Cardiac sympathetic activation and parasympathetic withdrawal during psychosocial stress exposure in 6‐month‐old infants
Infant autonomic reactivity to stress is a potential predictor of later life health complications, but research has not sufficiently examined sympathetic activity, controlled for effects of physical activity and respiration, or studied associations among autonomic adjustments, cardiac activity, and affect in infants. We studied 278 infants during the repeated Still-Face Paradigm, a standardized stressor, while monitoring cardiac activity (ECG) and respiratory pattern (respiratory inductance plethysmography). Video ratings of physical activity and affect were also performed. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and T-wave amplitude (TWA) served as noninvasive indicators of cardiac parasympathe…
Prospective study of nocebo effects related to symptoms of idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields (IEI-EMF).
The exact causes of Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance Attributed to Electromagnetic Fields (IEI-EMF, i.e., experience of somatic symptoms attributed to low-level electromagnetic fields) are still unknown. Psychological causation such as nocebo effects seem plausible. This study aimed to experimentally induce a nocebo effect for somatic symptom perception and examined whether it was reproducible after one week. We also examined whether these effects were associated with increased sympathetic activity and whether interoceptive accuracy (IAcc) moderated these relationships. Participants were recruited from the general population and instructed that electromagnetic exposure can enhance somat…
Integrated and diurnal indices of maternal pregnancy cortisol in relation to sex-specific parasympathetic responsivity to stress in infants.
Maternal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity may prenatally program sex-specific stress response pathways. We investigated associations between maternal cortisol during pregnancy and infant parasympathetic responsivity to stress among 204 mother-infant pairs. Cortisol indices included 3(rd) trimester hair cortisol, as well as diurnal slope and area under the curve, derived from saliva samples collected during pregnancy. Mother-infant dyads participated in the Repeated Still-Face Paradigm (SFP-R) at age 6 months. We calculated respiration-adjusted respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA(c)), an indicator of parasympathetic activation, from infant respiration and cardiac activity mea…
A cross‐cultural comparison of the roles of emotional intelligence, metacognition, and negative coping for health‐related quality of life in German versus Pakistani patients with chronic heart failure
Objectives Low emotional intelligence (EI) may predispose individuals to applying maladaptive coping strategies. This may maintain anxious worrying, which is highly prevalent in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) and may affect mental (MCS) and physical component summaries (PCS) of health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Design The current study is a cross-sectional and cross-cultural survey. Methods N = 200 outpatients with CHF were recruited at cardiology institutes in Germany and Pakistan and assessed with self-report questionnaires. Results Path analysis (χ2 (4) = 7.59, p = .11, GFI = .99) revealed that the expected associations between low EI and lower SF-36 MCS and PCS of HRQoL…
Does religiosity ameliorate the negative impact of obsessive-compulsive disorder on self-esteem?
ABSTRACTA core issue in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is the fear of losing control. Religion may help individuals with OCD to maintain their self-esteem despite the challenge of coping with the unpredictability of life. Data of N = 200 OCD outpatients were assessed via questionnaires at five government hospitals in Lahore, Pakistan. As predicted, high OCD significantly correlated with low self-esteem (r = −.20), and high religiosity was associated with high self-esteem (r = .18). Against the hypothesis, mediation analyses did not reveal an indirect effect of OCD on self-esteem via religiosity (b = −.02, p > .01), and OCD was associated with lowered religiosity (r = −.20). Sample char…