A novel scoring protocol reveals age-related differences in abstract compared to concrete thinking in cued autobiographical remembering.

Human imagination has garnered growing interest in many fields. However, it remains unclear how to characterize different forms of imaginative thinking and how imagination differs between young and older adults. Here, we introduce a novel scoring protocol based on recent theoretical developments in the cognitive neuroscience of imagination to provide a broad tool with which to characterize imaginative thinking.

Differences and similarities between human hippocampal low-frequency oscillations during navigation and mental simulation.

Low frequency oscillations in the hippocampus emerge during by both spatial navigation and episodic memory function in humans. We have recently shown that in humans, memory-related processing is a stronger driver of low frequency oscillations than navigation. These findings and others support the idea that low-frequency oscillations are more strongly associated with a general memory function than with a specific role in spatial navigation.

Shape of the past: Revealing detail arcs while narrating memories of autobiographical life events across the lifespan.

Humans can remember past autobiographical events through extended narratives. How these narrated memories typically unfold, however, remains largely unexplored. We evaluated how autobiographical memory details typically come together in a sample of 235 healthy young, middle-aged, and older adults.

Empathic communication skills training to reduce lung cancer stigma: Study protocol of a cluster randomized control trial.

Background: Prior research demonstrates that nearly all (95 %) people with lung cancer (PwLC) report stigma, and approximately half (48 %) PwLC experience stigma during clinical encounters with oncology care providers (OCPs). When stigma is experienced in a medical context, it can have undesirable consequences including patients' delaying and underreporting of symptoms, misreporting of smoking behavior, and avoiding help-seeking such as psychosocial support and cessation counseling. Multi-level interventions are needed to prevent and mitigate lung cancer stigma.

Phishing vulnerability compounded by older age, apolipoprotein E e4 genotype, and lower cognition.

With technological advancements, financial exploitation tactics have expanded into the online realm. Older adults may be particularly susceptible to online scams due to age- and Alzheimer's disease-related changes in cognition. In this study, 182 adults ranging from 18 to 90 years underwent cognitive assessment, genotyping for apolipoprotein E e4 (APOE4), and completed the lab-based Short Phishing Email Suspicion Test (S-PEST) as well as the real-life PHishing Internet Task (PHIT).

Speaking Well and Feeling Good: Age-Related Differences in the Affective Language of Resting State Thought.

Unlabelled: Despite the prevalence and importance of resting state thought for daily functioning and psychological well-being, it remains unclear how such thoughts differ between young and older adults. Age-related differences in the affective tone of resting state thoughts, including the affective language used to describe them, could be a novel manifestation of the positivity effect, with implications for well-being. To examine this possibility, a total of 77 young adults ( = 24.

Alcohol Use Predicts Longer But More Fragmented Sleep: A Daily Diary Study of Alcohol, Sleep, and PTSD in Nurses.

Background: Due to the demanding nature of their profession, nurses are at risk of experiencing irregular sleep patterns, substance use, and fatigue. Evidence supports a reciprocal relationship between alcohol use and sleep disturbances; however, no research has examined such a link in a sample of nurses. One factor that may further impact the dynamic between alcohol and sleep patterns is posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.

The structure and development of explore-exploit decision making.

A critical component of human learning reflects the balance people must achieve between focusing on the utility of what they know versus openness to what they have yet to experience. How individuals decide whether to explore new options versus exploit known options has garnered growing interest in recent years. Yet, the component processes underlying decisions to explore and whether these processes change across development remain poorly understood.

Frontal-midline theta and posterior alpha oscillations index early processing of spatial representations during active navigation.

Previous research has demonstrated that humans combine multiple sources of spatial information such as self-motion and landmark cues while navigating through an environment. However, it is unclear whether this involves comparing multiple representations obtained from different sources during navigation (parallel hypothesis) or building a representation first based on self-motion cues and then combining with landmarks later (serial hypothesis). We tested these two hypotheses (parallel vs serial) in an active navigation task using wireless mobile scalp EEG recordings.

Inhibition of midfrontal theta with transcranial ultrasound explains greater approach versus withdrawal behavior in humans.

Recent reviews highlighted low-intensity transcranial focused ultrasound (TUS) as a promising new tool for non-invasive neuromodulation in basic and applied sciences. Our preregistered double-blind within-subjects study (N = 152) utilized TUS targeting the right prefrontal cortex, which, in earlier work, was found to positively enhance self-reported global mood, decrease negative states of self-reported emotional conflict (anxiety/worrying), and modulate related midfrontal functional magnetic resonance imaging activity in affect regulation brain networks. To further explore TUS effects on objective physiological and behavioral variables, we used a virtual T-maze task that has been established in prior studies to measure motivational conflicts regarding whether participants execute approach versus withdrawal behavior (with free-choice responses via continuous joystick movements) while allowing to record related electroencephalographic data such as midfrontal theta activity (MFT).

Memory-related processing is the primary driver of human hippocampal theta oscillations.

Decades of work in rodents suggest that movement is a powerful driver of hippocampal low-frequency "theta" oscillations. Puzzlingly, such movement-related theta increases in primates are less sustained and of lower frequency, leading to questions about their functional relevance. Verbal memory encoding and retrieval lead to robust increases in low-frequency oscillations in humans, and one possibility is that memory might be a stronger driver of hippocampal theta oscillations in humans than navigation.

Frontal-midline theta and posterior alpha oscillations index early processing of spatial representations during active navigation.

