Under the surface: Low cardiac vagal tone and poor interoception in young adults with subclinical depressive symptoms.

Introduction: Depressive symptoms are associated with alterations in central and autonomic nervous system activity, including misperception of bodily activity (e.g., low interoception), somatic symptoms and decreased vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV).

Alcoholic Etiology, Severity of Liver Disease, and Post-Transplant Adherence Are Correlated with Worse Stanford Integrated Psychosocial Assessment for Transplantation (SIPAT) in Liver Transplant Candidates.

: Psychosocial pre-transplant evaluation in patients undergoing liver transplantation (LT) could help identify those patients at higher risk of pharmacological non-adherence, organ rejection, and mortality. The Stanford Integrated Psychosocial Assessment for Transplantation (SIPAT) is a validated tool for assessing LT candidates' psychosocial well-being. Data on the ability of the SIPAT evaluation to predict post-transplant outcomes are sparse.

The moderating role of depressive symptoms in the association between heart rate variability and cognitive performance in cardiac patients.

Introduction: Coronary heart disease (CHD) is strongly associated with cognitive impairment, which is a core feature of depression, highly prevalent in patients with CHD. Interestingly, patients with CHD and individuals with depression display reduced heart rate variability (HRV), which proxies a complex network integrating autonomic and attentional systems. This study investigated the moderating role of depressive symptoms in the relation between reduced HRV and cognitive performance in patients with CHD.

Multidimensional components of (state) mathematics anxiety: Behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and psychophysiological consequences.

The present study aimed to analyze the different components of state mathematics anxiety that students experienced while solving calculation problems by manipulating their stress levels. A computerized mathematical task was administered to 165 fifth-graders randomly assigned to three different groups: positive, negative, and control conditions, in which positive, negative, or no feedback during the task was given, respectively. Behavioral (task performance), emotional (negative feelings), cognitive (worrisome thoughts and perceived competence), and psychophysiological responses (skin conductance and vagal withdrawal) were analyzed.

Rethinking the risk for depression using the RDoC: A psychophysiological perspective.

Considering that the classical categorical approach to mental disorders does not allow a clear identification of at-risk conditions, the dimensional approach provided by the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) is useful in the exploration of vulnerability to psychopathology. In the RDoC era, psychophysiological models have an important role in the reconceptualization of mental disorders. Indeed, progress in the study of depression vulnerability has increasingly been informed by psychophysiological models.

Reduced heart rate variability and expressive suppression interact to prospectively predict COVID-19 pandemic-related post-traumatic stress symptoms.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a unique period of stress that, in some cases, led to post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSSs). Emotion regulation strategies are known to modulate the emotional response to stressful events. Expressive suppression (ES) is a maladaptive strategy related to the exacerbation of the physiological stress response.

Complexity Modulation in functional Brain-Heart Interplay series driven by Emotional Stimuli: an early study using Fuzzy Entropy.

Increasing attention has recently been devoted to the multidisciplinary investigation of functional brain-heart interplay (BHI), which has provided meaningful insights in neuroscience and clinical domains including cardiology, neurology, clinical psychology, and psychiatry. While neural (brain) and heartbeat series show high nonlinear and complex dynamics, a complexity analysis on BHI series has not been performed yet. To this end, in this preliminary study, we investigate BHI complexity modulation in 17 healthy subjects undergoing a 3-minute resting state and emotional elicitation through standardized image slideshow.

The impact of COVID-19-related quarantine on psychological outcomes in patients after cardiac intervention: a multicenter longitudinal study.

Mandatory quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic had substantial negative consequences on psychological health in the general population. Depression, anxiety, and insomnia were reported to increase the morbidity and mortality risk in cardiac patients after cardiac interventions. Nonetheless, a gap in the evidence appeared regarding the effects of COVID-19-related quarantine on psychological outcomes in patients after cardiac interventions.

The Influence of Emotion Regulation on the Association Between Depression and Heart Rate Variability in Cardiac Patients.

