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Reports that the event-related potentials evoked by HIV-infected individuals in a cognitive decision-making test yielded no P300 component, suggesting possible alteration in neuronal activity and impaired cognitive function. Possibility of using paradigm for diagnosis of HIV infection.

Examines age-related processing differences in facilitory and inhibitory semantic priming operations. Assessments of behavioral and electrophysiological on young and elderly subjects; Semantic priming task; Finding of no age-related slowing in semantic priming.

This study explored whether physical activity and sleep, combined with the biomarker C-reactive protein, indexed positive health in older men. Many were former prisoners of war, with most remaining psychologically resilient and free of any psychiatric diagnoses. Activity and sleep were recorded through actigraphy in 120 veterans (86 resilient and 34 nonresilient) for 7 days. Resilient men had higher physical activity, significantly lower C-reactive protein levels, and 53 percent had lower cardiac-disease risk compared to nonresilient men. Sleep was adequate and not associated with C-reactive protein. Results suggest continued study is needed in actigraphy and C-reactive protein as means to index positive health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience, exhibiting intact psychological functioning despite exposure to trauma, is one perspective as to why some people who are exposed to trauma do not develop symptoms. This study examines the prisoner of war experience to expand our understanding of this phenomenon in extreme cases of trauma such as prolonged captivity, malnourishment, and physical and psychological torture. The study examined the United States' longest detained American prisoners of war, those held in Vietnam in the 1960s through early 1970s. A logistic regression analysis using resilience, defined as never receiving any psychiatric diagnosis over a 37-year follow-up period, as the outcome was performed ( n = 224 with complete data). Six variables showing at least small effects emerged: officer/enlisted status, age at time of capture, length of solitary confinement, low antisocial/psychopathic personality traits, low posttraumatic stress symptoms following repatriation, and optimism. Odds ratios (ORs) and confidence intervals (CIs) confirmed the significance and relative strength of these variables, with a range from OR = 0.54, 95% CI [0.13, 2.29] to OR = 1.11, 95% CI [1.04, 1.17]. When all variables were examined continuously and categorically, dispositional optimism was the strongest variable, accounting for 17%, continuously, and 14%, categorically. We discuss optimism as a protective factor for confronting trauma and the possibility of training to increase it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]