TJMS Sleep-Deprivation

Sodium Valproate Improves Sensorimotor Gating Deficit Induced by Sleep-Deprivation in Low Doses

Muhammet Tekin, Fatma Duygu Kaya Yertutanol, Burcu Çevreli, Asil Ali Özdoğru, Hamza Kulaksız, and İsmail Tayfun Uzbay

Background/aim: Sleep-deprivation disrupts prepulse inhibition of acoustic startle reflex and can be used to mimic psychosis in experimental animals. On the other hand, it is also a model for other disorders of sensory processing including migraine. The aim of this study is to assess the effects of sodium valproate, a drug that is used in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders, on normal and disrupted sensorimotor gating in rats. Materials and methods: 62 Wistar Albino rats were randomly distributed into 8 groups. Subchronic and intraperitoneal sodium valproate were administrated to the sleep-deprived and non-sleep-deprived rats by either in 50-100 or 200 mg/kg/day. Prepulse inhibition test and locomotor activity test were performed. Sleep-deprivation induced by the modified multiple platform method. Results: Sleep-deprivation impaired prepulse inhibition, decreased startle amplitude and increased locomotor activity. Sodium valproate did not significantly alter prepulse inhibition and locomotor activity in non-sleep-deprived and sleep-deprived groups. On the other hand, all doses decreased locomotor activity in drug treated groups, and low dose improved sensorimotor gating and startle amplitude after sleep-deprivation. Conclusion: Low dose sodium valproate improves sleep-deprivation-disrupted sensorimotor gating, and this finding may rationalize the use of sodium valproate in psychotic states and other disorders of sensory processing. Dose-dependent effects of sodium valproate on sensorimotor gating should be investigated in detail.

Keywords: Sleep deprivation; prepulse inhibition; psychosis; rat; sensorimotor gating; sodium valproate.

Citation: Tekin, M., Kaya Yertutanol, F. D., Çevreli, B., Özdoğru, A. A., Kulaksız, H., & Uzbay, İ. T. (2021). Sodium valproate improves sensorimotor gating deficit induced by sleep-deprivation in low doses. Turkish Journal of Medical Sciences, 51, 1521-1530. https://doi.org/10.3906/sag-2011-229

Death Studies CORPD

Adaptation and Evaluation of COVID-19 Related Psychological Distress Scale Turkish Form

Tuğba Ay, Deniz Oruç, and Asil Ali Özdoğru

This study aimed to adapt COVID-19 Related Psychological Distress Scale (CORPD) into Turkish and evaluate its psychometric properties. Participants were assessed across the CORPD Turkish form, Symptom Checklist-90-Revised anxiety subscale, Fear of COVID-19 Scale, and the Brief Resilience Scale. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed a two-factor model in different subsamples, with satisfactory reliability. The total and subscale scores of the CORPD Turkish Form were positively correlated with anxiety and fear of COVID-19, and negatively correlated with resilience. The findings suggest that the CORPD Turkish form is a valid and reliable measure to assess the COVID-19 related psychological distress.

Citation: Ay, T., Oruç, D., & Özdoğru, A. A. (2021). Adaptation and evaluation of COVID-19 related Psychological Distress Scale Turkish form. Death Studies, 46(3), 560-568. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2021.1873459

SJPH C19 ISWS

The COVID-19 International Student Well-being Study

Sarah Van de Velde, Veerle Buffel, Piet Bracke, Guido Van Hal, Nikolett M. Somogyi, Barbara Willems, Edwin Wouters, and for the C19 ISWS Consortium

As a large international consortium of 26 countries and 110 higher-education institutions (HEIs), we successfully developed and executed an online student survey during or directly after the initial peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 International Student Well-being Study (C19 ISWS) is a cross-sectional multicountry study that collected data on higher-education students during the COVID-19 outbreak in the spring of 2020. The dataset allows description of: (1) living conditions, financial conditions, and academic workload before and during the COVID-19 outbreak; (2) the current level of mental well-being and effects on healthy lifestyles; (3) perceived stressors; (4) resources (e.g., social support and economic capital); (5) knowledge related to COVID-19; and (6) attitudes toward COVID-19 measures implemented by the government and relevant HEI. The dataset additionally includes information about COVID-19 measures taken by the government and HEI that were in place during the period of data collection. The collected data provide a comprehensive and comparative dataset on student well-being. In this article, we present the rationale for this study, the development and content of the survey, the methodology of data collection and sampling, and the limitations of the study. In addition, we highlight the opportunities that the dataset provides for advancing social science research on student well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic in varying policy contexts. Thus far, this is, to our knowledge, the first cross-country student well-being survey during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a unique dataset that enables high-priority socially relevant research.

