Impact of 24 h shifts on urinary catecholamine in emergency physicians: a cross-over randomized trial.

24-h shift (24 hS) exposed emergency physicians to a higher stress level than 14-h night shift (14 hS), with an impact spreading on several days. Catecholamines are supposed to be chronic stress biomarker. However, no study has used catecholamines to assess short-term residual stress or measured them over multiple shifts. A shift-randomized trial was conducted to study urinary catecholamines levels of 17 emergency physicians during a control day (clerical work on return from leave) and two working day (14 hS and 24 hS). The Wilcoxon matched-pairs test was utilized to compare the mean catecholamine levels. Additionally, a multivariable generalized estimating equations model was employed to further analyze the independent relationships between key factors such as shifts (compared to control day), perceived stress, and age with catecholamine levels. Dopamine levels were lower during 24 hS than 14 hS and the control day. Norepinephrine levels increased two-fold during both night shifts. Epinephrine levels were higher during the day period of both shifts than on the control day. Despite having a rest day, the dopamine levels did not return to their normal values by the end of the third day after the 24 hS. The generalized estimating equations model confirmed relationships of catecholamines with workload and fatigue. To conclude, urinary catecholamine biomarkers are a convenient and non-invasive strong measure of stress during night shifts, both acutely and over time. Dopamine levels are the strongest biomarker with a prolonged alteration of its circadian rhythm. Due to the relation between increased catecholamine levels and both adverse psychological effects and cardiovascular disease, we suggest that emergency physicians restrict their exposure to 24 hS to mitigate these risks.

The Reflective Mind of the Anxious in Action: Metacognitive Beliefs and Maladaptive Emotional Regulation Strategies Constrain Working Memory Efficiency.

The Attentional Control Theory (ACT) posits that, while trait anxiety may not directly impact performance, it can influence processing efficiency by prompting the use of compensatory mechanisms. The specific nature of these mechanisms, which might be reflective, is not detailed by the ACT. In a study involving 110 students (M = 20.12; SD = 2.10), surveys were administered to assess the students' metacognitive beliefs, trait anxiety, and emotion regulation strategies (ERSs). The participants engaged in two working memory exercises: the digit span task from the WAIS-IV and an emotional n-back task. The findings indicated that anxiety, metacognitive beliefs, and maladaptive ERSs did not affect task performance but were correlated with increased response times. Several regression analyses demonstrated that a lack of confidence in one's cognitive abilities and maladaptive ERSs predict higher reaction times (RT) in the n-back task. Additionally, maladaptive ERSs also predict an increased use of strategies in the digit span task. Finally, two mediation analyses revealed that anxiety increases processing efficiency, and this relation is mediated by the use of maladaptive ERSs. These results underscore the importance of the reflective level in mediating the effects of trait anxiety on efficiency. They highlight the necessity of incorporating metacognitive beliefs and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies for a thorough comprehension of the Attentional Control Theory. Recognizing these factors offers valuable perspectives for enhancing cognitive capabilities and fostering academic achievement.

Modeling the neurocognitive dynamics of language across the lifespan.

Healthy aging is associated with a heterogeneous decline across cognitive functions, typically observed between language comprehension and language production (LP). Examining resting-state fMRI and neuropsychological data from 628 healthy adults (age 18-88) from the CamCAN cohort, we performed state-of-the-art graph theoretical analysis to uncover the neural mechanisms underlying this variability. At the cognitive level, our findings suggest that LP is not an isolated function but is modulated throughout the lifespan by the extent of inter-cognitive synergy between semantic and domain-general processes. At the cerebral level, we show that default mode network (DMN) suppression coupled with fronto-parietal network (FPN) integration is the way for the brain to compensate for the effects of dedifferentiation at a minimal cost, efficiently mitigating the age-related decline in LP. Relatedly, reduced DMN suppression in midlife could compromise the ability to manage the cost of FPN integration. This may prompt older adults to adopt a more cost-efficient compensatory strategy that maintains global homeostasis at the expense of LP performances. Taken together, we propose that midlife represents a critical neurocognitive juncture that signifies the onset of LP decline, as older adults gradually lose control over semantic representations. We summarize our findings in a novel synergistic, economical, nonlinear, emergent, cognitive aging model, integrating connectomic and cognitive dimensions within a complex system perspective.

