Are Mindfulness and Mind-Wandering Opposite Constructs? It Depends on How Mindfulness is Conceptualised.

This study investigated if trait mindfulness and its components, mindful attention, acceptance, and non-judging correlate negatively with self-reported and indirect markers of mind-wandering. The 552 participants of the study completed an anonymous online questionnaire consisting of trait mindfulness and mind-wandering scales. They also completed the computer-based Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), an objective measure of mind-wandering. The total mindfulness score and acceptance and non-judging subscale scores were strongly negatively correlated with both self-reported trait mind-wandering (TMW) and SART indices of mind-wandering. In contrast, attention was significantly positively correlated with both. These findings suggest that trait mindfulness conceptualised as a multi-component construct, but not a uni-component one, is probably an opposing construct to trait mind-wandering. Furthermore, mindfulness and its components, acceptance and non-judging, are associated with a reduction in the more common form of SART errors. However, only the acceptance component made a unique contribution to the variance in TMW and SART performance. Therefore, it is advisable for researchers to specify whether they investigated mindfulness as a uni-component or multi-component construct. Furthermore, it would be beneficial if future research investigates the relationship of mindfulness and its components with mind-wandering further by also incorporating a measure of state mindfulness.

Ambulance ramping predicts poor mental health of paramedics.

OBJECTIVE: Ambulance ramping involves a patient remaining under paramedic care until a hospital emergency department bed becomes available. This study examined whether negative ramping experiences (verbal abuse, physical abuse, compromised patient care, and patient fatality) contribute to relatively high levels of depression, anxiety, stress, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in paramedics. METHOD: Ninety Australian paramedics (Mage = 37.68, SD = 10.73; 52.2% male) completed an online survey. RESULTS: Path analysis found that negative ramping experiences were positively associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress, and PTSD. Interactions indicated that negative ramping experiences predicted greater depression, stress, and PTSD among paramedics with higher, but not lower, work-related self-efficacy. All interactions with resilience were nonsignificant. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that policymakers should aim to reduce ambulance ramping, and that future research could fruitfully investigate the mental health benefits of training programs that include strategies to minimize paramedics' feelings of powerlessness, frustration, and self-blame, during ramping. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Moment to moment variability in functional brain networks during cognitive activity in EEG data.

Functional brain networks (FBNs) are gaining increasing attention in computational neuroscience due to their ability to reveal dynamic interdependencies between brain regions. The dynamics of such networks during cognitive activity between stimulus and response using multi-channel electroencephalogram (EEG), recorded from 16 healthy human participants are explored in this research. Successive EEG segments of 500[Formula: see text]ms duration starting from the onset of cognitive stimulation have been used to analyze and understand the cognitive dynamics. The approach employs a combination of signal processing techniques, nonlinear statistical measures and graph-theoretical analysis. The efficacy of this approach in detecting and tracking cognitive load induced changes in EEG data is clearly demonstrated using graph metrics. It is revealed that most cognitive activity occurs within approximately 500[Formula: see text]ms of the stimulus presentation in addition to temporal variability in the FBNs. It is shown that mutual information (MI), a nonlinear measure, produces good correlations between the EEG channels thus enabling the construction of FBNs which are sensitive to cognitive load induced changes in EEG. Analyses of the dynamics of FBNs and the visualization approach reveal hard to detect subtle changes in cognitive function and hence may lead to a better understanding of cognitive processing in the brain. The techniques exploited have the potential to detect human cognitive dysfunction (impairments).

TVAR modeling of EEG to detect audio distraction during simulated driving.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of our current study was to look for the EEG correlates that can reveal the engaged state of the brain while undertaking cognitive tasks. Specifically, we aimed to identify EEG features that could detect audio distraction during simulated driving. APPROACH: Time varying autoregressive (TVAR) analysis using Kalman smoother was carried out on short time epochs of EEG data collected from participants as they undertook two simulated driving tasks. TVAR coefficients were then used to construct all pole model enabling the identification of EEG features that could differentiate normal driving from audio distracted driving. MAIN RESULTS: Pole analysis of the TVAR model led to the visualization of event related synchronization/desynchronization (ERS/ERD) patterns in the form of pole displacements in pole plots of the temporal EEG channels in the z plane enabling the differentiation of the two driving conditions. ERS in the EEG data has been demonstrated during audio distraction as an associated phenomenon. SIGNIFICANCE: Visualizing the ERD/ERS phenomenon in terms of pole displacement is a novel approach. Although ERS/ERD has previously been demonstrated as reliable when applied to motor related tasks, it is believed to be the first time that it has been applied to investigate human cognitive phenomena such as attention and distraction. Results confirmed that distracted/non-distracted driving states can be identified using this approach supporting its applicability to cognition research.