Cristina Ottaviani

Cristina Ottaviani
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Cristina verified their affiliation via an institutional email.
Verified
Cristina verified their affiliation via an institutional email.
Sapienza University of Rome | la sapienza · Department of Psychology

PhD, PsyD

About

181
Publications
57,734
Reads
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5,194
Citations
Additional affiliations
December 2013 - present
Foundation Santa Lucia
Position
  • Researcher

Publications

Publications (181)
Article
Full-text available
Pavlovian conditioning holds the potential to incentivize environmental cues, leading to approach behavior toward them, even outside our awareness. Animal models suggest that this is particularly true for the so-called sign-tracker (ST) phenotype, which is considered to reflect a predisposition toward developing addiction-related behaviours. Despit...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Experiences of early life maltreatment (ELM) are alarmingly common and represent a risk factor for the development of psychopathology, particularly depression. Research has focused on alterations in autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning as a mediator of negative mental health outcomes associated with ELM. Early alterations in auton...
Article
Full-text available
Stressors can initiate a cascade of central and peripheral changes that modulate mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic circuits and, ultimately, behavioral response to rewards. Driven by the absence of conclusive evidence on this topic and the Research Domain Criteria framework, random-effects meta-analyses were adopted to quantify the effects of acute st...
Article
Full-text available
Background. Loneliness and social isolation have detrimental consequences on mental health and act as vulnerability factors for the development of depressive symptoms, such as anhedonia. The mitigation strategies used to contain the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), such as social distancing and lockdowns, allowed us to investigate putative associations...
Article
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The “Sign-tracker/Goal-tracker” (ST/GT) is an animal model of individual differences in learning and motivational processes attributable to distinctive conditioned responses to environmental cues. While GT rats value the reward-predictive cue as a mere predictor, ST rats attribute it with incentive salience, engaging in aberrant reward-seeking beha...
Article
Full-text available
Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is associated with cognitive and physiological symptoms including uncontrollable worry, inhibitory control deficits, and low heart rate variability (HRV). Literature linking HRV and inhibition in GAD is predominantly correlational. The present experiment investigated whether HRV has a causal role in maintaining in...
Article
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Two separate meta-analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses that moral transgressions elicit disgust and that inducing disgust may intensify moral judgments. The data supported both the elicitation hypothesis (k = 78; g = 0.55) and the amplification hypothesis (k = 101; g = 0.40). When examining the moderating effects of person-and measurement...
Preprint
Full-text available
Abnormalities in the functional connectivity of large-scale brain networks, including the default mode network (DMN), salience network (SN), fronto-parietal network (FPN), and limbic network, have been implicated in repetitive negative thinking (RNT) – a construct characterized by repetitive and intrusive thoughts. However, the potential of large-s...
Article
Full-text available
The identification of reliable biomarkers of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) responsiveness is a key challenge both at the clinical and preclinical level. Vagally-mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV), a surrogate measure of cardiac vagal efferent activity, is an ideal candidate. Yet, the effects of taVNS on vmHRV remain...
Article
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The study explores whether racial identity and appearance-based trustworthiness judgments can affect recognition of pain in medical students differing in levels of resting heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of parasympathetic control of the heart. After undergoing HRV assessment, 68 medical students (37 females) participated in a dynamic pain...
Preprint
Full-text available
Numerous studies have substantiated the efficacy of slow-paced breathing (SPB) in decreasing anxiety and increasing vagally-mediated heart rate variability (HRV). Given its effectiveness and simplicity, SPB is a promising candidate for a just-in-time adaptive intervention (JITAI). This study examined the efficacy of SPB, triggered by increased anxi...
Article
Full-text available
Vagally mediated heart rate variability (HRV) is a measure of parasympathetic modulation of the heart, which is considered an index of the ability to regulate emotional arousal attuned to environmental demands. The present study explores the association between HRV and exhaustion—the core symptom of burnout. Based on the multilevel model of employe...
Article
The neurovisceral integration model proposes that information flows bidirec- tionally between the brain and the heart via the vagus nerve, indexed by vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV). Voluntary reduction in breathing rate (slow-paced breathing, SPB, 5.5 Breathing Per Minute (BPM)) can enhance vmHRV. Additionally, prefrontal transcran...
Article
Studies have shown a significant association between effective parasympathetic modulation of the heart and processes linked to social cognition. Particularly, Quintana and colleagues documented a relation between vagally-mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) and performance on a theory of mind (ToM) task, namely, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes...
