This fMRI study was set up to explore how cognitive empathy, i.e. the cognitive inference on another person's affective state, can be characterized as a distinct brain function relating to pre-existing neurofunctional concepts about mentalizing and empathy. In a 3 Tesla MRI scanner 28 healthy participants were presented with four different instructions randomly combined with 32 false-belief car...

BACKGROUND Cognitive remediation is accepted as an important therapeutic intervention in schizophrenia, but few studies provide data on whether the benefits extend to affective disorders. OBJECTIVES To review quantitatively studies of cognitive remediation with samples that included cases of schizoaffective disorder, affective psychosis, unipolar and/or bipolar disorders. METHODS Twenty one...

OBJECTIVES Sleep problems related to technology affect college students through several potential mechanisms including displacement of sleep due to technology use, executive functioning abilities, and the impact of emotional states related to stress and anxiety about technology availability. DESIGN In the present study, cognitive and affective factors that influence technology usage were exam...

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the factor structure of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) in pregnancy and postpartum. Women were asked to fill in the BDI-II in their last trimester of pregnancy and at 3 months after delivery. A total of 331 pregnant women, with a mean age of 29.7 years (SD=4.6), and 354 mothers, aged 30.6 years (SD=4.6 years), answered the BDI-II. T...

OBJECTIVE this study investigated the association of somatic and cognitive-affective symptoms with sex and age, among patients hospitalized with heart disease. METHOD this study was a secondary analysis of two previous observational studies totaling 531 patients with heart disease, hospitalized from 2005 to 2011 in two public hospitals in Ribeirão Preto, state of São Paulo, Brazil. Somatic an...

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to attribute thoughts, intentions and beliefs to others. This involves component processes, including cognitive perspective taking (cognitive ToM) and understanding emotions (affective ToM). This study assessed the distinction and overlap of neural processes involved in these respective components, and also investigated their development between adolescence a...

Two alternative models of impaired cognitive and affective processing that may underlie reduced social quality of life (SQoL) of persons with schizophrenia, were examined. According to the parallel process model, impaired cognitive empathy and affective empathy make relatively independent contributions to the symptoms of schizophrenia and to the consequent reduction in SQoL. According to the in...