Out-of-body experience favors emotional memory consolidation

Η ιδιοδεκτικότητα αντανακλά την ικανότητά μας να αναγνωρίζουμε το σώμα μας σε μια συγκεκριμένη τοποθεσία, επιτρέποντάς μας να επικοινωνούμε με τον κόσμο. Τα συναισθήματα επιφέρουν ισχυρό αντίκτυπο στη μνήμη και στην ιδιοδεκτικότητα. Παρουσιάζει ενδιαφέρον ότι η θερμοκρασία του δέρματος μπορεί τουλάχιστον εν μέρει να μεσολαβήσει σε αυτή την επίδραση. Προηγούμενες μελέτες έχουν διαπιστώσει ότι οι εξωσωματικές εμπειρίες (out-of-body experiences, OBE) έχουν αρνητικό αντίκτυπο στην κωδικοποίηση πληροφοριών και προκαλούν πτώση της θερμοκρασίας του δέρματος. Στην παρούσα μελέτη σχεδιάστηκε μια νέα μέθοδος για την πρόκληση OBE και διερευνήθηκε η επίδρασή τους σε διαφορετικό στάδιο και τύπο επεξεργασίας μνήμης (παγίωση της συναισθηματικής μνήμης) και στη θερμοκρασία του δέρματος. Στο πείραμά μας παρουσιάσαμε τρεις τύπους συναισθηματικών εικόνων (ουδέτερες, ευχάριστες, δυσάρεστες) προτού προχωρήσουμε στην πρόκληση OBE και εξετάσουμε τη μνήμη αναγνώρισης των συμμετεχόντων μας σε μια δοκιμασία ανάκτησης. Σε όλο το πείραμα, η θερμοκρασία του δέρματος τόσο στο λαιμό όσο και στο χέρι μετρήθηκε με iButtons. Οι επιδόσεις των συμμετεχόντων υπολογίστηκαν χρησιμοποιώντας d-prime και οι στατιστικές αναλύσεις περιελάμβαναν ανάλυση ANOVA, εξετάζοντας τη σχέση μεταξύ της βαθμολογίας στο ερωτηματολόγιο OBE, της απόδοσης και της θερμοκρασίας του δέρματος. Συγκρίναμε επίσης τις διαφορές μεταξύ της πειραματικής ομάδας και της ομάδας ελέγχου. Τα αποτελέσματα έδειξαν ότι το OBE ευνοεί την παγίωση της συναισθηματικής μνήμης και προκαλεί αύξηση της θερμοκρασίας. Μελλοντικές μελέτες θα πρέπει να επεκτείνουν τα ευρήματά μας, να αποκλείσουν ότι οι συμμετέχοντες που βιώνουν OBE θα μπορούσαν να έχουν εκ των προτέρων καλύτερη μνήμη ή ότι η θερμοκρασία θα μπορούσε να αυξηθεί λόγω άλλων λόγων.Body ownership reflects our ability to recognise our body at a certain location, enabling us to interact with the world. Emotion has a strong impact on memory and body ownership; interestingly, skin temperature may at least in part mediate this impact. Previous studies have found that out-of-body experiences (OBE) impair memory encoding and cause skin temperature to drop. In the present study a new method for inducing OBE was designed and their impact on a different stage and type of memory processing (emotional memory consolidation) and on skin temperature was investigated. In our experiment, we presented three types of emotional pictures (neutral, pleasant, unpleasant) before inducing OBE and testing our participants’ recognition memory in a retrieval session. Throughout the whole experiment, both neck and hand skin temperature were measured using iButtons. Participants’ performance was calculated using d-prime and statistical analyses included one-way ANOVA, probing the relationship between the score on the OBE questionnaire, performance and skin temperature; we also compared the differences between the experimental and a control group. Results showed that OBE favour emotional memory consolidation and cause a temperature increase, supporting the embodied cognition theory as proposed by Anderson (2003). Future studies should expand our findings, to rule out that participants experiencing OBE could have a better memory at baseline or that temperature could be increased due to other reasons

Sleep spindle and slow wave frequency reflect motor skill performance in primary school-age children

