The enteric nervous system relays psychological stress to intestinal inflammation.

Mental health profoundly impacts inflammatory responses in the body. This is particularly apparent in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), in which psychological stress is associated with exacerbated disease flares. Here, we discover a critical role for the enteric nervous system (ENS) in mediating the aggravating effect of chronic stress on intestinal inflammation. We find that chronically elevated levels of glucocorticoids drive the generation of an inflammatory subset of enteric glia that promotes monocyte- and TNF-mediated inflammation via CSF1. Additionally, glucocorticoids cause transcriptional immaturity in enteric neurons, acetylcholine deficiency, and dysmotility via TGF-ß2. We verify the connection between the psychological state, intestinal inflammation, and dysmotility in three cohorts of IBD patients. Together, these findings offer a mechanistic explanation for the impact of the brain on peripheral inflammation, define the ENS as a relay between psychological stress and gut inflammation, and suggest that stress management could serve as a valuable component of IBD care.

Addressing distress management challenges: Recommendations from the consensus panel of the American Psychosocial Oncology Society and the Association of Oncology Social Work.

Distress management (DM) (screening and response) is an essential component of cancer care across the treatment trajectory. Effective DM has many benefits, including improving patients' quality of life; reducing distress, anxiety, and depression; contributing to medical cost offsets; and reducing emergency department visits and hospitalizations. Unfortunately, many distressed patients do not receive needed services. There are several multilevel barriers that represent key challenges to DM and affect its implementation. The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research was used as an organizational structure to outline the barriers and facilitators to implementation of DM, including: 1) individual characteristics (individual patient characteristics with a focus on groups who may face unique barriers to distress screening and linkage to services), 2) intervention (unique aspects of DM intervention, including specific challenges in screening and psychosocial intervention, with recommendations for resolving these challenges), 3) processes for implementation of DM (modality and timing of screening, the challenge of triage for urgent needs, and incorporation of patient-reported outcomes and quality measures), 4) organization-inner setting (the context of the clinic, hospital, or health care system); and 5) organization-outer setting (including reimbursement strategies and health-care policy). Specific recommendations for evidence-based strategies and interventions for each of the domains of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research are also included to address barriers and challenges.

Deportation threat predicts Latino US citizens and noncitizens' psychological distress, 2011 to 2018.

The national context of deportation threat, defined as the federal government's approach to deportation and/or deportation's salience to the US public, fluctuated between 2011 and 2018. US Latinos across citizenship statuses may have experienced growing psychological distress associated with these changes, given their disproportionate personal or proximal vulnerabilities to deportation. Drawing on 8 y of public- and restricted-access data from the National Health Interview Survey (2011 to 2018), this article examines trends in psychological distress among Latinos who are US-born citizens, naturalized citizens, and noncitizens. It then seeks to explain these trends by considering two theoretical pathways through which the national context of deportation threat could distress Latinos: 1) through discrete dramatic societal events that independently signal a change to the country's approach to deportation and/or that render deportation temporarily more salient to the public or 2) through more gradual changes to the country's everyday institutional (i.e., quotidian efforts to detain and deport noncitizens) and social (i.e., deportation's ongoing salience to a concerned public) environment of deportation threat. We find that, though both pathways matter to some degree, there is more consistent evidence that the gradual changes are associated with Latino US citizens and noncitizens' overall experiences of psychological distress. The article highlights how, even absent observable spillover effects of dramatic societal events bearing on deportation threat, the institutional and social environment in which they occur implicates Latinos' well-being.

Zoom out: An intervention on the virtual learning environment improves minority students' grades in two field experiments in Israel.

Closing the achievement gap for minority students in higher education requires addressing the lack of belonging these students experience. This paper introduces a psychological intervention that strategically targets key elements within the learning environment to foster the success of minority students. The intervention sought to enhance Palestinian minority student's sense of belonging by increasing the presence of their native language. We tested the effectiveness of the intervention in two field experiments in Israel (n > 20,000), at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when all classes were held via Zoom. Lecturers in the experimental condition added a transcript of their names in Arabic to their default display (English/Hebrew only). Our findings revealed a substantial and positive impact on Palestinian student's sense of belonging, class participation, and overall grades. In experiment 1, Palestinian student's average grade increased by 10 points. In experiment 2, there was an average increase of 4 points among Palestinian students' semester grade. Our intervention demonstrates that small institutional changes when carefully crafted can have a significant impact on minority populations. These results have significant implications for addressing educational disparities and fostering inclusive learning environment.

