Patient safety indicators for virtual consultations in primary care: A systematic review protocol.

Background: Virtual consultations are being increasingly incorporated into routine primary care, as they offer better time and geographical flexibility for patients while also being cost-effective for both patients and service providers. At the same time, concerns have been raised about the extent to which virtual care is safe for patients. As of now, there is no validated methodology for evaluating the safety nuances and implications of virtual care.

App-Based Mindfulness for Attenuation of Subjective and Physiological Stress Reactivity in a Population With Elevated Stress: Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Stress-related mental health disorders have steadily increased and contributed to a worldwide disease burden with up to 50% experiencing a stress-related mental health disorder worldwide. Data suggest that only approximately 20%-65% of individuals receive treatment. This gap in receiving treatment may be attributed to barriers such as limited treatment access, negative stigma surrounding mental health treatment, approachability (ie, not having a usual treatment plan or provider), affordability (ie, lack of insurance coverage and high treatment cost), and availability (ie, long waits for appointments) leaving those who need treatment without necessary care.

Brain Endurance Training improves endurance and cognitive performance in road cyclists.

Objectives: To evaluate the effects of brain endurance training (BET) on endurance and cognitive performance in road cyclists.

Design: Two independent randomized controlled pretest-posttest training studies.

Methods: In both studies cyclists trained five times/week for six weeks and completed either cognitive response inhibition tasks (Post-BET group) or listened to neutral sounds (control group) after each training session.

Brain Endurance Training Improves Physical, Cognitive, and Multitasking Performance in Professional Football Players.

Purpose: Brain endurance training (BET)-the combination of physical training with mentally fatiguing tasks-could help athletes adapt and increase their performance during sporting competitions. Here we tested whether BET completed after standard physical training improved physical and mental performance more than physical training alone during a preseason football training camp.

Methods: The study employed a pretest/training/posttest design, with 22 professional football players randomly assigned to BET or a control group.

Trait mindful awareness predicts inter-brain coupling but not individual brain responses during naturalistic face-to-face interactions.

In recent years, the possible benefits of mindfulness meditation have sparked much public and academic interest. Mindfulness emphasizes cultivating awareness of our immediate experience and has been associated with compassion, empathy, and various other prosocial traits. However, neurobiological evidence pertaining to the prosocial benefits of mindfulness in social settings is sparse.

Mindfulness and music interventions in the workplace: assessment of sustained attention and working memory using a crowdsourcing approach.

Background: Occupational stress has huge financial as well as human costs. Application of crowdsourcing might be a way to strengthen the investigation of occupational mental health. Therefore, the aim of the study was to assess Danish employees' stress and cognition by relying on a crowdsourcing approach, as well as investigating the effect of a 30-day mindfulness and music intervention.

SERIES: eHealth in primary care. Part 5: A critical appraisal of five widely used eHealth applications for primary care - opportunities and challenges.

Background: Given the pressure on modern healthcare systems, eHealth can offer valuable opportunities. However, understanding the potential and challenges of eHealth in daily practice can be challenging for many general practitioners (GPs) and their staff.

Objectives: To critically appraise five widely used eHealth applications, in relation to safe, evidence-based and high-quality eHealth.

Heart rate variability is enhanced during mindfulness practice: A randomized controlled trial involving a 10-day online-based mindfulness intervention.

Objectives: The goal of the present study was to probe the effects of mindfulness practice in a naturalistic setting as opposed to a lab-based environment in the presence of continuous heart rate variability (HRV) measurements. The specific experimental goals were to examine the effects of a brief 10-day online-based mindfulness intervention on both chronic and acute HRV responses.

Method: We conducted a fully randomized 10-day longitudinal trial of mindfulness practice, explicitly controlling for practice effects with an active-control group (music listening) and a non-intervention control group.

Cognitive framing modulates emotional processing through dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex networks: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

Introduction: In this study, we show new evidence for the role of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC-DLPFC) networks in the cognitive framing of emotional processing.

Method: We displayed neutral and aversive images described as having been sourced from artistic material to one cohort of subjects (i.e.

The effect of mindfulness training on extinction retention.

Anxiety and trauma related disorders are highly prevalent, causing suffering and high costs for society. Current treatment strategies, although effective, only show moderate effect-sizes when compared to adequate control groups demonstrating a need to develop new forms of treatment or optimize existing ones. In order to achieve this, an increased understanding of what mechanisms are involved is needed.

