Amygdala and emotionality in Parkinson's disease: An integrative review of the neuropsychological evidence.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is often accompanied by significant changes in emotionality, such as apathy, anhedonia, anxiety and depression. The present review summarizes the empirical evidence, including amygdala changes and psychological changes in emotionality in people suffering from PD. Seventeen empirical full-text articles including research on both amygdala and emotionality in PD were reviewed. The changes in amygdala volumes as well as changes in binding potentials, functional connectivity, regional homogeneity and regional cerebral blood flow were found to have various impacts on emotionality in people with PD. The integration of the results showed that some effects of amygdala changes on emotionality were lateralized. Some of the reviewed studies indicated that the volume loss in the left amygdala was found to be related to increased anxiety, whereas bilateral volume loss in amygdala was linked to increased depressivity. The reviewed results also support a hypothesis of bradylimbic affective disturbance in patients with PD. The disturbed activation of amygdala accompanying the evaluation of negative facial expressions implies that the evaluation of the content of affective stimuli in terms of their affective meanings is disturbed in PD patients. Impaired evaluation of affective attributes given by amygdala-based translational deficits is likely to be related to problems in translating the results of cognitive appraisal into somatomotor, arousal and other changes. This mechanism is suggested to be responsible for apathy as well as for other changes in emotionality accompanying PD.

Understanding death, suicide and self-injury among adherents of the emo youth subculture: A qualitative study.

Emo youth subculture bases its subcultural identification mostly on symbols of death, dying, suicide, and other kinds of morbid content. The main goal of the present study was to explore attitudes toward suicidal behavior and self-injury in emo adolescents. Semistructured in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 14 emo adherents, accompanied by the analysis of emo Web discussion forums. Participants reported attitudes including high acceptance for suicidal behavior and self-injury. The identification with the emo youth subculture is considered to be a factor strengthening vulnerability towards risky behaviors.

Facial expression of fear in the context of human ethology: Recognition advantage in the perception of male faces.

Facial expression is one of the core issues in the ethological approach to the study of human behaviour. This study discusses sex-specific aspects of the recognition of the facial expression of fear using results from our previously published experimental study. We conducted an experiment in which 201 participants judged seven different facial expressions: anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise (Trnka et al. 2007). Participants were able to recognize the facial expression of fear significantly better on a male face than on a female face. Females also recognized fear generally better than males. The present study provides a new interpretation of this sex difference in the recognition of fear. We interpret these results within the paradigm of human ethology, taking into account the adaptive function of the facial expression of fear. We argue that better detection of fear might be crucial for females under a situation of serious danger in groups of early hominids. The crucial role of females in nurturing and protecting offspring was fundamental for the reproductive potential of the group. A clear decoding of this alarm signal might thus have enabled the timely preparation of females for escape or defence to protect their health for successful reproduction. Further, it is likely that males played the role of guardians of social groups and that they were responsible for effective warnings of the group under situations of serious danger. This may explain why the facial expression of fear is better recognizable on the male face than on the female face.

Neural bases of social deficits in ADHD: A systematic review. Does the Theory of Mind matter?

INTRODUCTION: The Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) causes serious interpersonal problems from childhood to adulthood, one of them being problematic social functioning. This phenomenon in ADHD should be associated with impairments in the Theory of Mind (ToM). Therefore, understanding the neural correlates of the ToM could be crucial for helping individuals with ADHD with their social functioning. Thus, we aimed to review published literature concerning neuroanatomical and functional correlates of ToM deficits in children and adolescents with ADHD. METHODS: We reviewed studies published between 1970 and 2023. In accordance with PRISMA guidelines, after data from three databases were collected, two authors (LN and PM) independently screened all relevant records (n=638) and consequently, both authors did the data extraction. The quality of the included studies (n=5) was measured by a modified version of The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale and by measures specific for our study. This systematic review was registered on PROSPERO (CRD42020139847). RESULTS: Results indicated that impairments in performing of the ToM tasks were negatively associated with the grey matter volume in the bilateral amygdala and hippocampus in both, ADHD and control group. In EEG studies, a significantly greater electrophysiological activity during ToM tasks was observed in the, frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital lobes in participants with ADHD as compared to healthy subjects. CONCLUSION: More research is needed to explore the ToM deficits in children with ADHD. Future research might focus on the neural circuits associated with attention and inhibition, which deficits seems to contribute to the ToM deficits in children and adolescents with ADHD.

