•The capability model of frontal asymmetry should integrate the strength of the situation.•Situations with very high situational strength do not differ concerning personality.•Different paradigms ...have different parameters, including situational strength.•References matter if looking on the applicability of the capability model.•Timespan of measurement and motivational phase also play a role for the capability model.
The capability model of anterior asymmetry integrates trait-related and state-related frontal asymmetry research by proposing that frontal asymmetry is dependent on relevant traits if they are activated by a situation. However, differences in experimental design and EEG recording methods haven’t been fully explored. We investigated 56 participants under three different situational paradigms (virtual T-maze, mental imagery, movies), varying the stimulus and type of measurement concerning frontal asymmetry. We predicted that “strong” situational manipulations (virtual T-maze, frontal asymmetry measured as event-related desynchronization) would eclipse relationships between frontal asymmetry and relevant traits, whereas “weaker” task manipulations, measured during longer time periods, would enhance relationships to relevant traits compared to frontal asymmetry at rest. The results confirmed these expectations, stressing the importance of stimulus characteristics, trait measures and recording methods with respect to the capability model. Additionally, a revision of the capability model to an inverse U-shaped quadratic relationship might be appropriate.
Abstract Background Although it has been argued that frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) asymmetry at rest may be a risk marker for major depressive disorder (MDD), it is unclear whether a pattern ...of relatively less left than right activity characterizes depressed individuals during emotional challenges. Examination of frontal asymmetry during emotion task manipulations could provide an assessment of the function of systems relevant for MDD, and test the limits of frontal EEG asymmetry as a marker of risk for depression. Methods EEG data were assessed during a facial emotion task, wherein 306 individuals age 18–34 (31% male) with ( n = 143) and without ( n = 163) DSM-IV defined lifetime MDD made directed facial actions of approach (angry and happy) and withdrawal (afraid and sad) expressions. Results Lifetime depressed individuals displayed less relative left frontal activity than never-depressed individuals during all facial expressions across four EEG reference montages, findings that were not due to emotional experience, facial expression quality, electromyographic (EMG) activity, or current depression status. Limitations Although this was a sizable sample, only one emotion task was utilized. Conclusions Results provide further support for frontal EEG asymmetry as a risk marker for MDD.
This study quantifies the wide-ranging health care costs affecting patients living with IBD, including the annualized direct and indirect costs of care for patients with IBD, the longitudinal drivers ...of these costs, and the cost of care for newly diagnosed patients.
Abstract
Background
The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s Cost of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Care Initiative seeks to quantify the wide-ranging health care costs affecting patients living with IBD. We aimed to (1) describe the annualized direct and indirect costs of care for patients with Crohn’s disease (CD) or ulcerative colitis (UC), (2) determine the longitudinal drivers of these costs, and (3) characterize the cost of care for newly diagnosed patients.
Methods
We analyzed the Optum Research Database from the years 2007 to 2016, representing commercially insured and Medicare Advantage–insured patients in the United States. Inclusion for the study was limited to those who had continuous enrollment with medical and pharmacy benefit coverage for at least 24 months (12 months before through 12 months after the index date of diagnosis). The value of patient time spent on health care was calculated as number of workplace hours lost due to health care encounters multiplied by the patients’ estimated average wage derived from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Comparisons between IBD patients and non-IBD patients were analyzed based on demographics, health plan type, and length of follow-up. We used generalized linear models to estimate the association between total annual costs and various patient variables.
Results
There were 52,782 IBD patients (29,062 UC; 23,720 CD) included in the analysis (54.1% females). On a per-annual basis, patients with IBD incurred a greater than 3-fold higher direct cost of care compared with non-IBD controls ($22,987 vs $6956 per-member per-year paid claims) and more than twice the out-of-pocket costs ($2213 vs $979 per-year reported costs), with all-cause IBD costs rising after 2013. Patients with IBD also experienced significantly higher costs associated with time spent on health care as compared with controls. The burden of costs was most notable in the first year after initial IBD diagnosis (mean = $26,555). The study identified several key drivers of cost for IBD patients: treatment with specific therapeutics (biologics, opioids, or steroids); ED use; and health care services associated with relapsing disease, anemia, or mental health comorbidity.