Interpersonal heart rate synchrony predicts effective information processing in a naturalistic group decision-making task.

Groups often outperform individuals in problem-solving. Nevertheless, failure to critically evaluate ideas risks suboptimal outcomes through so-called groupthink. Prior studies have shown that people who hold shared goals, perspectives, or understanding of the environment show similar patterns of brain activity, which itself can be enhanced by consensus-building discussions. Whether shared arousal alone can predict collective decision-making outcomes, however, remains unknown. To address this gap, we computed interpersonal heart rate synchrony, a peripheral index of shared arousal associated with joint attention, empathic accuracy, and group cohesion, in 44 groups (n = 204) performing a collective decision-making task. The task required critical examination of all available information to override inferior, default options and make the right choice. Using multidimensional recurrence quantification analysis (MdRQA) and machine learning, we found that heart rate synchrony predicted the probability of groups reaching the correct consensus decision with >70% cross-validation accuracy-significantly higher than that predicted by the duration of discussions, subjective assessment of team function or baseline heart rates alone. We propose that heart rate synchrony during group discussion provides a biomarker of interpersonal engagement that facilitates adaptive learning and effective information sharing during collective decision-making.

Reevaluating the "deaths of despair" narrative: Racial/ethnic heterogeneity in the trend of psychological distress-related death.

Despite the significant scientific advancement in deciphering the "deaths of despair" narrative, most relevant studies have focused on drug-, alcohol-, and suicide-related (DAS) deaths. This study directly investigated despair as a determinant of death and the temporal variation and racial heterogeneity among individuals. We used psychological distress (PD) as a proxy for despair and drew data from the US National Health Interview Survey-Linked Mortality Files 1997 to 2014, CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Multiple Cause of Death database 1997 to 2014, CDC bridged-race population files 1997 to 2014, Current Population Survey 1997 to 1999, and the American Community Survey 2000 to 2014. We used Cox proportional hazards models to estimate mortality hazard ratios of PD and compared age-standardized PD- and DAS-related mortality rates by race/ethnicity and over time. We found that while Whites had a lower prevalence of PD than Blacks and Hispanics throughout the whole period, they underwent distinctive increases in PD-related death and have had a higher PD-related mortality rate than Blacks and Hispanics since the early 2000s. This was predominantly due to Whites' relatively high and increasing vulnerability to PD less the prevalence of PD. Furthermore, PD induced a more pervasive mortality consequence than DAS combined for Whites and Blacks. In addition, PD- and DAS-related deaths displayed a concordant trend among Whites but divergent patterns for Blacks and Hispanics. These findings suggest that 1) DAS-related deaths underestimated the mortality consequence of despair for Whites and Blacks but overestimated it for Hispanics; and 2) despair partially contributed to the DAS trend among Whites but probably not for Blacks and Hispanics.

Self-affirmation increases reemployment success for the unemployed.

Losing a job is one of life's most stressful events. Furthermore, maladaptive reactions to unemployment can trap people in a vicious cycle that derails their reemployment efforts. The current research tested whether a brief values-based self-affirmation intervention increases the odds of reemployment after a job loss and during unemployment, which presumably breaks this vicious cycle. Two field experiments, including one with a governmental employment agency, found that a 15-min self-affirmation exercise-i.e., reflecting on one's most important values-increased key employment-related outcomes after 4 wk, including the probability and speed of reemployment and the number of job offers. Because the ordeal of job loss and the probability of reemployment may be particularly challenging for individuals above the age of 50 y, we also explored whether the intervention was equally effective for those above and below 50 y of age. Demonstrating the generality of this effect, the efficacy of the intervention did not differ between individuals below and above the age of 50, and it was also effective for both recently unemployed and chronically unemployed individuals. Because self-affirmations have more typically been tested in educational contexts, the current research demonstrates the wide-ranging value of this intervention. By diminishing the vicious cycle of unemployment, the present studies show how a simple self-affirmation intervention can help individuals succeed in the labor market.

Utility-value intervention promotes persistence and diversity in STEM.

