The association between hair cortisol and burnout is moderated by age, psychosocial, and immunological markers.

Background: Exhaustion and depersonalization are the core symptoms of the occupational burnout. However, burnout is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon, but can occur in a milder to moderate form in otherwise healthy employees. In the last two decades hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) were increasingly related to the cumulative effect of psychosocial stress at work.

Auditory distraction, time perception, and the role of age: ERP evidence from a large cohort study.

Cognitive aging is typically associated with a higher susceptibility to distraction by concurrent, but task-irrelevant stimuli. Here, we studied the cognitive sub-processes involved in a sample of 484 healthy adults aged 20-70 years from the Dortmund Vital Study (Clinicaltrials.gov NCT05155397).

Resting-state EEG data before and after cognitive activity across the adult lifespan and a 5-year follow-up.

This dataset consists of 64-channels resting-state EEG recordings of 608 participants aged between 20 and 70 years, 61.8% female, as well as follow-up measurements after approximately 5 years of 208 participants, starting 2021. The EEG was measured for three minutes with eyes open and eyes closed before and after a 2-hour block of cognitive experimental tasks.

Phenotyping in clinical laterality research: a comparison of commonly used methods to determine mixed-handedness and ambidexterity.

An increased prevalence of mixed-handedness has been reported in several neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Unfortunately, there is high between-study variability in the definition of mixed-handedness, leading to a major methodological problem in clinical laterality research and endangering replicability and comparability of research findings. Adding to this challenge is the fact that sometimes researchers use the concepts of mixed-handedness and ambidexterity interchangeably.

Stress from early life to adulthood: Is there a protective role of cognitive control?

Early life events can have long-lasting effects that may impact the quality of life into adulthood. The link between childhood adversities and adult mental and physical health is well documented, however, the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Executive functions are assumed to be a key factor in successfully dealing with cognitive-emotional challenges thereby contributing to stress resilience and mental health across the lifespan.

Be prepared for interruptions: EEG correlates of anticipation when dealing with task interruptions and the role of aging.

Dealing with task interruptions requires the flexible use of working memory and attentional control mechanisms, which are prone to age-related changes. We investigated effects of age on dealing with task interruptions and potential advantages of anticipating an interruption using EEG and a retrospective cueing (retro-cue) paradigm. Thirty-two young (18-30 years) and 28 older (55-70 years) participants performed a visual working memory task, where they had to report the orientation of a target following a retro-cue.

Chronic Infection Modulates Hearing Ability across the Adult Life Span.

While several studies have shown associations between hearing disorders and congenital toxoplasmosis, the present study investigated the impact of chronic, latent () infection on hearing loss. We used a regression analysis to explore whether latent infection modulates changes in hearing thresholds over an age range from 20 to 70 years. We analyzed audiometric data of 162 IgG-positive and 430 -negative participants, collected in the Dortmund Vital Study (DVS, ClinicalTrials.

Comparing auditory distance perception in real and virtual environments and the role of the loudness cue: A study based on event-related potentials.

The perception of the distance to a sound source is relevant in many everyday situations, not only in real spaces, but also in virtual reality (VR) environments. Where real rooms often reach their limits, VR offers far-reaching possibilities to simulate a wide range of acoustic scenarios. However, in virtual room acoustics a plausible reproduction of distance-related cues can be challenging.

Blink-related EEG activity measures cognitive load during proactive and reactive driving.

Assessing drivers' cognitive load is crucial for driving safety in challenging situations. This research employed the occurrence of drivers' natural eye blinks as cues in continuously recorded EEG data to assess the cognitive workload while reactive or proactive driving. Twenty-eight participants performed either a lane-keeping task with varying levels of crosswind (reactive) or curve road (proactive).

Adult ADHD: it is old and new at the same time - what is it?

Even though the number of studies aiming to improve comprehension of ADHD pathology has increased in recent years, there still is an urgent need for more effective studies, particularly in understanding adult ADHD, both at preclinical and clinical levels, due to the increasing evidence that adult ADHD is highly distinct and a different entity from childhood ADHD. This review paper outlines the symptoms, diagnostics, and neurobiological mechanisms of ADHD, with emphasis on how adult ADHD could be different from childhood-onset. Data show a difference in the environmental, genetic, epigenetic, and brain structural changes, when combined, could greatly impact the behavioral presentations and the severity of ADHD in adults.

Effects of cognitive and stress management training in middle-aged and older industrial workers in different socioeconomic settings: a randomized controlled study.

Introduction: The demographic change requires longer working lifetime. However, fear of job loss may lead to chronic stress whereas aging and unchallenging work may accelerate cognitive decline and early retirement. Long-time repetitive work led to impairments of cognitive functions in middle-aged and older employees, as demonstrated in a previous study conducted in a large car manufacturer.

Cognitive Functions, Neurotransmitter Alterations, and Hippocampal Microstructural Changes in Mice Caused by Feeding on Western Diet.

Metabolic Dysfunction Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD) is the most common chronic liver disease in Western countries. It is becoming increasingly evident that peripheral organ-centered inflammatory diseases, including liver diseases, are linked with brain dysfunctions. Therefore, this study aims to unravel the effect of MASLD on brain histology, cognitive functions, and neurotransmitters.

