The Neuronal Basis and Ontogeny of Empathy and Mind Reading: Review of Literature and Implications for Future Research
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Assessment of Emotional Functioning in Pain Treatment Outcome Research
Assessment of emotional functioning in pain treatment outcome research Robert D. Kerns, Ph.D. VA Connecticut Healthcare System Yale University Running head: Emotional functioning Correspondence: Robert D. Kerns, Ph.D., Psychology Service (116B), VA Connecticut Healthcare System, 950 Campbell Avenue, West Haven, CT 06516; Phone: 203-937- 3841; Fax: 203-937-4951; Electronic mail: [email protected] Emotional Functioning 2 Assessment of Emotional Functioning in Pain Treatment Outcome Research The measurement of emotional functioning as an important outcome in empirical examinations of pain treatment efficacy and effectiveness has not yet been generally adopted in the field. This observation is puzzling given the large and ever expanding empirical literature on the relationship between the experience of pain and negative mood, symptoms of affective distress, and frank psychiatric disorder. For example, Turk (1996), despite noting the high prevalence of psychiatric disorder, particularly depression, among patients referred to multidisciplinary pain clinics, failed to list the assessment of mood or symptoms of affective distress as one of the commonly cited criteria for evaluating pain outcomes from these programs. In a more recent review, Turk (2002) also failed to identify emotional distress as a key index of clinical effectiveness of chronic pain treatment. A casual review of the published outcome research in the past several years fails to identify the inclusion of measures of emotional distress in most studies of pain treatment outcome, other than those designed to evaluate the efficacy of psychological interventions. In a recent edited volume, The Handbook of Pain Assessment (Turk & Melzack, 2001), several contributors specifically encouraged inclusion of measures of psychological distress in the assessment of pain treatment effects (Bradley & McKendree-Smith, 2001; Dworkin, Nagasako, Hetzel, & Farrar, 2001; Okifuji & Turk, 2001). -
The Psychology of Euthanizing Animals: the Emotional Components
F. Turner and J. Strak Comment ORIGINAL ARTICLE food. Apart from this, there are likely to be large adjustmentcosts borne by pro ducers (at home and abroad) as existing production systems are discarded in The Psychology favor of those advocated by the welfare groups. Furthermore, the adoption of these less intensive forms of farming may result in a completely different pattern of Euthanizing Animals: of labor and capital use in the U.K. farming sector. The subject of animal welfare is undoubtedly one of great public concern. The Emotional Components However, it is also one of great complexity, and if changes in the regulations governing animal production methods are to be made, those changes should take full account of the implications for producers, consumers and society in general. The farming industry should not interpret the interest in animal welfare as a Charles E. Owens, Ricky Davis threat to its livelihood nor should consumers dismiss lightly the likely changes in costs or structure of farming that may result from a revision of the Codes of Prac and Bill Hurt Smith* tice relating to animal welfare. The appropriate animal welfare policy for society will be identified only when all the interested parties become fully aware of the consequences of their actions. [Ed. Note: Independent of any proposed changes in the British Codes of Prac Abstract tice, the U.K. veal calf industry (Quantock Veal) has taken the initiative of switch The emotional effects of euthanizing unwanted animals on professional ani ing from individual crate rearing to the use of straw-fi.lled group pens. -
Know Thy Selves: Learning to Understand Oneself Increases the Ability to Understand Others
JCognEnhanc DOI 10.1007/s41465-017-0023-6 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Know Thy Selves: Learning to Understand Oneself Increases the Ability to Understand Others Anne Böckler1,2 & Lukas Herrmann 1 & Fynn-Mathis Trautwein1 & Tom Holmes3 & Tania Singer1 Received: 7 December 2016 /Accepted: 10 April 2017 # The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication Abstract Understanding others’ feelings, intentions, and be- of identified parts that were negatively valenced showed a liefs is a crucial social skill both for our personal lives and for strong relation with enhanced ToM capacities. This finding meeting the challenges of a globalized world. Recent evidence suggests a close link between getting better in understanding suggests that the ability to represent and infer others’ mental oneself and improvement in social intelligence. states (Theory of Mind, ToM) can be enhanced by mental training in healthy adults. The present study investigated the Keywords Internal Family System . Theory of Mind . Self . role of training-induced understanding of oneself for the en- Inner parts . Contemplative mental training hanced understanding of others. In a large-scale longitudinal study, two independent participant samples (N =80and N = 81) received a 3-month contemplative training. This train- Introduction ing focused on perspective taking and was inspired by the Internal Family Systems model that conceives the self as be- As citizens of the twenty-first century, we face many problems ing composed of a complex system of inner personality as- of an industrialized and globalized world. Tensions between pects. Specifically, participants practiced perspective taking countries, cultures, and religions are rising; wars and political on their own inner states by learning to identify and classify instabilities drive millions of people to leave their homes and different inner personality parts. -
Understanding Psychological Pain
UNDERSTANDING Psychological pain is defined as intense and unbearable emotional pain associated with suffering, guilt, anguish, fear, panic, angst, loneliness, and helplessness. Unresolved, psychological pain can sometimes result in self-harming behaviors, addiction, and death by suicide. SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pain WHY DO PEOPLE ENGAGE IN SELF-HARMING BEHAVIORS? There are no simple answers. Everyone faces unique life challenges, which may include experiencing intense pain or trauma. For some, the emotions can feel overwhelming, leading them to hurt themselves on purpose to escape or cope. STOPPING OR ESCAPING COPING WITH UNDERLYING TRAUMA INTENSE PSYCHOLOGICAL PAIN To return from numbness: Emotional trauma To gain control: Self-harming can sometimes lead to disassociation (or a lack of behaviors are attempts to regain feelings). As a result, some people may engage subjective control over helplessness in behaviors to generate a strong physical or powerlessness by shifting attention sensation to bring them back to to distract from something more feeling “something” again. overwhelming or painful. To express their feelings: To release tension: Sometimes people have Sometimes self-harming GAIN difficulty acknowledging CONTROL behaviors provide RETURN or articulating their temporary relief and FROM inner emotional turmoil escape for the pain. NUMBNESS in a healthy way and Unfortunately, it the only way to can become an EXPRESS communicate their addictive cycle FEELINGS pain is by expressing when the body through physical and brain adapt self-harm, and develop a aggression, and tolerance. other forms of risky and reckless To experience behaviors. Other euphoria: Some RELEASE times, their actions self-harming TENSION are a silent cry behaviors trigger for help. -
Compassion Or Empathy? a Way Forward to Reduce GP Stress and Burnout
Out of Hours Compassion or empathy? A way forward to reduce GP stress and burnout I have often heard from colleagues and ADDREss FOR CORREsPONDENCE felt myself the sense of psychological Manohar Thakur exhaustion when dealing with the Derby Open Access Centre, 207 St Thomas Road, particularly stressful life problems of our Normanton, Derby DE3 9BL, UK. patients. This is part of the ‘burnout’ so E-mail: [email protected] often talked about in general practice. It is common experience that listening to the patient with empathy goes a long way In the light of this new research showing towards helping many of them: being the that compassion is a virtue that can be ‘drug doctor’ of Balint. Empathy, according passed on by training, it may be worth to the Oxford English Dictionary means: thinking of ways to train ourselves in techniques such as meditation, which will ‘... the ability to understand and share the Photo: The Mind and Life Institute. help not only our patients but ourselves feelings of another.’ as well. The Royal College of General Practitioners could play a guiding role in While this is obviously good for the to have been able to make a difference to exploring this dimension of GP training patient, the person at the giving end of this their lives and, rather than stressing me at the undergraduate, postgraduate, empathy can find themselves emotionally out, these formerly difficult patients have and professional levels. The Mind and drained and fatigued. This can be repeated become a source of professional, as well as Life Institute (http://www.mindandlife. -
Publication List Prof. Dr. Tania Singer
Publication List Prof. Dr. Tania Singer Articles in Refereed Journals 109 Engen, H., Kanske, P., & Singer, T. (in press). Choosing how to feel: Endogenous emotion generation abilities mediate the relationship between trait affectivity and emotion management style. Scientific Reports. 108 Lumma, A.-L., Valk, S. L., Böckler, A., Vrticka, P., & Singer, T. (in press). Change in emotional self-concept following socio-cognitive training relates to structural plasticity of the prefrontal cortex. Brain and Behavior. 107 Engert, V., Ragsdale, A., & Singer, T. (2018). Cortisol stress resonance in the laboratory is associated with inter-couple diurnal cortisol covariation in daily life. Hormones and Behavior, 98, 183190. doi:10.1016/j.yhbeh.2017.12.018 106 Mendes, N., Steinbeis, N., Bueno-Guerra, N., Call, J., & Singer, T. (2018). Preschool children and chimpanzees incur costs to watch punishment of antisocial others. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 4551. 105 Preckel, K., Kanske, P., Singer, T. (2018). On the interaction of social affect and cognition: empathy, compassion and theory of mind. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 19, 16. doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.07.010 104 Böckler, A., Herrmann, L., Trautwein, F.-M., Holmes, T., & Singer, T. (2017). Know thy selves: Learning to understand oneself increases the ability to understand others. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, 1(2), 197209. 103 Böckler, A., Sharifi, M., Kanske, P., Dziobek, I., & Singer, T. (2017). Social decision making in narcissism: Reduced generosity and increased retaliation are driven by alterations in perspective-taking and anger. Personality and Individual Differences, 104, 17. 102 Bornemann, B., & Singer, T. (2017). Taking time to feel our body: Steady increases in heartbeat perception accuracy and decreases in alexithymia over 9 months of contemplative mental training. -
From Empathy to Compassion in a Neuroscience Laboratory
From Empathy to Compassion in a Neuroscience Laboratory Chapter I.IV of “Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World”, Little, Brown and Company (2015) Matthieu Ricard In 2007, along with Tania Singer, I was in Rainer Goebel’s neuroscience laboratory in Maastricht, as a collaborator and guinea pig in a research program on empathy. Tania would ask me to give rise to a powerful feeling of empathy by imagining people affected by great suffering. Tania was using a new fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) technique used by Goebel. It has the advantage of following the changes of activity of the brain in real time (fMRI-rt), whereas data usually cannot be analyzed until later on. According to the protocol of this kind of experiment, the meditator, myself in this case, must alternate twenty or so times between periods when he or she engenders a particular mental state, here empathy, with moments when he relaxes his mind in a neutral state, without thinking of anything in particular or applying any method of meditation. During a pause, after a first series of periods of meditation, Tania asked me: “What are you doing? It doesn’t look at all like what we usually observe when people feel empathy for someone else’s suffering.” I explained that I had meditated on unconditional compassion, trying to feel a powerful feeling of love and kindness for people who were suffering, but also for all sentient beings. In fact, complete analysis of the data, carried out subsequently, confirmed that the cerebral networks activated by meditation on compassion were very different from those linked to empathy,which Tania had been studying for years. -
Supporting Individuals with Grief: Using a Psychological First Aid Framework Barney Dunn, July 2020 My Background and Acknowledgements
Supporting individuals with grief: Using a psychological first aid framework Barney Dunn, July 2020 My background and acknowledgements • Professor of Clinical Psychology at Mood Disorders Centre, University of Exeter and co-lead AccEPT clinic (NHS ‘post IAPT gap’ service) • Main area depression but been involved in developing some grief guidance as part of COVID response with Kathy Shear (Columbia) and Anke Ehlers (Oxford) • These materials developed to support counsellors/therapists to work with grief with principals of psychological first aid. • Thanks to Kathy Shear for letting me use some of her centre’s materials and videos Overview • Part 1: Understanding grief • Part 2: Supporting individuals through acute grief • Part 3: Use of psychological first aid framework for grief (and more generally) • Part 4: Prolonged grief disorder Learning objectives • Be familiar with range of grief reactions • Be able use your common factor skills and knowledge around bereavement from workshop to respond empathically and supportively to people who are grieving in a non-pathologizing way • Be able to use the psychological first aid framework to help people look after themselves while grieving • To know who and how to signpost on to further help • You are not expected to be experts in grief or to ‘treat’ grief Optional core reading Supporting people with grief: • Shear, M. K., Muldberg, S., & Periyakoil, V. (2017). Supporting patients who are bereaved. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 358, j2854. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j2854 • See also material for clinicians and public on this website: https://complicatedgrief.columbia.edu/professionals/complicated-grief-professionals/overview/ Prolonged grief disorder: • Jordan, A. -
Depression As a Functional Response to Adversity and Strife
Credible sadness, coercive sadness: Depression as a functional response to adversity and strife Edward H. Hagen1 Kristen L. Syme1,2 1Department of Anthropology Washington State University 14204 NE Salmon Creek Ave, Vancouver, WA, 98686 [email protected] 2Department of Applied and Experimental Psychology Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam the Netherlands [email protected] In The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions, Laith Al-Shawaf and Todd Shackelford, Eds. 1 Abstract Evolutionary medicine offers the insight that many unpleasant conditions such as physical pain are not harmful in themselves but are evolved mechanisms to mitigate harm. A major goal of the field is to distinguish illnesses from aversive conditions that are evolved defenses. There are numerous evolutionary theories of depression, but many fail to account for the central role of conflict and cannot explain suicidality. We review evidence from Western and non-Western societies that depression is caused by adversity, conflict, and powerlessness. The most parsimonious theory is that depression evolved, in part, as a form of psychological pain that functions to mitigate harm, credibly signal need, and coerce help when the powerless are in conflicts with powerful others. Key terms: depression, suicide, mental health, cross-cultural, evolutionary medicine For of men one can, in general, say this: They are ungrateful, fickle, deceptive and deceiving, avoiders of danger, eager to gain. As long as you serve their interests, they are devoted to you. They promise you their blood, their possessions, their lives, and their children, as I said before, so long as you seem to have no need of them. -
