Attention bias dynamics and symptom severity during and following CBT for social anxiety disorder

Objective: Threat-related attention bias figures prominently in contemporary accounts of the maintenance of anxiety disorders, yet longitudinal intervention research relating attention bias to anxiety symptom severity is limited. Capitalizing on recent advances in the conceptualization and measurement of attention bias, we aimed to examine the relation between attention bias, indexed using trial-level bias scores (TLBSs) to quantify temporal dynamics reflecting dysregulation of attentional processing of threat (as opposed to aggregated mean bias scores) and social anxiety symptom severity over the course of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and 1-month follow-up. Method: Adults with social anxiety disorder (N = 39) assigned to either yohimbine-or placebo-augmented CBT completed measures of attention bias and social anxiety symptom severity weekly throughout CBT (5 sessions) and at 1-week and 1-month posttreatment. Results: TLBSs of attention bias temporal dynamics showed stronger psychometric properties than mean aggregated scores and were highly interrelated, in line with within-subject temporal variability fluctuating in time between attentional overengagement and strategic avoidance from threat. Attention bias toward threat and temporal variability in attention bias (i.e., attentional dysregulation), but not attention bias away from threat, significantly reduced over the course of CBT. Cross-lag analyses revealed no evidence of a causal relation between reductions in attentional dysregulation leading to symptom severity reduction, or vice versa. Observed relations did not vary as a function of time. Conclusions: We found no evidence for attentional dysregulation as a causal mechanism for symptom reduction in CBT for social anxiety disorders. Implications for future research are discussed

Optogenetics and deep brain stimulation neurotechnologies

Brain neural network is composed of densely packed, intricately wired neurons whose activity patterns ultimately give rise to every behavior, thought, or emotion that we experience. Over the past decade, a novel neurotechnique, optogenetics that combines light and genetic methods to control or monitor neural activity patterns, has proven to be revolutionary in understanding the functional role of specific neural circuits. We here briefly describe recent advance in optogenetics and compare optogenetics with deep brain stimulation technology that holds the promise for treating many neurological and psychiatric disorders

Background risk of breast cancer and the association between physical activity and mammographic density

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0

Distributed Synthesis in Continuous Time

We introduce a formalism modelling communication of distributed agents strictly in continuous-time. Within this framework, we study the problem of synthesising local strategies for individual agents such that a specified set of goal states is reached, or reached with at least a given probability. The flow of time is modelled explicitly based on continuous-time randomness, with two natural implications: First, the non-determinism stemming from interleaving disappears. Second, when we restrict to a subclass of non-urgent models, the quantitative value problem for two players can be solved in EXPTIME. Indeed, the explicit continuous time enables players to communicate their states by delaying synchronisation (which is unrestricted for non-urgent models). In general, the problems are undecidable already for two players in the quantitative case and three players in the qualitative case. The qualitative undecidability is shown by a reduction to decentralized POMDPs for which we provide the strongest (and rather surprising) undecidability result so far

The Shear TEsting Programme 1: Weak lensing analysis of simulated ground-based observations

The Shear TEsting Programme, STEP, is a collaborative project to improve the accuracy and reliability of all weak lensing measurements in preparation for the next generation of wide-field surveys. In this first STEP paper we present the results of a blind analysis of simulated ground-based observations of relatively simple galaxy morphologies. The most successful methods are shown to achieve percent level accuracy. From the cosmic shear pipelines that have been used to constrain cosmology, we find weak lensing shear measured to an accuracy that is within the statistical errors of current weak lensing analyses, with shear measurements accurate to better than 7%. The dominant source of measurement error is shown to arise from calibration uncertainties where the measured shear is over or under-estimated by a constant multiplicative factor. This is of concern as calibration errors cannot be detected through standard diagnostic tests. The measured calibration errors appear to result from stellar contamination, false object detection, the shear measurement method itself, selection bias and/or the use of biased weights. Additive systematics (false detections of shear) resulting from residual point-spread function anisotropy are, in most cases, reduced to below an equivalent shear of 0.001, an order of magnitude below cosmic shear distortions on the scales probed by current surveys. Our results provide a snapshot view of the accuracy of current ground-based weak lensing methods and a benchmark upon which we can improve. To this end we provide descriptions of each method tested and include details of the eight different implementations of the commonly used Kaiser, Squires and Broadhurst (1995) method (KSB+) to aid the improvement of future KSB+ analyses

Ovarian steroid hormones: what's hot in the stem cell pool?