Decoding Eye Blink and Related EEG Activity in Realistic Working Environments.

Accurately evaluating cognitive load during work-related tasks in complex real-world environments is challenging, leading researchers to investigate the use of eye blinking as a fundamental pacing mechanism for segmenting EEG data and understanding the neural mechanisms associated with cognitive workload. Yet, little is known about the temporal dynamics of eye blinks and related visual processing in relation to the representation of task-specific information. Therefore, we analyzed EEG responses from two experiments involving simulated driving (re-active and pro-active) with three levels of task load for each, as well as operating a steam engine (active vs.

Cognitive aging at work and in daily life-a narrative review on challenges due to age-related changes in central cognitive functions.

Demographic change is leading to an increasing proportion of older employees in the labor market. At the same time, work activities are becoming more and more complex and require a high degree of flexibility, adaptability, and cognitive performance. Cognitive control mechanism, which is subject to age-related changes and is important in numerous everyday and work activities, plays a special role.

Tracking drivers' minds: Continuous evaluation of mental load and cognitive processing in a realistic driving simulator scenario by means of the EEG.

Driving safety strongly depends on the driver's mental states and attention to the driving situation. Previous studies demonstrate a clear relationship between EEG measures and mental states, such as alertness and drowsiness, but often only map their mental state for a longer period of time. In this driving simulation study, we exploit the high temporal resolution of the EEG to capture fine-grained modulations in cognitive processes occurring before and after eye activity in the form of saccades, fixations, and eye blinks.

Does physical fitness affect cognitive functions differently across adulthood? An advantage of being older.

Introduction: There is a large interindividual variability in cognitive functioning with increasing age due to biological and lifestyle factors. One of the most important lifestyle factors is the level of physical fitness (PF). The link between PF and brain activity is widely accepted but the specificity of cognitive functions affected by physical fitness across the adult lifespan is less understood.

Stress exposure, hand preference, and hand skill: A deep phenotyping approach.

Stress exposure and reactivity may show differential associations with handedness, but shallow phenotyping may influence the current knowledge. Importantly, different handedness measures do not necessarily show high correlations with each other and should not be used interchangeably as they may reflect different dimensions of laterality. Here, data on handedness from 599 participants in the population-based, longitudinal Dortmund Vital Study was used to determine various asymmetry indices.

Cross-modal interactions at the audiovisual cocktail-party revealed by behavior, ERPs, and neural oscillations.

Theories of attention argue that objects are the units of attentional selection. In real-word environments such objects can contain visual and auditory features. To understand how mechanisms of selective attention operate in multisensory environments, in this pre-registered study, we created an audiovisual cocktail-party situation, in which two speakers (left and right of fixation) simultaneously articulated brief numerals.

Selective spatial attention in lateralized multi-talker speech perception: EEG correlates and the role of age.

Speech comprehension under dynamic cocktail party conditions requires auditory search for relevant speech content and focusing spatial attention on the target talker. Here, we investigated the development of these cognitive processes in a population of 329 participants aged 20-70 years. We used a multi-talker speech detection and perception task in which pairs of words (each consisting of a cue and a target word) were simultaneously presented from lateralized positions.

Chronic stress is associated with specific path integration deficits.

Repeated exposure to stress (chronic stress) can cause excess levels of circulating cortisol and has detrimental influences on various cognitive functions including long-term memory and navigation. However, it remains an open question whether chronic stress affects path integration, a navigational strategy that presumably relies on the functioning of grid cells in the medial entorhinal cortex. The entorhinal cortex is a brain region in the medial temporal lobe, which contains multiple cell types involved in spatial navigation (and episodic memory), and a high number of corticosteroid receptors, predisposing it as a potential target of cortisol effects.

Age-related changes in midfrontal theta activity during steering control: A driving simulator study.

Motor control, a ubiquitous part of driving, requires increased cognitive controlled processing in older adults relative to younger adults. However, the influence of aging on motor-related neural mechanisms in the context of driving has rarely been studied. The present study aimed to identify age-related changes in cognitive control and attention allocation during a simulated steering task, using electroencephalography.

The impact of physical fitness, social life, and cognitive functions on work ability in middle-aged and older adults.

Objective: Demographic changes encompass societies to maintain the work ability (WA) of aging workforces. The present study explored the relationship between modifiable lifestyle factors, cognitive functions, and their influence on WA, using a multi-group structural equation approach.

Method: Cross-sectional data from 247 middle-aged and 236 older employees from the Dortmund Vital Study were included in this analysis.

Calibrating a Comprehensive Immune Age Metric to Analyze the Cross Sectional Age-Related Decline in Cardiorespiratory Fitness.

Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is essential for sustained work ability in good health, but declines with aging, as does the functionality of the immune system, the latter process commonly referred to as immunosenescence. This study aimed to compare the capacity of immunosenescence biomarkers with chronological age for predicting low CRF in a cross-sectional sample recruited from the regional working population. CRF was determined by submaximal bicycle ergometer testing in a cross-sectional sample of 597 volunteers aged 20-70 years from the 'Dortmund Vital Study' (DVS, ClinicalTrials.