[Individual specificities and heart rhythm variability under emotional influence in women of various age].

The autonomic regulation of heart rhythm against the background of emotiogenic factors in women aged 30-60 was studied. A method of variational pulsemetry based on the analysis of heart rhythm variability (HRV - temporal and spectral) was used for physiological control of the status of those under investigation. Modeling negative emotions in introverts and in those tested at intropunitive type of reaction resulted in a similar directivity of changes in HRV indices vs. initial condition: SDNN, RMSSD, triangular index and power in HF-range decreased, while Baevsky index increased. This may signify that people having above peculiarities demonstrated changes in the autonomic balance towards activation of sympathoadrenal link, decrease of efficacy of baroreflex regulation and a tension of organism's regulatory systems. Such changes in HRV values were shown to be similar to those observed during aging. Peculiarities of the emotional pattern of the personality, determined by both congenital features of the nervous system and the acquired system of emotional relationships, play a significant role in health strengthening and prevention of neurogenic disorders. The results obtained enable to explain some of the mechanisms of neurogenic diseases during prolonged emotional stress.

Contingent biofeedback outperforms other methods to enhance the accuracy of cardiac interoception: A comparison of short interventions.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Deviations in interoception might contribute to the development and maintenance of mental disorders. The improvement of interoceptive accuracy (IA) is desirable but assessment and training methods remain controversial. For instance, it was assumed that performance increases in heartbeat counting paradigms after cardiac feedback were due to an improvement of knowledge with regard to heart rate rather than due to an actual improvement in IA. METHODS: Here, we examined effects of contingent cardiac feedback training, non-contingent cardiac feedback, mindfulness practice, and a waiting period with external attentional focus on IA. 100 healthy participants underwent a mental tracking paradigm before and after 20 min of training or waiting. RESULTS: Results revealed a significant increase of IA in the contingent feedback condition (d = 1.21, p ≤ .001) and no significant changes after non-contingent feedback, mindfulness practice or waiting (d ≤ 0.37; p ≥ .06). Furthermore, IA increase was significantly higher after the contingent feedback training compared to all other conditions, including non-contingent feedback. LIMITATIONS: Future studies need to replicate these findings in clinical samples and examine time dependent effects. CONCLUSIONS: The results provide evidence for the trainability of heartbeat perception. IA improvements may reduce the symptom burden in people suffering from mental disorders and psychophysiological conditions that have been linked to lower interoceptive accuracy such as depression, somatic symptom disorder, chronic pain, and functional somatic syndromes. Consequently, exploration of biofeedback training procedures shall be continued with the aim of identifying relevant mediators of beneficial effects and future implementation in clinical practice.

Blushing during social interactions in people with a fear of blushing.

Changes in facial blood flow were investigated during an introductory conversation, delivering a speech, and listening to the speech afterwards in 16 people with a fear of blushing and 16 controls. It was hypothesized that fear of blushing would be associated with high ratings of self-reported blushing intensity and embarrassment during the tasks, and with persistence of the blushing reaction between tasks. Embarrassment and self-reported blushing intensity were greater in the fear-of-blushing group than in controls throughout the experiment. Increases in facial blood flow were similar in the two groups during each of the tasks. However, blushing dissipated more slowly after each task in the fear-of-blushing group than in controls, resulting in an incremental increase in facial blood flow over the course of the experiment. The slow recovery after an episode of blushing might result in physiological or social cues that help to maintain a fear of blushing.

Spontaneous emotion regulation during evaluated speaking tasks: associations with negative affect, anxiety expression, memory, and physiological responding.

In these studies, the correlates of spontaneously using expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal during stressful speeches were examined. Spontaneous emotion regulation means that there were no instructions of how to regulate emotions during the speech. Instead, participants indicated after the speech to what extent they used self-motivated expressive suppression or reappraisal during the task. The results show that suppression is associated with less anxiety expression, greater physiological responding, and less memory for the speech while having no impact on negative affect. In contrast, reappraisal has no impact on physiology and memory while leading to less expression and affect. Taken together, spontaneous emotion regulation in active coping tasks has similar consequences as experimentally induced emotion regulation in passive tasks.

Anxiety sensitivity and auditory perception of heartbeat.

Anxiety sensitivity (AS) is the fear of sensations associated with autonomic arousal. AS has been associated with the development and maintenance of panic disorder. Given that panic patients often rate cardiac symptoms as the most fear-provoking feature of a panic attack, AS individuals may be especially responsive to cardiac stimuli. Consequently, we developed a signal-in-white-noise detection paradigm to examine the strategies that high and low AS individuals use to detect and discriminate normal and abnormal heartbeat sounds. Compared to low AS individuals, high AS individuals demonstrated a greater propensity to report the presence of normal, but not abnormal, heartbeat sounds. High and low AS individuals did not differ in their ability to perceive normal heartbeat sounds against a background of white noise; however, high AS individuals consistently demonstrated lower ability to discriminate abnormal heartbeats from background noise and between abnormal and normal heartbeats. AS was characterized by an elevated false alarm rate across all tasks. These results suggest that heartbeat sounds may be fear-relevant cues for AS individuals, and may affect their attention and perception in tasks involving threat signals.

