Individual differences in affective, cognitive, and neural responses to interpersonal and social motivation: Novel methodological perspectives

Research in this thesis manipulated approach motivation via social / interpersonal incentives, to measure the effects on mood and learning of social perceptions via neural, behavioural and psychometric measures, while also interrogating how these effects might be moderated by personality. Two initial studies explored whether motivational videos work as appetitive mood inductions by inducing activated affect. These studies also tested an online line bisection task as an index of left frontal activation, which putatively represents approach motivation and activated affect. On average, compared with control videos, motivational videos induced changes specific to activated affect without inducing changes in pleasant affect. However, there was considerable heterogeneity across participants in the induced mood changes, but without clear-cut relationships between these changes and personality (extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness were tested as possible moderators). Line bisection was not affected by motivational videos relative to control videos. The third study replaced line bisection with an EEG measure of approach motivation (i.e., frontal alpha asymmetry, FAA). Measuring EEG itself was likely mood altering and complicated the pattern of mood changes observed. The expected mood induction effects were not found, although FAA did unexpectedly increase significantly after watching the control video. The final two studies evaluated probabilistic reinforcement learning in a social context via a novel artificial social interaction (ASI) task using on-screen faces of characters who varied in the amount of social reward (smiles) they gave. The reinforcing characters who smiled more throughout the ASI were rated as more likely to be befriended, more likeable, more extraverted, more agreeable, and less neurotic than the non-reinforcing characters who smiled less. These studies also showed that the participants extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, and autistic traits significantly moderated the character reinforcement effects on the social perception measures listed above. The methods used throughout this thesis show that considerable promise and solid foundations now exist for future developments in both areas of research

Psychosocial Effects of Iron Chelation on Thalassemia Patients

Introduction: Hemodialysis is a serious consequence of transfusions in the treatment of b-thalassemia major. Iron deficiency burdens the psychology of patients and due to the complexity and long process can be abandoned as a treatment. Aim: To study the perceptions and limitations experienced by patients undergoing iron deficiency, as well as the psychological effects. Methodology: The study was conducted in the Mediterranean Anemia Unit of Evangelismos Hospital. The study included patients with b-Mediterranean anemia, who were informed about the purpose of the study and gave signed consent. The research is a qualitative study with semi-structured interviews. Results: The analysis of 70 patient interviews (32 men - 38 women) showed that the majority of patients (54 participants) are regular in iron deficiency therapy, as they find that it improves survival expectancy. Six participants are not regular, as they feel that it limits them significantly, while the rest try to be regular, as they recognize its benefits. 41 participants have a positive attitude towards treatment, of which 13 state that treatment improves their quality of life, while the remaining 29 have a negative attitude towards treatment. Regarding the existence of a supportive environment, 47 participants state that they have a supportive family environment, while 11 participants state that they hide from the family environment and 12 participants have experienced or are still experiencing the stigma due to the disease. Conclusions: It is important to facilitate patients with iron deficiency treatments, which do not limit their daily life. Also, the psychological support of patients with thalassemia is important, so that they overcome the obstacles of the disease and live a life with fewer obstacles

