Environmental Enrichment Facilitates Anxiety in Conflict-Based Tests but Inhibits Predator Threat-Induced Defensive Behaviour in Male Mice

<b><i>Introduction:</i></b> Environmental enrichment (EE) is a useful and sophisticated tool that improves rodents’ well-being by stimulating social behaviour and cognitive, motor, and sensory functions. Exposure to EE induces neuroplasticity in different brain areas, including the limbic system, which has been implicated in the control of anxiety and fear. However, the effects of EE on ethologically relevant naturalistic behaviours, such as those displayed by prey in the presence of predators, remain largely unexplored. <b><i>Material and Methods:</i></b> In the present study, we investigated anxiety- and panic attack-like behaviours in a predator (cat)-prey confrontation paradigm and compared them with those in classical assays, such as the elevated plus-maze (EPM), marble-burying, and open field tests (OFTs), using C57BL/6J male mice housed in enriched or standard environments for 6 weeks. <b><i>Results:</i></b> We observed that EE exposure caused enhancement of the levels of anxiety-like behaviours in the EPM and OFTs, increasing risk assessment (an anxiety-related response), and decreasing escape (a panic attack-like response) behaviours during exposure to the predator versus prey confrontation paradigm. <b><i>Conclusion:</i></b> Taken together, our findings suggest that enriched external environments can modify the processing of fear- and anxiety-related stimuli in dangerous situations, changing the decision-making defensive strategy.

THE IMPACTS OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE GLOBAL SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic to manufacturing companies has been horrendous that panic attack has occurred among the companies, as well as semiconductor companies. Many companies have been declared bankrupt due to this pandemic and a new normal have been born such as remote working, following by certain Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) implemented by the government to avoid infection of this COVID-19 virus and practice social distancing at the workplace. Apart from the new normal, there are some effects to the semiconductor companies in a way that could present a negative impact to the future of the companies. There are some drastic measures being implemented to adapt with the new normal as well as keeping the production running as usual. The main motive of analyzing the current situation is to avoid complete down fall of production of semiconductor companies which may affect the global economy.

PANIC ATTACK: SOCIAL CAUSES AND INTEGRATIVE APPROACH TO PSYCHOTHERAPY

В статье рассматривается понятие панических атак (ПА), а также причины их возникновения, среди которых приоритетное место отводится конфликту личности и окружения, включая высшие уровни духовной иерархии и места в них человека. Утверждается необходимость духовного стержня и гармоничного соединения с миром для восстановления целостности (интегрирования) личности и тем самым устранения тревожности, как основной почвы для возникновения панических атак. The article discusses the concept of panic attacks (PA), as well as the causes of their occurrence, among which priority is given to the conflict of personality and environment, including the highest levels of the spiritual hierarchy and the place of a person in them. The necessity of a spiritual core and a harmonious connection with the world is stated in order to restore the integrity (integration) of personality and thereby to eliminate anxiety as the main ground for the occurrence of panic attacks.

Panic attack prediction using wearable devices and machine learning: development and cohort study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND A panic attack (PA) is an intense form of anxiety accompanied by multiple somatic presentations, leading to frequent emergency department visits and repetitive medical examinations before a formal diagnosis. Designing a PA prediction model could help prevent iatrogenic harm to patients and facilitate more personalized treatment. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to provide a seven-day PA prediction model and determine the relationship between physiological factors, anxiety and depressive factors, and air quality index. METHODS We enrolled 59 participants with PD (DMS-5 and MINI interview). Participants used smartwatches (Garmin vivosmart 4) and mobile applications to collect their sleep, heart rate, activity level, anxiety, and depression scores (BDI, BAI, STAI-S, STAI-T, and PDSS-SR) in their real life for a duration of one year. We also included air quality indexes from open data. To analyze these data, our team used six machine learning methods: random forests, decision trees, LDA, AdaBoost, XgBoost, and regularized greedy forests. RESULTS For seven-day PA prediction, the random forest produced the best prediction rate. The model achieved an accuracy of 97.5% on the training set. Overall, the accuracy of the testing set was 67.4–81.3% for different machine learning algorithms. The most critical variables in the model were questionnaire and physiological features such as BAI, BDI, STAI, MINI, average heart rate, resting heart rate, and deep sleep duration. CONCLUSIONS It is possible to predict panic attacks using a combination of data from questionnaires, and physiological and environmental data. Prediction accuracy was 97.5% on the training data and 81.3% on the testing data.

PanicMechanic: A Digital Therapeutic Delivering Biofeedback for Panic Attacks (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED Panic attacks are an impairing mental health problem that affects more than 11% of adults every year. Panic attacks are episodic, and it is difficult to predict when or where they may occur, thus they are challenging to study and treat. To this end, we present PanicMechanic, a novel mobile health (mHealth) application that captures heartrate-based data and delivers biofeedback during panic attacks. We leverage this tool to capture profiles of real-world panic attacks in a largest sample to date and present results from a pilot study to assess the feasibility and usefulness of PanicMechanic as a panic attack intervention. Results demonstrate that heart rate fluctuates by about 15 beats per minute during a panic attack and takes about 30 seconds to return to baseline from peak, cycling 4 to 5 times during each attack and that anxiety ratings consistently decrease throughout the attack. Thoughts about health were the most common trigger during the observed panic attacks, and potential lifestyle contributors include slightly worse stress, sleep, and eating habits, slightly less exercise, and slightly less drug/alcohol consumption than typical. The pilot study revealed that PanicMechanic is largely feasible to use, but would be made more so with simple modifications to the app and particularly the integration of consumer wearables. Similarly, participants found PanicMechanic useful, with 94% indicating that they would recommend PanicMechanic to a friend. These results point toward the need for future development and a controlled trial to establish effectiveness of this digital therapeutic for preventing panic attacks.

Coronavirus disease-19 Pandemic-Induced Panic Disorder

Background: COVID-19 is a newly emerging infectious disease which is found to be caused by SARS-2. COVID-19 pandemic has spread worldwide causing a rapidly increasing number of mental disorders cases, primarily anxiety disorder. Since majority of panic disorder patients are present with great anxiety in response to their physical or respiratory symptoms, support and encouragement from psychiatrist or therapist are fundamental to alleviate the severity of the symptoms. Case Report: We reported a case of COVID-19 induced panic disorder in a woman, 52 years old, batak tribe who started to experience multiple panic attacks since one of her family members was confirmed to be Covid-10 positive. Conclusion: In general, panic disorder is a common diagnosis, but this case appeared to be interesting as it is induced by COVID-19 pandemic. As in this case, the individual who experienced multiple panic attack is not even a COVID-19 patient but has one of her family member affected by the virus. A wide body of evidence has shown that this pandemic massively contributes to worsening of psychosocial burden in nationwide.