We tested the long-term effects of a utility-value intervention administered in a gateway chemistry course, with the goal of promoting persistence and diversity in STEM. In a randomized controlled trial (N = 2,505), students wrote three essays about course content and its personal relevance or three control essays. The intervention significantly improved STEM persistence overall (74% vs. 70% were STEM majors 2.5 y later). Effects were larger for students from marginalized and underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, who were 14 percentage points more likely to persist in STEM fields in the intervention condition (69% vs. 55%). Mediation analysis suggests that the intervention promoted persistence for these students by bolstering their motivation to attain a STEM degree and by promoting engagement with course assignments. This theory-informed curricular intervention is a promising tool for educators committed to retaining students in STEM.

Efficiently exploring the causal role of contextual moderators in behavioral science.

Behavioral science interventions have the potential to address longstanding policy problems, but their effects are typically heterogeneous across contexts (e.g., teachers, schools, and geographic regions). This contextual heterogeneity is poorly understood, however, which reduces the field's impact and its understanding of mechanisms. Here, we present an efficient way to interrogate heterogeneity and address these gaps in knowledge. This method a) presents scenarios that vividly represent different moderating contexts, b) measures a short-term behavioral outcome (e.g., an academic choice) that is known to relate to typical intervention outcomes (e.g., academic achievement), and c) assesses the causal effect of the moderating context on the link between the psychological variable typically targeted by interventions and this short-term outcome. We illustrated the utility of this approach across four experiments (total n = 3,235) that directly tested contextual moderators of the links between growth mindset, which is the belief that ability can be developed, and students' academic choices. The present results showed that teachers' growth mindset-supportive messages and the structural opportunities they provide moderated the link between students' mindsets and their choices (studies 1 to 3). This pattern was replicated in a nationally representative sample of adolescents and did not vary across demographic subgroups (study 2), nor was this pattern the result of several possible confounds (studies 3 to 4). Discussion centers on how this method of interrogating contextual heterogeneity can be applied to other behavioral science interventions and broaden their impact in other policy domains.

Generically partisan: Polarization in political communication.

American political parties continue to grow more polarized, but the extent of ideological polarization among the public is much less than the extent of perceived polarization (what the ideological gap is believed to be). Perceived polarization is concerning because of its link to interparty hostility, but it remains unclear what drives this phenomenon. We propose that a tendency for individuals to form broad generalizations about groups on the basis of inconsistent evidence may be partly responsible. We study this tendency by measuring the interpretation, endorsement, and recall of category-referring statements, also known as generics (e.g., "Democrats favor affirmative action"). In study 1 (n = 417), perceived polarization was substantially greater than actual polarization. Further, participants endorsed generics as long as they were true more often of the target party (e.g., Democrats favor affirmative action) than of the opposing party (e.g., Republicans favor affirmative action), even when they believed such statements to be true for well below 50% of the relevant party. Study 2 (n = 928) found that upon receiving information from political elites, people tended to recall these statements as generic, regardless of whether the original statement was generic or not. Study 3 (n = 422) found that generic statements regarding new political information led to polarized judgments and did so more than nongeneric statements. Altogether, the data indicate a tendency toward holding mental representations of political claims that exaggerate party differences. These findings suggest that the use of generic language, common in everyday speech, enables inferential errors that exacerbate perceived polarization.

Generational differences in mental health trends in the twenty-first century.

Given the observed deterioration in mental health among Australians over the past decade, this study investigates to what extent this differs in people born in different decades-i.e., possible birth cohort differences in the mental health of Australians. Using 20 y of data from a large, nationally representative panel survey (N = 27,572), we find strong evidence that cohort effects are driving the increase in population-level mental ill-health. Deteriorating mental health is particularly pronounced among people born in the 1990s and seen to a lesser extent among the 1980s cohort. There is little evidence that mental health is worsening with age for people born prior to the 1980s. The findings from this study highlight that it is the poorer mental health of Millennials that is driving the apparent deterioration in population-level mental health. Understanding the context and changes in society that have differentially affected younger people may inform efforts to ameliorate this trend and prevent it continuing for emerging cohorts.

Fostering Psychological Safety and Supporting Mental Health Among Cardiovascular Health Care Workers: A Science Advisory From the American Heart Association.

The psychological safety of health care workers is an important but often overlooked aspect of the rising rates of burnout and workforce shortages. In addition, mental health conditions are prevalent among health care workers, but the associated stigma is a significant barrier to accessing adequate care. More efforts are therefore needed to foster health care work environments that are safe and supportive of self-care. The purpose of this brief document is to promote a culture of psychological safety in health care organizations. We review ways in which organizations can create a psychologically safe workplace, the benefits of a psychologically safe workplace, and strategies to promote mental health and reduce suicide risk.