Η φορολογία της ναυτιλίας – Ο φόρος πλοίων

Στην παρούσα εργασία παρουσιάζεται το ειδικό φορολογικό καθεστώς της ναυτιλίας στην Ελλάδα και ειδικότερα ο φόρος πλοίου σύμφωνα με την Ελληνική νομοθεσία. Αρχικά, εξετάζονται τα ουσιώδη χαρακτηριστικά του φόρου πλοίου, δηλαδή το αντικείμενο, το υποκείμενο και ο τρόπος προσδιορισμού του φόρου χωρητικότητας. Επιπλέον, γίνεται αναφορά στις μειώσεις και στις απαλλαγές από το φόρο πλοίου και παρουσιάζονται ορισμένα διαδικαστικά ζητήματα, ήτοι η υποβολή της δήλωσης και η καταβολή του φόρου. Τέλος, εξετάζεται η σχέση της ελληνικής νομοθεσίας με το ενωσιακό δίκαιο και ο τρόπος με τον οποίο έχει επηρεαστεί η φορολογική μεταχείριση της ναυτιλίας στην Ελλάδα από την ενωσιακή έννομη τάξη.This paper presents the special shipping tax regime in Greece, and particularly the tonnage tax according to Greek legislation. At first, the essential characteristics of the tonnage tax are examined, i.e., the subject of the tonnage tax, the taxable person and the way in which the tonnage tax is calculated persuant to Greek legislation. Furthermore, reference is made to the tax reductions and the tax exemptions provided by the Greek legislation, as well as to certain procedural aspects, i.e., the submission of the tax declaration and the payment of the tax. Finally, the relationship between Greek legislation and EU law is examined along with the way in which the tax treatment of shipping industry in Greece has been affected by the EU legal order

Case report: meningitis as a presenting feature of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis

BACKGROUND:Meningitis is a very rare atypical presenting feature of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. In our case report, we describe an unusual clinical presentation of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis with a biphasic pattern of meningitis followed by encephalitis and discuss potential mechanisms underlying this presentation. We aim to widen the differential diagnosis to be considered in a patient presenting with clinical meningitis and pyrexia. CASE PRESENTATION:This is a case of a 33-year old Caucasian woman who initially presented with a lymphocytic meningitis attributed to a viral infection. She subsequently developed fluctuating consciousness, agitation, visual hallucinations, dyskinetic movements, a generalized tonic-clonic seizure, and autonomic instability. Investigations revealed a diagnosis of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis secondary to a previously unidentified ovarian teratoma. She made an excellent recovery with immunotherapy and removal of the teratoma. CONCLUSION:Clinicians should consider autoimmune encephalitides in individuals with meningitis, particularly where extensive investigations fail to identify a causative pathogen and there is rapid development of an encephalitic phenotype

Processing Coordinate Subject-Verb Agreement in L1 and L2 Greek.

The present study examines the processing of subject-verb (SV) number agreement with coordinate subjects in pre-verbal and post-verbal positions in Greek. Greek is a language with morphological number marked on nominal and verbal elements. Coordinate SV agreement, however, is special in Greek as it is sensitive to the coordinate subject's position: when pre-verbal, the verb is marked for plural while when post-verbal the verb can be in the singular. We conducted two experiments, an acceptability judgment task with adult monolinguals as a pre-study (Experiment 1) and a self-paced reading task as the main study (Experiment 2) in order to obtain acceptance as well as processing data. Forty adult monolingual speakers of Greek participated in Experiment 1 and a hundred and forty one in Experiment 2. Seventy one children participated in Experiment 2: 30 Albanian-Greek sequential bilingual children and 41 Greek monolingual children aged 10-12 years. The adult data in Experiment 1 establish the difference in acceptability between singular VPs in SV and VS constructions reaffirming our hypothesis. Meanwhile, the adult data in Experiment 2 show that plural verbs accelerate processing regardless of subject position. The child online data show that sequential bilingual children have longer reading times (RTs) compared to the age-matched monolingual control group. However, both child groups follow a similar processing pattern in both pre-verbal and post-verbal constructions showing longer RTs immediately after a singular verb when the subject was pre-verbal indicating a grammaticality effect. In the post-verbal coordinate subject sentences, both child groups showed longer RTs on the first subject following the plural verb due to the temporary number mismatch between the verb and the first subject. This effect was resolved in monolingual children but was still present at the end of the sentence for bilingual children indicating difficulties to reanalyze and integrate information. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that (a) 10-12 year-old sequential bilingual children are sensitive to number agreement in SV coordinate constructions parsing sentences in the same way as monolingual children even though their vocabulary abilities are lower than that of age-matched monolingual peers and (b) bilinguals are slower in processing overall.This research has been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund—ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program “Education and Lifelong Learning” of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF)—Research Funding Program: Thales. Investing in knowledge society through the European Social Fund. During the design of this study, TM was supported by an Onassis Fellowship