Alcoholic Etiology, Severity of Liver Disease, and Post-Transplant Adherence Are Correlated with Worse Stanford Integrated Psychosocial Assessment for Transplantation (SIPAT) in Liver Transplant Candidates.

Introduction: Psychosocial pre-transplant evaluation in patients undergoing liver transplantation (LT) could help identify those patients at higher risk of pharmacological non-adherence, organ rejection, and mortality. The Stanford Integrated Psychosocial Assessment for Transplantation (SIPAT) is a validated tool for assessing LT candidates' psychosocial well-being. Data on the ability of the SIPAT evaluation to predict post-transplant outcomes are sparse. Material and Methods: clinical and psychosocial data from a sample of 134 candidates for LT were analyzed. Moreover, the association between pre-transplant psychosocial evaluation and post-transplant clinical outcomes, including organ rejection, mortality, and immunosuppressant drug adherence, was calculated. Results: At the pre-transplant evaluation, patients who showed high SIPAT scores (77, 57%) also had more liver disease assessed by model for end-stage liver disease (MELD; F = 5.04; p < 0.05), alcoholic etiology (F = 35.80; p < 0.001), encephalopathy (F = 5.02; p < 0.05), and portal hypertension (F = 7.45; p < 0.01). Of the 51 transplant patients, those who had a high pre-transplant SIPAT score showed lower post-transplant immunosuppressive adherence, linked to more frequent immunological events. Conclusions: Patients with an alcoholic etiology of liver disease and more severe liver dysfunction are likelier to not adhere to medical prescriptions following transplantation. Current data suggests that this specific group of patients could benefit from early psychological pre-habilitation before undergoing liver transplantation.

The moderating role of depressive symptoms in the association between heart rate variability and cognitive performance in cardiac patients.

INTRODUCTION: Coronary heart disease (CHD) is strongly associated with cognitive impairment, which is a core feature of depression, highly prevalent in patients with CHD. Interestingly, patients with CHD and individuals with depression display reduced heart rate variability (HRV), which proxies a complex network integrating autonomic and attentional systems. This study investigated the moderating role of depressive symptoms in the relation between reduced HRV and cognitive performance in patients with CHD. METHOD: The sample included 274 patients with CHD (mean [standard deviation] age = 62 [9.5] years; 13 % women) admitted to cardiac rehabilitation units. Visual attention and task switching were assessed through the Trail Making Test (TMT). Depressive symptoms were assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). Resting electrocardiographic recordings were collected to compute HRV indices. RESULTS: Patients with more severe depressive symptoms displayed an inverse association between HRV and cognitive performance (TMT-A: b = -0.08, p = .022; TMTB: b = -0.07, p = .042), whereas patients with milder depressive symptoms showed no significant association (TMT-A: b = -0.00, p = .90; TMTB: b = -0.02, p = .44). CONCLUSIONS: Depressive symptoms may strengthen the relation between reduced HRV and poorer cognitive performance in cardiac patients. The presence of depressive symptoms may signal the dysfunction of a network subserving autonomic and cognitive function.

Multidimensional components of (state) mathematics anxiety: Behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and psychophysiological consequences.

The present study aimed to analyze the different components of state mathematics anxiety that students experienced while solving calculation problems by manipulating their stress levels. A computerized mathematical task was administered to 165 fifth-graders randomly assigned to three different groups: positive, negative, and control conditions, in which positive, negative, or no feedback during the task was given, respectively. Behavioral (task performance), emotional (negative feelings), cognitive (worrisome thoughts and perceived competence), and psychophysiological responses (skin conductance and vagal withdrawal) were analyzed. Behavioral responses did not differ in the positive and negative conditions, while the latter was associated with children's reportedly negative emotional states, worries, and perceived lack of competence. The stress induced in the negative condition led to an increase in skin conductance and cardiac vagal withdrawal in children. Our data suggest the importance of considering students' interpretation of mathematics-related experiences, which might affect their emotional, cognitive, and psychophysiological responses.

