Effects of high intensity interval training on serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor in individuals with PTSD.

Background: Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a protein important for synaptic plasticity and formation of memory. It is suggested to play an important role in the development of psychiatric disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Individuals with PTSD usually show decreased BDNF levels in serum.

Effects of high-intensity interval training on sleep disturbances associated with posttraumatic stress disorder.

Sleep disturbances are common in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder. Exercise interventions are a promising approach in the treatment of sleep disorders, but little is known about the efficacy of exercise interventions for sleep disturbances associated with posttraumatic stress disorder. A total of 40 individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder were randomized to six sessions of either high-intensity interval training or low-to-moderate-intensity training, administered within 12 days.

What to think or how to think - is symptom reduction in posttraumatic symptomatology associated with change in posttraumatic cognitions or perseverative thinking? A latent change score model approach.

Objective: Patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) report changes in they think of the world and themselves, referred to as posttraumatic cognitions, and changes in they think, reflected in increased perseverative thinking. We investigated whether pre-post therapy changes in the two aspects of thinking were associated with pre-post therapy changes in posttraumatic symptom severity.

Method: 219 d clinic patients with posttraumatic stress symptoms received trauma-focused psychotherapy with cognitive behavioral and metacognitive elements.

Daring to Feel: Emotion-Focused Psychotherapy Increases Amygdala Activation and Connectivity in Euthymic Bipolar Disorder-A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: In bipolar disorder (BD), the alternation of extreme mood states indicates deficits in emotion processing, accompanied by aberrant neural function of the emotion network. The present study investigated the effects of an emotion-centered psychotherapeutic intervention on amygdala responsivity and connectivity during emotional face processing in BD.

Methods: In a randomized controlled trial within the multicentric BipoLife project, euthymic patients with BD received one of two interventions over 6 months: an unstructured, emotion-focused intervention (FEST), where patients were guided to adequately perceive and label their emotions (n = 28), or a specific, structured, cognitive behavioral intervention (SEKT) (n = 31).

The Affect Intolerance Scale (AIS), German version: A validation study in a student and clinical sample of patients with trauma-related disorders.

Background And Objectives: The Affect Intolerance Scale (AIS) assesses two core concepts of emotion regulation: appraisals of negative emotions as threatening and proneness to emotional avoidance. Maladaptive emotion regulation is associated with various psychopathologies. We translated and validated the AIS in a German student and clinical sample of patients with trauma-related disorders.

Boosting the Theory of Mind Network: Specific Psychotherapy Increases Neural Correlates of Affective Theory of Mind in Euthymic Bipolar Disorder.

Background: In bipolar disorder, impaired affective theory of mind (aToM) performance and aberrant neural activation in the ToM brain network partly explain social functioning impairments. However, it is not yet known whether psychotherapy of bipolar disorder influences neuroimaging markers of aToM.

Methods: In this study, conducted within the multicentric randomized controlled trial of the BipoLife consortium, patients with euthymic bipolar disorder underwent 2 group interventions over 6 months (mean = 28.

XUV-Initiated Dissociation Dynamics of Molecular Oxygen (O).

We performed a time-resolved spectroscopy experiment on the dissociation of oxygen molecules after the interaction with intense extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) light from the free-electron laser in Hamburg at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron. Using an XUV-pump/XUV-probe transient-absorption geometry with a split-and-delay unit, we observe the onset of electronic transitions in the O cation near 50 eV photon energy, marking the end of the progression from a molecule to two isolated atoms. We observe two different time scales of 290 ± 53 and 180 ± 76 fs for the emergence of different ionic transitions, indicating different dissociation pathways taken by the departing oxygen atoms.

Reflections and New Perspectives on Face Cognition as a Specific Socio-Cognitive Ability.

The study of socio-cognitive abilities emerged from intelligence research, and their specificity remains controversial until today. In recent years, the psychometric structure of face cognition (FC)-a basic facet of socio-cognitive abilities-was extensively studied. In this review, we summarize and discuss the divergent psychometric structures of FC in easy and difficult tasks.

