Older adults are disproportionately vulnerable to fraud, and federal agencies have speculated that excessive trust explains their greater vulnerability. Two studies, one behavioral and one using ...neuroimaging methodology, identified age differences in trust and their neural underpinnings. Older and younger adults rated faces high in trust cues similarly, but older adults perceived faces with cues to untrustworthiness to be significantly more trustworthy and approachable than younger adults. This age-related pattern was mirrored in neural activation to cues of trustworthiness. Whereas younger adults showed greater anterior insula activation to untrustworthy versus trustworthy faces, older adults showed muted activation of the anterior insula to untrustworthy faces. The insula has been shown to support interoceptive awareness that forms the basis of "gut feelings," which represent expected risk and predict risk-avoidant behavior. Thus, a diminished "gut" response to cues of untrustworthiness may partially underlie older adults' vulnerability to fraud.
•Psychosocial predictors explained 1%-3.6% of variance in CAR responses.•Depression was linked to higher AUCw and posttraumatic stress to lower AUCw.•Inconclusive results were obtained for ...predictor-specific effects on CARi.•Cross-sectional studies of CAR need Ns of 617–783 to detect effects with 80% power.•There were no indications of questionable research practices biasing the CAR literature.
Cortisol levels rise immediately after awakening and peak approximately 30–45min thereafter. Psychosocial functioning influences this cortisol awakening response (CAR), but there is considerable heterogeneity in the literature. The current study used p-curve and meta-analysis on 709 findings from 212 studies to test the evidential value and estimate effect sizes of four sets of findings: those associating worse psychosocial functioning with higher or lower cortisol increase relative to the waking period (CARi) and to the output of the waking period (AUCw). All four sets of findings demonstrated evidential value. Psychosocial predictors explained 1%-3.6% of variance in CARi and AUCw responses. Based on these effect sizes, cross-sectional studies assessing CAR would need a minimum sample size of 617–783 to detect true effects with 80% power. Depression was linked to higher AUCw and posttraumatic stress to lower AUCw, whereas inconclusive results were obtained for predictor-specific effects on CARi. Suggestions for future CAR research are discussed.
Psychological stress has been linked empirically with dysregulation of facets of the human immune system, yet these effects are not the same in every situation or population. Recent research has made ...strides towards understanding risk factors for immune dysregulation as well as why these risks occur. This review discusses mechanisms and mediators underlying the stress-immune relation, the role of context in determining whether an immunologic responses to stress is adaptive versus maladaptive, and the stress-immune relation in populations including children exposed to early adversity, older adults, and individuals with clinical diagnoses. The reviewed work holds great promise for further elucidating the circumstances under which psychological stress has immunological consequences, and provides new directions for work in this field.
Chronic pain may negatively affect social functioning, but no study to date has examined the specific social impact of different chronic pain conditions in young women, and whether living with ...multiple chronic overlapping pain conditions (COPCs) differently influences social domains.
This study aimed to assess social functioning (social isolation, hostility, informational support satisfaction, social roles, emotional support, friendships, and family relationships) among young women with chronic pain compared with pain-free controls and to test whether the number of COPCs influenced the extent of social burden.
Participants aged 18 to 30 years with a physician-confirmed diagnoses of migraine, fibromyalgia, or temporomandibular disorder (TMD) and pain-free controls were invited to participate from across the United States. After confirming eligibility, participants completed a 1-hour REDCap online questionnaire assessing social functioning.
One hundred four participants (mean age 24.54 ± 3.35 years) were included (n = 26 with TMD, n = 25 with fibromyalgia, n = 25 with migraine, and n = 28 controls). All 3 chronic pain groups combined reported worse functioning than controls on friendship (
= 0.038), social isolation (
= 0.002), and social roles (
< 0.001). There were no differences on social variables between the 3 chronic pain groups (all
s > 0.05). Compared with those with 3 COPCs, participants with 1 condition reported better family relationships (
= 0.024).
Experience of chronic pain-regardless of the specific pain condition-may negatively affect some areas of social functioning in young women.