Rethinking the risk for depression using the RDoC: A psychophysiological perspective.

Considering that the classical categorical approach to mental disorders does not allow a clear identification of at-risk conditions, the dimensional approach provided by the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) is useful in the exploration of vulnerability to psychopathology. In the RDoC era, psychophysiological models have an important role in the reconceptualization of mental disorders. Indeed, progress in the study of depression vulnerability has increasingly been informed by psychophysiological models. By adopting an RDoC lens, this narrative review focuses on how psychophysiological models can be used to advance our knowledge of the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying depression vulnerability. Findings from psychophysiological research that explored multiple RDoC domains in populations at-risk for depression are reviewed and discussed. Future directions for the application of psychophysiological research in reaching a more complete understanding of depression vulnerability and, ultimately, improving clinical utility, are presented.

Reduced heart rate variability and expressive suppression interact to prospectively predict COVID-19 pandemic-related post-traumatic stress symptoms.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a unique period of stress that, in some cases, led to post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSSs). Emotion regulation strategies are known to modulate the emotional response to stressful events. Expressive suppression (ES) is a maladaptive strategy related to the exacerbation of the physiological stress response. Heart rate variability (HRV), an index of cardiac autonomic balance strictly related to ES, was also shown to predict PTSSs. This was the first study to investigate whether the pre-pandemic ES use and resting-state HRV predicted pandemic-related PTSSs. Before the pandemic, 83 (58 females) university students completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), self-report measures of anxiety and depressive symptoms, and a three-minute resting-state electrocardiogram recording. After 12 months, 61 (45 females) participants completed a self-report measure of pandemic-related PTSSs and repeated the self-report psychological measures. Pre-pandemic anxiety symptoms prospectively predicted greater PTSSs. Moreover, a significant interaction between HRV and ES in predicting PTSSs emerged, whereby those who had higher levels of ES and reduced HRV showed higher PTSSs. These findings suggest that an integrated assessment of HRV and ES might be useful for identifying individuals who are more vulnerable to the development of PTSSs during crises.

Complexity Modulation in functional Brain-Heart Interplay series driven by Emotional Stimuli: an early study using Fuzzy Entropy.

Increasing attention has recently been devoted to the multidisciplinary investigation of functional brain-heart interplay (BHI), which has provided meaningful insights in neuroscience and clinical domains including cardiology, neurology, clinical psychology, and psychiatry. While neural (brain) and heartbeat series show high nonlinear and complex dynamics, a complexity analysis on BHI series has not been performed yet. To this end, in this preliminary study, we investigate BHI complexity modulation in 17 healthy subjects undergoing a 3-minute resting state and emotional elicitation through standardized image slideshow. Electroencephalographic and heart rate variability series were the inputs of an adhoc BHI model, which provides directional (from-heart-to-brain and from-brain-to-heart) estimates at different frequency bands. A Fuzzy entropy analysis was performed channel-wise on the model output for the two experimental conditions. Results suggest that BHI complexity increases in the emotional elicitation phase with respect to a resting state, especially in the functional direction from the heart to the brain. We conclude that BHI complexity may be a viable computational tool to characterize neurophysiological and pathological states under different experimental conditions.

The impact of COVID-19-related quarantine on psychological outcomes in patients after cardiac intervention: a multicenter longitudinal study.

