Viral simulations in dreams: The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on threatening dream content in a Finnish sample of diary dreams.

Previous research indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected dreaming negatively. We compared 1132 dreams collected with prospective two-week dream diary during the pandemic to 166 dreams collected before the pandemic. We hypothesized that the pandemic would increase the number of threatening events, threats related to diseases, and the severity of threats. We also hypothesized that dreams that include direct references to the pandemic will include more threatening events, more disease-related threats, and more severe threats. In contradiction with our hypotheses, results showed no differences between pandemic and pre-pandemic samples in the number of threats, threats related to diseases, or severe threats. However, dreams with direct references to the pandemic had more threats, disease-related threats, and severe threats. Our results thus do not suggest a significant overall increase in nightmarish or threatening dream content during the pandemic but show a more profound effect on a minority of dreams.

COVID-19 on mind: Daily worry about the coronavirus is linked to negative affect experienced during mind-wandering and dreaming.

Despite a surge of studies on the effects of COVID-19 on our well-being, we know little about how the pandemic is reflected in people's spontaneous thoughts and experiences, such as mind-wandering (or daydreaming) during wakefulness and dreaming during sleep. We investigated whether and how COVID-19-related general concern, anxiety, and daily worry are associated with the daily fluctuation of the affective quality of mind-wandering and dreaming, and to what extent these associations can be explained by poor sleep quality. We used ecological momentary assessment by asking participants to rate the affect they experienced during mind-wandering and dreaming in daily logs over a 2-week period. Our preregistered analyses based on 1,755 dream logs from 172 individuals and 1,496 mind-wandering logs from 152 individuals showed that, on days when people reported higher levels of negative affect and lower levels of positive affect during mind-wandering, they experienced more worry. Only daily sleep quality was associated with affect experienced during dreaming at the within-person level: on nights with poorer sleep quality people reported experiencing more negative and less positive affect in dreams and were more likely to experience nightmares. However, at the between-person level, individuals who experienced more daily COVID-19 worry during the study period also reported experiencing more negative affect during mind-wandering and during dreaming. As such, the continuity between daily and nightly experiences seems to rely more on stable trait-like individual differences in affective processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of Intervention for Social Work Clients with Children Facing Complex Financial Problems in Finland (FinSoc): A Study Protocol.

PURPOSE: Social work clients often face complex financial problems. We have developed a financial social work intervention, FinSoc, to increase financial literacy and economic self-efficacy and reduce financial anxiety among parents with financial problems in Finland. The aim of this pilot randomized controlled trial is to explore the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of the intervention. This paper, a study protocol, describes the design and implementation of the trial. Study protocols are articles detailing a priori the research plan, rationale, proposed methods and plans for how a clinical trial will be conducted. METHOD: This study is a pilot randomized controlled trial with a mixed methods approach applying both quantitative measures and qualitative interviews. Participating social work clients with children are randomly assigned to either the treatment or the waiting list control group at a ratio of 1:1. The treatment group receives the intervention and the control group receives services as usual. The quantitative data from social work clients are collected at three measurement points. Qualitative interviews are conducted post-intervention with both clients receiving, and professionals implementing the intervention. The feasibility is assessed through recruitment and retention rates and the interviews with social work professionals providing the intervention. Acceptability is assessed through feedback from participants on satisfaction with the intervention and usefulness of the specific intervention components. Potential effectiveness is measured by financial literacy, economic self-efficacy and financial anxiety. DISCUSSION: The intervention is hypothesized to increase financial literacy and economic self-efficacy and reduce financial anxiety among social work clients with children. The results of this pilot study will increase the evidence base of financial social work and offer new insights for developing interventions for clients experiencing financial difficulties.

Decisions under uncertainty are more messy than they seem.

Conviction Narrative Theory (CNT) is conceptually so multifaceted as to make critical evaluation difficult. It also omits one course of action: Active engagement with the world. Parsing the developmental and mechanistic processes within CNT would allow for a rigorous research programme to put the account under test. I propose a unifying account based on active inference.

The effects of secondary stressors, social identity, and social support on perceived stress and resilience: Findings from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Primary stressors are direct outcomes of extreme events (e.g., viruses, floodwater) whereas secondary stressors stem from pre-disaster life circumstances and societal arrangements (e.g., illness, problematic pre-disaster policies) or from inefficient responses to the extreme event. Secondary stressors can cause significant long-term damage to people affected but are also tractable and amenable to change. In this study we explored the association between secondary stressors, social identity processes, social support, and perceived stress and resilience. Pre-registered analyses of data from the COVIDiSTRESS Global Survey Round II (N = 14,600; 43 countries) show that secondary stressors are positively associated with perceived stress and negatively associated with resilience, even when controlling for the effects of primary stressors. Being a woman or having lower socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with higher exposure to secondary stressors, higher perceived stress, and lower resilience. Importantly, social identification is positively associated with expected support and with increased resilience and lower perceived stress. However, neither gender, SES, or social identification moderated the relationship between secondary stressors and perceived stress and resilience. In conclusion, systemic reforms and the availability of social support are paramount to reducing the effects of secondary stressors.

