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The human prefrontal cortex (PFC) processes complex sensory information for the elaboration of social behaviors. The non-invasive neuroimaging technique near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) identifies hemodynamic changes and concentration of oxygenated (HbO 2 ) and deoxygenated (HHb) hemoglobin in the cerebral cortex. We studied the responses detected by NIRS in the right and left PFC activation of 28 participants (n = 14 adult young females and males) while processing social/emotional facial expressions, i.e., in conscious perception of different expressions (neutral, happy, sad, angry, disgust, and fearful) and in unconscious/masked perception of negative expressions (fearful and disgust overlapped by neutral). The power spectral analysis from concomitant ECG signals revealed the sympathetic and parasympathetic modulation of cardiac responses. We found higher HbO 2 values in the right PFC of females than in males during, and in the left PFC after, following the conscious perception of the happy face. In males, the left PFC increased and the right PFC decreased HbO 2 while viewing the happy expression. In both sexes, HHb values were higher during the masked presentation of disgust than fearful expression, and after the masked presentation of fearful expression than during it. Higher sympathetic and lower parasympathetic activity (LF/ HF components) occurred in females when consciously and unconsciously processing negative emotions (p < 0.05 in all cases). These results demonstrate that the human PFC displays a selective activation depending on sex, hemispheric laterality, attention, time for responding to conscious and unconscious emotionally loaded stimuli with simulataneous centrally modulated cardiovascular responses., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest Authors declare no real or potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The Health and Education Ministries of Brazil launched the Health in School Program (Programa Saúde na Escola - PSE) in 2007. The purpose of the PSE is two-fold: articulate the actions of the education and health systems to identify risk factors and prevent them; and promote health education in the public elementary school system. In the health field, the self-regulation (SR) construct can contribute to the understanding of life habits which can affect the improvement of individuals' health. This research aims to present a program that promotes SR in health (SRH). This program (PSRH) includes topics on healthy eating and oral health from the PSE; it is grounded on the social cognitive framework and uses story tools to train 5th grade Brazilian students in SRH. The study consists of two phases. In Phase 1, teachers and health professionals participated in a training program on SRH, and in Phase 2, they will be expected to conduct an intervention in class to promote SRH. The participants were randomly assigned into three groups: the Condition I group followed the PSE program, the Condition II group followed the PSRH (i.e., PSE plus the SRH program), and the control group (CG) did not enroll in either of the health promotion programs. For the baseline of the study, the following measures and instruments were applied: Body Mass Index (BMI), Simplified Oral Hygiene Index (OHI-S), Previous Day Food Questionnaire (PFDQ), and Declarative Knowledge for Health Instrument. Data indicated that the majority are eutrophic children, but preliminary outcomes showed high percentages of children that are overweight, obese and severely obese. Moreover, participants in all groups reported high consumption of ultraprocessed foods (e.g., soft drinks, artificial juices, and candies). Oral health data from the CI and CII groups showed a prevalence of regular oral hygiene, while the CG presented good oral hygiene. The implementation of both PSE and PSRH are expected to help reduce health problems in school, as well as the public expenditures with children's health (e.g., Obesity and oral diseases).

Introduction: Positive psychology (PP) constructs contribute significantly to a better quality of life for people with various diseases. There are still few studies that have evaluated the evolution of these aspects during the progression of dementia. Objective: To compare the scores for self-esteem, life satisfaction, affect, spirituality, hope, optimism and perceived support network between elderly people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), mild dementia and moderate dementia and control group. Methods: Cross-sectional study. The sample consisted of 66 healthy controls, 15 elderly people with MCI, 25 with mild dementia and 22 with moderate dementia matched by age, gender, and schooling. The instruments used were: Spirituality Self Rating Scale (SSRS), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Medical Outcomes Study's Social Support Scale, Life Satisfaction Scale (LSS), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), Revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R), and Adult Dispositional Hope Scale (ADHS). Results: The scores for spiritual well-being, social support, self-esteem, life satisfaction, positive affect, optimism, negative affect, and hope differed significantly between the groups ( p < 0.05). The individuals with MCI and mild dementia had lower spiritual well-being, social support, self-esteem, life satisfaction, positive affect, optimism and hope scores, and higher negative affect scores compared with the controls. The scores for PP constructs did not differ between the group of people with moderate dementia and the control group. Conclusion: Dementia was found to impact several PP constructs in the early stages of the disease. For individuals with greater cognitive impairment, anosognosia appears to suppress the disease's impact on these constructs.

