The efficacy of psychedelic-assisted therapies for mental disorders has been attributed to the lasting change from experiential avoidance to acceptance that these treatments appear to facilitate. This article presents a conceptual model that specifies potential psychological mechanisms underlying such change, and that shows substantial parallels between psychedelic therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy: We propose that in the carefully controlled context of psychedelic therapy as applied in contemporary clinical research, psychedelic-induced belief relaxation can increase motivation for acceptance via operant conditioning, thus engendering episodes of relatively avoidance-free exposure to greatly intensified private events. Under these unique learning conditions, relaxed avoidance-related beliefs can be exposed to corrective information and become revised accordingly, which may explain long-term increases in acceptance and corresponding reductions in psychopathology. Open research questions and implications for clinical practice are discussed.

Self-control is commonly assumed to depend on executive functions (EFs). However, it is unclear whether real-life self-control failures result from deficient EF competencies or rather reflect insufficient conflict-induced mobilization of executive control, and whether self-control depends more critically on function-specific EF competencies or general executive functioning (GEF), that is, common competencies that underlie all EFs. Here we investigated whether failure-related action versus state orientation, a personality trait related to the conflict-induced mobilization of cognitive control, moderates the effect of general and function-specific control competencies on self-control. To this end, 240 young adults completed questionnaire measures of action-state orientation and trait self-control, reported everyday self-control failures during 7 consecutive days via smartphone-based experience sampling, and completed 9 EF tasks from which latent variables reflecting GEF as well as inhibition-, updating-, and shifting-specific competencies were derived. Structural equation models confirmed that the effect of GEF on self-control was moderated by action-state orientation: action-oriented compared with more state-oriented participants showed a stronger inverse association between GEF and everyday self-control failures. Corresponding effects of function-specific competencies on self-control were not found. These results highlight that high executive functioning may enable self-controlled behavior only if control is sufficiently mobilized when needed and suggest that self-control may depend more critically on general than function-specific control competencies. More generally, the present study demonstrates the fruitfulness of combining latent-variable models of well-controlled EF tasks with experience sampling of daily self-control and measures of individual differences in control modes to bridge the gap between laboratory research and real-life behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record

Despite their immense relevance, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying real-life self-control failures (SCFs) are insufficiently understood. Whereas previous studies have shown that SCFs were associated with decreased activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG; a region involved in cognitive control), here we consider the possibility that the reduced implementation of cognitive control in individuals with low self-control may be due to impaired performance monitoring. Following a brain-as-predictor approach, we combined experience sampling of daily SCFs with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a Stroop task. In our sample of 118 participants, proneness to SCF was reliably predicted by low error-related activation of a performance-monitoring network (comprising anterior mid-cingulate cortex, presupplementary motor area, and anterior insula), low posterror rIFG activation, and reduced posterror slowing. Remarkably, these neural and behavioral measures predicted variability in SCFs beyond what was predicted by self-reported trait self-control. These results suggest that real-life SCFs may result from deficient performance monitoring, leading to reduced recruitment of cognitive control after responses that conflict with superordinate goals.

Low back pain with resultant loss of function, decreased productivity, and high economic costs is burdensome for both the individual and the society. Evidence suggests that intervertebral disc pathology is a major contributor to spine-related pain and degeneration. When commonly used conservative therapies fail, traditional percutaneous or surgical options may be beneficial for pain relief but are suboptimal because of their inability to alter disc microenvironment catabolism, restore disc tissue, and/or preserve native spine biomechanics. Percutaneously injected Multipotent Mesenchymal Stem Cell (MSC) therapy has recently gained clinical interest for its potential to revolutionarily treat disc-generated (discogenic) pain and associated disc degeneration. Unlike previous therapies to date, MSCs may uniquely offer the ability to improve discogenic pain and provide more sustained improvement by reducing disc microenvironment catabolism and regenerating disc tissue. Consistent treatment success has the potential to create a paradigm shift with regards to the treatment of discogenic pain and disc degeneration.

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