Publications by authors named "Jose Alcala"

Article Synopsis
  • Anxiety is a prevalent condition that can severely affect quality of life; subsyndromal anxiety (SSA) involves symptoms that don’t fully meet anxiety disorder criteria but can lead to more serious issues.
  • A narrative review suggests practical strategies for identifying and treating SSA, highlighting lifestyle changes (like exercise), psychotherapy, and some medications, such as lavender oil extract Silexan.
  • Regular follow-up and use of the GAD-7 tool are recommended to track treatment effectiveness, with an integrative approach showing the most promise in preventing severe anxiety disorders.
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Generalization enables individuals to respond to novel stimuli based on previous experiences. The degree to which organisms respond is determined by their physical resemblance to the original conditioned stimulus (CS+), with a stronger response elicited by more similar stimuli, resulting in similarity-based generalization gradients. Recent research showed that cognitive or conceptual dimensions also result in gradients similar to those observed with manipulations of physical dimensions.

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Three experiments explored whether weakening temporal contiguity between auditory cues and an aversive outcome attenuated cue competition in an avoidance learning task with human participants. Overall, with strong temporal contiguity between auditory cues and the outcome during training (the offset of the predictive auditory signals concurred with the onset of the outcome), the target cue trained as part of a compound yielded less avoidance behaviour than the control cue trained alone, an instance of overshadowing. However, weakening temporal contiguity during training (inserting a 5-s trace) attenuated overshadowing, resulting in similar avoidance behaviour in response to the control and target cues.

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In situations in which multiple predictors anticipate the presence or absence of an outcome, cues compete to anticipate the outcome, resulting in a loss of associative strength compared to control conditions without additional cues. Critically, there are multiple factors modulating the magnitude and direction of such competition, although in some scenarios the effect of these factors remains unexplored. We sought to assess whether the relative salience of the elements in a compound of cues modulates the magnitude of the overshadowing effect in human predictive learning.

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The objective of the present study was to develop a model of avoidance learning and its extinction in planarians (Schmidtea mediterranea). Based on previous experiments showing conditioned place preference, we developed a procedure to investigate conditioned place avoidance (CPA) using shock as an unconditioned stimulus (US) and an automated tracking system to record the animals' behaviour. In Experiment 1, we assessed the unconditioned properties of different shock intensities by measuring post shock activity.

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When multiple cues are associated with the same outcome, organisms tend to select between the cues, with one revealing greater behavioral control at the expense of the others (i.e., cue competition).

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Categorical processes allow us to make sense of the environment effortlessly by grouping stimuli sharing relevant features. Although these processes occur in both social and non-social contexts, motivational, affective, and epistemic factors specific to the social world may motivate individuation over categorisation of social compared with non-social stimuli. In one experiment, we tested this hypothesis by analysing the reliance on categorical versus individuating information when making investment decisions about social and non-social targets.

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In a large variety of contexts, it is essential to use the available information to extract patterns and behave accordingly. When it comes to social interactions for instance, the information gathered about interaction partners across multiple encounters (e.g.

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Three experiments (n = 81, n = 81, n = 82, respectively) explored how temporal contiguity influences Action-Outcome learning, assessing whether an intervening signal competed, facilitated, or had no effect on performance and causal attribution in undergraduate participants. Across experiments, we observed competition and facilitation as a function of the temporal contiguity between Action and Outcome. When there was a strong temporal relationship between Action and Outcome, the signal competed with the action, hindering instrumental performance but not causal attribution (Experiments 1 and 3).

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One of the big challenges in treating individuals with bipolar disorder (BD) is nonadherence to medication. This is the principal factor associated with a worse prognosis or outcome of the disease. This study aimed to explore and analyze the individual perceptions that people with BD have about the positive and negative aspects when taking medication.

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Over the last 50 years, cue competition phenomena have shaped theoretical developments in animal and human learning. However, recent failures to observe competition effects in standard conditioning procedures, as well as the lengthy and ongoing debate surrounding cue competition in the spatial learning literature, have cast doubts on the generality of these phenomena. In the present study, we manipulated temporal contiguity between simultaneously trained predictors and outcomes (Experiments 1-4), and spatial contiguity between landmarks and goals in spatial learning (Supplemental Experiments 1 and 2; Experiment 5).

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Objectives: Since the results of the RECOVERY trial, WHO recommendations about the use of corticosteroids (CTs) in COVID-19 have changed. The aim of the study is to analyse the evolutive use of CTs in Spain during the pandemic to assess the potential influence of new recommendations.