Preprint
The neurovisceral integration model proposes that information flows bidirectionally between the brain and the heart via the vagus nerves and vagally-mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) can be used to index heart-brain interaction. Recent research has shown that voluntary reduction of breathing rate (slow-paced breathing, SPB) can enhance cardia...
Chapter
This book explores how psychotherapy and psychophysiology can be integrated to improve therapy outcomes and provides a guide for professionals on integration in clinical practice. Increasingly, many psychotherapists use psychophysiological approaches as a part of their therapy but currently no books address psychotherapy/psychophysiology integratio...
Article
Full-text available
The link between neuroticism and the various indicators of daily cortisol fluctuations is frequently noted to be inconsistent or lacking in strength. The current study aimed to investigate the predictive capacity of both self-assessment and external evaluations of neuroticism, along with their interaction, on multiple indices of diurnal cortisol va...
Conference Paper
Background: Preclinical animal models and longitudinal studies in human support a role of inflammation in the aetiology of depression, yet the precise role played by sleep disturbance and sex differences is poorly understood. In this study, we tested whether sleep disturbance may be associated to depression severity through the mediation of inflamm...
Article
Full-text available
Neuroanatomical findings on youth anxiety disorders are notoriously difficult to replicate, small in effect size and have limited clinical relevance. These concerns have prompted a paradigm shift toward highly powered (that is, big data) individual-level inferences, which are data driven, transdiagnostic and neurobiologically informed. Here we buil...
Article
Full-text available
Neuroanatomical findings on youth anxiety disorders are notoriously difficult to replicate, small in effect size and have limited clinical relevance. These concerns have prompted a paradigm shift toward highly powered (that is, big data) individual-level inferences, which are data driven, transdiagnostic and neurobiologically informed. Here we buil...
Article
Full-text available
Objectives: Compassion-focused therapy (CFT) is an integrative, evolution-informed approach to mental health difficulties that has been growing rapidly in the last 30 years. This series of meta-analyses examined the overall efficacy of CFT on positive and negative mental health outcomes, in both clinical and nonclinical populations, compared to act...
Preprint
Full-text available
The Sign-Tracking/Goal-tracking (ST/GT) is an animal model of individual differences in cue-reward learning offering a translational approach to investigate the vulnerability to impulse control disorders. In the present study, we mapped such model onto humans, on the one hand by adopting a new translational relevant Pavlovian paradigm and on the ot...
Article
This contribution highlights the significance of using vagally-mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV), a general indicator of adaptation, as an actionable biomarker to assess and enhance self-regulation abilities in individuals and organizations. The paper reviews the state-of-the-art on vmHRV and introduces various techniques to enhance vmHRV, in...
Article
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This study examines the predictive value of conflict and conflict-related variations in negative emotion dynamics, with respect to three cortisol indicators (cortisol awakening responses; overall cortisol output; diurnal cortisol slopes). A total of 166 workers provided momentary reports on conflict(s) with colleagues and negative emotions 10 times...
Article
In the present ecological study, we analyzed the relations of a set of self-efficacy beliefs at work to parameters of diurnal cortisol variation. Specifically, using data collected during two consecutive working days from 166 workers, we tested a mediation model positing social and work-related self-efficacy beliefs as mediators of the relations be...
Preprint
Full-text available
Alterations in neurotransmission mediated by gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the main inhibitory neurotransmitter, are posited to play a pathophysiological role in stress-related disorders. Evidence, however, comes from the comparisons of pathological and healthy samples at rest and not during specific disease states, making it difficult to underst...
Article
Objective This ecological study explored the association between regulatory emotional self-efficacy beliefs in managing negative emotions (RESE-NE) and heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of parasympathetic modulation of the heart that has been positively associated with a better ability to flexibly adjust to a changing environment and regulat...
Article
Full-text available
Phylogenetic theories suggest resting vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) as a biomarker for adaptive behavior in social encounters. Until now, no study has examined whether vmHRV can predict individual differences in inferring personality traits and intentions from facial appearance. To test this hypothesis, resting vmHRV was recorded...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Childhood maltreatment (CM) can disrupt the development of behavioural and physiological systems, increasing the risk of physical and psychological adverse outcomes across the lifespan. CM may cause interpersonal dysfunctions that impair social communication and lead to dysfunctional activation of the autonomic nervous system. The prese...
Article
Deficits in motivational functioning including impairments in reward learning or reward sensitivity are common in psychiatric disorders characterized by anhedonia. Recently, anhedonic symptoms have been exacerbated by the pandemic caused by the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the general population. The present study examined the putative as...
