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Previous study has shown that virtual training provides immediate cognitive and neurological effects. A recent study, based on those findings, proposes that a comparable virtual training can help lower psychological stress and anxiety.

Physical activity improves our entire health. However, for some people, such as neurological patients, persons suffering from cardiovascular illness, and hospitalised patients, physical activity is either impossible or harmful. However, comparable effects may be achieved with Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR).

Despite being primarily created for amusement, IVR has piqued the academic community’s interest due to its potential clinical applications, as it allows the user to experience a virtual environment through a virtual body.

In the researchers’ previous study, they found that looking at a moving virtual body displayed in first-person perspective induces physiological changes. Heart rates increased/decreased coherently with the virtual movements, even though the young participants remained still. Consequently, acute cognitive and neural benefits occurred, just like after real physical activity.

Effect of virtual training on elderly subjects

In a followup study, the same benefits were also found on healthy elderly subjects after 20-minute sessions occurring twice a week for six weeks.

In the current study, the researchers explored the effect on stress, adding another level to the beneficial effects of virtual training. Young healthy subjects, while sitting still, experienced a virtual training displayed from the first-person perspective, creating the illusion of ownership over movements.

The avatar ran at 6.4 km/h for 30 minutes. Before and after the virtual training, the researchers induced and assessed the psychosocial stress response by measuring the salivary alpha-amylase — a crucial biomarker indicating the levels of neuroendocrine stress. Similarly, they distributed a subjective questionnaire for anxiety.

The results demonstrated that following the virtual training, there was a lowered psychosocial stress response and lower levels of anxiety, similar to what happens after physical exercise.

Also Read: Adolescents more vulnerable to cannabis addiction but not other mental health risks: Study

“Psychosocial stress represents the stress experienced in frequent social situations such as social judgment, rejection, and when our performances get evaluated,” says Professor Dalila Burin, who developed the study. “While a moderate amount of exposure to stress might be beneficial, repeated and increased exposure can be detrimental to our health. This kind of virtual training represents a new frontier, especially in countries like Japan, where high performance demands and an aging population exist.”

Although mindfulness begins within an individual, a Virginia Commonwealth University study discovered that the advantages do not stop there. When an individual’s awareness is transferred into attentive interactions and relationships, the actual payoffs appear. These encounters, when imbued with intention, compassion, and presence, may result in more harmonious and healthier organisations.

“An understanding of how individuals bring mindfulness with them to work, and how these practices may contribute to interaction and relationship quality, is especially relevant as work landscapes are ever changing and interdependence is increasingly becoming the norm,” said Christopher S. Reina, Ph.D., an associate professor of management and entrepreneurship in the VCU School of Business.

In the study “Your Presence is Requested: Mindfulness Infusion in Workplace Interactions and Relationships,” which was published in Organization Science, Reina and management professors Glen E. Kreiner, Ph.D., of the University of Utah; Alexandra Rheinhardt, Ph.D., of the University of Connecticut; and Christine A. Mihelcic of the University of Richmond explore how individuals bring mindfulness to work and how it infuses their workplace interactions.

These practises can be formal, such as taking a thoughtful pause before commencing a meeting, or casual, such as paying close attention to someone.

Also Read: Virtual training can decrease psychosocial stress and anxiety

The qualitative research draws on actual leaders’ experiences to describe how they integrate mindfulness into the workplace. Interviews and on-site participant observation were used as primary data sources. The researchers performed 30 formal interviews with managers, professionals, and consultants who practise mindfulness at work, as well as more than 50 informal interviews with a diverse group of people who use mindfulness concepts at work.

“Interestingly, interviewees noted how other individuals around them had noticed the emotional effects of their mindful behaviors on interactions and relationships,” Reina said. “We found initial evidence that our interviewees’ efforts toward bringing their mindfulness into the workplace were seen by their colleagues as having a positive effect.”

High-quality connections have been found to increase individual functioning and have a favourable impact on group outcomes like psychological safety and trust.

Benefits of Practising Mindfulness

In addition to mindfulness emerging during an encounter, the study discovered that mindfulness practises might be utilised to prepare individuals for future interactions, such as when preparing for a tough or critical talk.

