A role of serotonin and the insula in vigor: Tracking environmental and physiological resources.

We describe a neural monitor of environmental and physiological resources that informs effort expenditure. Depending on resources and environmental stability, serotonergic and dopaminergic neuromodulations favor different behavioral controls that are organized in corticostriatal loops. This broader perspective produces some suggestions and questions that may not be covered by the foraging approach to vigor of Shadmehr and Ahmed (2020).

The Neuroscience of the Flow State: Involvement of the Locus Coeruleus Norepinephrine System.

Flow is a state of full task engagement that is accompanied with low-levels of self-referential thinking. Flow is considered highly relevant for human performance and well-being and has, therefore, been studied extensively. Yet, the neurocognitive processes of flow remain largely unclear.

Go with the flow: A neuroscientific view on being fully engaged.

Flow is a state of full task absorption, accompanied with a strong drive and low levels of self-referential thinking. Flow is likely when there is a match between a person's skills and the task challenge. Despite its relevance for human performance and the vast body of research on flow, there is currently still relatively little insight in its underlying neurocognitive mechanisms.

Mindfulness-Based Program Plus Amygdala and Insula Retraining (MAIR) for the Treatment of Women with Fibromyalgia: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.

The lack of highly effective treatments for fibromyalgia (FM) represents a great challenge for public health. The objective of this parallel, pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) was two-fold: (1) to analyze the clinical effects of mindfulness plus amygdala and insula retraining (MAIR) compared to a structurally equivalent active control group of relaxation therapy (RT) in the treatment of FM; and (2) to evaluate its impact on immune-inflammatory markers and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in serum. A total of 41 FM patients were randomized into two study arms: MAIR (intervention group) and RT (active control group), both as add-ons of treatment as usual.

Personality, Stress, and Intuition: Emotion Regulation Abilities Moderate the Effect of Stress-Dependent Cortisol Increase on Coherence Judgments.

Objective: Findings on the relationship between hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) activity and cognitive performance are inconsistent. We investigated whether personality in terms of emotion regulation abilities (ERA) moderates the relationship between stress-contingent HPA activity and accuracy of intuitive coherence judgments.

Method: ERA and cortisol responses to social-evaluative stress as induced by a variant of the Trier Social Stress Test were measured in = 49 participants (32 female, aged 18 to 33 years, = 22.