Elisabet Alzueta

SRI International | SRI · Department of Biomedical Sciences and Health

Introduction Sleep is an essential part of women’s health and well-being. Hormonal fluctuations that occur across the menstrual cycle or when approaching menopause might affect sleep quality. Most studies rely on self-reported data, or laboratory measures in small samples, to examine changes in sleep across the menstrual cycle. Here, we investigate...

Aim The COVID-19 outbreak escalated into a global pandemic, pushing many governments around the world to impose measures affecting all aspects of life. Similar to other countries, Greece adopted social restriction, lockdowns, and quarantines to reduce transmission from person-to-person. This cross-sectional study investigated the association betwee...

Study objectives: We sought to elucidate the interaction between sleep and mood considering menstrual cycle phase (menses and non-menses portions of the cycle) in 72 healthy young women (18 - 33 y) with natural, regular menstrual cycles and without menstrual-associated disorders. This work fills a gap in literature of examining mood in context of...

(1) Background: Psychometric network analysis provides a novel statistical approach allowing researchers to model clusters of related symptoms as a dynamic system. This study applied network analysis to investigate the patterns of somatic, cognitive, and affective neurobehavioral symptoms in an international sample of Spanish-speaking individuals w...

Sleep facilitates hippocampal-dependent memories, supporting the acquisition and maintenance of internal representation of spatial relations within an environment. In humans, however, findings have been mixed regarding sleep's contribution to spatial memory and navigation, which may be due to task designs or outcome measurements. We developed the M...

(1) Background: Some people with COVID-19 develop a series of symptoms that last for several months after infection, known as Long COVID. Although these symptoms interfere with people’s daily functioning and quality of life, few studies have focused on neurobehavioral symptoms and the risk factors associated with their development; (2) Methods: 100...

Objectives COVID-19 has infected millions of people worldwide, with growing evidence that individuals with a history of infection may continue to show persistent post-COVID symptoms (long COVID). The aim of this study was to investigate sleep health in an international sample of individuals who reported previously testing positive for COVID-19. De...

Introduction Emotional, more than neutral, experiences are preferentially consolidated during sleep. Fluctuating reproductive hormonal levels across the menstrual cycle are associated with changes in sleep features that are implicated in emotional memory consolidation. Yet, the interaction between menstrual cycle phases, sleep, and emotional memory...

Introduction The menses phase of a woman’s menstrual cycle, compared to other phases, is more likely to be associated with poorer sleep quality and alterations in cognitive performance, specifically impaired working memory. However, the relationship among these factors has been poorly investigated, and how age impacts these relationships is current...

Background and objective: The ovulatory menstrual cycle is characterized by hormonal fluctuations that influence physiological systems and functioning. Multi-sensor wearable devices can be sensitive tools capturing cycle-related physiological features pertinent to women's health research. This study used the Oura ring to track changes in sleep and...

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended life like few other events in modern history, with differential impacts on varying population groups. This study examined trauma-related distress among 6,882 adults ages 18 to 94 years old in 59 countries during April to May 2020. More than two-thirds of participants reported clinically significant trauma-related d...

Purpose Adolescence is characterized by dramatic physical, social, and emotional changes, making teens particularly vulnerable to the mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This longitudinal study identifies young adolescents who are most vulnerable to the psychological toll of the pandemic and provides insights to inform strategies to hel...

COVID-19 was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020. Since then, the disease escalated into a global pandemic forcing governments around the world to impose measures that affected all aspects of life. Among other countries, Greece has adopted social restriction, lockdowns, and quarantines to reduce transmissi...

While traditional studies claim that visuospatial attention stays fixed at one location at a time, recent research has rather shown that attention rhythmically fluctuates between different locations at rates of prominent brain rhythms. However, little is known about the temporal dynamics of this fluctuation and, particularly, whether it changes ove...

Background The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has significantly increased depression rates, particularly in emerging adults. The aim of this study was to examine longitudinal changes in depression risk before and during COVID-19 in a cohort of emerging adults in the U.S. and to determine whether prior drinking or sleep habits could pr...

Purpose Evaluate changes in early adolescent substance use during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic using a prospective, longitudinal, nationwide cohort. Methods Participants were enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. A total of 7,842 youth (mean age = 12.4 years, range = 10.5–14.6) at 21 study sites across t...

One's own face is recognized more efficiently than any other face, although the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon remain poorly understood. Considering the extensive visual experience that we have with our own face, some authors have proposed that self‐face recognition involves a more analytical perceptual strategy (i.e., based on face f...

Background and Objectives: There is strong evidence in the literature that women experience psychological disorders at significantly higher rates than men. The higher rates of psychological disorders in women may partly be attributable to gender differences in response to stressors and coping styles. The objective of this study was to contribute to...