Material And Methods: A retrospective, descriptive, and observational study was conducted on adults hospitalised due to COVID-19 in Spain who were included in the SEMI-COVID-19 Registry from March to November 2020.

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Two experiments were conducted to test the effect of experiencing associative interference on later learning. A predictive learning task was used in which human participants had to evaluate whether plants would grow or not (Outcome) after being watered with different fertilizers (Cues). Experiment 1 found that the increase in the prediction error produced by following a pre-exposed nontarget cue by the outcome, facilitated subsequent acquisition of the relationship between the pre-exposed target cue and the outcome.

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(1) Aims: To assess the incidence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in Spain, to describe the main epidemiological and clinical characteristics at diagnosis and the evolution of the disease, and to explore the use of drug treatments. (2) Methods: Prospective, population-based nationwide registry. Adult patients diagnosed with IBD-Crohn's disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC) or IBD unclassified (IBD-U)-during 2017 in Spain were included and were followed-up for 1 year.

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Our main aim was to describe the effect on the severity of ACEI (angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor) and ARB (angiotensin II receptor blocker) during COVID-19 hospitalization. A retrospective, observational, multicenter study evaluating hospitalized patients with COVID-19 treated with ACEI/ARB. The primary endpoint was the incidence of the composite outcome of prognosis (IMV (invasive mechanical ventilation), NIMV (non-invasive mechanical ventilation), ICU admission (intensive care unit), and/or all-cause mortality).

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Behavior change interventions that incentivize desired behavior are highly effective for improving personal health, but difficult to maintain long term. Relapse is common and examining the mechanisms that contribute to relapse in experimental settings can identify processes relevant to substance abuse treatment. We developed a laboratory task that parallels a recent operant model of relapse after incentivized choice reported in the rodent laboratory.

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Background: Management of schizophrenia is sub-optimal in many patients. Targeting negative symptoms, among the most debilitating aspects of schizophrenia, together with positive symptoms, can result in significant functional benefits and dramatically improve quality of life for patients and their carers. Cariprazine, a partial agonist of the dopamine receptors D2/D3 has demonstrated effectiveness across symptom domains in clinical trials, particularly on negative symptoms.

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When trained in a rectangular arena, some research has suggested that rats are guided by local features rather than overall boundary geometry. We explored this hypothesis using the terrestrial toad, Rhinella arenarum, as a comparative contrast. In two experiments, toads were trained to find a water-reward goal location in either a featureless rectangular arena (Experiment 1) or in a rectangular arena with a removable colored feature panel covering one short wall (Experiment 2).

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One experiment evaluated the effect of extinction on the context dependence of non-extinguished information in a situation in which physical (images), rather than predominantly verbal, contexts were used in human predictive learning. Participants received training in which different foods (Cues) were associated with the presence or the absence of gastric illness (outcome) in customers of different restaurants (contexts). One cue was associated with the gastric illness while a different cue was either extinguished or not between groups.

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Two experiments determined the effect of interference training on subsequent spatial learning in a Morris water maze. Rats first learned that a platform was located in a quadrant marked by landmarks A and B. Different groups of rats either continued or reversed that training.

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Three experiments with rats assessed the effects of introducing predictive ambiguity by reversing a Pavlovianly trained discrimination on subsequent context and temporal conditioning. The experience of discrimination reversal did not facilitate context conditioning when the food was presented on a variable time schedule (Experiment 1a). However, in Experiment 1b, discrimination reversal enhanced subsequent learning of a fixed temporal interval associated with unsignaled food presentation in comparison with consistent training.

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Three experiments tested the effect of experiencing extinction on learning about a differential conditioned inhibitor that was trained as an excitor. A human predictive learning task was used in which participants had to evaluate the probability of different colored fertilizers (Cues) leading plants to flourish or not (Outcome). Experiment 1 found that presenting the target cue without outcome while other cues were followed by the outcome made the target cue a conditioned inhibitor, passing both, retardation (Experiment 1a) and summation (Experiment 1b) tests of conditioned inhibition.

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This paper proposes an algorithm for calibrating the position of beacons which are placed on the ceiling of an indoor environment. In this context, the term calibration is used to estimate the position coordinates of a beacon related to a known reference system in a map. The positions of a set of beacons are used for indoor positioning purposes.

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Background: There is an increased risk of premature death in people with severe mental illness (SMI). Respiratory disorders and cardiovascular disease are leading causes of increased mortality rates in these patients, and tobacco consumption remains the most preventable risk factor involved. Developing new tools to motivate patients towards cessation of smoking is a high priority.

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