A lived experience perspective on sharing personal information

A lived experience perspective on sharing personal information

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Emotions and individual differences shape human foraging under threat

A common behavior in natural environments is foraging for rewards. However, this is often in the presence of predators. Therefore, one of the most fundamental decisions for humans, as for other animals, is how to apportion time between reward-motivated pursuit behavior and threat-motivated checking behavior. To understand what affects how people strike this balance, we developed an ecologically inspired task and looked at both within-participant dynamics (moods) and between-participant individual differences (questionnaires about real-life behaviors) in two large internet samples (n = 374 and n = 702) in a cross-sectional design. For the within-participant dynamics, we found that people regulate task-evoked stress homeostatically by changing behavior (increasing foraging and hiding). Individual differences, even in superficially related traits (apathy–anhedonia and anxiety–compulsive checking) reliably mapped onto unique behaviors. Worse task performance, due to maladaptive checking, was linked to gender (women checked excessively) and specific anxiety-related traits: somatic anxiety (reduced self-reported checking due to worry) and compulsivity (self-reported disorganized checking). While anhedonia decreased self-reported task engagement, apathy, strikingly, improved overall task performance by reducing excessive checking. In summary, we provide a multifaceted paradigm for assessment of checking for threat in a naturalistic task that is sensitive to both moods as they change throughout the task and clinical dimensions. Thus, it could serve as an objective measurement tool for future clinical studies interested in threat, vigilance or behavior–emotion interactions in contexts requiring both reward seeking and threat avoidance.

Two types of motifs enhance human recall and generalization of long sequences

Whether it is listening to a piece of music, learning a new language, or solving a mathematical equation, people often acquire abstract notions in the sense of motifs and variables—manifested in musical themes, grammatical categories, or mathematical symbols. How do we create abstract representations of sequences? Are these abstract representations useful for memory recall? In addition to learning transition probabilities, chunking, and tracking ordinal positions, we propose that humans also use abstractions to arrive at efficient representations of sequences. We propose and study two abstraction categories: projectional motifs and variable motifs. Projectional motifs find a common theme underlying distinct sequence instances. Variable motifs contain symbols representing sequence entities that can change. In two sequence recall experiments, we train participants to remember sequences with projectional and variable motifs, respectively, and examine whether motif training benefits the recall of novel sequences sharing the same motif. Our result suggests that training projectional and variables motifs improve transfer recall accuracy, relative to control groups. We show that a model that chunks sequences in an abstract motif space may learn and transfer more efficiently, compared to models that learn chunks or associations on a superficial level. Our study suggests that humans construct efficient sequential memory representations according to the two types of abstraction we propose, and creating these abstractions benefits learning and out-of-distribution generalization. Our study paves the way for a deeper understanding of human abstraction learning and generalization.

Weak ties and the value of social connections for autistic people as revealed during the COVID-19 pandemic

A diverse portfolio of social relationships matters for people’s wellbeing, including both strong, secure relationships with others (‘close ties’) and casual interactions with acquaintances and strangers (‘weak ties’). Almost all of autism research has focused on Autistic people’s close ties with friends, family and intimate partners, resulting in a radically constrained understanding of Autistic sociality. Here, we sought to understand the potential power of weak-tie interactions by drawing on 95 semi-structured interviews with Autistic young people and adults conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analysed the qualitative data using reflexive thematic analysis within an essentialist framework. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Autistic people deeply missed not only their close personal relationships but also their “incidental social contact” with acquaintances and strangers. These weak-tie interactions appear to serve similar functions for Autistic people as they do for non-autistic people, including promoting wellbeing. These findings have important implications both for future research into Autistic sociality and for the design of practical services and supports to enhance Autistic people’s opportunities to flourish.

Clinical practice recommendations for the diagnosis and management of X-linked hypophosphataemia

X-linked hypophosphataemia (XLH) is a rare metabolic bone disorder caused by pathogenic variants in the PHEX gene, which is predominantly expressed in osteoblasts, osteocytes and odontoblasts. XLH is characterized by increased synthesis of the bone-derived phosphaturic hormone fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23), which results in renal phosphate wasting with consecutive hypophosphataemia, rickets, osteomalacia, disproportionate short stature, oral manifestations, pseudofractures, craniosynostosis, enthesopathies and osteoarthritis. Patients with XLH should be provided with multidisciplinary care organized by a metabolic bone expert. Historically, these patients were treated with frequent doses of oral phosphate supplements and active vitamin D, which was of limited efficiency and associated with adverse effects. However, the management of XLH has evolved in the past few years owing to the availability of burosumab, a fully humanized monoclonal antibody that neutralizes circulating FGF23. Here, we provide updated clinical practice recommendations for the diagnosis and management of XLH to improve outcomes and quality of life in these patients.

Neural correlates of personal space regulation in psychosis: role of the inferior parietal cortex

Regulation of interpersonal distance or “personal space” (PS; the space near the body into which others cannot intrude without eliciting discomfort) is a largely unconscious channel of non-verbal social communication used by many species including humans. PS abnormalities have been observed in neuropsychiatric illnesses, including schizophrenia. However, the neurophysiological basis of these abnormalities remains unknown. To investigate this question, in this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were collected while individuals with psychotic disorders (PD; n = 37) and demographically-matched healthy control (HC) subjects (n = 60) viewed images of faces moving towards or away from them. Responses of a frontoparietal-subcortical network of brain regions were measured to the approaching versus the withdrawing face stimuli, and resting-state fMRI data were also collected. PS size was measured using the classical Stop Distance Procedure. As expected, the PD group demonstrated a significantly larger PS compared to the HC group (P = 0.002). In both groups, a network of parietal and frontal cortical regions showed greater approach-biased responses, whereas subcortical areas (the striatum, amygdala and hippocampus) showed greater withdrawal-biased responses. Moreover, within the PD (but not the HC) group, approach-biased activation of the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) and functional connectivity between the IPC and the ventral/limbic striatum were significantly correlated with PS size. This study provides evidence that PS abnormalities in psychotic illness involve disrupted function and connectivity of the PS network. Such brain-behavior relationships may serve as objective treatment targets for novel interventions for schizophrenia and related psychotic illnesses.

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