Effects of aging on face processing: An ERP study of the own-age bias with neutral and emotional faces.

Older adults systematically show an enhanced N170 amplitude during the visualization of facial expressions of emotion. The present study aimed to replicate this finding, further investigating if this effect is specific to facial stimuli, present in other neural correlates of face processing, and modulated by own-age faces. To this purpose, younger (n = 25; Mage = 28.36), middle-aged (n = 23; Mage = 48.74), and older adults (n = 25; Mage = 67.36) performed two face/emotion identification tasks during an EEG recording. The results showed that groups did not differ regarding P100 amplitude, but older adults had increased N170 amplitude for both facial and non-facial stimuli. The event-related potentials analysed were not modulated by an own-age bias, but older faces elicited larger N170 in the Emotion Identification Task for all groups. This increased amplitude may reflect a higher ambiguity of older faces due to age-related changes in their physical features, which may elicit higher neural resources to decode. Regarding P250, older faces elicited decreased amplitudes than younger faces, which may reflect a reduced processing of the emotional content of older faces. This interpretation is consistent with the lower accuracy obtained for this category of stimuli across groups. These results have important social implications and suggest that aging may hamper the neural processing of facial expressions of emotion, especially for own-age peers.

Results from PSIPROSPER: A multicenter retrospective study to analyze the impact of treatment with paliperidone palmitate 1-month on clinical outcomes and hospital resource utilization in adult patients with schizophrenia in Portugal.

Background: Schizophrenia is a chronic psychiatric disorder with a significant impact worldwide. The early onset and its relapsing nature pose a significant challenge to patients and caregivers. The PSIPROSPER study aimed to characterize the real-world context of schizophrenia treatment in Portugal and to measure the impact of including paliperidone palmitate 1-month formulation (PP1M) in the clinical outcomes (relapses and hospitalizations) and healthcare resource utilization, in a context in which payment scheme in Portugal allows for patients to receive free antipsychotics if prescribed at public hospitals. Methods: This was a multicenter, retrospective, observational study. Male and female adults with a diagnosis of schizophrenia who initiated treatment with PP1M after a minimum of 12 months on an Oral Antipsychotic (OAP), and with complete medical charts, were consecutively included. A mirror-image design over 24 months allowed the comparison of outcomes before and after the PP1M introduction. Results: Out of the 51 patients included, 80.4% were male, with a mean age of 34 (±9.8) years. Around 92% of patients were being treated with PP1M at inclusion. Lack of adherence to previous OAP was the main driver for PP1M initiation. Only 9.8% of patients were hospitalized during the PP1M period vs. 64.7% during the OAP period (p < 0.0001). The mean number of hospitalizations (0.1) was significantly lower during the PP1M period (p < 0.0001). Type of treatment was the only variable found to be significant in predicting a lower hospitalization rate and a lower risk of hospitalization. Relapses were significantly lower (p < 0.0001) in PP1M (21.6%) vs. OAP (83.7%). Similarly, the mean change in the number of relapses (p < 0.0001) showed significantly better outcomes in PP1M. Conclusion: This study supports PP1M as part of schizophrenia treatment in Portugal. Given the lower number of relapses and hospitalizations observed in schizophrenia patients treated with PP1M when compared to OAP-treated patients, this real-world study seems to provide further evidence to support the use of PP1M to treat this condition, in line with previous research. In the context of scarce public resources, these benefits should be carefully considered by healthcare decision-makers to ensure optimal value-based treatment strategies.

Awareness to utilitarian responses in later life: An ERP study with moral dilemmas.

The current study aims to provide the first insights into the neural correlates of utilitarian and deontological responses to moral dilemmas across the lifespan. To this purpose, younger (n = 30), middle-aged (n = 29), and older adults (n = 29) completed moral dilemmas during an EEG recording. Behaviorally, groups did not differ in the number of utilitarian responses and reaction times. However, at the neural level, older adults had higher Error Positivity (Pe) amplitudes than younger adults after utilitarian responses. As this effect was specific to utilitarian responses, it suggests that utilitarian decisions may induce increased conflict in the older group. These findings highlight that older adults may be more aware of the harmful outcomes of utilitarian decisions during moral decision-making.

