Effects of facial biofeedback on hypomimia, emotion recognition, and affect in Parkinson's disease.

Objectives: Facial expressions are a core component of emotions and nonverbal social communication. Therefore, hypomimia as secondary symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD) has adverse effects like social impairment, stigmatization, under-diagnosis and under-treatment of depression, and a generally lower quality of life. Beside unspecific dopaminergic treatment, specific treatment options for hypomimia in PD are rarely investigated.

Looking fear in the eye: Gamified virtual reality exposure towards spiders for children using attention based feedback.

Many children around the globe suffer from spider phobia. Virtual reality exposure therapy is an effective phobia treatment, but so far predominantly tailored for adults. A gamified approach utilizing gaze interaction would allow for a more child-friendly and engaging experience, and provide the possibility to foster working mechanisms of exposure therapy.

Fear, psychophysiological arousal, and cognitions during a virtual social skills training in social anxiety disorder while manipulating gaze duration.

The use of virtual reality (VR) is an option for social skills training and exposure in Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). In addition, virtual social situations are an ideal tool to study the influence of a counterpart's social behavior, e. g.

Individual changes in stress, depression, anxiety, pathological worry, posttraumatic stress, and health anxiety from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic in adults from Southeastern Germany.

Background: Many studies have previously compared the prevalence or sample means of distress and mental health problems from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic, while results on changes at the individual-level, and regarding multiple outcome measures are demanded.

Methods: This online study investigated individual changes in stress and mental health from before the COVID-19 pandemic to the first lockdown in adults from Southeastern Germany. This region was selected as it was where SARS-CoV-2 was first documented in Germany, and also due to the implementation of strict stay-at-home orders and social contact prohibitions.

Look at the Audience? A Randomized Controlled Study of Shifting Attention From Self-Focus to Nonsocial vs. Social External Stimuli During Virtual Reality Exposure to Public Speaking in Social Anxiety.

Enhanced self-focused attention plays a central role in the maintenance and treatment of Social Anxiety and is targeted in contemporary cognitive behavioral therapy. Actual developments use Virtual Reality (VR) for behavioral training. However, no VR attention training combining exposure to public speaking with shifting attention from self-focus to external focus has been investigated, and no experimental evidence exists on different kinds of external cues as targets of attention.

Widespread Recommendations Can Change Our Habits of Hand-Washing and Physical Distance During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background: Habits and behaviors in everyday life currently need to be modified as quickly as possible due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Two of the most effective tools to prevent infection seem to be regular and thorough hand-washing and physical distancing during interpersonal interactions.

Method: Two hundred and eighty-four participants completed a short survey to investigate how previous habits regarding hand-washing and physical distancing have changed in the general population as a function of the current pandemic and the thereby increased information and constant recommendations regarding these behaviors.

Dissociation of endocrine responses to the Trier Social Stress Test in Virtual Reality (VR-TSST) by the benzodiazepine alprazolam and the translocator protein 18 kDa (TSPO) ligand etifoxine.

Background: Activity of the two major stress systems, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary (SAM) axis, has already been shown to be modulated by different compounds that bind to the central benzodiazepine receptor. Less is known about ligands that modulate the peripheral benzodiazepine receptor - meanwhile known as the translocator protein 18 kDa (TSPO) - which constitute promising candidates in the search of novel anxiolytics. To close this gap, the present study compared the effects of the benzodiazepine alprazolam and the TSPO ligand etifoxine on responses of the HPA and SAM axes to the Trier Social Stress Test, a standardized paradigm to induce acute psychosocial stress in humans, performed in Virtual Reality (VR-TSST).

Linking Personality Traits to Individual Differences in Affective Spaces.

Different individuals respond differently to emotional stimuli in their environment. Therefore, to understand how emotions are represented mentally will ultimately require investigations into individual-level information. Here we tasked participants with freely arranging emotionally charged images on a computer screen according to their subjective emotional similarity (yielding a unique affective space for each participant) and subsequently sought external validity of the layout of the individuals' affective spaces through the five-factor personality model (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness) assessed via the NEO Five-Factor Inventory.

Inferiority or Even Superiority of Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy in Phobias?-A Systematic Review and Quantitative Meta-Analysis on Randomized Controlled Trials Specifically Comparing the Efficacy of Virtual Reality Exposure to Gold Standard Exposure in Agoraphobia, Specific Phobia, and Social Phobia.

Convincing evidence on Virtual Reality (VR) exposure for phobic anxiety disorders has been reported, however, the benchmark and golden standard for phobia treatment is exposure. For direct treatment comparisons, the control of confounding variables is essential. Therefore, the comparison of VR and exposure in studies applying an equivalent amount of exposure in both treatments is necessary.