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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (30 results)

  • Article
CSW Update Newsletter (2015)
In “Inflammation and Depression: Why Do Women have a Higher Risk for Depression than Men?,” Mona Moieni presents the results of a study using endotoxin. Moieni, who is a doctoral student the Department of Psychology and received the CSW Elizabeth Blackwell, MD, Award in 2015, reports the results: “First, we found that women showed greater increases in depressed mood in response to an inflammatory challenge. This may mean that women are more sensitive to the mood changes that may accompany an increase in inflammation.”
    Cover page: Inflammation and Depression: Why Do Women have a Higher Risk for Depression than Men?Creative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
    • Thesis
    • Peer Reviewed
    UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2017)

    Generativity—concern and care for the well-being of others, particularly younger generations—is an important component of successful aging. However, generativity has been understudied in older adults, and despite the potential for generativity interventions to positively impact health and well-being, this area of investigation has been especially lacking. The goal of this dissertation was to address this gap in the literature by designing and testing the effect of a novel writing-based generativity intervention in a sample of older women (aged 60 and over, n=73). Participants in this study were randomly assigned to complete six weeks of writing either intended to increase feelings of generativity by sharing experiences and advice with others (generativity condition) or intended to be neutral, descriptive writing (control condition). Pre- and post-intervention, participants completed self-report assessments of multiple domains of health, including social well-being, mental health, and physical health. Additionally, blood samples were collected to assess circulating levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines and pro-inflammatory gene expression.

    To begin, Paper 1 describes the main effects of this novel writing-based generativity intervention on health and well-being. The generativity intervention led to improvements across multiple measures, including increases in participation in social activities, decreases in psychological distress, more positive expectations regarding aging in the physical health domain, and decreases in inflammatory biology as assessed by gene expression and bioinformatic analyses.

    Paper 2 describes the effect of another psychosocial factor, expectations regarding aging, in the context of this generativity intervention. Beliefs about aging can influence well-being, and this paper tested whether expectations regarding aging moderate the impact of a generativity intervention on social outcomes. As hypothesized, results indicated that participants in the generativity condition with more positive expectations regarding mental health reported greater perceptions of social support and lower feelings of loneliness post-intervention.

    Together, the results of these papers contribute to our understanding of generativity and aging, which is an important but understudied area of research. They also emphasize the importance of studying psychosocial factors such as generativity and beliefs about aging and suggest that a writing-based generativity intervention may be impactful in improving health and well-being in older adults.

