Papers by Marianna Munafò
High demanding work environments are sources of potentially harmful stress reactions. Chronic str... more High demanding work environments are sources of potentially harmful stress reactions. Chronic stress experienced in working life generates an autonomic dysregulation, which in turn results in high resting heart rate and blood pressure, as well as reduced vagal tone. Here, we proposed a novel approach that exploits competitive biofeedback to reduce negative psychological and physiological outcomes of stress in high-performance work environments. We compared standard to competitive biofeedback, showing that competition enhances training efficacy in promoting health and restoring cardiac autonomic balance.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2009
In the literature, a lack of attentional bias in blood phobia has been reported, using both behav... more In the literature, a lack of attentional bias in blood phobia has been reported, using both behavioral and ERP measures. However, in the tasks employed so far, attentional resources to single stimuli, rather than attentional selection, were evaluated. The present study investigated whether in blood phobics disorder-relevant pictures can capture visuo-spatial attention when paired with neutral or non-specific unpleasant pictures (attack), and participants have to focus on a visual detection task. The N2pc component of the ERPs was measured as an index of spatial attentional selection. Results showed that in blood phobics, but not in controls, injuries elicited a larger early N2pc than attack pictures when paired with neutral material. Moreover, only in blood phobics a reliable N2pc to injury-attack pairs was found. The late N2pc reversal to injury pictures suggests that early orienting to phobic cues was followed by cognitive avoidance.
Neuroscience Letters, 2011
The presence of an attentional bias towards disorder-related stimuli has not been consistently de... more The presence of an attentional bias towards disorder-related stimuli has not been consistently demonstrated in blood phobics. The present study was aimed at investigating whether or not an attentional bias, as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs), could be highlighted in blood phobics by inducing cognitive-emotional sensitization through the repetitive presentation of different disorder-related pictures. The mean amplitudes of the N100, P200, P300 and late positive potentials to picture onset were assessed along with subjective ratings of valence and arousal in 13 blood phobics and 12 healthy controls. Blood phobics, but not controls, showed a linear increase of subjective arousal over time, suggesting that cognitive-emotional sensitization did occur. The analysis of cortical responses showed larger N100 and smaller late positive potentials in phobics than in controls in response to mutilations. These findings suggest that cognitive-emotional sensitization induced an attentional bias in blood phobics during picture viewing, involving early selective encoding and late cognitive avoidance of disorder-related stimuli depicting mutilations.
Cancer Nursing, 2012
A large body of literature sustains the association between long-lasting caregiving for impaired ... more A large body of literature sustains the association between long-lasting caregiving for impaired significant others and increased health risk. Depression, elevated heart rate, and blood pressure at rest are key measures of health risk, mostly cardiovascular, which have been generally studied in caregivers of patients affected by dementia or chronic illness. Limited research has been conducted on emotional and cardiovascular impact of family caregiving for terminally ill cancer patients. The aim of the present study was to examine psychological and cardiovascular responses in terminal cancer caregivers. Twenty relative caregivers who provided in-home or hospice care to terminally ill cancer patients and 20 age- and gender-matched controls were interviewed and assessed for emotional distress. Measures of cardiovascular risk, blood pressure, and heart rate were recorded at rest in 4 separate sessions. Caregivers reported higher levels of depression, state anxiety, and more sleep dysfunctions than controls. They also revealed heightened systolic and diastolic blood pressure in some measurements. Moreover, elevation of heart rate was associated with caregiving length. The caregiving stressor is associated with considerable psychological vulnerability, sleep disorders, and risk of alterations in the cardiovascular system, which seem to be modulated by caregiving characteristics. This study shows the importance of screening caregivers for psychological as well as physical symptoms and disorders. An awareness of burden of terminal cancer caregivers could lead to timely proactive preventive interventions on their physical and mental health, to decrease negative outcomes.
asqsinergie.it
... A cura di: Giulia Buodo, Marta Ghisi, Marianna Munafò, Caterina Novara e Daniela Palomba Con ... more ... A cura di: Giulia Buodo, Marta Ghisi, Marianna Munafò, Caterina Novara e Daniela Palomba Con i Patrocini di e Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale "Vittorio Benussi" Page 2. ... A cura di: Giulia Buodo, Marta Ghisi, Marianna Munafò, Caterina Novara e Daniela Palomba Page 4. ...
Social Neuroscience, 2011
Frontiers in Neuroscience
Frontiers in Neuroscience
Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 2015
High work stress has been consistently associated with disturbed autonomic balance, specifically,... more High work stress has been consistently associated with disturbed autonomic balance, specifically, lowered vagal cardiac control and increased sympathetic activity, which may lead to increased cardiovascular risk. Stress management procedures have been proposed to reduce autonomic dysfunctions related to work stress in different categories of workers exposed to heightened work demands, while a limited number of studies addressed this issue in managers. The present study was aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of a respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) biofeedback (BF) intervention on psychological and physiological outcomes, in managers with high-level work responsibilities. Thirty-one managers leading outstanding private or public companies were randomly assigned to either a RSA-BF training (RSA-BF; N = 16) or a control group (N = 15). The RSA-BF training consisted of five weekly 45 min sessions, designed to increase RSA, whereas controls had to provide a daily stress diary once a week. After the training, managers in both groups reported reduced heart rate at rest, lower anxiety levels and improvement in health-related quality of life. More importantly, managers in the RSA-BF group showed increased vagal control (as indexed by increased RSA), decreased sympathetic arousal (as indexed by reduced skin conductance and systolic blood pressure) and lower emotional interferences, compared to managers in the control group. Results from this study showed that RSA-BF training was effective in improving cardiac autonomic balance at rest. Moreover, findings from this study underline the effectiveness of biofeedback in reducing psychophysiological negative outcomes associated with stress in managers.
The work presented in this thesis describes three studies which had as their aim the investigatio... more The work presented in this thesis describes three studies which had as their aim the investigation of the presence of an attention bias in blood-injection-injury phobia through behavioural and eletrocortical measurements. Different experimental paradigms and emotional control categories were used to test the specificity of the attentional bias towards phobia-related stimuli and to identify the attentive processes involved.
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Papers by Marianna Munafò