The objective of the present study was to explore possible changes in the psychological wellbeing of young healthy students during the initial 14 days of the COVID-19 general lockdown that occurred in March of 2020, and if there was any relation with specific personality traits (neuroticism, psychoticism, and extraversion), cognitive styles (internal and external locus of control and intolerance of uncertainty), and coping strategies. One hundred twenty-two university students aged from 18 to 29 years participated in the study. The dispositional factors were assessed at the beginning of the study, while measures of psychological adjustment (anxiety, depression, and self-perceived health) were taken in three different assessment stages, employing validated questionnaires and scales. Anxiety and depression scores significantly increased after one week of lockdown, reaching a plateau pattern by the second week. The levels of self-perceived mental health, vitality, and quality of life showed a pattern of sustained progressive decrease, with a more acute lessening during the first week. Neuroticism, intolerance of uncertainty, and negative autofocus were associated to worse levels of psychological adjustment. These individual differences might be taken into consideration when designing prevention programs aiming to dampen the psychological impact of a general lockdown in healthy population.

Among defensive behaviors, tonic immobility is considered the last defensive resort when life is at extreme risk. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the main psychiatric consequence resulting from exposure to traumatic events. Increasing evidence indicate an association between peritraumatic tonic immobilility and severity of PTSD. Cardiac defense response, a reactivity to perceived danger or threat, has been studied by recording heart rate changes that follows the presentation of an unpredictable intense auditory aversive stimulus The aim of this study was to investigate potential distinctiveness in cardiac defense response among PTSD patients who presented – compared to those that did not - tonic immobility reaction in the laboratory setting. Patients (N=17) completed the tonic immobility questionnaire for signs of immobility elicited by passive listening to their autobiographical trauma script. After a while, they were exposed to an intense white noise, while electrocardiogram was recorded. The heart rate during the 80 seconds after the noise, subtracted from baseline, was analysed. Higher reports of tonic immobility to the trauma script were associated with stronger and sustained heart rate accelerations after the noise. The effects on cardiac defense response add to increasing evidence that some PTSD patients are prone to repeated re-experiences of tonic immobility, which may implicate in a potentially distinct pathophysiology and even a new PTSD subtype.

The proliferation of misinformation on social media platforms poses significant challenges to public health, political discourse, and social cohesion. This study investigates the efficacy of a World Health Organization (WHO) infodemic intervention in mitigating the spread of misinformation and explores the underlying neural mechanisms involved in information processing. A sample of 77 university students was randomly assigned to an experimental group, which was exposed to the WHO's infodemic intervention, or a control group, which received a campaign on healthy lifestyle habits. Participants viewed a series of manipulated and non-manipulated tweets before and after the intervention, rating their likelihood to share, verify, and perceive the truthfulness of the information. Electroencephalogram (EEG) data were collected throughout the experiment to assess neural complexity using Sample Entropy (SampEn) measures. Results revealed that the experimental group significantly reduced their intention to share information and perceived truthfulness of both manipulated and non-manipulated items post-intervention. The control group showed no significant changes. EEG analysis demonstrated higher SampEn scores in the frontal and temporal regions for the experimental group post-intervention, indicating increased neural complexity and more homogeneous activation patterns. These findings suggest that the WHO intervention effectively enhanced participants' critical evaluation of information, reflected in both behavioral and neurophysiological changes. This study contributes to the growing body of research on misinformation interventions by providing evidence for the effectiveness of passive, less demanding campaigns in fostering critical thinking and information discernment. Moreover, it offers novel insights into the neural correlates of information processing following such interventions, highlighting the potential of combining behavioral and neurophysiological measures in misinformation research. These findings have important implications for developing targeted strategies to combat misinformation, enhance digital literacy, and inform future public health and policy initiatives in the digital era.