Connection between the COVID-19 pandemic, war trauma reminders, perceived stress, loneliness, and PTSD in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In order to gain a better understanding of what happens during the COVID-19 pandemic to those who were previously traumatized, this study investigated perceived stress and severity of PTSD symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic in people who experienced the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was also examined how reminders of past trauma and loneliness instigated by the COVID-19 crisis relate to current stress and PTSD symptoms. The sample consisted of 123 participants (74.8% women). Participants responded to assessments of sociodemographic characteristics, exposure to COVID-related information, concerns over disease, severity of exposure to war, frequency and intensity of war trauma reminders, loneliness, stress, and severity of PTSD symptoms. Data was collected as part of the COVIDiSTRESS Global Survey. Results showed that in a population previously exposed to the effects of war, severity of PTSD symptoms was positively related to perceived stress, and loneliness during the pandemic significantly mediated this relationship. Intensity of exposure to war trauma reminders was associated with higher levels of PTSD symptom severity. Higher severity of PTSD symptoms was related to forced displacement during the war. Moreover, higher stress was related to increased concerns over disease. To conclude, those exposed to war may be more affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic and preventive measures that accompany it, while loneliness mediates the effects of PTSD and perceived stress in this population.

Correction to: Connection between the COVID-19 pandemic, war trauma reminders, perceived stress, loneliness, and PTSD in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s12144-021-02407-x.].

'No Man is an Island': Effects of social seclusion on social dream content and REM sleep.

Based on the Social Simulation Theory of dreaming (SST), we studied the effects of voluntary social seclusion on dream content and sleep structure. Specifically, we studied the Compensation Hypothesis, which predicts social dream contents to increase during social seclusion, the Sociality Bias - a ratio between dream and wake interactions - and the Strengthening Hypothesis, which predicts an increase in familiar dream characters during seclusion. Additionally, we assessed changes in the proportion of REM sleep. Sleep data and dream reports from 18 participants were collected preceding (n = 94), during (n = 90) and after (n = 119) a seclusion retreat. Data were analysed using linear mixed-effects models. We failed to support the Compensation Hypothesis, with dreams evidencing fewer social interactions during seclusion. The Strengthening Hypothesis was supported, with more familiar characters present in seclusion dreams. Dream social interactions maintained the Sociality Bias even under seclusion. Additionally, REM sleep increased during seclusion, coinciding with previous literature and tentatively supporting the proposed attachment function for social REM sleep.

The dynamics of affect across the wake-sleep cycle: From waking mind-wandering to night-time dreaming.

Affective experiences occur across the wake-sleep cycle-from active wakefulness to resting wakefulness (i.e., mind-wandering) to sleep (i.e., dreaming). Yet, we know little about the dynamics of affect across these states. We compared the affective ratings of waking, mind-wandering, and dream episodes. Results showed that mind-wandering was more positively valenced than dreaming, and that both mind-wandering and dreaming were more negatively valenced than active wakefulness. We also compared participants' self-ratings of affect with external ratings of affect (i.e., analysis of affect in verbal reports). With self-ratings all episodes were predominated by positive affect. However, the affective valence of reports changed from positively valenced waking reports to affectively balanced mind-wandering reports to negatively valenced dream reports. These findings show that (1) the positivity bias characteristic to waking experiences decreases across the wake-sleep continuum, and (2) conclusions regarding affective experiences depend on whether self-ratings or verbal reports describing these experiences are analysed.

Segregated brain state during hypnosis.

Can the brain be shifted into a different state using a simple social cue, as tests on highly hypnotizable subjects would suggest? Demonstrating an altered global brain state is difficult. Brain activation varies greatly during wakefulness and can be voluntarily influenced. We measured the complexity of electrophysiological response to transcranial magnetic stimulation in one 'hypnotic virtuoso'. Such a measure produces a response arguably outside the subject's voluntary control and has been proven adequate for discriminating conscious from unconscious brain states. We show that a single-word hypnotic induction robustly shifted global neural connectivity into a state where activity remained sustained but failed to ignite strong, coherent activity in frontoparietal cortices. Changes in perturbational complexity indicate a similar move towards a more segregated state. We interpret these findings to suggest a shift in the underlying state of the brain, likely moderating subsequent hypnotic responding.

Mapping out the philosophical questions of AI and clinical practice in diagnosing and treating mental disorders.

