Expanding Monitoring Capacity for Potential Invasive Species in Arctic Canada With Environmental DNA Metabarcoding.

To date, environmental conditions have been enough to act as an effective barrier to prevent non-indigenous species from arriving and establishing in Arctic Canada. However, rapidly changing climatic conditions are creating more suitable habitats for non-indigenous species to potentially establish and become invasive. Concurrently, shipping traffic in parts of Arctic Canada has increased by over 250% since 1990, providing an effective vector for transporting non-indigenous species to the region.

Music interferes with expectation-induced pain modulation: a controlled cross-over experimental study.

Introduction: Music reduces pain and anxiety in various contexts, but the possible effect on pain anticipatory mechanisms remains unclear.

Objectives: This study examines the effects of a standardized musical intervention (Music Care) on pain perception and on pain modulation induced by expectations of low or high pain.

Methods: Healthy participants were tested in an experimental study using a crossover design involving the musical intervention counterbalanced with an active auditory control condition (audiobook) and a silent control condition.

Unraveling the pain trajectory in chronic low back pain patients during a physical exercise training program.

Objectives: Physical exercise can transiently decrease pain intensity within a single session and improve physical capacities while reducing pain over a training program. However, the pain trajectory throughout a concurrent physical training program remains unknown. This study aimed to model the pain trajectory during a training program including both aerobic and resistance exercises, considering both acute (within-session) and chronic (across-program) effects of physical exercise.

Neurophysiological encoding of aversive prediction errors.

Aversive prediction error (PE) brain signals generated by unexpected pain or pain absence are crucial for learning to avoid future pain. Yet, the detailed neurophysiological origins of PE signaling remain unclear. In this study, we combined an instrumental pain avoidance task with computational modeling and magnetoencephalography to detect time-resolved activations underlying pain expectations and aversive PE signals in the human brain.

Impact of different acute low back pain definitions on the predictors and on the risk of transition to chronic low back pain: a prospective longitudinal cohort study.

Inconsistencies in the identification of predictors for the transition from acute low back pain (aLBP) to chronic LBP (cLBP) may be attributed to the varying definitions of aLBP used in different studies. We investigated how adopting different aLBP definitions affects the set of predictors and the risk of transition to cLBP (LBP > 3 months that caused a problem for at least half the days in the past 6 months). We leveraged data from the ongoing prospective Quebec Low Back Pain Study to compose 3 aLBP groups at baseline: nonchronic (individuals not meeting the cLBP criteria, n = 788), acute (LBP < 3 months, n = 230), and new episode (LBP < 3 months preceded by ≥3 pain-free months, n = 182).

Ultrasound and MRI-based evaluation of relationships between morphological and mechanical properties of the lower lumbar multifidus muscle in chronic low back pain.

Purposes: While lumbar multifidus (MF) muscle alterations are linked to low back pain (LBP), the structure-function relationship is not fully understood. This study aims to evaluate the relationship between fatty degeneration of the lumbar MF muscle and its function in individuals with and without LBP.

Methods: The study included 25 participants with chronic nonspecific LBP and 25 age- and sex-matched healthy controls.

Sex-specific genetics underlie increased chronic pain risk in women: genome-wide association studies from the UK Biobank.

Background: Chronic pain disproportionately affects women, but the reasons for this disparity are unclear.

Methods: We investigated this disparity from a genetic perspective using data from the UK Biobank, focusing on multisite chronic pain, which is highly heritable and manifests a sex bias.

Results: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) revealed that women have approximately 4500 sex-specific causal loci for overlapping pains, four times more than men, accounting for their higher heritability.

Biological markers and psychosocial factors predict chronic pain conditions.

Chronic pain is a multifactorial condition presenting significant diagnostic and prognostic challenges. Biomarkers for the classification and the prediction of chronic pain are therefore critically needed. Here, in this multidataset study of over 523,000 participants, we applied machine learning to multidimensional biological data from the UK Biobank to identify biomarkers for 35 medical conditions associated with pain (for example, rheumatoid arthritis and gout) or self-reported chronic pain (for example, back pain and knee pain).

Tinnitus risk factors and its evolution over time.

Subjective tinnitus is an auditory percept unrelated to external sounds, for which the limited understanding of its risk factors complicates the prevention and management. In this study, we train two distinct machine learning models to predict tinnitus presence (how often individuals perceive tinnitus) and severity separately using socio-demographic, psychological, and health-related predictors with the UK Biobank dataset (192,993 participants, 41,042 with tinnitus). We show that hearing health was the primary risk factor of both presence and severity, while mood, neuroticism, and sleep predicted severity.

Exploring the neuropsychological profile of patients with fibromyalgia with insights from pain, psychological, and clinical predictors.

Objective: Dyscognition is a frequently overlooked symptom in fibromyalgia (FM) that negatively impacts functioning and contributes to disability. Previous research has substantiated these complaints but lacks a comprehensive assessment battery to establish a neuropsychological profile. Further, the factors contributing to their genesis remain poorly understood.

Individualizing musical tempo to spontaneous rates maximizes music-induced hypoalgesia.

Music has long been recognized as a noninvasive and cost-effective means of reducing pain. However, the selection of music for pain relief often relies on intuition rather than on a scientific understanding of the impact of basic musical attributes on pain perception. This study examines how a fundamental element of music-tempo-affects its pain-relieving properties.

Increased attention towards progress information near a goal state.