Internal and external attention in speech anxiety.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Cognitive models of social phobia propose that socially anxious individuals engage in heightened self-focused attention. Evidence for this assumption was provided by dot probe and feedback tasks measuring attention and reactions to internal cues. However, it is unclear whether similar patterns of attentional processing can be revealed while participants actually engage in a social situation. The current study used a novel paradigm, simultaneously measuring attention to internal and external stimuli in anticipation of and during a speech task. METHODS: Participants with speech anxiety and non-anxious controls were asked to press a button in response to external or internal probes, while giving a speech on a controversial topic in front of an audience. The external probe consisted of a LED attached to the head of one spectator and the internal probe was a light vibration, which ostensibly signaled changes in participants' pulse or skin conductance. RESULTS: The results indicate that during speech anticipation, high speech anxious participants responded significantly faster to internal probes than low speech anxious participants, while during the speech no differences were revealed between internal and external probes. LIMITATIONS: Generalization of our results is restricted to speech anxious individuals. CONCLUSIONS: Our results provide support for the pivotal role of self-focused attention in anticipatory social anxiety. Furthermore, they provide a new framework for understanding interaction effects of internal and external attention in anticipation of and during actual social situations.

Differentiation of Internet addiction risk level based on autonomic nervous responses: the Internet-addiction hypothesis of autonomic activity.

How high-risk Internet addiction (IA) abusers respond to different autonomic nervous activities compared with low-risk subjects may be a critical research goal with prevention and treatment implications. The aim of the present study was to address this issue by observing differences between high- and low-risk IA abusers in four physiological assessments when surfing the Internet: blood volume pulse (BVP), skin conductance (SC), peripheral temperature (PTEMP), and respiratory response (RESPR). Forty-two male and ten female participants aged 18-24 years were screened with the Chen Internet Addiction Scale (CIAS, 2003), and then separated into high- and low-risk IA groups. Using psychophysiology equipment, participants encountered a 3-minute adaptation period followed by a 6-minute testing period for surfing the Internet on baseline and testing phases. The present results indicate that: (a) the CIAS scores were positively and negatively correlated with the RESPR and the PTEMP; (b) the PTEMP and RESPR of high-risk IA abusers were respectively weaker and stronger than those of low-risk IA abusers; the BVP and SC of high-risk IA abusers were respectively augmented and decreased relative to low-risk IA abusers. Thus we suggest that four autonomic responses may be differentially sensitive to abusers' potency in terms of the IA hypothesis of autonomic activity. The stronger BVP and RESPR responses and the weaker PTEMP reactions of the high-risk IA abusers indicate the sympathetic nervous system was heavily activated in these individuals. However, SC activates parasympathetic responses at the same time in the high-risk IA abusers. The paradoxical responses between the sympathetic and parasympathetic actions are addressed in the discussion.

Body-related film clip triggers desire to binge in women with binge eating disorder.

Previous research suggests that excessive influence of shape or weight concern on self-evaluation is strongly associated with psychological functioning in women with binge eating disorder (BED). However, little is known so far about its direct influence on binge episodes. In an experimental study, 27 women with BED (DSM-IV) and 25 overweight healthy controls watched a body-related film clip. Ratings of the desire to binge and mood were assessed prior to and at the end of the film clip. Additionally, measures of heart rate, finger pulse and electrodermal activity were obtained. Main results revealed a significant increase in the desire to binge, sadness and anxiety, as well as a significant increase in non-specific skin conductance fluctuation on the body-related clip in the group of BED only. The results underline the importance of shape and weight concerns in BED.

Impact of type A behavior on brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity in Japanese.

Pulse wave velocity (PWV) is the velocity of a pulse wave traveling a given distance between 2 sites in the arterial system, and is a well-known indicator of arteriosclerosis. Brachial-ankle PWV (baPWV) is a parameter more simple to obtain, compared with the conventional PWV, and is an easy and effective means of evaluating arteriosclerosis. BaPWV can be obtained by only wrapping the four extremities with blood pressure cuffs, and it can be easily used to screen a large number of subjects. Type A behavior has been confirmed as an independent risk factor for the development of coronary heart disease. To examine the relationship between Type A behavior and arteriosclerosis, 307 normal Japanese subjects were classified into either a Type A group (n = 90) or a non-Type A group (n = 217) by using Maeda's Type A Scale. BaPWV was evaluated using a PWV diagnosis device. The baPWV in the Type A group was significantly higher than that obtained in the non-Type A group. The baPWV showed a positive correlation with age both in the Type A group and in the non-Type A group; however, the straight-line regression slope of baPWV versus age in the Type A group was significantly larger than that in the non-Type A group. Therefore, our results suggest that arteriosclerosis might be promoted earlier in subjects expressing the Type A behavior pattern. Type A behavior pattern is confirmed as a risk factor for arteriosclerosis, and may increase the risk of the cardiovascular disease related to arteriosclerosis.

Psychiatric features and disturbance of circadian rhythm of temperature, pulse, and blood pressure in Wilson's disease.

Wilson's disease (hepatolenticular degeneration), a disease of genetic origin, is due to abnormal copper metabolism affecting many organs and systems, especially the liver and the nervous system. The initial symptoms can be exclusively or predominantly psychiatric, including psychotic features. Three cases are reported in which the clinical picture at the beginning was compatible with a psychiatric diagnosis. During hospitalization, before treatment, there were abnormal and spontaneous changes in the circadian rhythm of temperature, pulse, and blood pressure, recorded every 6 hours, with febrile peaks in the absence of infectious focus. Because the hypothalamus is important in the regulation of these autonomic functions, the hypothesis of a possible hypothalamic dysfunction was made, justifying a wide clinical and laboratory investigation that allowed the diagnosis of Wilson's disease. Alertness to circadian rhythm abnormalities in such cases may help the psychiatrist avoid an erroneous diagnosis.