Cannabidiol Modulates Neuroinflammatory and Estrogen-Related Pathways in a Sex-Specific Manner in a Chronic Stress Model of Depression.

Evidence indicates a bidirectional link between depressive symptoms and neuroinflammation. This study evaluated chronic cannabidiol (CBD) treatment effects in male and female rats subjected to the unpredictable chronic mild stress (UCMS) model of depression. We analyzed the gene expression related to neuroinflammation, cannabinoid signaling, estrogen receptors, and specific microRNAs in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), CA1, and ventral subiculum (VS).

Long-term mindfulness meditation increases occurrence of sensory and attention brain states.

Interest has been growing in the use of mindfulness meditation (MM) as a therapeutic practice, as accumulating evidence highlights its potential to effectively address a range of mental conditions. While many fMRI studies focused on neural activation and functional connectivity during meditation, the impact of long-term MM practice on spontaneous brain activity, and on the expression of resting state networks over time, remains unclear. Here, intrinsic functional network dynamics were compared between experienced meditators and meditation-naïve participants during rest.

It's Hard to Prepare for Task Novelty: Cueing the Novelty of Upcoming Tasks Does Not Facilitate Task Performance.

Rapidly learning new tasks, such as using new technology or playing a new game, is ubiquitous in our daily lives. Previous studies suggest that our brain relies on different networks for rapid task learning versus retrieving known tasks from memory, and behavioral studies have shown that novel versus practiced tasks may rely on different task configuration processes. Here, we investigated whether explicitly informing about the novelty of an incoming task would help participants prepare for different task configuration processes, such as pre-adjusting working memory gating functions.

Default mode network functional connectivity as a transdiagnostic biomarker of cognitive function.

The default mode network (DMN) is intricately linked with processes such as self-referential thinking, episodic memory recall, goal-directed cognition, self-projection, and theory of mind. Over recent years, there has been a surge in examining its functional connectivity, particularly its relationship with frontoparietal networks (FPN) involved in top-down attention, executive function, and cognitive control. The fluidity in switching between these internal and external modes of processing-highlighted by anti-correlated functional connectivity-has been proposed as an indicator of cognitive health.

Cognitive Distortions and Decision-Making in Women Victims of Intimate Partner Violence: A Scoping Review.

Exposing women to intimate partner violence (IPV) poses a risk to their physical and mental health, necessitating that they leave the relationship. However, women face various obstacles in doing so, such as cognitive distortions that affect their interpretation of the reality of violence, trapping them and significantly influencing their decision to leave. This scoping review explores, synthesizes, and analyzes the available evidence on the relationship between cognitive distortions and decision-making among women involved in IPV.

Efficacy of the reGENER@r Program on Socio-Emotional Skills and Sexist Beliefs in Perpetrators of Gender-Based Violence: A Pilot Study in Spain.

Background: Gender-based violence (GBV) is one of the most pronounced expressions of the unequal power relations between women and men. As a tool for action against this phenomenon, psychological intervention programs for perpetrators of GVB are offered. This is how reGENER@r was born; it is a two-month program based on psychoeducational and cognitive-behavioral strategies that is part of the alternative measures to GBV-related prison sentences.

Meditation-Induced Self-Boundary Flexibility and Prosociality: A MEG and Behavioral Measures Study.

Background: In the last decade, empirical studies on the beneficial effects of meditation on prosocial capacities have accumulated, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Buddhist sources state that liberating oneself from a fixed view of the self by gaining access to its transitory and malleable nature leads to increased compassion and other prosocial traits. These, however, have not yet been empirically tested.

Buprenorphine and postpartum contraception utilization among people with opioid use disorder: a multi-state analysis.

Background: The postpartum period provides an opportunity for birthing people with opioid use disorder (OUD) to consider their future reproductive health goals. However, the relationship between the use of medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) and contraception utilization is not well understood. We used multistate administrative claims data to compare contraception utilization rates among postpartum people with OUD initiating buprenorphine (BUP) versus no medication (psychosocial services receipt without MOUD (PSY)) in the United States (US).

Temporal dynamics of activation and suppression in a spatial Stroop task: A distribution analysis on gaze and arrow targets.

Directional judgments of an arrow became slower when the direction and location were incongruent in a spatial Stroop task (i.e., a standard congruency effect).

Social Beliefs and Attitudes Involved in the Willingness to Intervene in Cases of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in a Spanish Sample.

Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) is a public health and social responsibility issue affecting women worldwide. The role of society is essential to help victims to get out of the violent relationship and reduce their risk of revictimization. In this regard, the social response to IPVAW depends to some extent on public beliefs and attitudes toward IPVAW.

