Objectives
The aim of our survey is to identify psychological features for the relationship between mental health and hardiness of Ukrainians during the war.
Methods
The study involved 608 ...Ukrainians. We aimed to identify the relationship between mental health and hardiness and determine the differences in the peculiarities of mental health of people with different levels of hardiness. Also we looked for predictors for hardiness.
Results
Subjective hardiness was found to be related to specific manifestation of mental health in the Ukrainian population. Strong correlations were revealed for hardiness with adaptation (ρ = 0.818), emotional comfort (ρ = 0.786), internality (ρ = 0.672), self-perception (ρ = 0.656,), escapism (ρ = −0.632) and mental health (ρ = 0.629). A prognostic model based on linear regression analysis identified the main predictors of personal hardiness and confirmed correlational analysis. Mental health (0.341), emotional comfort (ρ = 0.786), and escapism (−0.576) were found to be good predictors. Altogether 40.1% of Ukrainians scored low, 54.6% medium, and 5.3% high on individual hardiness.
Conclusion
The study found that about every 4th Ukrainian demonstrates a low level of personal hardiness, which is accompanied by emotional discomfort and lack of internal locus of control, making them more susceptible to stress and illness. Additionally, they tend to distance themselves which significantly exacerbates the situation. It has been found that Ukrainians with low levels of personal hardiness exhibit escapism (with diversion of the mind to imaginative activity), a destructive defense mechanism that not only prevents effective problem solving but also has long-term negative consequences for their overall health. Consequently, especially people with low hardiness should receive specific support to stabilize their mental wellbeing and health overall.
See Thibault et al. (doi:10.1093/awx033) for a scientific commentary on this article.Neurofeedback training builds upon the simple concept of instrumental conditioning, i.e. behaviour that is ...rewarded is more likely to reoccur, an effect Thorndike referred to as the 'law of effect'. In the case of neurofeedback, information about specific electroencephalographic activity is fed back to the participant who is rewarded whenever the desired electroencephalography pattern is generated. If some kind of hyperarousal needs to be addressed, the neurofeedback community considers sensorimotor rhythm neurofeedback as the gold standard. Earlier treatment approaches using sensorimotor-rhythm neurofeedback indicated that training to increase 12-15 Hz sensorimotor rhythm over the sensorimotor cortex during wakefulness could reduce attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and epilepsy symptoms and even improve sleep quality by enhancing sleep spindle activity (lying in the same frequency range). In the present study we sought to critically test whether earlier findings on the positive effect of sensorimotor rhythm neurofeedback on sleep quality and memory could also be replicated in a double-blind placebo-controlled study on 25 patients with insomnia. Patients spent nine polysomnography nights and 12 sessions of neurofeedback and 12 sessions of placebo-feedback training (sham) in our laboratory. Crucially, we found both neurofeedback and placebo feedback to be equally effective as reflected in subjective measures of sleep complaints suggesting that the observed improvements were due to unspecific factors such as experiencing trust and receiving care and empathy from experimenters. In addition, these improvements were not reflected in objective electroencephalographic-derived measures of sleep quality. Furthermore, objective electroencephalographic measures that potentially reflected mechanisms underlying the efficacy of neurofeedback such as spectral electroencephalographic measures and sleep spindle parameters remained unchanged following 12 training sessions. A stratification into 'true' insomnia patients and 'insomnia misperceivers' (subjective, but no objective sleep problems) did not alter the results. Based on this comprehensive and well-controlled study, we conclude that for the treatment of primary insomnia, neurofeedback does not have a specific efficacy beyond unspecific placebo effects. Importantly, we do not find an advantage of neurofeedback over placebo feedback, therefore it cannot be recommended as an alternative to cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, the current (non-pharmacological) standard-of-care treatment. In addition, our study may foster a critical discussion that generally questions the effectiveness of neurofeedback, and emphasizes the importance of demonstrating neurofeedback efficacy in other study samples and disorders using truly placebo and double-blind controlled trials.
