A randomized controlled trial investigating the effect of liraglutide on self-reported liking and neural responses to food stimuli in participants with obesity.

Background/objectives: Obesity is a complex condition and the mechanisms involved in weight gain and loss are not fully understood. Liraglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist, has been demonstrated to successfully promote weight loss in patients with obesity (OB). Yet, it is unclear whether the observed weight loss is driven by an alteration of food liking.

Healthcare experience affects pain-specific responses to others' suffering in the anterior insula.

Medical students and professional healthcare providers often underestimate patients' pain, together with decreased neural responses to pain information in the anterior insula (AI), a brain region implicated in self-pain processing and negative affect. However, the functional significance and specificity of these neural changes remains debated. Across two experiments, we recruited university medical students and emergency nurses to test the role of healthcare experience on the brain reactivity to other's pain, emotions, and beliefs, using both pictorial and verbal cues.

Relationship between reward-related brain activity and opportunities to sit.

The present study tested whether energy-minimizing behaviors evoke reward-related brain activity that promotes the repetition of these behaviors via reinforcement learning processes. Fifty-eight healthy young adults in a standing position performed a task where they could earn a reward either by sitting down or squatting while undergoing electroencephalographic (EEG) recording. Reward-prediction errors were quantified as the amplitude of the EEG-derived reward positivity.

Action-orientation shields against primed cognitive conflict effects on effort-related cardiac response.

This article presents a quasi-experiment (N = 79 university students) testing whether individual differences in action-state orientation moderate primed cognitive conflict's effects on sympathetically mediated cardiac response during task performance reflecting effort. Action control theory posits that action-oriented individuals are less receptive to distracting affective stimuli during goal pursuit than state-oriented individuals because action-orientation is related to higher volitional skills. Therefore, we expected that action-oriented individuals should be shielded against conflict primes' effect on effort-related responses in the cardiovascular system.

Decay rates of arboreal and terrestrial nests of Eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the Bugoma Central Forest Reserve, Uganda: Implications for population size estimates.

Chimpanzees were once thought to sleep primarily in the trees, but recent studies indicate that some populations also construct terrestrial night nests. This behavior has relevance not only to understanding the behavioral diversity of Pan troglodytes, but also to the conservation of the species, given that nest encounter rates are often used to estimate great ape population densities. A proper estimate of decay rates for ground nests is necessary for converting the encounter rate of nests to the density of weaned chimpanzees.

Anxiety, concerns and COVID-19: Cross-country perspectives from families and individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on the mental health and well-being of children with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) and of their families worldwide. However, there is insufficient evidence to understand how different factors (e.g.

Humans recognize affective cues in primate vocalizations: acoustic and phylogenetic perspectives.

Humans are adept at extracting affective information from vocalizations of humans and other animals. However, the extent to which human recognition of vocal affective cues of other species is due to cross-taxa similarities in acoustic parameters or the phylogenetic closeness between species is currently unclear. To address this, we first analyzed acoustic variation in 96 affective vocalizations, taken from agonistic and affiliative contexts, of humans and three other primates-rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), chimpanzees and bonobos (Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus).

The connections between personality, ideology and (counter-)empathic emotions depend on the target.

Objectives: Examine the group-specific connections between personality, ideology, and the moral emotions of empathy and schadenfreude.

Background: Empathy and schadenfreude are emotions that often lead to moral prosocial or spiteful harmful behaviors respectively. An outstanding question is what motivates feelings of empathy and schadenfreude towards people from different groups.

Reduction in sugar drink valuation and consumption with gamified executive control training.

The overvaluation of high-energy, palatable food cues contributes to unhealthy eating and being overweight. Reducing the valuation of unhealthy food may thus constitute a powerful lever to improve eating habits and conditions characterized by unhealthy eating. We conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized intervention trial assessing the efficacy of a five to twenty days online cognitive training intervention to reduce sugary drink perceived palatability and consumption.

The Effect of Meditation-Based Interventions on Patients with Fatigue Symptoms: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Persistent fatigue constitutes a prevalent and debilitating symptom in several diseases. The symptom is not effectively alleviated by pharmaceutical treatments, and meditation has been proposed as a non-pharmacological intervention. Indeed, meditation has been shown to reduce inflammatory/immune problems, pain, stress, anxiety and depression which are associated with pathological fatigue.