Mandatory quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic had substantial negative consequences on psychological health in the general population. Depression, anxiety, and insomnia were reported to increase the morbidity and mortality risk in cardiac patients after cardiac interventions. Nonetheless, a gap in the evidence appeared regarding the effects of COVID-19-related quarantine on psychological outcomes in patients after cardiac interventions. The present study aimed to longitudinally investigate the effects of quarantine on depressive, anxiety, and insomnia symptoms in a group of patients who underwent cardiac intervention. Seventy-three patients admitted for cardiac rehabilitation completed a psychological assessment before and a reassessment after the quarantine and were included in the quarantine group. The control group included 76 patients who completed both evaluations before the quarantine. Depressive (Beck Depression Inventory-II; BDI-II), anxiety (Beck Anxiety Inventory-II; BAI), and insomnia (Sleep Condition Indicator; SCI) symptoms were evaluated in both groups at one (assessment) and eight (reassessment) months after cardiac intervention. The statistical analyses revealed that at reassessment, the quarantine group showed higher global depressive, anxiety, and insomnia symptoms than the control group and increased cognitive symptoms of depression. A higher presence of clinically relevant depressed patients was seen in the quarantine group. The present results showed that the COVID-19-related mandatory quarantine negatively affected psychological outcomes in patients after cardiac intervention, increasing the probability for these patients to be depressed. This, in turn, could influence patients' health in a critical period for morbidity and mortality risk. This underlines the priority of integrating and improving targeted mental health support as the pandemic continues, especially for cardiac patients.

The Influence of Emotion Regulation on the Association Between Depression and Heart Rate Variability in Cardiac Patients.

OBJECTIVE: Poor vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) is a mechanism linking depression to coronary heart disease (CHD). Reduced vmHRV is also considered an index of emotion dysregulation-the frequent use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, one of the most important being expressive suppression-which is a key component of depression. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the moderating role of expressive suppression in the relation between depression and vmHRV in patients with CHD. METHODS: The sample included 235 patients with CHD (mean [standard deviation] age = 61.6 [9.8] years; 12% women) admitted to cardiac rehabilitation after a cardiac intervention. The Beck Depression Inventory-II was administered to assess depressive symptoms. Emotion regulation strategies based on either expressive suppression or cognitive reappraisal were assessed through the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Resting electrocardiographic recordings were collected for 5 minutes to compute HRV indices. RESULTS: Expressive suppression moderated the relation between depressive symptoms and vmHRV ( b = -0.03, p = .012). Patients with lower expressive suppression scores showed no association between depressive symptoms and vmHRV ( b = -0.00, p = .94), whereas those with higher expressive suppression scores showed a significant negative association between depressive symptoms and vmHRV ( b = -0.05, p = .015). CONCLUSIONS: The use of expressive suppression is likely to potentiate the relation between depressive symptoms and poor vmHRV, which could increase the cardiac risk in these patients. Targeting emotion regulation skills in cardiac rehabilitation programs may be useful for reducing the impact of depression in cardiac patients.

Direct Gaze Holds Attention, but Not in Individuals with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

The attentional response to eye-gaze stimuli is still largely unexplored in individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Here, we focused on an attentional phenomenon according to which a direct-gaze face can hold attention in a perceiver. Individuals with OCD and a group of matched healthy controls were asked to discriminate, through a speeded manual response, a peripheral target. Meanwhile, a task-irrelevant face displaying either direct gaze (in the eye-contact condition) or averted gaze (in the no-eye-contact condition) was also presented at the centre of the screen. Overall, the latencies were slower for faces with direct gaze than for faces with averted gaze; however, this difference was reliable in the healthy control group but not in the OCD group. This suggests the presence of an unusual attentional response to direct gaze in this clinical population.

Do catastrophizing and autonomic-reduced flexibility mediate pain outcomes in chronic headache?

OBJECTIVES: Maladaptive cognitive strategies and reduced autonomic flexibility have been reported in chronic pain conditions. No study to date addressed the effects of maladaptive coping and reduced autonomic flexibility, as indexed by heart rate variability (HRV), in chronic headaches. The present study aimed to assess the mediating role of pain catastrophizing and HRV on pain outcomes in patients with chronic headache. METHODS: Thirty-two chronic headache patients and 28 healthy controls were recruited. Self-reported pain severity, pain interference on daily activity, and pain catastrophizing were assessed through the Multidimensional Pain Inventory and the Pain-Related Self Statements Scale. HRV was recorded at rest. Correlations and mediation analysis between self-report, HRV, and pain outcomes were run. RESULTS: Patients with chronic headache reported significantly higher pain severity (p < .001; d = - 1.98), pain interference on daily activity (p < .001; d = - 1.81), and pain catastrophizing (p < .001; d = - 0.96) compared to controls. They also presented significantly lower HRV (p < .05; d = 0.57). Both pain catastrophizing and HRV were associated with pain interference on daily activity. However, from mediation analysis, pain catastrophizing only emerged as the mediator for pain severity (p < .001; b = 0.30) and pain interference (p < .001; b = 0.14). CONCLUSION: Present results showed that chronic headache patients are characterized by high catastrophizing and lower physiological adaptability. Pain catastrophizing emerged as the only mediator of pain outcomes, suggesting that cognitive factors might have a major influence on the severity of pain and its interference on daily activities. Further studies are needed to evaluate these autonomic-cognitive interactions in chronic pain.

Psychophysiological Regulation and Classroom Climate Influence First and Second Graders' Well-Being: The Role of Body Mass Index.

This study examines the associations between physical and emotional well-being and classroom climate, cardiac vagal response, and body mass index (BMI) in a sample of 6- to-8-year-olds. Specifically, we expected a direct link between classroom climate, vagal withdrawal, BMI and children's physical and emotional comfort. Furthermore, we explored whether these individual and environmental characteristics influenced well-being in an interactive fashion. Participants were 142 (63 boys, 44%) first and second graders living in the North of Italy who were interviewed on their emotional and physical comfort. Heart rate and a measure of vagal influence on the heart (cardiac vagal tone) were recorded at rest and during an oral academic test. Height and weight were collected. Classroom climate was positively linked with physical well-being, whereas emotional well-being was negatively related with BMI. In addition, an inverted U-shaped effect of cardiac vagal withdrawal (i.e., cardiac vagal tone during stress minus resting vagal tone) on emotional well-being was found. Two regression models highlighted the role played by BMI when interacting with vagal withdrawal in predicting children's physical and emotional well-being. The interplay between BMI and cardiac vagal withdrawal played an important role in primary school children's well-being. From a clinical perspective, preventive training to improve autonomic regulation in concert with interventions promoting healthy eating attitudes might be critical for supporting primary school children's emotional and physical health.

The longitudinal negative impact of early stressful events on emotional and physical well-being: The buffering role of cardiac vagal development.

Early stressful events negatively affect emotional and physical well-being. Cardiac vagal tone (CVT), which is associated with better emotional and physical well-being, usually gradually increase in early childhood. Nonetheless, children's CVT developmental trajectories are greatly variable, such that CVT can increase or decrease across the years. The present study examines the longitudinal effects of early stressful events and the role of 4 years CVT developmental trajectory on children's emotional and physical well-being. Forty-two 4-year-old children were enrolled. Number of stressful events and resting electrocardiogram (ECG) were collected at T1. ECG was registered again after one (T2), two (T3) and three (T4) years. Children's emotional and physical well-being were assessed at T4 through the Child Health and Illness Profile - Child Edition (CHIP-CE). CVT development was calculated as the angular coefficient, reflecting the developmental trajectory of CVT across the four timepoints. Results yielded that higher experienced stressful events predicted poorer emotional and physical well-being after 4 years. The interaction between the number of stressful events and CVT development emerged on physical well-being. Early stressful events negatively affect long-term children's emotional and physical well-being while a positive CVT development seems to mitigate the negative effects of early stressful events on physical well-being.

Psychophysiological and Visual Behavioral Responses to Faces Associated with Affective and Non-affective Touch in Four-month-old Infants.

