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Background: Antidepressants are proposed to work by increasing sensitivity to positive versus negative information. Increasing positive affective learning within social contexts may help remediate negative self-schema. We investigated the association between change in biased learning of social evaluations about the self and others, and mood during early antidepressant treatment. Method: Prospective cohort assessing patients recruited from primary care in South West England at four timepoints over the first 8 weeks of antidepressant treatment (n = 29). At each timepoint, participants completed self-report measures of depression (Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) and Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9)), anxiety (Generalised Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire 7 (GAD-7)), and a computerised task measuring learning of social evaluations about the self, a friend and a stranger. Results: We did not find evidence that learning about the self was associated with a reduction in PHQ-9 (b = 0.08, 95% CI: −0.05, 0.20, p = 0.239) or BDI-II scores (b = 0.10, 95% CI: −0.18, 0.38, p = 0.469). We found some weak evidence that increased positive learning about the friend was associated with a reduction in BDI-II scores (b = 0.30, 95% CI: −0.02, 0.62, p = 0.069). However, exploratory analyses indicated stronger evidence that increased positive learning about the self (b = 0.18, 95% CI: 0.07, 0.28, p = 0.002) and a friend (b = 0.22, 95% CI: 0.10, 0.35, p = 0.001) was associated with reductions in anxiety. Conclusions: Change in social evaluation learning was associated with a reduction in anxiety but not depression. Antidepressants may treat anxiety symptoms by remediating negative affective biases towards socially threatening information directed towards the self and close others. However, our findings are based on exploratory analyses within a small sample without a control group and are therefore at risk of type 1 errors and order effects. Further research with larger samples is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 7.5% carbon dioxide (CO2) inhalation model is used to provoke acute anxiety, for example to investigate the effects of anxiety on cognitive processes, or the efficacy of novel anxiolytic agents. However, little is known about the relationship of baseline anxiety sensitivity or trait anxiety (i.e., anxiety proneness), with an individual's response to the 7.5% CO2 challenge. We examined data from a number of 7.5% CO2 challenge studies to determine whether anxiety proneness was related to subjective or physiological response. Our findings indicate anxiety proneness is associated with greater subjective and physiological responses. However, anxiety-prone individuals also have a greater subjective response to the placebo (medical air) condition. This suggests that anxiety-prone individuals not only respond more strongly to the 7.5% CO2 challenge, but also to medical air. Implications for the design and conduct of 7.5% CO2 challenge studies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If current trends in smoking prevalence continue, even with the implementation of enhanced tobacco control measures, millions of smokers will continue to fall ill and die as a direct result of their smoking. Many of these will be from the most deprived groups in society – smoking continues to be one of the strongest drivers of health inequalities. The personal costs of this morbidity and mortality, as well as costs to business and the economy, are unequalled and will therefore remain high for several decades to come. However, there is an addition to the tobacco control armoury that could have a marked impact on public health, but it requires radical action to be taken. This would be to embrace harm reduction, but this approach is as controversial in the case of tobacco as it is in the case of illicit drugs from where it derives. However, harm reduction remains the Cinderella of the three major strategies for reducing smoking-related harm, the others being prevention and cessation. Here we make the case that harm reduction has an important role to play in reducing the health burden of tobacco use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have shown that anxiety can positively or negatively affect performance with respect to focusing of attention or distractibility, subjective workload and effort (Humphreys and Revelle, 1984). The inhalation of carbon dioxide (CO2) is associated with physiological and psychological effects of anxiety (Bailey et al., 2005) but its effects on performance have rarely been reported. The studies reported here looked at the effects of CO2 inhalation on physiological and subjective measures and performance on two tasks. Eight healthy male participants completed a tracking task with a reaction time component, and 12 healthy participants (six male) completed a complex target identification task. Tasks were performed during 20-min inhalations of 7.5% CO2/21% O2/71.5% N2 mixture or medical air. Continuous heart rate and blood pressure measures were taken, in addition to subjective measures of mood and workload. In comparison with air, CO2 increased heart rate and blood pressure, increased subjective scores of panic, anxiety, fear, and tension, and reduced subjective scores of relaxation and happiness. Attention was focussed when inhaling CO2 during the simple task, and central demand was greater when inhaling CO2 during the complex task. Therefore, inhalation of 7.5% CO2 produces effects on task performance which are consistent with anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We investigated (1) the effects of alcohol on cognitive biases for alcohol-related