How to classify the human condition? This is one of the main problems psychiatry has struggled with since the first diagnostic systems. The furore over the recent editions of the diagnostic systems DSM-5 and ICD-11 has evidenced it to still pose a wicked problem. Recent advances in techniques and methods of artificial intelligence and computing power which allows for the analysis of large data sets have been proposed as a possible solution for this and other problems in classification, diagnosing, and treating mental disorders. However, mental disorders contain some specific inherent features, which require critical consideration and analysis. The promises of AI for mental disorders are threatened by the unmeasurable aspects of mental disorders, and for this reason the use of AI may lead to ethically and practically undesirable consequences in its effective processing. We consider such novel and unique questions AI presents for mental health disorders in detail and evaluate potential novel, AI-specific, ethical implications.

Cardiac monitoring of dogs via smartphone mechanocardiography: a feasibility study.

BACKGROUND: In the context of monitoring dogs, usually, accelerometers have been used to measure the dog's movement activity. Here, we study another application of the accelerometers (and gyroscopes)-seismocardiography (SCG) and gyrocardiography (GCG)-to monitor the dog's heart. Together, 3-axis SCG and 3-axis GCG constitute of 6-axis mechanocardiography (MCG), which is inbuilt to most modern smartphones. Thus, the objective of this study is to assess the feasibility of using a smartphone-only solution to studying dog's heart. METHODS: A clinical trial (CT) was conducted at the University Small Animal Hospital, University of Helsinki, Finland. 14 dogs (3 breeds) including 18 measurements (about one half of all) where the dog's status was such that it was still and not panting were further selected for the heart rate (HR) analysis (each signal with a duration of 1 min). The measurement device in the CT was a custom Holter monitor including synchronized 6-axis MCG and ECG. In addition, 16 dogs (9 breeds, one mixed-breed) were measured at home settings by the dog owners themselves using Sony Xperia Android smartphone sensor to further validate the applicability of the method. RESULTS: The developed algorithm was able to select 10 good-quality signals from the 18 CT measurements, and for 7 of these, the automated algorithm was able to detect HR with deviation below or equal to 5 bpm (compared to ECG). Further visual analysis verified that, for approximately half of the dogs, the signal quality at home environment was sufficient for HR extraction at least in some signal locations, while the motion artifacts due to dog's movements are the main challenges of the method. CONCLUSION: With improved data analysis techniques for managing noisy measurements, the proposed approach could be useful in home use. The advantage of the method is that it can operate as a stand-alone application without requiring any extra equipment (such as smart collar or ECG patch).

Sleep Parameter Assessment Accuracy of a Consumer Home Sleep Monitoring Ballistocardiograph Beddit Sleep Tracker: A Validation Study.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Growing interest in monitoring sleep and well-being has created a market for consumer home sleep monitoring devices. Additionally, sleep disorder diagnostics, and sleep and dream research would benefit from reliable and valid home sleep monitoring devices. Yet, majority of currently available home sleep monitoring devices lack validation. In this study, the sleep parameter assessment accuracy of Beddit Sleep Tracker (BST), an unobtrusive and non-wearable sleep monitoring device based on ballistocardiography, was evaluated by comparing it with polysomnography (PSG) measures. We measured total sleep time (TST), sleep onset latency (SOL), wake after sleep onset (WASO), and sleep efficiency (SE). Additionally, we examined whether BST can differentiate sleep stages. METHODS: We performed sleep studies simultaneously with PSG and BST in ten healthy young adults (5 female/5 male) during two non-consecutive nights in a sleep laboratory. RESULTS: BST was able to distinguish SOL with some accuracy. However, it underestimated WASO and thus overestimated TST and SE. Also, it failed to discriminate between non-rapid eye movement sleep stages and did not detect the rapid eye movement sleep stage. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that BST is not a valid device to monitor sleep. Consumers should be careful in interpreting the conclusions on sleep quality and efficiency provided by the device.

Social contents in dreams: An empirical test of the Social Simulation Theory.

Social Simulation Theory (SST) considers the function of dreaming to be the simulation of social events. The Sociality Bias and the Strengthening hypotheses of SST were tested. Social Content Scale (SCS) was developed to quantify social events. Additionally, we attempted to replicate a previous finding (McNamara et al., 2005, Psychological Science) of REM dreams as predisposed to aggressive, and NREM dreams to prosocial interactions. Further, we investigated the frequency and quality of interactions in late vs early REM and NREM dreams. Data consisted of wake, REM and NREM home dream reports (N = 232, 116, 116, respectively) from 15 students. Dreams overrepresented social events compared to wake reports, supporting the Sociality Bias hypothesis. However, the Strengthening Hypothesis was not supported. We weren't able to replicate the McNamara et al. finding, and no time of night effect was found. While SST gained partial support, further research on social contents in dreams is required.

