Daniela M. Pfabigan

Reinforcement learning - to adjust behaviors in response to feedback regarding reward and punishment - is pivotal to our survival. The present work investigated whether and how reinforcement learning is affected by thoughts of mortality that endanger one's survival. We recorded electroencephalographic while adults performed a probabilistic learning task that required a forced-choice between two visual patterns for monetary reward for different beneficiaries (i.e., self, stranger, or no one) followed by reward or no-reward feedback. We found that verbal reminders of mortality (vs. negative emotion) enlarged an early positive component (P1) at the occipital electrodes but decreased a late positive potential (LPP) at the frontocentral electrodes in response to learning stimuli. While no-reward feedback relative to reward feedback stimuli elicited a feedback-related negativity (FRN) and increased non-phase locked theta band (4-8 Hz) activity at the frontocentral electrodes during reward learning for all beneficiaries, verbal reminders of mortality (vs. negative emotion) significantly reduced the FRN amplitude but failed to modulate the theta band activity. These results suggest that mortality salience enhances early attentional processing but dampens late cognitive evaluation of the learning stimuli during reinforcement learning. Moreover, mortality salience decreases the neural sensitivity to feedback signaling the absence of monetary reward.

Empathy for another person's pain and feeling pain oneself seem to be accompanied by similar or shared neural responses. Such shared responses could be achieved by mapping the bodily states of others onto our own bodily representations. We investigated whether sensorimotor neural responses to the pain of others are increased when experimentally reducing perceived bodily distinction between the self and the other. Healthy adult participants watched video clips of the hands of ethnic ingroup or outgroup members being painfully penetrated by a needle syringe or touched by a cotton swab. Manipulating the video presentation to create a visuospatial overlap between the observer's and the target's hand increased the perceived bodily self-attribution of the target's hand. For both ingroup and outgroup targets, this resulted in increased neural responses to the painful injections (compared with nonpainful contacts), as indexed by desynchronizations of central mu and beta scalp rhythms recorded using electroencephalography. Furthermore, these empathy-related neural activations were stronger in participants who reported stronger bodily self-attribution of the other person's hand. Our findings provide further evidence that empathy for pain engages sensorimotor resonance mechanisms. They also indicate that reducing bodily self-other distinction may increase such resonance for ingroup as well as outgroup targets.

Introduction Stress and obesity are two public health issues. The relationship between obesity and stress is biological through the actions of stress on the major hormones that regulate appetite (leptin and ghrelin). Many spa resorts in France specialise in the treatment of obesity, but no thermal spa currently proposes a specific programme to manage stress in obesity. The ObesiStress protocol has been designed to offer a new residential stress management programme. This thermal spa treatment of obesity implements stress management strategies as suggested by international recommendations. Methods and analysis 140 overweight or obese participants with a Body Mass Index of >25 kg/m2 and aged over 18 years will be recruited. Participants will be randomised into two groups: a control group of usual practice (restrictive diet, physical activity and thermal spa treatment) and an intervention group with stress management in addition to the usual practice. In the present protocol, parameters will be measured on five occasions (at inclusion, at the beginning of the spa (day 0), at the end of the spa (day 21), and at 6 and 12 months). The study will assess the participants’ heart rate variability, cardiac remodelling and function, electrodermal activity, blood markers, anthropometric profile, body composition, psychology and quality of life via the use of questionnaires and bone parameters. Ethics and dissemination The ObesiStress protocol complies with the ethics guidelines for Clinical Research and has been approved by the ethics committee (CPP Sud- Est VI, Clermont- Ferrand - ANSM: 2016- A01774-47). This study aimed to highlight the efficacy of a 21- day thermal spa residential programme of stress management in obesity through objective measurements of well- being and cardiovascular morbidity. Results will be disseminated during several research conferences and articles published in peer- reviewed journals. Trial registration number NCT03578757.

Objective Work-related stress is a public health issue. Stress has multiple physical and psychological consequences, the most serious of which are increased mortality and cardiovascular morbidity. The ThermStress protocol was designed to offer a short residential thermal spa program for work-related stress prevention that is compatible with a professional context. Methods Participants will be 56 male and female workers aged 18 years or above. All participants will undergo a 6-day residential spa program comprising psychological intervention, physical activity, thermal spa treatment, health education, eating disorder therapy and a follow-up. On six occasions, participants’ heart rate variability, cardiac remodelling and function, electrodermal activity, blood markers, anthropometry and body composition, psychology and quality of life will be measured using questionnaires and bone parameters. Results This study protocol reports the planned and ongoing research for this intervention. Discussion The ThermStress protocol has been approved by an institutional ethics committee (ANSM: 2016 A02082 49). It is expected that this proof of concept study will highlight the effect of a short-term specific residential thermal spa program on the prevention of occupational burnout and work-related stress. The findings will be disseminated at several research conferences and in published articles in peer-reviewed journals. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT 03536624, 24/05/2018)

