Dream and daydream: differences and similarities

Did you know that daydreams reflect events from the previous two days and “night” dreams resemble a fictional plot?

Does your dog have social skills?

A study suggests that viewing the owner’s face works as a positive social reinforcement for dogs. Learn more about this and other surprising results about “man’s best friend”.

How stress affects social cognition?

The research team of project 72/18 - Temperamental influences on social cognition under stress, coordinated by Frederike Beyer, published in the journal Stress: The International Journal on the Biology of Stress the paper Regulating interpersonal stress: the link between heart-rate variability, physical exercise and social perspective taking under stress. “Social interactions can be stressful, especially if they involve provocation or ambiguity. At the same time, such interactions necessitate social cognition. The question thus arises how stress affects social cognition and how personality attributes modulate this effect. The aim of the current study was to investigate the link between emotional reactivity, physical exercise, and social cognition under stress. As a measure of social cognition, we used spontaneous perspective taking, i.e., the degree to which participants represented the mental state of another agent. Studying young female participants, we investigated how physiological regulation, measured through resting heart-rate variability, is related to spontaneous social perspective taking under stress, and to predicted anger in an ambiguous social scenario. When controlling for resting heart rate, vagally mediated heart-rate variability was negatively correlated with the effect of stress on perspective taking, indicating that good physiological regulation supports social cognition under stress. Further, participants who reported to exercise at least once a week showed higher perspective taking under stress than less active participants. Finally, we found tentative evidence for participants who exercised regularly to show reduced predicted anger in response to an ambiguous provocation. Our findings suggest that good physiological regulation and regular physical exercise support social cognition under stress.”

BIAL Foundation is seen as “Visionary”

Did you know that some of the researchers supported by the BIAL Foundation describe it as “Visionary”?

Prémio BIAL de Medicina Clínica 2020 distinguishes work on familial amyloid polyneuropathy, cancer and COVID-19

BIAL FOUNDATION DISTINGUISHES WORK ON FAMILIAL AMYLOID POLYNEUROPATHY WITH 100 THOUSAND EUROS PRIZE The “Prémio BIAL de Medicina Clínica 2020” has distinguished a team coordinated by Teresa Coelho, Director of the Neurophysiology Department at the Academic Medical Centre of Porto, for the work “A Paramiloidose em Portugal e no mundo: de doença fatal a doença crónica com qualidade de vida preservada” (Paramyloidosis in Portugal and the world: from fatal disease to chronic disease with preserved quality of life).