Subjective perception of life stress events affects long-term pain: the role of resilience.

OBJECTIVE: There is evidence that experiencing childhood trauma and life stressors across the lifespan together with lower resilience is associated with chronic pain-related conditions. The aim of this study was to explore the potential mediating role of resilience in the relationship between childhood trauma and long-term pain and to explore a possible moderating role of serious life stressors in the last year. METHODS: The participants, drawn from a representative sample of citizens of the Czech Republic (n = 1800, mean age: 46.6 years, 48.7% male), were asked to report various long-term pain conditions, childhood trauma (Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, CTQ), life stressors (Life Stressor Checklist Revised, LSC-R) and resilience (Brief Resilience Scale, BRS) in a cross-sectional face-to-face study conducted in 2016. A conditional process SEM model of moderated mediation was performed. RESULTS: The occurrence of life stress events affecting the participant's last year moderated the relationship between childhood trauma, resilience and health. In the group of participants who experienced at least one life stress event affecting their last year, resilience fully mediated the effect of past childhood trauma on long-term pain. In participants who did not experience life stressors with an impact on the last year, the direct path from childhood trauma to health through resilience lost its significance. CONCLUSION: The subjective meaning of stress events on one's life has an impact on the trajectory between childhood trauma and health and acts as a moderator. Resilience may buffer the negative effect of trauma on later long-term pain.

Dispositional resilience predicted the perceived stress experienced by psychotherapists during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic elicited huge stress responses in most world populations, and at this time psychotherapy is an important protective service against this stress. However, a somewhat neglected question is: How stressful was the COVID-19 outbreak for psychotherapists themselves? The main aim of the present study was to investigate whether dispositional resilience predicted the perceived stress reported by psychotherapists during the COVID-19 outbreak. A total of 338 psychotherapists organized within the national psychotherapy associations of three European countries (Czech Republic, Germany, and Slovakia) were included in this online study (mean age 46.7, 77.8% female, 22.2% male). The participants were administered the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). For the data analysis, nonparametric ANOVA and two-level (mixed-effect) linear regression models were used. Dispositional resilience significantly predicted the perceived stress reported by psychotherapists during the COVID-19 outbreak. Higher dispositional resilience significantly reduced the level of perceived stress among psychotherapists (adjusted ß = -0.47, p < .001). Those with moderate resilience (between mean ± SD values) had a lower perceived stress score than those with low resilience (mean + SD value) had a lower perceived stress score than the low resilience group by an average of 6.5. The results of this study imply that the involvement of psychotherapists in resilience supportive training may reduce their vulnerability to stress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Decreased emotional creativity and its relationship with cognitive functions in Parkinson's disease: A preliminary study.

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) suffer from a wide range of non-motor symptoms, including cognitive deficits and impairment of emotional processing. The present study aimed to explore in PD patients compared to healthy adults the relationship between cognitive performance and emotional creativity (EC), defined as a set of cognitive abilities and personality traits related to originality and appropriateness of emotional experience. PD patients (n = 22) and healthy controls (n = 40) underwent a complex neuropsychological assessment and were administrated with the self-reported Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI) questionnaire. To explore the relationship between cognitive tests and the ECI, a regression analysis was conducted. PD patients and healthy controls differed significantly in the EC component Preparedness as well as in the neuropsychological test battery scores. PD patients showed lower scores in cognitive tests and a lower score in Preparedness compared to healthy adults. The output of the regression analysis showed that the extent to which the neuropsychological tests relate to the ECI components is low.

