Facial representations of complex affective states combining pain and a negative emotion.

Pain is rarely communicated alone, as it is often accompanied by emotions such as anger or sadness. Communicating these affective states involves shared representations. However, how an individual conceptually represents these combined states must first be tested.

Improving feeling of control and trust in interpreter-mediated mental health consultations.

Language barriers are among the most critical factors in health care disparities. Low language proficiency is consistently associated with a high prevalence and severity of mental health disorder symptoms. Despite the advantages of working with an interpreter, most practitioners report difficulties, especially with trust and the feeling of control.

[Basic, Clinical and Social Perspectives on the Use of Virtual Characters in Mental Health].

Along other breakthroughs in computer sciences, such as artificial intelligence, virtual characters (i.e. digitally represented characters featuring a human appearance or not) are foreseen as potential providers of mental healthcare services.

I Can But I Shall Not Always Be Empathic.

Empathy, a core process for social interactions, is the capacity to understand and share others' mental states and emotions. Each individual is thought to have a maximum level of empathy (empathic ability) and a spontaneous tendency to express it (empathic propensity), which can be affected by multiple factors. Two within-subject studies were conducted to assess the malleability of empathy by modulating contextual factors and measuring their interaction with psychological characteristics.

Comparison of myocardial ischemia on the ergocycle versus the treadmill in patients with coronary heart disease.

We previously observed an attenuation of exercise-induced myocardial ischemia on the ergocycle during a ramp protocol compared to the standard Bruce protocol treadmill test in patients with coronary heart disease. However, it was uncertain whether decreased ischemia on the ergocycle resulted from the warm-up effect of the more gradual ramp protocol or from the mode of exercise itself (cycling vs running). Sixteen stable patients, aged 64 +/- 5 years, with documented coronary heart disease (> or =70% coronary artery stenosis and/or reversible myocardial perfusion defects) performed 3 symptom-limited exercise tests: the standard Bruce protocol treadmill test and 2 individualized ramp protocols (treadmill and ergocycle).

Can prolonged exercise-induced myocardial ischaemia be innocuous?

Aims: To evaluate the innocuousness of intense and prolonged exercise training above the threshold for myocardial ischaemia (1 mm ST-segment depression).

Methods And Results: Twenty-two patients with ischaemic heart disease (IHD) were randomized to exercise training either at a target intensity that induced myocardial ischaemia (ischaemic group) or that adhered to current guidelines (control group). Training was progressively increased to 60 min under continuous electrocardiographic (ECG) monitoring.