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.

Trajectories of posttraumatic stress symptoms during and after Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) in refugees.

Background: Trauma-focused therapy approaches are recommended as treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This includes the treatment of trauma-related suffering in refugee populations. However, there is a lack of knowledge about symptom trajectories in refugees living in volatile conditions.

[Healthcare models for traumatized refugees in Germany].

People with a migration background are a risk group for psychiatric disorders. Innovative, transnational and sustainable projects are necessary to ensure adequate care for refugees and asylum seekers. Selected projects of the University of Munich, the Charité Berlin and the University of Konstanz show promising approaches in addition to other initiatives.

Relations between traumatic stress, dimensions of impulsivity, and reactive and appetitive aggression in individuals with refugee status.

Objective: Traumatic stressors and other forms of adversities, especially when experienced during childhood, shape aggressive behavior. Effects of differential dimensions of impulsivity on the relationship between psychological trauma, reactive aggression (defensive survival response to threat), and appetitive aggression (the pleasure of attacking and fighting) have not yet been assessed.

Method: Using structural equation modeling, we sought to uncover precursors of reactive and appetitive aggression investigating a sample of 94 adult individuals with refugee status.

Are experiences of family and of organized violence predictors of aggression and violent behavior? A study with unaccompanied refugee minors.

Background: There is strong support for familial abuse as a risk factor for later delinquency and violent offending, whereas empirical evidence about the contribution of experienced organized violence to the cycle of violence is less clear. Nevertheless not all abused children do become violent offenders. This raises the question of which factors influence these children's risk of future aggressive behavior.

Transgenerational impact of intimate partner violence on methylation in the promoter of the glucocorticoid receptor.

Prenatal exposure to maternal stress can have lifelong implications for psychological function, such as behavioral problems and even the development of mental illness. Previous research suggests that this is due to transgenerational epigenetic programming of genes operating in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, such as the glucocorticoid receptor (GR). However, it is not known whether intrauterine exposure to maternal stress affects the epigenetic state of these genes beyond infancy.

Neurofeedback for treating tinnitus.

Many individuals with tinnitus have abnormal oscillatory brain activity. Led by this finding, we have developed a way to normalize such pathological activity by neurofeedback techniques (Weisz et al. (2005).

The relevance of spontaneous activity for the coding of the tinnitus sensation.

In this chapter we will present support for the hypothesis that synchronous neuronal activity of cell assemblies within the auditory cortex could be the underlying neural code of tinnitus. Such synchronous activity is reflected in the ongoing oscillatory activation pattern that can be recorded non-invasively using MEG and EEG techniques. We conclude that such an oscillatory model of tinnitus can explain many different observations regarding tinnitus.

Tuning the tinnitus percept by modification of synchronous brain activity.

Purpose: Tinnitus, the perception of sound without the presence of a physical stimulus, provides the opportunity to study neural codes of percepts without simultaneous processing of stimuli. Previously, we have found that tinnitus is associated with enhanced delta- and reduced tau-power in temporal brain regions. By operantly modifying corresponding aspects of spontaneous EEG activity, the aim of the present study was to corroborate the assumption that tinnitus should be reduced if patterns of ongoing synchronous brain activity are normalised.

The neural code of auditory phantom perception.

Tinnitus is defined by an auditory perception in the absence of an external source of sound. This condition provides the distinctive possibility of extracting neural coding of perceptual representation. Previously, we had established that tinnitus is characterized by enhanced magnetic slow-wave activity (approximately 4 Hz) in perisylvian or putatively auditory regions.

High-frequency tinnitus without hearing loss does not mean absence of deafferentation.

A broad consensus within the neuroscience of tinnitus holds that this audiologic condition is triggered by central deafferentation, mostly due to cochlear damage. The absence of audiometrically detectable hearing loss however poses a challenge to this rather generalizing assumption. The aim of this study was therefore to scrutinize cochlear functioning in a sample of tinnitus subjects audiometrically matched to a normal hearing control group.

Tracking short-term auditory cortical plasticity during classical conditioning using frequency-tagged stimuli.

Animal studies indicate that short-term plasticity during classical conditioning is a fast process. The temporal details of this process in humans are unknown. We employed amplitude-modulated tones in order to elicit the steady-state field (SSF).

Neuromagnetic indicators of auditory cortical reorganization of tinnitus.

Animal studies show that following damage to inner-ear receptors, central representations of intact lesion-edge (LE) frequencies become enlarged (map reorganization). One theory of tinnitus holds that this process could be related to the tinnitus sensation. To test this hypothesis, neuromagnetic evoked fields of tinnitus participants with high-frequency hearing loss and normal hearing controls were measured, while subjects listened to monaurally presented LE or control (CO; an octave below LE) tones.

Tinnitus perception and distress is related to abnormal spontaneous brain activity as measured by magnetoencephalography.

Background: The neurophysiological mechanisms underlying tinnitus perception are not well understood. Surprisingly, there have been no group studies comparing abnormalities in ongoing, spontaneous neuronal activity in individuals with and without tinnitus perception.

Methods And Findings: Here, we show that the spontaneous neuronal activity of a group of individuals with tinnitus (n = 17) is characterised by a marked reduction in alpha (8-12 Hz) power together with an enhancement in delta (1.

Weight gain in pregnancy.

The amount of weight that women are advised to gain during pregnancy has changed significantly in the past few decades. In the past, recommendations were aimed at curtailing weight gain because of problems surrounding delivery (i.e.