The glymphatic system is thought to be responsible for waste clearance in the brain. As it is primarily active during sleep, different components of sleep, subjective sleep quality, and sleep ...patterns may contribute to glymphatic functioning. This systematic review aimed at exploring the effect of sleep components, sleep quality, and sleep patterns on outcomes associated with the glymphatic system in healthy adults.
PubMed®, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched for studies published in English until December 2021. Articles subjectively or objectively investigating sleep components (total sleep time, time in bed, sleep efficiency, sleep onset latency, wake-up after sleep onset, sleep stage, awakenings), sleep quality, or sleep pattern in healthy individuals, on outcomes associated with glymphatic system (levels of amyloid-β, tau, α-synuclein; cerebrospinal fluid, perivascular spaces; apolipoprotein E) were selected.
Out of 8359 records screened, 51 studies were included. Overall, contradictory findings were observed according to different sleep assessment method. The most frequently assessed sleep parameters were total sleep time, sleep quality, and sleep efficiency. No association was found between sleep efficiency and amyloid-β, and between slow-wave activity and tau. Most of the studies did not find any correlation between total sleep time and amyloid-β nor tau level. Opposing results correlated sleep quality with amyloid-β and tau.
This review highlighted inconsistent results across the studies; as such, the specific association between the glymphatic system and sleep parameters in healthy adults remains poorly understood. Due to the heterogeneity of sleep assessment methods and the self-reported data representing the majority of the observations, future studies with universal study design and sleep methodology in healthy individuals are advocated.
•Outcomes of glymphatic system may be influenced by changes in sleep in healthy adults.•Sleep-glymphatic system interplay in humans is more complex than what observed in animals.•Sleep assessment methods influenced the findings on glymphatic outcomes.
Self-regulation requires overriding a dominant response and leads to temporary self-regulatory fatigue. Existing theories of the nature and causes of self-regulatory fatigue highlight physiological ...substrates such as glucose, or psychological processes such as motivation, but these explanations are incomplete on their own. Historically, theories of physical fatigue demonstrate a similar pattern of useful but incomplete explanations, as recent views of physical fatigue emphasize the roles of both physiological and psychological factors. In addition to accounting for multiple inputs, these newer views also explain how fatigue can occur even in the presence of sufficient resources. Examining these newer theories of physical fatigue can serve as a foundation on which to build a more comprehensive understanding of self-regulatory fatigue that integrates possible neurobiological underpinnings of physical and self-regulatory fatigue, and suggests the possible function of self-regulatory fatigue.
White-nose disease, caused by the dermatophyte
Pseudogymnoascus destructans,
is a devastating pathology that has caused a massive decline in the US bat populations. In Europe, this fungus and the ...related infection in bats have been recorded in several countries and for many bat species, although no mass mortality has been detected. This study reports for the first time the presence of
P. destructans
in Italy. The fungus was isolated in the Rio Martino cave, a site located in the Western Alps and included in the Natura 2000 network. Twenty bats, belonging to five different species, were analysed. The fungus was retrieved on eight individuals of
Myotis emarginatus
. The allied keratolytic species
P. pannorum
was observed on two other individuals, also belonging to
M. emarginatus
. Strains were isolated in pure culture and characterized morphologically. Results were validated through molecular analyses. Future work should be dedicated to understand the distribution and the effects of the two
Pseudogymnoascus
species on Italian bats.
•We model macroinvertebrate diversity and richness in lakes using quantile regression.•We examine the effects of 21 environmental variables on macroinvertebrate community.•Diversity decreases with ...decreasing oxygen content and with increasing sampling depth.•Quantitative results are useful for water monitoring purposes and bio-assessment.
The Water Framework Directive introduced in Europe major changes to improve the management of water resources. This study aims to highlight some of the potential implications of its implementation for lake water monitoring in Italy. A Life+ project was launched to plan the first monitoring of lake macroinvertebrates standardized at the national level.
Quantile regression analysis was used to explain different metrics of diversity describing macroinvertebrate communities in response to twenty-one variables representing chemical, physical and morphological characteristics of the environment. Nine lakes located in two Italian regions (Piedmont and Sardinia) were analyzed covering a wide trophic spectrum, from oligotrophy to hyper-eutrophy. The lakes were sampled following the national standardized protocol with samples covering the three recognized lake zones: littoral, sublittoral, profundal.
