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This study investigated the perception bias on affective emoticons in individuals with emotion dysregulation and a maladaptive regulation strategy. A total of 289 students from the university completed 1) the Cognitive Emotional Regulation Questionnaire, including both adaptive and maladaptive cognitive emotional strategies, 2) the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, 3) an emoticon rating in terms of perception intensity, based on 6 basic emotions. Twenty-six emoticons from KakaoTalk, a popular messenger application in South Korea, were used after arousal whereupon valence ratings were obtained. The results revealed that individuals with emotion dysregulation significantly displayed stronger perception to ambiguous affect emoticons in anger and fear emotions, as compared to the control. These findings suggest that individuals with emotion dysregulation may be more influenced by negative affect stimuli which then leads to daily negative affect bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Portulaca oleracea L. is a traditional oriental medicine known for its pharmacological effects. The present study aimed to investigate the immunostimulatory effects of PPCE on cyclophosphamide-stimulated rat model and in isolated spleen cells. The result showed that PPCE exerted an immunostimulatory effect in vivo and in vitro. Specifically, PPCE significantly enhanced splenocyte proliferation and upregulated inflammatory cytokines (IL-2, IL-12, TNF-α, and IFN-γ) and NK cell activity in vitro. The immunostimulatory effect was further investigated through various immunological assays. Oral administration of PPCE increased the swimming time and number of immune cells in rats. Histological analysis revealed that PPCE administration exerted splenic recovery. Thus, P. oleracea L. based complex extracts may be used as an immunostimulatory agent in medicine or functional foods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]