Affective touch (gentle, caress-like touch) carries a rewarding meaning, which may represent a neurophysiological foundation for the development of social interactions from the earliest stages of life. Developmental studies have shown evidence of infants' sensitivity to affective touch as reflected by a decrease in heart rate and activation of the insular cortex. Moreover, affective touch has been shown to regulate infants' emotional state, reinforce eye contact and facilitate learning of facial information, suggesting that affective touch may promote social functioning from the earliest stages of development. The present study aims to investigate the role of affective touch in enhancing engagement with social stimuli, exploring sustained attention and cardiac responses to faces as signatures of the underlying psychophysiological mechanism. Four-months-old infants (N = 40) were repeatedly presented with a female face paired with touch (hand stroking vs tapping with a brush in two different blocks) alternating with a face presented without tactile stimulation (familiarization phase), followed by a visual preference test between the two faces. Our results revealed an attenuated cardiac response in the affective compared to the non-affective condition during the familiarization phase. During the test phase infants looked longer at both the faces presented in the affective touch condition, compared to the faces in the non-affective condition. These findings suggest that affective touch might promote engagement in social interactions by facilitating physiological state regulation during processing of multisensory social information.

Not All Competitions Come to Harm! Competitive Biofeedback to Increase Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia in Managers.

Despite the positive impact on achievement, competition has been associated with elevated psychophysiological activation, potentially leading to a greater risk of cardiovascular diseases. Competitive biofeedback (BF) can be used to highlight the effects of competition on the same physiological responses that are going to be controlled through BF. However, it is still unknown whether competition could enhance the effects of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA)-BF training in improving cardiac vagal control. The present study explored whether competitive RSA-BF could be more effective than non-competitive RSA-BF in increasing RSA in executive managers, who are at higher cardiovascular risk of being commonly exposed to highly competitive conditions. Thirty managers leading outstanding private or public companies were randomly assigned to either a Competition (n = 14) or a Control (n = 16) RSA-BF training lasting five weekly sessions. Managers in the Competition group underwent the RSA-BF in couples and each participant was requested to produce a better performance (i.e., higher RSA) than the paired challenger. After the training, results showed that managers in the Competition group succeeded in increasing cardiac vagal control, as supported by the specific increase in RSA (p < 0.001), the standard deviation of R-R wave intervals (SDNN; p < 0.001), and root mean square of the successive differences between adjacent heartbeats (rMSSD; p < 0.001). A significant increase in the percentage of successive normal sinus beat to beat intervals more than 50 ms (pNN50; p = 0.023; η2 p = 0.17), low frequency (p = ≤ 0.001; η2 p = 0.44), and high frequency power (p = 0.005; η2 p = 0.25) emerged independently from the competitive condition. Intriguingly, managers who compete showed the same reduction in resting heart rate (HR; p = 0.003, η2 p = 0.28), systolic blood pressure (SBP; p = 0.013, η2 p = 0.20), respiration rate (p < 0.001; η2 p = 0.46), and skin conductance level (SCL; p = 0.001, η2 p = 0.32) as non-competitive participants. Also, the same reduction in social anxiety (p = 0.005; η2 p = 0.25), state (p = 0.038, η2 p = 0.14) and trait anxiety (p = 0.001, η2 p = 0.31), and depressive symptoms (p = 0.023, η2 p = 0.17) emerged in the two groups. The present results showed that managers competing for increasing RSA showed a greater improvement in their parasympathetic modulation than non-competing managers. Most importantly, competition did not lead to the classic pattern of increased psychophysiological activation under competitive RSA-BF. Therefore, competition could facilitate the use of self-regulation strategies, especially in highly competitive individuals, to promote adaptive responses to psychological stress.

Dual-tasking effects on static and dynamic postural balance performance: a comparison between endurance and team sport athletes.