Article
Full-text available
The present study explored the association between perceived social support at work (from coworkers and supervisors), and heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of parasympathetic modulation of the heart which is considered an index of the ability to regulate emotional arousal in tune with environmental demands. To test these associations, we used...
Article
Perseverative cognitions can provoke psychophysiological stress in the absence of an actual stressor and are considered important transdiagnostic vulnerability factors for several (mental) health issues. These stress-related cognitive processes are reflected by both cognitive (assessed by self-reports) and autonomic inflexibility (assessed by heart...
Article
This study explored the relationships between self-esteem level and self-esteem variability at work with parameters of diurnal cortisol rhythm, using intensive longitudinal data collected during two consecutive working days from N = 166 workers. Participants self-reported measures of sex, height, weight, self-esteem, neuroticism, and negative event...
Article
Flexible attention toward relevant positive or negative information depending on specific contextual affective goals underlies resilience and is thought to be modulated by individual differences in motivational self-focuses. In this study, it was tested how promotion and prevention motivational self-focuses modulate context-based affective attentio...
Conference Paper
Background: Intrusive thinking (IT) is a transdiagnostic psychiatric symptom that causes clinically significant distress and impairments in important areas of functioning. Alterations in glutamate and GABA metabolism are posited to be implicated in the pathophysiology of many neuropsychiatric disorders, such as depression and generalized anxiety di...
Article
Full-text available
Sleep quality is considered a basic dimension of emotional health. The psychophysiological mechanisms underlying the associations between sleep quality and positive emotions are still largely unknown, yet autonomic regulation may play a role. This study employed a two-day ecological momentary assessment methodology in a sample of young adults to in...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Compassion motivation is associated with increased heart rate variability (HRV), reflecting a calm and self-soothing physiological state. Recent work, however, suggests that this association is dynamic for the specific components of compassion. Objectives: The present study adopted anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS...
Preprint
Full-text available
Neuroimaging studies point to neurostructural abnormalities in youth with anxiety disorders. Yet, findings are based on small-scale studies, often with small effect sizes, and have limited generalizability and clinical relevance. These issues have prompted a paradigm shift in the field towards highly powered (i.e., big data) individual-level infere...
Article
Background According to the perseverative cognition (PC) hypothesis, the repetitive chronic activation of the cognitive representations of stressors are associated with a concomitant prolonged and sustained physiological stress response, including sleep disruption. Purpose We conducted a systematic review and structural equation modeling meta-analy...
Article
An important, yet under-explored area of interpretation bias research concerns the examination of potential physiological correlates and sequalae of this bias. Developing a better understanding of the physiological processes that underpin interpretation biases will extend current theoretical frameworks underlying interpretation bias, as well as opt...
Article
This study aimed to investigate the long-term association between subjective sleep disturbance and depressive symptoms in older adults, and ascertain whether this association is partially mediated by neuro-immune markers, while testing the moderation of sex using conditional process analyses, i.e., combinations of mediation and moderation analyses....
Article
Background: Anxiety related to the dental context is a clinically significant challenge. In children, dental fear is often accompanied by disruptive and uncooperative behaviours that can render treatment difficult. While techniques to reduce children's anxiety exist, many have not been formally evaluated. Design: Diaphragmatic breathing has been...
Article
Full-text available
Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent and disabling but seem particularly tractable to investigation with translational neuroscience methodologies. Neuroimaging has informed our understanding of the neurobiology of anxiety disorders, but research has been limited by small sample sizes and low statistical power, as well as heterogenous imaging meth...
Article
Chronic stress has dramatically increased over the last years and is one of the major health concerns of the 21st century. Targeted interventions are traditionally based on inducing cognitive changes and enhancing control with the aim to promote adaptive emotion regulation, ultimately enhancing stress resilience. Crucially, bodily functions have re...
Article
Full-text available
Resting heart rate variability (HRV), a surrogate index of cardiac vagal modulation, is considered a putative biomarker of stress resilience as it reflects the ability to effectively regulate emotions in a changing environment. However, most studies are cross-sectional, precluding longitudinal inferences. The high degree of uncertainty and fear at...
Article
Full-text available
Affect plays a major role in the individual's daily life, driving the sensemaking of experience, psychopathological conditions, social representations of phenomena, and ways of coping with others. The characteristics of affect have been traditionally investigated through physiological, self-report, and behavioral measures. The present article propo...
Article
Full-text available
Global self-esteem represents a protective personal resource lowering the risk of psychological distress. Research conducted in the work setting has confirmed the psychosocial benefits of high self-esteem. However, research linking self-esteem to neurobiological adaptability appears quite scarce. In this study, we propose a theoretical model in whi...
