No description available.

No description available.

The autonomic flexibility model has proven to be a useful theoretical tool relating reductions in physiological variability found to accompany anxiety and concomitant reductions in behavioral (e.g., cognitive and emotional) flexibility. The present study aimed to extend the autonomic flexibility model through the inclusion of individual differences in the sensitivity of the independent motivational systems presumed to underlie anxiety and impulsivity, namely the behavioral inhibition and activation systems (BIS/BAS; Gray, 1994). Contrary to the predicted inverse relationship between BIS sensitivity and measures of physiological variability, findings suggest BAS sensitivity is associated with increased trait-like vagally mediated heart rate variability across diverse tasks as well as greater flexibility in responding within tasks. Numerous BIS*BAS interactions emerged as significant predictors of trait reactivity. Results are discussed in terms of the interface between (1) mesolimbic dopaminergic projections to the nucleus accumbens and (2) the network of central nervous system structures believed to play a large role in controlling peripheral physiology. / Ph. D.

The neurovisceral integration model (NVM) proposes that an organisms ability to flexibly adapt to their environment is related to biological flexibility within the central autonomic network. One important aspect of this flexibility is behavioral inhibition (Thayer and Friedman, 2002). During a behavioral inhibition task, the central autonomic network (CAN), which is comprised of a series of feedback loops, must be able to integrate information and react to these inputs flexibly to facilitate optimal performance. The functioning of the CAN is shown to be associated with respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), as the vagus nerve is part of this feedback system. While the NVM has been examined through neural imaging and RSA, only a few studies have examined these measures simultaneously during the neuroimaging procedure. Furthermore, these studies were done at rest or used tasks that were not targeted at processes associated with the NVM, such as behavior inhibition and cognitive flexibility. For this reason, the present study assessed RSA and neural activation in the prefrontal cortex simultaneously while subjects completed a behavior inhibition task. Using a series of go/no-go tasks, RSA and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) were collected to investigate the relationship between prefrontal activation and vagal activity at rest and during behavioral inhibition. There are three primary aims of this study. First, examine prefrontal activation during various inhibition tasks through fNIRS. Second, evaluate the NVM during a cognitive task using simultaneous fNIRS and RSA analysis. Third, relate task performance, imaging, and RSA measures during behavioral inhibition to deficits in flexible everyday responding, as indicated by self-report measures of behavior. Doing so will elucidate the connection with prefrontal activation and RSA as proposed by the NVM model and determine whether neural and RSA metrics can be related to broader symptoms of inflexibility. / PHD / The neurovisceral integration model (NVM) proposes that the ability to adapt to the environment is related to biological flexibility within the brain. One important aspect of the ability to adapt to the environment is behavior inhibition (e.g., the ability to stop from engaging in a habitual response, Thayer & Friedman, 2002). During a behavior inhibition task, the brain must be able to integrate information and react to these inputs flexibly to facilitate optimal performance. The brain’s ability to do this is related to a measure of heart activity known as respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). The present study assessed RSA and brain activity while subjects completed a behavior inhibition task. Neural activation was measured through functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). fNIRS measures the amount of oxygenated blood in different areas of the brain. Greater concentrations of oxygenated blood indicated greater brain activity in an area. Through simultaneous fNIRS and RSA measurement the present study examined their relationship during various inhibition tasks. Doing so clarified the connection between brain activation and RSA as proposed by the NVM model.

