Activitas nervosa superior 

About: Activitas nervosa superior is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Poison control & Sleep in non-human animals. It has an ISSN identifier of 0001-7604. Over the lifetime, 1262 publications have been published receiving 5176 citations.

The relationship of type A behavior pattern to coronary heart disease.

Abstract: We have attempted to review the majority, if not all, of the available literature concerned with the Type A behavior pattern. The data indicate that the concept of TABP has construct validity and that it does not reflect the distinguishing characteristics of personality traits or psychopathology that are measured by standard psychometric inventories. They support the belief that TABP is an interplay of certain personality attributes and the environmental milieu. This behavior pattern is found to have a causal association with the prevalence and incidence of coronary heart disease and the severity of coronary atherosclerosis in both sexes and predictive strength that is equivalent to the standard risk factors for CHD. The concept of TABP and its relevance for CHD are shown to have cross-cultural validity and to have specificity for CHD in a relationship that has a biological gradient of pathogenecity. TABP can be assessed with substantial replicability and probably can be quantified. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute recently assembled a review panel of more than 50 eminent scientists representing a variety of biomedical and behavioral specialties in order to critically examine the evidence for the association between TABP and CHD. In the opening paragraph of the panel's final report, it was stated that "The Review Panel accepts the available body of scientific evidence as demonstrating that Type A behavior (as defined by the structured interview, JAS, and Framingham scale) is associated with an increased risk of clinically apparent CHD in employed, middle-aged U.S. citizens. This increased risk is over and above that imposed by age, systolic blood pressure, serum cholesterol, and smoking and appears to be of the same order of magnitude as the relative risk associated with any of these factors" (402).

Trauma-related structural dissociation of the personality

Abstract: Many traumatized individuals alternate between re-experiencing their trauma and being detached from, or even relatively unaware of the trauma and its effects. At first sight one may be inclined to conceptualize detachment from trauma and reexperiencing of trauma as mental states. However, on closer scrutiny it becomes apparent that in both cases a range or cluster of states rather than a singular state is involved. For example, being detached from trauma does not itself exclude being joyful, ashamed, sexually aroused, or curious at times, and re-experiencing trauma can encompass states such as fleeing, freezing, and being in pain or being analgesic. In this paper we relate detachment from trauma and reexperiencing trauma to emotional operating systems (Panksepp, 1998) and functional systems (Fanselow & Lester, 1988), briefly addressed as action systems. Action systems control a range of functions, but some are more complex than others. Reexperiencing trauma will be associated with the inborn and evolutionary derived defensive system that is evoked by severe threat, in particular threat to the integrity of the body. As a complex system, it encompasses various subsystems, such as flight, freeze, and fight. Detachment from trauma, in our view, is associated with several action systems (Panksepp, 1998), i.e., the ones that control functions in daily life (e.g., exploration of the environment, energy control), and the ones that are dedicated to survival of the species (e.g., reproduction, attachment to and care for offspring). In this context we will maintain that severe threat may provoke a structural dissociation of the premorbid personality (Van der Hart, 2000). In its primary form this dissociation is between the defensive system on one hand, and the systems that involve managing daily life and survival of the species on the other hand. To summarize the essence of the theory of structural dissociation of the personality, we argue (1) that traumatic experiences, especially when they occur early in life and involve severe threat to the integrity of the body, may activate psychobiological action systems that have been developed by evolution, and (2) that due to extreme stress levels and classical as well as evaluative conditioning to traumatic memories these systems may remain unintegrated to varying degrees.

Are sleep complaints predictive of future myocardial infarction

Abstract: In a prospective study of 3877 males, aged 39-65 years, the hypothesis was tested that sleep complaints are predictive of myocardial infarction. It was found that complaints about troubles in falling asleep and about feeling exhausted when one wakes up were predictive of myocardial infarction occurring in a 4.2 years follow-up period. However, this predictive power was confounded by age, and especially by vital exhaustion. It is concluded that sleep complaints are long term determinants of myocardial infarction because they are part of the syndrome of vital exhaustion.