Fears Worth Testing Out: A Systematic Review of the Neural Mechanisms of Treatment Outcome for Anxiety-Related Disorders.

With the advent of human neuroimaging, researchers were drawn to the idea that by better understanding the human brain, more effective mental health interventions could be developed. It has been more than 20 years since the first functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies were conducted to examine changes in brain activation with anxiety-related treatments and more than 60 studies have since been published in this vein. For the current review, we conduct a systematic review of this literature, focusing on adult studies using task-based fMRI to measure brain activation changes with pharmacologic or psychotherapy interventions for phobia, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Extinction and beyond: an expanded framework for exposure and response prevention for obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Exposure therapy is a first-line, empirically validated treatment for anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and trauma-related disorders. Extinction learning is the predominant theoretical framework for exposure therapy, whereby repeated disconfirmation of a feared outcome yields fear reduction over time. Although this framework has strong empirical support and substantial translational utility, extinction learning is unlikely to be the sole process underlying the therapeutic effects of exposure therapy.

Elevated decision uncertainty and reduced avoidance drives in depression, anxiety and substance use disorders during approach-avoidance conflict: a replication study.

Background: Decision-making under approach-avoidance conflict (AAC; e.g., sacrificing quality of life to avoid feared outcomes) may be affected in multiple psychiatric disorders.

Striatal reactivity during emotion and reward relates to approach-avoidance conflict behaviour and is altered in adults with anxiety or depression.

Background: We have previously reported activation in reward, salience and executive control regions during functional MRI (fMRI) using an approach-avoidance conflict (AAC) decision-making task with healthy adults. Further investigations into how anxiety and depressive disorders relate to differences in neural responses during AAC can inform their understanding and treatment. We tested the hypothesis that people with anxiety or depression have altered neural activation during AAC.

Comparison of brain nicotine uptake from electronic cigarettes and combustible cigarettes.

Brain accumulation rate and magnitude are critical for the acute reinforcing effects of nicotine. Despite electronic cigarettes' (E-cigs) appeal as substitutes for traditional combustible cigarettes (C-cigs), brain nicotine accumulation (BNA) from E-cigs has not been compared with that from C-cigs using a within-subjects design. BNA was directly assessed with 16 adult dual users (10 females) of E-cigs (e-liquid pH 9.

Methylated DNA markers for plasma detection of ovarian cancer: Discovery, validation, and clinical feasibility.

Objective: Aberrant DNA methylation is an early event in carcinogenesis which could be leveraged to detect ovarian cancer (OC) in plasma.

Methods: DNA from frozen OC tissues, benign fallopian tube epithelium (FTE), and buffy coats from cancer-free women underwent reduced representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) to identify OC MDMs. Candidate MDM selection was based on receiver operating characteristic (ROC) discrimination, methylation fold change, and low background methylation among controls.

Prospective clinical trial of disulfiram plus copper in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Background: In preclinical models of prostate cancer (PC), disulfiram (DSF) reduced tumor growth only when co-administered with copper (Cu), and Cu uptake in tumors is partially regulated by androgen-receptor signaling. However, prior trials of DSF in PC used DSF as monotherapy.

Objective: To assess the safety and efficacy of concurrent administration of DSF with Cu, we conducted a phase 1b clinical trial of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) receiving Cu with DSF.

The Placement of Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms Within a Five-Factor Model of Maladaptive Personality.

Dimensional models of obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms, as seen in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), are instrumental in explaining the heterogeneity observed in this condition and for informing cutting-edge assessments. Prior structural work in this area finds that OC symptoms cross-load under both Negative Affectivity and Psychoticism traits within the (5th ed.; ) Alternative Model of Personality Disorder (AMPD).

Generalization of conditioned disgust and the attendant maladaptive avoidance: Validation of a novel paradigm and effects of trait disgust-proneness.

