Respiratory psychophysiology and COVID-19: A research agenda.

After multiple waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become clear that the impact of SARS-CoV-2 will carry on for years to come. Acutely infected patients show a broad range of disease severity, depending on virus variant, vaccination status, age and the presence of underlying medical and physical conditions, including obesity. Additionally, a large number of patients who have been infected with the virus present with post-COVID syndrome. In September 2020, the International Society for the Advancement of Respiratory Psychophysiology organized a virtual interest meeting on 'Respiratory research in the age of COVID-19', which aimed to discuss how research in respiratory psychophysiology could contribute to a better understanding of psychophysiological interactions in COVID-19. In the resulting current paper, we propose an interdisciplinary research agenda discussing selected research questions on acute and long-term neurobiological, physiological and psychological outcomes and mechanisms related to respiration and the airways in COVID-19, as well as research questions on comorbidity and potential treatment options, such as physical rehabilitation.

Short-term Pulse Rate Variability to Assess Psychophysiological Changes during Online Trier Social Stress Test (TSST).

Mental stress and unpleasant emotions are significant issues at the moment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been spreading globally for more than a year. During the pandemic, every daily activity was oriented around utilizing an online platform to speak with one another within a company or regarding personal matters. However, how the psychophysiological state is perpetuated while engaging in online engagement is currently limited. Previous research has established a strong correlation between psychophysiological characteristics and diverse contexts. Four university students participated in this study. Each subject needed to follow four stages during an experimental design procedure called Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) namely R1, R2, R3, and R4. We retrieved the physiological and psychological data during the experiment. We observed that the mental and emotional changes that occur during the TSST procedure correlate with physiological features measured using short-term pulse rate variability in both linear and non-linear time series analysis. During an online interview, we discovered that the variation of peak-to-peak intervals was more remarkable in the post-interview session (R3) than during the baseline (R1), and pre-interview session (R2), particularly for the pSD2 parameter, which changed at a rate of 4.235 (0.017 to 0.089 seconds) on a subject. Additionally, we discovered a substantial correlation between negative emotions as measured by PANAS scores and stress level scales (r=0.81, p<0.01), indicating that stress and negative emotion have similar attributes. Our findings indicated that caution should be considered when utilizing online platforms for daily activities and employment, even in a new-normal life period.

Olfactory impairment in psychiatric disorders: Does nasal inflammation impact disease psychophysiology?

Olfactory impairments contribute to the psychopathology of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression. Recent neuroscience research has shed light on the previously underappreciated olfactory neural circuits involved in regulation of higher brain functions. Although environmental factors such as air pollutants and respiratory viral infections are known to contribute to the risk for psychiatric disorders, the role of nasal inflammation in neurobehavioral outcomes and disease pathophysiology remains poorly understood. Here, we will first provide an overview of published findings on the impact of nasal inflammation in the olfactory system. We will then summarize clinical studies on olfactory impairments in schizophrenia and depression, followed by preclinical evidence on the neurobehavioral outcomes produced by olfactory dysfunction. Lastly, we will discuss the potential impact of nasal inflammation on brain development and function, as well as how we can address the role of nasal inflammation in the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders. Considering the current outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), which often causes nasal inflammation and serious adverse effects for olfactory function that might result in long-lasting neuropsychiatric sequelae, this line of research is particularly critical to understanding of the potential significance of nasal inflammation in the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders.

Honeycomb: a template for reproducible psychophysiological tasks for clinic, laboratory, and home use.