Article
Full-text available
The goal of this study was to compare brain structure between individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and healthy controls. Previous studies have generated inconsistent findings, possibly due to small sample sizes, or clinical/analytic heterogeneity. To address these concerns, we combined data from 28 research sites worldwide through th...
Article
This study examines the change and associations in parental emotion socialization strategies in response to children's negative emotions and youths' adjustment, comparing before the Covid-19 pandemic hit Italy and since the pandemic began. Participants were convenient cross-sectional/normative (Study 1) and clinical/longitudinal (Study 2) samples o...
Article
Full-text available
Theory of mind (ToM) is the human ability to infer the mental states of others in order to understand their behaviors and plan own actions. In the past decades, accumulating evidence has shown that heart rate variability (HRV), an index of parasympathetic control of the heart, is linked to behavioral regulation, social competence, and social cognit...
Article
Full-text available
This study examined whether interacting with a humanoid robot influences children’s gaze aversion, an effortless strategy that people commonly use to facilitate thinking when asked challenging questions. Following the Intentional Stance Model (ISM), we hypothesized that interacting with agents perceived as having a mind would modulate the social re...
Preprint
Full-text available
Due to its ability to reflect the capacity to engage in context-appropriate responses, tonic heart rate variability (HRV) is considered a putative biomarker of stress resilience. However, most studies are cross-sectional, precluding causal inferences. The high levels of uncertainty and fear at a global level that characterize the COVID-19 pandemic...
Article
Full-text available
Background: A paradoxical profile of greater elevated sympathetic vasoconstriction (increased total peripheral resistance, TPR) and increased vagally-mediated heart rate variability (HRV) -the so-called Cardiovascular Conundrum- has been reported in African Americans (AAs) both at rest and in response to orthostasis. Whereas some authors have attri...
Article
The study was designed to test the hypothesis that indirect inhibition of the insula via cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) would decrease disgust and moral rigidity in 36 healthy individuals undergoing 15 min of tDCS over the temporal lobe. To obtain a comprehensive assessment of disgust, we used subjective (affect rating), ph...
Article
Full-text available
Perseverative cognition (PC) is a transdiagnostic risk factor that characterizes both hypo- motivational (e.g., depression) and hyper-motivational (e.g., addiction) disorders; however, it has been almost exclusively studied within the context of the negative valence systems. The present study aimed to fill this gap by combining laboratory-based, co...
Article
Full-text available
Perseverative cognition (PC) is a transdiagnostic risk factor that characterizes both hypo-motivational (e.g., depression) and hyper-motivational (e.g., addiction) disorders; however, it has been almost exclusively studied within the context of the negative valence systems. The present study aimed to fill this gap by combining laboratory-based, com...
Article
Full-text available
Recent studies have linked compassion with higher vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV), a measure of parasympathetic activity, and meta-analytic evidence confirmed significant and positive associations. Compassion, however, is not to be confused with soothing positive emotions: in order to engage in actions aimed to alleviate (self or ot...
Article
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread increases in mental health problems, including anxiety and depression. The development of these and other psychiatric disorders may be related to changes in immune, endocrine, autonomic, cognitive, and affective processes induced by a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Interestingly, many of these same changes can be...
Article
Full-text available
The healthcare provider profession strongly relies on the ability to care for others' emotional experiences. To what extent burnout may relate to an actual alteration of this key professional ability has been little investigated. In an experimentally controlled setting, we investigated whether subjective experiences of global burnout or burnout dep...
Article
The left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) has been implicated in the regulation of stress-related cognitive processes and physiological responses and is the principal target of noninvasive brain stimulation techniques applied to psychiatric conditions. However, existing studies are mostly correlational and causal evidence on the role of this...
Article
Neurovisceral integration models emphasize the role of frontal lobes in cognitive, behavioral, and emotional regulation. Two candidate hubs for the regulation of cardio-autonomic control, anxiety, and executive attention are the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Two-hundred and seventy-one adults (62.9 % female...
Article
Several labels, such as neuroticism, negative emotionality, and dispositional negativity, indicate a broad dimension of psychopathology. However, largely separate, often disorder-specific research lines have developed that focus on different cognitive and affective characteristics that are associated with this dimension, such as perseverative cogni...
Article
Background Worry increases risk for long-term health issues by prolonging the physiological stress response. In contrast, relaxation may ameliorate the psychological and physiological burden resulting from worry. This study examined the impact of experimentally induced worry and relaxation on cortisol, heart rate variability (HRV), and inflammation...