Retirement Confidence: Development of an Index.

Older workers who are confident about the changes accompanying retirement report higher well-being. We have developed an index to measure retirement confidence - the Retirement Confidence Index (RCI). A six-stage approach was used to develop the index items, including (i) a literature review to catalogue retirement confidence components; (ii) a consultation with a panel of experts to review the proposed indicators and combine components according to their meaning; (iii) normalisation of the selected components to make them comparable; (iv) weighting of the top-level dimensions using experts' judgement; (v) linear aggregation of the dimension scores according to their corresponding relative weight; and (vi) correlation of the composite score with a self-report measure of retirement confidence.

Neural-based valuation of functional foods among lean and obese individuals.

Functional foods may contribute to establish healthy eating habits and reduce obesity and related comorbidities. Differences in the brain mechanisms underpinning the valuation of functional foods in individuals with excess weight may inform the development of attractive functional foods. We aimed to compare brain function during the Willingness to Pay task for functional vs standard foods between individuals with healthy weight (HW), overweight (OW), and obesity (OB).

Comparison of a Bioelectrical Impedance Device against the Reference Method Dual Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry and Anthropometry for the Evaluation of Body Composition in Adults.

This study aimed to compare the use of the bioelectrical impedance device (BIA) seca mBCA 515 using dual X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) as a reference method, for body composition assessment in adults across the spectrum of body mass indices. It explores the utility of simple anthropometric measures (the waist height ratio (WHtR) and waist circumference (WC)) for the assessment of obesity. In the morning after an overnight fast (10 h), 30 participants underwent a body composition DXA (GE iDXA) scan, BIA (seca 515), and anthropometric measures.

Cognitive and neuromodulation strategies for unhealthy eating and obesity: Systematic review and discussion of neurocognitive mechanisms.

We systematically reviewed research on cognitive training and neuromodulation interventions for reducing food craving/intake, unhealthy diet and weight, and discussed their mechanisms of action. We reviewed 50 studies involving six cognitive trainings: Approach and Attentional Bias Modification, Implementation Intentions, Response Inhibition, Episodic Future Thinking and Working Memory; and four neuromodulation approaches: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) and Neurofeedback. Response Inhibition and Implementation Intentions have shown to reduce unhealthy diet and weight in people with overweight/obesity.

Reduced Willingness to Expend Effort for Reward in Obesity: Link to Adherence to a 3-Month Weight Loss Intervention.

Objective: This study aimed to (1) compare the willingness to expend effort for rewards between young adults with healthy weight, overweight, and obesity; and (2) to examine how individual differences in the willingness to expend effort for rewards predict adherence to weight loss treatment.

Methods: Seventy-three participants completed the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT). Of those 73 participants, 42 young adults with excess weight took part in a 3-month weight loss treatment after completing the EEfRT.

Self-changing behaviour in smoking cessation linked to trait and cognitive impulsivity.

Background And Aims: To compare impulsivity, measured using self-report and cognitive tasks in people who ceased smoking without treatment (self-changers) with each of the following groups: (i) smoking non-treatment-seekers, (ii) people in smoking cessation treatment and currently abstinent and (iii) people in smoking cessation treatment but non-abstinent.

Design: Cross-sectional, observational study.

Setting: The smoking cessation unit of a public general hospital, Hospital de Santa Maria, in Lleida, Spain.

Development of a version of the self-ordered pointing task: a working memory task for Brazilian preschoolers.

Objective: Working memory is a fundamental cognitive function and is predictive of outcomes and achievement in a wide range of domains from an early age. The focus of this study was to develop a computerized Brazilian version of the Self-Ordered Pointing Task (SOPT) for preschoolers and to provide initial normative and validation data for this task.

Methods: The sample of the present study was composed of 248 children aged 3 (n = 41), 4 (n = 88) and 5 (n = 119) years from 13 private and public schools in Belo Horizonte.

Changes in choice evoked brain activations after a weight loss intervention in adolescents.

This study was aimed to investigate if treatment-related success in weight loss (i.e., reductions of BMI and fat percentage) is linked to significant changes in choice evoked brain activity in adolescents with excess weight.

Emotion Regulation and Excess Weight: Impaired Affective Processing Characterized by Dysfunctional Insula Activation and Connectivity.

Emotion-regulation strategies are understood to influence food intake. This study examined the neurophysiological underpinnings of negative emotion processing and emotion regulation in individuals with excess weight compared to normal-weight controls. Fifteen participants with excess-weight (body mass index >25) and sixteen normal-weight controls (body mass index 18-25) performed an emotion-regulation task during functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Endocrine abnormalities in ring chromosome 11: a case report and review of the literature.

Unlabelled: Ring chromosomes (RCs) are uncommon cytogenetic findings, and RC11 has only been described in 19 cases in the literature. Endocrine abnormalities associated with RC11 were reported for two of these cases. The clinical features of RC11 can result from an alteration in the structure of the genetic material, ring instability, mosaicism, and various extents of genetic material loss.

Insula tuning towards external eating versus interoceptive input in adolescents with overweight and obesity.

This study was aimed to examine if adolescent obesity is associated with alterations of insula function as indexed by differential correlations between insula activation and perception of interoceptive feedback versus external food cues. We hypothesized that, in healthy weight adolescents, insula activation will positively correlate with interoceptive sensitivity, whereas in excess weight adolescents, insula activation will positively correlate with sensitivity towards external cues. Fifty-four adolescents (age range 12-18), classified in two groups as a function of BMI, excess weight (n = 22) and healthy weight (n = 32), performed the Risky-Gains task (sensitive to insula function) inside an fMRI scanner, and completed the heartbeat perception task (measuring interoceptive sensitivity) and the Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (measuring external eating as well as emotional eating and restraint) outside the scanner.

Staying and shifting patterns across IGT trials distinguish children with externalizing disorders from controls.

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is the most widely instrument used in the assessment of affective decision-making in several populations with frontal impairment. The standard performance measure on the IGT is obtained by calculating the difference between the advantageous and the disadvantageous choices. This standard score does not allows the assessment of the use of different strategies to deal with contingencies of gain and losses across the task.

Do general intellectual functioning and socioeconomic status account for performance on the Children's Gambling Task?

Studies that use the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and its age-appropriate versions as indices of affective decision-making during childhood and adolescence have demonstrated significant individual differences in scores. Our study investigated the association between general intellectual functioning and socioeconomic status (SES) and its effect on the development of affective decision-making in preschoolers by using a computerized version of the Children's Gambling Task (CGT). We administered the CGT and the Columbia Mental Maturity Scale (CMMS) to 137 Brazilian children between the ages of 3 and 5 years old to assess their general intellectual functioning.