The studied lakes had high chemical variability with conductivity ranging between 53 and 561μS/cm, pH between 6.5 and 9.1, and alkalinity between 14 and 398mg/l. The bottom sediments were characterized by fine sand (range 51–99%), followed by silt (1–35%) and clay (0–28%). When the Lake Habitat Survey was also applied to these lakes, its synthetic indices (LHMS, Lake Habitat Modification Score and LHQA, Lake Habitat Quality Assessment) produced higher values in natural lakes (mean values±SD: LHMS=26±7, LHQA=57±3) than in the reservoirs (LHMS=22±4, LHQA=52±6). In all lakes, macroinvertebrates mainly consisted of chironomids and oligochaetes characterized by relative abundances up to 80% and >90%, respectively.
Using quantile regression to evaluate limiting responses, only two variables, namely sampling depth and oxygen percent saturation (oxygen content), resulted the ones that best explained all the analyzed metrics of diversity of the macroinvertebrate communities. Depth and oxygen were then used to suggest synthetic models describing the various metrics of potential community diversity. These models can help the environmental agencies responsible for monitoring at the national level in distinguishing entire lakes or part of them with high biodiversity from those in altered conditions and then address remediation efforts toward the water bodies with the most critical conditions. Such approach could also be used to optimize the sampling procedures for the application of the Benthic Quality Index for lakes currently adopted at national level.
Few studies have investigated specific associations between insomnia and orofacial pain (OFP). The aim of this cross-sectional study was to examine relationships of insomnia with pain, mental health, ...and physical health variables among treatment-seeking patients with chronic OFP.
OFP diagnosis, demographics, insomnia symptoms, pain intensity, interference, and duration, mental health measures, and number of medical comorbidities were extracted from the medical records of 450 patients receiving an initial appointment at a university-affiliated tertiary OFP clinic. T-tests compared differences between patients with and without insomnia symptomatology, and between patients with different insomnia subtypes (delayed onset/early wakening).
Compared to patients without insomnia, those with elevated insomnia symptomatology (45.1%) reported higher pain intensity (60.70 ± 20.61 vs 44.15 ± 21.69; P < .001) and interference (43.81 ± 29.84 vs 18.40 ± 23.43; P < 0.001), depression/anxiety symptomatology (5.53 ± 3.32 vs 2.72 ± 2.66; P < 0.001), dissatisfaction with life (21.63 ± 6.95 vs 26.50 ± 6.21; P < .001), and number of medical comorbidities (6.72 ± 5.37 vs 4.37 ± 4.60; P < .001). Patients with Sleep Onset Latency insomnia (SOL-insomnia) (N = 76) reported higher pain intensity (t = 3.57; P < 0.001), and pain interference (t = 4.46; P < .001) compared to those without SOL-insomnia. Those with Early Morning Awakening insomnia (EMA-insomnia) (N = 71) did not significantly differ from those without EMA-insomnia on any of the variables. Differences remained significant after adjusting for age, sex, primary OFP diagnosis, and pain intensity.
Insomnia is associated with pain outcomes and should be appropriately managed when treating patients with chronic OFP.
Misestimation as a consequence of small sample sizes, small effect sizes, and noisy measurement may be particularly problematic in biomarker studies, the cost of which can adversely affect design ...decisions. This simulation study used real study designs reported in a meta-analysis of psychosocial correlates of the cortisol awakening response to investigate the probability that the results of these designs would yield misestimates in a cross-sectional study.
For each of the 212 designs, 100,000 simulated data sets were produced and the percentages of effects that were in the wrong direction and/or that differed by more than 0.10 from the true effect (b = 0.10) were calculated.
As expected, small samples (n < 100) and noisy measurement contributed to higher probability of errors. The average probability of an effect being in the wrong direction was around 20%, with some designs reaching 40%; misestimation probabilities were around 40%, with some designs reaching 80%. This was true for all studies as well as those reporting statistically significant effects.
Results call for better study designs, and this article provides suggestions for how to achieve more accurate estimates.
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