The role of stress in perinatal depression and anxiety - A systematic review.

Perinatal depression (PND) and anxiety affect around 20% of women, but available pharmacotherapy is not sufficiently effective in 20-60% of them, indicating a need for better understanding of these diseases. Since stress is a significant risk factor for PND, the aim was to examine the role of biological, environmental and psychological stress in PND and anxiety through a systematic literature search. Overall 210 studies were included, among which numerous rodent studies showed that perinatal stress induced depressive-like and anxious behavior, which was associated with HPA-axis alterations and morphological brain changes. Human studies indicated that the relationship between cortisol and perinatal depression/anxiety was not as clear and with many contradictions, although social and psychological stress were clearly positively associated with PND. Finally, oxytocin, synthetic neuroactive steroid and n-3 PUFA diet have been identified as potentially beneficial in the therapy of PND and anxiety, worth to be investigated in the future.

Follicular oocyte as a potential target for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was reported in December 2019 and rapidly became a pandemic as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Apart from other organs, presence of specific receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE2) and corresponding proteases such as transmembrane serine protease 2, basigin and cysteine protease cathepsin L make follicular somatic cells as well as oocyte as potential targets for SARS-CoV-2 infection. The SARS-CoV-2 causes inflammation and hypoxia that generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) in critically ill patients. In addition, a large number of casualties and insecurity of life due to repeated waves of SARS-CoV-2 infection generate psychological stress and cortisol resulting in the further generation of ROS. The excess levels of ROS under physiological range cause meiotic instability, while high levels result in oxidative stress that trigger various death pathways and affect number as well as quality of follicular oocytes. Although, emerging evidence suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 utilises cellular machinery of ovarian follicular cells, generates ROS and impairs quality of follicular oocytes, the underlying mechanism of viral entry into host cell and its negative impact on the follicular oocyte remains poorly understood. Therefore, this review summarises emerging evidence on the presence of cellular machinery for SARS-CoV-2 in ovarian follicles and the potential negative impact of viral infection on the follicular oocytes that affect ovarian functions in critically ill and stressed women.

Psychological Flexibility, Chronic Pain, and Health.

Psychological flexibility is a model of human performance and well-being. It essentially entails an approach to life circumstances that includes openness, awareness, and engagement. It has roots in behavior analysis, and it is linked to a philosophy of science called functional contextualism and to a specific therapy approach called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. One of the earliest and most developed research areas in which this model and therapy have been applied is chronic pain. This review describes psychological flexibility and its facets in more detail, sets them in a context of relevant psychological models, and examines related assessment and treatment methods. It also examines evidence, current challenges, and future directions. It is proposed that psychological flexibility, or an expanded model very much like it, could provide a basis for integrating current research and treatment approaches in chronic pain and health generally. This, in turn, could produce improved treatments for people with chronic pain and other conditions.

Modeling Similarity and Psychological Space.

Similarity and categorization are fundamental processes in human cognition that help complex organisms make sense of the cacophony of information in their environment. These processes are critical for tasks such as recognizing objects, making decisions, and forming memories. In this review, we provide an overview of the current state of knowledge on similarity and psychological spaces, discussing the theories, methods, and empirical findings that have been generated over the years. Although the concept of similarity has important limitations, it plays a key role in cognitive modeling. The review surfaces three key themes. First, similarity and mental representations are merely two sides of the same coin, existing as a similarity-representation duality that defines a psychological space. Second, both the brain's mental representations and the study of mental representations are made possible by exploiting second-order isomorphism. Third, similarity analysis has near-universal applicability across all levels of cognition, providing a common research language.

Comparing the reliability and predictive power of child, teacher, and guardian reports of noncognitive skills.

Children's noncognitive or socioemotional skills (e.g., persistence and self-control) are typically measured using surveys in which either children rate their own skills or adults rate the skills of children. For many purposes-including program evaluation and monitoring school systems-ratings are often collected from multiple perspectives about a single child (e.g., from both the child and an adult). Collecting data from multiple perspectives is costly, and there is limited evidence on the benefits of this approach. Using a longitudinal survey, this study compares children's noncognitive skills as reported by themselves, their guardians, and their teachers. Although reports from all three types of respondents are correlated with each other, teacher reports have the highest internal consistency and are the most predictive of children's later cognitive outcomes and behavior in school. The teacher reports add predictive power beyond baseline measures of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) for most outcomes in schools. Measures collected from children and guardians add minimal predictive power beyond the teacher reports.

