A bit of madness is good for leadership potential

Successful leaders possess a personality disorder, and a modicum of psychopathology is a prerequisite for exceptional performance. Influenced by recent advances in neuroscience and genetics, I argue in a book that leadership and followership are evolutionary adaptations that developed in order to enhance group cohesion, to maximise chances for survival and reproduction, two basic functions of living organisms. A prodigious leader should enhance, or appear to enhance, these two imperatives. Therefore, leader emergence must be biologically determined and, consequently, heritable, as we observe in the animal kingdom, where pecking orders and hierarchies are genetically determined

Statistics and society: a study on the burden experienced by caregivers of patients with Alzheimer

The cost of caring for people with Alzheimer-type diseases is enormous. Caregivers experience emotional, physical and financial stress, and their demands are central to decisions on patient institutionalization. We hereby investigate the burden experienced by caregivers of Alzheimer patients in Cyprus. We explore whether burden is related to variables such as patient psychopathology, caregiver gender, income and level of education. Moreover, we examine if there is a significant difference in the level of burden, depression, or reaction to memory and behavior problems when patients live in the community or in institutions and if the level of burden is associated with the use of different coping strategies by caregivers. Various statistical techniques are implemented for the analysis and all the conclusions are discussed. This work was partially funded by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation

In Search for Novel and More Effective Psychological Treatments for Chronic Pain: The “Algea” Research Project

The aim of this paper isto present the objectivesand current state of anongoing multilevelcollaborative researchproject for the study ofpain. “Algea”, the painand suffering deity inancient Greek mythology,was the name given tothis project, which aimsto investigate criticalfactors involved in theexperience of pain, andsuffering. Moreover, theproject will examine theeffects of a novelapproach to treatmentbased on Acceptance andCommitment Therapy.This is a collaborativeproject between theUniversity of Cyprus, theUniversity of Crete, andthe Cyprus Institute ofNeurology and Genetics.Algea is the first systematic effort to examine painrelated parameters and evaluate a noveltherapeutic approach aimed at alleviating thesuffering and interference in living experienced byindividuals with one or more chronic painconditions (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis). The specificobjectives of the “Algea” project include:a) understanding the contributing factors involvedin the experience of pain in individuals withchronic pain (CP) conditions, their dyadicinteractions with their partners, and differenceswith individuals suffering from other chronicillnesses not involving pain; b) designing aculturally sensitive intervention based on newempirical findings stemming from third-wave CBTsfor use in clinical settings (i.e., CP organizations,CP rehabilitation and outpatients units, etc.); c)evaluating via randomized clinical trials theacceptability and effectiveness of this interventionespecially in reducing suffering, interference ofpain and medical utilization in various chronic painconditions; d) training interested healthprofessionals in this new approach and widelydisseminating it into clinical settings; and e)translating the intervention into a digitally-basedintervention so as to be more accessible and reacha wider audience of CP sufferers

Neural correlates of pain acceptance and the role of the cerebellum:Functional connectivity and anatomical differences in individuals with headaches versus matched controls

Background: Despite functional connectivity network dysfunction among indi-viduals with headaches, no studies have examined functional connectivity neuralcorrelates and anatomical differences in coping with headaches.Methods: This study investigated inter-individual variability in whole-brainfunctional connectivity and anatomical differences among 37 individuals withprimary headaches and 24 age- and gender-matched controls, and neural cor-relates of psychological flexibility (PF) that was previously found to contributeto headache adjustment. Participants (84% women; M headache severity = 4/10;M age = 43 years) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scans andcompleted questionnaires to examine global and subnetwork brain areas, andtheir relations with PF components, controlling for age, gender, education, andhead- motion.Results: Seed and voxel-based contrast analyses between groups showed atypicalfunctional connectivity of regions involved in pain matrix and core resting-statenetworks. Pain acceptance was the sole PF component that correlated with thecerebellum (x, y, z: 28, −72, −34, p-false discovery rate <0.001), where individualswith headaches showed higher grey matter density compared to controls.Conclusions: The cerebellum, recently implicated in modulating emotional andcognitive processes, was indicated to process information resembling what indi-viduals do when practicing pain acceptance. Our findings establish for the firsttime this connection of the cerebellum and its role in pain acceptance. We pro-pose that pain acceptance might be a behavioural biomarker target that couldmodulate problematic headache perceptions and brain networks abnormalities

