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The ego documents, especially war letters from the front of the soldiers, have been studied from many points of view. The letters contain much information about the use of 'violence', whether in terms of the striking power of the weapons and the encounters and dealings with locals, prisoners of war or the 'enemy'. As the main task of the soldiers was to use violence to win or avoid being killed, the understanding and use of violence (towards enemy soldiers and locals) is a constant factor in the letters. As authors such as Latzel (Latzel 2004) and Buchbender (Buchbender and Sterz 1983) have studied the expression and use of war letters by soldiers, I, too, have come across many references and hints of the concept of violence in the sources in my current project. In the WARLUX project, we have collected the ego-documents of Wehrmacht soldiers' (letters, diaries and photographs). In my contribution to this conference, I will discuss the use and reference of ‘violence’ in soldiers' letters during the Second World War in the context of an in-depth study of the reading and analysis of the letters. Even if the sources are biased from the interpretative side, these doubts are nevertheless urgent to consider when studying violence and the effects of violence in wars. After a historiographical overview, I will present my current project and the extensive results of the war letters and diaries of Wehrmacht soldiers. With the help of digital tools (e.g. topic modelling and text analysis), I will present the results of the representation and justification and understanding of ‘violence’. Following the conference's theme, I will analyse different sources in which the ‘violent turn’ can be depicted. I will grasp soldiers' perceptions (and beliefs) about using force and the meaning and motivation to hold arms and pull the trigger. Even though the role of soldiers is clearly defined, the use and application of the concept of force are still worth further discussion. Soldiers' letters are one of the most widely circulated sources on the Second World War - over two billion letters were sent between the front and home. These letters are a rich yet controversial source, but they offer multiple opportunities to analyse the use and understanding of violence by millions of individuals.

Interoceptive sensibility is the self-perceived dispositional tendency to be internally self-focused and interoceptively cognizant. One would expect that persons with high interoceptive sensibility would be more consistent in their subjective ratings to pain stimulation, i.e., the same intensity would be rated similarly across different time points of the session. The present study investigated the relationship between interoceptive sensibility and perception of acute pain, realized by transcutaneous electrical stimulation to the inner forearm, compromising both the subjective pain ratings and the cardiovascular response to the painful stimulation in young healthy adults. To determine the interoceptive sensibility the MAIA-2 was used. In two session design participants received short, individualized pain stimuli in the non-painful to moderate pain range, which they rated regarding subjective intensity and unpleasantness on visual analog scales. The task was repeated three times in one session. Preliminary results suggest a positive relationship between different subscales of the MAIA-2 and the intensity and unpleasantness ratings of painful and non-painful stimulations. Over the three repetitions of stimulation, a differentiated picture forms with respect to possible sensitization or habituation of the participants. These findings suggest that there is an impact of interoceptive sensibility on the perception of pain. Using the MAIA-2 to determine the interoceptive sensibility is an economical approach, since previous studies worked with the heartbeat detection task or other experimental paradigms. Incorporating interoceptive sensitivity could be helpful for future interventions and possible treatments in pain patients.

Attention is acknowledged as an effective strategy to modulate pain, as shown by various studies of acute and chronic pain. Here executive functioning (EF) plays a key role, with poorer EF related to less successful inhibition of pain, both relying on the prefrontal cortex (PFC). With age, structural and volume changes in the PFC are accompanied by age-related cognitive decline. So far, only a few studies investigated how age-related cognitive decline affect cognitive distraction from pain.In a two-session design, healthy young (18-30 years) and older participants (60+ years) performed four EF tasks shown to either reveal age-related cognitive decline or not. Afterwards, participants performed a pain distraction task, a n-Back working memory task with low and high cognitive load, during which participants received individually adjusted transdermal electrical pulse trains in non-painful and moderately painful intensities to the inner forearm. Participants rated them regarding their intensity and unpleasantness. Stimulus-related (EF tasks) and pain-related evoked potentials were recorded with a 64-channel EEG.Preliminary results suggest a similar effective subjective pain relief during high and low working memory load in both age groups, which is reflected in a similar reduced N1-P2 pain-related ERPs in older but not in younger participants. However, including executive functioning showing age-related cognitive decline, revealed less successful pain reduction in the high working memory load condition in older adults. These findings could lead to a better understanding how to adapt pain treatments in the older population by including selective cognitive trainings, optimizing pain modulation settings.

Background Inhibitory control is a core executive function. It involves our ability to think before we act and allows an individual to control their automatic impulses. Executive functions are a mechanism of the prefrontal cortex, which is highly stress sensitive. Research suggests that executive functions positively influence the stress response, with higher executive functions supporting a more successful stress regulation, but it is unclear if that is also the case in older age. Methods To investigate this, healthy young (18-30 years) and older participants (65+ years) were asked to perform two inhibitory control tasks (Stroop-Color-Word task and Go/Nogo task) and were then assigned to a stress condition (Trier Social Stress Test) and to the control condition in counterbalanced order in a two-session design. Cardiovascular parameters and self-reported stress were used as indices for the stress response. Results First analyses suggest that better inhibitory control is associated with less agitation for the TSST condition in both, young and older adults. While the relationship between response inhibition and the stress response seems to be age-unrelated, preliminary results suggest an age-depended impact of interference control on the physiological stress response. Conclusion Since cognitive decline comes with age, older people may be more affected by stress, this could be counterbalanced by training executive functions. Therefore, these results highlight the importance of inhibitory control and suggest the possibility that enhancing executive function may improve stress management.