Persistent amygdala novelty response is associated with less anterior cingulum integrity in trauma-exposed women

Objectives: We investigated the potential role of cingulum and uncinate fasciculus integrity in trauma-related neural hypervigilance, indexed by less discrimination between amygdala activation to novel and familiar affective images. Participants: 22 women (mean age 21.7 ± 3.9 years) with a history of trauma, and 20 no-trauma controls (mean age 21.9 ± 4.8 years). Measures: Trauma exposure and trauma-related symptoms were assessed during structured clinical interview. White matter integrity in the anterior cingulum, parahippocampal cingulum, and uncinate fasciculus was measured using diffusion weighted imaging. Amygdala response to novel and familiar affective scenes was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results: Trauma-exposed women showed less discrimination between novel and familiar negative images in the amygdala compared to no-trauma controls. In trauma-exposed women, less amygdala discrimination between novel and familiar affective images was associated with less structural integrity in the anterior cingulum, but was not associated with structural integrity of the parahippocampal cingulum or the uncinate fasciculus. Conclusions: The anterior cingulum might play an important role in impaired novelty discrimination for affective information in the amygdala. This impairment is potentially driven by inefficient habituation and could contribute to persistent behavioral hypervigilance following trauma exposure

Digital Feedback for Digital Work? Affordances and Constraints of a Feedback App at InsurCorp

Little is known about how digital work shapes the exchange of performance feedback, even though today’s digital and global world demands for more continuous feedback than annual reviews. This research investigates a feedback app in a naturalistic context within a globally leading financial service corporation (InsurCorp). Drawing on malleability and voluntary participation, the app offers possibilities to send and request feedback between employees. Rich contextual insights from a multinational pilot study with 568 users are gained by triangulating qualitative data from 21 semi-structured interviews and69 feedback app user reviews with usage data. Anchored in the theory of affordances, we provide insights on use practices and find that the app affords operational-level feedback exchange on specific subjects, while general feedback on sensitive topics is preferably exchanged in person. To understand actualization facilitators and barriers, we take a social-technical systems perspective to elaborate contextual factors that influence the individual’s actualization decision

Child Maltreatment, Non-Suicidal Self-Injury, and the Mediating Role of Self-Criticism

We examined the relation between child maltreatment and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). Participants were 86 adolescents who completed measures of child maltreatment, self-criticism, perceived criticism, depression, and NSSI. Analyses revealed significant, small-to-medium associations between specific forms of child maltreatment (physical neglect, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse) and the presence of a recent history of NSSI. Emotional and sexual abuse had the strongest relations with NSSI, and the data supported a theoretical model in which self-criticism mediates the relation between emotional abuse and engagement in NSSI. Specificity for the mediating role of self-criticism was demonstrated by ruling out alternative mediation models. Taken together, these results indicate that several different forms of childhood maltreatment are associated with NSSI and illuminate one mechanism through which maltreatment may be associated with NSSI. Future research is needed to test the temporal relation between maltreatment and NSSI and should aim to identify additional pathways to engagement in NSSI.Psycholog

Activation of a HERV-H LTR induces expression of an aberrant calbindin protein in human prostate carcinoma cells

The human genome contains around 500 000 LTR retrotransposons including endogenous retroviruses (HERVs). Most of these LTR elements are silenced by epigenetic conditions, but may be reactivated by environmental factors such as chemicals, radiation or exogenous viruses. We have analyzed a HERV-H element located upstream of the human calbindin gene (CALB-1) that leads to expression of a truncated calbindin protein by alternative splicing in a human prostate carcinoma cell line (PC3). PC3 cells are polyploid with one or two complete alleles of chromosome 8, and four to five pieces of the 8q-arm, all containing the CALB-1 locus. Analysis of these loci did not reveal substantial alterations on DNA sequence level, such as modification of splice sites, suggesting an epigenetic activation of the HERV-H LTR. Therefore, we compared the DNA methylation status of this LTR in PC3 cells and in three prostate carcinoma cell lines not expressing the truncated calbindin protein. We found that the HERV-H LTR is hypomethylated in two cell lines including PC3. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) analysis, however, revealed that the chromatin is associated with active marks (acetylated histone H4 and tri-methylated lysine4 at histone H3) at this locus only in PC3 cells. This data suggests that reactivation of the HERV-H LTR requires at least two steps: demethylation of DNA and modification of histones. There is evidence that expression of the truncated calbindin prevents apoptosis and may thus contribute to the malignant phenotype of PC3 cells

Attentional breadth and proximity seeking in romantic attachment relationships

The present study provides first evidence that attentional breadth responses can be influenced by proximity-distance goals in adult attachment relationships. In a sample of young couples, we measured attachment differences in the breadth of attentional focus in response to attachment-related cues. Results showed that priming with a negative attachment scenario broadens attention when confronted with pictures of the attachment figure in highly avoidant men. In women, we found that attachment anxiety was associated with a more narrow attentional focus on the attachment figure, yet only at an early stage of information processing. We also found that women showed a broader attentional focus around the attachment figure when their partner was more avoidantly attached. This pattern of results reflects the underlying action of attachment strategies and provides insight into the complex and dynamic influence of attachment on attentional processing in a dyadic context