Mild Phenotype in a Patient with a De Novo

We report on a 29-year-old Greek-Cypriot female with a de novo 6.3 Mb distal 10q26.2q26.3 deletion. She had a very mild neurocognitive phenotype with near normal development and intellect. In addition, she had certain distinctive features and postural orthostatic tachycardia. We review the relevant literature and postulate that certain of her features can be diagnostically relevant. This report illustrates the powerful diagnostic ability of array-CGH in the elucidation of relatively mild phenotypes

Graph Theoretical Characteristics of EEG-Based Functional Brain Networks in Patients With Epilepsy: The Effect of Reference Choice and Volume Conduction

It is well-established that both volume conduction and the choice of recording reference (montage) affect the correlation measures obtained from scalp EEG, both in the time and frequency domains. As a result, a number of correlation measures have been proposed aiming to reduce these effects. In our previous work, we have showed that scalp-EEG based functional brain networks in patients with epilepsy exhibit clear periodic patterns at different time scales and that these patterns are strongly correlated to seizure onset, particularly at shorter time scales (around 3 and 5 h), which has important clinical implications. In the present work, we use the same long-duration clinical scalp EEG data (multiple days) to investigate the extent to which the aforementioned results are affected by the choice of reference choice and correlation measure, by considering several widely used montages as well as correlation metrics that are differentially sensitive to the effects of volume conduction. Specifically, we compare two standard and commonly used linear correlation measures, cross-correlation in the time domain, and coherence in the frequency domain, with measures that account for zero-lag correlations: corrected cross-correlation, imaginary coherence, phase lag index, and weighted phase lag index. We show that the graphs constructed with corrected cross-correlation and WPLI are more stable across different choices of reference. Also, we demonstrate that all the examined correlation measures revealed similar periodic patterns in the obtained graph measures when the bipolar and common reference (Cz) montage were used. This includes circadian-related periodicities (e.g., a clear increase in connectivity during sleep periods as compared to awake periods), as well as periodicities at shorter time scales (around 3 and 5 h). On the other hand, these results were affected to a large degree when the average reference montage was used in combination with standard cross-correlation, coherence, imaginary coherence, and PLI, which is likely due to the low number of electrodes and inadequate electrode coverage of the scalp. Finally, we demonstrate that the correlation between seizure onset and the brain network periodicities is preserved when corrected cross-correlation and WPLI were used for all the examined montages. This suggests that, even in the standard clinical setting of EEG recording in epilepsy where only a limited number of scalp EEG measurements are available, graph-theoretic quantification of periodic patterns using appropriate montage, and correlation measures corrected for volume conduction provides useful insights into seizure onset

Corrigendum: Illness perceptions of COVID-19 in Europe: Predictors, impacts and temporal evolution

A corrigendum on Illness perceptions of COVID-19 in Europe: predictors, impacts and temporal evolution by Dias Neto, D., Nunes da Silva, A., Roberto, M. S., Lubenko, J., Constantinou, M., Nicolaou, C., Lamnisos, D., Papacostas, S., Höfer, S., Presti, G., Squatrito, V., Vasiliou, V. S., McHugh, L., Monestès, J. L., Baban, A., Alvarez-Galvez, J., Paez-Blarrina, M., Montesinos, F., Valdivia-Salas, S., Ori, D., Lappalainen, R., Kleszcz, B., Gloster, A., Karekla, M., and Kassianos, A. P. (2021). Front. Psychol. 12:640955. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.640955info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Illness Perceptions of COVID-19 in Europe: Predictors, Impacts and Temporal Evolution

Objective: Illness perceptions (IP) are important predictors of emotional and behavioral responses in many diseases. The current study aims to investigate the COVID-19-related IP throughout Europe. The specific goals are to understand the temporal development, identify predictors (within demographics and contact with COVID-19) and examine the impacts of IP on perceived stress and preventive behaviors. Methods: This was a time-series-cross-section study of 7,032 participants from 16 European countries using multilevel modeling from April to June 2020. IP were measured with the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire. Temporal patterns were observed considering the date of participation and the date recoded to account the epidemiological evolution of each country. The outcomes considered were perceived stress and COVID-19 preventive behaviors. Results: There were significant trends, over time, for several IP, suggesting a small decrease in negativity in the perception of COVID-19 in the community. Age, gender, and education level related to some, but not all, IP. Considering the self-regulation model, perceptions consistently predicted general stress and were less consistently related to preventive behaviors. Country showed no effect in the predictive model, suggesting that national differences may have little relevance for IP, in this context. Conclusion: The present study provides a comprehensive picture of COVID-19 IP in Europe in an early stage of the pandemic. The results shed light on the process of IP formation with implications for health-related outcomes and their evolution