Bair, AngelaMarksteiner, JosefStoecklein, ThomasReyes del Paso, Gustavo A....
10页
查看更多>>摘要：Worry, which refers to uncontrollable chains of thoughts and images with negative affective load, is a transdiagnostic symptom of various mental disorders including major depressive disorder (MDD). Current theories relate excessive worry to deficient top-down control of automatically occurring perseverative thinking. This study investigated parasympathetic cardiac control in MDD in the context of worry and cognitive control. Heart rate variability (HRV) was recorded, in the high frequency (HF) and low frequency (LF) bands, in 36 MDD patients and 36 healthy controls while they performed a breathing focus task. The task included two phases during which participants' ability to concentrate on their breathing was assessed before and after an instructed worry phase. In addition to higher self-reported worry, MDD patients exhibited lower HF and LF HRV at rest, and lower LF HRV during the task than controls. MDD was also associated with impaired breathing concentration ability, more negative and neutral thought intrusions, more negative mood during breathing focus and increased stress during instructed worry. In the total sample, LF HRV correlated negatively with self-reported worry and negative thought intrusions, and positively with mood ratings. The reduction of HRV confirms the notion of low parasympathetic cardiac control in MDD. Moreover, low HRV represents a correlate of blunted prefrontal activity and impaired cognitive control that characterize the disorder. Impaired cognitive control may exacerbate worry, which is in turn involved in the genesis of aversive emotional states and maintenance of MDD.
查看更多>>摘要：Previous research showed that repetitive sensory stimulation entrains neural oscillations at the stimulation rate, facilitates long-term potentiation like perceptual learning, and improves behavioural performance. For example, short-time repetitive tactile stimulation improved tactile acuity measured with two-point or spatial orientation discrimination tests. The behavioural gain was maximal for a stimulation rate of 20 Hz, the same frequency at which repetitive somatosensory stimulation elicits a steady-state response with maximum amplitude. The current study investigated whether sensory stimulation must be strictly periodic to induce perceptual learning and whether the 20-Hz steady-state response plays a crucial role in the neural mechanisms of perceptual learning. In a crossover-designed experiment, young, healthy adults received sensory stimulation to the fingertip on three subsequent days. The stimulation was either periodic or temporally randomized (aperiodic) with the same number of stimuli. Tactile acuity was assessed with a grating orientation discrimination task, and brain activity was measured with magnetoencephalography (MEG). Stimulus type-by-session interactions were found for behavioural and brain data. Tactile acuity improved more after a session with aperiodic than periodic stimu-lation. Beta-band 20-Hz steady-state responses were localized in the primary somatosensory cortex contralateral to the stimulated finger and had larger amplitudes after periodic than aperiodic stimulation. Both stimulus types also elicited gamma oscillations, which increased in amplitude more with aperiodic than periodic stimulation. Sensory stimuli caused a phase reset of sensorimotor beta oscillations phase-coupled to alpha oscillations. The system of stimulus-related oscillations was discussed as underlying temporal processing. Learning may result from facilitating the temporal code. More pronounced behavioural gain with aperiodic than periodic stimulation suggests beneficial effects of temporal stimulus variability for perceptual learning.
查看更多>>摘要：Third-party punishment plays a crucial role in fairness norm enforcement. The present study investigated how punishment cost would affect third-parties' behavioral and neural responses to unfairness using a modified Third-Party Dictator Game and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants acted as third-parties and decided how many monetary units (MUs) to invest to punish norm violations in two punishment cost contexts. Participants' every MU investment reduced dictators' payoff by 6 MUs in the low punishment cost context and 3 MUs in the high one. Participants' invested MUs reflected the cost they would like to pay to punish dictators while dictators' reduced MUs represented the amount of punishment they received. Behavioral results showed participants' fairness ratings were not affected by punishment cost. However, punishment amount decreased in the high punishment cost context where participants invested more MUs and spent more time for decision-making. Neurally, left anterior insula (AI) and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) showed stronger responses to unfair relative to fair allocations in both contexts. Moreover, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) was more active during unfair allocations in the high punishment cost context than in the low one and the difference of dACC activity between these two conditions was positively correlated with the difference of re-action times. Overall, the present study demonstrated that punishment cost would not affect people's fairness perception but increase the conflicts between norm enforcement and self-interest. The decision for punishment was the outcome of integrating fairness and economic considerations.