Objective: The Computerized and Dynamic Writing Test (TIDE) is designed to examine the learning potential of adolescents in narrative writing. This was a validation study of the TIDE based on its internal structure. Learning potential is responsible for cognitive modifiabilty according to the Theory of Cognitive Structural Modifiability (CSM) developed by Feüerstein. Method: Included 304 participants between 10 and 17 years of age from schools in the South of Brazil. The data collection involved student groups that were divided according to age and school grade. Each participant reponded to the TIDE for an average of 50 min in the school's computer lab. The participants' selection criteria were: being regularly enrolled in the fifth to eighth grade and providing an informed consent form signed by a responsible caregiver. The exclusion criteria included: neurological problems, having been held back in school for two or more years, not cooperating, not completing the test for any reason and physical conditions impeding the assessment. Results: The Kendall test indicated agreement between two evaluators, who corrected the participants' first and second texts that resulted from applying the TIDE. The TIDE is divided into three modules. Factor analysis was applied to the first module (pre-test), which revealed a division in two factors, and to the second module (instructional module), which was divided in three factors. The reliability of the TIDE items was verified using Cronbach's Alpha with coefficients >0.7. The analysis of the third module (post-test) was based on McNemar's Test and showed statistically significant results that demonstrated an evolution in the participants' learning potential. Conclusion: The TIDE proved to be valid and is considered a relevant tool for speech, language, hearing, psychological and educational assessment. The original nature of the tool presented here is highlighted, based on the dynamic assessment method, offering data on a narrative writing learning method as well as its possible adaptation to other contexts and languages. In addition, the computer-based nature of the tool is emphasized, enabling its more precise application and analysis of participant performance, in addition to its lower cost, reduced application bias and ability to test more than one person simultaneously.

There is a growing recognition that positive psychological functioning (which includes constructs such as optimism and hope) influences health. However, the understanding of these underlying mechanisms in relation to health is limited. Therefore, this review sought to identify what the scientific literature says about the influence of optimism and hope on chronic disease treatment. A search was conducted in the PsycINFO, Scopus, Pubmed, and Web of Science databases using the indexing terms optimism, hope, chronic diseases, randomized controlled trial , and treatment between 1998 and 2015. In the articles, we identified the most studied diseases in context, the assessment instruments used, the participant characteristics investigated, the results found, and the publication dates. From our analysis of the articles that met our inclusion criteria, it appears that the study of these constructs is recent and there is evidence that individuals with greater optimism and hope seek to engage in healthier behaviors, regardless of their clinical status, and that this contributes to chronic disease treatment. More research is needed so that targeted interventions can be carried out effectively in chronic disease treatment.

Unlabelled: Based on many temperament frameworks, here we propose an integration of emotional and affective temperaments (the AFECT model), forming a common substrate for mood, behavior, personality and part of cognition. Temperament is conceived as a self-regulated system with six emotional dimensions: volition, anger, inhibition, sensitivity, coping and control. The different combinations of these emotional dimensions result in 12 affective temperament types, namely depressive, anxious, apathetic, obsessive, cyclothymic, dysphoric, irritable, volatile, disinhibited, hyperthymic and euphoric. We also developed and validated a self-report scale to evaluate this construct, the Affective and Emotional Composite Temperament Scale (AFECTS)., Methods: Exploratory and confirmatory psychometric analyses were performed with the internet version of the AFECTS in 2947 subjects (72% females, 35±11years old)., Results: The factors interpreted as volition, anger, inhibition, sensitivity, coping and control showed very good Cronbach's alphas for 5 dimensions (0.87-0.90) and acceptable alpha for inhibition (0.75). Confirmatory factor analysis corroborated this 6-factor structure when considering inhibition as a second-order factor with fear and caution as first-order factors (SRMR=0.061; RMSEA=0.053). In the Affective section, all 12 categorical affective temperaments were selected in the categorical choice, with 99% of volunteers identifying at least one adequate description of their affective temperament., Limitations: Only the internet version was used in a general population sample., Conclusion: The AFECT model provides an integrated framework of temperament as a self-regulated system, with implications for mental health, psychiatric disorders and their treatment. The AFECTS showed good psychometric properties to further study this model., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Temperament relates to both emotional dimensions and prevailing mood, but these different views are rarely integrated. Based on a model where temperament works as a system with activation, inhibition and control (inspired in Cloninger's and Rothbart's models), which produce the affective tone (inspired by Akiskal's and Kraepelin's model), we developed and validated the Combined Emotional and Affective Temperament Scale (CEATS)., Methods: 1007 subjects (28% males) from the general population and university students filled in the instrument either in the Internet or in a pen and paper version. The CEATS has an emotional section (dimensional only), an Affective section (both dimensional and categorical) and an evaluation of problems and benefits related to temperament. The data was analyzed with standard psychometric batteries and different sections were compared., Results: In the emotional section, 4 factors with Eingenvalue >1 explained 46% of the variation. These factors were interpreted as drive, control, disinhibition-fear and anger, had a normal distribution and had satisfactory Chronbach's alphas (0.70-0.82). Anger was particularly associated with problems and drive with benefits. In the Affective section, all 10 categorical affective temperaments were selected, being euthymic and hyperthymic the most prevalent (18-23%), followed by cyclothymic and irritable (11-13%), anxious and depressive (8-9%) and dysphoric, disinhibited, labile and apathetic temperaments (3-7%). The dimensional evaluation of affective temperaments showed 95% of the sample was able to ascribe to at least one affective temperament. Only the euthymic and hyperthymic temperaments were clearly associated with a favorable problem/benefit profile. The comparison between the emotional and affective sections revealed that each affective temperament had a particular emotional configuration., Limitations: Both computerized and pen and paper versions were used. The sample was not evaluated for psychiatric symptoms. Quantification of the dimensional assessment of affective temperament is limited., Conclusions: The CEATS is a brief and adequate instrument to evaluate emotional and affective aspects of temperament simultaneously.