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22 believers and 20 skeptics of extrasensory perception (ESP) participated in a telepathy experiment. Subjects were asked to judge the covariation between transmitted symbols and the corresponding feedback given by a receiver. Believers overestimated the number of successful transmissions ('hits'). Skeptics were characterized by accurate hit judgments. For believers, positive correlations between hit-responses, their heart rates, and their experienced arousal were found. In addition, subjective arousal was positively associated with the hit estimates given at the end of the experiment. This response pattern was absent in the group of skeptics. It is concluded that covariation bias as a psychophysiological concept plays an important role in the maintenance of paranormal belief.

Placebos, that are administered with deception, can reduce stress and increase relaxation. The present study investigated an open-label placebo (OLP) to improve the effects of Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) training. A total of 160 psychology students were randomly assigned to a 14-day PMR course with or without daily OLP treatment. The placebo was administered along with an explanation of placebo effects and the verbal suggestion that the OLP activates the body's natural relaxation response. The relaxation instructions for home practice were delivered via a smartphone app, which was also used for the evaluation of the exercises. The participants of the OLP group completed more PMR exercises (M = 9.75) than the group without a placebo (M = 8.15). The two groups did not differ in reported exercise-related changes in relaxation level. On average, the OLP group rated the effects of the placebo as very low and was characterized by a higher drop-out rate compared to the group without OLP. Some participants experienced the OLP as negative. In conclusion, factors that influence the acceptance of OLP treatment require further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous study a negative correlation was found between the natural sferics activity and scores on an ESP task. We attempted a replication in three studies with 37, 100, and 68 participants. In these studies ESP scores and the level of sferics activity were not significantly correlated. The result for all combined data is significant but with a quite low effect size. Other trends in the data could not be confirmed.

The presentation of visual food cues (e.g., food plating) can affect our appetite and leads to characteristic changes of early as well as late positivity in the electroencephalogram. The present event-related potential (ERP) study attempted to change ERPs and affective ratings for food pictures by rearranging the components of a depicted meal (conventional presentation) as a smiley or frowny. The images were presented to 68 women (mean age = 24 years), who rated the wanting and liking of the meals. Compared to conventional food plating, smiley and frowny meals elicited enhanced amplitudes of the P200, P300, and late positive potential (LPP) in a large occipito-parietal cluster. Frowny meals were rated as less appetizing than conventional food presentations. The mentioned ERP components are concomitants of face configuration processing (P200), automatic attention/novelty detection (P300), and voluntary attention/assignment of emotional meaning (LPP). Thus, the combination of two affective cues (food, face) in one stimulus changed the activation in motivational circuits of the brain. Also, serving a meal as a frowny could help to regulate appetite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

64 students participated in a study of a simple reaction time (RT) task with and without magnetic sferics stimulation. Exposure did not affect RT.

