No antidepressant-like acute effects of bright light on emotional information processing in healthy volunteers

Rationale Bright light treatment (BLT) is an efficacious antidepressant intervention, but its mechanism of action is not well understood. Antidepressant drugs acutely affect how emotional information is processed, pushing the brain to prioritise positive relative to negative input. Whether BLT could have a similar effect is not known to date. Objective To test whether BLT acutely influences emotional information processing similar to antidepressant drugs, using an established healthy volunteer assay. Methods Following a double-blind, parallel-group design, 49 healthy volunteers (18–65 years, 26 females) were randomly allocated to 60-min BLT (≥ 10,000 lux) or sham-placebo treatment early in the morning in autumn/winter. Immediately after treatment, emotional information processing was assessed using the Oxford Emotional Test Battery, a validated set of behavioural tasks tapping into emotional information processing in different cognitive domains. Participants also completed questionnaires before and after treatment to assess changes in subjective state. Results The BLT group did not show significantly more positively biased emotional information processing compared to the placebo group (p > 0.05 for all measures). After adjustment for pre-treatment scores, there were also no significant post-treatment differences between groups in subjective state (p > 0.05 for all measures). Conclusions BLT did not show immediate effects on emotional information processing in an established healthy volunteer assay. Thus, BLT might exert its clinical effects through a different (cognitive) mechanism than other antidepressant interventions. Future studies should corroborate this finding including clinical populations and more intensive treatment regimes, and control for potential chronobiological effects.

Relaxation or Regulation: The Acute Effect of Mind-Body Exercise on Heart Rate Variability and Subjective State in Experienced Qi Gong Practitioners

Mind-body exercises such as Yoga or Qi Gong have demonstrated a wide range of health benefits and hold great promise for employment in clinical practice. However, the psychophysiological mechanism underlying these effects remains unclear. Theoretical frameworks highlight regulation as a characteristic and specific mechanism of mind-body exercise for which empirical evidence is scarce. To investigate the exact nature of this mechanism, we tracked acute changes in autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity and subjective state over a common form of mind-body exercise (Qi Gong). Heart rate variability (HRV) and subjective state were assessed in 42 Qi Gong practitioners from China and Germany during a standard moving Qi Gong exercise (Baduanjin). Relaxation in supine position prior and after the exercise served as a control condition to Qi Gong and to assess changes before and after the exercise. Following Qi Gong, all practitioners reported significantly increased subjective calmness and perceived body activation, attentional focus, and subjective vitality. On the physiological level, a significant decrease of parasympathetic modulation and increase in heart rate indicated a pattern of moderate general physiological activation during Qi Gong. A significant increase in overall RR-interval modulation and cardiac coherence during Qi Gong were indicative of a mechanism of active regulation. Examination of the RR-interval trajectories revealed a rhythmic pattern of ANS activation and deactivation in sync with activating and relaxing segments of the exercise. Significant changes in subjective state, not on the physiological level, before and after the exercise were observed. Significant associations between Qi-Gong-specific beliefs, age, cultural background, and experiential and physiological measures demonstrated the complexity of mind-body exercises as multicomponent interventions. Overall, this study highlights moderate general physiological activation, exercise-dependent rhythmic ANS modulation, and induction of a characteristic state of eutonic calmness as potential psychophysiological mechanisms underlying the health benefits of mind-body exercise.

Ready-to-eat cereal and milk for breakfast compared with no breakfast has a positive acute effect on cognitive function and subjective state in 11–13-year-olds: a school-based, randomised, controlled, parallel groups trial

Purpose We tested the acute effect of breakfast (ready-to-eat-cereal [RTEC] and milk) versus (vs.) no breakfast on cognitive function and subjective state in adolescents. Methods Healthy adolescents (n = 234) aged 11–13 years were recruited to take part in this school-based, acute, randomised, controlled, parallel groups trial with two interventions; Breakfast or No Breakfast. The breakfast intervention consisted of ad libitum intake of RTEC (up to 70 g) with milk (up to 300 ml) administered in a naturalistic school breakfast programme environment. Cognitive function was assessed at baseline and + 70 and + 215 min post-intervention in a group-testing situation, similar to a school classroom context. The CANTAB test battery included: Simple Reaction Time (SRT), 5-Choice Reaction Time (5-CRT), Rapid Visual Information Processing (RVIP), and Paired Associates Learning (PAL; primary outcome). Data collection commenced January 2011 and ended May 2011. This trial was retrospectively registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03979027 on 07/06/2019. Results A significant effect of the intervention (CMH[1] = 7.29, p < 0.01) was found for the number of levels achieved on the PAL task. A significant difference between interventions was found when baseline performance reached level 2 (JT, z = 2.58, p < 0.01), such that 100% of participants in the breakfast intervention reached the maximum level 4 but only 41.7% of those in the no breakfast intervention reached level 4. A significant baseline*intervention interaction (F[1,202] = 6.95, p < 0.01) was found for total errors made on the PAL task, indicating that participants who made above-average errors at baseline reduced the total number of errors made at subsequent test sessions following breakfast consumption whilst those in the no breakfast intervention did not. There was a positive effect of breakfast on reaction time and visual-sustained attention. The results also demonstrated interactions of intervention with baseline cognitive performance, such that breakfast conferred a greater advantage for performance when baseline performance was poorer. Conclusion Consuming breakfast has a positive acute effect on cognition in adolescents.

