Personality disorders (PD) are usually treated with face-to-face sessions and/or digital mental health services. Among many schools of therapies, schema therapy stands out because rather than simply targeting the symptoms of PD, it cordially targets the cause of PD and heals the early maladaptive schema, thus is exceptionally good at soothing emotional disturbances before enacting cognitive restructuring, resulting in long-term efficacy. However, according to Piaget’s genetic epistemology, the unmet needs lie in the fact that the schemata that determine the adaptive behavior can only be formed in the interaction with the real world that the patient is living in and reconsolidated by the feedback from the object world upon the patient’s newly-formed behavior. Therefore, in order to reshape the patient’s schema modes to support adaptive behavior and regain emotional regulation capabilities of the healthy adult, one may have to reconstruct the object world surrounding the patient. Metaverse, the bestowed successor to the Internet with the cardinal feature of “the sense of full presence,” can become a powerful tool to reconstruct a new object world for the patient with the prescription of a psychotherapist, so as to transform the treatment techniques in schema therapy into the natural autobiographical experiences of patients in the new object world, thus gradually reshape the patient’s schema modes that can ultimately result in an adaptive, and more inclusive, interaction with the real world. This work describes the underlying theory, the mechanism, the process, and ethical considerations of such promising technology for the not-too-far future.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common type of dementia, is characterized by senile plaques composed of amyloid β protein (Aβ) and neurofilament tangles derived from the hyperphosphorylation of tau protein. However, the developed medicines targeting Aβ and tau have not obtained ideal clinical efficacy, which raises a challenge to the hypothesis that AD is Aβ cascade-induced. A critical problem of AD pathogenesis is which endogenous factor induces Aβ aggregation and tau phosphorylation. Recently, age-associated endogenous formaldehyde has been suggested to be a direct trigger for Aβ- and tau-related pathology. Another key issue is whether or not AD drugs are successfully delivered to the damaged neurons. Both the blood–brain barrier (BBB) and extracellular space (ECS) are the barriers for drug delivery. Unexpectedly, Aβ-related SP deposition in ECS slows down or stops interstitial fluid drainage in AD, which is the direct reason for drug delivery failure. Here, we propose a new pathogenesis and perspectives on the direction of AD drug development and drug delivery: (1) aging-related formaldehyde is a direct trigger for Aβ assembly and tau hyperphosphorylation, and the new target for AD therapy is formaldehyde; (2) nano-packaging and physical therapy may be the promising strategy for increasing BBB permeability and accelerating interstitial fluid drainage.

This review examines the application of olfactory testing in the early stages of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), highlighting its potential and challenges in early screening and intervention. Olfactory function is typically divided into three domains: odor identification, odor discrimination, and odor threshold. Among these, odor identification and discrimination are closely linked to higher cognitive processes and exhibit significant impairment in patients with AD and MCI. Moreover, the anatomical and functional characteristics of the olfactory system make it a promising target for the early detection of neurodegenerative disorders. This review also outlines various olfactory assessment tools and evaluates their clinical utility. Future research should aim to enhance the accuracy and cultural adaptability of olfactory tests and integrate them with multimodal diagnostic approaches to advance early detection and intervention strategies for AD.

Tactile discrimination, a cognitive task reliant on fingertip touch for stimulus discrimination, encompasses the somatosensory system and working memory, with its acuity diminishing with advancing age. Presently, the evaluation of cognitive capacity to differentiate between individuals with early Alzheimer's disease (AD) and typical older adults predominantly relies on visual or auditory tasks, yet the efficacy of discrimination remains constrained. To review the existing tactile cognitive tasks and explore the interaction between tactile perception and the pathological process of Alzheimer's disease. The tactile discrimination task may be used as a reference index of cognitive decline in patients with mild cognitive impairment and provide a new method for clinical evaluation. We searched four databases (Embase, PubMed, Web of Science and Google scholar). The reference coverage was from 1936 to 2023. The search terms included “Alzheimer disease” “mild cognitive impairment” “tactile” “tactile discrimination” “tactile test” and so on. Reviews and experimental reports in the field were examined and the effectiveness of different types of tactile tasks was compared. Individuals in the initial phases of Alzheimer's spectrum disease, specifically those in the stage of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), exhibit notable impairments in tasks involving tactile discrimination. These tasks possess certain merits, such as their quick and straightforward comparability, independence from educational background, and ability to circumvent the limitations associated with conventional cognitive assessment scales. Furthermore, tactile discrimination tasks offer enhanced accuracy compared to cognitive tasks that employ visual or auditory stimuli. Tactile discrimination has the potential to serve as an innovative reference indicator for the swift diagnosis of clinical MCI patients, thereby assisting in the screening process on a clinical scale.

Background: Growing evidence suggests a relationship between deficits in cognitive control and anxiety. However, studies examining cognitive control within affective contexts (affective control) are limited, and the specific characteristics of affective control in patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) remain unclear. This study investigated whether differences exist in cognitive control under affective contexts.Methods: We conduct our research in a population of GAD patients (n = 50) and a healthy control group (n = 50). The affective flanker task measured affective inhibition, while the affective flexibility task assessed affective shifting capabilities.Results: GAD patients exhibited abnormal affective inhibition, characterized by reduced proactive control related to target stimulus processing and enhanced reactive control associated with distractor resolution. Additionally, GAD patients demonstrated deficits in affective shifting, as indicated by significantly higher shifting costs in both non-affective and affective tasks compared to the healthy control group.Conclusions: The findings reveal that GAD patients display poorer emotion recognition abilities, indicating deficits in affective control compared to healthy individuals. Our study underscores the importance of measuring affective control by delineating it into distinct components.