Keywords: COVID-19, Corona, Higher education, Student well-being, multi-country study

Citation: Van de Velde, S., Buffel, V., Bracke, P., Van Hal, G., Somogyi, N. M., Willems, B., Wouters, E., & for the C19 ISWS Consortium (2021). The COVID-19 International Student Well-being Study. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 49, 114-122. https://doi.org/10.1177/1403494820981186

NHB Social Perception

To Which World Regions Does the Valence–Dominance Model of Social Perception Apply?

Benedict C. Jones, Lisa M. DeBruine, Jessica K. Flake, Marco Tullio Liuzza, Jan Antfolk, Nwadiogo C. Arinze, Izuchukwu L. G. Ndukaihe, Nicholas G. Bloxsom, Savannah C. Lewis, Francesco Foroni, Megan L. Willis, Carmelo P. Cubillas, Miguel A. Vadillo, Enrique Turiegano, Michael Gilead, Almog Simchon, S. Adil Saribay, Nicholas C. Owsley, Chaning Jang, Georgina Mburu, Dustin P. Calvillo, Anna Wlodarczyk, Yue Qi, Kris Ariyabuddhiphongs, Somboon Jarukasemthawee, Harry Manley, Panita Suavansri, Nattasuda Taephant, Ryan M. Stolier, Thomas R. Evans, Judson Bonick, Jan W. Lindemans, Logan F. Ashworth, Amanda C. Hahn, Coralie Chevallier, Aycan Kapucu, Aslan Karaaslan, Juan David Leongómez, Oscar R. Sánchez, Eugenio Valderrama, Milena Vásquez-Amézquita, Nandor Hajdu, Balazs Aczel, Peter Szecsi, Michael Andreychik, Erica D. Musser, Carlota Batres, Chuan-Peng Hu, Qing-Lan Liu, Nicole Legate, Leigh Ann Vaughn, Krystian Barzykowski, Karolina Golik, Irina Schmid, Stefan Stieger, Richard Artner, Chiel Mues, Wolf Vanpaemel, Zhongqing Jiang, Qi Wu, Gabriela M. Marcu, Ian D. Stephen, Jackson G. Lu, Michael C. Philipp, Jack D. Arnal, Eric Hehman, Sally Y. Xie, William J. Chopik, Martin Seehuus, Soufian Azouaghe, Abdelkarim Belhaj, Jamal Elouafa, John P. Wilson, Elliott Kruse, Marietta Papadatou-Pastou, Anabel De La Rosa-Gómez, Alan E. Barba-Sánchez, Isaac González-Santoyo, Tsuyueh Hsu, Chun-Chia Kung, Hsiao-Hsin Wang, Jonathan B. Freeman, Dong Won Oh, Vidar Schei, Therese E. Sverdrup, Carmel A. Levitan, Corey L. Cook, Priyanka Chandel, Pratibha Kujur, Arti Parganiha, Noorshama Parveen, Atanu Kumar Pati, Sraddha Pradhan, Margaret M. Singh, Babita Pande, Jozef Bavolar, Pavol Kačmár, Ilya Zakharov, Sara Álvarez-Solas, Ernest Baskin, Martin Thirkettle, Kathleen Schmidt, Cody D. Christopherson, Trinity Leonis, Jordan W. Suchow, Jonas K. Olofsson, Teodor Jernsäther, Ai-Suan Lee, Jennifer L. Beaudry, Taylor D. Gogan, Julian A. Oldmeadow, Benjamin Balas, Laura M. Stevens, Melissa F. Colloff, Heather D. Flowe, Sami Gülgöz, Mark J. Brandt, Karlijn Hoyer, Bastian Jaeger, Dongning Ren, Willem W. A. Sleegers, Joeri Wissink, Gwenaël Kaminski, Victoria A. Floerke, Heather L. Urry, Sau-Chin Chen, Gerit Pfuhl, Zahir Vally, Dana M. Basnight-Brown, Hans I. Jzerman, Elisa Sarda, Lison Neyroud, Touhami Badidi, Nicolas Van der Linden, Chrystalle B. Y. Tan, Vanja Kovic, Waldir Sampaio, Paulo Ferreira, Diana Santos, Debora I. Burin, Gwendolyn Gardiner, John Protzko, Christoph Schild, Karolina A. Ścigała, Ingo Zettler, Erin M. O’Mara Kunz, Daniel Storage, Fieke M. A. Wagemans, Blair Saunders, Miroslav Sirota, Guyan V. Sloane, Tiago J. S. Lima, Kim Uittenhove, Evie Vergauwe, Katarzyna Jaworska, Julia Stern, Karl Ask, Casper J. J. van Zyl, Anita Körner, Sophia C. Weissgerber, Jordane Boudesseul, Fernando Ruiz-Dodobara, Kay L. Ritchie, Nicholas M. Michalak, Khandis R. Blake, David White, Alasdair R. Gordon-Finlayson, Michele Anne, Steve M. J. Janssen, Kean Mun Lee, Tonje K. Nielsen, Christian K. Tamnes, Janis H. Zickfeld, Anna Dalla Rosa, Michelangelo Vianello, Ferenc Kocsor, Luca Kozma, Ádám Putz, Patrizio Tressoldi, Natalia Irrazabal, Armand Chatard, Samuel Lins, Isabel R. Pinto, Johannes Lutz, Matus Adamkovic, Peter Babincak, Gabriel Baník, Ivan Ropovik, Vinet Coetzee, Barnaby J. W. Dixson, Gianni Ribeiro, Kim Peters, Niklas K. Steffens, Kok Wei Tan, Christopher A. Thorstenson, Ana Maria Fernandez, Rafael M. C. S. Hsu, Jaroslava V. Valentova, Marco A. C. Varella, Nadia S. Corral-Frías, Martha Frías-Armenta, Javad Hatami, Arash Monajem, MohammadHasan Sharifian, Brooke Frohlich, Hause Lin, Michael Inzlicht, Ravin Alaei, Nicholas O. Rule, Claus Lamm, Ekaterina Pronizius, Martin Voracek, Jerome Olsen, Erik Mac Giolla, Aysegul Akgoz, Asil A. Özdoğru, Matthew T. Crawford, Brooke Bennett-Day, Monica A. Koehn, Ceylan Okan, Tripat Gill, Jeremy K. Miller, Yarrow Dunham, Xin Yang, Sinan Alper, Martha Lucia Borras-Guevara, Sun Jun Cai, Dong Tiantian, Alexander F. Danvers, David R. Feinberg, Marie M. Armstrong, Eva Gilboa-Schechtman, Randy J. McCarthy, Jose Antonio Muñoz-Reyes, Pablo Polo, Victor K. M. Shiramazu, Wen-Jing Yan, Lilian Carvalho, Patrick S. Forscher, Christopher R. Chartier, and Nicholas A. Coles

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov’s methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov’s original analysis strategy, the valence–dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions, we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence–dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods and correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution.

Citation: Jones, B. C., DeBruine, L. M., Flake, J. K., Liuzza, M. T., Antfolk, J., Arinze, N. C., Ndukaihe, I. L. G., Bloxsom, N. G., Lewis, S. C., Foroni, F., Willis, M. L., Cubillas, C. P., Vadillo, M. A., Turiegano, E., Gilead, M., Simchon, A., Saribay, S. A., Owsley, N. C., Jang, C., . . . Coles, N. A. (2021). To which world regions does the valence–dominance model of social perception apply? Nature Human Behavior, 5, 159–169. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01007-2

FYI 2021

Do not merely practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; it deserves that, for only art and science can exalt man to divinity.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1812) Letter to Emilie


Truth is powerful, and, if not instantly, at least by slow degrees, may make good her possession. Gleams of good sense may penetrate through the thickest clouds of error. … and, as the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking; open to him new mines of science and new incentives to virtue; and perhaps, by a blended and compound effect, produce in him an improvement which was out of the limits of his lessons, and raise him to heights the preceptor never knew.

William Godwin (1797) The Enquirer

Cellular landscape cross-section through a eukaryotic cell
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