Emotion Regulation and Vulnerability to Depression: A Longitudinal Test of the Diathesis-Stress Model

<p>Maladaptive emotion regulation is an established vulnerability marker for depression. Within a diathesis-stress framework individual differences in emotion regulation constitute sensitivity to stress, such that people who are less able to effectively regulate their emotions are more likely to become depressed when stress is encountered. Markers of maladaptive emotion regulation have been examined from affective, neurological, and cognitive perspectives and, for the most part, have been examined in independent lines of research. As such, the independent and interactive contributions of maladaptive emotion regulation markers are still unknown. The current thesis addresses this gap with a longitudinal study. Emotion regulation markers and depression were assessed at the outset of the study (time one) then life stress and depression were measured three months (time two) and twelve months (time three) later. Three trait measures of emotion regulation were assessed: spontaneous emotion regulation (as indexed by startle reactivity following negative images), frontal and parietal resting EEG asymmetries, and brooding rumination. All emotion regulation markers were found to be independent markers of vulnerability to depression. The emotion regulation markers measured at time one were then tested within a diathesis stress framework to predict stress sensitivity at time two. Poorer online regulation interacted with life stress to predict depression. That is, poor online regulators were sensitive to stress at three months, whereas good online regulators were not. Stress sensitivity was tested again at time three, twelve months after the initial assessment. At this time point frontal asymmetry, parietal asymmetry and life stress interacted to predict depression. When right parietal activity was low, rightward frontal asymmetries showed more sensitivity to stress. However, people with leftward asymmetries showed less stress sensitivity. Brooding predicted depression at three months but not at twelve months and did not interact with stress at either time point. The findings of this thesis show that, within the diathesis-stress framework, online regulation measures indicate short-term sensitivity to stress; however, EEG asymmetry measures show sensitivity to stress in the longer term.</p>

Emotion Regulation and Vulnerability to Depression: A Longitudinal Test of the Diathesis-Stress Model

<p>Maladaptive emotion regulation is an established vulnerability marker for depression. Within a diathesis-stress framework individual differences in emotion regulation constitute sensitivity to stress, such that people who are less able to effectively regulate their emotions are more likely to become depressed when stress is encountered. Markers of maladaptive emotion regulation have been examined from affective, neurological, and cognitive perspectives and, for the most part, have been examined in independent lines of research. As such, the independent and interactive contributions of maladaptive emotion regulation markers are still unknown. The current thesis addresses this gap with a longitudinal study. Emotion regulation markers and depression were assessed at the outset of the study (time one) then life stress and depression were measured three months (time two) and twelve months (time three) later. Three trait measures of emotion regulation were assessed: spontaneous emotion regulation (as indexed by startle reactivity following negative images), frontal and parietal resting EEG asymmetries, and brooding rumination. All emotion regulation markers were found to be independent markers of vulnerability to depression. The emotion regulation markers measured at time one were then tested within a diathesis stress framework to predict stress sensitivity at time two. Poorer online regulation interacted with life stress to predict depression. That is, poor online regulators were sensitive to stress at three months, whereas good online regulators were not. Stress sensitivity was tested again at time three, twelve months after the initial assessment. At this time point frontal asymmetry, parietal asymmetry and life stress interacted to predict depression. When right parietal activity was low, rightward frontal asymmetries showed more sensitivity to stress. However, people with leftward asymmetries showed less stress sensitivity. Brooding predicted depression at three months but not at twelve months and did not interact with stress at either time point. The findings of this thesis show that, within the diathesis-stress framework, online regulation measures indicate short-term sensitivity to stress; however, EEG asymmetry measures show sensitivity to stress in the longer term.</p>

Smartphone-Based Pelvic Movement Asymmetry Measures for Clinical Decision Making in Equine Lameness Assessment

