Facial emotional expressions are a salient source of information for nonverbal social interactions. However, their impact on action planning and execution is highly controversial. In this vein, the effect of the two threatening facial expressions, i.e., angry and fearful faces, is still unclear. Frequently, fear and anger are used interchangeably as negative emotions. However, they convey different social signals. Unlike fear, anger indicates a direct threat toward the observer. To provide new evidence on this issue, we exploited a novel design based on two versions of a Go/No-go task. In the emotional version, healthy participants had to perform the same movement for pictures of fearful, angry, or happy faces and withhold it when neutral expressions were presented. The same pictures were shown in the control version, but participants had to move or suppress the movement, according to the actor’s gender. This experimental design allows us to test task relevance’s impact on emotional stimuli without conflating movement planning with target detection and task switching. We found that the emotional content of faces interferes with actions only when task-relevant, i.e., the effect of emotions is context-dependent. We also showed that angry faces qualitatively had the same effect as fearful faces, i.e., both negative emotions decreased response readiness with respect to happy expressions. However, anger has a much greater impact than fear, as it increases both the rates of mistakes and the time of movement execution. We interpreted these results, suggesting that participants have to exploit more cognitive resources to appraise threatening than positive facial expressions, and angry than fearful faces before acting.

The ability to generate appropriate responses, especially in social contexts, requires integrating emotional information with ongoing cognitive processes. In particular, inhibitory control plays a crucial role in social interactions, preventing the execution of impulsive and inappropriate actions. In this study, we focused on the impact of facial emotional expressions on inhibition. Research in this field has provided highly mixed results. In our view, a crucial factor explaining such inconsistencies is the task-relevance of the emotional content of the stimuli. To clarify this issue, we gave two versions of a Go/No-go task to healthy participants. In the emotional version, participants had to withhold a reaching movement at the presentation of emotional facial expressions (fearful or happy) and move when neutral faces were shown. The same pictures were displayed in the other version, but participants had to act according to the actor's gender, ignoring the emotional valence of the faces.We found that happy expressions impaired inhibitory control with respect to fearful expressions, but only when they were relevant to the participants' goal. We interpret these results as suggesting that facial emotions do not influence behavioral responses automatically. They would instead do so only when they are intrinsically germane for ongoing goals.

We suggest that the cognitive mechanisms underlying tics and compulsions controls are likely to be different. Possibly the preserved ability to suppress actions in uncomplicated Tourette patients allows them to experience a greater feeling of self-control, and this fact might play a key role in evolution of the disorder beyond adolescence. © 2018 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

Background It is well known that a deficit in inhibitory control is a hallmark of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, inhibition is not a unitary construct, and it is unclear whether patients in the early stage of the disease (Hoehn and Yahr stage 1) exhibit a deficit in outright stopping (reactive inhibition), a deficit in the ability to shape their response strategies according to the context (proactive inhibition), or both. Objective We assessed whether PD patients at Hoehn and Yahr stage 1 show a global or selective impairment in inhibitory control. As it has been suggested that inhibition relies upon a right‐lateralized pathway, we tested whether left‐dominant PD patients suffered from a more severe deficit in this executive function than right‐dominant PD patients. Methods Via a reaching stop‐signal task, we assessed both proactive and reactive inhibition in 17 left‐dominant PD and 17 right‐dominant PD patients and in 24 age‐matched participants. Results We found that reactive inhibition was more impaired in PD patients than in healthy participants. However, proactive inhibition was not affected. Furthermore, we found no differences between left‐dominant PD and right‐dominant PD patients. Conclusions For the first time, we found evidence for a deficit of reactive inhibition in the early‐stage PD patients in the absence of evidence for deficits in proactive inhibition. These findings have clinical relevance as they provide critical insights on the time course of the disease. In addition, we confirmed, on a population of PD patients at Hoehn and Yahr stage 1, previous results showing that the onset of the disease does not affect inhibition. © 2019 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society

IMPORTANCE Cefazolin is the preoperative antibiotic of choice because it is safer and more efficacious than second-line alternatives. Surgical patients labeled as having penicillin allergy are less likely to prophylactically receive cefazolin and more likely to receive clindamycin or vancomycin, which results in higher rates of surgical site infections.OBJECTIVE To examine the incidence of dual allergy to cefazolin and natural penicillins.DATA SOURCES MEDLINE/PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase were searched without language restrictions for relevant articles published from database inception until July 31, 2020.STUDY SELECTION In this systematic review and meta-analysis, a search of MEDLINE/PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase was performed for articles published from database inception to July 31, 2020, for studies that included patients who had index allergies to a natural penicillin and were tested for tolerability to cefazolin or that included patients who had index allergies to cefazolin and were tested for tolerability to a natural penicillin. A total of 3228 studies were identified and 2911 were screened for inclusion.DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS Data were independently extracted by 2 authors. Bayesian meta-analysis was used to estimate the frequency of allergic reactions. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURESDual allergy to cefazolin and a natural penicillin. RESULTSSeventy-seven unique studies met the eligibility criteria, yielding 6147 patients. Cefazolin allergy was identified in 44 participants with a history of penicillin allergy, resulting in a dual allergy meta-analytical frequency of 0.7% (95% credible interval [CrI], 0.1%-1.7%; I 2 = 74.9%). Such frequency was lower for participants with unconfirmed (0.6%; 95% CrI, 0.1%-1.3%; I 2 = 54.3%) than for those with confirmed penicillin allergy (3.0%; 95% CrI, 0.01%-17.0%; I 2 = 88.2%). Thirteen studies exclusively assessed surgical patients (n = 3884), among whom 0.7% (95% CrI, 0%-3.3%; I 2 = 85.5%) had confirmed allergy to cefazolin. Low heterogeneity was observed for studies of patients with unconfirmed penicillin allergy who had been exposed to perioperative cefazolin (0.1%; 95% CrI, 0.1%-0.3%; I 2 = 13.1%). Penicillin allergy was confirmed in 16 participants with a history of cefazolin allergy, resulting in a meta-analytical frequency of 3.7% (95% CrI, 0.03%-13.3%; I 2 = 64.4%). The frequency of penicillin allergy was 4.4% (95% CrI, 0%-23.0%; I 2 = 75%) for the 8 studies that exclusively assessed surgical patients allergic to cefazolin.CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE These findings suggest that most patients with a penicillin allergy history may safely receive cefazolin. The exception is patients with confirmed penicillin allergy in whom additional care is warranted.