Refugees' integration and emotional distress over the course of 9 months.

Background: High prevalence rates of mental disorders are reported in refugees due to experiencing substantial pre-, peri-, and post-migration stress. While long-term studies indicated that emotional distress of refugees either stagnates or ameliorates over time, long-term research on refugees' integration and its' interaction with emotional distress is limited. The examined long-term predictors for refugees' emotional distress and integration in this study were, amongst others, severe physical abuse in childhood, residence status and length of stay.

Nothing to lose? Neural correlates of decision, anticipation, and feedback in the balloon analog risk task.

Understanding the subprocesses of risky decision making is a prerequisite for understanding (dys-)functional decisions. For the present fMRI study, we designed a novel variant of the balloon-analog-risk task (BART) that measures three phases: decision making, reward anticipation, and feedback processing. Twenty-nine healthy young adults completed the BART.

[Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness of Individual Placement and Support (Ips) in Germany - A Controlled Trials with Individuals with Psychosis].

Objective: To establish the effectiveness of Individual Placement and Support (IPS) to integrate people with mental illness into the general labor market, controlled comparisons with usual rehabilitative practice in terms of employment rates and cost-effectiveness are needed.

Methods: 20 IPS participants with psychoses (primarily schizophrenia spectrum disorders) were compared with 20 controls who were offered usual rehabilitative practices in adjacent counties (rehabilitation as usual, RAU) over 18 months.

Results: IPS was significantly superior to RAU on all job-related criteria with moderate to high effect sizes, with no differences in absenteeism, hospital days, or dropout rates.

[The Konstanz model project for refugees with mental disorders : Coordinated psychotherapeutic treatment involving trained peer support (KOBEG)].

Refugees with mental disorders are confronted with access barriers to the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic care system. In order to counter these barriers, a model project to support the health care and integration of mentally distressed refugees was established in the district of Konstanz (coordinated psychotherapeutic treatment involving trained peer support; KOBEG) and evaluated in an initial 3‑year model phase. A coordination center refers the patients to local certified psychotherapists.

"It is worth hanging in there" - Psychotherapeutic experiences shaping future motivation for outpatient psychotherapy with refugee clients in Germany.

Background: A high prevalence of mental disorders in refugees contrasts with a low rate of treatment and limited access to health care services. In addition to pre-, peri- and post-migration stress, language, cultural barriers together with lack of information about cost reimbursement, and access to German (mental) health care institutions are discussed as barriers to use of available services. Such barriers together with insufficient experience of treating traumatized refugee clients may lower therapists' motivation and facilities to accept refugee clients.

The impact of experiencing severe physical abuse in childhood on adolescent refugees' emotional distress and integration during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Accumulating evidence highlights the importance of pre- and post- migration stressors on refugees' mental health and integration. In addition to migration-associated stressors, experiences earlier in life such as physical abuse in childhood as well as current life stress as produced by the COVID-19-pandemic may impair mental health and successful integration - yet evidence on these further risks is still limited. The present study explicitly focused on the impact of severe physical abuse in childhood during the COVID-19 pandemic and evaluated the impact of these additional stressors on emotional distress and integration of refugees in Germany.

NETfacts: An integrated intervention at the individual and collective level to treat communities affected by organized violence.

War and crises affect mental health, social attitudes, and cultural norms, which can exacerbate the state of long-term insecurity. With decades of armed conflict, the Democratic Republic of Congo is one example, and violence has become normalized in civilian settings. In this study, we tested the effectiveness of the NETfacts health system, an integrated model of evidence-based individual trauma treatment (Narrative Exposure Therapy [NET]) and a trauma-informed community-based intervention (NETfacts).

Oscillatory connectivity as a mechanism of auditory sensory gating and its disruption in schizophrenia.

Although innumerable studies using an auditory sensory gating paradigm have confirmed that individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) show less reduction in brain response to the second in a pair of clicks, this large literature has not yielded consensus on the circuit(s) responsible for gating nor for the gating difference in SZ. Clinically stable adult inpatients (N = 157) and matched community participants (N = 90) participated in a standard auditory sensory gating protocol. Responses to paired clicks were quantified as peak-to-peak amplitude from a response at approximately 50 ms to a response at approximately 100 ms in MEG-derived source waveforms.