A study, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, discovered that teenagers who used cannabis were no more likely than adults to have greater levels of subclinical depression or anxiety, nor were they more prone to the connections with psychotic-like symptoms.

Adolescents are more than three times more likely than adults to acquire a cannabis addiction, but they may not be at heightened risk of other mental health issues associated with the substance, according to a new study headed by UCL and King’s College London researchers.

Lead author Dr Will Lawn (UCL Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit and Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London) said: “There is a lot of concern about how the developing teenage brain might be more vulnerable to the long-term effects of cannabis, but we did not find evidence to support this general claim.

“Cannabis addiction is a real issue that teenagers should be aware of, as they appear to be much more vulnerable to it than adults.

“On the other hand, the impact that cannabis use has during adolescence on cognitive performance or on depression and anxiety may be weaker than hypothesised.

“But we also replicated previous work that if someone becomes addicted to cannabis, that may increase the severity of subclinical mental health symptoms. Given adolescents are also at a greater risk of experiencing difficulties with mental health than adults, they should be proactively discouraged from regular cannabis use.”

The study involved 274 participants, including 76 adolescents (aged 16 and 17) who used cannabis one to seven days per week, alongside similar numbers of adult (aged 26-29) users, and teenage and adult control (comparison) participants, who all answered questions about their cannabis use over the last 12 weeks and responded to questionnaires commonly used to assess symptoms of mental ill health. The cannabis users in the study, on average, used it four times per week. The adolescent and adult users were also carefully matched on gender, ethnicity, and type and strength of cannabis.

The researchers found that adolescent cannabis users were three and a half times as likely to develop severe ‘cannabis use disorder’ (addiction) than adult users, a finding which is in line with previous evidence using different study designs. Cannabis use disorder is defined by symptoms such as, among others: cravings; cannabis use contributing to failures in school or work; heightened tolerance; withdrawal; interpersonal problems caused by or exacerbated by cannabis use; or intending to cut back without success. The researchers found that 50% of the teenage cannabis users studied have six or more cannabis use disorder symptoms, qualifying as severe cannabis use disorder.

Among people of any age, previous studies have found that roughly 9-22% of people who try the drug develop cannabis use disorder, and that risk is higher for people who tried it at a younger age. The increased risk of cannabis addiction during adolescence has now been robustly replicated.

The researchers say that adolescents might be more vulnerable to cannabis addiction because of factors such as increased disruption to relationships with parents and teachers, a hyper-plastic (malleable) brain and developing endocannabinoid system (the part of the nervous system that THC in cannabis acts upon), and an evolving sense of identity and shifting social life.

Also Read: Probiotics ineffective in treating poor vaginal health, Study finds

Adolescent users were more likely than adult users or adolescent non-users to develop psychotic-like symptoms, but the analysis revealed that this is because all adolescents, and all cannabis users, are more likely to newly develop psychotic-like symptoms, rather than cannabis affecting the teenagers differently to adults.

In other words, there was no adolescent vulnerability, as the increased risk of psychotic-like symptoms was an additive effect (of the two already known risk factors for psychotic-like symptoms, cannabis use and adolescent age), rather than an interaction between age and cannabis use. The researchers say this fits in with prior evidence that cannabis use may increase the likelihood of developing a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia, but they warn their study did not investigate the risk of clinical psychosis or schizophrenia.

The researchers found that neither teenage nor adult cannabis users were more likely to develop depressive or anxiety symptoms than non-users. Only the adolescents that have severe cannabis use disorder had worse mental health symptoms, but the researchers caution that the small sample size for this group limits their confidence in this finding.

The separate study published in Psychopharmacology found that cannabis users were no more likely to have impaired working memory or impulsivity. Cannabis users were more likely to have poor verbal memory (remembering things said to you); this effect was the same in adults and teenagers, so again there was no adolescent vulnerability. However, the researchers caution that cannabis use could impact school performance during a key developmental stage of life.

The researchers caution that these findings were cross-sectional (only looking at one time point), and that longitudinal analyses of how their participants changed over time are ongoing.

Source: University College London

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