Trait Anxiety, Emotion Regulation, and Metacognitive Beliefs: An Observational Study Incorporating Separate Network and Correlation Analyses to Examine Associations with Executive Functions and Academic Achievement.

Trait anxiety, emotion regulation strategies, and metacognitive beliefs influence executive functions (EFs) and academic achievement. This study examines their interplay and impact on academic success. In total, 275 adolescents (10-17 years) and parents completed an online questionnaire assessing trait anxiety, emotion regulation strategies, metacognition, parent-reported behaviors related to executive functioning, and overall school average. Preliminary analyses confirmed consistency with the existing literature for each variable and their interaction. Furthermore, we conducted a network analysis among the main variables. This analysis supports the need to pay more attention to reflective variables-maladaptive emotion regulation strategies and metacognitive beliefs about worry-when studying trait anxiety. These variables were linked to problematic executive functioning in adolescents, and the latter was negatively linked to academic achievement. This study offers innovative insights by investigating relationships less explored in the scientific literature. It reveals high and significant correlations between metacognitive beliefs, maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, and trait anxiety (r > 0.500, p < 0.001) but also between these variables and both executive functioning and academic achievement. These findings offer new perspectives for research and underscore the importance of holistically examining the psychological factors related to academic success.

Interaction between central and peripheral vision: Influence of distance and spatial frequencies.

Visual scene perception is based on reciprocal interactions between central and peripheral information. Such interactions are commonly investigated through the semantic congruence effect, which usually reveals a congruence effect of central vision on peripheral vision as strong as the reverse. The aim of the present study was to further investigate the mechanisms underlying central-peripheral visual interactions using a central-peripheral congruence paradigm through three behavioral experiments. We presented simultaneously a central and a peripheral stimulus, that could be either semantically congruent or incongruent. To assess the congruence effect of central vision on peripheral vision, participants had to categorize the peripheral target stimulus while ignoring the central distractor stimulus. To assess the congruence effect of the peripheral vision on central vision, they had to categorize the central target stimulus while ignoring the peripheral distractor stimulus. Experiment 1 revealed that the physical distance between central and peripheral stimuli influences central-peripheral visual interactions: Congruence effect of central vision is stronger when the distance between the target and the distractor is the shortest. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that the spatial frequency content of distractors also influence central-peripheral interactions: Congruence effect of central vision is observed only when the distractor contained high spatial frequencies while congruence effect of peripheral vision is observed only when the distractor contained low spatial frequencies. These results raise the question of how these influences are exerted (bottom-up vs. top-down) and are discussed based on the retinocortical properties of the visual system and the predictive brain hypothesis.

Sex modulation of faces prediction error in the autistic brain.

Recent research suggests that autistic females may have superior socio-cognitive abilities compared to autistic males, potentially contributing to underdiagnosis in females. However, it remains unclear whether these differences arise from distinct neurophysiological functioning in autistic males and females. This study addresses this question by presenting 41 autistic and 48 non-autistic adults with a spatially filtered faces oddball paradigm. Analysis of event-related potentials from scalp electroencephalography reveal a neurophysiological profile in autistic females that fell between those of autistic males and non-autistic females, highlighting sex differences in autism from the initial stages of face processing. This finding underscores the urgent need to explore neurophysiological sex differences in autism and encourages efforts toward a better comprehension of compensation mechanism and a clearer definition of what is meant by camouflaging.

Graph-based methods coupled with specific distributional distances for adversarial attack detection.

Artificial neural networks are prone to being fooled by carefully perturbed inputs which cause an egregious misclassification. These adversarial attacks have been the focus of extensive research. Likewise, there has been an abundance of research in ways to detect and defend against them. We introduce a novel approach of detection and interpretation of adversarial attacks from a graph perspective. For an input image, we compute an associated sparse graph using the layer-wise relevance propagation algorithm (Bach et al., 2015). Specifically, we only keep edges of the neural network with the highest relevance values. Three quantities are then computed from the graph which are then compared against those computed from the training set. The result of the comparison is a classification of the image as benign or adversarial. To make the comparison, two classification methods are introduced: (1) an explicit formula based on Wasserstein distance applied to the degree of node and (2) a logistic regression. Both classification methods produce strong results which lead us to believe that a graph-based interpretation of adversarial attacks is valuable.

