The Interplay between Fear Reactivity and Callous-Unemotional Traits Predicting Reactive and Proactive Aggression.

Research has indicated that youths with CU traits are fearless, and this fearlessness plays a bidirectional role in both the development of CU traits and engagement in aggressive behavior. However, research specifically testing the role of fear in the association between CU traits and aggression is scarce. The goal of the current study was to test if fear reactivity, both conscious (self-report) and automatic (skin conductance reactivity; SCR), moderated the association between CU traits and aggression subtypes (reactive and proactive aggression).

Exploring neural mechanisms of the health benefits of gratitude in women: A randomized controlled trial.

Background: Gratitude has received growing interest as an emotion that can bring greater happiness and health. However, little is known about the effects of gratitude on objective measures of physical health or the neural mechanisms that underlie these effects. Given strong links between gratitude and giving behavior, and giving and health, it is possible that gratitude may benefit health through the same mechanisms as giving to others.

The comfort in touch: Immediate and lasting effects of handholding on emotional pain.

Consoling touch is a powerful form of social support that has been repeatedly demonstrated to reduce the experience of physical pain. However, it remains unknown whether touch reduces emotional pain in the same way that it reduces physical pain. The present research sought to understand how handholding with a romantic partner shapes experiences of emotional pain and comfort during emotional recollection, as well as how it shapes lasting emotional pain associated with emotional experiences.

Opioids and social bonding: Effect of naltrexone on feelings of social connection and ventral striatum activity to close others.

Close social bonds are critical to immediate and long-term well-being. However, the neurochemical mechanisms by which we remain connected to our closest loved ones are not well understood. Opioids have long been theorized to contribute to social bonding via their actions on the brain.

Naltrexone alters responses to social and physical warmth: implications for social bonding.

Socially warm experiences, when one feels connected to others, have been linked with physical warmth. Opioids, hypothesized to support social bonding with close others and, separately, physical warmth, may underlie both experiences. In order to test this hypothesis, 80 participants were randomly assigned to the opioid antagonist, naltrexone or placebo before neural and emotional responses to social and physical warmth were collected.

Resting Heart Rate Variability (HRV) in Adolescents and Young Adults from a Genetically-Informed Perspective.

Reduced heart rate variability (HRV) is associated with cardiac morbidity, mortality, and negative psychopathology. Most research concerning genetic influences on HRV has focused on adult populations, with fewer studies investigating the developmental period of adolescence and emerging adulthood. The current study estimated the genetic and environmental contributions to resting HRV in a sample of twins using various HRV time domain metrics to assess autonomic function across two different time measurement intervals (2.

Genetic and Environmental Contributions of Negative Valence Systems to Internalizing Pathways.

The genetic and environmental contributions of negative valence systems (NVS) to internalizing pathways study (also referred to as the Adolescent and Young Adult Twin Study) was designed to examine varying constructs of the NVS as they relate to the development of internalizing disorders from a genetically informed perspective. The goal of this study was to evaluate genetic and environmental contributions to potential psychiatric endophenotypes that contribute to internalizing psychopathology by studying adolescent and young adult twins longitudinally over a 2-year period. This report details the sample characteristics, study design, and methodology of this study.