How to elicit a negative bias? Manipulating contrast and saturation with the facial emotion salience task.

Introduction: Emotion recognition impairments and a tendency to misclassify neutral faces as negative are common in schizophrenia. A possible explanation for these deficits is aberrant salience attribution. To explore the possibility of salience driven emotion recognition deficits, we implemented a novel facial emotion salience task (FEST).

Executive functions in psychopathy: a meta-analysis of inhibition, planning, shifting, and working memory performance.

Much research has focused on executive function (EF) impairments in psychopathy, a severe personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy, antisocial behavior, and a disregard for social norms and moral values. However, it is still unclear to what extent EF deficits are present across psychopathy factors and, more importantly, which EF domains are impaired. The current meta-analysis answers these questions by synthesizing the results of 50 studies involving 5,694 participants from 12 different countries.

Nothing to lose? Neural correlates of decision, anticipation, and feedback in the balloon analog risk task.

Understanding the subprocesses of risky decision making is a prerequisite for understanding (dys-)functional decisions. For the present fMRI study, we designed a novel variant of the balloon-analog-risk task (BART) that measures three phases: decision making, reward anticipation, and feedback processing. Twenty-nine healthy young adults completed the BART.

Understanding empathy deficits and emotion dysregulation in psychopathy: The mediating role of alexithymia.

Psychopathy is a severe personality disorder marked by a wide range of emotional deficits, including a lack of empathy, emotion dysregulation, and alexithymia. Previous research has largely examined these emotional impairments in isolation, ignoring their influence on each other. Thus, we examined the concurrent interrelationship between emotional impairments in psychopathy, with a particular focus on the mediating role of alexithymia.

Putting the Vicious Cycle to the Test: Evidence for the Cognitive Behavioral Model of Persistent Somatic Symptoms From an Online Study.

Objective: In clinical practice, persistent somatic symptoms are regularly explained using a cognitive-behavioral model (CBM). In the CBM, predisposing, perpetuating, and precipitating factors are assumed to interact and to cause the onset and endurance of somatic symptoms. However, these models are rarely investigated in their entirety.

[Genetic studies on forensic-psychiatric inpatients? : Clinical, ethical and legal considerations].

Background: Research on people deprived of liberty raises serious questions, especially concerning behavioral genetic studies.

Question: Does including criminally detained patients with mental disorders in genetic studies lead to a gain of new knowledge and can this be ethically and legally justified?

Method: Evaluation of existing literature and interdisciplinary reflection.

Results: After a review of research ethics and legal norms, we consider the benefits and risks of behavioral genetic research, taking the unique situation of test persons deprived of their liberty into account.

In the face of horror - secondary traumatisation and mental distress in employees and volunteers at national socialism related memorial sites.

Employees and volunteers at national socialism related memorial sites in Germany (MemoS) are confronted with severely aversive documents of German history on a regular basis. Enhance knowledge on mental health in MemoS. In an online study, mental distress, secondary traumatisation as well as potential risk and protective factors were assessed in MemoS and a control group.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy for patients with post-COVID-19 condition (CBT-PCC): a feasibility trial.

Background: The post-COVID-19 condition describes the persistence or onset of somatic symptoms (e.g. fatigue) after acute COVID-19.

[The Konstanz model project for refugees with mental disorders : Coordinated psychotherapeutic treatment involving trained peer support (KOBEG)].

Refugees with mental disorders are confronted with access barriers to the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic care system. In order to counter these barriers, a model project to support the health care and integration of mentally distressed refugees was established in the district of Konstanz (coordinated psychotherapeutic treatment involving trained peer support; KOBEG) and evaluated in an initial 3‑year model phase. A coordination center refers the patients to local certified psychotherapists.

Investigating measurement invariance of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire-8 (ERQ-8) across 29 countries.

Unlabelled: The widely used Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) measures the habitual use of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Recently, a more economical 8-item version of the ERQ was proposed that showed good model fit. We assessed whether the latent constructs of the ERQ-8 are generalizable across different countries and cultures.

Effective connectivity of the human mirror neuron system during social cognition.

The human mirror neuron system (MNS) can be considered the neural basis of social cognition. Identifying the global network structure of this system can provide significant progress in the field. In this study, we use dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to determine the effective connectivity between central regions of the MNS for the first time during different social cognition tasks.

Predictors of Psychological Distress and Coronavirus Fears in the First Recovery Phase of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic in Germany.

While previous research has mainly focused on the impact of the first acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, little empirical knowledge exists about depression, anxiety, and somatic symptom levels and possible predictors of symptom levels in the pandemic's recovery phase. The present study aimed to analyze the mental burden of a convenience ample of the general German population during the first recovery phase of the pandemic and to identify significant predictors of symptom levels. Standardized measures of anxiety (GAD-2), depression (PHQ-2), somatic symptoms (PHQ-15), and health anxiety, as well as measures of COVID-19 fears and possible vulnerability factors, were administered through a national, cross-sectional online survey ( = 2160, mean age 42.

The human mirror neuron system-A common neural basis for social cognition?