The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns worldwide forced children and adolescents to change and adapt their lives to an unprecedented situation. Using an online survey, we investigated whether they ...showed changes in sleep quality and other related factors due to this event. Between February 21st, 2021 and April 19th, 2021, a total of 2,290 Austrian children and adolescents (6-18 years) reported their sleep habits and quality of sleep as well as physical activity, daylight exposure and usage of media devices during and, retrospectively, before the pandemic. Results showed an overall delay of sleep and wake times. Almost twice as many respondents reported having sleeping problems during the pandemic as compared to before, with insomnia, nightmares and daytime sleepiness being the most prevalent problems. Furthermore, sleeping problems and poor quality of sleep correlated positively with COVID-19 related anxiety. Lastly, results showed a change from regular to irregular bedtimes during COVID-19, higher napping rates, a strong to very strong decrease in physical activity and daylight exposure, as well as a high to very high increase in media consumption. We conclude that the increase in sleeping problems in children and adolescent during COVID-19 is concerning. Thus, health promoting measures and programs should be implemented and enforced.
Precise temporal coordination of slow oscillations (SO) and sleep spindles is a fundamental mechanism of sleep-dependent memory consolidation. SO and spindle morphology changes considerably ...throughout development. Critically, it remains unknown how the precise temporal coordination of these two sleep oscillations develops during brain maturation and whether their synchronization indexes the development of memory networks. Here, we use a longitudinal study design spanning from childhood to adolescence, where participants underwent polysomnography and performed a declarative word-pair learning task. Performance on the memory task was better during adolescence. After disentangling oscillatory components from 1/f activity, we found frequency shifts within SO and spindle frequency bands. Consequently, we devised an individualized cross-frequency coupling approach, which demonstrates that SO-spindle coupling strength increases during maturation. Critically, this increase indicated enhanced memory formation from childhood to adolescence. Our results provide evidence that improved coordination between SOs and spindles indexes the development of sleep-dependent memory networks.
For many studies, participants’ sleep-wake patterns are monitored and recorded prior to, during and following an experimental or clinical intervention using actigraphy, i.e. the recording of data ...generated by movements. Often, these data are merely inspected visually without computation of descriptive parameters, in part due to the lack of user-friendly software. To address this deficit, we developed a package for R Core Team 6, that allows computing several non-parametric measures from actigraphy data. Specifically, it computes the interdaily stability (IS), intradaily variability (IV) and relative amplitude (RA) of activity and gives the start times and average activity values of M10 (i.e. the ten hours with maximal activity) and L5 (i.e. the five hours with least activity). Two functions compute these ‘classical’ parameters and handle either single or multiple files. Two other functions additionally allow computing an L-value (i.e. the least activity value) for a user-defined time span termed ‘Lflex’ value. A plotting option is included in all functions. The package can be downloaded from the Comprehensive R Archives Network (CRAN).
•The package ‘nparACT’ for R serves the non-parametric analysis of actigraphy data.•Computed parameters include interdaily stability (IS), intradaily variability (IV) and relative amplitude (RA) as well as start times and average activity during the 10h with maximal and the 5h with minimal activity (i.e. M10 and L5).
Commercial sleep devices and mobile-phone applications for scoring sleep are gaining ground. In order to provide reliable information about the quantity and/or quality of sleep, their performance ...needs to be assessed against the current gold standard, i.e., polysomnography (PSG; measuring brain, eye, and muscle activity). Here, we assessed some commercially available sleep trackers, namely an activity tracker; Mi band (Xiaomi, Beijing, China), a scientific actigraph: Motionwatch 8 (CamNTech, Cambridge, UK), and a much-used mobile phone application: Sleep Cycle (Northcube, Gothenburg, Sweden). We recorded 27 nights in healthy sleepers using PSG and these devices and compared the results. Surprisingly, all devices had poor agreement with the PSG gold standard. Sleep parameter comparisons revealed that, specifically, the Mi band and the Sleep Cycle application had difficulties in detecting wake periods which negatively affected their total sleep time and sleep-efficiency estimations. However, all 3 devices were good in detecting the most basic parameter, the actual time in bed. In summary, our results suggest that, to date, the available sleep trackers do not provide meaningful sleep analysis but may be interesting for simply tracking time in bed. A much closer interaction with the scientific field seems necessary if reliable information shall be derived from such devices in the future.
Consciousness is reduced during nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep due to changes in brain function that are still poorly understood. Here, we tested the hypothesis that impaired consciousness during ...NREM sleep is associated with an increased modularity of brain activity. Cerebral connectivity was quantified in resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging times series acquired in 13 healthy volunteers during wakefulness and NREM sleep. The analysis revealed a modification of the hierarchical organization of large-scale networks into smaller independent modules during NREM sleep, independently from EEG markers of the slow oscillation. Such modifications in brain connectivity, possibly driven by sleep ultraslow oscillations, could hinder the brain's ability to integrate information and account for decreased consciousness during NREM sleep.