Can personal task choice shield against fear and anger prime effects on effort? A study on cardiac response.

This experiment tested whether personal task choice can shield against implicit affective influences on sympathetically mediated cardiovascular response, reflecting effort. Participants were N = 121 healthy university students who completed a moderately difficult memory task with integrated briefly flashed and masked fear vs. anger primes.

Threat learning in space: how stimulus-outcome spatial compatibility modulates conditioned skin conductance response.

A central question in Pavlovian conditioning concerns the critical conditions that drive the acquisition and maintenance of the stimulus-outcome association. The spatial relationship between the conditioned (CS) and unconditioned (US) stimuli is considered to exert strong effects on learning. However, how spatial information modulates Pavlovian learning remains mostly unexplored in humans.

Physical activity matters for everyone's health, but individuals with multimorbidity benefit more.

Multimorbidity, defined as the presence of two or more chronic conditions, is increasingly prevalent and is a major contributor to ill health in old age. Physical activity (PA) is a key protective factor for health and individuals with multimorbidity could particularly benefit from engaging in PA. However, direct evidence that PA has greater health benefits in people with multimorbidity is lacking.

Tackling childbirth-related intrusive memories with a single-session behavioural intervention involving a visuospatial task: protocol for a single-blind, waitlist-controlled randomised trial.

Introduction: Approximately 12.3% of mothers experience childbirth-related post-traumatic stress symptoms (CB-PTSS). However, evidence-based interventions to treat CB-PTSS are lacking.

Conspiracy believers claim to be free thinkers but (Under)Use advice like everyone else.

Conspiracy believers often claim to be critical thinkers their 'own research' instead of relying on others' testimony. In two preregistered behavioural studies conducted in the United Kingdom and Pakistan (N  = 864, N  = 5408), we test whether conspiracy believers have a general tendency to discount social information (in favour of their own opinions and intuitions). We found that conspiracy mentality is not associated with social information use in text-based (Study 1) and image-based (Study 2) advice-taking tasks.

Perceived Anxiety in Family Caregivers of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Down Syndrome and Williams Syndrome during the Lockdown of the First COVID-19 Wave in Spain.

The lockdown during the first wave of COV- ID-19 in Spain has been related to higher levels of anxiety in the general population. However, the emotional impact on Spanish caregivers of individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) has not been studied so far.

Physical activity mediates the effect of education on mental health trajectories in older age.

Objective: Why people with lower levels of educational attainment have poorer mental health than people with higher levels can partly be explained by financial circumstances. However, whether behavioral factors can further explain this association remains unclear. Here, we examined the extent to which physical activity mediates the effect of education on mental health trajectories in later life.

Cognitive exertion affects the appraisal of one's own and other people's pain.

Correctly evaluating others' pain is a crucial prosocial ability. In both clinical and private settings, caregivers assess their other people's pain, sometimes under the effect of poor sleep and high workload and fatigue. However, the effect played by such cognitive strain in the appraisal of others' pain remains unclear.

Emotional intelligence matters in hospitality education: contributions of emotional intelligence, fluid ability, and personality to hospitality grades.

Introduction: According to recent meta-analyses, emotional intelligence can significantly predict academic performance. In this research, we wanted to investigate a particular group of students for which emotional intelligence should be crucial. Namely, we examined whether emotional intelligence, conceptualized as an ability, uniquely contributes to academic performance in hospitality management education beyond fluid intelligence and personality.

Initial status and change in cognitive function mediate the association between academic education and physical activity in adults over 50 years of age.

Higher levels of academic education are associated with higher levels of physical activity throughout the lifespan. However, the mechanisms underlying this association are unclear. Cognitive functioning is a potential mediator of this association because higher levels of education are associated with better cognitive function, which is related to greater engagement in physical activity.

Look into my eyes: What can eye-based measures tell us about the relationship between physical activity and cognitive performance?

Background: There is a growing interest to understand the neurobiological mechanisms that drive the positive associations of physical activity and fitness with measures of cognitive performance. To better understand those mechanisms, several studies have employed eye-based measures (e.g.

Exposure to negative socio-emotional events induces sustained alteration of resting-state brain networks in older adults.

Basic emotional functions seem well preserved in older adults. However, their reactivity to and recovery from socially negative events remain poorly characterized. To address this, we designed a 'task-rest' paradigm in which 182 participants from two independent experiments underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while exposed to socio-emotional videos.