Can PTSD be prevented? A novel approach to increasing physiological resilience: a pilot study.

Much of the U.S. adult population will experience a traumatic event at some point in their lives, resulting in about 20 million people developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and costing over $143 billion for healthcare. The Community Resilience Model (CRM) and Mental and Emotional Self-Management (MESM) are potential novel solutions for stemming the tide of PTSD diagnoses resulting from a traumatic event. This pilot study was conducted to examine the phasic and tonic changes in cardiac vagal tone in a non-traumatized sample population (N = 83) after a 1-week intervention. Group comparisons were conducted between the CRM (n = 26), MESM (n = 34), and Control (n = 23) conditions. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 30. A phasic effect on cardiac vagal tone was found for the MESM condition within subjects but not for the CRM or control conditions. A tonic effect on cardiac vagal tone was not found within subjects amongst the three conditions. The phasic effect in the MESM condition was significantly different between itself and the CRM and control groups. No tonic effects on cardiac vagal tone were found between conditions either. These results suggest cardiac vagal tone responds to focused breathing in the moment only, but more research with larger sample sizes, longer intervention duration, and better methods to track home practice compliance are needed before one accepts the insignificant results as valid. This pilot study can serve as an introduction to the study of physiological processes that might be trainable to increase resilience in non-traumatized populations and serve as a springboard for future studies of physiological resilience to traumatic stress.

Affective decision-making moderates the effects of automatic associations on alcohol use among drug offenders.

BACKGROUND: This study used a dual-process model of cognition in order to investigate the possible influence of automatic and deliberative processes on lifetime alcohol use in a sample of drug offenders. OBJECTIVE: The objective was to determine if automatic/implicit associations in memory can exert an influence over an individual's alcohol use and if decision-making ability could potentially modify the influence of these associations. METHODS: 168 participants completed a battery of cognitive tests measuring implicit alcohol associations in memory (verb generation) as well as their affective decision-making ability (Iowa Gambling Task). Structural equation modeling procedures were used to test the relationship between implicit associations, decision-making, and lifetime alcohol use. RESULTS: Results revealed that among participants with lower levels of decision-making, implicit alcohol associations more strongly predicted higher lifetime alcohol use. CONCLUSION: These findings provide further support for the interaction between a specific decision function and its influence over automatic processes in regulating alcohol use behavior in a risky population. Understanding the interaction between automatic associations and decision processes may aid in developing more effective intervention components.

Neural correlates of a Go/NoGo task with alcohol stimuli in light and heavy young drinkers.

Inhibitory processes are highly relevant to behavioral control affecting decisions made daily. The Go/NoGo task is a common task used to tap basic inhibitory processes important in higher order executive functioning. The present study assessed neural correlates of response inhibition during performance of a Go/NoGo task in which NoGo signals or tests of inhibitory control consisted of images of beer bottles. Group comparisons were conducted between 21 heavy and 20 light drinkers, ranging in age from 18 to 22. Behaviorally, overall performance assessed with d-prime was significantly better among the lighter drinkers. On a neural level, the heavy drinkers showed significantly greater activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, medial frontal cortex and cingulate relative to the light drinkers during the NoGo trials. These regions are implicated in reflective or control processing of information. Further, heavy drinkers showed significantly greater activity in the insula relative to light drinkers during NoGo trials, a neural region implicated in habit circuitry and tied to cue induced urges and emotional memories of physical effects of drugs. These results suggest that the heavier drinkers may have experienced increased working memory demand and control efforts to withhold a response due to poorer inhibitory control from enhanced salience of alcohol cues on the beer NoGo trials, which also engaged insula mediated effects.

Inhibitory control effects in adolescent binge eating and consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and snacks.

Inhibitory control and sensitivity to reward are relevant to the food choices individuals make frequently. An imbalance of these systems can lead to deficits in decision-making that are relevant to food ingestion. This study evaluated the relationship between dietary behaviors - binge eating and consumption of sweetened beverages and snacks - and behavioral control processes among 198 adolescents, ages 14 to 17. Neurocognitive control processes were assessed with the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), a generic Go/No-Go task, and a food-specific Go/No-Go task. The food-specific version directly ties the task to food cues that trigger responses, addressing an integral link between cue-habit processes. Diet was assessed with self-administered food frequency and binge eating questionnaires. Latent variable models revealed marked gender differences. Inhibitory problems on the food-specific and generic Go/No-Go tasks were significantly correlated with binge eating only in females, whereas inhibitory problems measured with these tasks were the strongest correlates of sweet snack consumption in males. Higher BMI percentile and sedentary behavior also predicted binge eating in females and sweet snack consumption in males. Inhibitory problems on the generic Go/No-Go, poorer affective decision-making on the IGT, and sedentary behavior were associated with sweetened beverage consumption in males, but not females. The food-specific Go/No-Go was not predictive in models evaluating sweetened beverage consumption, providing some initial discriminant validity for the task, which consisted of sweet/fatty snacks as no-go signals and no sugar-sweetened beverage signals. This work extends research findings, revealing gender differences in inhibitory function relevant to behavioral control. Further, the findings contribute to research implicating the relevance of cues in habitual behaviors and their relationship to snack food consumption in an understudied population of diverse adolescents not receiving treatment for eating disorders.