Whether grocery shopping or choosing words to express a thought, selecting between options can be challenging, especially for people with anxiety. We investigate the neural mechanisms supporting selection during language processing and its breakdown in anxiety. Our neural network simulations demonstrate a critical role for competitive, inhibitory dynamics supported by GABAergic interneurons. As...

What do we really know about sympathetic outflow and blood pressure in humans? For example, in healthy normotensive young subjects, baseline sympathetic outflow can vary 2-fold to 3-fold.1,2 We also know that in healthy aging subjects, baseline sympathetic outflow can be increased dramatically with only a modest impact on vascular resistance and little or no impact on blood pressure.1 Additiona...

Mobile telephones were used to collect data on the relationship between gambling and mood state from gamblers in the field. Seventeen gamblers called an interactive voice response system running on a computer before, during and after a gambling episode. Measures taken in this way included self-reports of anxiety/arousal, the amount of money gambled, whether the result was a win or loss, the amo...

statistics anxiety has a positive relationship with academic drop-out and deserves greater attention. this study examines a model explaining the impact of students’ achievement goals on their statistics anxiety through levels of their academic engagement. three hundred and fifteen undergraduate students (53 males and 262 females) who studied educational sciences and psychology in the state univ...

In general, the further individuals, groups, and teams are ahead of their opponents in competition, the more likely they are to win. However, we show that through increasing motivation, being slightly behind can actually increase success. Analysis of over 6,000 collegiate basketball games illustrates that being slightly behind increases a team’s chance of winning. Teams behind by a point at hal...

In the Congo Basin, smallholder farmers practice slash-and-burn shifting cultivation. Yet, deliberate burning might no longer be sustainable under reduced fallow scenarios. We synthesized data from the Forest Margins Benchmark Area (FMBA), comprising 1.54 million hectares (ha), in southern Cameroon and assessed the impact of fire exclusion on yield, labor inputs, soil fertility, ecosystem carbo...

a valid questionnaire is a precursor to a sound measurement process. this study examined the psychometric properties of the persian version of the revised competitive state anxiety inventory – 2 (csai-2r). a total of 131 female taekwondo athletes (mean age =12.37 ± 2.52) from damghan completed csai-2r at competition venues. confirmatory factor analysis was used to analyze the structure of csai-...

objective: this study was performed to survey the relationship between coaches’ and athletes’ competitive anxiety, and their performance. methods: this is a descriptive correlational study performed using a demographic questionnaire, an athletic performance checklist, and sport competition anxiety test designed by martens consisting of 15 questions. the study population consisted of 540 players...

We investigated the efficiency with which men and women find their way to novel destinations using directions containing landmarks or cardinal descriptors and how such wayfinding performance is related to differences in spatial anxiety and wayfinding strategies. In two experiments, participants navigated through a model town using landmark or cardinal directions. Men and women were faster and m...