings as a function of state (deprived, satiated) and food type (chocolate, food): Picture-wise desire to eat (A), and palatability (B) ratings and block-wise ratings of frustration/depression (C).</p

The impact of pre-existing anxiety on affective and cognitive processing of a Virtual Reality analogue trauma

<div><p>Dysfunctional processing of traumatic events may be in particular related to high trait anxiety as a pre-traumatic risk factor for the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, as this has rarely been investigated in prospective, experimental studies, we aimed to analyse the association between high trait anxiety and affective as well as cognitive processing of stress using a new prospective Virtual Reality analogue trauma paradigm to overcome limitations of retrospective or current analogue designs. Individuals with high and low trait anxiety (<i>N</i> = 80) were exposed to a multi-sensory Virtual Reality emergency scenario while psychophysiological stress response, emotion regulation and intrusive memories were assessed. Our results showed that high trait anxiety individuals display increased (i) subjective stress responses, (ii) emotion dysregulation and (iii) intrusive memories upon VR analogue trauma exposure. In particular, our sample of high trait anxiety individuals displayed limited access to different emotion regulation strategies as well as increased worry and rumination regarding perceived intrusive memories. Considering the complex interplay of multiple risk factors, our findings suggests that peri-traumatic affective processing seems to mediate high trait anxiety and post-traumatic intrusive memories thereby pointing out the central role of peri-traumatic processes for intrusion development. In addition, HA as a modulating pre-traumatic risk factor might further increase the risk of later dysfunctional processing of an analogue trauma by interacting with factors of affective processing during analogue trauma exposure. Implications of these findings which may contribute to a higher risk to develop PTSD are discussed.</p></div

Emotion dysregulation of a Virtual Reality analogue trauma as a function of trait anxiety.

<p>Group differences between high and low trait anxiety regarding emotion dysregulation are shown, as measured by the total score as well as the subscales of the difficulties in emotion regulation scale (DERS). Between group differences of high and low trait anxious individuals are indicated (**<i>p</i>< .01; ***<i>p</i>< .001). Error bars represent standard errors of the mean.</p