The vital role of ovarian hormones in the development of the normal breast foreshadowed their importance in mammary stem cell regulation. Two recent papers reveal that 17β-estradiol and progesterone control the size and repopulating ability of the mammary stem cell compartment. This likely occurs via paracrine signaling from steroid receptor-positive luminal cells to steroid receptor-negative stem cells. These findings illuminate roles for the female sex steroids in mobilizing the stem cell pool in the normal breast, and also provide a crucial link between the known hormonal risks of breast cancer and the potential stem cell origin of this disease

Designation processes and semantic substitutions used by european portuguese children in a vocabulary test

This research study focus on the designation processes and semantic substitutions of each word on the vocabulary sub-task from the language test for children – ABFW, standardized in Brazil and adapted to European Portuguese, as well as the comparison of the results obtained in the two countries, to analyze the relevance of their extensibility to the Portuguese population. Methods: The test was applied to 150 children from 5 to 6 years old, of typical development. The test consists of 9 conceptual categories. Each category consists of different words, which were always assessed in the same sequential order. Results: The sample of this study showed a lower performance only in clothes, places and food semantic categories. All the other categories have outperformed the standard. The categories of vocabulary with higher percentage in the right designation of the words were colors and shapes, animals and toys and music instruments. The categories with a higher percentage of substitution processes, from the reference results, were: food and locations. The most recurrent substitution processes were the co-hyponym, words that designate semantic attributes, valorization of the visual stimulus, hypernym and parasynonyms Conclusion: Given the homogeneity of the results of this study with the results obtained with other studies in Brazil, this test reveal potentiality as an instrument for vocabulary assessment in Portugal.Objetivo: Este estudo teve por objetivo a análise e quantificação dos processos de designação e substituição semântica apresentados na prova do vocabulário do Teste de Linguagem Infantil ABFW, padronizado no Brasil e adaptado para Português Europeu (PE), assim como a comparação dos resultados obtidos nos dois países, de forma a analisar a pertinência da sua extensibilidade à população portuguesa. Métodos: A prova foi aplicada a 150 crianças de 5 e 6 anos de idade, de desenvolvimento típico, na Região Norte de Portugal. A prova é constituída por nove categorias conceituais e cada categoria formada por diferentes vocábulos, que foram avaliados sempre pela mesma ordem sequencial. Resultados: A amostra mostrou desempenho inferior, em relação à norma, apenas nas categorias semânticas vestuário, locais e alimentos. Todas as outras categorias revelaram desempenho superior. As categorias do vocabulário que apresentaram maior percentagem de respostas corretas foram: animais, formas e cores e brinquedos e instrumentos musicais. As categorias que apresentaram percentagem superior de processos de substituição, em relação à norma, foram alimentos e locais. Os processos de substituição mais utilizados foram: substituição por co-hipônimo, vocábulos que designam atributos semânticos, valorização do estímulo visual, hiperônimos e parassinônimos. Conclusão: Dada a homogeneidade dos resultados deste estudo com os resultados obtidos em outros estudos no Brasil, esta prova revela potencialidades como instrumento de avaliação do vocabulário em Portugal.This work is funded by CIEd – Research Centre on Education, projects UID/CED/1661/2013 and UID/CED/1661/2016, Institute of Education, University of Minho, through national funds of FCT/MCTESPT.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

On the Schoenberg Transformations in Data Analysis: Theory and Illustrations

The class of Schoenberg transformations, embedding Euclidean distances into higher dimensional Euclidean spaces, is presented, and derived from theorems on positive definite and conditionally negative definite matrices. Original results on the arc lengths, angles and curvature of the transformations are proposed, and visualized on artificial data sets by classical multidimensional scaling. A simple distance-based discriminant algorithm illustrates the theory, intimately connected to the Gaussian kernels of Machine Learning

Rudimentary G-Quadruplex-Based Telomere Capping In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae

Telomere capping conceals chromosome ends from exonucleases and checkpoints, but the full range of capping mechanisms is not well defined. Telomeres have the potential to form G-quadruplex (G4) DNA, although evidence for telomere G4 DNA function in vivo is limited. In budding yeast, capping requires the Cdc13 protein and is lost at nonpermissive temperatures in cdc13-1 mutants. Here, we use several independent G4 DNA-stabilizing treatments to suppress cdc13-1 capping defects. These include overexpression of three different G4 DNA binding proteins, loss of the G4 DNA unwinding helicase Sgs1, or treatment with small molecule G4 DNA ligands. In vitro, we show that protein-bound G4 DNA at a 3\u27 overhang inhibits 5\u27-\u3e 3\u27 resection of a paired strand by exonuclease I. These findings demonstrate that, at least in the absence of full natural capping, G4 DNA can play a positive role at telomeres in vivo

Vitamin D receptor ChIP-seq in primary CD4+ cells: relationship to serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and autoimmune disease

PMCID: PMC3710212This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited