Demoralization during the Italian quarantine due to 2019 coronavirus disease pandemic: prevalence and association with psychological well-being and coping strategies.

The aims of the study were to investigate demoralization in a sample of Italian citizens during the Italian quarantine due to COVID-19 pandemic and to explore its associations with psychological well-being, coping strategies, participants' socio-demographic characteristics and COVID-19-related factors. Italian citizens aged over 18 and quarantined in Italy were recruited. A cross-sectional online survey was launched through a snow-ball sampling and 1123 surveys were collected. Participants answered ad hoc questions and completed the Psychological General Well-Being Index, the Demoralization Scale, and the Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced-New Italian Version. Disheartenment, dysphoria, and sense of failure were the subdimensions of demoralization with higher scores. Demoralization was associated with depressed mood, positive well-being, self-control, general health, vitality, problem-solving, and avoidance and religious coping strategies. Individuals who were female, older, without children and not working during quarantine had higher demoralization. Quarantine-related changes can elicit demoralization that is associated to lower psychological well-being. Problem-solving and religious coping can protect against demoralization, while avoidant coping strategies can exacerbate it. Assessing and treating demoralization, especially in the categories of citizens most at risk of developing it, could be useful to provide adequate care against COVID-19-related distress.

Sleep Deprivation-Induced Changes in Baseline Brain Activity and Vigilant Attention Performance.

Sleep deprivation (SD) negatively affects several aspects of cognitive performance, and one of the most widely-used tools to evaluate these effects is the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT). The present study investigated the possibility of predicting changes induced by SD in vigilant attention performance by evaluating the baseline electroencephalographic (EEG) activity immediately preceding the PVT stimuli onset. All participants (n = 10) underwent EEG recordings during 10 min of PVT before and after a night of SD. For each participant, the root mean square (RMS) of the baseline EEG signal was evaluated for each 1 s time window, and the respective average value was computed. After SD, participants showed slower (and less accurate) performance in the PVT task. Moreover, a close relationship between the changes in the baseline activity with those in cognitive performance was identified at several electrodes (Fp2, F7, F8, P3, T6, O1, Oz, O2), with the highest predictive power at the occipital derivations. These results indicate that vigilant attention impairments induced by SD can be predicted by the pre-stimulus baseline activity changes.

Effect of the Trigeminal Nerve Stimulation on Auditory Event-Related Potentials.

Trigeminal sensorimotor activity stimulates arousal and cognitive performance, likely through activation of the locus coeruleus (LC). In this study we investigated, in normal subjects, the effects of bilateral trigeminal nerve stimulation (TNS) on the LC-dependent P300 wave, elicited by an acoustic oddball paradigm. Pupil size, a proxy of LC activity, and electroencephalographic power changes were also investigated. Before TNS/sham-TNS, pupil size did not correlate with P300 amplitude across subjects. After TNS but not sham-TNS, a positive correlation emerged between P300 amplitude and pupil size within frontal and median cortical regions. TNS also reduced P300 amplitude in several cortical areas. In both groups, before and after TNS/sham-TNS, subjects correctly indicated all the target stimuli. We propose that TNS activates LC, increasing the cortical norepinephrine release and the dependence of the P300 upon basal LC activity. Enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio of cortical neurons, norepinephrine may improve the sensory processing, allowing the subject to reach the best discriminative performance with a lower level of neural activation (i.e., a lower P300 amplitude). The study suggests that TNS could be used for improving cognitive performance in patients affected by cognitive disorders or arousal dysfunctions.

Efficient embedded sleep wake classification for open-source actigraphy.

This study presents a thorough analysis of sleep/wake detection algorithms for efficient on-device sleep tracking using wearable accelerometric devices. It develops a novel end-to-end algorithm using convolutional neural network applied to raw accelerometric signals recorded by an open-source wrist-worn actigraph. The aim of the study is to develop an automatic classifier that: (1) is highly generalizable to heterogenous subjects, (2) would not require manual features' extraction, (3) is computationally lightweight, embeddable on a sleep tracking device, and (4) is suitable for a wide assortment of actigraphs. Hereby, authors analyze sleep parameters, such as total sleep time, waking after sleep onset and sleep efficiency, by comparing the outcomes of the proposed algorithm to the gold standard polysomnographic concurrent recordings. The relatively substantial agreement (Cohen's kappa coefficient, median, equal to 0.78 ± 0.07) and the low-computational cost (2727 floating-point operations) make this solution suitable for an on-board sleep-detection approach.

Association of hypnotizability and deep sleep: any role for interoceptive sensibility?

The aim of the study was to investigate the possible association of hypnotizability and deep sleep (N3) duration, and whether the interoceptive sensibility influences this association. This was motivated by the proneness of highly hypnotizable individuals to easily change their psychophysiological state, i.e., from wakefulness to hypnosis and sleep, and by the positive association observed between hypnotizability and interoceptive sensibility. Forty-seven healthy participants previously enrolled in a polysomnographic night sleep study completed the questionnaire for Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) and underwent hypnotic assessment through the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, form A (SHSS,A). Results showed that N3 duration is not linearly correlated with hypnotizability. Controlling for a few MAIA scales did not modify the relation between hypnotizability and deep sleep. A polynomial relation indicates that N3 duration and N3 percentage of the total sleep time increase with hypnotizability in the low-to-medium range of hypnotizability and decrease in the medium-to-high range. In conclusion, hypnotic assessment predicts N3 duration and their association is not modified by interoceptive awareness/sensitivity.

Electrophysiological features of sleep in children with Kir4.1 channel mutations and Autism-Epilepsy phenotype: a preliminary study.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Recently, a role for gain-of-function (GoF) mutations of the astrocytic potassium channel Kir4.1 (KCNJ10 gene) has been proposed in subjects with Autism-Epilepsy phenotype (AEP). Epilepsy and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are common and complexly related to sleep disorders. We tested whether well characterized mutations in KCNJ10 could result in specific sleep electrophysiological features, paving the way to the discovery of a potentially relevant biomarker for Kir4.1-related disorders. METHODS: For this case-control study, we recruited seven children with ASD either comorbid or not with epilepsy and/or EEG paroxysmal abnormalities (AEP) carrying GoF mutations of KCNJ10 and seven children with similar phenotypes but wild-type for the same gene, comparing period-amplitude features of slow waves detected by fronto-central bipolar EEG derivations (F3-C3, F4-C4, and Fz-Cz) during daytime naps. RESULTS: Children with Kir4.1 mutations displayed longer slow waves periods than controls, in Fz-Cz (mean period = 112,617 ms ± SE = 0.465 in mutated versus mean period = 105,249 ms ± SE = 0.375 in controls, p < 0.001). An analog result was found in F3-C3 (mean period = 125,706 ms ± SE = 0.397 in mutated versus mean period = 120,872 ms ± SE = 0.472 in controls, p < 0.001) and F4-C4 (mean period = 127,914 ms ± SE = 0.557 in mutated versus mean period = 118,174 ms ± SE = 0.442 in controls, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: This preliminary finding suggests that period-amplitude slow wave features are modified in subjects carrying Kir4.1 GoF mutations. Potential clinical applications of this finding are discussed.