Vabba, AlishaPorciello, GiuseppinaPanasiti, Maria SerenaAglioti, Salvatore Maria...
9页
查看更多>>摘要：Bodily signals influence high-order cognitive and emotional processes, including social decision making. Here, we examined whether individual differences in the capacity to read signals from inside (interoception) and outside the body (exteroception) predicted participants' (dis)honesty. Deceptive behavior was measured in a card game where participants were tempted to lie to another person for financial gain in two conditions, i.e., under high vs. low risk of being seen by the other player (reputation risk). Participants completed the Heartbeat Counting Task (cardiac interoception) and a variation of the Body-Scaled Action Task (visual exteroception). Overall, when participants believed their reputation was at risk (i.e., the other player knew they lied) they told significantly less egoistic lies compared to when their choices were secret. This effect was significantly moderated by cardiac interoception. While low interoceptive participants told less egoistic lies when their reputation was at risk, high cardiac interoceptive participants did not change their behavior depending on the reputation risk conditions. We also found that cardiac interoception and visual exteroception did not correlate. Together our findings suggest that although integrated, interoception and exteroception constitute distinct facets of corporal awareness, and that high cardiac interoception shapes moral behavior by making people less concerned about their social reputation during spontaneous lies.
查看更多>>摘要：The present review focuses on the development of attention as indexed in the electrical activity of the brain under a systematic framework of attention-related paradigms and experimental tasks in typically developing children (TDC). The framework is organized according to the filter and selective-set paradigms of attention research and experimental tasks that these models commonly use. The first part of the review discusses agevariant changes in the event-related potentials (ERPs) of TDC. Age affects the parameters of the various attention-related components (latencies and amplitudes) independently and differentially. The changes are mainly in the form of decreasing latencies, showing that aging increases the speed and efficiency of attentional processing. High task difficulty and cognitive load produce a shift in TDC from early selection, which involves a perceptual analysis, to late selection, which involves target detection. The second part of the review discusses attentional processing in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Relative to TDC, ERP differences in ADHD are mainly represented in component amplitudes, which normally vary according to task difficulty and cognitive load. The literature permits a review of the differences between children with ADHD and age-matched TDC in not only ERPs but also in resting electroencephalogram (EEG) and event-related oscillations (EROs). Some of the differences between children with ADHD and TDC are quantitative and in the form of maturational lag, while others are qualitative and in the form of maturational deviance. The early gamma-band response (GBR) appears to be a significant biomarker of ADHD. The match-and-utilization model, which delineates the pervasive role that early GBR plays in the bottom-up and top-down processes of attention, applies to ADHD. The integrative approach of the present review reveals the gaps in the relevant literature and suggests directions for future studies by way of which a comprehensive understanding of ADHD may be possible.
查看更多>>摘要：Distinguishing among similar events is indeed crucial to memory. In a dangerous context, this ability may be less essential, whereas in a secure context it may provide an adaptative advantage notably in social situations. Vagal activity as a marker of the individual's adaptation in social engagement contexts might predict the ability to discriminate highly similar memories in an unthreatening context. The present study aims to test the relation between vagal activity and memory discrimination by manipulating the visual distinctiveness of stimuli (high vs. low) in an ecological memory discrimination task with humanoid characters. It was expected that vagal activity support adaptive self-regulatory processes which may be needed only when the memory discrimination is challenging (low distinctiveness between true memory and lure). In a study phase, multiple realistic fictional humanoid characters performed the same action on different objects. The characters could be very similar or very distinct one to each other. Then, during a test phase, the participants had to discriminate whether a displayed character on the screen was exactly matched the one performing the given action on a specific object in the study phase (target). Vagal activity was assessed in undergraduate students (n = 40) before the study phase. Higher vagal activity predicted better memory discrimination performance specifically when the distinctiveness between the lure and target was low. These data extend previous work on vagal activity and memory suggesting that heart-brain interactions represent an adaptive psychophysiological mechanism underlying memory discrimination specifically when it is challenging in an unthreatening context.
