Dysmenorrhea catastrophizing and functional impairment in female pelvic pain.

Background: Dysmenorrhea is suggested to increase the risk of chronic pain by enhancing central sensitization. However, little is known about whether emotional and cognitive responses induced by dysmenorrhea contribute to chronic pain interference. This study examined the association between catastrophizing specific to dysmenorrhea and both dysmenorrhea and chronic pelvic pain (CPP)-associated pain interference.

Chronic Pelvic Pain Profiles in Women Seeking Care in a Tertiary Pelvic Pain Clinic.

Objective: Female chronic pelvic pain (CPP) has multiple pain generators and significant psychosocial sequalae. Biopsychosocial-based phenotyping could help identify clinical heterogeneity that may inform tailored patient treatment. This study sought to identify distinct CPP profiles based on routinely collected clinical information and evaluate the validity of the profiles through associations with social histories and subsequent health care utilization.

Responding flexibly to the complex problem of chronic pelvic pain: Incorporating patient needs into program development.

Background: Chronic pelvic pain (CPP) in women is both common and disabling, and access to interdisciplinary care is limited. Patient education programs may represent a pragmatic approach to delivering interdisciplinary care, but to date the specific educational needs of patients with CPP are unknown.

Method: We surveyed 136 patients at a tertiary CPP treatment center to identify their educational needs and preferences; 71 (52%) completed surveys.

Prospective Association between Dysmenorrhea and Chronic Pain Development in Community-Dwelling Women.

Despite emerging evidence of associations between dysmenorrhea, enhanced pain sensitivity, and functional neuroimaging patterns consistent with chronic pain, it is unknown whether dysmenorrhea is prospectively associated with chronic pain development. Gaining a better understanding of this relationship could inform efforts in prevention of chronic pain. Using data from the national Midlife in the United States cohort, we examined the prospective association between dysmenorrhea and chronic pain development during a 10-year follow-up (starting 10 years after dysmenorrhea was measured) among 874 community-dwelling women aged 25-74 at baseline (when dysmenorrhea was measured).

Association between dysmenorrhea and chronic pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis of population-based studies.

Objective: The objective of the study was to synthesize the epidemiological findings for the associations between dysmenorrhea, including primary dysmenorrhea and endometriosis-associated dysmenorrhea and any chronic pain conditions, including chronic pelvic pain, and chronic nonpelvic pain.

Data Sources: The data sources included PubMed, Embase, and CINAHL from inception to December 2019.

Study Eligibility Criteria: The study criteria included observational population-based studies in which the relationship between dysmenorrhea and the presence or severity of chronic pain was examined.

Couple Interventions for Chronic Pain: A Systematic Review.

Objective: Couple interventions for chronic pain have been shown to more effectively reduce pain intensity for individuals with chronic pain (ICPs) than individual behavioral interventions or usual care. This systematic review identified randomized controlled trials of couple interventions to highlight strategies that could be incorporated into psychotherapy with ICPs and their romantic partners.

Methods: The authors identified articles reporting randomized controlled trials of couple interventions for chronic pain.

The relationship between cortisol, salivary alpha-amylase, and cognitive bias in young women.

Both animal and human studies suggest that cognitive bias toward negative information, such as that observed in major depression, may arise through the interaction of cortisol (CORT) and norepinephrine (NE) within the amygdala. To date, there is no published account of the relationship between endogenous NE and CORT levels and cognitive bias. The present study examined salivary CORT and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA), an indirect measure of NE, in relation to masked affective priming of words in young female participants.

What can Event-related Potentials tell us about language, and perhaps even thought, in schizophrenia?

Disturbances of thought and language are fundamental to schizophrenia. Cognitive behavioral and electrophysiological research has implicated problems in two different neurocognitive mechanisms: abnormalities in the structure and function of semantic memory, and abnormalities in combining and integrating words together to build up sentence and discourse context. This review discusses recent electrophysiological evidence suggesting that these two deficits are not completely distinct, but rather that language impairment in schizophrenia results from a dysfunctional interaction between these systems in an effort to build up higher-order meaning.

Selective emotional processing deficits to social vignettes in schizophrenia: an ERP study.

Schizophrenia is associated with abnormalities in emotional processing and social cognition. However, it remains unclear whether patients show abnormal neurophysiological responses during fast, online appraisals of the emotional meaning of social information. To examine this question, event-related potentials (ERPs) were collected while 18 schizophrenia patients and 18 demographically matched controls evaluated 2-sentence vignettes describing negative, positive, or neutral social situations.

Why all the confusion? Experimental task explains discrepant semantic priming effects in schizophrenia under "automatic" conditions: evidence from Event-Related Potentials.

The schizophrenia research literature contains many differing accounts of semantic memory function in schizophrenia as assessed through the semantic priming paradigm. Most recently, Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) have been used to demonstrate both increased and decreased semantic priming at a neural level in schizophrenia patients, relative to healthy controls. The present study used ERPs to investigate the role of behavioral task in determining neural semantic priming effects in schizophrenia.

Neural evidence for faster and further automatic spreading activation in schizophrenic thought disorder.

It has been proposed that the loose associations characteristic of thought disorder in schizophrenia result from an abnormal increase in the automatic spread of activation through semantic memory. We tested this hypothesis by examining the time course of neural semantic priming using event-related potentials (ERPs). ERPs were recorded to target words that were directly related, indirectly related, and unrelated to their preceding primes, while thought-disordered (TD) and non-TD schizophrenia patients and healthy controls performed an implicit semantic categorization task under experimental conditions that encouraged automatic processing.

An electrophysiological investigation of indirect semantic priming.

In two experiments, direct and indirect semantic priming were measured using event-related potentials. In Experiment 1, participants rated the relatedness between prime and target on a seven-point scale. In Experiment 2, participants simply read the primes and targets as they monitored for a semantic category in probe filler items.

Building up linguistic context in schizophrenia: evidence from self-paced reading.

An impairment in the build-up and use of context has been proposed as a core feature of schizophrenia. The current study tested the hypothesis that schizophrenia patients show impairments in building up context within sentences because of abnormalities in combining semantic with syntactic information. Schizophrenia patients and healthy controls read and made acceptability judgments about sentences containing verbs that were semantically associated with individual preceding words but that violated either the meaning (animacy/semantic constraints) or the syntactic structure (morphosyntactic constraints) of their preceding contexts.

The role of animacy and thematic relationships in processing active English sentences: evidence from event-related potentials.

Recent event-related potential studies report a P600 effect to incongruous verbs preceded by semantically associated inanimate noun-phrase (NP) arguments, e.g., "eat" in "At breakfast the eggs would eat.

Low-level lead exposure, executive functioning, and learning in early childhood.

The current paper presents evidence relating low-level lead exposure to impaired executive functioning in young children. Using the Shape School task, we assessed focused attention, attention switching, working memory, and the ability to inhibit automatic responses in a cohort of 170 children. Participants performed the Shape School task at both 48 and 54 months of age; the mean blood lead level was 6.