Sleep architecture is associated with core symptom severity in autism spectrum disorder.

Study Objectives: While caregiver-reported sleep disturbances are common in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (['), few studies have measured objective sleep in ASD compared to controls, and their findings are mixed. We investigated (1) differences in sleep architecture, specifically slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, between ASD and typically developing controls (TD); and (2) if any observed differences in sleep were associated with core ASD symptoms.

Methods: We used ambulatory polysomnography (PSG) in 53 participants with ASD (ages 4-18) and 66 age-matched TD in their home sleeping environment.

Memory reconsolidation impairment using the β-adrenergic receptor blocker propranolol reduces nightmare severity in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder: a preliminary study.

Study Objectives: Posttraumatic nightmares may exacerbate and perpetuate the daytime symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder and might represent a therapeutic target. The therapeutic strategy of memory reconsolidation using the β-adrenergic receptor blocker propranolol associated with re-exposure psychotherapy is a promising treatment in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder. Previous studies have established this therapy is effective in reducing overall clinician-assessed posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, but to date no previous study has specifically focused on posttraumatic nightmares in this therapy.

Changes in Quality of Life and Loneliness Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults Participating in Therapist-Guided Digital Mental Health Intervention.

This study aimed to examine the effects of a 12-week multicomponent mobile app-delivered intervention, the Meru Health Program (MHP), on mental health quality of life (QoL) and loneliness among the middle-aged and older adults with depression symptoms. The eligible participants ( age = 57.06, = 11.

A school-based health and mindfulness curriculum improves children's objectively measured sleep: a prospective observational cohort study.

Study Objectives: Poor sleep impedes children's cognitive, emotional, and psychosocial development. Pediatric sleep dysregulation is common, and children who live in communities of low socioeconomic status experience additional risk factors for short sleep duration and poor sleep quality. School-based training in mindfulness and yoga-informed practices can improve children's behavior and well-being, but effects on objectively measured sleep are unknown.

The 5-HTTLPR long allele predicts two-year longitudinal increases in cortisol and declines in verbal memory in older adults.

Objectives: The short form or s-allele variant of the serotonin transporter polymorphism (5-HTTLPR), as compared with the long-form or l-allele variant, has been associated with the presence of cognitive dysfunction, and particularly memory impairment in older adults. This body of cross-sectional work has culminated in the hypothesis that presence of the s-allele predicts greater memory decline in older adults. Yet, to date, there are no longitudinal studies that have investigated this issue.

Identification of Common Neural Circuit Disruptions in Emotional Processing Across Psychiatric Disorders.

Objective: Disrupted emotional processing is a common feature of many psychiatric disorders. The authors investigated functional disruptions in neural circuitry underlying emotional processing across a range of tasks and across psychiatric disorders through a transdiagnostic quantitative meta-analysis of published neuroimaging data.

Methods: A PubMed search was conducted for whole-brain functional neuroimaging findings published through May 2018 that compared activation during emotional processing tasks in patients with psychiatric disorders (including schizophrenia, bipolar or unipolar depression, anxiety, and substance use) to matched healthy control participants.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation demonstrates a role for the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in emotion perception.

The lateral prefrontal cortex, a region with both structural and functional connectivity to the amygdala, has been consistently implicated in the downregulation of subcortical-generated emotional responses. Although previous work has demonstrated that the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) is important to emotion processing, no study has interrupted vlPFC function in order to test is role in emotion perception. In the current study, we acutely disrupted vlPFC function in twenty healthy adult participants by administering sham stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), in randomized order, during performance of an emotional perception task.

Factors Associated with Supportive Care Service Use Among California Alzheimer's Disease Patients and Their Caregivers.

Background: Existing literature on factors associated with supportive care service (SCS) use is limited. A better understanding of these factors could help tailor SCS to the needs of frequent users, as well as facilitate targeted outreach to populations that underutilize available services.

Objective: To investigate the prevalence of SCS use and to identify factors associated with, and barriers to, service use.

My body, your emotions: Viscerosomatic modulation of facial expression discrimination.

Interoception reflects the ability to observe one's innermost bodily states. Here, we assessed whether interoceptive accuracy (IA) is related to the empathic ability to discriminate others' emotions. Participants (N = 111) completed a heartbeat tracking task, as well as an emotional go/no-go task with fearful and disgusted faces.

Cooperative versus competitive influences of emotion and cognition on decision making: A primer for psychiatry research.

Clinical research across the developmental spectrum increasingly reveals the nuanced ways in which emotion and cognition can work to either support or derail rational (i.e., healthy or goal-consistent) decision making.

Framing effects are robust to linguistic disambiguation: A critical test of contemporary theory.

Theoretical accounts of risky choice framing effects assume that decision makers interpret framing options as extensionally equivalent, such that if 600 lives are at stake, saving 200 implies that 400 die. However, many scholars have argued that framing effects are caused, instead, by filling in pragmatically implied information. This linguistic ambiguity hypothesis is grounded in neo-Gricean pragmatics, information leakage, and schema theory.

Developmental reversals in risky decision making: intelligence agents show larger decision biases than college students.

Intelligence agents make risky decisions routinely, with serious consequences for national security. Although common sense and most theories imply that experienced intelligence professionals should be less prone to irrational inconsistencies than college students, we show the opposite. Moreover, the growth of experience-based intuition predicts this developmental reversal.