Ambivalent bonds, positive and negative emotions, and expectations in teachers' perceptions of relationship with their students with ADHD.

A growing body of research has been focusing recently on the life and well-being of students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and also on the well-being of their teachers. However, there is a need for in-depth, qualitative insights into ADHD issues from the teachers' perspectives. Therefore, the main aim of this qualitative study was to use thematic analysis to explore how teachers perceive the relationship with students with ADHD and the factors that influence the quality of this relationship. Sixteen teachers working with adolescent ADHD students were interviewed for this purpose. The results indicate that the quality of the teacher-ADHD student relationship is associated with the ADHD students related behaviours, ambivalent emotions of the teacher, the teacher's beliefs about ADHD and the beliefs about the determinants of the behaviour of the students with ADHD and the teacher's approaches and methods of work in the classroom. Furthermore, the results suggest that increasing the quality of the teachers' well-being is associated with knowledge of ADHD determinants, regulation of ambivalent emotions, empathy, teachers' ability to perceive positive qualities and the potentials of the students with ADHD and their motivation to teach ADHD students.

Sensory Processing Sensitivity Questionnaire: A Psychometric Evaluation and Associations with Experiencing the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) is a common human neurobiological trait that is related to many areas of human life. This trait has recently received increased public interest. However, solid scientific research on SPS is lagging behind. Progress in this area is also hindered by a lack of comprehensive research tools suitable for a rapid assessment of SPS. Thus, the aim of this study was to offer a newly developed tool, the Sensory Processing Sensitivity Questionnaire (SPSQ), and to assess its psychometric properties and associations with emotional and relational variables measured during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found the tool to have good psychometric characteristics: high temporal stability (r = 0.95) and excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.92; McDonald's ω = 0.92). The fit of the SPSQ bi-factor model was satisfactory: χ2 (88.0) = 506.141; p < 0.001; CFI = 0.993; TLI = 0.990; RMSEA = 0.070; SRMR = 0.039. Testing of configural, metric, scalar and strict invariance suggested that the SPSQ assesses SPS equivalently between males and females. The scale's validity was supported via a strong association with an existing SPS measure. Further, we observed higher total SPSQ scores among women, students and religious respondents, and we found that more sensitive respondents reported higher feelings of anxiety and more deterioration in relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, this study also identifies people with this trait as being potentially more vulnerable during periods of an increased presence of global stressors.

Fear, anger, and media-induced trauma during the outbreak of COVID-19 in the Czech Republic.

Fear, anger and hopelessness were the most frequent traumatic emotional responses in the general public during the first stage of outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in the Czech Republic (N = 1,000). The four most frequent categories of fear were determined: (a) fear of the negative impact on household finances, (b) fear of the negative impact on the household finances of significant others, (c) fear of the unavailability of health care, and (d) fear of an insufficient food supply. The pessimistic communications used by the Czech mass media contributed to intensifying traumatic feelings, fears and psychological distress in the general public during the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

A Psychometric Evaluation of the Guilt and Shame Experience Scale (GSES) on a Representative Adolescent Sample: A Low Differentiation between Guilt and Shame.

The Guilt and Shame Experience Scale (GSES) is a new, brief self-report instrument for assessing experiences of guilt and shame. It includes two distinct scales: feelings of shame and feelings of guilt. The present report focuses on results from a final validation study using a nationally representative sample of 7899 adolescents (M age = 14.5 ± 1.1 years, 50.7% boys) who participated in the 2014 Health Behavior in School-aged Children study. For factor analysis, the dataset was divided into two groups. One group (n = 3950) was used for the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and the second (n = 3949) for the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The EFA results in a one-factor model of the GSES scale, while the CFA suggests a two-factor solution mirroring two scales, feelings of shame and feelings of guilt. Both models have a good fit to the data, and the scale also showed high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.89). A nonparametric comparison of different sociodemographic groups showed a higher disposition for experiencing guilt and shame among girls, students of the ninth grade, and religious respondents. A comparison of the results to previously published results obtained from adults indicates that adolescence is a developmental period involving low differentiation between moral emotions like guilt and shame compared with adulthood. Moreover, positive association with religious attendance shows a need of addressing these issues in a pastoral care setting.