Objective: To determine if there are pandemic-related sleep and mental health problems at different ages in the general population. Design: Survey data were collected following a snowball sampling method via social media platforms and mailing lists. Results: The current findings show significant differences among age groups in sleep quality and men...

Despite older adults’ extremely high vulnerability to COVID-19 complications and death, few studies have examined how personal characteristics and the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted the mental health of older adults at the global level. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among demographics, COVID-19 life impacts, and depres...

Introduction Sleep modulates mood, with adequate, good-quality sleep associated with a more positive mood. Additionally, sleep is affected by the menstrual cycle in women, with better self-reported sleep quality during non-menses, compared with pre- and during menses. The present study examines the interaction between self-reported sleep quality an...

Introduction Adolescence is a transitional life-stage accompanied by large biopsychosocial changes and greater psychophysiological vulnerability. Global events like the COVID-19 pandemic may increase vulnerability to depression and anxiety in this population. Poor sleep is often associated with depression, and both sleep and mood have been shown to...

Introduction Spatial navigation and memory are hippocampally-dependent and decrease with age, yet, ecologically-valid methods remain elusive. We developed an engaging and inherently flexible spatial navigation/memory task using the Minecraft platform to test sleep-dependent memory. We validated baseline performance and learning rates across two sep...

Introduction The novel COVID-19 disease rapidly escalated into a global pandemic affecting people around the world. While communities imposed mitigation measures to stop the spread of the disease, the mass (home) confinement in addition to the uncertainty of the pandemic led to drastic changes in all aspects of life, including sleep. Sleep health i...

Introduction Estrogen and progesterone cycle through two main phases across a typical 28-day menstrual cycle: a perimense phase, when both hormones are low; and a non-perimenses phase, when both hormones are high. These fluctuations affect a range of daily activities, including sleep, mood, and physical feelings such as bloating. Here we aimed to p...

Introduction A woman’s menstrual cycle is characterized by hormonal changes that might affect sleep and therefore daily functionality. While some studies using self-reports have shown a lower sleep quality in the peri-menstruation phase, objective – in lab – studies have not found significant differences in sleep continuity during the menstrual cyc...

Objectives COVID-19 escalated into a global pandemic affecting countries around the world. As communities shut down to reduce disease spread, all aspects of life have been altered, including sleep. This study investigated changes in sleep patterns and correlates of sleep health in a global sample and examined relationships between sleep health and...

Self-recognition or self-awareness is a capacity attributed typically only to humans and few other species. The definitions of these concepts vary and little is known about the mechanisms behind them. However, there is a Turing test-like benchmark: the mirror self-recognition, which consists in covertly putting a mark on the face of the tested subj...

Self-recognition or self-awareness is a capacity attributed typically only to humans and few other species. The definitions of these concepts vary and little is known about the mechanisms behind them. However, there is a Turing test-like benchmark: the mirror self-recognition, which consists in covertly putting a mark on the face of the tested subj...

Objective This study examined the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic and subsequent social restrictions or quarantines on the mental health of the global adult population. Method A sample of 6,882 individuals (Mage = 42.30; 78.8% female) from 59 countries completed an online survey asking about several pandemic‐related changes in life and psychologic...

Self-related information, such as one's own face, is prioritized by our cognitive system. Whilst recent theoretical developments suggest that this is achieved by an interplay between bottom-up and top-down attentional mechanisms, their underlying neural dynamics are still poorly understood. Furthermore, it is still matter of discussion as to whethe...

This study aimed to elucidate whether distinct early processes underlie the perception of our own face. Alternatively, self-face perception might rely on the same processes that realize the perception of highly familiar faces. To this end, we recorded EEG activity while participants performed a facial recognition task in which they had to discrimin...

#self-face recognition #ERP #N170 #P2 #N250

#self-face recognition #self-face advantage #visual experience #ERPs

#face processing #neuropsychology

#face-recognition #visual memory #neuropsychological assessment

Introduction: Hospital admissions due to pneumonia range from 1.1 to 4 per 1,000 patients and this figure increases with age. Hospitalization causes a decline in functional status. Physical impairment impedes recovery and constitutes a higher risk of disability and mortality in elderly people. The objective of this study is to assess the impact of...

The objectives of this study were to characterize and clarify the relationships between the various cognitive domains affected in COPD patients and the disease itself, as well as to determine the prevalence of impairment in the various cognitive domains in such patients. To that end, we performed a systematic review using the following databases: P...

Hospital admissions due to pneumonia range from 1.1 to 4 per 1,000 patients and this figure increases with age. Hospitalization causes a decline in functional status. Physical impairment impedes recovery and constitutes a higher risk of disability and mortality in elderly people.

Introduction: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive disease with a prevalence that increases with the aging of the subject. It presents a high prevalence of comorbidities, such as cognitive decline, which is gaining great clinical relevance in recent years. Factors such as pulmonary function, hypoxemia, hypercapnia or exace...