Methodology for tDCS integration with fMRI.

Understanding and reducing variability of response to transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) requires measuring what factors predetermine sensitivity to tDCS and tracking individual response to tDCS. Human trials, animal models, and computational models suggest structural traits and functional states of neural systems are the major sources of this variance. There are 118 published tDCS studies (up to October 1, 2018) that used fMRI as a proxy measure of neural activation to answer mechanistic, predictive, and localization questions about how brain activity is modulated by tDCS.

Use of quality circles for primary care providers in 24 European countries: an online survey of European Society for Quality and Safety in family practice delegates.

To identify and describe the core characteristics and the spread of quality circles in primary healthcare in European countries. An online survey was conducted among European Society for Quality and Safety in Family Practice (EQuiP) delegates. To allow comparison with earlier results, a similar survey as in a study from 2000 was used.

Short-term mindfulness practice attenuates reward prediction errors signals in the brain.

Activity changes in dopaminergic neurons encode the ongoing discrepancy between expected and actual value of a stimulus, providing a teaching signal for a reward prediction process. Previous work comparing a cohort of long-term Zen meditators to controls demonstrated an attenuation of reward prediction signals to appetitive reward in the striatum. Using a cross-commodity design encompassing primary- and secondary-reward conditioning experiments, the present study asks the question of whether reward prediction signals are causally altered by mindfulness training in naïve subjects.

Applicability of Motivational Interviewing for Chronic Disease Management in Primary Care Following a Web-Based E-Learning Course: Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: Motivational interviewing (MI) is an established communication method for enhancing intrinsic motivation for changing health behavior. E-learning can reduce the cost and time involved in providing continuing education and can be easily integrated into individual working arrangements and the daily routines of medical professionals. Thus, a Web-based course was devised to familiarize health professionals with different levels of education and expertise with MI techniques for patients with chronic conditions.

Belief about Nicotine Modulates Subjective Craving and Insula Activity in Deprived Smokers.

Little is known about the specific neural mechanisms through which cognitive factors influence craving and associated brain responses, despite the initial success of cognitive therapies in treating drug addiction. In this study, we investigated how cognitive factors such as beliefs influence subjective craving and neural activities in nicotine-addicted individuals using model-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and neuropharmacology. Deprived smokers (N = 24) participated in a two-by-two balanced placebo design, which crossed beliefs about nicotine (told "nicotine" vs.

Mindfulness training increases cooperative decision making in economic exchanges: Evidence from fMRI.

Emotions have been shown to exert influences on decision making during economic exchanges. Here we investigate the underlying neural mechanisms of a training regimen which is hypothesized to promote emotional awareness, specifically mindfulness training (MT). We test the hypothesis that MT increases cooperative economic decision making using fMRI in a randomized longitudinal design involving 8weeks of either MT or active control training (CT).

Mindfulness meditation modulates reward prediction errors in a passive conditioning task.

Reinforcement learning models have demonstrated that phasic activity of dopamine neurons during reward expectation encodes information about the predictability of reward and cues that predict reward. Self-control strategies such as those practiced in mindfulness-based approaches is claimed to reduce negative and positive reactions to stimuli suggesting the hypothesis that such training may influence basic reward processing. Using a passive conditioning task and fMRI in a group of experienced mindfulness meditators and age-matched controls, we tested the hypothesis that mindfulness meditation influence reward and reward prediction error (PE) signals.

Belief about nicotine selectively modulates value and reward prediction error signals in smokers.

Little is known about how prior beliefs impact biophysically described processes in the presence of neuroactive drugs, which presents a profound challenge to the understanding of the mechanisms and treatments of addiction. We engineered smokers' prior beliefs about the presence of nicotine in a cigarette smoked before a functional magnetic resonance imaging session where subjects carried out a sequential choice task. Using a model-based approach, we show that smokers' beliefs about nicotine specifically modulated learning signals (value and reward prediction error) defined by a computational model of mesolimbic dopamine systems.

Adaptive neural reward processing during anticipation and receipt of monetary rewards in mindfulness meditators.

Reward seeking is ubiquitous and adaptive in humans. But excessive reward seeking behavior, such as chasing monetary rewards, may lead to diminished subjective well-being. This study examined whether individuals trained in mindfulness meditation show neural evidence of lower susceptibility to monetary rewards.