cues, (2) the effects of drinking status on alcohol-related cognitive biases and (3) the similarity of any effects of alcohol across two measures of alcohol cognitive bias. Healthy, heavy and light social alcohol users (n = 72) were examined in a single-blind placebo-controlled design. Participants received 0.00 g/kg, 0.13 g/kg or 0.40 g/kg of alcohol in a between-subjects design and then completed both a modified Stroop task and a visual probe task. Modified Stroop data indicated a main effect of cue type, which was qualified by drinking status, with heavier drinkers slower to respond to alcohol-related cues. Visual probe data, in contrast, indicated a significant interaction effect between validity (valid: alcohol-related, invalid: neutral) and drink condition. Participants receiving a moderate dose of alcohol (0.40 g/kg) were faster to respond to alcohol-related stimuli compared with participants receiving a low dose of alcohol or placebo. These data indicate that the cognitive processes assayed by the visual probe and Stroop tasks may not be mediated by a common underlying mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Alcohol consumption is associated with increases in aggressive behaviour, but the mechanisms underlying this relationship are poorly understood. One mechanism by which alcohol consumption may influence behaviour is via alterations in the processing of social cues such as gaze. We investigated the effects of acute alcohol consumption on the perception of gaze, using a task in which participants determined whether a stimulus face was looking towards or away from them. Gaze direction varied across trials, allowing calculation of a threshold at which participants considered gaze to switch from direct to averted. Target faces varied in both sex and attractiveness. Thirty social drinkers attended three randomized experimental sessions. At each session, participants consumed 0.0, 0.2 or 0.4 g/kg alcohol, and completed the gaze perception task. A significant three-way interaction involving target sex, participant sex and alcohol dose indicated that alcohol increased the cone of gaze for females viewing male targets (i.e. females were biased towards making a direct gaze judgement), but decreased the cone of gaze for males viewing male targets. Our data indicate that alcohol consumption influences gaze perception, but that these effects vary across sex of both stimulus and rater. These effects may have important implications for alcohol-related violence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We investigated the impact of the administration of a tyrosine-depleting amino acid mixture compared to a balanced mixture on measures of mood, craving and selective processing of smoking-related cues in healthy cigarette smokers instructed to abstain from smoking for 12 h prior to, and during, the experiment. A modified Stroop task was used to index selective processing of smoking-related cues. We observed evidence for an increase in subjective craving among mates, and an attenuation of the selective processing of smoking-related cues compared to control cues among females, in the tyrosine-depleting condition compared to the balanced condition. No effects of mixture were observed on measures of subjective mood. These results tentatively support for the rote of dopaminergic neurotransmission in mediating the response of cigarette smokers to smoking-related cues. In addition, these results also provide further evidence for sex differences in the factors that maintain cigarette smoking, in particular with respect to conditioned reinforcement of smoking behaviour, and suggest that the relationship between subjective craving and selective processing of smoking-related cues may differ in mates and females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of low dose tryptophan depletion on recovered depressed patients both on and off antidepressant medication on an emotional Stroop task using social threat cues. Twenty-four healthy volunteers, 24 euthymic volunteers with a history of depression not currently on antidepressant medication and 24 euthymic volunteers with a history of depression and currently on antidepressant medication were randomly allocated to double-blind treatment with either a tryptophan depleting or a balanced mixture. All participants then completed subjective mood ratings and an emotional Stroop task using social threat cues. The recovered depressed group on medication demonstrated an increase in selective processing of social threat cues on the emotional Stroop task in the tryptophan depletion compared to the control condition. This was not the case for either healthy controls or the recovered depressed group not on medication. Although none of the patients showed a clinically significant relapse following tryptophan depletion, the medicated group showed a small but statistically significant increase in self-rated depression on the Profile of Mood States (POMS). Our data indicate that low-dose acute tryptophan depletion elicits both cognitive processing typical of the depressed state and subtle changes in subjective mood in the recovered depressed group on medication, but not in the recovered depressed group not on medication. This suggests that these two groups may differ in their underlying vulnerability to compromised serotonin function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the proposal that morbidity, mortality and social costs associated with alcohol use may be reduced by developing alternatives to alcohol. Reason behind the addictive potential of smoking; Lack of efficacy of nicotine replacement therapy for smoking cessation; Evidence that harm reduction strategies such as the promotion of low nitrosamine smokeless tobacco products may be effective.