Psychometric properties and further validation of the emergency reaction questionnaire in a sample of Portuguese adults

Emergencies and disasters are abrupt, unexpected, dangerous events often traumatic. Individuals differ in the way they respond to this kind of adverse experience, depending on varied factors. This study used the Emergency Reaction Questionnaire (ERQ) to assess defensive mechanisms, feelings, and thoughts during emergency and disaster-related situations. The main objective of the present study was to confirm the factor structure and provide further support to the validity of the ERQ on a Portuguese sample. Here we replicated previous findings in showing that people who are more prone to react in an organized way in emergencies tend to have lower anxiety levels and a greater tendency for sensation seeking. We also found that females score lower than males; that ERQ specific readiness scores slightly increase with age and people who have risky jobs or routinely engage in extreme sports scored higher on the ERQ scales (meaning they act more readily and organized in an emergency). The ERQ and its Portuguese version show to be a psychometrically sound and valid measurement of emergency behavior, able to assess individual differences in the way people perform during various emergencies, and can be used in future research and in practice for screening or measuring training efficiency.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Fear inoculation among snake experts

Abstract Background Fear acquisition of certain stimuli, such as snakes, is thought to be rapid, resistant to extinction, and easily transferable onto other similar objects. It has been hypothesized that due to increased survival chances, preparedness to instantly acquire fear towards evolutionary threats has been hardwired into neural pathways of the primate brain. Here, we compare participants’ fear of snakes according to experience; from those who often deal with snakes and even suffer snakebites to those unfamiliar with snakes. Methods The Snake Questionnaire-12 (SNAQ-12) and Specific Phobia Questionnaire (SPQ) were administered to three groups of participants with a different level of experience with snakes and snakebites: 1) snake experts, 2) firefighters, and 3) college students. Results This study shows that individuals more experienced with snakes demonstrate lower fear. Moreover, participants who have suffered a snakebite (either venomous or not) score lower on fear of snakes (SNAQ-12), but not of all other potentially phobic stimuli (SPQ). Conclusions Our results suggest that a harmless benign exposure might immunize people to highly biologically prepared fears of evolutionary threats, such as snakes

On the nature of fear and anxiety triggered by COVID-19

Emergencies that occur during natural disasters, such as avalanches, earthquakes, and floods, tend to be sudden, unexpected, and ephemeral and recruit defensive responses, similar to the ones recruited when faced with dangerous animals. Defensive behaviors are triggered by activity in survival circuits that detects imminent threats and fear is the conscious emotion of that follows immediately. But this particular threat (COVID-19) is useable and mysterious, triggering anxieties much more than fear. We conducted a literature search on May 1, 2020 in Google Scholar, PsychInfo, and PubMed with search terms related to COVID-19 fears and found 28 relevant articles. We categorized the papers into six groups based on the content and implications: fear of the unknown, social isolation, hypochondriasis, disgust, information-driven fears, and compliance.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Interplay of Structural Disorder and Short Binding Elements in the Cellular Chaperone Function of Plant Dehydrin ERD14.

Details of the functional mechanisms of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) in living cells is an area not frequently investigated. Here, we dissect the molecular mechanism of action of an IDP in cells by detailed structural analyses based on an in-cell nuclear magnetic resonance experiment. We show that the ID stress protein (IDSP) A. thaliana Early Response to Dehydration (ERD14) is capable of protecting E. coli cells under heat stress. The overexpression of ERD14 increases the viability of E. coli cells from 38.9% to 73.9% following heat stress (50 °C × 15 min). We also provide evidence that the protection is mainly achieved by protecting the proteome of the cells. In-cell NMR experiments performed in E. coli cells show that the protective activity is associated with a largely disordered structural state with conserved, short sequence motifs (K- and H-segments), which transiently sample helical conformations in vitro and engage in partner binding in vivo. Other regions of the protein, such as its S segment and its regions linking and flanking the binding motifs, remain unbound and disordered in the cell. Our data suggest that the cellular function of ERD14 is compatible with its residual structural disorder in vivo