Toddlers' sensitivity to dominance traits from faces.

In adults, seeing individual faces is sufficient to trigger dominance evaluations, even when conflict is absent. From early on, infants represent dyadic dominance relations and they can infer conflict outcomes based on a variety of cues. To date, it is unclear if toddlers also make automatic dominance trait evaluations of individual faces. Here we asked if toddlers are sensitive to dominance traits from faces, and whether their sensitivity depends on their face experience. We employed a visual preference paradigm to study 18- and 24-month-old toddlers' sensitivity to dominance traits from three types of faces: artificial, male, female. When presented with artificial faces (Experiment 1), 18- and 24-month-olds attended longer to the non-dominant faces, but only when they were in upright orientation. For real male faces (Experiment 2), toddlers showed equivalent looking durations to the dominant and non-dominant upright faces. However, when looking at female faces (Experiment 3), toddlers displayed a visual preference for the upright non-dominant faces at 24 months. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that toddlers already display sensitivity to facial cues of dominance from 18 months of age, at least for artificial face stimuli.

Detection of emotional faces: The role of spatial frequencies and local features.

Models of emotion processing suggest that threat-related stimuli such as fearful faces can be detected based on the rapid extraction of low spatial frequencies. However, this remains debated as other models argue that the decoding of facial expressions occurs with a more flexible use of spatial frequencies. The purpose of this study was to clarify the role of spatial frequencies and differences in luminance contrast between spatial frequencies, on the detection of facial emotions. We used a saccadic choice task in which emotional-neutral face pairs were presented and participants were asked to make a saccade toward the neutral or the emotional (happy or fearful) face. Faces were displayed either in low, high, or broad spatial frequencies. Results showed that participants were better to saccade toward the emotional face. They were also better for high or broad than low spatial frequencies, and the accuracy was higher with a happy target. An analysis of the eye and mouth saliency ofour stimuli revealed that the mouth saliency of the target correlates with participants' performance. Overall, this study underlines the importance of local more than global information, and of the saliency of the mouth region in the detection of emotional and neutral faces.

Cognitive and plastic recurrent neural network clock model for the judgment of time and its variations.

The aim of this study in the field of computational neurosciences was to simulate and predict inter-individual variability in time judgements with different neuropsychological properties. We propose and test a Simple Recurrent Neural Network-based clock model that is able to account for inter-individual variability in time judgment by adding four new components into the clock system: the first relates to the plasticity of the neural system, the second to the attention allocated to time, the third to the memory of duration, and the fourth to the learning of duration by iteration. A simulation with this model explored its fit with participants' time estimates in a temporal reproduction task undertaken by both children and adults, whose varied cognitive abilities were assessed with neuropsychological tests. The simulation successfully predicted 90% of temporal errors. Our Cognitive and Plastic RNN-Clock model (CP-RNN-Clock), that takes into account the interference arising from a clock system grounded in cognition, was thus validated.

Perceived discrimination based on the symptoms of covid-19, mental health, and emotional responses-the international online COVISTRESS survey.

