User-avatar bond as diagnostic indicator for gaming disorder: A word on the side of caution.

In their study, Stavropoulos et al. (2023) capitalized on supervised machine learning and a longitudinal design and reported that the User-Avatar Bond could be accurately employed to detect Gaming Disorder (GD) risk in a community sample of gamers. The authors suggested that the User-Avatar Bond is a "digital phenotype" that could be used as a diagnostic indicator for GD risk.

How much gaming is too much? An analysis based on psychological distress.

Background: While there are calls to restrict the time spent on gaming because it is seen as problematic and potentially leading to gaming disorder (GD), there is conflicting evidence about this issue. We explored the association between the average weekly time spent gaming and reported GD symptoms. Additionally, Latent Profile Analysis was employed to investigate how time spent gaming relates to variables representing psychological distress (PD), such as satisfaction with life, symptoms of depression, and perceived stress.

Psychedelic-assisted therapy for people with gambling disorder?

Gambling disorder is a severe mental health and behavioural problem with harmful consequences, including financial, relationship and mental health problems. The present paper initiates discussion on the use of psychedelics combined with psychotherapeutic support as a potential treatment option for people living with a gambling disorder. Recent studies have shown promising results using psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) to treat anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and various substance use disorders.

Red box, green box: A self-report behavioral frequency measurement approach for behavioral addictions research.

Behavior frequency measures in behavioral addictions research fail to account for how engagement in the activity relates to each respondent's personal circumstances. We propose a "Red Box, Green Box" method, an alternative to conventional self-report behavior questions. Participants report two distinct time-based values: (1) Green box: time spent engaged in the activity during 'free' time, and (2) Red box: engagement in the activity at times when the respondent should be doing something else (e.

Thinking beyond cut-off scores in the assessment of potentially addictive behaviors: A brief illustration in the context of binge-watching.

While applying a diagnostic approach (i.e., comparing "clinical" cases with "healthy" controls) is part of our methodological habits as researchers and clinicians, this approach has been particularly criticized in the behavioral addictions research field, in which a lot of studies are conducted on "emerging" conditions.

Safer esports for players, spectators, and bettors: Issues, challenges, and policy recommendations.

The present paper provides an overview of the possible risks, harms, and challenges that might arise with the development of the esports field and pose a threat to professional esports players, spectators, bettors and videogame players, including underage players. These include physical and mental health issues, gambling and gambling-like elements associated with videogames and esports, the challenges arising from pursuing a career in esports, the unique difficulties women face, and a need for supporting professional esports players. It briefly discusses possible responses and suggestions regarding how to address and mitigate these negative consequences.

The concept of recovery in gaming disorder: A scoping review.

Background: Recovery from mental health and behavioral disorders is classically defined as a reduction in symptoms. More recent definitions see it as a process in which individuals improve their health, wellness and other life domains. The inclusion of gaming disorder (GD) in the 11th International Classification of Diseases in 2019 prompted growing interest in GD.

Internet-based interventions for behavioral addictions: A systematic review.

Background And Aims: Behavioral addictions are a public health problem that causes harm to both individuals and society. Internet-based interventions offer potential benefits over face-to-face therapy for the treatment of behavioral addictions, including their accessibility, perceived anonymity, and low costs. We systematically reviewed the characteristics and effectiveness of these interventions.

A comprehensive model to understand and assess the motivational background of video game use: The Gaming Motivation Inventory (GMI).

Background And Aims: The popularity of video gaming has generated significant interest in research methods to examine motivations for gaming. Current measures of gaming motives are limited by lack of scope and/or their applicability to specific game genres only. We aimed to create a comprehensive motivation inventory applicable to any gaming genre and to evaluate its psychometric properties in a large sample of highly engaged video gamers.

Treatment outcomes of a CBT-based group intervention for adolescents with Internet use disorders.

Background And Aims: Instances of Internet use disorders (IUD) including Internet gaming disorder (IGD) and non-gaming pathological Internet use (ng-PIU) have the extent that they are now a growing mental health issue. Individuals suffering from IUD show a large range of symptoms, high comorbidities and impairments in different areas of life. To date there is a lack of efficient and evidence-based treatment programs for such adolescents.

A pilot study of mindfulness-based relapse prevention for compulsive sexual behaviour disorder.

Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (CSBD) is a medical condition that can impair social and occupational functioning and lead to severe distress. To date, treatment effectiveness studies of CSBD are under-developed; typically, treatment for CSBD is based on guidelines for substance or other behavioural addictions. Mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP) is an evidence-based treatment for substance addiction aimed at, among other things, reducing craving and negative affect-i.

Attentional bias and disengagement as a function of Body Mass Index in conditions that differ in anticipated reward.

Background And Aims: Previous studies suggest that attentional bias and disengagement may vary as a function of Body Mass Index (BMI), most notably in a palatable food related context. Though this could indeed represent a food context specific effect, it could also represent a general reward related context effect. In addition, though mindfulness and stress have both been reported to affect attention, it is not yet clear whether these moderate the relationship between BMI and attention as a function of reward context.

