Cannabinoids in Chronic Pain: Therapeutic Potential Through Microglia Modulation

Chronic pain is a complex sensory, cognitive, and emotional experience that imposes a great personal, psychological, and socioeconomic burden on patients. An estimated 1.5 billion people worldwide are afflicted with chronic pain, which is often difficult to treat and may be resistant to the potent pain-relieving effects of opioid analgesics. Attention has therefore focused on advancing new pain therapies directed at the cannabinoid system because of its key role in pain modulation. Endocannabinoids and exogenous cannabinoids exert their actions primarily through Gi/o-protein coupled cannabinoid CB1 and CB2 receptors expressed throughout the nervous system. CB1 receptors are found at key nodes along the pain pathway and their activity gates both the sensory and affective components of pain. CB2 receptors are typically expressed at low levels on microglia, astrocytes, and peripheral immune cells. In chronic pain states, there is a marked increase in CB2 expression which modulates the activity of these central and peripheral immune cells with important consequences for the surrounding pain circuitry. Growing evidence indicate that interventions targeting CB1 or CB2 receptors improve pain outcomes in a variety of preclinical pain models. In this mini-review, we will highlight recent advances in understanding how cannabinoids modulate microglia function and its implications for cannabinoid-mediated analgesia, focusing on microglia-neuron interactions within the spinal nociceptive circuitry.

Hypothesizing in the Face of the Opioid Crisis Coupling Genetic Addiction Risk Severity (GARS) Testing with Electrotherapeutic Nonopioid Modalities Such as H-Wave Could Attenuate Both Pain and Hedonic Addictive Behaviors

In the United States, amid the opioid overdose epidemic, nonaddicting/nonpharmacological proven strategies are available to treat pain and manage chronic pain effectively without opioids. Evidence supporting the long-term use of opioids for pain is lacking, as is the will to alter the drug-embracing culture in American chronic pain management. Some pain clinicians seem to prefer classical analgesic agents that promote unwanted tolerance to analgesics and subsequent biological induction of the “addictive brain”. Reward genes play a vital part in modulation of nociception and adaptations in the dopaminergic circuitry. They may affect various sensory and affective components of the chronic pain syndromes. The Genetic Addiction Risk Severity (GARS) test coupled with the H-Wave at entry in pain clinics could attenuate pain and help prevent addiction. The GARS test results identify high-risk for both drug and alcohol, and H-Wave can be initiated to treat pain instead of opioids. The utilization of H-Wave to aid in pain reduction and mitigation of hedonic addictive behaviors is recommended, notwithstanding required randomized control studies. This frontline approach would reduce the possibility of long-term neurobiological deficits and fatalities associated with potent opioid analgesics.

Predicting Academic Alienation From Emotion Dysregulation, Social Competence, and Peer Relationships in School-Attending Girls: A Multiple-Regression Approach

School alienation (SA) refers to a collection of negative attitudes toward the social and academic realms of schooling consisting of cognitive and affective components. The current study was designed to examine whether emotion dysregulation, social competence, and peer problems predict school alienation. In this vein, 300 school-attending adolescents in Sarab were recruited and completed difficulties in emotion regulation scale (DERS), academic alienation questionnaire (AAQ), social competence test (SCT), and index of peer relations (IPR) measures, but 280 (M age = 16.35; SD = 0.82; 46% girls) completed data were gathered. The results of hierarchical multiple regression indicated that school alienation was significantly predicted by emotion dysregulation, social competency, and peer problems. In conclusion, our findings suggest that school psychologists and other clinicians design interventions to improve the students’ shortcomings in emotion regulations, social competency, and peer relationships domains.

Модель формирования коммуникативных компетенций учеников средствами игровых ситуаций на занятиях по английскому языку

The article describes the model of formation students' communicative skills through game situations during English language classes. Competency-based approach, at the base of the study of foreign languages, it is considered as an effective mean of organizing the educational and cognitive activity of students, ensures the acquisition of the content of the material and the achievement of the study objectives in solving certain problematic tasks. Students' communication competence, which is considered by us as a complex personal education, is a multi-component structure. With the help of a theoretical analysis of the psychological and pedagogical literature, self-assessments, experts’ assessments, observation of students' communication activity, the structure of communicative competence is defined, which combines cognitive, axiological, praxiological and affective components.

Are disturbances in mentalization ability similar between schizophrenic patients and borderline personality disorder patients? A pilot study

There is a growing interest in theory of mind (ToM) performance among individuals with psychiatric disorders, however, the difference and the performance level between different diagnoses is unclear. Here, we compared the ToM abilities of schizophrenia, schizoaffective and borderline personality individuals (BPD) with healthy individuals, and searched for a correlation between ToM ability, social skills, and empathy. Overall, diagnostic groups performed worse in the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test and recognized fewer Faux Pax motifs than healthy individuals recognize. No difference was observed in the ability to perform the eyes test between schizophrenic patients with and without the affective components and BPD patients. Both schizophrenia and BPD patients received a higher score in the autism-spectrum questioner, while all the diagnostic groups scored lower on the empathy quotient scale than healthy individuals. Finally, a correlation was found between ToM ability and empathy, but not with autistic-related traits. Results indicate that both cognitive and affective aspects of ToM are impaired across all the diagnostic groups, challenge the ability to use ToM as a differential diagnostic tool, and strengthen the correlation between decreased empathy and impaired ToM.