According to the theory of embodied simulation, mirror neurons (MN) in our brain's motor system are the neuronal basis of all social-cognitive processes. The assumption of such a mirroring process in humans could be supported by results showing that within one person the same region is involved in different social cognition tasks. We conducted an fMRI-study with 75 healthy participants who completed three tasks: imitation, empathy, and theory of mind.

Dynamic Causal Modeling for fMRI With Wilson-Cowan-Based Neuronal Equations.

Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) is an analysis technique that has been successfully used to infer about directed connectivity between brain regions based on imaging data such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Most variants of DCM for fMRI rely on a simple bilinear differential equation for neural activation, making it difficult to interpret the results in terms of local neural dynamics. In this work, we introduce a modification to DCM for fMRI by replacing the bilinear equation with a non-linear Wilson-Cowan based equation and use Bayesian Model Comparison (BMC) to show that this modification improves the model evidences.

fMRI adaptation reveals: The human mirror neuron system discriminates emotional valence.

Our ability to infer other individuals' emotions is central for successful social interactions. Based on the theory of embodied simulation, our mirror neuron system (MNS) provides the essential link between the observed facial configuration of another individual and our inference of the emotion by means of common neuronal activation. However, so far it is unknown, whether the MNS differentiates the valence of facial configurations.

Hyperfunctioning of the right posterior superior temporal sulcus in response to neutral facial expressions presents an endophenotype of schizophrenia.

Deficits in social cognition have been proposed as a marker of schizophrenia. Growing evidence suggests especially hyperfunctioning of the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) in response to neutral social stimuli reflecting the neural correlates of social-cognitive impairments in schizophrenia. We characterized healthy participants according to schizotypy (n = 74) and the single-nucleotide polymorphism rs1344706 in ZNF804A (n = 73), as they represent risk variants for schizophrenia from the perspectives of personality traits and genetics, respectively.

The effect of ethnicity and team membership on face processing: a cultural neuroscience perspective.

In-ethnicity bias, as one of the in-group biases, is widespread in different cultures, interfering with cross-ethnicity communication. Recent studies have revealed that an in-ethnicity bias can be reduced by an in-team bias caused by the membership in a mixed-ethnicity team. However, the neural correlates of different in-group biases are still not clear, especially regarding possible cultural differences.

Reduced activity and connectivity of left amygdala in patients with schizophrenia treated with clozapine or olanzapine.

Obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) in patients with schizophrenia are a common co-occurring condition, often associated with additional impairments. A subgroup of these patients develops OCS during treatment with second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs), most importantly clozapine and olanzapine. So far, little is known about possible neural mechanism of these SGAs, which seem to aggravate or induce OCS.

Nucleus accumbens activation is linked to salience in social decision making.

Aberrant salience may explain hasty decision making and psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia. In healthy individuals, final decisions in probabilistic reasoning tasks are related to Nucleus accumbens (Nacc) activation. However, research investigating the Nacc in social decision making is missing.

Impaired emotion processing and a reduction in trust in patients with somatic symptom disorder.

There is accumulating evidence for deficits in the perception and regulation of one's own emotions, as well as the recognition of others' emotions in somatic symptom disorder (SSD). However, investigations of SSD focusing on specific aspects of emotion processing and how these might interact are missing. We included 35 patients with SSD and 35 healthy controls who completed questionnaires on the perception and regulation of their own emotions, as well as experimental investigations of emotion recognition and trust.

Scary symptoms? Functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence for symptom interpretation bias in pathological health anxiety.

Patients with pathological health anxiety (PHA) tend to automatically interpret bodily sensations as sign of a severe illness. To elucidate the neural correlates of this cognitive bias, we applied an functional magnetic resonance imaging adaption of a body-symptom implicit association test with symptom words in patients with PHA (n = 32) in comparison to patients with depression (n = 29) and healthy participants (n = 35). On the behavioral level, patients with PHA did not significantly differ from the control groups.

Emotion dysregulation in hypochondriasis and depression.

Background: The aim of this study was to explore whether certain aspects of emotion dysregulation (i.e., facets of alexithymia and rumination) are more closely linked to hypochondriasis than to depression and vice versa.

The role of emotional inhibitory control in specific internet addiction - an fMRI study.

Background: Addicts to specific internet applications involving communication features showed increased social anxiety, emotional competence deficits and impaired prefrontal-related inhibitory control. The dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex (dACC) likely plays an important role in cognitive control and negative affect (such as social exclusion, pain or anxiety).

Aim: To assess (social) anxiety-related inhibitory control in specific internet addiction (addicted use of games and social networks) and its relation to altered dACC activation.

Understanding the impact of 5-HTTLPR, antidepressants, and acute tryptophan depletion on brain activation during facial emotion processing: A review of the imaging literature.

Detecting and evaluating emotional information from facial expressions as a basis for behavioural adaption belong to the core social-cognitive abilities of mankind. Dysfunctions in emotional face processing are observed in several major psychiatric disorders like depression and schizophrenia. In search for psychiatric disease biomarkers using the imaging genetics approach, serotonergic gene polymorphisms have been associated with altered brain circuit activation during emotional face processing.