Post-viral Fatigue: Implications for Long Covid

There has been extensive research on post-viral fatigue, and the present mini-review and commentary provides an overview of the effects associated with different infecting agents. Fatigue is not only a subjective state, rather it has an impact on our ability to carry out everyday functions, and its effect can be demonstrated using performance tasks. It is not surprising, therefore, that persistent effects of COVID-19 are observed, and the key features of Long Covid are reviewed here, Suggestions for further research which will provide a better understanding of Long Covid and provide a basis for prevention and management are also discussed.

Psychogenic theory of consciousness

The brain is a unique organization in nature, having the psychic activity, which is expressed in subjective states: thoughts, feelings, emotions. Knowledge of the nature of mental activity of the brain is the most urgent and the most challenging task of physiology. Historically the neurophysiology developed on the basis of physical and chemical laws discovered in an inanimate nature. Our investigation is devoted towards the origin of a human subjective state, and presents a new methodology for studying of the nature psychic brain activity. We have established the existence of physical phenomena unique for the living brain so-called «psychogenic field», which reflects the expressed psychic state of human brain. The subjective state of a human being was shown to affect remotely the physicochemical properties of the blood. An original schematic diagram is presented to describe the formation of the brain psychic activity. This approach is based on the feedback influence of a psychogenic field on neuronal molecular processes (self-induction in the brain). The paper describes the interrelation of neurophysiologic and subjective processes in the system organization of goal-seeking behavior. A «Psychogenic theory of consciousness» is proposed, suggests presuming the existence of physical phenomena unique for the living brain and brain fields, and their role in the origin of a subjective state.

Culpability and Negligence

How blameworthy is negligence? Recently this perennial question has reappeared, with several scholars arguing that negligence is not blameworthy. On this view, actors should be judged only by the information, beliefs, and reasons that they actually had. To hold them blameworthy for things that were not part of their mental calculus is incoherent, unfair, or both. In this essay, I dispute the non-culpability view with both intuitions and arguments about its perverse implications. I also begin to sketch a view that connects the blameworthiness of negligence to the consideration that we attempt to inculcate in ourselves and others. Limiting culpability to a subjective state locates our responsibilities entirely within the confines of our own minds and what we have consciously chosen to take on board. It does not hold us accountable for failing to attend to the world and people around us. This seems wrong in itself. It also has disturbing implications in rewarding obliviousness, a privilege often available only to the lucky few, while penalizing conscientiousness, a trait often thrust upon the marginalized. While this piece offers only a sketch of these issues, it identifies a few sources of resistance to the conclusion that negligence cannot be blameworthy.

Beta and theta oscillations correlate with subjective time during musical improvisation in ecological and controlled settings: a single subject study

In this paper, we describe the results of a single subject study attempting at a better understanding of the subjective state during musical improvisation. In a first experiment, we setup an ecological paradigm measuring EEG on a musician in free improvised concerts with an audience, followed by retrospective rating of the mental state of the improviser. We introduce Subjective Temporal Resolution (STR), a retrospective rating assessing the instantaneous attention of the musician towards short or long musical events. We identified high and low STR states using Hidden Markov Models in two performances, and were able to decode those states using supervised learning on instantaneous EEG power spectrum, showing increases in theta and alpha power with high STR values. In a second experiment, we found an increase of theta and beta power when experimentally manipulating STR in a musical improvisation imagery experiment. These results are interpreted with respect to previous research on flow state in creativity, as well as with the temporal processing literature. We suggest that a component of the subjective state of musical improvisation may be reflected in an underlying mechanism responsible for modulating subjective temporal processing of musical events.

Office wall color influence on subjective response in patients with chronic heart failure

Heart failure is defined as a clinical state, which occurs as a result of structural or functional damage of ventricle with consequential blood hypo perfusion of organs (reduced stroke volume of heart muscle and/or increased intracardial pressure in rest or during work activity). Therapeutical monitoring of patient is imperative, and it includes assessment of objective and subjective state of patient, which is often guide for optimizing of pharmacological treatment. The aim of paper is assessment of the room wall color influence as one of the factor for optimizing the therapeutic modality of patients with diagnosis of heart failure. Findings suggest that the influence of color in environment can be neutral, enabling or disabling, and this is the aspect of treatment that needs to be investigated further in future.

Ambiguity and Awareness: A Coherent Multiple Priors Model

Ambiguity in the ordinary language sense means that available information is open to multiple interpretations. We model this by assuming that individuals are unaware of some possibilities relevant to the outcome of their decisions and that multiple probabilities may arise over an individual’s subjective state space depending on which of these possibilities are realized. We formalize a notion of coherent multiple priors and derive a representation result that with full awareness corresponds to the usual unique (Bayesian) prior but with less than full awareness generates multiple priors. When information is received with no change in awareness, each element of the set of priors is updated in the standard Bayesian fashion (that is, full Bayesian updating). An increase in awareness, however, leads to an expansion of the individual’s subjective state and (in general) a contraction in the set of priors under consideration.