The impact of stress on financial decision-making varies as a function of depression and anxiety symptoms.

Stress can precipitate the onset of mood and anxiety disorders. This may occur, at least in part, via a modulatory effect of stress on decision-making. Some individuals are, however, more resilient to the effects of stress than others. The mechanisms underlying such vulnerability differences are nevertheless unknown. In this study we attempted to begin quantifying individual differences in vulnerability by exploring the effect of experimentally induced stress on decision-making. The threat of unpredictable shock was used to induce stress in healthy volunteers (N = 47) using a within-subjects, within-session design, and its impact on a financial decision-making task (the Iowa Gambling Task) was assessed alongside anxious and depressive symptomatology. As expected, participants learned to select advantageous decks and avoid disadvantageous decks. Importantly, we found that stress provoked a pattern of harm-avoidant behaviour (decreased selection of disadvantageous decks) in individuals with low levels of trait anxiety. By contrast, individuals with high trait anxiety demonstrated the opposite pattern: stress-induced risk-seeking (increased selection of disadvantageous decks). These contrasting influences of stress depending on mood and anxiety symptoms might provide insight into vulnerability to common mental illness. In particular, we speculate that those who adopt a more harm-avoidant strategy may be better able to regulate their exposure to further environmental stress, reducing their susceptibility to mood and anxiety disorders

IL NUOVO VOLTO DELLA GIURISDIZIONE “IN EXECUTIVIS” Tra crisi di identità e prospettive di riforma

Il presente lavoro tenta di eseguire una ricognizione dei nuovi poteri che, le Sezioni Unite, hanno riconosciuto in capo al giudice dell'esecuzione penale. Ciò in riposta alle pressioni provenienti da Strasburgo, di una maggiore tutela dei diritti fondamentali, di cui fa parte la libertà personale. Diritto pregiudicato da una disciplina rigida, che non permette modificazioni del trattamento sanzionatorio una volta che la sentenza di condanna acquista i crismi della "cosa giudicata". Pressati dalla necessità di conformarsi alle pronunce di Strasburgo e della Corte costituzionale, i giudici di legittimità, pur in assenza di una espressa disposizione normativa, hanno cercato la strada per riportare nell’alveo della legalità le pene inflitte sulla base di norme dichiarate incostituzionali. Ripercorrendo i momenti salienti della giurisprudenza degli ultimi 5-6 anni, si analizza l’opera di equilibrismo della Corte di Cassazione che, in definitiva, ha portato ad una progressiva demolizione del mito dell’intangibilità del giudicato; affermando la supremazia del diritto fondamentale della libertà personale su quello di stabilità dei rapporti giuridici. Per realizzare questa finalità, i giudici, hanno rinvenuto, attraverso un’interpretazione a maglie molto larghe delle previsioni del codice di procedura penale, nel giudice dell’esecuzione, l’organo deputato alle necessarie modifiche della pena

Threat of Shock and Aversive Inhibition: Induced Anxiety Modulates Pavlovian-Instrumental Interactions

Anxiety can be an adaptive response to potentially threatening situations. However, if experienced in inappropriate contexts, it can also lead to pathological and maladaptive anxiety disorders. Experimentally, anxiety can be induced in healthy individuals using the threat of shock (ToS) paradigm. Accumulating work with this paradigm suggests that anxiety promotes harm-avoidant mechanisms through enhanced inhibitory control. However, the specific cognitive mechanisms underlying anxiety-linked inhibitory control are unclear. Critically, behavioral inhibition can arise from at least 2 interacting valuation systems: instrumental (a goal-directed system) and Pavlovian (a "hardwired" reflexive system). The present study (N = 62) replicated a study showing improved response inhibition under ToS in healthy participants, and additionally examined the impact of ToS on aversive and appetitive Pavlovian-instrumental interactions in a reinforced go/no-go task. When Pavlovian and instrumental systems were in conflict, ToS increased inhibition to aversive events, while leaving appetitive interactions unperturbed. We argue that anxiety promotes avoidant behavior in potentially harmful situations by potentiating aversive Pavlovian reactions (i.e., promoting avoidance in the face of threats). Critically, such a mechanism would drive adaptive harm-avoidant behavior in threatening situations where Pavlovian and instrumental processes are aligned, but at the same time, result in maladaptive behaviors when misaligned and where instrumental control would be advantageous. This has important implications for our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie pathological anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Recor

