Do personality traits predict post-traumatic stress?: a prospective study in civilians experiencing air attacks

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What scans we will read: imaging instrumentation trends in clinical oncology

Oncological diseases account for a significant portion of the burden on public healthcare systems with associated costs driven primarily by complex and long-lasting therapies. Through the visualization of patient-specific morphology and functional-molecular pathways, cancerous tissue can be detected and characterized non- invasively, so as to provide referring oncologists with essential information to support therapy management decisions. Following the onset of stand-alone anatomical and functional imaging, we witness a push towards integrating molecular image information through various methods, including anato-metabolic imaging (e.g., PET/ CT), advanced MRI, optical or ultrasound imaging. This perspective paper highlights a number of key technological and methodological advances in imaging instrumentation related to anatomical, functional, molecular medicine and hybrid imaging, that is understood as the hardware-based combination of complementary anatomical and molecular imaging. These include novel detector technologies for ionizing radiation used in CT and nuclear medicine imaging, and novel system developments in MRI and optical as well as opto-acoustic imaging. We will also highlight new data processing methods for improved non-invasive tissue characterization. Following a general introduction to the role of imaging in oncology patient management we introduce imaging methods with well-defined clinical applications and potential for clinical translation. For each modality, we report first on the status quo and point to perceived technological and methodological advances in a subsequent status go section. Considering the breadth and dynamics of these developments, this perspective ends with a critical reflection on where the authors, with the majority of them being imaging experts with a background in physics and engineering, believe imaging methods will be in a few years from now. Overall, methodological and technological medical imaging advances are geared towards increased image contrast, the derivation of reproducible quantitative parameters, an increase in volume sensitivity and a reduction in overall examination time. To ensure full translation to the clinic, this progress in technologies and instrumentation is complemented by progress in relevant acquisition and image-processing protocols and improved data analysis. To this end, we should accept diagnostic images as “data”, and – through the wider adoption of advanced analysis, including machine learning approaches and a “big data” concept – move to the next stage of non-invasive tumor phenotyping. The scans we will be reading in 10 years from now will likely be composed of highly diverse multi- dimensional data from multiple sources, which mandate the use of advanced and interactive visualization and analysis platforms powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) for real-time data handling by cross-specialty clinical experts with a domain knowledge that will need to go beyond that of plain imaging

Joint action aesthetics

Synchronized movement is a ubiquitous feature of dance and music performance. Much research into the evolutionary origins of these cultural practices has focused on why humans perform rather than watch or listen to dance and music. In this study, we show that movement synchrony among a group of performers predicts the aesthetic appreciation of live dance performances. We developed a choreography that continuously manipulated group synchronization using a defined movement vocabulary based on arm swinging, walking and running. The choreography was performed live to four audiences, as we continuously tracked the performers’ movements, and the spectators’ affective responses. We computed dynamic synchrony among performers using cross recurrence analysis of data from wrist accelerometers, and implicit measures of arousal from spectators’ heart rates. Additionally, a subset of spectators provided continuous ratings of enjoyment and perceived synchrony using tablet computers. Granger causality analyses demonstrate predictive relationships between synchrony, enjoyment ratings and spectator arousal, if audiences form a collectively consistent positive or negative aesthetic evaluation. Controlling for the influence of overall movement acceleration and visual change, we show that dance communicates group coordination via coupled movement dynamics among a group of performers. Our findings are in line with an evolutionary function of dance–and perhaps all performing arts–in transmitting social signals between groups of people. Human movement is the common denominator of dance, music and theatre. Acknowledging the time-sensitive and immediate nature of the performer-spectator relationship, our study makes a significant step towards an aesthetics of joint actions in the performing arts

A mathematical model of stress reaction: Individual differences in threshold and duration

People differ in what they experience as stressful and to what extent. We define a variable-stress threshold (sigma)-that links the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis and the memory system in a feedback mechanism. Current sigma dictates the intensity of a stimulus that turns the stress response on. On the other hand, each jump of the HPA axis helps long-term registration of the stressful event via concentration changes of some of its products, consequently changing the value of sigma for future stressors. After the action of a strong exterior stressor, the new stressful memory acts as an internal source of stress. We assume that its intensity decreases with the rate of processing the stressful information. This process is characterized by a time parameter tau. Both sigma and tau are individual: They depend on personality traits, genetic as well as acquired. The mathematical model presented here simulates the feedback mechanism between the HPA axis and the memory system involved in stress reaction

Regulation of Light Harvesting in the Green Alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii: The C-Terminus of LHCSR Is the Knob of a Dimmer Switch

Feedback mechanisms that dissipate excess photoexcitations in light-harvesting complexes (LHCs) are necessary to avoid detrimental oxidative stress in most photosynthetic eukaryotes. Here we demonstrate the unique ability of LHCSR, a stress-related LHC from the model organism Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, to sense pH variations, reversibly tuning its conformation from a light-harvesting state to a dissipative one. This conformational change is induced exclusively by the acidification of the environment, and the magnitude of quenching is correlated to the degree of acidification of the environment. We show that this ability to respond to different pH values is missing in the related major LHCII, despite high structural homology. Via mutagenesis and spectroscopic characterization, we show that LHCSR's uniqueness relies on its peculiar C-terminus subdomain, which acts as a sensor of the lumenal pH, able to tune the quenching level of the complex. © 2013 American Chemical Society

Sleep studies in Serbian victims of torture: Analysis of traumatic dreams

One of prominent features related to the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is according to DSM-5 “recurrent distressing dreams in which the content and/or affect of the dream are related to the traumatic event(s)”. The phenomenology and the underlying dynamics of traumatic dreams are areas of study that still need to be understood. The study presented in this chapter is a qualitative study of traumatic dreams of torture survivors of the last Balkan wars. Aims of the study were to demonstrate two different methods of qualitative analysis of dreams which could be used for the investigation of latent structures of reported narratives of dreams, and to demonstrate how these structures are reflected in posttraumatic states, as changes in affect regulation, symbolization and attachment to others. An additional aim of the study was to help clinicians to better understand their traumatized patients’ dreaming by identifying mechanisms related to posttraumatic processes within the dream and thus give a better understanding on how the traumatized dreamers attempt of healing fail in recurrent nightmares