Feedback-Related Brain Potentials Indicate the Influence of Craving on Decision-Making in Patients with Alcohol Use Disorder: An Experimental Study.

Introduction: Alcohol craving is a key symptom of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and a significant cause of poor treatment outcome and frequent relapse. Craving is supposed to impair executive functions by modulating reward salience and decision-making.

Objective: The present study sought to clarify this modulation by scrutinizing reward feedback processing in an experimental decision-making task, which was accomplished by AUD patients in 2 conditions, in the context of induced alcohol craving and in neutral context.

Therapeutic success in relapse prevention in alcohol use disorder: the role of treatment motivation and drinking-related treatment goals.

Changing addictive behavior is a complex process with high demands on motivation. The Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change provides a theoretical framework for explaining and predicting behavioral change, although its predictive value for addiction is somewhat inconsistent. The aim of the present study is to extend the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change by investigating not only treatment motivation but also the predictive value of the type of drinking-related treatment goal.

Decision- and feedback-related brain potentials reveal risk processing mechanisms in patients with alcohol use disorder.

Individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD) are aware of the risks of alcohol abuse yet continue risky drinking. Research indicates that dysfunctional decision processes and trait variables such as impulsivity contribute to this awareness-behavior discrepancy. The present study focused on decision-related versus feedback-related processes as potential contributors to decision making in AUD by examining the relationship between decision choices and decision- and feedback-related ERP phenomena in the balloon analogue risk task (BART).

A combined therapy for limb apraxia and related anosognosia.

Left hemisphere stroke frequently leads to limb apraxia, a disorder that has been reported to impact independence in daily life and rehabilitation success. Nonetheless, there is a shortcoming in research and availability of applicable trainings. Further, to date, anosognosia for limb apraxia has largely been neglected.

Mismatch negativity and cognitive performance in the course of schizophrenia.

Background: Cognitive deficits and abnormal event-related brain potentials (ERP) have been proposed as risk markers for the development of schizophrenia. Evidence is inconclusive whether these markers indicate a risk for the development of psychosis or illness progression.

Methods: The present study aimed at further clarification by comparing symptom expression (Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, BRPS), the ERP Mismatch Negativity (MMN), and neuropsychological performance on the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery between healthy controls (HC, n = 38) and individuals at different stages of illness: individuals at risk for psychosis (ARP, n = 33), patients at first admission, thus, early stage (ES, n = 35), chronic schizophrenia patients (CS, n = 25).

Oscillatory brain dynamics supporting impaired Stroop task performance in schizophrenia-spectrum disorder.

The Stroop color-word interference task, prompting slower response to color-incongruent than to congruent items, is often used to study neural mechanisms of inhibitory control and dysfunction in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Inconsistent findings of an augmented Stroop effect limit identification of relevant dysfunctional mechanism(s) in schizophrenia. The present study sought to advance understanding of normal and impaired neural oscillatory dynamics by distinguishing interference detection and response preparation during the Stroop task in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders via analysis of behavioral performance and 4-7 Hz (theta) and 10-30 Hz (alpha/beta) EEG oscillations in 40 patients (SZ) and 27 healthy comparison participants (HC).

Cross-frequency interactions between frontal theta and posterior alpha control mechanisms foster working memory.

Neural oscillatory activity in the theta (4-8 Hz) and alpha (8-14 Hz) bands has been associated with the implementation of executive function, with theta in midline frontal cortex and alpha in posterior parietal cortex related to working memory (WM) load. To identify how these spatially and spectrally distinct neural phenomena interact within a large-scale fronto-parietal network organized in service of WM, EEG was recorded while subjects performed an N-back WM task. Frontal theta power increase, paralleled by posterior alpha decrease, tracked participants' successful WM performance.

Neural network communication facilitates verbal working memory.

