Psychological interventions for acute pain after open heart surgery (Protocol)

The objectives are as follows: To assess the efficacy of psychological interventions as an adjunct to standard surgical care compared to standard surgical care or attention control in adults undergoing open heart surgery

Hypnosis and top-down regulation of consciousness

Hypnosis is a unique form of top-down regulation in which verbal suggestions are capable of eliciting pronounced changes in a multitude of psychological phenomena. Hypnotic suggestion has been widely used both as a technique for studying basic science questions regarding human consciousness but also as a method for targeting a range of symptoms within a therapeutic context. Here we provide a synthesis of current knowledge regarding the characteristics and neurocognitive mechanisms of hypnosis. We review evidence from cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychopathology, and clinical psychology regarding the utility of hypnosis as an experimental method for modulating consciousness, as a model for studying healthy and pathological cognition, and as a therapeutic vehicle. We also highlight the relations between hypnosis and other psychological phenomena, including the broader domain of suggestion and suggestibility, and conclude by identifying the most salient challenges confronting the nascent cognitive neuroscience of hypnosis and outlining future directions for research on hypnosis and suggestion

Neural correlates of emotional interference in social anxiety disorder

Disorder-relevant but task-unrelated stimuli impair cognitive performance in social anxiety disorder (SAD); however, time course and neural correlates of emotional interference are unknown. The present study investigated time course and neural basis of emotional interference in SAD using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Patients with SAD and healthy controls performed an emotional stroop task which allowed examining interference effects on the current and the succeeding trial. Reaction time data showed an emotional interference effect in the current trial, but not the succeeding trial, specifically in SAD. FMRI data showed greater activation in the left amygdala, bilateral insula, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and left opercular part of the inferior frontal gyrus during emotional interference of the current trial in SAD patients. Furthermore, we found a positive correlation between patients’ interference scores and activation in the mPFC, dorsal ACC and left angular/supramarginal gyrus. Taken together, results indicate a network of brain regions comprising amygdala, insula, mPFC, ACC, and areas strongly involved in language processing during the processing of task-unrelated threat in SAD. However, specifically the activation in mPFC, dorsal ACC, and left angular/supramarginal gyrus is associated with the strength of the interference effect, suggesting a cognitive network model of attentional bias in SAD. This probably comprises exceeded allocation of attentional resources to disorder-related information of the presented stimuli and increased self-referential and semantic processing of threat words in SAD

Demographic and questionnaire characteristics for patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and healthy control subjects (HC) concerning gender, age, education, symptom severity (LSAS), and depression (BDI).

<p>* p < .05; y = years</p><p>Mean ± standard deviation; range displayed in parentheses</p><p>Demographic and questionnaire characteristics for patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and healthy control subjects (HC) concerning gender, age, education, symptom severity (LSAS), and depression (BDI).</p

Brain activation differences to the actual trial (NS > NN).

<p>Patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) display an enhanced activation in the left amygdala (a), right (b) and left insula (c), medial prefrontal cortex [mPFC; (d)], dorsal anterior cingulate cortex [ACC; (e)], and left opercular inferior frontal gyrus [IFG; (f)] as compared to healthy control subjects (HC). Statistical parametric maps are overlaid on an averaged T1 scan (radiological convention: left = right). The plots at the right side display contrasts of parameter estimates (mean ± standard error for maximally activated voxel).</p