Realistic Virtual Humans for Cultural Heritage Applications

Virtual Humans are becoming a commodity in computing technology and lately have been utilized in the context of interactive presentations in Virtual Cultural Heritage environments and exhibitions. To this end, this research work underlines the importance of aligning and fine-tuning Virtual Humans’ appearance to their roles and highlights the importance of affective components. Building realistic Virtual Humans was traditionally a great challenge requiring a professional motion capturing studio and heavy resources in 3D animation and design. In this paper, a workflow for their implementation is presented, based on current technological trends in wearable mocap systems and advancements in software technology for their implementation, animation, and visualization. The workflow starts from motion recording and segmentation to avatar implementation, retargeting, animation, lip synchronization, face morphing, and integration to a virtual or physical environment. The testing of the workflow occurs in a use case for the Mastic Museum of Chios and the implementation is validated both in a 3D virtual environment accessed through Virtual Reality and on-site at the museum through an Augmented Reality application. The findings, support the initial hypothesis through a formative evaluation, and lessons learned are transformed into a set of guidelines to support the replication of this work.

EXPLORING MOTIVATION TO LEARN MATHEMATICS THROUGH VROOM’S THEORY

<p>Mathematics is one of the fundamental subjects that contributes to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers since it plays a vital role in this Fourth Industrial Revolution. Due to that, this subject has been added in syllabus starting from primary school until university level and most of the students are taking mathematics but not limited to the students who are in the STEM area only. However, not all students particularly favour this subject since it requires problem solving skills as well as motivation to learn the subject matter. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate students’ motivation in learning Mathematics through Vrooms’ Theory. Quantitative method was used by distributing a set of questionnaires to 234 students in a public university in Malaysia. The instrument from the questionnaire consisted of three sections, a) affective components, b) expectancy components and c) value components with a total of 24 items. The findings revealed that students face anxiety while learning Mathematics and it could be motivating factors for the student to work even harder to perform in Mathematics. It was shown that their motivation towards learning Mathematics was influenced by how much value they placed on the outcome of the learning. This study can help educators to have a better understanding of students' learning motivation and provide continuous support to students. </p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0853/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Evaluation of Programme Outcomes Under the Psychomotor and Affective Domain for Diploma Civil Engineering Students Through Industrial Training: A Statistical Study from Employers' Perspective in Malaysia

The psychomotor and affective are important domains in Programme Out-comes (PO) and are used to assess the achievement of learning objectives. The psychomotor domain refers to performing motor activities accurately, smoothly, and quickly. The affective components are those personality and behavioural characteristics which focuses on feelings, emotions, and attitudes. Through industrial training, students are exposed to engineering practices, the real civil engineering environments and the ethical and communication skill required. This paper identified the employer's perspective on the students’ attainment for psychomotor and affective domains while undergoing industrial training. There were 272 students are involved in this study that undergoing the Industrial Training in session II 2019/2020. The portion of marks from the industry evaluation for the psychomotor domain is 40% and for the af-fective domain is 10%. The marks were analyzed using descriptive statistical analysis to measure student’s performance. The Pearson correlation (r) was used to identify the relationship between each POs with related domain and the t-test analysis was completed to evaluate any significant difference be-tween the performance evaluation of male and female students. The result shows that most of the students were excellent in the psychomotor and affective domain. The r-value for each POs shows a moderately positive correlation. Therefore, the outcomes of this study can provide input to the faculty to improve the important elements of the psychomotor and affective domain to produce good quality of future civil engineering technical personnel.

Preprint: Alcohol's effects during uncertain and uncontrollable stressors in the laboratory

Alcohol’s effects on reactivity to stressors depend on the nature of the stressor and the reactivity being assessed. Research identifying characteristics of stressors that modulate reactivity and clarifies the neurobehavioral, cognitive, and affective components of this reactivity may help prevent, reduce or treat the negative impacts of acute and chronic alcohol use with implications for other psychopathology involving maladaptive reactivity to stressors. We used a novel, multi-measure, cued electric shock stressor paradigm in a greater university community sample of adult recreational drinkers to test how alcohol (N=64), compared to No-alcohol (N=64), affects reactivity to stressors that vary in both their perceived certainty and controllability. Preregistered analyses suggested alcohol significantly dampened subjective anxiety (self-report) and defensive reactivity (startle potentiation) more during uncertain than during certain stressors regardless of controllability, suggesting that stressor uncertainty —but not uncontrollability— may be sufficient to enhance alcohol’s stress reactivity dampening and thus negative reinforcement potential.

Integration of Cognitive and Emotional Processing Predicts Poor and Good Outcomes of Psychotherapy

With the aim of investigating analogies and differences between psychotherapeutic processes, ten good-outcome and ten poor-outcome cases were selected from a sample of patients treated at the University Hospital of Psychiatry, Salzburg, Austria, and the Department of Psycho-Traumatology of the Clinic St. Irmingard, Prien am Chiemsee, Germany. They were monitored daily using the Therapy Process Questionnaire (TPQ), and their evolution over time was analyzed by means of Principal Components Analysis and Linear Discriminant Analysis. The results highlight that poor-outcome patients show a separation between cognitive processes (Principal Component 1) and relational-emotional processes (Principal Component 2) (r = − 0.25; p = n.s.), while in the good-outcome patients these aspects are well integrated (r = 0.70; p = 0.02). These results corroborate the validity of the daily monitoring procedure and also indicate the need for greater attention to the relational and emotional aspects of the patients rather than merely to their cognitive functioning and well-being. Key Message In poor-outcome cases, burdensome emotions and interpersonal experiences on the one hand and cognitive/well-being aspects of the mental processing on the other, stay unrelated. Successful therapeutic processing, as in good-outcome cases, requires an integration of cognitive and affective components.