Psychopathology and positive emotions in daily life

In this short review, we describe recent trends from Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) research investigating positive affect (PA) in relation to mood disorders. Aside from notable exceptions (e.g. mania), most mood disorders involve relatively lower levels of PA in daily life, often combined with a larger level of variability in PA. In reaction to positive events, studies show a puzzling ‘mood brightening’ effect in individuals with mood disorder symptoms that suggests hyper responsiveness to real-life rewards. Studies into anhedonia (i.e. lack of, or lower levels of PA) suggest that high-arousal PA and anticipatory PA are potential targets for intervention. Despite PA-focused EMA-interventions bear promises of greater therapeutic effectiveness, so far, these promises have not materialized yet

Sociomarkers of anhedonia in MDD

Background: Anhedonia is one of the two core symptoms of MDD, described as the decreased ability to experience pleasure in daily life. We aimed to describe anhedonia in everyday life of patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and investigate its link to social stress. We semi-randomly sampled anhedonia and social stress ten times a day, for seven consecutive days, by means of Experience Sampling Methods in the daily life of 53 MDD patients. Results: Multilevel analyses showed that anhedonia was less severe when patient were in company of others (versus being alone). Social stress was linked to anhedonia, both concurrently and prospectively. Albeit less strongly, anhedonia also prospectively predicted increases in social stress. Conclusions: Experiencing an increase in social stress makes it harder for depressed patients to experience pleasure in both current and future activities, suggesting that social stressors might put MDD patients at risk for the development of anhedonia

A multiverse analysis of early attempts to replicate memory suppression with the Think/No-think Task

In 2001, Anderson and Green [2001. Suppressing unwanted memories by executive control. Nature, 410(6826), 366-369] showed memory suppression using a novel Think/No-think (TNT) task. When participants attempted to prevent studied words from entering awareness, they reported fewer of those words than baseline words in subsequent cued recall (i.e., suppression effect). The TNT literature contains predominantly positive findings and few null-results. Therefore we report unpublished replications conducted in the 2000s (N = 49; N = 36). As the features of the data obtained with the TNT task call for a variety of plausible solutions, we report parallel "universes" of data-analyses (i.e., multiverse analysis) testing the suppression effect. Two published studies (Wessel et al., 2005. Dissociation and memory suppression: A comparison of high and low dissociative individuals' performance on the Think-No think Task. Personality and Individual Differences, 39(8), 1461-1470, N = 68; Wessel et al., 2010. Cognitive control and suppression of memories of an emotional film. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 41(2), 83-89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2009.10.005, N = 80) were reanalysed in a similar fashion. For recall probed with studied cues (Same Probes, SP), some tests (sample 3) or all (samples 2 and 4) showed statistically significant suppression effects, whereas in sample 1, only one test showed significance. Recall probed with novel cues (Independent Probes, IP) predominantly rendered non-significant results. The absence of statistically significant IP suppression effects raises problems for inhibition theory and its implication that repression is a viable mechanism of forgetting. The pre-registration, materials, data, and code are publicly available (https://osf.io/qgcy5/).</p

Personalized lifestyle advice alters affective reactivity to negative events in anhedonic young adults

BACKGROUND: Anhedonia is a common symptom of several disorders, but cost-effective treatments that focus on anhedonia specifically have been lacking. Therefore, personalized lifestyle advice has recently been investigated as a suitable means of enhancing pleasure and positive affect (PA) in young adults with anhedonia. This intervention provided individuals with a personalized lifestyle advice which was based on observed individual patterns of lifestyle behaviors and experienced pleasure in daily life. The present study extends this previous work by examining a potential mechanism of treatment success, affective reactivity. METHODS: We explored changes in affective reactivity to events in daily life from pre- to post-intervention in a subclinical sample of young adults with anhedonia (N = 69). Using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), participants answered questions on their activities, their pleasure levels, PA and negative affect (NA) before and after the intervention. RESULTS: Multilevel analysis revealed that participants did not experience an altered affective reactivity to positive events after the intervention. The affective reactivity to negative events depended on the level of improvement in mean-PA after the lifestyle advice intervention. LIMITATIONS: The present study used a subclinical sample with the majority of participants being female which limited the generalizability of the findings. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that an altered affective reactivity to negative events is an underlying mechanism of the effectiveness of a personalized lifestyle advice