Provision of Psychotherapy during the COVID-19 Pandemic among Czech, German and Slovak Psychotherapists.

Psychotherapists around the world are facing an unprecedented situation with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). To combat the rapid spread of the virus, direct contact with others has to be avoided when possible. Therefore, remote psychotherapy provides a valuable option to continue mental health care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study investigated the fear of psychotherapists to become infected with COVID-19 during psychotherapy in personal contact and assessed how the provision of psychotherapy changed due to the COVID-19 situation and whether there were differences with regard to country and gender. Psychotherapists from three European countries: Czech Republic (CZ, n = 112), Germany (DE, n = 130) and Slovakia (SK, n = 96), with on average 77.8% female participants, completed an online survey. Participants rated the fear of COVID-19 infection during face-to-face psychotherapy and reported the number of patients treated on average per week (in personal contact, via telephone, via internet) during the COVID-19 situation as well as (retrospectively) in the months before. Fear of COVID-19 infection was highest in SK and lowest in DE (p < 0.001) and was higher in female compared to male psychotherapists (p = 0.021). In all countries, the number of patients treated on average per week in personal contact decreased (p < 0.001) and remote psychotherapies increased (p < 0.001), with more patients being treated via internet than via telephone during the COVID-19 situation (p < 0.001). Furthermore, female psychotherapists treated less patients in personal contact (p = 0.036), while they treated more patients via telephone than their male colleagues (p = 0.015). Overall, the total number of patients treated did not differ during COVID-19 from the months before (p = 0.133) and psychotherapy in personal contact remained the most common treatment modality. Results imply that the supply of mental health care could be maintained during COVID-19 and that changes in the provision of psychotherapy vary among countries and gender.

Are Adolescent Religious Attendance/Spirituality Associated with Family Characteristics?

The family environment is associated with religiosity and spirituality as well as many aspects of adolescent lives, including their health behaviour. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess family environment associations with adolescent religious attendance (RA), i.e., weekly participation in religious services, and spirituality in a highly secular country. A nationally representative sample (n = 4182, 14.4 ± 1.1 years, 48.6% boys) of Czech adolescents participated in the 2014 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children cross-sectional study. RA, spirituality and the family environment, i.e., family communication, perceived emotional support, and parental monitoring, were measured. Higher adolescent RA was associated with lower self-reported easiness of communication with mother (odds ratio (OR) = 0.68; 99% confidence interval (99% CI) = 0.47-0.99; p < 0.01). In contrast, spiritual respondents were more likely to report both easier communication with their father (OR per standard deviation (SD) change = 1.12, 99% CI 1.02-1.23; p < 0.01) and mother (OR per SD change = 1.38 (1.23-1.55); p < 0.001) and higher perceived emotional support (OR per SD change = 1.73 (1.55-1.92); p < 0.001). Parents of respondents who attended religious services at least once a week, as well as parents of spiritual respondents, were generally more likely to monitor adolescent behaviour. Thus, this study provides information for parents, mental health workers, and pastoral carers. Further research should assess the association of a lower easiness of family communication with dissonances in adolescent-parent religiosity/spirituality and with higher parental monitoring.

Sex of expresser and correct perception of facial expressions of emotion.

The influence of the sex of the expresser was examined in relation to correct perception of facial expressions by the receiver. Two hundred and twenty-seven college students (114 women, 103 men) judged seven facial expressions, anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, by choosing the appropriate emotion name from a list of six Czech options, on men and women's faces. No significant difference was found between rates of correct perception of facial expressions on the faces of women and on the faces of men. The facial expression of fear was better recognized on the man's face than on the woman's face in this set of subjects. The results do not support the hypothesis of more accurate recognition of facial expressions on women's faces than on men's faces.