Hintergrund. In klinischen und epidemiologischen Untersuchungen wurden retrospektiv Assoziationen zwischen Angst- und Alkoholstörungen bestätigt. Bei Personen, die von beiden Störungen betroffen waren, fand man restrospektiv meist einen früheren Beginn der Angststörungen im Vergleich zu den Alkoholstörungen, was kausal im Sinne der Selbstmedikationshypothese interpretiert wurde. Diese konnte bisher nicht eindeutig bestätigt werden. Zur Aufklärung notwendige prospektive Untersuchungen, die Angststörungen auf diagnostischer Ebene erfassen, zwischen verschiedenen Angststörungen unterscheiden und sich auf Jugendliche beziehen, fehlen bisher. Fragestellung. Die Bedeutung von Angststörungen für die Entwicklung von erhöhtem Alkoholkonsum und Alkoholstörungen bei Jugendlichen und jungen Erwachsenen. Methodik. Die Analysen basieren auf den Daten der prospektiv-longitudinalen EDSP-Studie (Follow-Up: insg. 4 Jahre) mit einer epidemiologischen, repräsentativen Stichprobe von 3021 Personen im Alter zwischen 14 und 24 Jahre zu T0 aus München und Umland. Zur Erhebung von DSM-IV-Diagnosen wurde das M-CIDI verwendet. Ergebnisse. Primäre Panikstörungen, Panikattacken und Soziale Phobie erwiesen sich prospektiv als spezifische Prädiktoren für Beginn und Aufrechterhaltung von Alkoholproblemen. Umgekehrt waren Alkoholprobleme mit einem erhöhten Risiko für den Beginn von Sozialer Phobie und GAS assoziiert. Bezüglich DSM-IV Diagnosekriterien fanden sich phobische Ängste sowie Episoden intensiver Angst als Risikofaktoren für den Beginn von Alkoholproblemen. Vermeidungsverhalten war mit einem verminderten Risiko für nachfolgende Alkoholprobleme verbunden. Schlussfolgerungen. Maßnahmen zur Prävention von Alkoholproblemen können sich zielgruppenorientiert an Jugendliche mit Sozialer Phobie und Paniksymptomatik richten. Bei Patienten, die sich wegen Alkoholproblemen in Behandlung begeben, ist eine umfassende Diagnostik zur Identifikation zusätzlicher Angststörungen ratsam. / Background. Many clinical and epidemiological studies have documented significant cross-sectional comorbidities between anxiety disorders and alcohol use disorders. Analysis of retrospective age-of-onset reports suggests that the anxiety disorders often start earlier than the alcohol disorders. These data have often been interpreted in terms of a self-medication-model implying a causal mechanism. Overall, in former studies this model couldn't definitely be proofed. Prospective studies that follow a sample of adolescents into adulthood assessing different anxiety disorders on an diagnostic level are needed to confirm these associations. Methods. Baseline and four-year-follow-up data from the EDSP-Study, a prospective community survey of 3021 (2548 at follow-up) adolescents and young adults aged 14 to 24 years at baseline carried out in Munich, were used. DSM-IV anxiety disorders, alcohol use and alcohol use disorders were assessed with the M-CIDI. Results. While in retrospective analyses strong associations between nearly all anxiety disorders and alcohol problems, especially harmful use and dependence, were found, prospective analyses showed that only primary panic disorder, panic attack and social phobia are specific predictors of subsequent onset and persistence of alcohol problems. Contrary, primary alcohol problems were related to subsequent onset of social phobia and GAD. Considering the different DSM-IV-criteria, phobic anxiety as well as episodes of intensive anxiety were found to be risk factors for the following onset of alcohol problems. Avoidance behavior was associated with a lower risk for subsequent alcohol problems. Conclusions. Alcohol prevention programs could be directed to target groups with social phobia and panic. Patients with alcohol problems should carefully be screened for comorbid anxiety disorders. In order to prevent relapses the treating of social phobia and panic should be part of the therapy with comorbid alcohol patients.

The purpose of this study was to examine behavioral inhibition system and behavioral activation system (BIS/BAS) motives and loneliness as predictors of eating disturbances (viz., drive for thinness, bulimic symptoms, & body dissatisfaction) in female college students. Three hundred and one female college students (ages ranging from 18–33 years) completed measures assessing for BIS/BAS motives, loneliness, and eating disturbances. Results of conducting regression analyses indicated that BIS/BAS motives, especially BIS motives, accounted for significant amounts of variance across all three eating disturbance outcomes examined (R2 range = .10 to .13). Moreover, the inclusion of loneliness as a predictor of eating disturbances was found to account for additional unique amounts of variance (ΔR2 range = .02 to .06), over what was accounted for by BIS/BAS motives. These findings indicate that in addition to the potential role of biologically linked variables like BIS/BAS motives, it is important to also consider the contributions of important psychosocial variables like loneliness for understanding eating disturbances among female college students.

The response inhibition ability is part of executive functions, which may be defined as a set of higher cognitive processes particularly located in the frontal-subcortical circuits. Since the main obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms seem to be relevant to the inability of inhibiting certain stimuli, it can be assumed that response inhibition in these patients will be disrupted. Studies related to this topic have brought inconsistent results. Our research dealing with OCD patients has focused on two dimensions of the response inhibition - the behavioral inhibition, which generally includes the behavior control (for instance impulse control), and the cognitive interference, which is considered to be the cognitive component of inhibition process and is mostly associated with the control of internal cognitive processes. The first part of our research included the verification of hypothesis, stating that the increased severity of obsession is associated with the degree of disrupted ability of cognitive interference, while the severity of compulsions correlates with the degree of disrupted performance in tests measuring behavioral inhibition. The second research objective was to clarify whether the inhibition response ability was different between patients when the predominance of symptoms was...

