RESUMO
AIM: To evaluate how gelotophobia correlates with trait anxiety in a sample of Brazilian college students. METHODS: We evaluated the association of GELOPH < 15 > scores with both self-reported experiences of bullying victimization and trait anxiety measures assessed by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). The study consisted of a sample of 65 adult volunteers (M = 21.48, SD = 2.54 years, 38 females), recruited through social media or flyer distribution, and submitted to online versions of the gelotophobia assessment instrument (GELOPH < 15 >) and the STAI. RESULTS: Most participants (N = 56, 86.15%) had an STAI-T score indicative of high trait anxiety. The average GELOPH < 15 > score of the sample was 2.69 (0.65) and 39 of the subjects (60%) were considered gelotophobes. There was a strong positive correlation between the GELOPH < 15 > and STAI-T scores but no correlation between bullying and either the STAI-T and GELOPH < 15 > scores. However, the great majority of subjects with gelotophobia reported been previously bullied. CONCLUSION: In our sample, all gelotophobes had trait anxiety, but only a fraction of anxious subjects had gelotophobia. These preliminary findings expand on previous reports underscoring the high prevalence of mental health problems afflicting higher education students in Brazil.
Assuntos
Ansiedade , Medo , Adulto , Feminino , Humanos , Brasil/epidemiologia , Ansiedade/epidemiologia , Ansiedade/psicologia , Medo/psicologia , Transtornos de Ansiedade/psicologia , Inventário de PersonalidadeRESUMO
The heart and brain are reciprocally interconnected and engage in two-way communication for homeostatic regulation. Epilepsy is considered a network disease that also affects the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The neurovisceral integration model (NVM) proposes that cardiac vagal tone, indexed by heart rate variability (HRV), can indicate the functional integrity of cognitive neural networks. ANS activity and the pattern of oscillatory EEG activity covary during the transition of arousal states and associations between cortical and autonomic activity are reflected by HRV. Cognitive dysfunction is one of the common comorbidities that occur in epilepsy, including memory, attention, and processing difficulties. Recent studies have shown evidence for the active involvement of alpha activity in cognitive processes through its active role in the control of neural excitability in the cortex through top-down modulation of cortical networks. In the present pilot study, we evaluated the association between resting EEG oscillatory behavior and ANS function in patients with refractory epilepsy. Our results show: (1) In patients with refractory epilepsy, there is a strong positive correlation between HRV and the power of cortical oscillatory cortical activity in all studied EEG bands (delta, theta, alpha, and beta) in all regions of interest in both hemispheres, the opposite pattern found in controls which had low or negative correlation between these variables; (2) higher heartbeat evoked potential amplitudes in patients with refractory epilepsy than in controls. Taken together, these results point to a significant alteration in heart-brain interaction in patients with refractory epilepsy.