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Evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation training has the potential to train aspects of attention. However, the neurophysiological mechanisms underpinning the attentional benefits from mindfulness remain unclear. This randomized controlled trial examined changes in electrophysiological markers of attention before and after completion of a 6-week internet-based mindfulness intervention. EEG and ERP data were collected from 64 generally healthy, mildly stressed older adults. Participants were randomized to an internet-based mindfulness-based stress reduction course (IMMI), an internet-based health and wellness education course, or a waitlist control condition. Attentional N2 and P3 evoked potentials were derived from active and passive auditory oddball paradigms. Participants in the IMMI group showed significantly greater differences in P3 peak-trough amplitude between the active and passive oddball paradigms at endpoint relative to controls. see more There were no significant relationships between the intervention and N2 potentials. Our data demonstrate a measurable increase in attentional control when discriminating or directing attention away from auditory stimuli for older adult participants who received mindfulness training. These findings lend support to the use of the P3 as a neurophysiological measure of meditation engagement and intervention efficacy.

Although previous studies suggested that depressed mood and fatigue among cancer survivors are associated with chronic inflammation, the effect of cytokines on the relation between physical activity and fatigue and depressed mood is characterized by inconsistent results. The aim was to examine levels of pro-inflammatory (IL-6, IL-8, TNFα, IL-12) and anti-inflammatory (IL-10) cytokines in relation to the effects of physical activity on fatigue and depressed mood.

Breast cancer survivors (n=108; stages I-III), aged >20 and who were 1-6months postchemotherapy were recruited consecutively. Participants completed the Fatigue Symptom Inventory and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale and reported physical activity details; 10cc of blood were drawn for assessment of levels of IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, Il-12, and TNFα in serum.

Only IL-6 and IL-8 were associated with fatigue and depressed mood. Controlling for background variables, physical activity and IL-6 were significantly associated with fatigue, hysical activity. The study stresses the need to provide information and tailored guidance for cancer survivors for maintaining an active lifestyle into survivorship and the importance of allocating resources for programs to encourage active lifestyles among cancer survivors. Caution should be exercised in the interpretation of the results due to the cross-sectional design and possibility of bidirectional associations between the study variables.

In odour research, there is still a lack of knowledge regarding the detailed understanding of the determinants and the magnitude of an odour's impact on human psychophysiology. Therefore, the present review aims to summarize current evidence on psychophysiological responses to olfactory events, to highlight diversity in research methods, and to provide recommendations for further research.

Predefined search items were used for literature research in two databases, focussing on recent investigations of cardiac and electrodermal responses to short (<10s) olfactory stimulations, combined with self-reports on odour experience, in a healthy population. The selected 27 publications were evaluated with regard to their methods and their findings on psychophysiological correlates of odour stimulation, following a conceptual scheme proposing mediating and moderating factors of physiological responses to odour stimuli.

The cardiac and electrodermal activity generally followed a discriminative pattern depending in olfaction research.Nicotine has been commonly used in pyschopharmacological studies, showing its benefits as a pharmacological stimulant on cognitive performance. In the current study, we investigated the effects of 2 mg (Experiment 1) and 4 mg (Experiment 2) of nicotine on performance on a multiple-object-tracking task. Participants were young non-smoking adults with no pre-existing attentional deficits. Nicotine and placebo were administered through nicotine and nicotine-free taste-matched chewing gum, respectively. Additionally, we compared pupil size between nicotine and placebo conditions in both experiments. Although we found that pupil size was considerably smaller in the nicotine conditions, nicotine administration did not appear to facilitate behavioural performance. We speculate that nicotine might enhance performance only for certain cognitive functions, and only for specific populations, such as nicotine-deprived smokers.Traditional view holds that associative recognition require recollection while familiarity can't support associative recognition. However, recent research indicate that familiarity can also contribute to associative recognition when the stimuli are unitized in encoding. Here, we investigated the electrophysiological correlates of retrieval of word and picture stimuli in three encoding conditions. Semantically unrelated word pairs or picture pairs were encoded in concept definition, interactive imagery, and item comparison conditions, separately. In test, the participants were required to discriminate between old pairs that appeared in the same pairing as in study, rearranged pairs that appeared in different pairings in study, or completely new pairs. The behavioral results revealed that higher associative recognition was observed in interactive imagery condition than in concept definition condition, with item comparison condition eliciting the worst recognition, regardless of word or picture stimuli. ERP results of word stimuli revealed that the FN400 old/new effect was solely elicited in concept definition and interactive imagery conditions, but not in item comparison condition. However, ERP results of picture stimuli revealed that the late FN400 old/new effect was observed in three encoding conditions and that larger magnitude of old/new effect was elicited in item comparison condition than in interactive imagery condition. There may be different neural mechanisms of unitization on associative recognition for word and picture stimuli. These findings suggested that the pattern of engagement of familiarity during successful retrieval was dependent on the stimulating properties and the encoding conditions. We will discuss the possibility that top-down unitization which manipulates two unrelated stimuli through instructions may lead to the engagement of specific forms of familiarity-association familiarity and item familiarity.