      Cover page: Feeling Needed: Effects of Generativity on Health and Well-Being in Older Women
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UCLA Previously Published Works (2018)
      Although at first glance inflammation and social behavior may appear unrelated, research points to an important role for inflammation in shaping social processes. This review summarizes findings in this field, specifically highlighting work that provides support for the idea that inflammation can lead to (1) increases in sensitivity to negative, threatening social experiences and (2) increases in sensitivity to positive, socially rewarding experiences. These diverging sensitivities in response to inflammation may depend on context and be adaptive for recuperation and recovery from illness. This review also discusses the implications of these findings for health and future research, including implications for depression, loneliness, and inflammatory disorders.
        Cover page: Effects of inflammation on social processes and implications for health.
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UCLA Previously Published Works (2020)
          Cover page: Inflammation affects social experience: implications for mental health
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UCLA Previously Published Works (2018)
          Although at first glance inflammation and social behavior may appear unrelated, research points to an important role for inflammation in shaping social processes. This review summarizes findings in this field, specifically highlighting work that provides support for the idea that inflammation can lead to (1) increases in sensitivity to negative, threatening social experiences and (2) increases in sensitivity to positive, socially rewarding experiences. These diverging sensitivities in response to inflammation may depend on context and be adaptive for recuperation and recovery from illness. This review also discusses the implications of these findings for health and future research, including implications for depression, loneliness, and inflammatory disorders.
            Cover page: Effects of inflammation on social processes and implications for health
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            UCLA Previously Published Works (2009)
            Mild cognitive impairment following chemotherapy is one of the most commonly reported post treatment symptoms by breast cancer survivors. This deterioration in cognitive function, commonly referred to as “chemobrain” or “chemofog,” was largely unacknowledged by the medical community until recent years. Although chemobrain has now become the subject of more vigorous exploration, little is known about this specific phenomenon’s psychosocial impact on breast cancer survivors. This research documents in-depth the effects that cognitive impairment has on women’s personal and professional lives, and our data suggest that greater attention needs to be focused on this arena of survivorship. The results are based on an in-depth qualitative study of 74 white and African American breast cancer survivors in California who experience post-treatment side effects. The data reported herein were obtained through the use of focus groups and in-depth interviews. Our data indicate that cognitive impairment can be problematic for survivors, with many asserting that it is their most troublesome post treatment symptom. Survivors report diminished quality of life and daily functioning as a result of chemobrain. Respondents detail a range of coping strategies that they are forced to employ in order to manage their social and professional lives. Chemobrain significantly impairs a proportion of cancer survivors, at great cost to them economically, emotionally, and interpersonally. This suggests that more research needs to be conducted on the psychosocial ramifications of post treatment symptoms in order to inform the efforts of the medical and mental health communities as well as the support networks of survivors. A better and broader understanding of the effects of cognitive impairment both in the medical community and among lay people could pave the way for improved social and psychological services for this population.
              Cover page: Confronting chemobrain: an in-depth look at survivors’ reports of impact on work, social networks, and health care response
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UCLA Previously Published Works (2017)
              Although it has commonly been assumed that the immune system and the processes that govern social behavior are separate, non-communicating entities, research over the past several decades suggests otherwise. Considerable evidence now shows that inflammatory processes and social behavior are actually powerful regulators of one another. This review first summarizes evidence that inflammatory processes regulate social behavior, leading to characteristic changes that may help an individual navigate the social environment during times of sickness. Specifically, this review shows that inflammation: (1) increases threat-related neural sensitivity to negative social experiences (eg, rejection, negative social feedback), presumably to enhance sensitivity to threats to well-being or safety in order to avoid them and (2) enhances reward-related neural sensitivity to positive social experiences (eg, viewing close others and receiving positive social feedback), presumably to increase approach-related motivation towards others who might provide support and care during sickness. Next, this review summarizes evidence showing that social behavior also regulates aspects of inflammatory activity, preparing the body for situations in which wounding and infection may be more likely (social isolation). Here, we review research showing: (1) that exposure to social stressors increases proinflammatory activity, (2) that individuals who are more socially isolated (ie, lonely) show increased proinflammatory activity, and (3) that individuals who are more socially isolated show increased proinflammatory activity in response to an inflammatory challenge or social stressor. The implications of the co-regulation of inflammation and social behavior are discussed.
                Cover page: In Sickness and in Health: The Co-Regulation of Inflammation and Social Behavior.
                • Article
                • Peer Reviewed
                UCLA Previously Published Works (2016)
                Inflammation, part of the bodys innate immune response, can lead to sickness behaviors, as well as alterations in social and affective experiences. Elevated levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines have been associated with increased neural sensitivity to social rejection and social threat, but also decreased neural sensitivity to rewards. However, recent evidence suggests that inflammation may actually enhance sensitivity to certain social rewards, such as those that signal support and care. Despite a growing interest in how inflammation influences neural reactivity to positive and negative social experiences, no known studies have investigated these processes in the same participants, using a similar task. To examine this issue, 107 participants were randomly assigned to receive either placebo or low-dose endotoxin, which safely triggers an inflammatory response. When levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines were at their peak, participants were scanned using fMRI while they received positive, negative, and neutral feedback from an evaluator (actually a confederate) about how they came across in an audio-recorded interview. In response to negative feedback (vs. neutral), participants in the endotoxin condition showed heightened neural activity in a number of threat-related neural regions (i.e., bilateral amygdala, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) and a key mentalizing-related region (i.e., dorsomedial PFC), compared to placebo participants. Interestingly, when receiving positive feedback (vs. neutral), endotoxin (vs. placebo) led to greater neural activity in the ventral striatum and ventromedial PFC, regions often implicated in processing reward, as well as greater activity in dorsomedial PFC. Together, these results reveal that individuals exposed to an inflammatory challenge are more neurally sensitive to both negative and positive social feedback, suggesting that inflammation may lead to a greater vigilance for both social threats and social rewards.
                  Cover page: Exposure to an inflammatory challenge enhances neural sensitivity to negative and positive social feedback.
                  • Article
                  • Peer Reviewed
                  UCLA Previously Published Works (2016)
                    Cover page: A Pilot Study Examining Physical and Social Warmth: Higher (Non-Febrile) Oral Temperature Is Associated with Greater Feelings of Social Connection
                    • Article
                    • Peer Reviewed
                    UCLA Previously Published Works (2015)
                    Substantial evidence demonstrates that inflammatory processes may underlie depression for a subset of patients, including work showing that healthy subjects exposed to an inflammatory challenge show increases in depressed mood and feelings of social disconnection. However, despite the fact that depression is two times as likely to occur in females than males, the vast majority of this work has been carried out in males. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine whether females (vs males) would show greater increases in proinflammatory cytokines, depressed mood, and social disconnection in response to an inflammatory challenge. One hundred and fifteen healthy participants (69 female) completed this double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial in which participants were randomly assigned to receive either a single infusion of low-dose endotoxin (derived from Escherichia coli; 0.8 ng/kg of body weight) or placebo (same volume of 0.9% saline). Interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), depressed mood, and feelings of social disconnection were assessed hourly. Results showed that endotoxin (vs placebo) led to increases in proinflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-6), depressed mood, and feelings of social disconnection. Females exposed to endotoxin showed greater increases in depressed mood and feelings of social disconnection. Furthermore, increases in TNF-α and IL-6 were correlated with increases in social disconnection for females but not for males. These sex differences in the relationships between inflammatory and socioemotional responses to an inflammatory challenge may be particularly important for understanding why females are two times as likely as males to develop depressive disorders.
                      Cover page: Sex Differences in Depressive and Socioemotional Responses to an Inflammatory Challenge: Implications for Sex Differences in DepressionCreative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
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