BACKGROUND: Despite the potential detrimental consequences for individuals' health and discrimination from covid-19 symptoms, the outcomes have received little attention. This study examines the relationships between having personally experienced discrimination based on the symptoms of covid-19 (during the first wave of the pandemic), mental health, and emotional responses (anger and sadness). It was predicted that covid-19 discrimination would be positively related to poor mental health and that this relationship would be mediated by the emotions of anger and sadness. METHODS: The study was conducted using an online questionnaire from January to June 2020 (the Covistress network; including 44 countries). Participants were extracted from the COVISTRESS database (Ntotal = 280) with about a half declaring having been discriminated due to covid-19 symptoms (N = 135). Discriminated participants were compared to non-discriminated participants using ANOVA. A mediation analysis was conducted to examine the indirect effect of emotional responses and the relationships between perceived discrimination and self-reported mental health. RESULTS: The results indicated that individuals who experienced discrimination based on the symptoms of covid-19 had poorer mental health and experienced more anger and sadness. The relationship between covid-19 personal discrimination and mental health disappeared when the emotions of anger and sadness were statistically controlled for. The indirect effects for both anger and sadness were statistically significant. DISCUSSION: This study suggests that the covid-19 pandemic may have generated discriminatory behaviors toward those suspected of having symptoms and that this is related to poorer mental health via anger and sadness.

High spatial frequencies disrupt conscious visual recognition: evidence from an attentional blink paradigm.

In this article, we tested the respective importance of low spatial frequencies (LSF) and high spatial frequencies (HSF) for conscious visual recognition of emotional stimuli by using an attentional blink paradigm. Thirty-eight participants were asked to identify and report two targets (happy faces) embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation of distractors (angry faces). During attentional blink, conscious perception of the second target (T2) is usually altered when the lag between the two targets is short (200-500 ms) but is restored at longer lags. The distractors between T1 and T2 were either non-filtered (broad spatial frequencies, BSF), low-pass filtered (LSF), or high-pass filtered (HSF). Assuming that prediction abilities could be at the root of conscious visual recognition, we expected that LSF distractors could result in a greater disturbance of T2 reporting than HSF distractors. Results showed that both LSF and HSF play a role in the emergence of exogenous consciousness in the visual system. Furthermore, HSF distractors strongly affected T1 and T2 reporting irrespective of the lag between targets, suggesting their role for facial emotion processing. We discuss these results with regards to other models of visual recognition. .

Prevalence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Healthcare Workers following the First SARS-CoV Epidemic of 2003: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

The world is still in the grip of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, with putative psychological consequences for healthcare workers (HCWs). Exploring the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during the first SARS-CoV-1 epidemic in 2003 may inform us of the long-term effects of the actual pandemic, as well as putative influencing factors such as contact with the virus, time effects, or the importance of some sociodemographic data. This information may help us develop efficient preventive strategies. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis on the prevalence of PTSD in HCWs following the SARS-CoV-1 in 2003. PubMed, Embase, Google Scholar, Psychinfo, and Web of Science were searched until September 2022. Random-effects meta-analyses were stratified by the time of follow-up. We included 14 studies: 4842 HCWs (32.0 years old, 84% women). The overall prevalence of PTSD was 14% (95CI 10 to 17%). The prevalence of PTSD was 16% (8 to 24%) during the epidemic, 19% (16 to 22%) within 6 months after the epidemic, and 8% (4 to 13%) more than one year after the end of the epidemic. The longest follow-up was three years after the epidemic, with 10% of HCWs with PTSD. Nevertheless, the prevalence of PTSD was significantly lower more than one year after the end of the epidemic than the first six months after the epidemic (Coefficient -10.4, 95CI -17.6 to -3.2, p = 0.007). In conclusion, the prevalence of PTSD in HCWs was high during the first epidemic of SARS-CoV in 2003 and remained high in the long term. The lessons from the SARS-CoV-1 epidemic may help prevent a wave of PTSD following the latest COVID-19 pandemic.

Does heart rate variability predict better executive functioning? A systematic review and meta-analysis.

The recent focus on the bidirectional heart-brain interactions in psychoneurophysiological research has led to a variety of findings suggesting vagal activity is associated with cognition and, possibly, specifically with executive functioning. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to provide a better understanding of the association between vagally-mediated heart rate variability (HRV) and executive functioning. We included 13 correlational studies. We found a small positive association between vagally-mediated HRV and executive functioning (r = .19, 95% CI .15 to .23, p < .0001) using a quantitative synthesis of existing studies with random-effect models. Conducting meta-regression analyses, we found that vagally-mediated HRV predicts cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility more than working memory. In addition to the specific executive function measured, this relationship is moderated by the HRV measurement used, and age. After proposing a theoretical interpretation of the results, we emphasized the need for further research in light of the methodological issues identified in the included studies, and we outline several aspects to consider in future studies.

