Biomedical subjects

Mike Rinck

Publications and source records attributed to Mike Rinck.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2026

Acute effects of AT1 receptor blockade on approach-avoidance of negative emotional faces.

Recent evidence implicates the renin angiotensin system (RAS) in various cognitive markers of depression, including dysfunctional reward processing. Yet, it remains unknown whether these effects extend to other markers implicated in depression and its treatment, such as approach-avoidance motivations that reflect innate drives to approach reward and evade harm. We sought to examine the impact of acute losartan, an angiotensin type 1 (AT1) receptor blocker, on the implicit approach-avoidance of facial expressions and checkerboard controls in healthy adults. In a randomized controlled trial, N = 68 healthy adults aged 18-50 (49 F/19 M) were administered a single 50 mg dose of losartan or placebo before completing an implicit Approach Avoidance Task (AAT) at drug-peak level. On the AAT, participants responded to color-filtered facial stimuli (happy, sad, angry, or neutral) and checkerboard controls using a joystick, and were instructed to pull all gray photos and push all brown photos as quickly as possible. Compared to placebo, losartan induced a significant avoidance bias for sad faces (p = 0.027) and reduced avoidance of angry faces at trend level (p = 0.085). This occurred without significant group differences on blood pressure, overall reaction time, accuracy, and approach-avoidance biases for other stimuli. The response pattern associated with AT1 receptor blockade may counteract previously observed depressive tendencies, suggesting effects possibly consistent with antidepressant treatments. Our findings further highlight the RAS as a mechanistically relevant target for psychiatry, suggesting that AT1 receptor antagonism may have relevance for treating depression and other emotional disorders characterized by aberrant motivational biases (Clincialtrials.gov ID: NCT06624904).

Journal Article↗

PubMed2006

Epidemiology of specific phobia subtypes: findings from the Dresden Mental Health Study.

This study determined the prevalence, age of onset, comorbidity, and impairment associated with specific phobia subtypes in the community. Data were drawn from the Dresden Mental Health Study (N=2064), a representative community-based sample of young women in Dresden, Germany. The lifetime prevalence of any specific phobia was 12.8%, with subtypes ranging in prevalence between 0.2% (vomiting, infections) and 5.0% (animals). There were significant differences in the mean age of onset of specific phobias. Significant differences in comorbidity patterns also emerged between subtypes. No significant differences were found in level of impairment associated with the subtypes. The findings suggest that specific phobias are common among young women and that they differ in prevalence, associated comorbidity, and mean age of onset. These data suggest significant differences in the phenomenology and clinical significance of specific phobia subtypes.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Approach and avoidance in fear of spiders.

We examined attitudes towards spiders by employing an Approach-Avoidance Task, in which participants respond to pictures by pulling a joystick towards themselves or by pushing it away from themselves. For spider fearfuls, this stimulus-response assignment is either compatible (push spiders away) or incompatible (pull spiders closer). Specific compatibility effects were found: compared to non-anxious controls and control pictures, highly spider fearful participants responded to spider pictures more quickly by pushing than by pulling, even when picture contents was task-irrelevant. Moreover, compatibility effects predicted fear-related behavior independently of questionnaires. Potential applications, extensions, and limitations of the findings are discussed.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

Spider fearful individuals attend to threat, then quickly avoid it: evidence from eye movements.

According to cognitive models of anxiety, anxiety patients exhibit an early reflexive attentional bias toward threat stimuli, which may be followed by intentional avoidance of these stimuli. To determine the time course of attentional vigilance and avoidance, the authors conducted an eye-tracking study in which 22 highly spider fearful participants (SFs) and 23 nonanxious control participants (NACs) studied groups of 4 pictures (spider, butterfly, dog, and cat). The authors found that the very first fixation was on a spider picture more often in SFs than in NACs. However, SFs quickly moved their eyes away from the spider they had fixated first, yielding shorter gaze durations than NACs. Afterward, SFs exhibited shorter gaze durations on spiders than NACs for the rest of the 1-min presentation time. This early reflexive attentional bias toward threat followed by avoidance of threat may explain earlier failures to find attentional biases in anxiety.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

From fear to love: individual differences in implicit spider associations.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was used to investigate automatic fear associations in fear of spiders. Fear associations toward spiders were measured among spider fearful and nonfearful participants (Experiment 1) as well as among nonfearfuls and spider enthusiasts (Experiment 2). It was shown that the IAT is sensitive to personal automatic fear associations and therefore distinguishes between high-fearful, nonfearful, and enthusiastic participants. Moreover, implicit spider associations measured by the IAT predicted avoidance behavior beyond self-reports. The results of Experiment 2 provide additional support for the argument that implicit spider associations are different from general stereotypes or knowledge about spiders.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Spiders crawl easily through the bottleneck: visual working memory for negative stimuli.