A growing body of evidence across psychology suggests that (cognitive) effort exertion increases in proximity to a goal state. For instance, previous work has shown that participants respond more quickly, but not less accurately, when they near a goal-as indicated by a filling progress bar. Yet it remains unclear when over the course of a cognitively demanding task do people monitor progress information: Do they continuously monitor their goal progress over the course of a task, or attend more frequently to it as they near their goal? To answer this question, we used eye-tracking to examine trial-by-trial changes in progress monitoring as participants completed blocks of an attentionally demanding oddball task.

Bouncing Beyond Adversity in Oncology: An Exploratory Study of the Association Between Professional Team Resilience at Work and Work-Related Sense of Coherence.

Team resilience at work (TR@W) is an important resource for bouncing beyond adverse situations. Adopting a health-promoting salutogenic approach, this cross-sectional study explores whether oncology team resilience, which is significantly associated with work-related sense of coherence (Work-SoC), and examines the roles of team member characteristics, quality of work life, and perceived impact of COVID-19. Team members ( = 189) from four oncology settings in Québec (Canada) completed self-administered e-questionnaires.

Starting the pill during adolescence: Age of onset and duration of use influence morphology of the hippocampus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

From adolescence, women become more likely to experience fear dysregulation. Oral contraceptives (OCs) can modulate the brain regions involved in fear processes. OCs are generally used for years and often initiated during adolescence, a sensitive period where certain brain regions involved in the fear circuitry are still undergoing important reorganization.

Context effects in cognitive effort evaluation.

When given a choice, people will avoid cognitively effortful courses of action because the experience of effort is evaluated as aversive and costly. At the same time, a body of work spanning psychology, economics, and neuroscience suggests that goods, actions, and experiences are often evaluated in the context in which they are encountered, rather in absolute terms. To probe the extent to which the evaluation of cognitive effort is also context-dependent, we had participants learn associations between unique stimuli and subjective demand levels across low-demand and high-demand contexts.

It takes two: examining the dynamic nature of cooperative behavior in adolescents.

Cooperating with those around us is an important facet of functioning in modern-day society. Forming successful cooperative relationships requires trust, reciprocity, and other interpersonal skills that continue to develop during adolescence. This study examined the dynamic nature of how trust is formed and broken among 248 adolescents (Males = 110,  = 15.

Pain reflects the informational value of nociceptive inputs.

Pain perception and its modulation are fundamental to human learning and adaptive behavior. This study investigated the hypothesis that pain perception is tied to pain's learning function. Thirty-one participants performed a threat conditioning task where certain cues were associated with a possibility of receiving a painful electric shock.

[An innovative process for sustaining and scaling up a school-based mental health promotion and anxiety prevention programs: The example of the HORS-PISTE program].

Context Anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent psychopathologies for children and adolescents in Quebec. The prevalence of anxiety disorders is very high and has been affecting a growing number of young people for the past 10 years. It is possible to observe an increased number of anxiety prevention programs for young people around the world.

Proximity to rewards modulates parameters of effortful control exertion.

The now-classic goal-gradient hypothesis posits that organisms increase effort expenditure as a function of their proximity to a goal. Despite nearly a century having passed since its original formulation, goal-gradient-like behavior in human cognitive performance remains poorly understood: Are we more willing to engage in costly cognitive processing when we are near, versus far, from a goal state? Moreover, the computational mechanisms underpinning these potential goal-gradient effects-for example, whether goal proximity affects fidelity of stimulus encoding, response caution, or other identifiable mechanisms governing speed and accuracy-are unclear. Here, in two experiments, we examine the effect of goal proximity, operationalized as progress toward the completion of a rewarded task block, upon task performance in an attentionally demanding oddball task.

Effect of Age-Friendly Communities Action Plan on Trajectories of Older Canadians' Depressive Symptoms Between 2018 and 2020: Multilevel Results From the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.

As the COVID-19 pandemic impacted mental health, this longitudinal study examined the effect of age-friendly communities (AFC) action plan on older adults' depressive symptoms. Using the CLSA, the CLSA COVID-19 Questionnaire study, survey of Canadian municipalities, and the census, the depressive symptoms trajectories were modeled with multilevel multinomial regressions. Most respondents (66.

Emotional responses to favorite and relaxing music predict music-induced hypoalgesia.

Introduction: The hypoalgesic effect of music has long been established. However, the characteristics of music which are important for reducing pain have not been well-studied. Some research has compared subject-selected preferred music to unfamiliar music selected by researchers, and has typically found a superior effect from preferred music.

Neurophysiological oscillatory markers of hypoalgesia in conditioned pain modulation.

Introduction: Conditioned pain modulation (CPM) is an experimental procedure that consists of an ongoing noxious stimulus attenuating the pain perception caused by another noxious stimulus. A combination of the CPM paradigm with concurrent electrophysiological recordings can establish whether an association exists between experimentally modified pain perception and modulations of neural oscillations.

Objectives: We aimed to characterize how CPM modifies pain perception and underlying neural oscillations.

"Ready-to-use" two-week home exercise program targeting depressive symptoms: pilot study.

Exercise is an evidence-based treatment for depressive symptoms, yet it often requires specialised knowledge, equipment, or professional supervision. Lay people in certain contexts, for example in remote locations or under pandemic restrictions, often lack these resources and thus cannot use exercise to manage their depressive symptoms. We developed a two-week home exercise program that bypasses these barriers and tested it in university students during pandemic restrictions.