Syftet med denna avhandling var att undersöka på vilket sätt och i vilken utsträckning blyga personer skiljer sig från icke-blyga personer med avseende på deras attributionsmönster. Resultaten från 3 kvantitativa och 1 kvalitativ studie visar en något annorlunda bild av hur blyghet relaterar till social kognition jämfört med tidigare forskning i området. Följande 4 huvudsakliga slutsatser drogs. (1) Blyga personer har inte nödvändigtvis en snedvriden social kognition eftersom de uppvisade en mindre aktörs–observatörsskillnad jämfört med icke-blyga personer. (2) Det är sannolikt att blyga och självfokuserade personer bedömer sina emotionella reaktioner som orsakade av stabila interna orsaker snarare än mindre stabila interna och externa orsaker. Om blyga personer är mindre självfokuserade så tenderar dessa personer ändå att uppvisa detta attributionsmönster. (3) Blyghet snarare än beteendemässig inhibition har betydelse för vilka orsaker som tillskrivs emotionella reaktioner medan blyghet och beteendemässig inhibition interagerar när det gäller i vilken grad fritt valda orsaker upplevs vara orsakade av interna respektive externa faktorer. En slutsats av dessa resultat är att fortsatt forskning bör fokusera hur människor i sin vardag förklarar sina egna och andra människors beteenden och reaktioner. (4) Mycket blyga personer kan uppleva identitetsförvirring samt kan ha en ambivalent önskan om att vara blyg samtidigt som blygheten försvinner. Trots att dessa resultat pekar på ganska allvarliga konsekvenser av att vara blyg så verkar blyghet generellt betraktas i ett ganska positivt ljus. / The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how and to what degree shy individuals differ from non-shy individuals regarding their attributional patterns. The results from 3 quantitative and 1 qualitative study paint a somewhat different picture of how shyness is associated with social cognition compared to previous research in the field. The following 4 main conclusions were drawn. (1) Being shy does not necessarily imply distorted social cognitions since shy people exhibited less of a self–other difference compared to non-shy people. (2) Being self-focused and shy means that emotional reactions are likely to be perceived as caused by stable internal causes rather than less stable internal and external causes. If shy people are self-focused to a lesser extent there is still a tendency for these individuals to exhibit this attributional pattern. (3) Shyness is more important than behavioral inhibition in determining ascriptions of causes to emotional reactions, whereas shyness and behavioral inhibition interact in determining people’s perceptions of the degree to which freely chosen causes are caused by internal and external factors, respectively. One conclusion of these findings is that future research needs to focus on how people in everyday life really explain their own and other people’s behaviors and reactions. (4) Very shy people can experience identity confusion as well as a conflicting wish to stay shy and to overcome shyness at the same time. Even though these results imply quite severe consequences of being shy, in general shyness seems to be viewed in quite a positive light.

No description available.

區辨性增強低頻反應作業 (differential reinforcement of low-rate responding task, DRL task) 為一與時間相關聯之操作式制約行為作業，該作業常用於計時行為、行為抑制功能、或抗焦慮與抗憂鬱症等藥物之行為藥理研究的探討。雖然DRL作業是一種實驗室常用的動物行為模式，但是對於上述行為或藥理機制的探討往往缺乏一致性的解釋，其中可能的原因為DRL作業的行為同時包含了計時與行為抑制的成份。針對上述問題，本研究將以DRL行為作業為研究主題，探討作業習得歷程之神經機制。首先根據DRL作業之行為內涵，將作業的習得分為行為抑制與計時先後表現的兩個階段；並依據過去的研究文獻整理出的八個與行為抑制和計時表現相關之大腦區塊，以c-Fos免疫組織化學染色法探討行為抑制和計時的神經機制。實驗結果發現受試於行為抑制的表現階段，其眶眼皮質、內側前額葉皮質、與海馬CA1區域的c-Fos表現量較高；而在計時行為的表現階段，除了和行為抑制有關的三個大腦區塊外，尚有前扣帶迴、紋狀體、與齒狀迴呈現c-Fos表現量增加的現象。綜合以上結果，DRL-10秒作業於學習初期所進行的行為抑制可能和前額葉皮質與海馬體的神經互動有關；而學習較末階段的計時表現，則可能需要前額葉皮質、紋狀體、與海馬等三處較多的次級區域的組織加入，形成神經網路的方式支援之。 / Differential reinforcement of low-rate responding (DRL) task was an operant conditioned behavior based on temporal contingency. This task has been widely used to investigate the behavioral components of timing and behavioral inhibition, which is frequently used for pharmacological screening of anxiolytic and antidepressant drugs. Despite of being widely used as an animal behavioral model in the laboratory, but the performance of the DRL task was varied and inconsistent when the drug test conducted. One way to encounter this problematic issue is to differentiate the distinct behavioral components of DRL task and correlate the involved neural substrates, which was the theme investigated in the present study. This study first characterized the acquisition process of the DRL-10 sec task into behavioral inhibition and the timing stages, and then assessed the c-Fos levels by immunohistochemistry in the eight brain areas that potentially involved in behavioral inhibition and the timing processes. Regarding the stage of behavioral inhibition, significant increases in c-Fos-positive neurons were observed in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and the hippocampal CA1 area. At the stage of the timing being acquired, c-Fos immunohistochemical activity was highly expressed in the anterior cingulated cortex (ACC), OFC, mPFC, the dorsolateral striatum (dlS), the dentate gyrus (DG), and the hippocampal CA1 area. Together, these results showed that the functioning dual paths between the hippocampus CA1 and the prefrontal cortex (OFC and mPFC) are critically essential for developing the appropriate performance via behavioral inhibition in the early-stage of the DRL task and with three other areas (ACC, dlS, and DG) being recruited, an anatomical circuitry connecting prefrontal/striatal/hippocampal structures were involved in the acquisition of interval timing toward the later establishment of the DRL behavior.