Background: Patients with depression often experience difficulties with completing homework assignments during cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). In the present study, we investigated the effects of a specific placebo which aimed at improving the practice of a daily relaxation exercise during a four-week outpatient program.Methods: A total of 126 patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder were randomly assigned to one of three groups: 'Coping with Depression' course, 'Coping with Depression' course with additional daily placebo treatment, and waiting-list group. The placebo (sunflower oil) was introduced as a natural medicine to help the patients focus on their inner strengths and to mobilize their bodies' natural healing powers. The placebo was taken orally before the daily relaxation exercise.Results: The placebo improved homework quantity and quality (both p < .001). The placebo group practiced more often and experienced greater relaxation effects than the no-placebo group. Additionally, the placebo group showed a greater reduction of depression symptoms (p < .001).Limitations: The primary limitation of the study is the lack of a psychophysiological measure of relaxation.Conclusions: Placebos can be used to leverage CBT effects in patients with depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processing of facial expressions is biased in social anxiety (SA). We tested whether a brief situational context training in the school setting might be helpful in changing biased facial processing and reducing relevant symptoms in children with SA. A final sample of 118 children aged 8 to 13 years with high vs. low SA were randomly assigned to a training group or a control group without intervention. During the training, the children were exposed to images depicting negative facial expressions with masked and later unmasked backgrounds, in order to demonstrate that negative expressions can also occur in emotion-irrelevant contexts (e.g., during onion cutting). Especially for socially anxious children, the intervention effectively reduced harmful expectations during the presentation of images showing negative facial expressions. Moreover, socially anxious children having undertaken the training were able to perform a subjectively more challenging social evaluation task in front of the class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The concept of 'food addiction' (FA) posits that highly processed food with added fat and/or refined carbohydrates is capable of triggering addictive-like eating behavior. FA may be one possible phenotype in obesity. Methods: The present voxel-based morphometry (VBM) study compared data from three groups of women. One group scored high on the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) and was overweight (n = 21), whereas the two other groups had low YFAS scores and were either overweight (n = 21) or normal-weight (n = 21). Results: Overweight women with high YFAS scores had less grey matter volume (GMV) in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) than overweight women with low FA tendency, who in turn had less GMV in the IFG than the normal-weight group. The IFG is involved in response inhibition, which is relevant for the control of appetite and food intake. In the group with high FA tendency, the frequency of binge episodes was substantially correlated with the YFAS scores, and 11 women of this group were diagnosed with binge-eating disorder (BED). The association between IFG volume and YFAS scores was not statistically significant anymore when controlling for the effect of binge frequency as revealed by partial correlation analysis. Conclusion: This VBM study revealed an association between reported FA tendency and a neural correlate of disinhibited eating. Future studies with bigger sample sizes are needed in order to demonstrate that FA is sufficiently different from existing conditions (e.g., BED) to warrant classification as a distinct disease phenotype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Humans are very sensitive to several bitter compounds, although there is great inter-individual variability in the elicited emotional (e.g., disgust) and somatic (e.g., nausea) responses. The variability might be associated with the personality trait "disgust proneness" (DP; general tendency to respond with the emotion of disgust). Method: This study examined the relationship between the sensitivity to quinine hydrochloride and DP in children (63 boys and 67 girls; mean age = 8.5 years) and adults (107 men, 95 women; mean age = 29.4 years). Each participant rated the perceived taste intensity of four gustatory stimuli (sucrose, 0.4 g/ml; sodium chloride, 0.25 g/ml; quinine hydrochloride, 0.006 g/ml; citric acid, 0.3 g/ml) and completed questionnaires that assessed the proneness to experience disgust, anxiety, and depressed mood. Results: The computed multiple linear regression analyses for the adults showed that DP but no other trait measure was associated with bitter sensitivity. In children, depression proneness and age were predictors of bitter sensitivity. Conclusions: This study revealed age-dependent correlations between DP and bitter sensitivity. Implications: This finding points to the dynamic features of taste sensitivity (and possibly DP) across the lifespan. Therefore, longitudinal studies are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies with adults and school children have shown that placebos can enhance motivation and performance in physical activities. This study aimed to investigate whether similar effects are present in kindergarten-aged children. A total of 101 children (58 girls, 43 boys) aged 3 to 6 years were randomly assigned to one of two groups that either received a deceptive placebo (DP: "magic potion") or a nondeceptive placebo (NDP: "water") to enhance physical abilities. Each child completed three tasks (sprinting; balancing: standing on a balance board; strength: using a handheld dynamometer) both with and without the placebo. The variables assessed included task performance, enjoyment, and expected and perceived placebo efficacy (measured with nonverbal pictorial rating scales). Results showed that both the DP and NDP increased speed. For strength, balance, and task enjoyment (which was very high), no placebo-induced changes were observed. Expected efficacy was higher for the DP; perceived efficacy did not differ between DP and NDP. In conclusion, reported outcome expectations indicated that kindergarten-aged children were already able to differentiate between the two types of placebos which exhibited positive effects concerning running performance. This encourages further research on using nondeceptive placebos to enhance physical activity, which is crucial for children's overall health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]