Biomedical subjects

J Margraf

Publications and source records attributed to J Margraf.

58 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

PubMedDate not supplied

The emotional Stroop effect in anxiety disorders: general emotional or disorder specificity?

Selective attentional biases, often documented with a modified Stroop task, are considered to play an important role in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety. Two competing explanations for these effects are selectivity for highly emotional words in general vs. selectivity for disorder-specific words. We tested these explanations in 32 patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), 29 patients with social phobia (SP), and 31 non-anxious controls. Stimuli were of four kinds: GAD-related words, SP-related words, words with a neutral valence, and words with a positive valence. Different attentional biases were observed: GAD patients were slowed by all types of emotional words, while SP patients were distracted specifically by speech-related words.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Don't worry and beware of white bears: thought suppression in anxiety patients.

The ability to suppress unwanted thoughts was investigated in patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD; n = 29), Speech Phobics (n = 25), and nonanxious controls (n = 28). All participants spent 5 minutes thinking aloud about anything that came to mind while trying not to think of white bears. In another task, they thought aloud for 5 minutes while trying not to think of their main worry. Intrusions of unwanted thoughts were signaled by button presses and recorded on tape. In accordance with the disorder's definition and complaints of the GAD patients, they showed more intrusions of their main worry than of white bears. The opposite was true for other participants. Compared to a baseline measure, all participant groups were unable to reduce duration of main worry thoughts when trying to suppress them.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Sodium lactate infusions and panic attacks: a review and critique.

Response to sodium lactate infusions has been proposed as an experimental model and a biologic marker for panic attacks. Several authors have claimed that patients suffering from panic attacks, but not normal controls, "panic" in response to lactate. A careful review of methods and results of 13 studies, however, reveals serious methodologic problems, lack of specificity and sensitivity, and a failure to consider cognitive variables. When baseline differences are ruled out, the responses of patients and controls may not differ. So far, response to lactate cannot be interpreted as a model and marker for panic attacks and does not provide evidence for their underlying biologic distinctness from other types of anxiety. Known biologic mechanisms do not sufficiently explain the effects of lactate. Instead, an interaction of peripheral physiologic changes, past experience, environmental cues, and their appraisal as threatening or dangerous seems to be a more appropriate model.

Anxiety Disorders↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Mitral valve prolapse and panic disorder: a review of their relationship.

There has been considerable speculation about a possible relationship between panic disorder and mitral valve prolapse syndrome (MVP), although empirical results have been highly inconsistent. Some studies report low frequencies of 0-8%, others high frequencies of 24-35% "definite" MVP in panic patients (average across 17 studies: 18% of panic patients, 1% of normal controls). Elevated prevalences of MVP were also reported for generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar affective disorder, and anorexia nervosa. Studies of MVP patients generally failed to find elevated prevalence of panic compared to other cardiac patients or normal controls (averages across seven studies: 14%, 10%, and 8%, respectively). Inconsistent results may be due to widely different diagnostic criteria for MVP, low reliability of this diagnosis, inadequate control groups, "non-blind" ratings of panic or MVP, and sampling bias in both patient and control populations. These problems as well as the great variations in the published results preclude any final judgment. If there is concomitance between MVP and panic, it is small and primarily involves subjects with milder or reversible variants of MVP. At present it seems most justified, however, to assume co-morbidity in highly symptomatic individuals rather than a functional relationship.

Fear↗