Objective: Poor vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) is a mechanism linking depression to coronary heart disease (CHD). Reduced vmHRV is also considered an index of emotion dysregulation-the frequent use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, one of the most important being expressive suppression-which is a key component of depression. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the moderating role of expressive suppression in the relation between depression and vmHRV in patients with CHD.

Direct Gaze Holds Attention, but Not in Individuals with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

The attentional response to eye-gaze stimuli is still largely unexplored in individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Here, we focused on an attentional phenomenon according to which a direct-gaze face can hold attention in a perceiver. Individuals with OCD and a group of matched healthy controls were asked to discriminate, through a speeded manual response, a peripheral target.

Psychophysiological Regulation and Classroom Climate Influence First and Second Graders' Well-Being: The Role of Body Mass Index.

This study examines the associations between physical and emotional well-being and classroom climate, cardiac vagal response, and body mass index (BMI) in a sample of 6- to-8-year-olds. Specifically, we expected a direct link between classroom climate, vagal withdrawal, BMI and children's physical and emotional comfort. Furthermore, we explored whether these individual and environmental characteristics influenced well-being in an interactive fashion.

Do catastrophizing and autonomic-reduced flexibility mediate pain outcomes in chronic headache?

Objectives: Maladaptive cognitive strategies and reduced autonomic flexibility have been reported in chronic pain conditions. No study to date addressed the effects of maladaptive coping and reduced autonomic flexibility, as indexed by heart rate variability (HRV), in chronic headaches. The present study aimed to assess the mediating role of pain catastrophizing and HRV on pain outcomes in patients with chronic headache.

The longitudinal negative impact of early stressful events on emotional and physical well-being: The buffering role of cardiac vagal development.

Early stressful events negatively affect emotional and physical well-being. Cardiac vagal tone (CVT), which is associated with better emotional and physical well-being, usually gradually increase in early childhood. Nonetheless, children's CVT developmental trajectories are greatly variable, such that CVT can increase or decrease across the years.

Dual-tasking effects on static and dynamic postural balance performance: a comparison between endurance and team sport athletes.

In sports, postural balance control has been demonstrated to be one of the limiting factors of performance and a necessary component to achieve any sport technique. Team players (TP) must process and react to multiple external stimuli while executing at the same time the skills of the game. By contrast, endurance athletes (END) must perform the same gesture repetitively without a concurrent coordination of continuous stimuli-related actions.

Not All Competitions Come to Harm! Competitive Biofeedback to Increase Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia in Managers.

Despite the positive impact on achievement, competition has been associated with elevated psychophysiological activation, potentially leading to a greater risk of cardiovascular diseases. Competitive biofeedback (BF) can be used to highlight the effects of competition on the same physiological responses that are going to be controlled through BF. However, it is still unknown whether competition could enhance the effects of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA)-BF training in improving cardiac vagal control.

Depression anticipates patients at risk of poor exercise stress test performance after percutaneous coronary angioplasty: A short-term longitudinal study.

Aims: The exercise stress test is commonly used to assess physical capacity and recovery in coronary artery disease (CAD) patients after percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA). Despite depressive symptoms have been consistently associated with adverse outcomes in CAD patients, they are rarely considered as risk factors of poor exercise test. The present study investigated the influence of depressive symptoms, along with anxiety, sleep problems and perceived health on exercise test in PTCA patients.

Psychophysiological and Visual Behavioral Responses to Faces Associated with Affective and Non-affective Touch in Four-month-old Infants.

Affective touch (gentle, caress-like touch) carries a rewarding meaning, which may represent a neurophysiological foundation for the development of social interactions from the earliest stages of life. Developmental studies have shown evidence of infants' sensitivity to affective touch as reflected by a decrease in heart rate and activation of the insular cortex. Moreover, affective touch has been shown to regulate infants' emotional state, reinforce eye contact and facilitate learning of facial information, suggesting that affective touch may promote social functioning from the earliest stages of development.

Stressing the accuracy: Wrist-worn wearable sensor validation over different conditions.