Background and Aim: The role of sleep in the enhancement of motor skills has been studied extensively in adults. We aimed to determine involvement of sleep and characteristics of spindles and slow waves in a motor skill in children. Hypothesis: We hypothesized sleep-dependence of skill enhancement and an association of interindividual differences in skill and sleep characteristics. Methods:: 30 children (19 females, 10.7 ± 0.8 years of age; mean ± SD) performed finger sequence tapping tasks in a repeated-measures design spanning 4 days including 1 polysomnography (PSG) night. Initial and delayed performance were assessed over 12 h of wake; 12 h with sleep; and 24 h with wake and sleep. For the 12 h with sleep, children were assigned to one of three conditions: modulation of slow waves and spindles was attempted using acoustic perturbation, and compared to yoked and no-sound control conditions. Analyses: Mixed effect regression models evaluated the association of sleep, its macrostructure and spindles and slow wave parameters with initial and delayed speed and accuracy. Results and Conclusions: Children enhance their accuracy only over an interval with sleep. Unlike previously reported in adults, children enhance their speed independent of sleep, a capacity that may to be lost in adulthood. Individual differences in the dominant frequency of spindles and slow waves were predictive for performance: children performed better if they had less slow spindles, more fast spindles and faster slow waves. On the other hand, overnight enhancement of accuracy was most pronounced in children with more slow spindles and slower slow waves, i.e., the ones with an initial lower performance. Associations of spindle and slow wave characteristics with initial performance may confound interpretation of their involvement in overnight enhancement. Slower frequencies of characteristic sleep events may mark slower learning and immaturity of networks involved in motor skills

Деякі аспекти діяльності уповноважених Наркомату (Міністерства) заготівель СРСР на Кіровоградщині в 1944-1946 рр. та їх наслідки

У статті на основі аналізу архівних документів висвітлена діяльність уповноважених Наркомату (Міністерства) заготівель СРСР на Кіровоградщині у перші післявоєнні роки, вказані наслідки, спричинені цією діяльністю - тотальне зубожіння населення області через вилучення майже всіх продуктів харчування.В статье на основе анализа архивных документов освещена деятельность уполномоченных Наркомата (Министерства) заготовок СССР на Кировоградщине в первые послевоенные годы, указаны последствия, причиненные этой деятельностью - тотальное обнищание населения области посредством изъятия почти всех продуктов питания.The activity of authorized people of the Ministry of Supply of the USSR in Kirovograd region in the first post-war years had been analyzed in the article on the basis of analysis of the archival documents and the consequences caused by this activity like the total impoverishment of population of the region through the confiscation of almost all food stuff had been indicated in this article as well

Impaired spatio-temporal predictive motor timing associated with spinocerebellar ataxia type 6

Many daily life activities demand precise integration of spatial and temporal information of sensory inputs followed by appropriate motor actions. This type of integration is carried out in part by the cerebellum, which has been postulated to play a central role in learning and timing of movements. Cerebellar damage due to atrophy or lesions may compromise forward- model processing, in which both spatial and temporal cues are used to achieve prediction for future motor states. In the present study we sought to further investigate the cerebellar contribution to predictive and reactive motor timing, as well as to learning of sequential order and temporal intervals in these tasks. We tested patients with spinocerebellar ataxia type 6 (SCA6) and healthy controls for two related motor tasks; one requiring spatio-temporal prediction of dynamic visual stimuli and another one requiring reactive timing only. We found that healthy controls established spatio-temporal prediction in their responses with high temporal precision, which was absent in the cerebellar patients. SCA6 patients showed lower predictive motor timing, coinciding with a reduced number of correct responses during the 'anticipatory' period on the task. Moreover, on the task utilizing reactive motor timing functions, control participants showed both sequence order and temporal interval learning, whereas patients only showed sequence order learning. These results suggest that SCA6 affects predictive motor timing and temporal interval learning. Our results support and highlight cerebellar contribution to timing and argue for cerebellar engagement during spatio-temporal prediction of upcoming events

Early Trajectory Prediction in Elite Athletes

Cerebellar plasticity is a critical mechanism for optimal feedback control. While Purkinje cell activity of the oculomotor vermis predicts eye movement speed and direction, more lateral areas of the cerebellum may play a role in more complex tasks, including decision-making. It is still under question how this motor-cognitive functional dichotomy between medial and lateral areas of the cerebellum plays a role in optimal feedback control. Here we show that elite athletes subjected to a trajectory prediction, go/no-go task manifest superior subsecond trajectory prediction accompanied by optimal eye movements and changes in cognitive load dynamics. Moreover, while interacting with the cerebral cortex, both the medial and lateral cerebellar networks are prominently activated during the fast feedback stage of the task, regardless of whether or not a motor response was required for the correct response. Our results show that cortico-cerebellar interactions are widespread during dynamic feedback and that experience can result in superior task-specific decision skills