Oscillatory brain activity in the theta, alpha, and gamma frequency ranges has been associated with working memory (WM). In addition to alpha and theta activity associated with WM retention, and gamma band activity with item encoding, activity in the alpha band is related to the deployment of attention resources and information. The present study sought to specify distinct roles of neuromagnetic 4-7 Hz theta, 9-13 Hz alpha, and 50-70 Hz gamma power modulation and communication in fronto-parietal networks during cued, hemifield-specific item presentation in a modified Sternberg verbal WM task in 14 student volunteers.

Verbal working memory-related neural network communication in schizophrenia.

Impaired working memory (WM) in schizophrenia is associated with reduced hemodynamic and electromagnetic activity and altered network connectivity within and between memory-associated neural networks. The present study sought to determine whether schizophrenia involves disruption of a frontal-parietal network normally supporting WM and/or involvement of another brain network. Nineteen schizophrenia patients (SZ) and 19 healthy comparison subjects (HC) participated in a cued visual-verbal Sternberg task while dense-array EEG was recorded.

Time Course of Brain Network Reconfiguration Supporting Inhibitory Control.

Hemodynamic research has recently clarified key nodes and links in brain networks implementing inhibitory control. Although fMRI methods are optimized for identifying the structure of brain networks, the relatively slow temporal course of fMRI limits the ability to characterize network operation. The latter is crucial for developing a mechanistic understanding of how brain networks shift dynamically to support inhibitory control.

The impact of cognitive training on spontaneous gamma oscillations in schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia patients exhibit less gamma-frequency EEG/MEG activity (>30 Hz), a finding interpreted as evidence of poor temporal neural organization and functional network communication. Research has shown that neuroplasticity-oriented training can improve task-related oscillatory dynamics, indicating some reorganization capacity in schizophrenia. Demonstrating a generalization of such task training effects to spontaneous oscillations at rest would not only enrich understanding of this neuroplastic potential but inform the interpretation of spontaneous gamma oscillations in the service of normal cognitive function.

Variation of Functional Neurological Symptoms and Emotion Regulation with Time.

Introduction: The present study addressed the variation of emotion regulation in the context of functional neurological symptom disorder (FNSD) by examining changes of functional neurological symptoms (FNS), general psychological strain, alexithymia, emotion regulation strategies, and cortical correlates of emotion regulation in the context of a standard inpatient treatment program.

Methods And Materials: Self-report data on FNS, general psychological strain, alexithymia, emotion regulation strategies, and cortical correlates of an experimentally induced emotion regulation task (participants either passively watched unpleasant and neutral pictures or regulated their emotional response to unpleasant pictures using pre-trained reappraisal, while an electroencephalogram was recorded) were compared between 19 patients with FNSD and 19 healthy comparison participants (HC) before and after a 4-week standard treatment protocol that included a combination of (individual and group) psychotherapies and functional treatments (such as physiotherapy) or a 4-week interval in HC, respectively.

Results: General psychological strain did not decrease significantly in FNSD patients.

Experience-Induced Change of Alcohol-Related Risk Perception in Patients with Alcohol Use Disorders.

The role of alcohol-related risk perception for effective treatment of alcohol use disorders (AUD) is still unclear. The present study on 101 alcohol-dependent patients undergoing a 10-week AUD treatment protocol investigated the relationship between alcohol-related risk perception and alcohol use with the hypotheses that (1) risk perception changes across treatment, (2) changes vary with treatment-related experiences of abstinence/relapse indicating 'risk reappraisal,' and (3) adjustment of perceived own vulnerability according to 'risk reappraisal hypothesis' predicts abstinence during follow-up. Abstinence during treatment was related to a decrease, and relapse during treatment to a slight increase in perceived own risks.

Environmental adversities and psychotic symptoms: The impact of timing of trauma, abuse, and neglect.

Background: Trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACE) occur more often in mental illness, including psychosis, than in the general population. Individuals with psychosis (cases) report a higher number and severity (dose) of adversities than healthy controls. While a dose-dependent increase of adversities has been related to more severe psychopathology, the role of type and timing is still insufficiently understood on the exacerbation of positive and negative psychotic symptoms.