Effect of Daily Life Reward Loop Functioning on the Course of Depression

Engagement in activities increases positive affect (Reward Path 1), which subsequently reinforces motivation (Reward Path 2), and hence future engagement in activities (Reward Path 3). Strong connections between these three reward loop components are considered adaptive, and might be disturbed in depression. Although some ecological nomentary assessment (EMA) studies have investigated the cross-sectional association between separate reward paths and individuals’ level of depression, no EMA study has looked into the association between individuals’ reward loop strength and depressive symptom course. The present EMA study assessed reward loop functioning (5x/day, 28 days) of 46 outpatients starting depression treatment at secondary mental health services and monitored with the Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology—Self-Report (IDS-SR) during a 7-month period. Results of multilevel regression analyses showed significant within-person associations for Reward Path 1 (b = 0.21, p &lt; .001), Reward Path 2 (b = 0.43, p &lt; .001), and Reward Path 3 (b = 0.20, p &lt; .001). Stronger average reward loops (i.e., within-person mean of all reward paths) did not relate to participants’ improvement in depressive symptoms over time. Path-specific results revealed that Reward Paths 1 and 2 may have partly opposite effects on depressive symptom course. Together, our findings suggest that reward processes in daily life might be best studied separately and that further investigation is warranted to explore under what circumstances strong paths are adaptive or not.</p

Correction: I Just Ran a Thousand Analyses:Benefits of Multiple Testing in Understanding Equivocal Evidence on Gene-Environment Interactions

[This corrects the DATA-LINK for article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0125383.]

Tracking Infant Development With a Smartphone:A Practical Guide to the Experience Sampling Method

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced developmental researchers to rethink their traditional research practices. The growing need to study infant development at a distance has shifted our research paradigm to online and digital monitoring of infants and families, using electronic devices, such as smartphones. In this practical guide, we introduce the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) – a research method to collect data, in the moment, on multiple occasions over time – for examining infant development at a distance. ESM is highly suited for assessing dynamic processes of infant development and family dynamics, such as parent-infant interactions and parenting practices. It can also be used to track highly fluctuating family dynamics (e.g., infant and parental mood or behavior) and routines (e.g., activity levels and feeding practices). The aim of the current paper was to provide an overview by explaining what ESM is and for what types of research ESM is best suited. Next, we provide a brief step-by-step guide on how to start and run an ESM study, including preregistration, development of a questionnaire, using wearables and other hardware, planning and design considerations, and examples of possible analysis techniques. Finally, we discuss common pitfalls of ESM research and how to avoid them

Clínica e cirurgia de espécies pecuárias

O presente relatório, inerente ao estágio curricular do Mestrado Integrado em Medicina Veterinária da Universidade de Évora, tem como objetivo descrever as atividades observadas e realizadas na área da clínica e cirurgia de espécies pecuárias. Na primeira parte é feita uma descrição do local de estágio, uma caraterização das explorações acompanhadas e a distribuição casuística das atividades desenvolvidas. A segunda parte deste relatório consiste numa revisão bibliográfica sobre o tema, aborto infecioso em pequenos ruminantes e ainda no desenvolvimento de dois casos clínicos. O aborto em pequenos ruminantes causa significativas perdas reprodutivas de elevada importância económica. O aborto pode ter etiologia infeciosa ou não infeciosa e ocorrer de forma isolada ou em surto. Quando ocorre em forma de surto pode tomar proporções graves e a intervenção correta do médico veterinário, no diagnóstico, tratamento e controlo é fundamental; Abstract: Medical and Surgical Pathology of livestock species This report, associated to an internship of a masters degree in Veterinary Medicin in the University of Évora, has as its main purpose to describe the observed and realized activities in the area of clinic and surgery in livestock species. The first part of this report is based on a description of the internship site, on a characterization of the livestock farms studied in this report and the casuistry distribution of the developed activities. The second part of this report consists in a brief literature review about infectious abortions in small ruminants and also in the development of clinic cases. Abortions in small ruminants can cause significant reproductive losses which result in important economic losses. Abortions can be caused by infectious or non-infectious etiology and these can occur in an isolated event or in an outbreak. When these happen in an outbreak, they can take dangerous proportions and a correct intervention of the veterinary, during the diagnose, treatment and control is very important