In sports, postural balance control has been demonstrated to be one of the limiting factors of performance and a necessary component to achieve any sport technique. Team players (TP) must process and react to multiple external stimuli while executing at the same time the skills of the game. By contrast, endurance athletes (END) must perform the same gesture repetitively without a concurrent coordination of continuous stimuli-related actions. However, END are used to facilitate their physical performance by adopting cognitive strategies while performing their sport gesture. Therefore, we aimed to investigate static and dynamic balance performance in these two types of athletes, both in single and dual-task conditions. Nineteen END and sixteen TP underwent a static and a dynamic balance assessment on a dynamometric platform and an instrumented oscillating board, respectively. Among TP static but not dynamic postural balance performance was negatively affected by dual-tasking considering the area of the confidence ellipse (p < 0.001; d = 0.52) and the sway path mean speed (p < 0.001; d = 0.93). Conversely, END unaltered static balance performance but showed an overall improvement in the dynamic one when dual-tasking occurred. The limited human processing capacity accounted the worsening of the cognitive performance in both TP (p < 0.05; d = 0.22) and END (p < 0.001; d = 0.37). Although TP are more used coping dual tasking, the better performance of END could be accounted for by the employment of the external attentive focus (i.e. counting backward aloud) that called into play a strategy close to those adopted during training and competitions. These surprising results should be considered when driving and developing new trainings for team players in dual-tasking conditions.

Depression anticipates patients at risk of poor exercise stress test performance after percutaneous coronary angioplasty: A short-term longitudinal study.

AIMS: The exercise stress test is commonly used to assess physical capacity and recovery in coronary artery disease (CAD) patients after percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA). Despite depressive symptoms have been consistently associated with adverse outcomes in CAD patients, they are rarely considered as risk factors of poor exercise test. The present study investigated the influence of depressive symptoms, along with anxiety, sleep problems and perceived health on exercise test in PTCA patients. METHODS: One hundred and sixty-five patients who underwent PTCA completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), the Beck Anxiety Inventory, the Sleep Condition Index and the 12-item Short-Form Health Survey and, after 20 days, underwent exercise stress test. RESULTS: Higher BDI-II scores significantly predicted lower maximal workload measured in metabolic equivalents (METs; ß = -0.13; p = .030), shorter total exercise duration (ß = -5.23; p = .034) and the inability to reach maximum heart rate during exercise test (OR = 1.07; p = .032), even after controlling for relevant sociodemographic and biomedical risk factors. CONCLUSIONS: Depressive symptoms specifically predicted worse exercise stress test performance in patients after PTCA, controlling for common risk factors. Focusing on the assessment of depressive symptoms, in addition to sociodemographic and biomedical risk factors, is essential to anticipate patients at risk of poor physical capacity after PTCA.

Stressing the accuracy: Wrist-worn wearable sensor validation over different conditions.

Wearable sensors are promising instruments for conducting both laboratory and ambulatory research in psychophysiology. However, scholars should be aware of their measurement error and the conditions in which accuracy is achieved. This study aimed to assess the accuracy of a wearable sensor designed for research purposes, the E4 wristband (Empatica, Milan, Italy), in measuring heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and skin conductance (SC) over five laboratory conditions widely used in stress reactivity research (seated rest, paced breathing, orthostatic, Stroop, speech task) and two ecological conditions (slow walking, keyboard typing). Forty healthy participants concurrently wore the wristband and two gold standard measurement systems (i.e., electrocardiography and finger SC sensor). The wristband accuracy was determined by evaluating the signal quality and the correlations with and the Bland-Altman plots against gold standard-derived measurements. Moreover, exploratory analyses were performed to assess predictors of measurement error. Mean HR measures showed the best accuracy over all conditions. HRV measures showed satisfactory accuracy in seated rest, paced breathing, and recovery conditions but not in dynamic conditions, including speaking. Accuracy was diminished by wrist movements, cognitive and emotional stress, nonstationarity, and larger wrist circumferences. Wrist SC measures showed neither correlation nor visual resemblance with finger SC signal, suggesting that the two sites may reflect different phenomena. Future studies are needed to assess the responsivity of wrist SC to emotional and cognitive stress. Limitations and implications for laboratory and ambulatory research are discussed.

