Angst Wetenschap

Related Articles

Content-specific interpretation biases in clinically anxious children.

Behav Res Ther. 2019 Aug 09;121:103452

Authors: Klein AM, Rapee RM, Hudson JL, Morris TM, Schneider SC, Schniering CA, Becker ES, Rinck M

Abstract
Cognitive theories of anxiety suggest that anxious children interpret negatively only those materials specifically related to the content of their anxiety. So far, there are only a few studies available that report on this postulated content-specificity of interpretation processes across different anxiety disorders in children, and most of them focused on social anxiety. Therefore, we examined interpretation bias and its content-specificity in a group of clinically anxious children between the ages of 6-12 years with various anxiety disorders, using an "ambiguous scenarios" task. Children were asked to finish scenarios that were related to either social threat, general threat, or separation threat. In total, 105 clinically anxious children, 21 control children and their mothers were assessed with the ADIS-C/P and the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale. As expected, clinically anxious children provided significantly more negative endings to the scenarios than control children. Within the clinically anxious group, specific interpretation biases were found: Interpretation of scenarios related to social threat, general threat, and separation threat were only predicted by the children's self-reported levels of social anxiety, generalized anxiety, and separation anxiety, respectively. These findings support the content-specificity hypothesis that clinically anxious children display interpretation biases that are specific to fear-relevant stimuli.

PMID: 31430687 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Related Articles

Dental students' and patients' perceived importance and knowledge of dental anxiety.

Eur J Dent Educ. 2019 Aug 20;:

Authors: Korpela I, Vaununmaa K, Tolvanen M, Suominen A, Freeman R, Lahti S

Abstract
AIM: To examine the perceived importance and knowledge of the dental students' in their treatment of dental anxiety according to their year of study and to find out patients' perceived importance of the dental students' knowledge of dental anxiety according to their level on dental fear.
METHODS: Dental students (N=219) at the University of Turku and non-probability convenience sample of 100 of patients attending the Dental Teaching Clinic were given questionnaires with multiple choice and open-ended questions. Students were categorized into three groups according to the year of study (1-3, 4, 5). Patients were categorised into three groups using the established cut points for Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (no fear=5-9, low fear=10-18, high fear=19-25). The differences between groups were evaluated using cross-tabulations and chi squared and Fisher's exact tests. The open-ended questions were subjected to content analysis.
RESULTS: Students' perceived importance of dental anxiety did not differ between three groups. Students with greater undergraduate education and clinical experience were more likely to have excellent or quite good knowledge (p<0.001). Patients' perceived importance of dental students' knowledge of dental anxiety was greater in patients with high level of fear. The overlapping category that emerged from the open-ended question analysis was communication skills. This appeared to be important for patients with dental anxiety and for dental students in their management of dental anxiety.
CONCLUSION: Clinical communication skills should be part of dental anxiety management teaching. Dental students should be able to gain sufficient knowledge and skills in treating dental anxiety before graduating. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

PMID: 31429501 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Related Articles

Microglial P2Y12 receptor regulates ventral hippocampal CA1 neuronal excitability and innate fear in mice.

Mol Brain. 2019 Aug 19;12(1):71

Authors: Peng J, Liu Y, Umpierre AD, Xie M, Tian DS, Richardson JR, Wu LJ

Abstract
The P2Y12 receptor (P2Y12R) is a purinoceptor that is selectively expressed in microglia in the central nervous system. As a signature receptor, microglial P2Y12R mediates process chemotaxis towards ADP/ATP gradients and is engaged in several neurological diseases including chronic pain, stroke and seizures. However, the role of microglial P2Y12R in regulating neuronal excitability and innate behaviors is not fully understood. Here, we generated P2Y12-floxed mice to delete microglial P2Y12R beginning in development (CX3CR1Cre/+:P2Y12f/f; "constitutive knockout"), or after normal development in adult mice (CX3CR1CreER/+:P2Y12f/f; "induced knockout"). Using a battery of behavioral tests, we found that both constitutive and induced P2Y12R knockout mice exhibited innate fear but not learned fear behaviors. After mice were exposed to the elevated plus maze, the c-fos expression in ventral hippocampus CA1 neurons was robustly increased in P2Y12R knockout mice compared with wild-type mice. Consistently, using whole cell patch clamp recording, we found the excitability of ventral hippocampus CA1 neurons was increased in the P2Y12R knockout mice. The results suggest that microglial P2Y12R regulates neuronal excitability and innate fear behaviors in developing and adult mice.

PMID: 31426845 [PubMed - in process]