The special status of spiders in the attentional bottleneck and visual working memory (VWM) was studied. 23 spider-fearfuls (SF) and 23 non-anxious controls (NACs) participated in a serial VWM-task. Each trial showed a 4 x 4 matrix of images and 5 of these were subsequently cued for 150 ms each. Afterwards, one of the 16 displayed images was hidden and probed. The spider image was included in the string of 5 cued images, among the 11 uncued items, or not at all. For both groups, memory was better for cued spiders than for other cued items. SFs also showed improved memory for uncued spiders. The relevance of the results for theories of attention and cognitive models of phobias are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Predictability of locomotion: effects on updating of spatial situation models during narrative comprehension.

We investigated how the updating of spatial situation models during narrative comprehension depends on the interaction of cognitive abilities and text characteristics. Participants with low verbal and visuospatial abilities and participants with high abilities read narratives in which the protagonist's motions in a fictitious building were either highly predictable or very hard to predict. In Experiment 1, high-ability readers updated spatial situation models only if the protagonist's motions were hard to predict, whereas low-ability readers did so only if the motions were highly predictable. In Experiment 2, facilitated integrative spatial processing compensated for the low-ability participants' resource limitations. As a result, both ability groups updated spatial situation models with hard-to-predict protagonist motions. These results highlight the interactions of cognitive abilities and text characteristics in spatial situation model updating.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Assessing the influence of dimensional focus during situation model construction.

According to Zwaan, Langston, and Graesser's (1995) event-indexing model, when comprehending text, readers monitor changes in a series of critical dimensions: space, time, protagonist, causality, and intentionality. In this study, the influence of dimensional focus was assessed during situation-model construction. Participants read narratives and were instructed to specifically monitor a single dimension while their sentence reading times were recorded. Critical sentence reading times were then analyzed for all shift types. Results support the general prediction that at least the time and protagonist dimensions are resistant to task demands, demonstrating that comprehenders routinely perform dimensional updating processes that are context independent. These results are discussed in the context of the event-indexing model.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Activation and measurement of threat associations in fear of spiders: an application of the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task.

The Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (DeHouwer, EAST; Experimental Psychol. 50 (2003) 77) was used to assess how different context conditions lead to differential activation of cognitive schemata in anxiety. Participants completed two identical EASTs, in which ambiguous target words (e.g., legs, net) were categorized together with pleasant words and unpleasant, fear-related words. Each EAST was preceded by the presentation of pictures, activating either a 'human' concept or a 'spider' concept. Results indicated that spider fearful participants showed threat associations towards the target words, but only when the spider concept was primed. Non-fearful participants did not show threat associations with either type of priming. We conclude that impact of threat associations depends on the activated context, and that the EAST is suitable for the assessment of fear associations and their current activation level.

Animals↗

PubMed2005

A comparison of attentional biases and memory biases in women with social phobia and major depression.

Cognitive processes play an important role in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety and depression. Current theories differ, however, in their predictions regarding the occurrence of attentional biases and memory biases in depression and anxiety. To allow for a systematic comparison of disorders and cognitive processes, 117 women (35 with generalized social phobia, 27 with major depression, and 55 healthy controls) participated in a test of visual attention (visual search), an explicit memory test (free recall), and an implicit memory test (anagram solving). Both clinical groups exhibited attentional biases for disorder-related words, whereas only depressed participants showed clear evidence of explicit and implicit memory biases. The implications of these results for competing theories are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Speeded detection and increased distraction in fear of spiders: evidence from eye movements.

Anxiety patients exhibit attentional biases toward threat, which have often been demonstrated as increased distractibility by threatening stimuli. In contrast, speeded detection of threat has rarely been shown. Therefore, the authors studied both phenomena in 3 versions of a visual search task while eye movements were recorded continuously. Spider-fearful individuals and nonanxious control participants participated in a target search task, an odd-one-out search task, and a category search task. Evidence for disorder-specific increased distraction by threat was found in all tasks, whereas speeded threat detection did not occur in the target search task. The implications of these findings for cognitive theories of anxiety are discussed, particularly in relation to the concept of disengagement from threat.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Emotional and temporal aspects of situation model processing during text comprehension: an event-related fMRI study.

Language comprehension in everyday life requires the continuous integration of prior discourse context and general world knowledge with the current utterance or sentence. In the neurolinguistic literature, these so-called situation model building processes have been ascribed to the prefrontal cortex or to the right hemisphere. In this study, we use whole-head event-related fMRI to directly map the neural correlates of narrative comprehension in context. While being scanned using a spin-echo sequence, 20 participants listened to 32 short stories, half of which contained globally inconsistent information. The inconsistencies concerned either temporal or chronological information or the emotional status of the protagonist. Hearing an inconsistent word elicited activation in the right anterior temporal lobe. The comparison of different information aspects revealed activation in the left precuneus and a bilateral frontoparietal network for chronological information. Emotional information elicited activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the extended amygdaloid complex. In addition, the integration of inconsistent emotional information engaged the dorsal frontomedial cortex (Brodmann's area 8/9), whereas the integration of inconsistent temporal information required the lateral prefrontal cortex bilaterally. These results indicate that listening to stories can elicit activation reflecting content-specific processes. Furthermore, updating of the situation model is not a unitary process but it also depends on the particular requirements of the text. The right hemisphere contributes to language processing in context, but equally important are the left medial and bilateral prefrontal cortices.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed2004

The metrics of spatial distance traversed during mental imagery.