Effects of Concomitant Benzodiazepines and Antidepressants Long-Term Use on Social Decision-Making: Results From the Ultimatum Game.

Benzodiazepines and antidepressants have been shown to change responses to unfairness; however, the effects of their combined use on unfairness evaluation are unknown. This study examines the effects of concomitant benzodiazepines and antidepressants long-term use on the evaluation of fair and unfair offers. To analyze behavioral changes on responses to unfairness, we compared the performance of medicated participants and healthy controls in the Ultimatum Game (UG), both in the proposer and in the respondent role. The results showed that long-term psychotropic users had the worse economic strategy by accepting less offers than control subjects. However, in the proposer role, the unfair offers made by participants were similar between groups. The present results suggest that long-term use of psychotropic medication, specifically the combination of benzodiazepines and antidepressants, may increase the sensitivity to unfairness, resulting in higher rejection rates in conditions where this strategy is the most disadvantageous.

Delay discounting in aging: The influence of cognitive and psychological variables.

Delay discounting (or temporal discounting) refers to the decrease of the subjective value of a reward as the time interval for receiving that reward increases. A recent meta-analysis showed that delay discounting appears to be similar across the lifespan as younger, middle-aged, and older adults prefer sooner rewards, despite smaller, over later rewards, even if larger. However further investigation is needed to understand the potential role of individual factors in delay discounting across the lifespan. The present study aimed to contribute to this debate, by investigating the influence of sociodemographic, neurocognitive, and psychological variables on delay discounting. For this purpose, 88 participants (30 younger, 30 middle-aged, and 28 older adults) aged between 19 and 73 years old completed the Monetary Choice Questionnaire (MCQ), a comprehensive battery of neurocognitive tests, and self-report measures of psychopathology. Results revealed no group differences in the rate of discounting. A well-established effect of the amount of the delayed reward was replicated, showing that medium rewards were less discounted than smaller rewards, and larger rewards had lower discounting rates than smaller and medium rewards-the magnitude effect. Regarding the influence of neurocognitive and psychological factors on delay discounting, better working memory, as assessed by the Corsi block-tapping task, significantly predicted larger magnitude effects. The findings of the current work are consistent with the results of previous studies, suggesting that temporal discounting is a stable function across the adult life span. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Economic decision-making in the continuum between healthy aging and Alzheimer's Disease: A systematic review of 20 years of research.

The effect of pathological aging on economic decision-making is a topic of major relevance as impairments in this domain place older adults at increased risk for financial abuse. This review aims to characterize decision-making across the continuum that goes from healthy aging to Alzheimer's Dementia. We included 42 studies comparing patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and healthy older adults, patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and healthy older adults, and patients with MCI and patients with AD. Substantial evidence emerged suggesting that both MCI as AD affect economic decision-making. However, a non-negligible number of behavioural tasks failed to find significant differences between patients and controls, and no differences were reported between patients with MCI and AD. On the contrary, measures of financial capacity reached more robust findings, showing that healthy older adults had better performance than patients, while MCI patients showed better performance than AD patients. This review presents the main conclusions that may be drawn from significant findings, as well as the hypotheses and recommendations for future research.

Abnormal Habituation of the Auditory Event-Related Potential P2 Component in Patients With Schizophrenia.

Auditory event-related potentials (ERP) may serve as diagnostic tools for schizophrenia and inform on the susceptibility for this condition. Particularly, the examination of N1 and P2 components of the auditory ERP may shed light on the impairments of information processing streams in schizophrenia. However, the habituation properties (i.e., decreasing amplitude with the repeated presentation of an auditory stimulus) of these components remain poorly studied compared to other auditory ERPs. Therefore, the current study used a roving paradigm to assess the modulation and habituation of N1 and P2 to simple (pure tones) and complex sounds (human voices and bird songs) in 26 first-episode patients with schizophrenia and 27 healthy participants. To explore the habituation properties of these ERPs, we measured the decrease in amplitude over a train of seven repetitions of the same stimulus (either bird songs or human voices). We observed that, for human voices, N1 and P2 amplitudes decreased linearly from stimulus 1-7, in both groups. Regarding bird songs, only the P2 component showed a decreased amplitude with stimulus presentation, exclusively in the control group. This suggests that patients did not show a fading of neural responses to repeated bird songs, reflecting abnormal habituation to this stimulus. This could reflect the inability to inhibit irrelevant or redundant information at later stages of auditory processing. In turn schizophrenia patients appear to have a preserved auditory processing of human voices.

