When the brain does not adequately feel the body: Links between low resilience and interoception.

This study examined neural processes of resilience during aversive interoceptive processing. Forty-six individuals were divided into three groups of resilience Low (LowRes), high (HighRes), and normal (NormRes), based on the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (2003). Participants then completed a task involving anticipation and experience of loaded breathing during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recording.

Assessment of Sleep Disruption and Sleep Quality in Naval Special Warfare Operators.

Little is known about sleep in elite military populations who are exposed to higher operational demands, unpredictable training, deployment, and mission cycles. Twenty-nine Naval Special Warfare (NSW) Operators wore an actiwatch for an 8-day/7-night period for objective sleep assessment and completed a nightly sleep log. A total of 170 nights of actigraphically recorded sleep were collected.

Modifying resilience mechanisms in at-risk individuals: a controlled study of mindfulness training in Marines preparing for deployment.

Objective: Military deployment can have profound effects on physical and mental health. Few studies have examined whether interventions prior to deployment can improve mechanisms underlying resilience. Mindfulness-based techniques have been shown to aid recovery from stress and may affect brain-behavior relationships prior to deployment.

Detecting emotion in others: increased insula and decreased medial prefrontal cortex activation during emotion processing in elite adventure racers.

Understanding the neural processes that characterize elite performers is a first step to develop a neuroscience model that can be used to improve performance in stressful circumstances. Adventure racers are elite athletes that operate in small teams in the context of environmental and physical extremes. In particular, awareness of team member's emotional status is critical to the team's ability to navigate high-magnitude stressors.

Altered insula activation in anticipation of changing emotional states: neural mechanisms underlying cognitive flexibility in Special Operations Forces personnel.

Individuals who perform optimally in extreme conditions, such as elite military warriors, can provide valuable insight into the neurobehavioral mechanisms underlying extraordinary performance. In the current study, we examined the degree to which Navy SEALs, when compared with healthy volunteers, could show more right anterior insula activation when shifting from anticipating one emotion to another during functional MRI. Consistent with our hypothesis, SEALs showed attenuated insula activation to negative image relative to positive image anticipation and greater right anterior insula activation during affective set-shifting.