The Predictive Role of Low Spatial Frequencies in Automatic Face Processing: A Visual Mismatch Negativity Investigation.

Visual processing is thought to function in a coarse-to-fine manner. Low spatial frequencies (LSF), conveying coarse information, would be processed early to generate predictions. These LSF-based predictions would facilitate the further integration of high spatial frequencies (HSF), conveying fine details. The predictive role of LSF might be crucial in automatic face processing, where high performance could be explained by an accurate selection of clues in early processing. In the present study, we used a visual Mismatch Negativity (vMMN) paradigm by presenting an unfiltered face as standard stimulus, and the same face filtered in LSF or HSF as deviant, to investigate the predictive role of LSF vs. HSF during automatic face processing. If LSF are critical for predictions, we hypothesize that LSF deviants would elicit less prediction error (i.e., reduced mismatch responses) than HSF deviants. Results show that both LSF and HSF deviants elicited a mismatch response compared with their equivalent in an equiprobable sequence. However, in line with our hypothesis, LSF deviants evoke significantly reduced mismatch responses compared to HSF deviants, particularly at later stages. The difference in mismatch between HSF and LSF conditions involves posterior areas and right fusiform gyrus. Overall, our findings suggest a predictive role of LSF during automatic face processing and a critical involvement of HSF in the fusiform during the conscious detection of changes in faces.

Assessment of sick building syndrome using visual analog scales.

BACKGROUND: Despite there is no recommendations for assessing symptoms of sick building syndrome, the use of visual analog scales (VAS) seems attractive and appropriate. We aimed to demonstrate the benefits of using VAS for evaluating subjective symptoms of sick building syndrome. METHOD: We compared an exposed group to a control group with a one-year follow-up. To assess chronology of symptoms, employees were asked to complete four VAS at different times: after vacations (time 1), beginning of the week-beginning of the day (time 2), beginning of the week-end of the day (time 3), and end of the week-end of the day (time 4). Measurements were repeated before and after ventilation work for the exposed group and at the same time in the control group without intervention. Confounding factors were assessed. RESULTS: We included 36 employees (21 in the exposed group and 15 in the control group). Both groups were comparable. Prior to ventilation work, the exposed group had more subjective symptoms than the control group with a chronology of symptoms. After ventilation work, symptoms did not differ between groups, and most symptoms decreased within the exposed group. PRACTICAL IMPLICATION: The use of VAS provided reliable data for assessing sick building syndrome and showed a dose-response relationship between occupational exposure and symptoms.

Validation of Visual Analogue Scales of job demand and job control at the workplace: a cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVES: Work-related stress is a major concern. One of the best performing models is the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) of Karasek, assessing job demand and job control using 18 items. However, the JCQ is long and complex. Visual Analogue Scales (VASs) are easy to use and quick to implement. VASs have been validated to assess pain and occupational stress; however, VASs demand and control have not been evaluated. Therefore, we aimed to validate the use of VAS demand and control compared with the 18 items of the JCQ. DESIGN: We implemented a cross-sectional observational study, by administering a self-reported questionnaire to the users of Wittyfit software, with a second test (retest) proposed 1 week later. In addition to JCQ, VAS demand and control, we measured sociodemographic outcomes, as well as characteristics of work, sleep, well-being, stress, depression and anxiety. PARTICIPANTS: 190 volunteers French workers using WittyFit software participated in the study, and 129 completed the test-retest. RESULTS: VAS demand and VAS control correlated with the two Karasek domains from the JCQ, respectively, at 0.59 and 0.57 (p<0.001). Test-retest reliability highlighted concordance coefficients higher than 0.70. Sensitivity was higher than 70% for each VAS. External validity was acceptable. For both demand and control, VAS cut-offs were 75/100. Compared with other workers, senior executives and individuals with master's degrees had higher levels of job control but did not differ in job demand using the VAS and JCQ. CONCLUSIONS: VAS demand and VAS control are valid, quick, easy to use, and reliable tools for the assessment of job demand and job control. They can be used in daily clinical practice for primary prevention and diagnosis. However, when results are over 75 mm on VAS, we promote the use of JCQ to be more discriminant and specific to initiate action plans to help workers. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT02596737.