Mechanisms of face specificity - Differentiating speed and accuracy in face cognition by event-related potentials of central processing.

Given the crucial role of face recognition in social life, it is hardly surprising that cognitive processes specific for faces have been identified. In previous individual differences studies, the speed (measured in easy tasks) and accuracy (difficult tasks) of face cognition (FC, involving perception and recognition of faces) have been shown to form distinct abilities, going along with divergent factorial structures. This result has been replicated, but remained unexplained.

Strong-Field Extreme-Ultraviolet Dressing of Atomic Double Excitation.

We report on the experimental observation of a strong-field dressing of an autoionizing two-electron state in helium with intense extreme-ultraviolet laser pulses from a free-electron laser. The asymmetric Fano line shape of this transition is spectrally resolved, and we observe modifications of the resonance asymmetry structure for increasing free-electron-laser pulse energy on the order of few tens of Microjoules. A quantum-mechanical calculation of the time-dependent dipole response of this autoionizing state, driven by classical extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) electric fields, evidences strong-field-induced energy and phase shifts of the doubly excited state, which are extracted from the Fano line-shape asymmetry.

Nonlinear Coherence Effects in Transient-Absorption Ion Spectroscopy with Stochastic Extreme-Ultraviolet Free-Electron Laser Pulses.

We demonstrate time-resolved nonlinear extreme-ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy on multiply charged ions, here applied to the doubly charged neon ion, driven by a phase-locked sequence of two intense free-electron laser pulses. Absorption signatures of resonance lines due to 2p-3d bound-bound transitions between the spin-orbit multiplets ^{3}P_{0,1,2} and ^{3}D_{1,2,3} of the transiently produced doubly charged Ne^{2+} ion are revealed, with time-dependent spectral changes over a time-delay range of (2.4±0.

Patterns of individual differences in fiber tract integrity of the face processing brain network support neurofunctional models.

Face cognition, the ability to perceive faces and interpret facial information, is a crucial skill in human social interactions. At the neurobiological level, several functionally specialized brain regions constitute a network of face processing. However, the evidence whether functional specialization within the face network is also reflected in the white matter structural connectivity patterns is yet limited.

Are global and specific interindividual differences in cortical thickness associated with facets of cognitive abilities, including face cognition?

Face cognition (FC) is a specific ability that cannot be fully explained by general cognitive functions. Cortical thickness (CT) is a neural correlate of performance and learning. In this registered report, we used data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) to investigate the relationship between CT in the core brain network of FC and performance on a psychometric task battery, including tasks with facial content.

Perceiving faces: Too much, too fast?-face specificity in response caution.

Faces are a major source of information in social interaction. The ability to perceive and interpret faces thus carries paramount importance in people's social lives. However, this crucial ability is not yet fully understood.

Temporal resolution beyond the average pulse duration in shaped noisy-pulse transient absorption spectroscopy.

In time-resolved spectroscopy, it is a widespread belief that the temporal resolution is determined by the laser pulse duration. Recently, it was observed and shown that partially coherent laser pulses as they are provided by free-electron-laser (FEL) sources offer an alternative route to reach a temporal resolution below the average pulse duration. Here, we demonstrate the generation of partially coherent light in the laboratory like we observe it at FELs.

Time-frequency distribution properties of event-related potentials in mental fatigue induced by visual memory tasks.

Prolonged periods of demanding cognitive tasks lead to an exhausted feeling known as mental fatigue. The neural underpinnings of mental fatigue are still under exploration. In the present study, we aimed to identify neurophysiological indicators of mental fatigue by studying the time-frequency distribution of the event-related potentials (ERPs) measured in N=26 adults in nonfatigued versus fatigued states.

Time-resolved four-wave-mixing spectroscopy for inner-valence transitions.