Visual evaluation of hindlimb lameness in the horse is challenging. Objective measurements, simultaneous to visual assessment, are used increasingly to aid clinical decision making. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of pelvic movement asymmetry with lameness scores (UK scale 0–10) of one experienced veterinarian. Absolute values of pelvic asymmetry measures, quantifying differences between vertical minima (AbPDMin), maxima (AbPDMax) and upward movement amplitudes (AbPDUp), were recorded during straight-line trot with a smartphone attached to the sacrum (n = 301 horses). Overall, there was a significant difference between lameness grades for all three asymmetry measures (p < 0.001). Five pair-wise differences (out of 10) were significant for AbPDMin (p ≤ 0.02) and seven for AbPDMax (p ≤ 0.03) and AbPDUp (p ≤ 0.02). Receiver operating curves assessed sensitivity and specificity of asymmetry measures against lameness scores. AbPDUp had the highest discriminative power (area under curve (AUC) = 0.801–0.852) followed by AbPDMax (AUC = 0.728–0.813) and AbPDMin (AUC = 0.688–0.785). Cut-off points between non-lame (grade 0) and lame horses (grades 1–4) with a minimum sensitivity of 75% were identified as AbPDUp ≥ 7.5 mm (67.6% specificity), AbPDMax ≥ 4.5 mm (51.9% specificity) and AbPDMin ≥ 2.5 mm (33.3% specificity). In conclusion, pelvic upward movement amplitude difference (AbPDUp) was the asymmetry parameter with the highest discriminative power in this study.

Do mergers and acquisitions affect information asymmetry in the banking sector?

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the consequences of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on information asymmetry in the banking sector. Specifically, the authors look at whether specific firm or deal characteristic influence information asymmetry levels between insiders and investors, as well as the impact of recent regulation such as the Dodd–Frank Act.Design/methodology/approachThe authors decompose the M&A process into three periods (pre-announcement, negotiation and post-completion period) and document changes in the information asymmetry levels between insiders and investors through the M&A process. The authors capture changes in information asymmetry using six different spread-based information asymmetry measures.FindingsThe authors find evidence that information asymmetry increases following M&A announcement and decreases following deal completion. These findings are more pronounced for acquisitions involving a private target, all-cash deals and for mergers, as opposed to acquisition of assets. We find that overall, successful mergers improve the quality of the information environment, while failed deals degrade it. Additionally, the enactment of Dodd–Frank reduced the magnitude of the changes in information asymmetry during the M&A process. The results are important to regulators, policy makers and investors.Originality/valueTo authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that looks at the effect of bank M&As on information asymmetry as well as the effect of regulations on information asymmetry.

Stock Return Asymmetry: Beyond Skewness

In this article, we propose two asymmetry measures for stock returns. Unlike the popular skewness measure, our measures are based on the distribution function of the data rather than just the third central moment. We present empirical evidence that the greater upside asymmetries calculated using our new measures imply lower average returns in the cross section of stocks. In contrast, when using the skewness measure, the relationship between asymmetry and returns is inconclusive.

Fusion of Motif- and Spectrum-Related Features for Improved EEG-Based Emotion Recognition

Emotion recognition is a burgeoning field allowing for more natural human-machine interactions and interfaces. Electroencephalography (EEG) has shown to be a useful modality with which user emotional states can be measured and monitored, particularly primitives such as valence and arousal. In this paper, we propose the use of ordinal pattern analysis, also called motifs, for improved EEG-based emotion recognition. Motifs capture recurring structures in time series and are inherently robust to noise, thus are well suited for the task at hand. Several connectivity, asymmetry, and graph-theoretic features are proposed and extracted from the motifs to be used for affective state recognition. Experiments with a widely used public database are conducted, and results show the proposed features outperforming benchmark spectrum-based features, as well as other more recent nonmotif-based graph-theoretic features and amplitude modulation-based connectivity/asymmetry measures. Feature and score-level fusion suggest complementarity between the proposed and benchmark spectrum-based measures. When combined, the fused models can provide up to 9% improvement relative to benchmark features alone and up to 16% to nonmotif-based graph-theoretic features.

Asymmetry of Caddo Ceramics from the Washington Square Mound Site: An Exploratory Analysis

While pursuing a study of 3D geometric morphometrics for ceramic burial vessels that often articulate with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) from the ancestral Caddo region, there have been no shortage of potentially meaningful observations, one of which--rotational asymmetry--is discussed here. Using Geomagic Design X (reverse-engineering software) and Geomagic Verify (inspection software), metrics associated with rotational asymmetry were generated and analyzed. Future directions include the incorporation of directional and fluctuating asymmetry measures of the widest vessel profiles, which were calculated in Design X then analyzed using the geomorph package in R. Preliminary results point toward gainful results that can be used to augment more traditional ceramic analyses as well as geometric morphometric studies of ceramic vessel shape.

Big and Small Cerebral Asymmetries

Letter HighlightsDeformation-based asymmetries replicate previously observed grey matter asymmetries and characterize white matter asymmetries.Increased sensitivity to structural asymmetries in some brain regions depends on smaller-scale normalization or deformation parameters.Tuning deformation parameters can provide more precise asymmetry measures for understanding the mechanisms and functional significance of cerebral asymmetries.