The neurophysiological correlates of the triarchic model of psychopathy: An approach to the basic mechanisms of threat conditioning and inhibitory control.

The psychopathic traits boldness, meanness, and disinhibition are theorized to be underlined by trait fearlessness and externalizing vulnerability as etiologic neurobiological processes. However, little is known about the neurophysiological correlates of these traits. In this work, we explored how the three traits are associated with event-related potential (ERP) components targeted at the etiological processes in a partial delayed threat conditioning task and in a go/no-go task. Fifty community-dwelling volunteers (25 women), without history of neurological or psychiatric conditions, were recruited and assessed for psychopathic traits using the triarchic psychopathy measure. Participants performed a threat conditioning task, and a go/no-go task while undergoing an electroencephalography recording. Results from the threat conditioning task showed that boldness was significantly associated with reduced late positive potential. Concerning the go/no-go task, disinhibition was significantly associated with reduced error-related negativity ERP component. Overall, distinct psychopathic traits were found to be associated with distinct neurophysiological correlates of threat conditioning and response inhibition. This is consistent with models of psychopathy entailing trait fearlessness and externalizing proneness, and related brain mechanisms, as distinct processes underlying the expression of psychopathic traits.

Effects of benzodiazepines administration on identification of facial expressions of emotion: a meta-analysis.

RATIONALE: Benzodiazepines, a class of commonly prescribed drugs, were shown to cause cognitive impairments in several domains. However, the effect of benzodiazepines on social cognition is still unclear. OBJECTIVES: In order to clarify how benzodiazepines administration affects the identification of facial expressions of emotion (FEE), we conducted a meta-analysis of 8 empirical studies (N = 153 benzodiazepines, N = 153 placebo). RESULTS: Results showed that participants receiving benzodiazepines were less accurate at identifying facial expressions of anger compared with those receiving placebo (M = - 0.52). Regarding the remaining facial expressions, the meta-analysis did not reveal significant differences between the groups. CONCLUSIONS: We discuss several factors that may explain the differences in the identification of emotions in facial expressions associated with benzodiazepines administration. Additionally, the relevance of assessing the effects of benzodiazepines when used on a long-term basis is addressed.

The Paths to Negative and Positive Experiences of Informal Caregiving in Severe Mental Illness: A Study of Explanatory Models.

The experience of caregiving in severe mental illness is a valuable concept for research and clinical practice as it can provide access to the idiosyncratic assessment of negative and positive dimensions of informal caregiving, thus allowing the design of interventions focused on reducing risk factors and promoting protective factors. This study was aimed at testing explanatory models of negative and positive experiences of caregiving considering the role of the caregiver's perceptions of difficulties, satisfaction, and coping. A convenience sample of 159 informal caregivers of patients with schizophrenia was used in this study. Different variables were considered: (1) perception of difficulties (Caregiver's Assessment of Difficulties Index); (2) perception of satisfaction (Caregiver's Assessment of Satisfaction Index); (3) perception of coping (Caregiver's Assessment of Managing Index); and (4) the experience of caregiving (Experience of Caregiving Inventory). Using structural equation modeling, the results revealed the following: (1) the perception of difficulties and of satisfaction coexist; (2) the negative experiences of caregiving are predominantly explained by the perception of difficulties and of coping with stress; and (3) the positive experiences of caregiving are mainly explained by the perception of sources of intrapersonal satisfaction, while the perception of coping does not have robust predictive value.