An integrative review of coping related to problematic computer use in adolescence.

OBJECTIVES: Problematic computer use is the use of computer technology that may be health-endangering and may cause immediate or later negative physical or psychological health outcomes or disturb well-being in users. The main purpose of this study was to review current empirical research on coping strategies which adolescents apply in the context of problematic computer use and the coping-relevant impacts of problematic computer use. METHODS: An integrative review of empirical studies using the Web of Science, Google Scholar, reference lists and forward tracking was conducted. Of the 404 articles identified, 28 peer-reviewed, full-text articles that directly addressed coping in relation to problematic Internet use, computer overuse and cyberbullying were included in the review. RESULTS: This review identified the structure of specific coping strategies related to problematic computer use as well as the general patterns of relationships between reviewed instances of problematic computer use, situational coping and dispositional coping. CONCLUSIONS: Instrumental action and talking with others were the most frequent strategies used by adolescents to cope with cyberbullying. The structure of the coping strategies related to problematic Internet use and computer overuse is highly differentiated, revealing a new and promising area for future research.

Free Associations Mirroring Self- and World-Related Concepts: Implications for Personal Construct Theory, Psycholinguistics and Philosophical Psychology.

People construe reality by using words as basic units of meaningful categorization. The present theory-driven study applied the method of a free association task to explore how people express the concepts of the world and the self in words. The respondents were asked to recall any five words relating with the word world. Afterward they were asked to recall any five words relating with the word self. The method of free association provided the respondents with absolute freedom to choose any words they wanted. Such free recall task is suggested as being a relatively direct approach to the respondents' self- and world-related conceptual categories, without enormous rational processing. The results provide us, first, with associative ranges for constructs of the world and the self, where some associative dimensions are defined by semantic polarities in the meanings of peripheral categories (e.g., Nature vs. Culture). Second, our analysis showed that some groups of verbal categories that were associated with the words world and self are central, while others are peripheral with respect to the central position. Third, the analysis of category networks revealed that some categories play the role of a transmitter, mediating the pathway between other categories in the network.

Modeling Semantic Emotion Space Using a 3D Hypercube-Projection: An Innovative Analytical Approach for the Psychology of Emotions.

The widely accepted two-dimensional circumplex model of emotions posits that most instances of human emotional experience can be understood within the two general dimensions of valence and activation. Currently, this model is facing some criticism, because complex emotions in particular are hard to define within only these two general dimensions. The present theory-driven study introduces an innovative analytical approach working in a way other than the conventional, two-dimensional paradigm. The main goal was to map and project semantic emotion space in terms of mutual positions of various emotion prototypical categories. Participants (N = 187; 54.5% females) judged 16 discrete emotions in terms of valence, intensity, controllability and utility. The results revealed that these four dimensional input measures were uncorrelated. This implies that valence, intensity, controllability and utility represented clearly different qualities of discrete emotions in the judgments of the participants. Based on this data, we constructed a 3D hypercube-projection and compared it with various two-dimensional projections. This contrasting enabled us to detect several sources of bias when working with the traditional, two-dimensional analytical approach. Contrasting two-dimensional and three-dimensional projections revealed that the 2D models provided biased insights about how emotions are conceptually related to one another along multiple dimensions. The results of the present study point out the reductionist nature of the two-dimensional paradigm in the psychological theory of emotions and challenge the widely accepted circumplex model.

Gender differences in human interpersonal conflicts: A reply to Ingram et al. (2012).

In the article, I comment on the study results of Ingram et al. (2012). Feelings of anger were hypothesized to be reported more often in the descriptions of past conflicts of boys than in the descriptions of past conflicts of girls. However, the authors found that boys were no more likely than girls to describe feelings of anger ensuing from a conflict. An explanation of this interesting finding is not provided in the discussion section. The present study provides possible theoretical explanations for this finding, also using the results of our studies published in the past.