Grief over patients, compassion fatigue, and the role of social acknowledgment among psycho-oncologists.

Objective: Compassion fatigue-that is, secondary traumatic stress (STS) and burnout-is a traumatic emotional state experienced by health care providers and expressed in a reduced capacity to be interested in and empathic to the suffering of others. Compassion fatigue may be related to grief over patients' loss. We examined the relation between grief and compassion fatigue among psycho-oncologists while exploring the impact of social acknowledgment on this association.

Compassion fatigue among oncologists: the role of grief, sense of failure, and exposure to suffering and death.

Purpose: Oncologists cope with unique work characteristics that increase their risk of developing compassion fatigue-that is, burnout and secondary traumatic stress-and can result in reduced capacity and interest in being empathetic to the suffering of others (Stamm B. The concise ProQOL manual, 2010). At the same time, oncologists can experience compassion satisfaction-that is, the positive aspects of caring.

Neuromodulation of reinforced skill learning reveals the causal function of prefrontal cortex.

Accumulating evidence has suggested functional interactions between prefrontal cortex (PFC) and dissociable large-scale networks. However, how these networks interact in the human brain to enable complex behaviors is not well-understood. Here, using a combination of behavioral, brain stimulation and neuroimaging paradigms, we tested the hypothesis that human PFC is required for successful reinforced skill formation.

Memory reactivation improves visual perception.

Human perception thresholds can improve through learning. Here we report findings challenging the fundamental 'practice makes perfect' basis of procedural learning theory, showing that brief reactivations of encoded visual memories are sufficient to improve perceptual discrimination thresholds. Learning was comparable to standard practice-induced learning and was not due to short training per se, nor to an epiphenomenon of primed retrieval enhancement.

Reward disrupts reactivated human skill memory.

Accumulating evidence across species and memory domains shows that when an existing memory is reactivated, it becomes susceptible to modifications. However, the potential role of reward signals in these mechanisms underlying human memory dynamics is unknown. Leaning on a wealth of findings on the role of reward in reinforcing memory, we tested the impact of reinforcing a skill memory trace with monetary reward following memory reactivation, on strengthening of the memory trace.