Differences in ongoing thought between autistic and non-autistic adults.

Autistic people may be distinguishable from non-autistic individuals in the content and modality of their thoughts. Such differences potentially underlie both psychological vulnerability and strengths, motivating the need to better understand autistic thought patterns. In non-clinical undergraduates, a recent study found that autistic traits were associated with thinking more in words than images.

Interoceptive Mechanisms and Emotional Processing.

Interoception, the sensing of internal bodily signals, is intricately linked with the experience of emotions. Various theoretical models of emotion incorporate aspects of interoception as a fundamental component alongside higher-order processes such as the appraisal of internal signals guided by external context. Interoception can be delineated into different dimensions, which include the nature of afferent signals, the accuracy with which they can be sensed, their neural processing, and the higher-order interpretation of these signals.

"I'm Trying to Reach Out, I'm Trying to Find My People": A Mixed-Methods Investigation of the Link Between Sensory Differences, Loneliness, and Mental Health in Autistic and Nonautistic Adults.

Background: Rates of loneliness are substantially higher among autistic compared with nonautistic individuals. This observation refutes the persistent stereotype that autistic individuals are not motivated to seek meaningful social relationships. More plausibly, social environments systematically exclude people with higher levels of sensory differences, impeding on opportunities for autistic individuals to form meaningful relationships.

Understanding the mechanisms of fatigue in multiple sclerosis: linking interoception, metacognition and white matter dysconnectivity.

One of the most prominent symptoms in multiple sclerosis is pathological fatigue, often described by sufferers as one of the most debilitating symptoms, affecting quality of life and employment. However, the mechanisms of both, physical and cognitive fatigue in multiple sclerosis remain elusive. Here, we use behavioural tasks and quantitative MRI to investigate the neural correlates of interoception (the ability to sense internal bodily signals) and metacognition (the ability of the brain to assess its own performance), in modulating cognitive fatigue.

Venous Thromboembolism Rates in Trauma Patients Significantly Increase With Missed Prophylactic Enoxaparin Doses.

Current literature demonstrates prophylactic enoxaparin to be efficacious in reducing venous thromboembolism (VTE) rates without significantly increasing risk for bleeding complications. Despite this evidence, prophylactic enoxaparin doses are frequently withheld for surgery or procedures. This exploratory study aims to quantify the risk of a VTE event in trauma patients associated with missed doses of prophylactic enoxaparin.

A model linking emotional dysregulation in neurodivergent people to the proprioceptive impact of joint hypermobility.

Emotional feelings are putatively ascribed to central representation of bodily states in the context of expectation and uncertainty in both internal state and external world. Neurodivergent people are more likely to experience co-occurring mental health challenges, although mechanistic insights underpinning this association are scarce. We therefore undertook a study to test whether imprecise processing of proprioceptive error signals may underlie the connection between neurodivergence and emotional dysregulation.

General and anxiety-linked influences of acute serotonin reuptake inhibition on neural responses associated with attended visceral sensation.

Ordinary sensations from inside the body are important causes and consequences of our affective states and behaviour, yet the roles of neurotransmitters in interoceptive processing have been unclear. With a within-subjects design, this experiment tested the impacts of acute increases of endogenous extracellular serotonin on the neural processing of attended internal sensations and the links of these effects to anxiety using a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) (20 mg CITALOPRAM) and a PLACEBO. Twenty-one healthy volunteers (fourteen female, mean age 23.

Dissociative Symptoms and Interoceptive Integration.

Dissociative symptoms and disorders of dissociation are characterised by disturbances in the experience of the self and the surrounding world, manifesting as a breakdown in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, and perception. This paper aims to provide insights into dissociative symptoms from the perspective of interoception, the sense of the body's internal physiological state, adopting a transdiagnostic framework.Dissociative symptoms are associated with a blunting of autonomic reactivity and a reduction in interoceptive precision.

Effects of stress on pain in females using a mobile health app in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The chronic and acute effects of stress can have divergent effects on health; long-term effects are associated with detrimental physical and mental health sequelae, while acute effects may be advantageous in the short-term. Stress-induced analgesia, the attenuation of pain perception due to stress, is a well-known phenomenon that has yet to be systematically investigated under ecological conditions. Using Flo, a women's health and wellbeing app and menstrual cycle tracker, with a world-wide monthly active usership of more than 57 million, women in Ukraine were monitored for their reporting of stress, pain and affective symptoms before, and immediately after, the onset of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

Evidence that pupil dilation and cardiac afferent signalling differentially impact the processing of emotional intensity and racial bias.

Interoceptive cardiac arousal signals (e.g., from baroreceptor firing at ventricular systole compared to diastole) have been found to enhance perception of fearful versus neutral faces.

Impaired cardiac modulation in patients with functional seizures: Results from a face intensity judgment task.

Objective: Although interoceptive abnormality in patients with functional seizure (FSs) has been demonstrated using explicit tasks, implicit measurements of interoception such as the effect of interoception on perceptual brain processes have not been investigated. It has been shown that perception is normally modulated by interoceptive signals related to the different phases (systole vs diastole) of the cardiac cycle (cardiac modulation effect). Given our previous findings using explicit measures of interoception, we hypothesized that cardiac modulation would be impaired in FSs.

