Advancing the personalized advantage index (PAI): a systematic review and application in two large multi-site samples in anxiety disorders.

Background: The Personalized Advantage Index (PAI) shows promise as a method for identifying the most effective treatment for individual patients. Previous studies have demonstrated its utility in retrospective evaluations across various settings. In this study, we explored the effect of different methodological choices in predictive modelling underlying the PAI.

Intermittent theta burst stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has no additional effect on the efficacy of virtual reality exposure therapy for acrophobia. A randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study.

Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental disorders. Treatment guidelines recommend pharmacotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy as standard treatment. Although cognitive behavioral therapy is an effective therapeutic approach, not all patients benefit sufficiently from it.

Elemental and configural representation of a conditioned context.

A context can be conceptualized as a stable arrangement of elements or as the sum of single elements. Both configural and elemental representations play a role in associative processes. This study aimed to explore the respective contributions of these two representations of a context in the acquisition of conditioned anxiety in humans.

Lack of evidence for predictive utility from resting state fMRI data for individual exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy outcomes: A machine learning study in two large multi-site samples in anxiety disorders.

Data-based predictions of individual Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) treatment response are a fundamental step towards precision medicine. Past studies demonstrated only moderate prediction accuracy (i.e.

Trauma history and course of therapy in a naturalistic cognitive behavior therapy outpatient sample: An archive data study.

Objective: Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for anxiety and depression disorders. Nonetheless, nearly 50% of all patients do not respond. Besides other factors, nonresponse may be linked to traumatic life events.

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex in response to threat omission is associated with subsequent explicit safety memory.

In order to memorize and discriminate threatening and safe stimuli, the processing of the actual absence of threat seems crucial. Here, we measured brain activity with fMRI in response to both threat conditioned stimuli and their outcomes by combining threat learning with a subsequent memory paradigm. Participants (N = 38) repeatedly saw a variety of faces, half of which (CS+) were associated with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) and half of which were not (CS-).

Mental health improvement after the COVID-19 pandemic in individuals with psychological distress.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated countermeasures had an immensely disruptive impact on people's lives. Due to the lack of systematic pre-pandemic data, however, it is still unclear how individuals' psychological health has been affected across this incisive event. In this study, we analyze longitudinal data from two healthy samples (N = 307) to provide quasi-longitudinal insight into the full trajectory of psychological burden before (baseline), during the first peak, and at a relative downturn of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Better safe than sorry?-On the influence of learned safety on pain perception.

The experience of threat was found to result-mostly-in increased pain, however it is still unclear whether the exact opposite, namely the feeling of safety may lead to a reduction of pain. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two between-subject experiments (N = 94; N = 87), investigating whether learned safety relative to a neutral control condition can reduce pain, while threat should lead to increased pain compared to a neutral condition. Therefore, participants first underwent either threat or safety conditioning, before entering an identical test phase, where the previously conditioned threat or safety cue and a newly introduced visual cue were presented simultaneously with heat pain stimuli.

Visual Indicators Representing Avatars' Authenticity in Social Virtual Reality and Their Impacts on Perceived Trustworthiness.

Photorealistic avatars show great potential in social VR and VR collaboration. However, identity and privacy issues are threatening avatars' authenticity in social VR. In addition to the necessary authentication and protection, effective solutions are needed to convey avatars' authenticity status to users and thereby enhance the overall trustworthiness.

Virtual reality to understand pain-associated approach behaviour: a proof-of-concept study.

Pain-associated approach and avoidance behaviours are critically involved in the development and maintenance of chronic pain. Empirical research suggests a key role of operant learning mechanisms, and first experimental paradigms were developed for their investigation within a controlled laboratory setting. We introduce a new Virtual Reality paradigm to the study of pain-related behaviour and investigate pain experiences on multiple dimensions.

To remember or not to remember: Neural oscillations and ERPs as predictors of intentional associative fear learning.

It is widely accepted that impaired safety learning to a safe stimulus is a pathological feature of anxiety disorders. Safety learning refers to learning that a stimulus is associated with the absence of threat. Cognitive mechanisms that underlie successful threat and safety learning are, however, poorly understood.

The application of virtual reality exposure versus relaxation training in music performance anxiety: a randomized controlled study.

Background: Performance anxiety is the most frequently reported anxiety disorder among professional musicians. Typical symptoms are - on a physical level - the consequences of an increase in sympathetic tone with cardiac stress, such as acceleration of heartbeat, increase in blood pressure, increased respiratory rate and tremor up to nausea or flush reactions. These symptoms can cause emotional distress, a reduced musical and artistical performance up to an impaired functioning.

Effective-and Tolerable: Acceptance and Side Effects of Intensified Exposure for Anxiety Disorders.

