Dwelling on potential threat cues may reflect current PTSD symptoms, or it could reflect a cognitive vulnerability factor for PTSD.

Although an attentional bias for threat has been implicated in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), evidence supporting such a bias has been inconsistent. The current study examines whether exposure to different emotional content modulates attention disengagement and impairs the perception of subsequently presented nonemotional targets in GAD. Patients with GAD (n = 30) and controls (n = 30) searched for a target embedded within a series of rapidly presented images. Critically, an erotic, fear, disgust, or neutral distracter image appeared 200 ms or 800 ms before the target. Impaired target detection was observed among GAD patients relative to controls following only fear and neutral distractors. However, this effect did not significantly vary as a function of distractor stimulus duration before the target. Furthermore, group differences in target detection after fear distractors were no longer significant when controlling for target detection after neutral distractors. Subsequent analysis also revealed that the impaired target detection among those with GAD relative to controls following neutral (but not fear) distractors was mediated by deficits in attentional control. The implications of these findings for further delineating the function of attentional biases in GAD are discussed.

No abstract

Although anxiety sensitivity and disgust sensitivity have been shown to predict adverse reactions to traumatic events, it remains unclear whether these traits are best conceptualized as risk or resilience factors for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In the present study, veterans with PTSD (n = 21), trauma-exposed veterans without PTSD (n = 16), and healthy nonveteran controls (n = 22) completed measures of anxiety sensitivity, disgust sensitivity, and emotion regulation. The findings showed that veterans with PTSD reported significantly higher levels of anxiety sensitivity than veterans without PTSD and healthy nonveteran controls. However, veterans without PTSD and healthy nonveteran controls did not significantly differ in anxiety sensitivity. In contrast, veterans without PTSD reported significantly lower disgust sensitivity than veterans with PTSD and healthy nonveteran controls. Furthermore, veterans with PTSD and healthy nonveteran controls did not significantly differ from each other in disgust sensitivity. These distinct patterns of differences in anxiety sensitivity and disgust sensitivity remained significant when controlling for group differences in expressive emotion suppression. These preliminary findings suggest that anxiety sensitivity and disgust sensitivity may differ in the extent to which they represent risk or resilience factors for the development of PTSD.

Herein, we report a novel amphiphilic biodegradable and sustainable soybean oil-based copolymer (SBC) prepared by grafting hydrophilic and biocompatible hydroxyethyl acrylate (HEA) polymeric segments onto the natural hydrophobic soybean oil chains. FTIR, H1-NMR, and GPC measurements have been used to investigate the molecular structure of the obtained SBC macromolecules. Self-assembly behaviors of the prepared SBC in aqueous solution have also been extensively evaluated by fluorescence spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy. The prepared SBC nanocarrier with the size range of 40 to 80 nm has a potential application in the biomedical field.