Predicting the behaviour of near-critical and supercritical alcohols at microwave frequencies: Validation of molecular dynamic simulations as a tool that can substitute for measurements under extreme experimental conditions

Equilibrium and non-equilibrium molecular dynamic simulations, predicting the dielectric properties of near-critical and supercritical methanol and ethanol at microwave frequencies have been carried out. The autocorrelation functions of the dielectric relaxation, show dependency on the slow component at the near-critical region for both alcohols. At the supercritical region, two competing relaxation mechanisms are observed, related to the large breakdown of the hydrogen-bonding network and the degree of clustering between the molecules. This approach closely matches experimental data at microwave frequencies and identical temperature and pressure conditions, validating the predictions of how the molecular structure and dynamics manifest themselves into the complex permittivity and dielectric relaxation behaviour. Thus, introducing a modelling-based solution to deliver accurate dielectric property values for materials at supercritical conditions for “a priori” screening of solvents, whilst removing the need to overcome engineering and safety challenges associated with the development of experimental equipment to practically generate such data

Enhanced Risk Aversion, But Not Loss Aversion, in Unmedicated Pathological Anxiety.

BACKGROUND: Anxiety disorders are associated with disruptions in both emotional processing and decision making. As a result, anxious individuals often make decisions that favor harm avoidance. However, this bias could be driven by enhanced aversion to uncertainty about the decision outcome (e.g., risk) or aversion to negative outcomes (e.g., loss). Distinguishing between these possibilities may provide a better cognitive understanding of anxiety disorders and hence inform treatment strategies. METHODS: To address this question, unmedicated individuals with pathological anxiety (n = 25) and matched healthy control subjects (n = 23) completed a gambling task featuring a decision between a gamble and a safe (certain) option on every trial. Choices on one type of gamble-involving weighing a potential win against a potential loss (mixed)-could be driven by both loss and risk aversion, whereas choices on the other type-featuring only wins (gain only)-were exclusively driven by risk aversion. By fitting a computational prospect theory model to participants' choices, we were able to reliably estimate risk and loss aversion and their respective contribution to gambling decisions. RESULTS: Relative to healthy control subjects, pathologically anxious participants exhibited enhanced risk aversion but equivalent levels of loss aversion. CONCLUSIONS: Individuals with pathological anxiety demonstrate clear avoidance biases in their decision making. These findings suggest that this may be driven by a reduced propensity to take risks rather than a stronger aversion to losses. This important clarification suggests that psychological interventions for anxiety should focus on reducing risk sensitivity rather than reducing sensitivity to negative outcomes per se

Anxiety promotes memory for mood-congruent faces but does not alter loss aversion

Pathological anxiety is associated with disrupted cognitive processing, including working memory and decision-making. In healthy individuals, experimentally-induced state anxiety or high trait anxiety often results in the deployment of adaptive harm-avoidant behaviours. However, how these processes affect cognition is largely unknown. To investigate this question, we implemented a translational within-subjects anxiety induction, threat of shock, in healthy participants reporting a wide range of trait anxiety scores. Participants completed a gambling task, embedded within an emotional working memory task, with some blocks under unpredictable threat and others safe from shock. Relative to the safe condition, threat of shock improved recall of threat-congruent (fearful) face location, especially in highly trait anxious participants. This suggests that threat boosts working memory for mood-congruent stimuli in vulnerable individuals, mirroring memory biases in clinical anxiety. By contrast, Bayesian analysis indicated that gambling decisions were better explained by models that did not include threat or treat anxiety, suggesting that: (i) higher-level executive functions are robust to these anxiety manipulations; and (ii) decreased risk-taking may be specific to pathological anxiety. These findings provide insight into the complex interactions between trait anxiety, acute state anxiety and cognition, and may help understand the cognitive mechanisms underlying adaptive anxiety

The Hubble Constant

Considerable progress has been made in determining the Hubble constant over the past two decades. We discuss the cosmological context and importance of an accurate measurement of the Hubble constant, and focus on six high-precision distance-determination methods: Cepheids, tip of the red giant branch, maser galaxies, surface brightness fluctuations, the Tully-Fisher relation and Type Ia supernovae. We discuss in detail known systematic errors in the measurement of galaxy distances and how to minimize them. Our best current estimate of the Hubble constant is 73 +/-2 (random) +/-4 (systematic) km/s/Mpc. The importance of improved accuracy in the Hubble constant will increase over the next decade with new missions and experiments designed to increase the precision in other cosmological parameters. We outline the steps that will be required to deliver a value of the Hubble constant to 2% systematic uncertainty and discuss the constraints on other cosmological parameters that will then be possible with such accuracy.Comment: To be published in Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 48, 2010, consisting of 79 pages, 13 figures, 2 table

Does overloading cognitive resources mimic the impact of anxiety on temporal cognition?