The Complex Affective Scene Set (COMPASS): Solving the Social Content Problem in Affective Visual Stimulus Sets

Social information, including faces and human bodies, holds special status in visual perception generally, and in visual processing of complex arrays such as real-world scenes specifically. To date, unbalanced representation of social compared with nonsocial information in affective stimulus sets has limited the clear determination of effects as attributable to, or independent of, social content. We present the Complex Affective Scene Set (COMPASS), a set of 150 social and 150 nonsocial naturalistic affective scenes that are balanced across valence and arousal dimensions. Participants (n = 847) rated valence and arousal for each scene. The normative ratings for the 300 images together, and separately by social content, show the canonical boomerang shape that confirms coverage of much of the affective circumplex. COMPASS adds uniquely to existing visual stimulus sets by balancing social content across affect dimensions, thereby eliminating a potentially major confound across affect categories (i.e., combinations of valence and arousal). The robust special status of social information persisted even after balancing of affect categories and was observed in slower rating response times for social versus nonsocial stimuli. The COMPASS images also match the complexity of real-world environments by incorporating stimulus competition within each scene. Together, these attributes facilitate the use of the stimulus set in particular for disambiguating the effects of affect and social content for a range of research questions and populations

Trait emotional intelligence and attentional bias for positive emotion: An eye tracking study

Emotional intelligence (EI) may promote wellbeing through facilitation of adaptive attentional processing patterns. In the current study, a total of 54 adults (43 females, mean age = 25 years, SD = 10 years) completed a Trait Emotional Intelligence (TEI) scale and took part in three eye-tracking tasks, where they viewed (1) faces with different emotions (happy, angry, fearful, neutral), (2) 16-face crowds with varying ratios of happy to angry faces, and (3) 4 visual scenes (physical threat, social threat, positive social, neutral). Findings showed that higher TEI was associated with more attention to positive emotional stimuli (happy faces, positive social scenes), relative to negative and neutral stimuli. An attentional preference for positive rather than negative emotional stimuli may be one way that TEI affords protection from stressors to promote mental health

Roles of the Nuclear Lamina in Stable Nuclear Association and Assembly of a Herpesviral Transactivator Complex on Viral Immediate-Early Genes

Little is known about the mechanisms of gene targeting within the nucleus and its effect on gene expression, but most studies have concluded that genes located near the nuclear periphery are silenced by heterochromatin. In contrast, we found that early herpes simplex virus (HSV) genome complexes localize near the nuclear lamina and that this localization is associated with reduced heterochromatin on the viral genome and increased viral immediate-early (IE) gene transcription. In this study, we examined the mechanism of this effect and found that input virion transactivator protein, virion protein 16 (VP16), targets sites adjacent to the nuclear lamina and is required for targeting of the HSV genome to the nuclear lamina, exclusion of heterochromatin from viral replication compartments, and reduction of heterochromatin on the viral genome. Because cells infected with the VP16 mutant virus in1814 showed a phenotype similar to that of lamin A/C−/− cells infected with wild-type virus, we hypothesized that the nuclear lamina is required for VP16 activator complex formation. In lamin A/C−/− mouse embryo fibroblasts, VP16 and Oct-1 showed reduced association with the viral IE gene promoters, the levels of VP16 and HCF-1 stably associated with the nucleus were lower than in wild-type cells, and the association of VP16 with HCF-1 was also greatly reduced. These results show that the nuclear lamina is required for stable nuclear localization and formation of the VP16 activator complex and provide evidence for the nuclear lamina being the site of assembly of the VP16 activator complex

Three-Dimensional Maps of All Chromosomes in Human Male Fibroblast Nuclei and Prometaphase Rosettes

Studies of higher-order chromatin arrangements are an essential part of ongoing attempts to explore changes in epigenome structure and their functional implications during development and cell differentiation. However, the extent and cell-type-specificity of three-dimensional (3D) chromosome arrangements has remained controversial. In order to overcome technical limitations of previous studies, we have developed tools that allow the quantitative 3D positional mapping of all chromosomes simultaneously. We present unequivocal evidence for a probabilistic 3D order of prometaphase chromosomes, as well as of chromosome territories (CTs) in nuclei of quiescent (G0) and cycling (early S-phase) human diploid fibroblasts (46, XY). Radial distance measurements showed a probabilistic, highly nonrandom correlation with chromosome size: small chromosomes—independently of their gene density—were distributed significantly closer to the center of the nucleus or prometaphase rosette, while large chromosomes were located closer to the nuclear or rosette rim. This arrangement was independently confirmed in both human fibroblast and amniotic fluid cell nuclei. Notably, these cell types exhibit flat-ellipsoidal cell nuclei, in contrast to the spherical nuclei of lymphocytes and several other human cell types, for which we and others previously demonstrated gene-density-correlated radial 3D CT arrangements. Modeling of 3D CT arrangements suggests that cell-type-specific differences in radial CT arrangements are not solely due to geometrical constraints that result from nuclear shape differences. We also found gene-density-correlated arrangements of higher-order chromatin shared by all human cell types studied so far. Chromatin domains, which are gene-poor, form a layer beneath the nuclear envelope, while gene-dense chromatin is enriched in the nuclear interior. We discuss the possible functional implications of this finding