Evidence from functional neuroimaging studies on resting state suggests that there are two distinct anticorrelated cortical systems that mediate conscious awareness: an “extrinsic” system that ...encompasses lateral fronto-parietal areas and has been linked with processes of external input (external awareness), and an “intrinsic” system which encompasses mainly medial brain areas and has been associated with internal processes (internal awareness). The aim of our study was to explore the neural correlates of resting state by providing behavioral and neuroimaging data from healthy volunteers. With no a priori assumptions, we first determined behaviorally the relationship between external and internal awareness in 31 subjects. We found a significant anticorrelation between external and internal awareness with a mean switching frequency of 0.05 Hz (range: 0.01–0.1 Hz). Interestingly, this frequency is similar to BOLD fMRI slow oscillations. We then evaluated 22 healthy volunteers in an fMRI paradigm looking for brain areas where BOLD activity correlated with “internal” and “external” scores. Activation of precuneus/posterior cingulate, anterior cingulate/mesiofrontal cortices, and parahippocampal areas (“intrinsic system”) was linearly linked to intensity of internal awareness, whereas activation of lateral fronto-parietal cortices (“extrinsic system”) was linearly associated with intensity of external awareness.
The negative psychosocial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are becoming increasingly apparent. Children and adolescents in particular, were affected and torn away from their daily life routines. The ...aim of our survey is to evaluate the psychosocial burden and impairments of children and adolescents in Austria during the COVID-19 pandemic by using cross-sectional analysis.
An Austrian-wide online survey was conducted from 21 February to 19 April 2021 for children and adolescents. The questionnaire was distributed widely using the national press agency and public media.
Using an online questionnaire, 5,483 children and adolescents between 6 and 18 years of age were sampled.
Quantitative responses to questions regarding the children's feelings, worries, and needs concerning the COVID-19 pandemic were measured. Furthermore, the children were sampled for subjective risk perception as well as their sleep quality.
Most children reported a high degree of fear due to the pandemic, especially female (48.1%) participants being under more emotional strain than their male (35.9%) counterparts. Associated with this, we found a strong overestimation of COVID-19-associated hospitalization likelihood (>100-fold) across all age groups. In addition, an alarming lack of positive perspective during the ongoing pandemic is evident across all age groups, including the youngest participants aged 6-10 years. Feelings of anger and annoyance (58.2%), loneliness (46%), and sadness (42.7%) are reported much more frequently than before the pandemic. On the other hand, only 15.6% reported feeling well (or even better; 2%) since the COVID-19 pandemic. Last but not least, our study shows an alarming 37% of children and adolescents who now report poorer sleep quality than before the pandemic.
The results of this survey indicate the high burden and emotional strain for children and adolescents during the pandemic. Personal contact with friends and family is mentioned as the most protective factor for their mental health. The study results underscore the need for immediate action to limit the collateral damage that has already occurred on a psychosocial and developmental level among younger generations worldwide.
The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the performance of a low-cost commercial smartwatch, the Xiaomi Mi Band (MB), in extracting physical activity and sleep-related measures and show its ...potential use in addressing questions that require large-scale real-time data and/or intercultural data including low-income countries. We evaluated physical activity and sleep-related measures and discussed the potential application of such devices for large-scale step and sleep data acquisition. To that end, we conducted two separate studies. In Study 1, we evaluated the performance of MB by comparing it to the GT3X (ActiGraph, wGT3X-BT), a scientific actigraph used in research, as well as subjective sleep reports. In Study 2, we distributed the MB across four countries (Austria, Germany, Cuba, and Ukraine) and investigated physical activity and sleep among these countries. The results of Study 1 indicated that MB step counts correlated highly with the scientific GT3X device, but did display biases. In addition, the MB-derived wake-up and total-sleep-times showed high agreement with subjective reports, but partly deviated from GT3X predictions. Study 2 revealed similar MB step counts across countries, but significant later wake-up and bedtimes for Ukraine than the other countries. We hope that our studies will stimulate future large-scale sensor-based physical activity and sleep research studies, including various cultures.
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