scholarly journals Long-Term Effects of Postearthquake Distress on Brain Microstructural Changes

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atsushi Sekiguchi ◽  
Yuka Kotozaki ◽  
Motoaki Sugiura ◽  
Rui Nouchi ◽  
Hikaru Takeuchi ◽  
...  

Stressful events can have both short- and long-term effects on the brain. Our recent investigation identified short-term white matter integrity (WMI) changes in 30 subjects soon after the Japanese earthquake. Our findings suggested that lower WMI in the right anterior cingulum (Cg) was a pre-existing vulnerability factor and increased WMI in the left anterior Cg and uncinate fasciculus (Uf) after the earthquake was an acquired sign of postearthquake distress. However, the long-term effects on WMI remained unclear. Here, we examined the 1-year WMI changes in 25 subjects to clarify long-term effects on the WMI. We found differential FAs in the right anterior Cg, bilateral Uf, left superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), and left thalamus, suggesting that synaptic enhancement and shrinkage were long-term effects. Additionally, the correlation between psychological measures related to postearthquake distress and the degree of WMI alternation in the right anterior Cg and the left Uf led us to speculate that temporal WMI changes in some subjects with emotional distress occurred soon after the disaster. We hypothesized that dynamic WMI changes predict a better prognosis, whereas persistently lower WMI is a marker of cognitive dysfunction, implying the development of anxiety disorders.

Meditation refers to a state of mind of relaxation and concentration, where generally the mind and body is at rest. The process of meditation reflects the state of the brain which is distinct from sleep or typical wakeful states of consciousness. Meditative practices usually involve regulation of emotions and monitoring of attention. Over the past decade there has been a tremendous increase in an interest to study the neural mechanisms involved in meditative practices. It could also be beneficial to explore if the effect of meditation is altered by the number of years of meditation practice. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a very useful imaging technique which can be used to perform this analysis due to its inherent benefits, mainly it being a non-invasive technique. Functional activation and connectivity analysis can be performed on the fMRI data to find the active regions and the connectivity in the brain regions. Functional connectivity is defined as a simple temporal correlation between anatomically separate, active neural regions. Functional connectivity gives the statistical dependencies between regional time series. It is a statistical concept and is quantified using metrics like Correlation. In this study, a comparison is made between functional connectivity in the brain regions of long term meditation practitioners (LTP) and short-term meditation practitioners (STP) to see the differences and similarities in the connectivity patterns. From the analysis, it is evident that in fact there is a difference in connectivity between long term and short term practitioners and hence continuous practice of meditation can have long term effects.


1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Butler ◽  
Adrian Wells ◽  
Hilary Dewick

Imagery appears to be associated with higher levels of anxiety than does worry. Borkovec has argued that worry could be a way of avoiding distressing imagery and the associated affect. Thus worry could suppress emotional activation, interfere with emotional processing, and contribute to the maintenance of anxiety. This hypothesis suggests that short and long-term effects of worrying after experiencing a distressing stimulus should differ from the effects of engaging in imagery. In the short term, imagery should maintain anxiety while worry should not do so, or should do so less. In the longer term, worry should be a less successful way of reducing anxiety associated with the stimulus than imagery, and should be followed by a greater number of intrusive cognitions (indicating the relative failure of emotional processing). These predictions were tested by asking subjects to worry, engage in imagery or “settle down” after watching a distressing video. The results were broadly consistent with the hypothesis. Other interpretations are also considered.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 440-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Girard ◽  
Marcel Lichters ◽  
Marko Sarstedt ◽  
Dipayan Biswas

Ambient scents are being increasingly used in different service environments. While there is emerging research on the effects of scents, almost nothing is known about the long-term effects of consumers’ repeated exposure to ambient scents in a service environment as prior studies on ambient scents have been lab or field studies examining short-term effects of scent exposure only. Addressing this limitation, we examine the short- and long-term effects of ambient scents. Specifically, we present a conceptual framework for the short- and long-term effects of nonconsciously processed ambient scent in olfactory-rich servicescapes. We empirically test this framework with the help of two large-scale field experiments, conducted in collaboration with a major German railway company, in which consumers were exposed to a pleasant, nonconsciously processed scent. The first experiment demonstrates ambient scent’s positive short-term effects on consumers’ service perceptions. The second experiment—a longitudinal study conducted over a 4-month period—examines scent’s long-term effects on consumers’ reactions and demonstrates that the effects persist even when the scent has been removed from the servicescape.


TRIKONOMIKA ◽  
2020 ◽  

Economic development in a country is indicated by an increase in the number of industrial sectors and other supporting facilities such as transportation. However, there is another impact on developments industrial sectors and transportation, especially environmental degradation. Air pollution is one of the environmental degradation. This research was conducted to determine the short-term and long-term environmental impact of industry and transport in Indonesia. The data analysis method in this research used Autoregressive Distribution Lag (ARDL) to see the short-term and long-term effects between research variables. The data used are data on CO2 emissions, the amount of industries and transport in Indonesia from 1965 - 2018. The results showed that the industry had a negative impact on increasing CO2 emissions in the short and long term. Meanwhile, transportation has a positive impact in the short term and a negative impact in the long term.


Author(s):  
Erika dos Santos Souza ◽  
Albertina P. Lima ◽  
William E. Magnusson ◽  
RICARDO ALEXANDRE KAWASHITA-RIBEIRO ◽  
Rodrigo Ferreira Fadini ◽  
...  

