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The concept of regional anchor firms remains under-investigated. We analyse the mechanisms by which anchors affect other regional firms, disentangling effects resulting from scale/size vis-à-vis knowledge spillovers. Departing from previous idiographic research, we adopt a nomothetic research design and develop a stepwise expert-informed supervised machine learning approach to identify all anchor
Background: Neuromodulation is nowadays investigated as a promising method for pain relief. Research indicates that a single 30-minute stimulation with transcranial pulsed electromagnetic fields (tPEMF) can induce analgesic effects. However, it is unknown whether tPEMF can induce analgesia in neuropathic pain patients. Objective: To evaluate the effect of tPEMF on spontaneous pain and heat pain in
Background: Reliable and valid assessment of paranoia is important in forensic psychiatry for providing adequate care. VR technology may add to current assessment procedures, as it enables observation within realistic (social) situations resembling the complexity of everyday life. VR constitutes a promising tool within forensics, due to the restricted nature of forensic psychiatric hospitals and e
Immersive virtual reality (VR) has been identified as a potentially revolutionary tool for psychological interventions. This study reviews current advances in immersive VR-based therapies for mental disorders. VR has the potential to make psychiatric treatments better and more cost-effective and to make them available to a larger group of patients. However, this may require a new generation of VR
Background: Safety behaviors, both positive (maladaptive coping behavior) and negative (avoidance behavior), are used by people with paranoid delusions to avoid perceived threats. Safety behaviors contribute to the persistence of paranoid delusions by preventing disconfirmation of threat beliefs and may influence other psychiatric symptoms. This study investigated how changes in safety behaviors a
Many forensic psychiatric inpatients have difficulties regulating aggressive behavior. Evidence of effective aggression treatments is limited. We designed and investigated the effectiveness of a transdiagnostic application of a virtual reality aggression prevention training (VRAPT). In this randomized controlled trial at four Dutch forensic psychiatric centers, 128 inpatients with aggressive behav
Background: Evidence was found for the effectiveness of virtual reality-based cognitive behavioral therapy (VR-CBT) for treating paranoia in psychosis, but health-economic evaluations are lacking. Objective: This study aimed to determine the short-term cost-effectiveness of VR-CBT. Methods: The health-economic evaluation was embedded in a randomized controlled trial evaluating VR-CBT in 116 patien
Background: People with a psychotic disorder commonly experience problems in social cognition and functioning. Social cognition training (SCT) improves social cognition, but may inadequately simulate real-life social interactions. Virtual reality (VR) provides a realistic, interactive, customizable, and controllable training environment, which could facilitate the application of skills in daily li
Background: Many patients with psychotic disorders have persistent paranoid ideation and avoid social situations because of suspiciousness and anxiety. We investigated the effects of virtual-reality-based cognitive behavioural therapy (VR-CBT) on paranoid thoughts and social participation. Methods: In this randomised controlled trial at seven Dutch mental health centres, outpatients aged 18–65 yea
Background: Negative affective processes may contribute to maintenance of paranoia in patients with psychosis, and vice versa. Successful treatment may break these pathological symptom networks. This study examined whether treatment with virtual reality based cognitive behavioral therapy (VR-CBT) for paranoia influences momentary affective states, and whether VR-CBT changes the adverse interplay b
Background: Virtual reality (VR) enables the administration of realistic and dynamic stimuli within a social context for the assessment and training of emotion recognition. We tested a novel VR emotion recognition task by comparing emotion recognition across a VR, video and photo task, investigating covariates of recognition and exploring visual attention in VR. Methods: Healthy individuals (n = 1
Background: Patients with a psychotic disorder often suffer from low self-esteem, which has been related to higher suicidal risk, poor quality of life and, the maintenance of psychotic and depression symptoms. However, intervention studies are scarce and reported interventions concern individual therapies provided by highly educated psychologists. Both the individual setting and the required quali
Background: Many patients with a psychotic disorder participate poorly in society. When psychotic disorders are in partial remission, feelings of paranoia, delusions of reference, social anxiety and self-stigmatization often remain at diminished severity and may lead to avoidance of places and people. Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is an evidence-based treatment for several anxiety disord
BACKGROUND: Problems in social functioning (e.g., unemployment, social isolation), are common in people with a psychotic disorder. Social cognition is a treatment target to improve social functioning, as it is a proximal predictor of social functioning. Social Cognition Training (SCT) improves social cognition, but may not generalize (enduringly) to social functioning, perhaps due to insufficient
Introduction: Studies have consistently demonstrated increased stress sensitivity in individuals with psychosis. Since stress sensitivity may play a role in the onset and maintenance of psychosis, this could potentially be a promising target for treatment. The current study was the first to investigate whether reactivity to and recovery from daily-life stressors in psychosis change in response to
Background: Patients with generalized social anxiety disorder (SAD) avoid various social situations and can be reluctant to engage in in vivo exposure therapy. Highly personalized practising can be required before patients are ready to perform in vivo exposure. Virtual reality-based therapy could be beneficial for this group.Aims: To assess the feasibility and potential effect of virtual reality-b
This document describes how the Nomenclature for Properties and Units (NPU) terminology can be applied to differentiate between cell subpopulations of the hematopoietic lineage. The clusters of differentiation molecules are included in the NPU syntax, together with its correct affiliations to indicate their presence or absence. This allows for identification and isolation of cell populations, subs
Background: Experimentally studying the influence of social environments on mental health and behavior is challenging, as social context is difficult to standardize in laboratory settings. Virtual Reality (VR) enables studying social interaction in terms of interpersonal distance in a more ecologically valid manner. Regulation of interpersonal distance may be abnormal in patients with psychotic di
Background Cognitive deficits may be characteristic for only a subgroup of first-episode psychosis (FEP) and the link with clinical and functional outcomes is less profound than previously thought. This study aimed to identify cognitive subgroups in a large sample of FEP using a clustering approach with healthy controls as a reference group, subsequently linking cognitive subgroups to clinical and