Authoritarian attitudes are associated with higher autonomic reactivity to stress and lower recovery.

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) both predict generalized prejudice, dehumanization, intergroup discrimination, oppression, violence, right-wing political party preference, and generally punitive attitudes. Authoritarian attitudes have been theorized to involve maladaptive emotional, cognitive, and social self-regulation. However, there is no study of authoritarianism using the functioning of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) as a physiological index of self-regulation, thus leaving it unclear whether regulation is "impaired" with authoritarian attitudes per se. PNS functioning is commonly assessed by examining tonic and phasic heart rate variability (HRV). These two components are recognized to be important in terms of adaptation to stress. Decreased HRV has been associated with hypoactive prefrontal regulation, hyperactive subcortical structures, maladaptive self-regulation, hyper-vigilance, decreased prosocial tendencies, defensiveness, impulsive behaviors, and aggression. Previous research suggests that self-regulatory failure may favor hostile attitudes and prejudicial intergroup behaviors. In a first study, we found that high RWA was associated with lower tonic HRV at rest. In a second study, stress-induced autonomic reactivity and poststress autonomic recovery were examined as potential pathways linking authoritarian attitudes to self-regulation. We found that high RWA and high SDO were associated with (i) lower tonic HRV during stress, (ii) greater autonomic reactivity during stress, and (iii) lower autonomic recovery. Overall, our results suggest that autonomic dysregulation during and following stress is a plausible physiological pathway connecting RWA and SDO to self-regulation. Implications of such results for research on political attitudes are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Modulation of Cardiac Vagal Tone on Attentional Orienting of Fair-Related Faces: Low HRV is Associated with Faster Attentional Engagement to Fair-Relevant Stimuli.

The current experiment examined the effect of fair-related stimuli on attentional orienting and the role of cardiac vagal tone indexed by heart rate variability (HRV). Neutral faces were associated with fair and unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game (UG). After the UG, participants performed the spatial cueing task in which targets were preceded by face cues that made fair or unfair offers in the UG. Participants showed faster attentional engagement to fair-related stimuli, which was more pronounced in individuals with lower resting HRV-indexing reduced cardiac vagal tone. Also, people showed delayed attentional disengagement from fair-related stimuli, which was not correlated with HRV. The current research provided initial evidence that fair-related social information influences spatial attention, which is associated with cardiac vagal tone. These results provide further evidence that the difficulty in attentional control associated with reduced cardiac vagal tone may extend to a broader social and moral context.

Flexibility in autism during unpredictable shifts of socio-emotional stimuli: Investigation of group and sex differences.

LAY ABSTRACT: Flexibility difficulties in autism might be particularly common in complex situations, when shifts (i.e. the switch of attentional resources or strategy according to the situation) are unpredictable, implicit (i.e. not guided by explicit rules) and the stimuli are complex. We analyzed the data of 101 autistic and 145 non-autistic adults, without intellectual deficiency, on two flexibility tasks performed online. The first task involved unpredictable and non-explicit shifts of complex socio-emotional stimuli, whereas the second task involved predictable and explicit shifts of character stimuli. Considering the discrepancies between laboratory results and the real-life flexibility-related challenges faced by autistic individuals, we need to determine which factor could be of particular importance in flexibility difficulties. We point out that the switch cost (i.e. the difference between shift and non-shift condition) was larger for autistic than for non-autistic participants on the complex flexibility task with unpredictable and non-explicit shifts of socio-emotional stimuli, whereas this was not the case when shifts were predictable, explicit and involved less complex stimuli. We also highlight sex differences, suggesting that autistic females have better social skills than autistic males and that they also have a specific cognitive profile, which could contribute to social camouflaging. The findings of this work help us understand which factors could influence flexibility difficulties in autism and are important for designing future studies. They also add to the literature on sex differences in autism which underpin better social skills, executive function, and camouflaging in autistic females.