"Mom said it in quotation marks!" Irony comprehension and metapragmatic awareness in 8-year-olds.

This study investigated links between the development of children's understanding of ironic comments and their metapragmatic knowledge. Forty-six 8-year-olds completed the short version of the Irony Comprehension Task, during which they were presented with ironic comments in three stories and asked to provide reasons for why the speaker in a story uttered an ironic comment. We coded their responses and compared the results to similar data collected previously with 5-year-olds.

Psychological stress, the central nervous system and arrhythmias.

This review highlights the links between psychological stress and the neurocircuitry of cardiac-brain interactions leading to arrhythmias. The role of efferent and afferent connections in the heart-brain axis is considered, with the mechanisms by which emotional responses promote arrhythmias illustrated by inherited cardiac conditions. Novel therapeutic targets for intervention in the autonomic nervous system are considered.

Enhancing Partnerships of Institutions and Journals to Address Concerns About Research Misconduct: Recommendations From a Working Group of Institutional Research Integrity Officers and Journal Editors and Publishers.

Importance: Institutions and journals strive to promote and protect the integrity of the research record, and both groups are equally committed to ensuring the reliability of all published data.

Observations: Three US universities coordinated a series of virtual meetings from June 2021 to March 2022 for a working group composed of senior, experienced US research integrity officers (RIOs), journal editors, and publishing staff who are familiar with managing issues of research integrity and publication ethics. The goal of the working group was to improve the collaboration and transparency between institutions and journals to ensure that research misconduct and publication ethics are managed properly and efficiently.

Changes in the heartbeat-evoked potential are associated with functional seizures.

Background: Patients with functional seizures (FS) can experience dissociation (depersonalisation) before their seizures. Depersonalisation reflects disembodiment, which may be related to changes in interoceptive processing. The heartbeat-evoked potential (HEP) is an electroencephalogram (EEG) marker of interoceptive processing.

Cardiac interoception in patients accessing secondary mental health services: A transdiagnostic study.

Background: Abnormalities in the regulation of physiological arousal and interoceptive processing are implicated in the expression and maintenance of specific psychiatric conditions and symptoms. We undertook a cross-sectional characterisation of patients accessing secondary mental health services, recording measures relating to cardiac physiology and interoception, to understand how physiological state and interoceptive ability relate transdiagnostically to affective symptoms.

Methods: Participants were patients (n = 258) and a non-clinical comparison group (n = 67).

Paediatric eating disorders: Exploring virtual family therapy during a global pandemic.

Aim: Explore treatment response and effectiveness of virtual treatment for a paediatric eating disorder sample.

Methods: Twenty patients and their families who received either virtual or in-person family therapy were included in the study. Family therapy was informed by family-based treatment (FBT) principles.

Experiences of caregivers and individuals living with traumatic brain injury in accessing health information: a qualitative investigation.

Background/purpose: Rehabilitation and treatment of chronic symptoms of traumatic brain injury (TBI) present life-long challenges. This qualitative study aimed to understand the experience of individuals with TBI and caregivers in finding and using health information and to understand their interest in participating in research.

Methods: Participants were recruited through hospital listservs, websites, social media, and word of mouth from across the US.

The relationship between interoception and agency and its modulation by heartbeats: an exploratory study.

Interoception, the sense of the internal physiological state of the body, theoretically underpins aspects of self-representation. Experimental studies link feelings of body ownership to interoceptive perception, yet few studies have tested for association between the sense of agency and interoceptive processing. Here, we combined an intentional binding paradigm with cardiac measures of interoceptive processing (behavioural performance on a heartbeat discrimination task, and effects of timing within the cardiac cycle) in twenty-six non-clinical participants as an exploratory study.

Hypermobility in patients with functional seizures: Toward a pathobiological understanding of complex conditions.

Background: Functional seizures (FS), otherwise known as psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES), are a common symptom presenting to neurology and epilepsy clinics. There is a pressing need for further research to understand the neurobiology of FS to develop mechanistically targeted treatments. Joint hypermobility is an expression of variation in connective tissue structure along a spectrum, and it has received increasing attention in functional neurological disorders, but there is lack of evidence of its relevance in FS.

Incorporating the Concept of Relevance in Clinical Rehabilitation Research and Its Reviews May Improve Uptake by Stakeholders.

The "relevance" of research to stakeholders is an important factor in influencing the uptake of new knowledge into practice; however, this concept is neither well defined nor routinely incorporated in clinical rehabilitation research. Developing a uniform definition, measurement standards, stakeholder engagement strategies, and guiding frameworks that bolster relevance may help incorporate the concept as a key element in research planning and design. This article presents a conceptual argument for why relevance matters, proposes a working definition, and suggests strategies for operationalizing the construct in the context of clinical rehabilitation research.

Access, Utilization, and Implementation of Research Among Rehabilitation Nurses: A Qualitative Study.

Purpose: This study aimed to understand rehabilitation nurses' perceptions of research information, related barriers, and avenues for future research, specifically in those caring for individuals with burn injury, spinal cord injury, or traumatic brain injury.

Design: Qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted.

Methods: Eighteen interviews were conducted.