Overgeneralization of conditioned fear to safe stimuli that resemble a previously-learned threat-cue is a well-studied correlate of clinical anxiety, yet whether conditioned disgust generalizes remains unknown, as does the extent to which such generalization is associated with disgust-related traits and maladaptive outcomes. The present study addresses this gap by adapting a validated fear-generalization paradigm to assess conditioned disgust and behavioral avoidance to a disgust-cue (CS+) paired with a disgusting video clip, and safe generalization stimuli parametrically varying in perceptual similarity to CS+. For comparison, levels of fear generalization were also assessed using the original fear-generalization paradigm.

The neurobiology of human fear generalization: meta-analysis and working neural model.

Fear generalization to stimuli resembling a conditioned danger-cue (CS+) is a fundamental dynamic of classical fear-conditioning. Despite the ubiquity of fear generalization in human experience and its known pathogenic contribution to clinical anxiety, neural investigations of human generalization have only recently begun. The present work provides the first meta-analysis of this growing literature to delineate brain substrates of conditioned fear-generalization and formulate a working neural model.

The Role of Disgust in Eating Disorders.

Purpose Of Review: In current review, we evaluate the current literature examining the role of disgust in eating disorders (EDs), and provide a theoretical model designed to inform the study and treatment of disgust-based symptoms in EDs.

Recent Findings: Findings from this review suggest that aberrant disgust-conditioning processes represent promising but understudied mechanisms that may contribute to the risk and maintenance of core eating disorder (ED) psychopathology. In addition, preliminary evidence supports the use of interventions designed to target aversive disgust cues and disrupt maladaptive disgust-based conditioning that may maintain eating pathology.

Salience and central executive networks track overgeneralization of conditioned-fear in post-traumatic stress disorder.

Background: Generalization of conditioned-fear, a core feature of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), has been the focus of several recent neuroimaging studies. A striking outcome of these studies is the frequency with which neural correlates of generalization fall within hubs of well-established functional networks including salience (SN), central executive (CEN), and default networks (DN). Neural substrates of generalization found to date may thus reflect traces of large-scale brain networks that form more expansive neural representations of generalization.

Anger Rumination is not Uniquely Characteristic of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Although anger has been observed in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), it remains unclear if rumination about anger is characteristic and/or unique to OCD. The present study examines whether types of anger rumination are endorsed more strongly by OCD patients compared to clinical and nonclinical controls. Patients with OCD ( = 30), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; = 29), and non-clinical controls (NCC; = 30) completed measures of OCD symptoms, anger rumination, and trait anxiety.

The effects of cognitive reappraisal on conditioned disgust in contamination-based OCD: An analogue study.

Experimental research has shown that conditioned disgust is resistant to extinction, which may account for the slower habituation to disgust relative to fear in contamination-based obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, few studies have examined the efficacy of interventions that may attenuate conditioned disgust responses. Studies of cognitive reappraisal have demonstrated that reinterpreting a stimulus can alter emotional responding.

Recognition of emotional facial expressions in anxious and nonanxious depression.

Background: Anxiety and depression have each been independently associated with impairments in emotional face recognition. However, little is known about the nature of these impairments when anxiety and depression co-occur.

Methods: This post-hoc analysis evaluated the relationship between anxiety status and performance on the Emotional Expression Multimorph Task within a clinical sample of individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD).

Emotion regulation of fear and disgust: differential effects of reappraisal and suppression.

Although excessive fear has been central to traditional conceptualisations of the anxiety disorders, recent research suggests that disgust may also play a role in the development of some anxiety disorders. While dysregulation of emotion may confer risk for the development of anxiety disorders, it remains unclear if there are differences in the extent to which fear and disgust can be effectively regulated. To fill this important gap in the literature, unselected participants (N = 95) experienced fear or disgust via video exposure, and they were instructed to employ either reappraisal or suppression to regulate their emotional experience while viewing the videos.

A case study of form-based solutions for watershed protection.

Despite an array of policies at the federal and state level aimed at regulating stormwater discharges, engineered solutions enforced by local governments often fall short of meeting water quality standards. Although the implications of land use planning and development regulations are important for stormwater management, they are often overlooked as critical initial steps to improving water quality. This study explores the role of 'form-based' regulations as tools for achieving urban planning and water quality objectives.