Altered Functional Connectivity in Resting State Networks in Tourette’s Disorder

Introduction: Brain regions are anatomically and functionally interconnected in order to facilitate important functions like cognition and movement. It remains incompletely understood how brain connectivity contributes to the pathophysiology of Tourette’s disorder (TD). By using resting-state functional MRI, we aimed to identify alterations in the default mode network (DMN), frontal-parietal network (FPN), sensori-motor network (SMN), and salience network (SN) in TD compared with healthy control (HC) subjects.Method: In 23 adult TD patients and 22 HC, 3T-MRI resting-state scans were obtained. Independent component analysis was performed comparing TD and HC to investigate connectivity patterns within and between resting-state networks.Results: TD patients showed higher involvement of the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex in the connectivity of the DMN and less involvement of the inferior parietal cortex in the connectivity of the FPN when compared to HC. Moreover, TD patients showed a stronger coupling between DMN and left FPN than HC. Finally, in TD patients, functional connectivity within DMN correlated negatively with tic severity.Conclusion: We tentatively interpret the increased functional connectivity within DMN in TD patients as compensatory to the lower functional connectivity within left FPN. The stronger coupling between DMN and left FPN, together with the finding that higher DMN intrinsic connectivity is associated with lower tic severity would indicate that DMN is recruited to exert motor inhibition

Emotion Processing, Reappraisal, and Craving in Alcohol Dependence: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Alcohol dependence has long been related to impaired emotion regulation—including reappraisal—but little is known about the performance and associated neural activity of alcohol-dependent patients (ADPs) on an emotion reappraisal task. This study, therefore, compares reappraisal of negative, positive, neutral, and alcohol-related images at a behavioral and neural level between ADPs and healthy controls (HCs).Thirty-nine ADPs and 39 age-, gender-, and education-matched HCs performed an emotion reappraisal task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and craving was measured before and after the reappraisal task. During the emotion reappraisal task, participants were instructed to either attend or reappraise positive, negative, neutral, or alcohol-related images, and to indicate their experienced emotion on a visual analogue scale (VAS).Both ADPs and HCs completed the emotion reappraisal task successfully, showing significant differences in self-reported experienced emotion after attending versus reappraising visual stimuli and in brain activity in emotion processing/reappraisal relevant areas. ADPs were not impaired in cognitive reappraisal at a behavioral or neural level relative to HCs, nor did ADPs indicate any difference in self-reported emotion while attending emotional images. However, ADPs were different from HC in emotion processing: ADPs revealed a blunted response in the (posterior) insula, precuneus, operculum, and superior temporal gyrus while attending emotional images compared neutral images compared to HCs, and in ADPs, higher baseline craving levels were associated with a less blunted response to alcohol-related images than in HCs. These results reveal that ADPs do not show impaired reappraisal abilities when instructed, although future studies should assess voluntary reappraisal abilities in alcohol-dependent patients.Clinical Trial Registration:www.ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT02557815

The Effect of High-Frequency Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Emotion Processing, Reappraisal, and Craving in Alcohol Use Disorder Patients and Healthy Controls: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Impaired cognitive–motivational functioning is present in many psychiatric disorders, including alcohol use disorder (AUD). Emotion regulation is a key intermediate factor, relating to the (cognitive) regulation of emotional and motivational states, such as in regulation of craving or negative emotions that may lead to relapse in alcohol use. These cognitive–motivational functions, including emotion regulation, are a target in cognitive behavioral therapy and may possibly be improved by neurostimulation techniques. The present between-subjects, single-blind study assesses the effects of sham-controlled high-frequency neuronavigated repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (10 Hz) of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) on several aspects relevant for emotion regulation (emotion processing and reappraisal abilities) and related brain activity, as well as self-reported craving in a sample of alcohol use disorder patients (AUD; n = 39) and healthy controls (HC; n = 36). During the emotion reappraisal task, participants were instructed to either attend or reappraise their emotions related to the negative, positive, neutral, and alcohol-related images, after which they rated their experienced emotions. We found that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) reduces self-reported experienced emotions in response to positive and negative images in AUD patients, whereas experienced emotions were increased in response to neutral and positive images in HCs. In the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analyses, we found that rTMS reduces right dlPFC activity during appraisal of affective images relative to sham stimulation only in AUD patients. We could not confirm our hypotheses regarding the effect of rTMS craving levels, or on reappraisal related brain function, since no significant effects of rTMS on craving or reappraisal related brain function were found. These findings imply that rTMS can reduce the emotional impact of images as reflected in blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response, especially in AUD patients. Future studies should replicate and expand the current study, for instance, by assessing the effect of multiple stimulation sessions on both explicit and implicit emotion regulation paradigms and craving, and assess the effect of rTMS within subgroups with specific addiction-relevant image preferences.Clinical Trial Registration: www.ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT02557815