Analysis of risk communication teaching in psychosocial and other medical departments.

: Teaching students about risk communication is an important aspect at medical schools given the growing importance of informed consent in healthcare. This observational study analyzes the quality of teaching content on risk communication and biostatistics at a medical school.: Based on the concept of curriculum mapping, purpose-designed questionnaires were used via participant observers to record the frequency, characteristics and context of risk communication employed by lecturers during teaching sessions for one semester.

Menstrual Cycle Changes in Vagally-Mediated Heart Rate Variability are Associated with Progesterone: Evidence from Two Within-Person Studies.

A recent meta-analysis revealed that cardiac vagal activity (mostly indicated by vagally-mediated heart rate variability; HRV) decreases significantly from the follicular to luteal menstrual cycle phase in naturally-cycling participants. However, the question remains as to whether cyclical changes in estradiol (E2), progesterone (P4), or both are responsible for HRV fluctuations. We present the first studies to use repeated measures of E2, P4, and HRV across the cycle to model both the unique and interactive effects of person-centered E2 and P4 on HRV in multilevel models.

Are we preparing future doctors to deal with emotionally challenging situations? Analysis of a medical curriculum.

Objective: Skilful communication by doctors is necessary for healthcare delivery during emotionally challenging situations. This study analyses a medical curriculum for the frequency and intensity of teaching content on communication in emotionally challenging situations.

Methods: A questionnaire with 31 questions ("EmotCog31") was used to evaluate teaching sessions at 17 departments of a medical school for one semester.

Cognitive and Affective Aspects of Creative Option Generation in Everyday Life Situations.

Which factors influence a human being's ability to develop new perspectives and be creative? This ability is pivotal for any context in which new cognitions are required, such as innovative endeavors in science and art, or psychotherapeutic settings. In this article, we seek to bring together two research programs investigating the generation of creative options: On the one hand, research on option generation in the decision-making literature and, on the other hand, cognitive and clinical creativity research. Previous decision-making research has largely neglected the topic of generating creative options.

Inhibition of histone methyltransferases SUV39H1 and G9a leads to neuroprotection in an in vitro model of cerebral ischemia.

Cerebral ischemia induces a complex transcriptional response with global changes in gene expression. It is essentially regulated by transcription factors as well as epigenetic players. While it is well known that the inhibition of transcriptionally repressive histone deacetylases leads to neuroprotection, the role of histone methyltransferases in the postischemic transcriptional response remains elusive.

Epigenetic mechanisms in cerebral ischemia.

Treatment efficacy for ischemic stroke represents a major challenge. Despite fundamental advances in the understanding of stroke etiology, therapeutic options to improve functional recovery remain limited. However, growing knowledge in the field of epigenetics has dramatically changed our understanding of gene regulation in the last few decades.

The cognitive and neural basis of option generation and subsequent choice.

Decision-making research has thoroughly investigated how people choose from a set of externally provided options. However, in ill-structured real-world environments, possible options for action are not defined by the situation but have to be generated by the agent. Here, we apply behavioral analysis (Study 1) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (Study 2) to investigate option generation and subsequent choice.

Weakness of will, akrasia, and the neuropsychiatry of decision making: an interdisciplinary perspective.

This article focuses on both daily forms of weakness of will as discussed in the philosophical debate (usually referred to as akrasia) and psychopathological phenomena as impairments of decision making. We argue that both descriptions of dysfunctional decision making can be organized within a common theoretical framework that divides the decision making process in three different stages: option generation, option selection, and action initiation. We first discuss our theoretical framework (building on existing models of decision-making stages), focusing on option generation as an aspect that has been neglected by previous models.