Ecological succession in tropical savannas is limited by seasonal fire, which affects habitat quality. Although fire may cause negligible or positive effects on animals occupying savannas, most short-term studies (months to a few years) are based on a single temporal sampling snapshot, and long-term studies (decades) are rare. We sampled four lizard species in Amazonian savannas to test the effects of fire and vegetation cover on lizard densities at two temporal scales. In the short-term, we use three sampling snapshots to test the effects of fire and vegetation cover on estimated lizard densities over the subsequent 1–5 years. In the long-term, we test the effects of fire and changes in vegetation cover over 21 years on current lizard density differences. In the short-term, species responses were usually consistent with foraging and thermoregulation modes. However, the results were not consistent among species and years, although the variances in species density explained by year as a random factor were generally low. In the long-term, the main effects of fire and vegetation cover show that lizard densities may change spatially, but not necessarily temporarily. Wildfire is a natural resource of savannas and apparently have little impact on resident lizards of that ecosystem.


2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1926) ◽  
pp. 20200677 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Sofia David Fernandes ◽  
Jeremy E. Niven

The formation of memories within the vertebrate brain is lateralized between hemispheres across multiple modalities. However, in invertebrates evidence for lateralization is restricted to olfactory memories, primarily from social bees. Here, we use a classical conditioning paradigm with a visual conditioned stimulus to show that visual memories are lateralized in the wood ant, Formica rufa . We show that a brief contact between a sugar reward and either the right or left antenna (reinforcement) is sufficient to produce a lateralized memory, even though the visual cue is visible to both eyes throughout training and testing. Reinforcement given to the right antenna induced short-term memories, whereas reinforcement given to the left antenna induced long-term memories. Thus, short- and long-term visual memories are lateralized in wood ants. This extends the modalities across which memories are lateralized in insects and suggests that such memory lateralization may have evolved multiple times, possibly linked to the evolution of eusociality in the Hymenoptera.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Sarraude ◽  
Bin-Yan Hsu ◽  
Ton G.G. Groothuis ◽  
Suvi Ruuskanen

AbstractMaternal thyroid hormones (THs) are known to be crucial in embryonic development in humans, but their influence on other, especially wild, animals remains poorly understood. So far, the studies that experimentally investigated the consequences of maternal THs focused on short-term effects, while early organisational effects with long-term consequences, as shown for other prenatal hormones, could also be expected. In this study, we aimed at investigating both the short- and long-term effects of prenatal THs in a bird species, the Japanese quail Coturnix japonica. We experimentally elevated yolk TH content (the prohormone T4, and its active metabolite T3, as well as a combination of both hormones). We analysed hatching success, embryonic development, offspring growth and oxidative stress as well as their potential organisational effects on reproduction, moult, and oxidative stress in adulthood. We found that eggs injected with both hormones had a higher hatching success compared with control eggs, suggesting conversion of T4 into T3 by the embryo. We detected no other clear short-term or long-term effects of yolk THs. These results suggest that yolk thyroid hormones are important in the embryonic stage of precocial birds, but other short- and long-term consequences remain unclear. Research on maternal thyroid hormones will greatly benefit from studies investigating how embryos use and respond to this maternal signalling. Long-term studies on prenatal THs in other taxa in the wild are needed for a better understanding of this hormone-mediated maternal pathway.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-139
Author(s):  
Diána Vona-Túri ◽  
Tünde Szmatona-Túri

Abstract The aim of the present study was to examine the short- and long-term effects of changes in vegetation structure caused by shrub removal and mowing on isopod diversity and composition in Natura 2000 habitats of Mátra Landscape Protection Area. Species richness and isopod diversity increased in the short term as a result of annual changes in vegetation; however, the values of both indices were reduced in the long term. The changes in vegetation structure on a regional scale led to a reduced isopod diversity in the short and long term. The changes in vegetation structure caused alterations in community structure in the long term. We conclude that changes of vegetation structure have a negative effect on species richness and the diversity of isopod communities in the long term.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hana Brozova ◽  
Isabelle Barnaure ◽  
Evzen Ruzicka ◽  
Jan Stochl ◽  
Ron Alterman ◽  
...  

The aim was to compare the short and long-term effects of subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) on gait dysfunction and other cardinal symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD). Two groups of patients were studied. The first group (short-term DBS, n = 8) included patients recently implanted with STN DBS (mean time since DBS 15.8 months, mean age 58.8 years, PD duration 13 years); the second group (long-term DBS, n = 10) included patients with at least 5 years of DBS therapy (mean time since DBS 67.6 months, mean age 61.7 years, PD duration 17.1 years). Both groups were examined using the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) and Gait and Balance scale (GABS) during four stimulation/medication states (ON/OFF; OFF/OFF; OFF/ON; ON/ON). Data were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA with time since implantation (years) between groups and medication or DBS effect (ON, OFF) within groups. In the short-term DBS group, stimulation improved all UPDRS subscores similar to dopaminergic medications. In particular, average gait improvement was over 40% (p = 0.01), as measured by the UPDRS item 29 and GABS II. In the long-term DBS group, stimulation consistently improved all clinical subscores with the exception of gait and postural instability. In these patients, the effect of levodopa on gait was partially preserved. Short-term improvement of gait abnormalities appears to significantly decline after 5 years of STN DBS in PD patients, while effectiveness for other symptoms remains stable. Progressive non-dopaminergic (non-DBS responsive) mechanisms or deleterious effects of high frequency STN stimulation on gait function may play a role.


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