Wearable sensors are promising instruments for conducting both laboratory and ambulatory research in psychophysiology. However, scholars should be aware of their measurement error and the conditions in which accuracy is achieved. This study aimed to assess the accuracy of a wearable sensor designed for research purposes, the E4 wristband (Empatica, Milan, Italy), in measuring heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and skin conductance (SC) over five laboratory conditions widely used in stress reactivity research (seated rest, paced breathing, orthostatic, Stroop, speech task) and two ecological conditions (slow walking, keyboard typing).

The frontal cortex is a heart-brake: Reduction in delta oscillations is associated with heart rate deceleration.

Prefrontal brain regions have been proposed to modulate vagally mediated heart rate variability (HRV) through their action on subcortical structures. This study aimed at investigating the beat-to-beat influence of the brain cortex over the heart through a high temporal resolution estimation of brain-heart coupling. Electrocardiogram (ECG) and electroencephalogram (EEG) from 32 scalp positions were recorded at rest for 5 min in 38 participants.

Profiles of vagal withdrawal to challenging interactions: Links with preschoolers' conceptual shifting ability.

The current study investigated profiles of vagal withdrawal in response to a challenging task in preschoolers. Also, the association between those profiles and conceptual shifting ability was assessed. Electrocardiogram of 43 four-year-olds was registered during a sequence of games including a win phase and a lose phase, while conceptual shifting ability was assessed via a standardized test.

Single-Session Attention Bias Modification Training in Victims of Work-Related Accidents.

Individuals who experienced traumatic work-related accidents frequently show cognitive deficits and biased processing of trauma-relevant information, which, in turn, could increase the risk of further accidents. The attention bias modification training (ABMT) is designed to reduce hypervigilance toward and enhance attentional disengagement from threat stimuli. The aim of the present study was to assess whether it is possible to implicitly reduce the attentional bias toward trauma-related stimuli through a single session of ABMT in individuals who experienced a traumatic occupational accident.

Standard representation and unified stability analysis for dynamic artificial neural network models.

An overview is provided of dynamic artificial neural network models (DANNs) for nonlinear dynamical system identification and control problems, and convex stability conditions are proposed that are less conservative than past results. The three most popular classes of dynamic artificial neural network models are described, with their mathematical representations and architectures followed by transformations based on their block diagrams that are convenient for stability and performance analyses. Classes of nonlinear dynamical systems that are universally approximated by such models are characterized, which include rigorous upper bounds on the approximation errors.

The role of cardiac vagal tone and inhibitory control in pre-schoolers' listening comprehension.

This study investigated the role of basal cardiac activity and inhibitory control at the beginning of the school year in predicting oral comprehension at the end of the year in pre-schoolers. Forty-three, 4-year-olds participated in the study. At the beginning of the school year children's electrocardiogram at rest was registered followed by the assessment of inhibitory control as well as verbal working memory and verbal ability.

Frontal alpha asymmetry neurofeedback for the reduction of negative affect and anxiety.

Frontal alpha asymmetry has been proposed to underlie the balance between approach and withdrawal motivation associated to each individual's affective style. Neurofeedback of EEG frontal alpha asymmetry represents a promising tool to reduce negative affect, although its specific effects on left/right frontal activity and approach/withdrawal motivation are still unclear. The present study employed a neurofeedback training to increase frontal alpha asymmetry (right - left), in order to evaluate discrete changes in alpha power at left and right sites, as well as in positive and negative affect, anxiety and depression.

Somatic-Affective, But Not Cognitive-Depressive Symptoms are Associated With Reduced Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients With Congestive Heart Failure.

Background: Depression has been associated with poor health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with congestive heart failure (CHF). However, to date, whether somatic-affective and cognitive-depressive symptoms differently contribute to poor HRQoL and behavioral functional capacity in patients with CHF has yet to be investigated.

Objective: To examine the differential influence of somatic-affective vs cognitive-depressive symptoms on HRQoL and behavioral functional capacity in CHF patients.