Despite striking empirical support, exposure-based treatments for anxiety disorders are underutilized. This is partially due to clinicians' concerns that patients may reject exposure or experience severe side effects, particularly in intensive forms of exposure. We examined acceptance and side effects of two randomly assigned variants of prediction error-based exposure treatment differing in temporal density (1 vs.

Measuring Interpersonal Trust towards Virtual Humans with a Virtual Maze Paradigm.

Virtual humans, including virtual agents and avatars, play an increasingly important role as VR technology advances. For example, virtual humans are used as digital bodies of users in social VR or as interfaces for AI assistants in online financing. Interpersonal trust is an essential prerequisite in real-life interactions, as well as in the virtual world.

VR for Studying the Neuroscience of Emotional Responses.

Emotions are frequently considered as the driving force of behavior, and psychopathology is often characterized by aberrant emotional responding. Emotional states are reflected on a cognitive-verbal, physiological-humoral, and motor-behavioral level but to date, human research lacks an experimental protocol for a comprehensive and ecologically valid characterization of such emotional states. Virtual reality (VR) might help to overcome this situation by allowing researchers to study mental processes and behavior in highly controlled but reality-like laboratory settings.

Investigating sustained attention in contextual threat using steady-state VEPs evoked by flickering video stimuli.

Anxiety is characterized by anxious anticipation and heightened vigilance to uncertain threat. However, if threat is not reliably indicated by a specific cue, the context in which threat was previously experienced becomes its best predictor, leading to anxiety. A suitable means to induce anxiety experimentally is context conditioning: In one context (CTX+), an unpredictable aversive stimulus (US) is repeatedly presented, in contrast to a second context (CTX-), in which no US is ever presented.

Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty: How intolerance of uncertainty and trait anxiety impact fear acquisition, extinction and the return of fear.

It is hypothesized that the ability to discriminate between threat and safety is impaired in individuals with high dispositional negativity, resulting in maladaptive behavior. A large body of research investigated differential learning during fear conditioning and extinction protocols depending on individual differences in intolerance of uncertainty (IU) and trait anxiety (TA), two closely-related dimensions of dispositional negativity, with heterogenous results. These might be due to varying degrees of induced threat/safety uncertainty.

Effects of psychosocial stress and performance feedback on pain processing and its correlation with subjective and neuroendocrine parameters.

Objectives: Previous research on stress-induced pain modulation suggests that moderate psychological stress usually leads to hyperalgesia while more severe threat results in hypoalgesia. However, existing studies often lack suitable control conditions imperative to identify mere stress effects. Similarly, research mainly focused on pure of a social threat, not taking into consideration experiences of social evaluation.

Theta-Burst Stimulation Combined With Virtual-Reality Reconsolidation Intervention for Methamphetamine Use Disorder: Study Protocol for a Randomized-Controlled Trial.

Background: Craving associated with drug-related memory is one of the key factors that induce the relapse of methamphetamine (MA). Disruption or modulation of the reconsolidation of drug-related memory may serve as an option for clinical treatment of MA addiction. This protocol proposes to use virtual reality (VR) to retrieve drug-associated memory and then use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) at the neural circuit that encodes the reward value of drug cues to provide a non-invasive intervention during reconsolidation.

Centralized gaze as an adaptive component of defensive states in humans.

Adequate defensive responding is crucial for mental health but scientifically not well understood. Specifically, it seems difficult to dissociate defense and approach states based on autonomic response patterns. We thus explored the robustness and threat-specificity of recently described oculomotor dynamics upon threat in anticipation of either threatening or rewarding stimuli in humans.

Approach and avoidance beyond verbal measures: A quantitative meta-analysis of human conditioned place preference studies.

Adaptive approach and avoidance in responses to reward and threat are fundamental to prevent harm and to ensure well-being. In contrast, maladaptive approach or avoidance behavior likely contributes to anxiety or substance abuse disorders, respectively. Therefore, there is a need to assess such behavior in humans objectively.

Contextual modulation of conditioned responses in humans: A review on virtual reality studies.

Conditioned response (CRs) triggered by stimuli predicting aversive consequences have been confirmed across various species including humans, and were found to be exaggerated in anxious individuals and anxiety disorder patients. Importantly, contextual information may strongly modulate such conditioned responses (CR), however, there are several methodological boundaries in the translation of animal findings to humans, and from healthy individuals to patients. Virtual Reality (VR) is a useful technological tool for overcoming such boundaries.

A Common Variant Is Associated with Low Agreeableness and Neural Responses to Working Memory Tasks in ADHD.

The cell-cell signaling gene is associated with a wide spectrum of neuropsychiatric disorders, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, and major depression. regulates axonal outgrowth and synapse formation, substantiating its relevance for neurodevelopmental processes. Several studies support the influence of on personality traits, behavior, and executive functions.