查看更多>>摘要：Despite being considered a valid model for the etiology of anxiety disorders, the fear conditioning paradigm does not always show clear correlations with anxious personality traits that constitute risk factors for the development of anxiety disorders. This may in part due to error variance and the fact that fear conditioning studies are typically underpowered to investigate inter-individual differences. In the current study, we focus on the relationship between conditioned fear acquisition and Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU). In a re-analysis of a large previous study (N = 120), which was conducted using a healthy student sample and a partial reinforcement procedure (75%) with words as Conditioned Stimuli (CSs), the relationship between IU and several outcome measures (i.e., fear ratings, expectancy ratings, skin conductance responses, and startle responses) during fear acquisition was examined. We find that IU is positively related to fear ratings towards the CS+ (r = 0.29), even when controlling for the shared variance with trait anxiety. Furthermore, we find a subtle relationship between IU and startle responses to the CS-(r =-0.23), though this correlation did not survive correction for the shared variance with trait anxiety. Taken together, we replicate some of the correlations previously reported in the literature. However, we recommend that future studies employ even larger samples and more advanced statistical techniques such as structural equation modelling to investigate the correlations between fear acquisition indices and anxious traits in a fine-grained manner.
Falk, Johanna R.Gollwitzer, Peter M.Oettingen, GabrieleGendolla, Guido H. E....
7页
查看更多>>摘要：This experiment tested whether personal choice vs. external assignment of task characteristics moderates the effect of incidental affective stimulation on effort-related cardiovascular response. We expected strong action shielding and low receptivity for incidental affective influences when participants could choose themselves the stimulus color of an easy memory task. By contrast, when the stimulus color was assigned, we expected weak action shielding and high receptivity. As expected, participants in the assigned color condition showed stronger cardiac pre-ejection period reactivity when exposed to sad music than when exposed to happy music during task performance. These music effects did not appear among participants who could personally choose the stimulus color. Our results replicate previous research by showing that personal choice leads to action shielding, whereas individuals remain receptive for affective influences during volition when task characteristics are assigned.
查看更多>>摘要：Previous studies proposed different views to explain the hemispheric lateralization of lexical tone processing. But how the acoustic and phonological information modulates it remains unclear. The acoustic information refers to the physical acoustic features of lexical tones, and the phonological information means the different word meanings differentiated by lexical tones. In the present study, we adopted the active oddball paradigm to explore the effects of pitch type and lexicality on native Cantonese speakers' lexical tone processing with the event related potential (ERP) technique. We used Cantonese level and contour tones (pitch type) to examine the role of acoustic information and real words and pseudowords (lexicality) to detect the phonological information's effect. The results showed that the pitch type and lexicality affected the N2b amplitudes between the left and right hemispheres interactively, while they did not play roles in P3b amplitudes. The results indicated that the acoustic and phonological information modulated the hemispheric lateralization of lexical tone processing interactively only in the early stage (N2b time window) but not in the later stage (P3b time window). The findings suggested a two-stage model interprets the hemispheric lateralization in lexical tone processing.
查看更多>>摘要：While previous studies have extensively explored the neural mechanisms of perceptual decision-making, most of them used paradigms with limited real-life consequences and largely neglected participants' individual differences. In this study, to resemble a perceptual decision-making scenario with real-life consequences, construction workers were recruited for an occupational hazard recognition task by categorizing construction site images as hazardous or safe with their EEG recorded. Event-related potential (ERP) analysis revealed distinct influences of perceptual decision-making by two dispositional factors of risk propensity and injury exposure experience. Risk propensity was positively correlated with the stimulus-locked difference waveforms (hazardous minus safe) at approximately 200 ms post-stimuli-onset over right-lateralized parietal-occipital areas. The difference waveforms showed reversed polarity between groups with high and low-risk propensity. Injury exposure experience was negatively correlated with the response-locked difference waveforms approximately 450 ms before motor response over right-lateralized parietal-occipital regions. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to report how individuals' injury exposure experience influenced the neural signatures of one's perceptual decisionmaking. These results extended previous findings for perceptual decision-making by setting up a scenario with high ecological validity and suggested possibly substantial different mechanisms for individual workers by the intrinsic factor of risk propensity and the extrinsic factor of injury exposure experience.
NSTL
Elsevier