When the selfing process goes wrong: Social-biofeed-back, causal mechanisms, and pathological narcissism

In direct opposition to the dominant nativist perspective tracing back to Descartes, William James suggested that the sense of self is constructed through a never-ending process of reflexivity. In more recent years, empirical data from various psychological domains (notably developmental, clinical and social psychology) have further strengthened this constructivist perspective. Notably, Gergely and Watson\u2019s social biofeedback model has been proposed as a central mechanism in the development of emotional introspection, which itself constitutes a crucial step in the process leading to a mature sense of self. In accordance with the social bio-feedback model, it has been suggested that reiterated failures in biofeedback mechanisms predispose an individual to mental suffering. While borderline personality disorder and antisocial behavior have received the most attention, here I make a preliminary attempt to examine the impact of dysfunctional biofeedback on the pathogenesis of narcissism, suggesting that some central features of pathological narcissism may result from serious and reiterated disruptions in social biofeedback. This preliminary exploration aims to deepen our understanding of the origins of psychological suffering. In this sense, my effort could contribute to the construction of a causal model going beyond the purely categorical, atheoretical analysis of mental diseases typical of the diagnostic and statistical manuals

Uncertainty, Attachment, and Narcissism, but most of all Vulnerability: The Perfect Recipe for Conspiracy Therapy

The paper aims to investigate the pervasiveness of conspiracy attitudes from a psychological point of view. Starting from one of the most common and shared definitions of conspiracy theories (a defensive strategy to manage stressful social events), we will first focus on cognitive distortions and then move on to the affective dimension. We will suggest that conspiracy beliefs can be explained by combining affective dynamics that occur on two distinct levels, individual and social. On the first, attachment disorders are predictive of anxious behaviour and existential insecurity. On the second, the need for uniqueness and for recognition/confirmation by the group compensates for narcissistic frustrations and the sense of social exclusion

The Effect of Simple Melodic Lines on Aesthetic Experience: Brain Response to Structural Manipulations

This fMRI study investigates the effect of melody on aesthetic experience in listeners na\uefve to formal musical knowledge. Using simple melodic lines, whose syntactic structure was manipulated, we created systematic acoustic dissonance. Two stimulus categories were created: canonical (syntactically \u201ccorrect,\u201d in the Western culture) and modified (made of an altered version of the canonical melodies). The stimuli were presented under two tasks: listening and aesthetic judgment. Data were analyzed as a function of stimulus structure (canonical and modified) and stimulus aesthetics, as appraised by each participant during scanning. The critical contrast modified versus canonical stimuli produced enhanced activation of deep temporal regions, including the parahippocampus, suggesting that melody manipulation induced feelings of unpleasantness in the listeners. This was supported by our behavioral data indicating decreased aesthetic preference for the modified melodies. Medial temporal activation could also have been evoked by stimulus structural novelty determining increased memory load for the modified stimuli. The analysis of melodies judged as beautiful revealed that aesthetic judgment of simple melodies relied on a fine-structural analysis of the stimuli subserved by a left frontal activation and, possibly, on meaning attribution at the charge of right superior temporal sulcus for increasingly pleasurable stimuli

Allosteric modulators targeting cannabinoid cb1 and cb2 receptors: Implications for drug discovery

Allosteric modulators of cannabinoid receptors hold great therapeutic potential, as they do not possess intrinsic efficacy, but instead enhance or diminish the receptor's response of orthosteric ligands allowing for the tempering of cannabinoid receptor signaling without the desensitization, tolerance and dependence. Allosteric modulators of cannabinoid receptors have numerous advantages over the orthosteric ligands such as higher receptor type selectivity, probe dependence and biased signaling, so they have a great potential to separate the therapeutic benefits from side effects own of orthosteric ligands. This review aims to give an overview of the CB1 and CB2 receptor allosteric modulators highlighting the structure-activity relationship and pharmacological profile of each classes, and their future promise

Le motivazioni del cospirazionismo

Che cosa comporta abbracciare una teoria cospirazionista? Perché il cospirazionista, indipendentemente dal livello di istruzione e dalla professione, cerca di difenderla e diffonderla addirittura, nonostante palesi contraddizioni talvolta molto fantasiose? Secondo gli autori, l’unico modo per dare una risposta soddisfacente alla comprensione del fenomeno del cospirazionismo - un fenomeno sociale che ha raggiunto una diffusione preoccupante con serie implicazioni a livello psicologico, culturale e politico – è riuscire a comprendere le ragioni del suo fascino. Gli autori illustrano una possibile ‘ricetta perfetta’ perché si inneschi e si autoalimenti la mentalità cospirazionista. Dalla revisione della letteratura più recente emerge che sentimenti di insicurezza esistenziale e ansia generalizzata possono essere indicati quali il primo ingrediente della ricetta; essi sarebbero anche in grado di distorcere i meccanismi di ragionamento e acquisizione delle informazioni. Peculiari tratti e difese narcisistiche unite a una condizione di isolamento e frustrazione sociale sono i composti del secondo ingrediente. Quest’ultimi tratti danno corpo a quelle ideazioni di stampo paranoideo, che colpiscono tanto l’attenzione dei media. Il terzo ingrediente è il bisogno di integrazione (e riconoscimento sociale), una spinta motivazionale incontenibile, autentico collante delle reti cospirazioniste

D-Dimer as Biomarker for Early Prediction of Clinical Outcomes in Patients With Severe Invasive Infections Due to Streptococcus Pneumoniae and Neisseria Meningitidis

Sepsis is defined as life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection; no current clinical measure adequately reflects the concept of dysregulated response. Coagulation plays a pivotal role in the normal response to pathogens (immunothrombosis), thus the evolution toward sepsis-induced coagulopathy could be individuate through coagulation/fibrinolysis-related biomarkers. We focused on the role of D-dimer assessed within 24 h after admission in predicting clinical outcomes in a cohort of 270 patients hospitalized in a 79 months period for meningitis and/or bloodstream infections due to Streptococcus pneumoniae (n = 162) or Neisseria meningitidis (n = 108). Comparisons were performed with unpaired t-test, Mann-Whitney-test or chi-squared-test with continuity correction, as appropriate, and multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed with Bayesian model averaging. In-hospital mortality was 14.8% for the overall population, significantly higher in S. pneumoniae than in N. meningitidis patients: 19.1 vs. 8.3%, respectively (p = 0.014). At univariable logistic regression analysis the following variables were significantly associated with in-hospital mortality: pneumococcal etiology, female sex, age, ICU admission, SOFA score, septic shock, MODS, and D-dimer levels. At multivariable analysis D-dimer showed an effect only in N. meningitidis subgroup: as 500 ng/mL of D-dimer increased, the probability of unfavorable outcome increased on average by 4%. Median D-dimer was significantly higher in N. meningitidis than in S. pneumoniae patients (1,314 vs. 1,055 ng/mL, p = 0.009). For N. meningitidis in-hospital mortality was 0% for D-dimer 7,000 ng/mL. Kaplan-Meier analysis of in-hospital mortality showed for N. meningitidis infections a statistically significant difference for D-dimer >7,000 ng/mL compared to values <500 ng/mL (p = 0.021) and 500\u20133,000 ng/mL (p = 0.002). For S. pneumoniae the mortality risk resulted always high, over 10%, irrespective by D-dimer values. In conclusion, D-dimer is rapid to be obtained, at low cost and available everywhere, and can help stratify the risk of in-hospital mortality and complications in patients with invasive infections due to N. meningitidis: D-dimer <500 ng/mL excludes any further complications, and a cut-off of 7,000 ng/mL seems able to predict a significantly increased mortality risk from much <10% to over 25%