Mental health of people detained within the justice system in Africa: systematic review and meta-analysis.

Worldwide, people with mental disorders are detained within the justice system at higher rates than the general population and often suffer human rights abuses. This review sought to understand the state of knowledge on the mental health of people detained in the justice system in Africa, including epidemiology, conditions of detention, and interventions. We included all primary research studies examining mental disorders or mental health policy related to detention within the justice system in Africa.

Balance Training in Virtual Reality Promotes Performance Improvement but Not Transfer to Postural Control in People with Chronic Stroke.

In people with chronic stroke, we investigated the transfer of gains obtained after balance training with virtual reality (VR) to an untrained task with similar balance demands. This study included 29 people with chronic stroke randomized into two groups: experimental (EG,  = 16) and control (CG,  = 13). The EG performed three sessions of balance training with VR using a platform-based videogame (Nintendo Wii Fit system™) for 1 week.

First use of whole-genome sequencing to investigate a cluster of Yersinia enterocolitica, Liverpool, United Kingdom, 2017.

Purpose: In May 2017 we were notified of a cluster of Yersinia enterocolitica-positive isolates from Liverpool. The purpose of this work was to investigate this cluster of cases and find a possible common source. We combined epidemiological information with whole-genome sequencing (WGS) results, which indicated that these cases were unlikely to be from the same source.

The details of past actions on a smartphone touchscreen are reflected by intrinsic sensorimotor dynamics.

Unconstrained day-to-day activities are difficult to quantify and how the corresponding movements shape the brain remain unclear. Here, we recorded all touchscreen smartphone interactions at a sub-second precision and show that the unconstrained day-to-day behavior captured on the phone reflects in the simple sensorimotor computations measured in the laboratory. The behavioral diversity on the phone, the speed of interactions, the amount of social & non-social interactions, all uniquely influenced the trial-to-trial motor variability used to measure the amount of intrinsic neuronal noise.

Consumption of preserved egg, a high-lead-containing food, is strongly associated with depressive symptoms in Chinese adults.

Previous studies have demonstrated adverse mental health effects of Pb exposure. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between consumption of preserved egg (PE), a high-Pb-containing food and depressive symptoms among adults in China. A sample of 25 213 adults (mean age 41·4 (sd 11·8) years; males, 53·9 %) in Tianjin, China, was studied in a cross-sectional analysis.

Modality-Dependent or Modality-Independent Processing in Mental Arithmetic: Evidence From Unimpaired Auditory Multiplication for a Patient With Left Frontotemporal Stroke.

Objectives: Mental arithmetic is essential to daily life. Researchers have explored the mechanisms that underlie mental arithmetic. Whether mental arithmetic fact retrieval is dependent on surface modality or knowledge format is still highly debated.

Medical and psychosocial determinants of risk of postpartum depression: a cross-sectional study.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the degree of risk of maternal postpartum depression during the second month of puerperium.

Method: In total, 387 postnatal women filled out a questionnaire concerning their health and social status, as well as the following tests: the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), the Neo Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) Personality Inventory and the Berlin Social Support Scales. After 4-8 weeks, patients responded to another questionnaire with the EPDS and the PHQ-9.

Systemic Corticosteroids and Transition to Delirium in Critically Ill Patients.

Objective: Corticosteroids are frequently used in critically ill patients. We investigated whether systemic corticosteroid use increases the probability of transitioning to delirium in a large population of mixed medical-surgical ICU patients.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Anticholinergic Medication Use and Transition to Delirium in Critically Ill Patients: A Prospective Cohort Study.

Objective: Although cholinergic deficiency is presumed to increase delirium risk and use of medication with anticholinergic properties in the ICU is frequent, the relationship between anticholinergic medication use and delirium in this setting remains unclear. We investigated whether exposure to medication with anticholinergic properties increases the probability of transitioning to delirium in critically ill adults and whether this relationship is affected by age or the presence of acute systemic inflammation.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Orexin receptors within the nucleus accumbens shell mediate the stress but not drug priming-induced reinstatement of morphine conditioned place preference.

Orexins are found to participate in mediating stress-induced drug relapse. However, the neuroanatomical basis that orexin transmission modulates stress-induced drug seeking remains unknown. The nucleus accumbens shell (NAcSh), best known for its role in appetitive and negative motivation via dopamine receptors, is likely to be the potential important brain area where the orexin system mediates stress-induced drug relapse since the function of dopamine system in the NAcSh can be regulated by orexin transmission.

Neural correlates of attentional bias in addiction.

A small but growing neuroimaging literature has begun to examine the neural mechanisms underlying the difficulty that substance-use dependent (SUD) groups have with ignoring salient, drug-related stimuli. Drug-related attentional bias appears to implicate the countermanding forces of cognitive control and reward salience. Basic cognitive neuroscience research suggests that ignoring emotionally evocative stimuli in our environment requires both up-regulation of control networks and down-regulation of processing in emotion and reward regions.