OBJECTIVE: To improve the ability of psychiatry researchers to build, deploy, maintain, reproduce, and share their own psychophysiological tasks. Psychophysiological tasks are a useful tool for studying human behavior driven by mental processes such as cognitive control, reward evaluation, and learning. Neural mechanisms during behavioral tasks are often studied via simultaneous electrophysiological recordings. Popular online platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and Prolific enable deployment of tasks to numerous participants simultaneously. However, there is currently no task-creation framework available for flexibly deploying tasks both online and during simultaneous electrophysiology. METHODS: We developed a task creation template, termed Honeycomb, that standardizes best practices for building jsPsych-based tasks. Honeycomb offers continuous deployment configurations for seamless transition between use in research settings and at home. Further, we have curated a public library, termed BeeHive, of ready-to-use tasks. RESULTS: We demonstrate the benefits of using Honeycomb tasks with a participant in an ongoing study of deep brain stimulation for obsessive compulsive disorder, who completed repeated tasks both in the clinic and at home. CONCLUSION: Honeycomb enables researchers to deploy tasks online, in clinic, and at home in more ecologically valid environments and during concurrent electrophysiology.

Psychophysiology, cognition, and political differences: Guest editors' introduction to the special issue.

We introduce the Politics and the Life Sciences special issue on Psychophysiology, Cognition, and Political Differences. This issue represents the second special issue funded by the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences that adheres to the Open Science Framework for registered reports (RR). Here pre-analysis plans (PAPs) are peer-reviewed and given in-principle acceptance (IPA) prior to data being collected and/or analyzed, and are published contingent upon the preregistration of the study being followed as proposed. Bound by a common theme of the importance of incorporating psychophysiological perspectives into the study of politics, broadly defined, the articles in this special issue feature a unique set of research questions and methodologies. In the following, we summarize the findings, discuss the innovations produced by this research, and highlight the importance of open science for the future of political science research.

Major Stress-Related Symptoms During the Lockdown: A Study by the Italian Society of Psychophysiology and Cognitive Neuroscience.

The clinical effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are now the subject of numerous studies worldwide. But what are the effects of the quarantine imposed by the states that implemented the measures of lockdown? The present research aims to explore, in a preliminary way, the major stress-related symptoms during the lockdown, due to Covid-19, in the Italian population. Subjects were asked to fill out a survey, that traced a line identifying the most relevant psychophysiological symptoms that took into account factors such as perceived stress, body perception, perceived pain, quality of sleep, perceptive variations (i.e., olfactory, gustatory, visual, acoustic, and haptic perception). A network approach formulating a hypothesis-generating exploratory analysis was adopted. Main results of the network analysis showed that the beliefs of having had the Covid-19 was related to individual variables (i.e., gender, working in presence, sleep quality, anxiety symptoms), while the familiarity of Covid-19 disease was related to contextual factors (e.g., number of recorded cases in the Region, working in presence). The self-perception of olfactory and perceptive alterations highlighted a great sensorial cross-modality, additionally, the olfactory impairment was related to the belief of having had the Covid-19. Compared to general network data, BAI, perceived stress, anxiety and chronic pain were in relation to daily sleep disturbance. Main study's results show how the management of the Covid-19 stressful representation, in its cognitive aspects, can modulate the psychophysiological responses.

Cognitive and psychophysiological impact of surgical mask use during university lessons.

The aim of the present study was to analyze the impact of surgical mask use in cognitive and psychophysiological response of university students during a lesson. We analyzed 50 volunteers university students (age 20.2 ± 2.9) in two 150 min lessons. i. personal class using a surgical mask and ii. online class with student at home without the mask. Blood oxygen saturation, heart rate and heart rate variability, mental fatigue and reaction time were measured before and immediately after both lectures. We found how both lesson produced an increase in mental fatigue, reaction time and autonomous sympathetic modulation, being heart rate significantly higher (77.7 ± 18.2 vs. 89.3 ± 11.2 bpm, not mask, mask respectively) and blood oxygen saturation significantly lower (98.4 ± 0.5 vs. 96.0 ± 1.8%, mask, not mask respectively) using the surgical mask. The use of surgical mask during a 150 min university lesson produced an increased heart rate and a decrease in blood oxygen saturation, not significantly affecting the mental fatigue perception, reaction time and time, frequency and nonlinear hear rate variability domains of students.