Demoralization's link to depression and anxiety symptoms: A network analysis.

Demoralization represents a clinical syndrome conceptualized as maladaptive coping to a stressor associated with discouragement, feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and a loss of meaning in life. It is a prevalent comorbidity in individuals with severe physical illnesses and affects a substantial proportion of the general population when facing global stressors like the COVID-19 pandemic. The main aim of the study was to test whether demoralization and features of depression and anxiety might reflect distinct entities within the general population, specifically in older adults, and to explore symptom interconnections, using a network psychometrics approach.

Pain in Palliative Cancer Patients - Analysis of the German National Palliative Care Registry.

Context: Palliative care aims to improve the quality of life in patients with progressive diseases such as cancer. Effective cancer pain management is a major challenge of palliative treatment. Empirical data on the prevalence of cancer pain, the efficiency of pain treatment and influencing factors are scarce.

Psychometric properties and normative values of the revised demoralization scale (DS-II) in a representative sample of the German general population.

Background: Demoralization is a clinically relevant syndrome in chronic diseases. The demoralization scale (DS-II) was recently developed as an economic screening tool in clinical populations. Main aim of this study was to provide normative data of DS-II scores in the general population.

Probing the relevance of the hippocampus for conflict-induced memory improvement.

The hippocampus plays a key role for episodic memory. In addition, a small but growing number of studies has shown that it also contributes to the resolution of response conflicts. It is less clear how these two functions are related, and how they are affected by hippocampal lesions in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE).

Increased behavioral inhibition trait and negative stress coping in non-rapid eye movement parasomnias.

Study Objectives: Reduced gray matter volume in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) has recently been found in patients with non-rapid eye movement (NREM) parasomnia, providing a neuroanatomical substrate for the arousal state dissociation. It remains unclear whether PCC changes in NREM parasomnias might also play a role in cognitive or affective dysfunction in these patients. The aim of this exploratory study was to investigate neurobehavioral correlates of PCC abnormalities in patients with NREM parasomnia.

Reduced hippocampal recruitment during response conflict resolution in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy.

Recent evidence suggests that the human hippocampus (HC) is not only involved in the processing of motivationally relevant approach-avoidance conflicts but is also engaged in the resolution of more general response conflicts as measured in the Stroop paradigm. Here we investigated whether neural activity in the HC is necessary for successful response conflict resolution. We compared hippocampal recruitment during an auditory Stroop paradigm in 20 patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) due to hippocampal sclerosis and 20 age-matched healthy controls using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Impaired processing of response conflicts in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy.

Increasing evidence from neuroimaging studies points towards a hippocampal role in resolving approach-avoidance goal conflicts. Furthermore, previous neuroimaging findings suggest that the hippocampus (HC) contributes to successful conflict resolution as it is measured, for example, in a Stroop paradigm. However, it is still an open question whether the hippocampus is indeed causally relevant for resolving cognitive conflicts.

Disease-specific attention impairment in disorders of chronic excessive daytime sleepiness.

Objective: Patients with chronic excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) complain of substantial attention deficits. However, their underlying neuronal dysfunction is largely unknown. Previous studies showed similar attention performances in central disorders of hypersomnolence suggesting that EDS-related cognitive impairment is independent of its cause.

The Perception and Attention Functions test battery as a measure of neurocognitive impairment in patients with suspected central disorders of hypersomnolence.

The aim of the current study was to evaluate an attention test as a discriminative tool to measure neurocognitive impairment in patients with disorders of hypersomnolence. Chronic excessive daytime sleepiness is the main symptom in central disorders of hypersomnolence. For diagnostic purposes and treatment evaluation, reliable assessment of excessive daytime sleepiness is required.