Anxiety alters how we perceive the world and can alter aspects of cognitive performance. Prominent theories of anxiety suggest that the effect of anxiety on cognition is due to anxious thoughts "overloading" limited cognitive resources, competing with other processes. If this is so, then a cognitive load manipulation should impact performance of a task in the same way as induced anxiety. Thus, we examined the impact of a load manipulation on a time perception task that we have previously shown to be reliably impacted by anxiety. In contrast with our prediction, across 3 studies we found that time perception was insensitive to our load manipulation. Our results do not therefore support the idea that anxiety impacts temporal cognition by overloading limited cognitive resources, at least as induced by a commonly used load manipulation. Thus, anxiety might affect temporal cognition in a unique way, via an evolutionary-preserved defense survival system, as suggested by animal-inspired theories of anxiety, rather than competing for limited attentional resources. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

Complementary transcriptomic and proteomic analyses reveal the cellular and molecular processes that drive growth and development of Fasciola hepatica in the host liver

Background The major pathogenesis associated with Fasciola hepatica infection results from the extensive tissue damage caused by the tunnelling and feeding activity of immature flukes during their migration, growth and development in the liver. This is compounded by the pathology caused by host innate and adaptive immune responses that struggle to simultaneously counter infection and repair tissue damage. Results Complementary transcriptomic and proteomic approaches defined the F. hepatica factors associated with their migration in the liver, and the resulting immune-pathogenesis. Immature liver-stage flukes express ~ 8000 transcripts that are enriched for transcription and translation processes reflective of intensive protein production and signal transduction pathways. Key pathways that regulate neoblast/pluripotent cells, including the PI3K-Akt signalling pathway, are particularly dominant and emphasise the importance of neoblast-like cells for the parasite’s rapid development. The liver-stage parasites display different secretome profiles, reflecting their distinct niche within the host, and supports the view that cathepsin peptidases, cathepsin peptidase inhibitors, saposins and leucine aminopeptidases play a central role in the parasite’s destructive migration, and digestion of host tissue and blood. Immature flukes are also primed for countering immune attack by secreting immunomodulating fatty acid binding proteins (FABP) and helminth defence molecules (FhHDM). Combined with published host microarray data, our results suggest that considerable immune cell infiltration and subsequent fibrosis of the liver tissue exacerbates oxidative stress within parenchyma that compels the expression of a range of antioxidant molecules within both host and parasite. Conclusions The migration of immature F. hepatica parasites within the liver is associated with an increase in protein production, expression of signalling pathways and neoblast proliferation that drive their rapid growth and development. The secretion of a defined set of molecules, particularly cathepsin L peptidases, peptidase-inhibitors, saponins, immune-regulators and antioxidants allow the parasite to negotiate the liver micro-environment, immune attack and increasing levels of oxidative stress. This data contributes to the growing F. hepatica -omics information that can be exploited to understand parasite development more fully and for the design of novel control strategies to prevent host liver tissue destruction and pathology

Modeling Avoidance in Mood and Anxiety Disorders Using Reinforcement Learning.

BACKGROUND: Serious and debilitating symptoms of anxiety are the most common mental health problem worldwide, accounting for around 5% of all adult years lived with disability in the developed world. Avoidance behavior-avoiding social situations for fear of embarrassment, for instance-is a core feature of such anxiety. However, as for many other psychiatric symptoms the biological mechanisms underlying avoidance remain unclear. METHODS: Reinforcement learning models provide formal and testable characterizations of the mechanisms of decision making; here, we examine avoidance in these terms. A total of 101 healthy participants and individuals with mood and anxiety disorders completed an approach-avoidance go/no-go task under stress induced by threat of unpredictable shock. RESULTS: We show an increased reliance in the mood and anxiety group on a parameter of our reinforcement learning model that characterizes a prepotent (Pavlovian) bias to withhold responding in the face of negative outcomes. This was particularly the case when the mood and anxiety group was under stress. CONCLUSIONS: This formal description of avoidance within the reinforcement learning framework provides a new means of linking clinical symptoms with biophysically plausible models of neural circuitry and, as such, takes us closer to a mechanistic understanding of mood and anxiety disorders