Neural correlates of somatoform disorders from a meta-analytic perspective on neuroimaging studies.

Somatoform disorders (SD) are common medical disorders with prevalence rates between 3.5% and 18.4%, depending on country and medical setting. SD as outlined in the ICD-10 exhibits various biological, social, and psychological pathogenic factors. Little is known about the neural correlates of SD. The aims of this meta-analysis are to identify neuronal areas that are involved in SD and consistently differ between patients and healthy controls. We conducted a systematic literature research on neuroimaging studies of SD. Ten out of 686 studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria and were analyzed using activation likelihood estimation. Five neuronal areas differ between patients with SD and healthy controls namely the premotor and supplementary motor cortexes, the middle frontal gyrus, the anterior cingulate cortex, the insula, and the posterior cingulate cortex. These areas seem to have a particular importance for the occurrence of SD. Out of the ten studies two did not contribute to any of the clusters. Our results seem to largely overlap with the circuit network model of somatosensory amplification for SD. It is conceivable that functional disorders, independent of the clinical impression, show similar neurobiological processes. While overlaps do occur it is necessary to understand single functional somatic syndromes and their aetiology for future research, terminology, and treatment guidelines

HRM Policies’ Impact on Employees’ Employability: The Role of Age Climate and the Offering of Developmental Measures

How can (aging) individual employees continue to grow as persons, on the one hand, and contribute to their employing organizations in meaningful ways, on the other hand? In this article, we set out to study how two important instruments of human resource management—age climate and the offering of developmental measures—may help. We use path modeling to investigate the research model based on data of 208 respondents of both rural and urban regions in Austria. The results indicate that a positive organizational age climate has a positive influence on the offering of developmental measures and, subsequently, on employees’ employability. We emphasize the importance of facilitating developmental measures for staff of all ages, as well as the necessity to address the organizational age climate to successfully tackle the challenges of demographic change