Is there a generalized timing impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorders across time scales and paradigms?

Individuals with ASD have abnormal motor and perceptual functions that do not currently form diagnostic criteria of ASD, but nevertheless may affect everyday behaviour. Temporal processing seems to be one of such non-diagnostic yet impaired domains, although the lack of systematic studies testing different aspects of timing in the same sample of participants prevents a conclusive assessment of whether there is a generalized temporal deficit in ASD associated with diagnostic symptoms. 17 children diagnosed with ASD and 18 typically developing age- and IQ-matched controls carried out a set of motor and perceptual timing tasks: free tapping, simultaneity judgment, auditory duration discrimination, and verbal duration estimation. Parents of participants filled in a questionnaire assessing the sense and management of time. Children with ASD showed faster and more variable free tapping than controls. Auditory duration discrimination thresholds were higher in the ASD group than controls in a sub-second version of the task, while there were no group differences in a supra-second discrimination of intervals. Children with ASD showed more variable thresholds of simultaneity judgment, and they received lower parental scores for their sense and management of time. No group differences were observed in the verbal duration estimation task in the minute-range. Different timing functions were correlated in the ASD group but not among controls, whilst several timing measures correlated with ASD symptoms. We conclude that children with ASD show a broad range of abnormalities in temporal processing tasks including motor timing, perceptual timing, and temporal perspective.

Dream emotions: a comparison of home dream reports with laboratory early and late REM dream reports.

The aim of this study was to compare the emotional content of dream reports collected at home upon morning awakenings with those collected in the laboratory upon early and late rapid eye movement (REM) sleep awakenings. Eighteen adults (11 women, seven men; mean age = 25.89 ± 4.85) wrote down their home dreams every morning immediately upon awakening during a 7-day period. Participants also spent two non-consecutive nights in the sleep laboratory where they were awoken 5 min into each continuous REM sleep stage, upon which they gave a verbal dream report. The content of a total of 151 home and 120 laboratory dream reports was analysed by two blind judges using the modified Differential Emotions Scale. It was found that: (1) home dream reports were more emotional than laboratory early REM dream reports, but not more emotional than laboratory late REM dream reports; (2) home dream reports contained a higher density of emotions than laboratory (early or late REM) dream reports; and (3) home dream reports were more negative than laboratory dream reports, but differences between home and early REM reports were larger than those between home and late REM reports. The results suggest that differences between home and laboratory dream reports in overall emotionality may be due to the time of night effect. Whether differences in the density of emotions and negative emotionality are due to sleep environment or due to different reporting procedures and time spent in a sleep stage, respectively, remains to be determined in future studies.

Gyrocardiography: A New Non-invasive Monitoring Method for the Assessment of Cardiac Mechanics and the Estimation of Hemodynamic Variables.

Gyrocardiography (GCG) is a new non-invasive technique for assessing heart motions by using a sensor of angular motion - gyroscope - attached to the skin of the chest. In this study, we conducted simultaneous recordings of electrocardiography (ECG), GCG, and echocardiography in a group of subjects consisting of nine healthy volunteer men. Annotation of underlying fiducial points in GCG is presented and compared to opening and closing points of heart valves measured by a pulse wave Doppler. Comparison between GCG and synchronized tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) data shows that the GCG signal is also capable of providing temporal information on the systolic and early diastolic peak velocities of the myocardium. Furthermore, time intervals from the ECG Q-wave to the maximum of the integrated GCG (angular displacement) signal and maximal myocardial strain curves obtained by 3D speckle tracking are correlated. We see GCG as a promising mechanical cardiac monitoring tool that enables quantification of beat-by-beat dynamics of systolic time intervals (STI) related to hemodynamic variables and myocardial contractility.

Dynamic Changes in Cortical Effective Connectivity Underlie Transsaccadic Integration in Humans.

Due to saccadic eye movements the retinal image is abruptly displaced 2-4 times a second, yet we experience a stable and continuous stream of vision. It is known that saccades modulate neural processing in various local brain areas, but the question of how saccades influence neural communication between different areas in the thalamo-cortical system has remained unanswered. By combining transcranial magnetic stimulation with electroencephalography, we found that saccades were accompanied by dynamic changes in causal communication between different brain areas in humans. These changes were anticipatory; they began before the actual eye movement. Compared with fixation, communication between posterior cortical areas was first briefly enhanced during saccades, but subsequently peri-saccadic information did not ignite sustained activity in fronto-parietal cortices. This suggests that the brain constructs a spatially stable and temporally continuous stream of conscious vision from discrete fixations by restricting the access of peri-saccadic visual information to sustained processing in fronto-parietal cortices.