The Neural Basis of the Sense of Fatigue
Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Graduate Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2020 The neural basis of the sense of fatigue Mark Edward Hartman Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd Recommended Citation Hartman, Mark Edward, "The neural basis of the sense of fatigue" (2020). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 18136. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/18136 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The neural basis of the sense of fatigue by Mark Edward Hartman A dissertation submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Major: Kinesiology Program of Study Committee: Panteleimon Ekkekakis, Major Professor Peter Clark James Lang Jacob Meyer Rick Sharp The student author, whose presentation of the scholarship herein was approved by the program of study committee, is solely responsible for the content of this dissertation. The Graduate College will ensure this dissertation is globally accessible and will not permit alterations after a degree is conferred. Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2020 Copyright © Mark Edward Hartman, 2020. All rights reserved. ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my mother. Thank you for all your incredible support, encouragement, and patience, especially considering that it has taken me 14 years to finish my post-secondary education. -
Shame Handout for Dell Childrens
Fall 08 Dell Children's Medical Center January 2015 Shame, Relevant Neurobiology, and Treatment Implications Arlene Montgomery Ph.D., LCSW Shame Guilt Early-forming (before age two) Must have concept of another (2 yrs+) Implicit memory (amygdala) Explicit memory (upper right & left hemi) Arousal involves entire body: Arousal is an upper cortex, primarily left, • excitement state of worry • painful arousal (SNS) • counter-regulate (PNS) • positive outcome = repair • negative outcome = no repair; lingering in PNS state Non-narrative (not conscious) Narrative (conscious experience) • a state of being: "I am something..." • "I did something" e.g., bad, worthless, flawed as a whole • an act person Runs away from further external Seeks to maintain attachments interactions, but cannot run away from the internal representations of the scorn of the other - an internal experience Shame states may engage the freeze Guilt experiences may engage the more (dissociated, passive) state or flight activated fight states ( not actually fighting, state(hiding, other avoidant behaviors) or but actively making thing right, correcting submit state(agreeing, becoming invisible, mistakes, engaging the milieu in some way complying) to manage the painful arousal to address the “bad act, moving toward…) Repaired shame is a normative socialization experience (Schore, 2003 a,b) Relational trauma may result from unrepaired shame experiences "corroded connections", (B. Brown, 2010); "affecting global sense of self" (Lewis, 1971) Issues and Diagnoses PTSD: shame is predictor -
The Pain of Grief: Exploring the Concept of Psychological Pain and Its Relation to Complicated Grief, Depression, and Risk for Suicide in Bereaved Adults
Received: 7 January 2020 | Revised: 15 May 2020 | Accepted: 24 June 2020 DOI: 10.1002/jclp.23024 RESEARCH ARTICLE The pain of grief: Exploring the concept of psychological pain and its relation to complicated grief, depression, and risk for suicide in bereaved adults Madelyn R. Frumkin1 | Donald J. Robinaugh2,3 | Nicole J. LeBlanc2,3 | Zeba Ahmad4 | Eric Bui2,3 | Matthew K. Nock5 | Naomi M. Simon6 | Richard J. McNally5 1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, Abstract St. Louis, Missouri, USA Objective: Emotional or psychological pain is a core 2Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts symptom of complicated grief (CG), yet its correlates are General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA largely unexamined among bereaved individuals. 3Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical Method: Bereaved adults (N = 135) completed self‐reports School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA regarding psychological pain, CG, depression, and suicid- 4Department of Psychology, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York City, ality. We assessed correlations among these variables and New York, USA tested whether psychological pain was elevated among 5 Department of Psychology, Harvard individuals with CG and individuals with current or past University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Using logistic regression, 6Department of Psychiatry, NYU Langone Health, New York University School of we also assessed psychological pain, depression, and CG Medicine, New York City, New York, USA symptom severity as predictors of suicide risk. Correspondence Results: Psychological pain was strongly associated with both Madelyn R. Frumkin, Department of CG and depression severity and was elevated among subjects Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, One reporting current or past suicidality.