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Objective: Eating disorders have a considerable influence on social contacts. The avoidance towards the own body may result in the avoidance of others. Previous research has found a preference for larger interaction distances in individuals with eating disorders (ED) as compared to control participants (CG). We aimed to replicate these findings and to investigate whether the body weight of the interactant moderates the effect., Method: We recruited a female sample with mixed ED subtypes (n = 21) and a female CG (n = 28). Participants were immersed in a virtual environment and engaged in a number of fictitious social interactions. They approached a virtual person until a comfortable distance for interaction was reached. The approached virtual persons differed with respect to body weight in five levels (underweight to obese)., Results: Our results indicate that interpersonal distance varies as a U-shaped function of the avatar's body weight, and that higher levels of body avoidance, present in ED individuals, magnify this effect., Conclusions: We discuss our results with regard to the role of perspective and disgust to provide a useful framework and to motivate future studies in the domain of body avoidance in social interactions., (© 2019 The Authors. European Eating Disorders Review published by Eating Disorders Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The Mona Lisa effect describes the phenomenon when the eyes of a portrait appear to look at the observer regardless of the observer's position. Recently, the metaphor of a cone of gaze has been proposed to describe the range of gaze directions within which a person feels looked at. The width of the gaze cone is about five degrees of visual angle to either side of a given gaze direction. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how the brain regions involved in gaze direction discrimination would differ between centered and decentered presentation positions of a portrait exhibiting eye contact. Subjects observed a given portrait's eyes. By presenting portraits with varying gaze directions-eye contact (0°), gaze at the edge of the gaze cone (5°), and clearly averted gaze (10°), we revealed that brain response to gaze at the edge of the gaze cone was similar to that produced by eye contact and different from that produced by averted gaze. Right fusiform gyrus and right superior temporal sulcus showed stronger activation when the gaze was averted as compared to eye contact. Gaze sensitive areas, however, were not affected by the portrait's presentation location. In sum, although the brain clearly distinguishes averted from centered gaze, a substantial change of vantage point does not alter neural activity, thus providing a possible explanation why the feeling of eye contact is upheld even in decentered stimulus positions., (© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Background: The authors studied rapidly alternating chemotherapy and radiotherapy as the initial treatment for patients with muscle-invasive transitional cell carcinomas of the urinary bladder whose advanced age and lack of strength precluded cystectomy., Methods: Twenty-one patients with T2 (28%) or T3 (72%) NXM0 carcinomas were treated by transurethral resection followed by chemoradiotherapy. Their median age was 73 years. The chemotherapy (consisting of methotrexate, vinblastine, doxorubicin, and cisplatin) was given during Weeks 1, 4 and 7. Radiotherapy (1.8-2 Gray [Gy] twice a day, to a total dose of 18-20 Gy per week) was given during Weeks 2, 5 and 8, for a final dose of 40 Gy to the pelvis plus 14-20 Gy boost to the affected bladder., Results: There was 1 treatment-related death (5% of patients), but otherwise the acute toxicity was relatively mild. Cystoscopy 1 month after chemoradiotherapy did not reveal invasive cancer in any patient. Subsequent cystoscopies detected recurrent invasive cancer in 3 patients after 30, 44, and 82 months, respectively. The observed survival rate after 5 years was 37%, the cause specific survival rate was 63%, the metastasis free rate was 71%, and the local control rate was 80%. Eighty-four percent of patients had normal bladder function., Conclusions: Transurethral resection plus chemoradiotherapy was successful in preserving bladder function in the majority of the patients. The survival and progression free rates compared favorably with what has been reported recently after radical cystectomy and chemotherapy, and they add to the growing body of evidence that chemoradiotherapy might be a safe, effective alternative to cystectomy for many patients with muscle-invasive carcinoma of the urinary bladder.