Conclusion
The costs of care for IBD have increased in the last 5 years and are driven by specific therapeutics and disease features. In addition, compared with non-IBD controls, IBD patients are increasingly incurring higher costs associated with health care utilization, out-of-pocket expenditures, and workplace productivity losses. There is a pressing need for cost-effective strategies to address these burdens on patients and families affected by IBD.
Video Abstract
10.1093/ibd/izz104_video1
Video Abstract
izz104.video1
6039344358001
•Older adults show a bias toward positive information, based on picture studies.•We tested if age-related positivity bias in word processing depends on arousal.•Older adults showed increased N400s ...with left frontal alpha decreases.•Older adults further showed a mid-frontal theta increase (500–700 ms).•Results support the strength and vulnerability integration model of aging.
Older adults often show a positivity bias effect during picture processing, focusing more on positive than negative information. It is unclear whether this positivity bias effect generalizes to language and whether arousal matters. The present study investigated how age affects emotional word comprehension with varied valence (positive, negative) and arousal (high, low). We recorded older and younger participants’ brainwaves (EEG) while they read positive/negative and high/low-arousing words and pseudowords, and made word/non-word judgments. Older adults showed increased N400s and left frontal alpha decreases (300–450 ms) for low-arousing positive as compared to low-arousing negative words, suggesting an arousal-dependent positivity bias during lexical retrieval. Both age groups showed similar LPPs to negative words. Older adults further showed a larger mid-frontal theta increase (500–700 ms) than younger adults for low-arousing negative words, possibly indicating down-regulation of negative meanings of low-arousing words. Altogether, our data supported the strength and vulnerability integration model of aging.
This paper describes the development and analysis of an objective climatology of warm and cold fronts over North America from 1979 to 2018. Fronts are detected by a convolutional neural network ...(CNN), trained to emulate fronts drawn by human meteorologists. Predictors for the CNN are surface and 850-hPa fields of temperature, specific humidity, and vector wind from the ERA5 reanalysis. Gridded probabilities from the CNN are converted to 2D frontal regions, which are used to create the climatology. Overall, warm and cold fronts are most common in the Pacific and Atlantic cyclone tracks and the lee of the Rockies. In contrast with prior research, we find that the activity of warm and cold fronts is significantly modulated by the phase and intensity of El Niño–Southern Oscillation. The influence of El Niño is significant for winter warm fronts, winter cold fronts, and spring cold fronts, with activity decreasing over the continental United States and shifting northward with the Pacific and Atlantic cyclone tracks. Long-term trends are generally not significant, although we find a poleward shift in frontal activity during the winter and spring, consistent with prior research. We also identify a number of regional patterns, such as a significant long-term increase in warm fronts in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which are characterized almost entirely by moisture gradients rather than temperature gradients.
Despite thermodynamic, bioenergetic and phylogenetic failings, the 81-year-old concept of primordial soup remains central to mainstream thinking on the origin of life. But soup is homogeneous in pH ...and redox potential, and so has no capacity for energy coupling by chemiosmosis. Thermodynamic constraints make chemiosmosis strictly necessary for carbon and energy metabolism in all free-living chemotrophs, and presumably the first free-living cells too. Proton gradients form naturally at alkaline hydrothermal vents and are viewed as central to the origin of life. Here we consider how the earliest cells might have harnessed a geochemically created proton-motive force and then learned to make their own, a transition that was necessary for their escape from the vents. Synthesis of ATP by chemiosmosis today involves generation of an ion gradient by means of vectorial electron transfer from a donor to an acceptor. We argue that the first donor was hydrogen and the first acceptor CO₂.
Divorce is a common stressor that is associated with increased risk for poor long-term physical and mental health. Using an experimental design, the current study examined the impact of expressive ...writing (EW) on average heart rate (HR), HR variability (HRV), and blood pressure (BP) 7.5 months later.
Participants from a community sample of recently separated adults (N = 109) were assigned to one of three conditions: traditional EW, narrative EW, or a control writing condition, and were assessed three times for an average of 7.5 months. Each study visit included 27 minutes of physiological assessment; the primary outcomes at each assessment were mean-level HR, HRV, BP scores averaged across six different tasks.