Imaging of the brain-heart axis: prognostic value in a European setting.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Increasing data suggest that stress-related neural activity (SNA) is associated with subsequent major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) and may represent a therapeutic target. Current evidence is exclusively based on populations from the U.S. and Asia where limited information about cardiovascular disease risk was available. This study sought to investigate whether SNA imaging has clinical value in a well-characterized cohort of cardiovascular patients in Europe. METHODS: In this single-centre study, a total of 963 patients (mean age 58.4 ± 16.1 years, 40.7% female) with known cardiovascular status, ranging from 'at-risk' to manifest disease, and without active cancer underwent 2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography between 1 January 2005 and 31 August 2019. Stress-related neural activity was assessed with validated methods and relations between SNA and MACE (non-fatal stroke, non-fatal myocardial infarction, coronary revascularization, and cardiovascular death) or all-cause mortality by time-to-event analysis. RESULTS: Over a maximum follow-up of 17 years, 118 individuals (12.3%) experienced MACE, and 270 (28.0%) died. In univariate analyses, SNA significantly correlated with an increased risk of MACE (sub-distribution hazard ratio 1.52, 95% CI 1.05-2.19; P = .026) or death (hazard ratio 2.49, 95% CI 1.96-3.17; P < .001). In multivariable analyses, the association between SNA imaging and MACE was lost when details of the cardiovascular status were added to the models. Conversely, the relationship between SNA imaging and all-cause mortality persisted after multivariable adjustments. CONCLUSIONS: In a European patient cohort where cardiovascular status is known, SNA imaging is a robust and independent predictor of all-cause mortality, but its prognostic value for MACE is less evident. Further studies should define specific patient populations that might profit from SNA imaging.

Psychological stress to ovalbumin peptide-specific T-cell receptor transgenic mice impairs the suppressive ability of type 1 regulatory T cell.

Numerous diseases of the immune system can be traced back to the malfunctioning of the regulatory T cells. The aetiology is unclear. Psychological stress can cause disruption to the immune regulation. The synergistic effects of psychological stress and immune response on immune regulation have yet to be fully understood. The intention of this study is to analyse the interaction between psychological stress and immune responses and how it affects the functional status of type 1 regulatory T (Tr1) cells. In this study, ovalbumin peptide T-cell receptor transgenic mice were utilised. Mice were subjected to restraint stress to induce psychological stress. An airway allergy murine model was established, in which a mouse strain with RING finger protein 20 (Rnf20)-deficient CD4+ T cells were used. The results showed that concomitant exposure to restraint stress and immune response could exacerbate endoplasmic reticulum stress in Tr1 cells. Corticosterone was responsible for the elevated expression of X-box protein-1 (XBP1) in mouse Tr1 cells after exposure to both restraint stress and immune response. XBP1 mediated the effects of corticosterone on inducing Rnf20 in Tr1 cells. The reduction of the interleukin-10 expression in Tr1 cells was facilitated by Rnf20. Inhibition of Rnf20 alleviated experimental airway allergy by restoring the immune regulatory ability of Tr1 cells. In conclusion, the functions of Tr1 cells are negatively impacted by simultaneous exposure to psychological stress and immune response. Tr1 cells' immune suppressive functions can be restored by inhibiting Rnf20, which has the translational potential for the treatment of diseases of the immune system.

The tumor-nerve circuit in breast cancer.

It is well established that innervation is one of the updated hallmarks of cancer and that psychological stress promotes the initiation and progression of cancer. The breast tumor environment includes not only fibroblasts, adipocytes, endothelial cells, and lymphocytes but also neurons, which is increasingly discovered important in breast cancer progression. Peripheral nerves, especially sympathetic, parasympathetic, and sensory nerves, have been reported to play important but different roles in breast cancer. However, their roles in the breast cancer progression and treatment are still controversial. In addition, the brain is one of the favorite sites of breast cancer metastasis. In this review, we first summarize the innervation of breast cancer and its mechanism in regulating cancer growth and metastasis. Next, we summarize the neural-related molecular markers in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. In addition, we review drugs and emerging technologies used to block the interactions between nerves and breast cancer. Finally, we discuss future research directions in this field. In conclusion, the further research in breast cancer and its interactions with innervated neurons or neurotransmitters is promising in the clinical management of breast cancer.