Profiles of vagal withdrawal to challenging interactions: Links with preschoolers' conceptual shifting ability.

The current study investigated profiles of vagal withdrawal in response to a challenging task in preschoolers. Also, the association between those profiles and conceptual shifting ability was assessed. Electrocardiogram of 43 four-year-olds was registered during a sequence of games including a win phase and a lose phase, while conceptual shifting ability was assessed via a standardized test. Cluster analyses revealed three profiles of cardiac vagal response to the task. Children in the first cluster displayed significant vagal withdrawal, children in the second cluster showed nonsignificant vagal withdrawal, while children in the third group displayed vagal augmentation to the challenge. These profiles differentiated preschoolers' conceptual shifting ability. Specifically, children with vagal withdrawal had the best performance in categorization and flexibility tasks and committed fewer perseverative errors compared to children who showed blunted vagal withdrawal or vagal augmentation to the challenge. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The frontal cortex is a heart-brake: Reduction in delta oscillations is associated with heart rate deceleration.

Prefrontal brain regions have been proposed to modulate vagally mediated heart rate variability (HRV) through their action on subcortical structures. This study aimed at investigating the beat-to-beat influence of the brain cortex over the heart through a high temporal resolution estimation of brain-heart coupling. Electrocardiogram (ECG) and electroencephalogram (EEG) from 32 scalp positions were recorded at rest for 5 min in 38 participants. To assess beat-to-beat cortical control on vagal activity, the longest and shortest inter-beat intervals (IBIs) were identified for each participant. Then, the EEG activity was time-locked to R waves in the ECG signal and analyzed using a time-frequency approach. Logistic regression models were applied to predict the trial-by-trial occurrence of long and short IBIs from cardiac-related EEG activity. Delta power reduction over prefrontal and frontocentral areas preceding the R-wave increased the probability for a long IBI to occur, as compared to a short one. Moreover, reduced prefrontal delta power preceding the R wave was correlated to higher cardiac vagal control, as reflected by the High Frequency (HF) power of HRV calculated on the whole recording time. The present results support the hypothesis that phasic activation/deactivation of prefrontal areas modulates vagal control of heart rate at rest.

Single-Session Attention Bias Modification Training in Victims of Work-Related Accidents.

Individuals who experienced traumatic work-related accidents frequently show cognitive deficits and biased processing of trauma-relevant information, which, in turn, could increase the risk of further accidents. The attention bias modification training (ABMT) is designed to reduce hypervigilance toward and enhance attentional disengagement from threat stimuli. The aim of the present study was to assess whether it is possible to implicitly reduce the attentional bias toward trauma-related stimuli through a single session of ABMT in individuals who experienced a traumatic occupational accident. Nineteen individuals who had experienced a traumatic work-related accident and 11 workers who never experienced a work accident (control group) underwent a preliminary assessment of cognitive performance (executive functions and sustained attention) and an evaluation of the attentional bias toward accident-related pictures by means of a dot-probe task. The results showed that injured workers performed more poorly than controls in tasks of executive functions and concentration abilities. Also, injured workers showed an attentional bias toward trauma reminders (i.e., faster reaction times to probes replacing trauma-related pictures). Injured workers were then randomly allocated to a single-session of ABMT (N = 10) or to an Attention Control Condition (ACC; N = 9). After the training, the dot-probe task was administered again to assess changes in the attentional bias toward trauma-relevant pictures. Injured workers who underwent the ABMT, but not those who underwent the ACC, showed a significant reduction of the attentional bias from pre- to post-training. Overall, these results support previous findings reporting an association between traumatic occupational accidents and cognitive dysfunctions. More importantly, these preliminary findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting the effectiveness of a short ABMT in reducing the attentional bias after a traumatic workplace accident.