Participants in the traditional EW condition did not significantly differ from control participants in their later HR, HRV, or BP. However, relative to control participants, those in the narrative EW condition had significantly lower HR (B = -3.41, 95% confidence interval = -5.76 to -1.06, p = .004) and higher HRV 7.5 months later (B = 0.41, 95% confidence interval = 0.16 to 0.74, p = .001). When comparing narrative EW participants to those in the traditional EW and control writing as a single group, these effects remained and were moderately sized, Cohen d values of -0.61 and 0.60, respectively, and durable across all task conditions when analyzed in independent models. The writing condition groups did not differ in their later BP.
Narrative EW decreased HR and increased HRV after marital separation but did not affect BP. We discuss the possible disconnect between psychology and physiology in response to EW, as well as possible future clinical applications after marital separation.
Frontal EEG asymmetry is a promising neurophysiological marker of depression risk. It predicts emotional response and negative affect hours to years later. Yet, inconsistencies in the literature may ...be due to differing methodological approaches between research groups. Within the past two years, a number of studies have shown this line of research may be strengthened by augmenting resting assessments with emotionally evocative tasks, utilizing optimal recording montages, and taking an integrative neuroscience approach that links frontal asymmetry to other indices of neural function. This review will focus on recent work in frontal asymmetry and depression with a particular focus on promising future directions and methodological considerations that may increase consistency between research groups.
Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is characterized by intrusive thoughts (i.e. obsessions) and future-oriented worrisome cognitions that are associated with behavioral ritualistic compensations ...(i.e. compulsions) and anxious arousal. Research has found an enhanced error-related negativity (ERN) among those with OCD in choice response tasks such as the flankers task, but not in probabilistic learning tasks. To date, research has not directly investigated whether the ERN effect observed in individuals with OCD is specific to the central features of OCD (obsessions and compulsions), or is related more closely to the worry or anxiety observed in this disorder. This study compared groups with relatively pure symptom profiles on OC, worry, and anxiety symptoms (e.g. high on OC, low on worry and anxiety) relative to a “typical” OC presentation group (e.g. high OC, mild to high worry and anxiety) and a non-anxious non-worry Control group, in both flankers and probabilistic learning tasks. For the flankers task, only the Worry group had a significantly enhanced ERN relative to controls. For the probabilistic learning task, the OC typical group had significantly enhanced ERN amplitude on suboptimal choices relative to controls. Across tasks, the experimental groups had significantly enhanced activity on error/suboptimal choices relative to the OC specific group. The results highlight the role of worry across both tasks, and to a lesser extent anxiety and OC symptoms, in performance-monitoring processes.
•Relationship of enhanced ERN and different symptom features of OCD were investigated.•Pure symptom (OC, worry, and anxious),‘typical’ OC, and Control groups compared in 2 tasks.•For flankers, only high Worry group, not pure OC group, had an enhanced ERN effect.•For probabilistic learning, the OC typical group had an enhanced ERN.•Results offer evidence underscoring role of worry in error monitoring in both tasks.
This book is about the renaissance of cities in the twenty first century and their increasing role as centers of creative economic activity. It attempts to put some conceptual and descriptive order ...around issues of urbanization in the contemporary world, emphasizing the idea of the social economy of the metropolis, which is to say, a view of the urban organism as an intertwined system of social and economic life played out through the arena of urban space. The book opens with a review of some essentials of urban theory, the book aims to re-articulate the urban question in a way that is relevant to city life and politics in the present era. It then analyses the functional characteristics of the urban economy, with special reference to the rise of a group of core sectors such as media, fashion, music, etc., focused on cognitive and cultural forms of work. These sectors are growing with great rapidity in the world's largest cities at the present time, and they play a major role in the urban resurgence that has been occurring of late. The discussion then explores the spatial ramifications of this new economy in cities and the ways in which it appears to be ushering in major shifts in divisions of labor and urban social stratification, as marked by a growing divide between a stratum of elite workers on the one side and a low-wage proletariat on the other. Allen Scott is one of the world's foremost thinkers on the economies of modern cities, and in this book presents a concise introduction to his innovative and insightful perspective. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/management/9780199549306/toc.html
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