Faculty Bibliography

Disgust plays a crucial role in the avoidance of pathogen threats. In many species, body odors provide important information related to health and disease, and body odors are potent elicitors of disgust in humans. With this background, valid assessments of body odor disgust sensitivity are warranted. In the present article, we report the development and psychometric validation of the Body Odor Disgust Scale (BODS), a measure suited to assess individual differences in disgust reaction to a variety of body odors. Collected data from 3 studies (total n = 528) show that the scale can be used either as a unidimensional scale or as a scale that reflects two hypothesized factors: sensitivity to one's own body odors versus those of others. Guided by our results, we reduced the scale to 12 items that capture the essence of these 2 factors. The final version of the BODS shows an excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's αs > 0.9). The BODS subscales show convergent validity with other general disgust scales, as well as with other olfactory functions measures and with aspects of personality that are related to pathogen avoidance. A fourth study confirmed the construct validity of the BODS and its measurement invariance to gender. Moreover, we found that, compared with other general disgust scales, the BODS is more strongly related to perceived vulnerability to disease. The BODS is a brief and valid assessment of trait body odor disgust sensitivity.

The psychological mechanisms of action involved in psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy are not yet well understood. Despite a resurgence of quantitative research regarding psilocybin, the current study is the first qualitative study of participant experiences in psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy. Semistructured interviews were carried out with 13 adult participants aged 22 to 69 years (M = 50 years) with clinically elevated anxiety associated with a cancer diagnosis. Participants received a moderate dose of psilocybin and adjunctive psychotherapy with an emphasis on the process of meaning-making. Verbatim transcribed interviews were analyzed by a five-member research team using interpretative phenomenological analysis. General themes found in all or nearly all transcripts included relational embeddedness, emotional range, the role of music as conveyor of experience, meaningful visual phenomena, wisdom lessons, revised life priorities, and a desire to repeat the psilocybin experience. Typical themes found in the majority of transcripts included the following: exalted feelings of joy, bliss, and love; embodiment; ineffability; alterations to identity; a movement from feelings of separateness to interconnectedness; experiences of transient psychological distress; the appearance of loved ones as guiding spirits; and sharing the experience with loved ones posttreatment. Variant themes found in a minority of participant transcripts include lasting changes to sense of identity, synesthesia experiences, catharsis of powerful emotion, improved relationships after treatment, surrender or letting go, forgiveness, and a continued struggle to integrate experience. The findings support the conclusion that psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy may provide an effective treatment for psychological distress in cancer patients. Implications for theory and treatment are discussed.

Body odors are potent triggers of disgust and regulate social behaviors in many species. The role of olfaction in disgust-associated behaviors has received scant attention in the research literature, in part because olfactory disgust assessments have required laboratory testing with odors. We have devised the "Body Odor Disgust Scale" (BODS) to facilitate research on olfactory disgust. In this study, we evaluated whether individual differences in BODS scores would be associated with the perception of disgust for sweat samples in a laboratory setting. Results show that BODS was a strong predictor of disgust ratings of sweat samples even when controlling for general disgust sensitivity. In contrast, odor intensity ratings were unrelated to BODS scores. Our findings suggest that the BODS scores reflect body odor disgust perception. The BODS scale might facilitate research on olfactory disgust responses and associated behaviors.

Social and occupational impairments are present in the schizophrenia prodrome, and poor social functioning predicts transition to psychosis in Ultra-High Risk (UHR) individuals. We aimed to: 1) validate the Italian version of the Global Functioning: Social (GF: S) and Global Functioning: Role (GF: S) scales; 2) evaluate their association with UHR criteria. Participants were 12-21-years-old (age, mean=15.2, standard deviation=2.1, male/female ratio=117/120) nonpsychotic help-seekers, meeting (N=39) or not (N=198) UHR criteria. Inter-rater reliability was excellent for both scales, which also showed good to excellent concurrent validity, as measured by correlation with Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scores. Furthermore, GF:S and GF: R were able to discriminate between UHRs and non-UHRs, with UHRs having lower current scores. After adjusting for current GAF scores, only current GF:S scores independently differentiated UHR from non-UHR (OR=1.33, 95%CI: 1.02-1.75, p=0.033). Finally, UHR participants showed a steeper decrease from highest GF:S and GF: R scores in the past year to their respective current scores, but not from highest past year GAF scores to current scores. GF:S/GS: R scores were not affected by age or sex. GF:S/GF: R are useful functional level and outcome measures, having the advantage over the GAF to not confound functioning with symptom severity. Additionally, the GF:S may be helpful in identifying UHR individuals.

