Search results for "Percept"
showing 10 items of 3839 documents
Neural correlates of an attentional bias to health-threatening stimuli in individuals with pathological health anxiety
2017
Background: An attentional bias to health-threat stimuli is assumed to represent the primary pathogenetic factor for the development and maintenance of pathological health anxiety (PHA; formerly termed “hypochondriasis”). However, little is known about the neural basis of this attentional bias in individuals with PHA.Methods: A group of patients with PHA, a group of depressed patients and a healthy control group completed an emotional Stroop task with health-threat (body symptom and illness) words and neutral control words while undergoing functional MRI.Results: We included 33 patients with PHA, 28 depressed patients and 31 controls in our analyses. As reflected in reaction times, patients…
Perceptual Pseudoneglect in Schizophrenia: Candidate Endophenotype and the Role of the Right Parietal Cortex
2013
Several contributions have reported an altered expression of pseudoneglect in psychiatric disorders, highlighting the existence of an anomalous brain lateralization in affected subjects. Surprisingly, no studies have yet investigated pseudoneglect in first-degree relatives (FdR) of psychiatric patients. We investigated performance on “paper and pencil” line bisection (LB) tasks in 68 schizophrenic patients (SCZ), 42 unaffected FdR, 41 unipolar depressive patients (UP), and 103 healthy subjects (HS). A subgroup of 20 SCZ and 16 HS underwent computerized LB and mental number line bisection (MNL) tasks requiring judgment of prebisected lines and numerical intervals. Moreover, we evaluated, in …
Visuospatial attention lateralization in volleyball players and in rowers.
2011
In the present study, differences in visuospatial attention lateralization were evaluated in athletes engaged in open- compared to closed-skill sports and sedentary nonathletes. 23 volleyball players (open skill; Italian national level and regional level), 10 rowers (closed skill, Italian national level), and 23 sedentary participants responded to a computerized line-length judgment task. Five lines, differing in the length of their right and left segments, were randomly presented; the respondent made a forced-choice decision about the respective length of the two segments. Volleyball players responded significantly faster; those at the higher competitive level were also more accurate, mak…
Are postural responses to backward and forward perturbations processed by different neural circuits?
2013
Item does not contain fulltext Startle pathways may contribute to rapid accomplishment of postural stability. Here we investigate the possible influence of a startling auditory stimulus (SAS) on postural responses. We formulated four specific questions: (1) can a concurrent SAS shorten the onset of automatic postural responses?; and if so (2) is this effect different for forward versus backward perturbations?; (3) does this effect depend on prior knowledge of the perturbation direction?; and (4) is this effect different for low- and high-magnitude perturbations? Balance was perturbed in 11 healthy participants by a movable platform that suddenly translated forward or backward. Each particip…
Effects of mat characteristics on plantar pressure patterns and perceived mat properties during landing in gymnastics.
2011
Shock absorption and stability during landings is provided by both, gymnast ability and mat properties. The aims of this study were to determine the influence of different mat constructions on their energy absorption and stability capabilities, and to analyse how these properties affect gymnast's plantar pressures as well as subjective mat perception during landing. Six mats were tested using a standard mechanical drop test. In addition, plantar pressures and subjective perception during landing were obtained from 15 expert gymnasts. The different mats influenced plantar pressures and gymnasts' subjective perception during landing of gymnasts. Significant correlations between plantar pressu…
Sociocognitive factors associated with nonadherence to medication after hospital discharge
2010
Poor adherence to prescribed medication is a well-known problem and continues to be a major challenge in all medical specialties. Unlike previous studies that have mainly focused on nonadherence behaviors in specific diseases, this study sought to examine socio-cognitive factors associated with nonadherence behavior in a sample of a general clinical population. A questionnaire investigating socio-demographic and cognitive factors and a telephone follow-up interview were administered to 84 patients recruited in a General Medicine Unit before their discharge. Half of the participants were informed about that follow-up procedure. One month after hospital discharge, 42% of uninformed patients r…
Zeroing in on the Effect of the Schizophrenia Label on Stigmatizing Attitudes: A Large-scale Study.
2017
The idea that psychiatric diagnoses are not mere descriptors of a symptomatology but create incrementally negative effects in patients has received considerable support in the literature. The flipside to this effect, that calling someone by a psychiatric diagnosis also has an effect on how this person is perceived by others, however, has been less well documented and remains disputed. An experimental study was conducted with a large sample (N = 2265) to ensure statistical power to detect even small effects of such adding a psychiatric diagnosis to a description of symptoms or not. Dependent variables were chosen in an exploratory manner and tests were corrected for alpha inflation. Results …
Expectations modulate long-term heat pain habituation.
2011
Habituation to pain was shown to be a complex mechanism involving the pain encoding regions and the antinociceptive system in the brain. Pain perception can be modulated by cognitive factors; however it is unclear whether cognitive factors also influence habituation to pain. We used an established experimental design with repetitive moderate painful heat stimulation over eight consecutive days. Thirty-seven healthy subjects were recruited and assigned to four different groups: The first group (n=10) was instructed that pain perception over time will habituate; the second group (n=9) that pain will increase; the third group (n=8) was instructed that pain will remain stable over the 8 days of…
Effects of in-play cooling during simulated tennis match play in the heat on performance, physiological and perceptual measures
2021
BACKGROUND: The aim of this crossover study was to investigate whether a cooling intervention during simulated tennis match play in the heat could affect players' performance, physiology, perception of effort, and well-being. METHODS: Eight competitive male tennis players performed two testing sessions of 45-minute simulated tennis match play on a hard court at 31.8±2.1°Cand 48.5±9.6% relative humidity. During change-of-end breaks, the cooling interventions (COL) consisted of cold-water ingestion (ad libitum) and an electric fan facing the players at a distance of 1 m combined with an ice-filled damp towel around the neck and on the thighs or no cooling (CON) were applied. Measures of perfo…
Increased cortisol and decreased right ear advantage (REA) in dichotic listening following a negative mood induction.
2005
This study aimed to evaluate neuroendocrine responses and changes in perceptual asymmetry following an induced negative affect. Cortisol increasing in response to negative affect has been reported, while current brain models of emotion processing link negative affect to the right hemisphere. In this study, the Velten Mood Induction Procedure was used to generate neutral or negative affect in 44 healthy subjects. The PANAS scales were used to assess self-reported mood. A consonant-vowel dichotic listening (DL) test was applied after the neutral and negative affect inductions, and levels of salivary cortisol were determined by radioimmunoassay. For the negative affect condition, and congruent…