Downstream effects of observational threat learning: Generalization and reversal learning across development.

Observational threat learning is a complex social learning process through which typical and atypical fears develop. While studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of observational learning for the acquisition and extinction of threat, the intricacies of this learning process and how it varies across development have been less explored. To this end, we examined the extent to which children, adolescents, and adults generalized threat responses following observational threat learning.

The Reporting of Race and Ethnicity in the Conduct Disorder Literature: A Time-Sensitive Review.

Background: Among presenting conditions in pediatric acute care settings, conduct disorder (CD) is a potentially stigmatizing yet common diagnosis in the setting of behavioral dysregulation requiring psychiatric admission. Concerns exist about over-diagnosis of CD in non-Hispanic Black children relative to White peers and the potential for the CD diagnosis to obfuscate manifestations of co-occurring psychiatric conditions.

Methods: We evaluated the number of manuscripts on CD diagnoses that report race and ethnicity and co-occurring mental health characteristics (i.

Effects of bottom-up and top-down attentional processes on change blindness for COVID-related stimuli: influence of heart rate variability.

Introduction: Top-down mechanisms that regulate attentional control are influenced by task demands and individuals' goals, while bottom-up processes are influenced by salient stimuli. Analogous networks are involved in both processes (e.g.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program for reducing anxiety and depression in hospital staff during a pandemic: A randomized controlled trial.

Hospital staff have experienced an increase in psychopathological symptoms such as anxiety or depression during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the aims of the present research were, firstly, to study the effectiveness of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program in reducing psychopathological symptoms in hospital staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as, its effectiveness in increasing mindfulness-related skills, self-compassion, body awareness, and reducing stress levels. This parallel randomized controlled trial consisted of 97 hospital workers who were divided into two groups: the experimental group (n = 54) and the control group (n = 44).

High-intensity physiological activation disrupts the neural signatures of conflict processing.

Physiological activation fluctuates throughout the day. Previous studies have shown that during periods of reduced activation, cognitive control remains resilient due to neural compensatory mechanisms. In this study, we investigate the effects of high physiological activation on both behavioural and neural markers of cognitive control.

The modulating effect of gestational age on attentional disengagement in toddlers.

Gestational Age (GA) at birth plays a crucial role in identifying potential vulnerabilities to long-term difficulties in cognitive and behavioral development. The present study aims to explore the influence of gestational age on the efficiency of early visual attention orienting, as a potential marker for the development of specific high-level socio-cognitive skills. We administered the Gap-Overlap task to measure the attentional orienting and disengagement performance of 16-month-olds born between the 34th and 41st weeks of gestation.

Hyperscanning: from inter-brain coupling to causality.

In hyperscanning studies, participants perform a joint task while their brain activation is simultaneously recorded. Evidence of inter-brain coupling is examined, in these studies, as a predictor of behavioral change. While the field of hyperscanning has made significant strides in unraveling the associations between inter-brain coupling and changes in social interactions, drawing causal conclusions between brain and behavior remains challenging.

FAAH Inhibition Reverses Depressive-like Behavior and Sex-Specific Neuroinflammatory Alterations Induced by Early Life Stress.

Early life stress (ELS) increases predisposition to major depressive disorder (MDD), with neuroinflammation playing a crucial role. This study investigated the long-term effects of the fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) inhibitor URB597 on ELS-induced depressive-like behavior and messenger RNA (mRNA) of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and CA1 regions. We also assessed whether these gene expression alterations were present at the onset of URB597 treatment during late adolescence.

Explicit and implicit timing across the adult lifespan.

The study of whether temporal processing in the millisecond-to-seconds range changes with age is an active and debated research field. Here, we adopted a lifespan approach in which younger to older participants performed both explicit and implicit timing tasks (time bisection and foreperiod tasks, respectively) in a single session. Three hundred seven participants (age range: 20-85 years) took part in the study.

An Overview of Neurophenomenological Approaches to Meditation and Their Relevance to Clinical Research.

There is a renewed interest in taking phenomenology seriously in consciousness research, contemporary psychiatry, and neurocomputation. The neurophenomenology research program, pioneered by Varela, rigorously examines subjective experience using first-person methodologies, inspired by phenomenology and contemplative practices. This review explores recent advancements in neurophenomenological approaches, particularly their application to meditation practices and potential clinical research translations.

The role of white matter variability in TMS neuromodulatory effects.

Background: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a widely used tool to explore the causal role of focal brain regions in cognitive processing. TMS effects over attentional processes are consistent and replicable, while at the same time subjected to individual variability. This individual variability needs to be understood to better comprehend TMS effects, and most importantly, its clinical applications.