How do infants plan and guide locomotion under challenging conditions? This experiment investigated the real-time process of visual and haptic exploration in 14-month-old infants as they decided whether and how to walk over challenging terrain - a series of bridges varying in width. Infants' direction of gaze was recorded with a head-mounted eye tracker and their haptic exploration and locomotor actions were captured on video. Infants' exploration was an organized, efficient sequence of visual, haptic, and locomotor behaviors. They used visual exploration from a distance as an initial assessment on nearly every bridge. Visual information subsequently prompted gait modifications while approaching narrow bridges and haptic exploration at the edge of the bridge. Results confirm predictions about the sequential, ramping-up process of exploration and the distinct roles of vision and touch. Exploration, however, was not a guarantee of adaptive decisions. With walking experience, exploratory behaviors became increasingly efficient and infants were better able to interpret the resulting perceptual information in terms of whether it was safe to walk.

We recommend the widespread use of a simple, inexpensive, easy-to-implement, and uniquely powerful tool to improve the transparency and reproducibility of behavioural research - video recordings.

Learning about potential threats is critical for survival. Learned fear responses are acquired either through direct experiences or indirectly through social transmission. Social fear learning (SFL), also known as vicarious fear learning, is a paradigm successfully used for studying the transmission of threat information between individuals. Animal and human studies have begun to elucidate the behavioral, neural and molecular mechanisms of SFL. Recent research suggests that social learning mechanisms underlie a wide range of adaptive and maladaptive phenomena, from supporting flexible avoidance in dynamic environments to intergenerational transmission of trauma and anxiety disorders. This review discusses recent advances in SFL studies and their implications for basic, social and clinical sciences.

Many problems in medicine are inherently dynamic processes which include the aspect of change over time, such as childhood development, aging, and disease progression. From medical images, numerous geometric structures can be extracted with various representations, such as landmarks, point clouds, curves, and surfaces. Different sources of geometry may characterize different aspects of the anatomy, such as fiber tracts from DTI and subcortical shapes from structural MRI, and therefore require a modeling scheme which can include various shape representations in any combination. In this paper, we present a geodesic regression model in the large deformation (LDDMM) framework applicable to multi-object complexes in a variety of shape representations. Our model decouples the deformation parameters from the specific shape representations, allowing the complexity of the model to reflect the nature of the shape changes, rather than the sampling of the data. As a consequence, the sparse representation of diffeomorphic flow allows for the straightforward embedding of a variety of geometry in different combinations, which all contribute towards the estimation of a single deformation of the ambient space. Additionally, the sparse representation along with the geodesic constraint results in a compact statistical model of shape change by a small number of parameters defined by the user. Experimental validation on multi-object complexes demonstrate robust model estimation across a variety of parameter settings. We further demonstrate the utility of our method to support the analysis of derived shape features, such as volume, and explore shape model extrapolation. Our method is freely available in the software package deformetrica which can be downloaded at www.deformetrica.org.

BACKGROUND:African American adults achieve smaller amounts of weight loss than their white counterparts when exposed to the same intervention and are more likely to regain weight during long-term follow-up. OBJECTIVE:To identify perceived motivators, barriers, and facilitators to weight loss and behavior change among African American adults. METHODS:Two focus groups were conducted between April and May 2015 at an urban community health center in Baltimore City, Maryland. A total of 13 participants took part in the discussions. Eligible participants were obese (BMI 30+) African American adults aged 21-70 who had at least one obesity-related comorbidity. Discussion questions were designed to identify the personal, social, and environmental factors that influence weight loss and behavior change among urban minority populations. RESULTS:Statements were first classified as a motivator, barrier, or facilitator, then divided further as a personal, social, or environmental factor influencing weight loss and behavior change. Among the findings, several novel motivators (reducing or eliminating medication, improving physical intimacy) and barriers (personal transportation, lack of access to scales) emerged that were not previously characterized in the existing literature. CONCLUSIONS:This study was intended to provide preliminary evidence that may be used to guide the development of innovative and culturally relevant weight-loss interventions in the future. Results are applicable to similar urban minority populations.

BACKGROUND:F]FPEB and positron emission tomography (PET). Furthermore, we sought to determine the role glutamate plays on mGluR5 availability in MDD. METHODS:H MRS) to estimate anterior cingulate (ACC) glutamate, glutamine, and Glx (glutamate + glutamine) levels relative to creatine (Cr). RESULTS:negatively correlated with glutamate/Cr and Glx/Cr levels. CONCLUSIONS:examination, we show an inverse relationship between mGluR5 availability and glutamate levels. These data highlight the need to further investigate the role of glutamatergic system in depression.