Previous research has demonstrated that humans combine multiple sources of spatial information such as self-motion and landmark cues, while navigating through an environment. However, it is unclear whether this involves comparing multiple representations obtained from different sources during navigation (parallel hypothesis) or building a representation first based on self-motion cues and then combining with landmarks later (serial hypothesis). We tested these two hypotheses (parallel vs.

Dreams share phenomenological similarities with task-unrelated thoughts and relate to variation in trait rumination and COVID-19 concern.

While recent neurocognitive theories have proposed links between dreams and waking life, it remains unclear what kinds of waking thoughts are most similar in their phenomenological characteristics to those of dreams. To investigate this question and examine relevance of dreams to significant personal concerns and dispositional mental health traits, we employed ecological momentary assessment and trait questionnaires across 719 young adults who completed the study during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time marked by considerable societal concern. Across the group and at the level of individual differences, dreams showed the highest correspondence with task-unrelated thoughts.

Understanding the encoding of object locations in small-scale spaces during free exploration using eye tracking.

Navigation is instrumental to daily life and is often used to encode and locate objects, such as keys in one's house. Yet, little is known about how navigation works in more ecologically valid situations such as finding objects within a room. Specifically, it is not clear how vision vs.

Spatial navigation and memory: A review of the similarities and differences relevant to brain models and age.

Spatial navigation and memory are often seen as heavily intertwined at the cognitive and neural levels of analysis. We review models that hypothesize a central role for the medial temporal lobes, including the hippocampus, in both navigation and aspects of memory, particularly allocentric navigation and episodic memory. While these models have explanatory power in instances in which they overlap, they are limited in explaining functional and neuroanatomical differences.

Taking the cat-and-mouse game to the next level: different perspectives on the introduction of the German New Psychoactive Substances Act.

Background: To counteract the spread of new psychoactive substances (NPS) and to prevent the emergence of novel substances, specifically designed as a response to the legal control of individual substances, a new law was introduced in Germany in 2016: the New Psychoactive Substances Act (NpSG). The NpSG combines a generic approach with the waiver of criminal liability for the acquisition and possession of NPS for personal use, which is a novelty in German narcotics law. The present study aimed at exploring the impact of the introduction of the NpSG from three different perspectives-NPS users, staff of addiction care facilities, and members of law enforcement authorities-to better understand the dynamics surrounding such a change in legislation and to contribute to the body of international experience in dealing with NPS.

Daily reactivity to stress and sleep disturbances: unique risk factors for insomnia.

Study Objectives: To naturalistically measure sleep disturbances following stress exposure (i.e. sleep reactivity) and stress responses following sleep disturbances (i.

Implementing Psychological First Aid for Healthcare Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Feasibility Study of the ICARE Model.

Maintaining the resilience of healthcare workers (HCWs) during the protracted COVID-19 pandemic is critical as chronic stress is associated with burnout, inability to provide high-quality care, and decreased attentiveness to infection prevention protocols. Between May and July 2020, we implemented the ICARE model of psychological first aid (PFA) in a novel online (i.e.

Task-unrelated thought increases after consumption of COVID-19 and general news.

Task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) are frequent distractions from our everyday tasks, which can reduce productivity and safety during task performance. This necessitates the examination of factors that modulate TUT occurrence in daily life. One factor that has previously been implicated as a source of TUT is personally salient concerns.

The New ICD-11 Prolonged Grief Disorder Guidelines in Japan: Findings and Implications from Key Informant Interviews.

Prolonged grief disorder (PGD) is a new mental health disorder, recently introduced in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), World Health Organization Classification of Diseases (WHO). The new ICD-11 guidelines reflect an emerging wave of interest in the global applicability of mental disorders. However, the selection of diagnostic core features in different cultural contexts has yet to be determined.

Largely intact memory for spatial locations during navigation in an individual with dense amnesia.

Spatial navigation and event memory (termed episodic memory) are thought to be heavily intertwined, both in terms of their cognitive processes and underlying neural systems. Some theoretical models posit that both memory for places during navigation and episodic memory depend on highly overlapping brain systems. Here, we assessed this relationship by testing navigation in an individual with severe retrograde and anterograde amnesia; the amnesia stemmed from bilateral lesions in the medial temporal lobes from two separate strokes.

A Brief Online Implicit Bias Intervention for School Mental Health Clinicians.

Clinician bias has been identified as a potential contributor to persistent healthcare disparities across many medical specialties and service settings. Few studies have examined strategies to reduce clinician bias, especially in mental healthcare, despite decades of research evidencing service and outcome disparities in adult and pediatric populations. This manuscript describes an intervention development study and a pilot feasibility trial of the Virtual Implicit Bias Reduction and Neutralization Training (VIBRANT) for mental health clinicians in schools-where most youth in the U.

Autobiographical memory unknown: Pervasive autobiographical memory loss encompassing personality trait knowledge in an individual with medial temporal lobe amnesia.

Autobiographical memory consists of distinct memory types varying from highly abstract to episodic. Self trait knowledge, which is considered one of the more abstract types of autobiographical memory, is thought to rely on regions of the autobiographical memory neural network implicated in schema representation, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and critically, not the medial temporal lobes. The current case study introduces an individual who experienced bilateral posterior cerebral artery strokes resulting in extensive medial temporal lobe damage with sparing of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

Social acquisition context matters: Increased neural responses for native but not nonnative taboo words.

This study examined whether the context of acquisition of a word influences its visual recognition and subsequent processing. We utilized taboo words, whose meanings are typically acquired socially, to ensure that differences in processing were based on learned social taboo, rather than proficiency. American English-speaking participants made word/non-word decisions on American taboo (native dialect), British taboo (non-native dialect), positive, neutral, and pseudo- words while EEG was recorded.