The authors conducted 2 experiments to study the metrics of spatial distance in a mental imagery task. In both experiments, participants first memorized the layout of a building containing 10 rooms with 24 objects. Participants then received mental imagery instructions and imagined how they walked through the building from one room to another. The authors manipulated Euclidean distance involved in these imaginary motions: Spatial distance measured in centimeters on the layout was either short or long. Independently, they varied categorical distance: The motions led through one room or two rooms. The time needed to imagine motions and response times to test probes indicated that both Euclidean distance and categorical distance affected mental imagery. The authors discuss the new finding of categorical distance effects in mental imagery and relate the results to earlier failures to find Euclidean distance effects in formally equivalent studies of narrative comprehension.

Humans↗

PubMed2004

On doing two things at once: temporal constraints on actions in language comprehension.

In two experiments, we investigated how text comprehension is influenced by the interaction between the properties of actions and the temporal relations specified by adverbs. Participants read short narratives describing a protagonist who performed two actions that involved similar sensorimotor systems (e.g., chopping wood and painting a fence) or different ones (e.g., whistling a melody and painting a fence). The actions were described as simultaneous or successive by means of the temporal adverbs while and after, respectively. Comprehension, both in Spanish and in English, was markedly impaired (longer reading times and lower subjective coherence) for sentences including the adverb while and actions involving the same sensorimotor system. However, when one of the same sensorimotor system actions was described as a mental plan (e.g., chopping wood and thinking of painting a fence), comprehension was equally easy with the adverbs while and after. These results are compatible with a revised version of the indexical hypothesis that specifies how comprehension is guided by syntax and embodied constraints within multiple noninteracting mental spaces.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Selective memory and memory deficits in depressed inpatients.

We investigated memory impairment and mood-congruent memory bias in depression, using an explicit memory test and an implicit one. Thirty-six severely depressed inpatients that fulfilled DSM-IV criteria for major depressive disorder and 36 healthy controls matched for sex, age, and educational level participated in the study. Explicit memory was assessed with a free recall task and implicit memory with an anagram solution task. Results showed that depressed and controls differed in explicit memory performance, depending on the amount of cognitive distraction between incidental learning and testing. Implicit memory was not affected. In addition, severely depressed patients showed a mood-congruent memory bias in implicit memory but not in explicit memory. The complex pattern of results is discussed with regard to relevant theories of depression.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Selective attention in anxiety: distraction and enhancement in visual search.

According to cognitive models of anxiety, anxiety patients exhibit an attentional bias towards threat, manifested as greater distractibility by threat stimuli and enhanced detection of them. Both phenomena were studied in two experiments, using a modified visual search task, in which participants were asked to find single target words (GAD-related, speech-related, neutral, or positive) hidden in matrices made up of distractor words (also GAD-related, speech-related, neutral, or positive). Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) patients, social phobia (SP) patients afraid of giving speeches, and healthy controls participated in the visual search task. GAD patients were slowed by GAD-related distractor words but did not show statistically reliable evidence of enhanced detection of GAD-related target words. SP patients showed neither distraction nor enhancement effects. These results extend previous findings of attentional biases observed with other experimental paradigms.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Who when where: an experimental test of the event-indexing model.

We tested the event-indexing model proposed by Zwaan, Langston, and Graesser (1995). Participants read narratives containing target sentences that involved situational shifts. Independently of each other, continuity and shifting of the protagonist, time, and location dimensions were varied. In Experiment 1, reading times of the target sentences increased for protagonist shifts and temporal shifts, whereas the effect of spatial shifts was weak. Moreover, an interaction of protagonist shifts and spatial shifts was found. These results were replicated in Experiment 2, which also revealed strong effects of these situational shifts on coherence ratings that participants gave immediately after reading each target sentence. Experiment 3 addressed the interaction of protagonist shifts and spatial shifts, showing that it may be due to the differential involvement of unexplained protagonist motions. These experimental results support the processing load predictions of the event-indexing model and extend previous correlational results.

Cognition↗

PubMed2003

Processing of temporal information: evidence from eye movements.

In two experiments, we recorded eye movements to study how readers monitor temporal order information contained in narrative texts. Participants read short texts containing critical temporal information in the sixth sentence, which could be either consistent or inconsistent with temporal order information given in the second sentence. In Experiment 1, inconsistent sentences yielded more regressions to the second sentence and longer refixations of it. In Experiment 2, this pattern of eye movements was shown only by readers who noticed the inconsistency and were able to report it. Theoretical and methodological implications of the results for research on text comprehension are discussed.

Eye Movements↗