Background Studies investigating hippocampal volume changes after treatment with serotonergic antidepressants in patients with major depressive disorder yielded inconsistent results, and effects on hippocampal subfields are unclear. Methods To detail treatment effects on total hippocampal and subfield volumes, we conducted an open-label study with escitalopram followed by venlafaxine upon nonresponse in 20 unmedicated patients with major depressive disorder. Before and after 12 weeks treatment, we measured total hippocampal formation volumes and subfield volumes with ultra-high field (7 Tesla), T1-weighted, structural magnetic resonance imaging, and FreeSurfer. Twenty-eight remitted patients and 22 healthy subjects were included as controls. We hypothesized to detect increased volumes after treatment in major depressive disorder. Results We did not detect treatment-related changes of total hippocampal or subfield volumes in patients with major depressive disorder. Secondary results indicated that the control group of untreated, stable remitted patients, compared with healthy controls, had larger volumes of the right hippocampal-amygdaloid transition area and right fissure at both measurement time points. Depressed patients exhibited larger volumes of the right subiculum compared with healthy controls at MRI-2. Exploratory data analyses indicated lower baseline volumes in the subgroup of remitting (n = 10) vs nonremitting (n = 10) acute patients. Conclusions The results demonstrate that monoaminergic antidepressant treatment in major depressive disorder patients was not associated with volume changes in hippocampal subfields. Studies with larger sample sizes to detect smaller effects as well as other imaging modalities are needed to further assess the impact of antidepressant treatment on hippocampal subfields.

We recently demonstrated a processing advantage of social versus nonsocial feedback stimuli in a western sample by assessing phase-locked neural responses. The current study extended our previous findings to another cultural sample (Chinese) to further test whether non-phase-locked neural oscillations also exhibit the social feedback processing advantage. Fifty-three Chinese volunteers performed a time estimation task with social and nonsocial feedback stimuli (matched for complexity) while electroencephalogram was recorded. Almost entirely replicating our previous results, feedback ERPs showed a processing advantage for social compared with nonsocial stimuli. Importantly, non-phase-locked oscillations also revealed this pattern. Frontal midline theta (FMΘ) oscillations differentiated between negative and positive feedback to a larger extent in response to social compared with nonsocial feedback. The current findings imply a rather universal effect of social stimulus characteristics during feedback processing and further corroborate the notion of social content as a distinct stimulus category.

Psychopathic offenders have a high propensity to violate social norms, as indicated for instance by their widespread lying and cheating behaviour. The reasons for their norm violations are not well understood, though, as they are able to recognise norms in a given situation and also punish norm violators. In this study, we investigated whether psychopathic offenders would violate fairness norms during a repeated trust game because of increased profit-maximising concerns. We measured back-transfer decisions in the repeated trust game, and affective arousal by means of skin conductance responses (SCR) in violent offenders with varying degrees of psychopathy, and non-offenders with low-trait psychopathy. Psychopathy in offenders was measured with the Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL-R). In the task, a participant and an interaction partner entrusted each other money for multiple rounds with the goal to earn as much money as possible. Fairness norm violations were positively associated with Factor 2 scores (the lifestyle/anti-social psychopathy subscale) of the PCL-R, but this was not accompanied by clear profit-maximising behaviour. In addition, anticipatory arousal to self-advantageous decisions was higher in all offenders, independent of their degree of psychopathy, compared with non-offenders. The results of our study widen our understanding of social decision-making in psychopathy. They also suggest treatment possibilities in offenders scoring high on Factor 2, targeting empathic concern and related prosocial intentions to overcome norm-violating behaviour.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been hypothesized to lead to impairments in empathy. Previous cross-sectional studies did not disentangle effects of MDD itself and antidepressant treatment. In this first longitudinal neuroimaging study on empathy in depression, 29 patients with MDD participated in two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) sessions before and after 3 months of antidepressant therapy. We compared their responses to an empathy for pain task to a group of healthy controls (N = 35). All participants provided self-report ratings targeting cognitive (perspective taking) and affective (unpleasant affect) aspects of empathy. To control for general effects on processing of negative affective states, participants additionally underwent an electrical pain task. Before treatment, we found no differences in empathic responses between controls and patients with MDD. After treatment, patients showed significant decreases in both affective empathy and activity of three a priori selected brain regions associated with empathy for pain. Decreases in affective empathy were moreover correlated with symptom improvement. Moreover, functional connectivity during the empathy task between areas associated with affective (anterior insula) and cognitive (precuneus) empathy decreased between sessions in the MDD group. Neither cognitive empathy nor responses to painful electrical shocks were changed after treatment. These findings contradict previous cross-sectional reports of empathy deficits in acute MDD. Rather, they suggest that antidepressant treatment reduces the aversive responses triggered by exposure to the suffering of others. Importantly, this cannot be explained by a general blunting of negative affect, as treatment did not change self-experienced pain.