Noncollinear four-wave-mixing (FWM) techniques at near-infrared (NIR), visible, and ultraviolet frequencies have been widely used to map vibrational and electronic couplings, typically in complex molecules. However, correlations between spatially localized inner-valence transitions among different sites of a molecule in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) spectral range have not been observed yet. As an experimental step toward this goal, we perform time-resolved FWM spectroscopy with femtosecond NIR and attosecond XUV pulses.

Signatures and control of strong-field dynamics in a complex system.

Controlling chemical reactions by light, i.e., the selective making and breaking of chemical bonds in a desired way with strong-field lasers, is a long-held dream in science.

Phase Reconstruction of Strong-Field Excited Systems by Transient-Absorption Spectroscopy.

The evolution of a V-type three-level system is studied, whose two resonances are coherently excited and coupled by two ultrashort laser pump and probe pulses, separated by a varying time delay. We relate the quantum dynamics of the excited multilevel system to the absorption spectrum of the transmitted probe pulse. In particular, by analyzing the quantum evolution of the system, we interpret how atomic phases are differently encoded in the time-delay-dependent spectral absorption profiles when the pump pulse either precedes or follows the probe pulse.

Family load impacts orbitofrontal volume in first-episode schizophrenia.

In schizophrenia, reduced orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) volume is inconsistently reported. To investigate the impact of genetic load on OFC volume, manual MRI-tracing in 23 first-episode schizophrenia patients (FE-SZ) and 23 controls was performed. FE-SZ with genetic load showed a decrease in OFC volume compared to FE-SZ without load and controls.

Reconstruction and control of a time-dependent two-electron wave packet.

The concerted motion of two or more bound electrons governs atomic and molecular non-equilibrium processes including chemical reactions, and hence there is much interest in developing a detailed understanding of such electron dynamics in the quantum regime. However, there is no exact solution for the quantum three-body problem, and as a result even the minimal system of two active electrons and a nucleus is analytically intractable. This makes experimental measurements of the dynamics of two bound and correlated electrons, as found in the helium atom, an attractive prospect.

Extracting phase and amplitude modifications of laser-coupled Fano resonances.

Fano line shapes observed in absorption spectra encode information on the amplitude and phase of the optical dipole response. A change in the Fano line shape, e.g.

Lorentz meets Fano in spectral line shapes: a universal phase and its laser control.

Symmetric Lorentzian and asymmetric Fano line shapes are fundamental spectroscopic signatures that quantify the structural and dynamical properties of nuclei, atoms, molecules, and solids. This study introduces a universal temporal-phase formalism, mapping the Fano asymmetry parameter q to a phase φ of the time-dependent dipole response function. The formalism is confirmed experimentally by laser-transforming Fano absorption lines of autoionizing helium into Lorentzian lines after attosecond-pulsed excitation.

Passively phase-stable, monolithic, all-reflective two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy based on a four-quadrant mirror.

A design for a passively phase-stable two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy experiment, based on a four-quadrant mirror concept, is introduced. The setup, which is particularly simple and robust, achieves subwavelength stability without the need for active stabilization or diffractive optical elements. Since only reflective optical components are used, the setup is suitable for few-cycle laser pulses and ultrabroad-bandwidth light in the ultraviolet, visible, and near-IR regions, with the capability to be used under grazing incidence for soft x ray or x-ray light at free-electron lasers.

Noisy optical pulses enhance the temporal resolution of pump-probe spectroscopy.

Time-resolved measurements of quantum dynamics are based on the availability of controlled events that are shorter than the typical evolution time scale of the processes to be observed. Here we introduce the concept of noise-enhanced pump-probe spectroscopy, allowing the measurement of dynamics significantly shorter than the average pulse duration by exploiting randomly varying, partially coherent light fields consisting of bunched colored noise. These fields are shown to be superior by more than a factor of 10 to frequency-stabilized fields, with important implications for time-resolved experiments at x-ray free-electron lasers and, in general, for measurements at the frontiers of temporal resolution (e.