Positive and negative affect mediate the bidirectional relationship between emotional processing and symptom severity and impact in irritable bowel syndrome.

PubMed

Sibelli, Alice; Chalder, Trudie; Everitt, Hazel; Chilcot, Joseph; Moss-Morris, Rona

2018-02-01

Individuals with IBS report higher levels of psychological distress compared to healthy controls. Distress has been associated with emotional processing difficulties but studies have not explored how the relationship between distress and emotional processing affects IBS. There is little research on the role of positive affect (PA) in IBS. (a) If difficulties in self-reported emotional processing are associated with affect and IBS measures (i.e., symptom severity, interference in life roles) (b1) If affect mediates the relationship between emotional processing and IBS measures (b2) Alternative model: if affect mediates the relationship between IBS and emotional processing (c) If PA moderates the relationship between distress and IBS. Participants with a confirmed diagnosis of IBS (n=558) completed a questionnaire including measures of emotional processing (i.e., unhelpful beliefs about negative emotions, impoverished emotional experience), distress, PA, and IBS symptoms/interference. Mediation and moderation analyses were conducted with Maximum Likelihood Estimation. Distress and PA mediated or partly mediated the relationship between unhelpful beliefs about negative emotions/impoverished emotional experience and both IBS measures. The alternative models were also valid, suggesting a two-way relationship between emotional processing and IBS through affect. PA did not moderate the relationship between distress and IBS. Future interventions in IBS may benefit from not only targeting the management of physical symptoms and their daily impact but also aspects related to the experience of both negative and positive affect, and the acceptance and expression of negative emotions. Longitudinal studies are needed to confirm causal relationships within the explored models. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cerebellum and processing of negative facial emotions: cerebellar transcranial DC stimulation specifically enhances the emotional recognition of facial anger and sadness.

PubMed

Ferrucci, Roberta; Giannicola, Gaia; Rosa, Manuela; Fumagalli, Manuela; Boggio, Paulo Sergio; Hallett, Mark; Zago, Stefano; Priori, Alberto

2012-01-01

Some evidence suggests that the cerebellum participates in the complex network processing emotional facial expression. To evaluate the role of the cerebellum in recognising facial expressions we delivered transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the cerebellum and prefrontal cortex. A facial emotion recognition task was administered to 21 healthy subjects before and after cerebellar tDCS; we also tested subjects with a visual attention task and a visual analogue scale (VAS) for mood. Anodal and cathodal cerebellar tDCS both significantly enhanced sensory processing in response to negative facial expressions (anodal tDCS, p=.0021; cathodal tDCS, p=.018), but left positive emotion and neutral facial expressions unchanged (p>.05). tDCS over the right prefrontal cortex left facial expressions of both negative and positive emotion unchanged. These findings suggest that the cerebellum is specifically involved in processing facial expressions of negative emotion.

Neural Correlates of Emotion Processing in Word Detection Task

PubMed Central

Zhao, Wenshuang; Chen, Liang; Zhou, Chunxia; Luo, Wenbo

2018-01-01

In our previous study, we have proposed a three-stage model of emotion processing; in the current study, we investigated whether the ERP component may be different when the emotional content of stimuli is task-irrelevant. In this study, a dual-target rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task was used to investigate how the emotional content of words modulates the time course of neural dynamics. Participants performed the task in which affectively positive, negative, and neutral adjectives were rapidly presented while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 18 undergraduates. The N170 component was enhanced for negative words relative to positive and neutral words. This indicates that automatic processing of negative information occurred at an early perceptual processing stage. In addition, later brain potentials such as the late positive potential (LPP) were only enhanced for positive words in the 480–580-ms post-stimulus window, while a relatively large amplitude signal was elicited by positive and negative words between 580 and 680 ms. These results indicate that different types of emotional content are processed distinctly at different time windows of the LPP, which is in contrast with the results of studies on task-relevant emotional processing. More generally, these findings suggest that a negativity bias to negative words remains to be found in emotion-irrelevant tasks, and that the LPP component reflects dynamic separation of emotion valence. PMID:29887824

Emotional processing and self-control in adolescents with type 1 diabetes.

PubMed

Hughes, Amy E; Berg, Cynthia A; Wiebe, Deborah J

2012-09-01

This study examined whether emotional processing (understanding emotions), self-control (regulation of thoughts, emotions, and behavior), and their interaction predicted HbA1c for adolescents with type 1 diabetes over and above diabetes-specific constructs. Self-report measures of self-control, emotional processing, self-efficacy for diabetes management, diabetes-specific negative affect, and adherence, and HbA1c from medical records were obtained from 137 adolescents with type 1 diabetes (M age = 13.48 years). Emotional processing interacted with self-control to predict HbA1c, such that when adolescents had both low emotional processing and low self-control, HbA1c was poorest. Also, both high emotional processing and self-control buffered negative effects of low capacity in the other in relation to HbA1c. The interaction of emotional processing × self-control predicted HbA1c over diabetes-specific self-efficacy, negative affect, and adherence. These findings suggest the importance of emotional processing and self-control for health outcomes in adolescents with diabetes.

Emotional Processing and Self-Control in Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes

PubMed Central

Hughes, Amy E.; Wiebe, Deborah J.

2012-01-01

Objective This study examined whether emotional processing (understanding emotions), self-control (regulation of thoughts, emotions, and behavior), and their interaction predicted HbA1c for adolescents with type 1 diabetes over and above diabetes-specific constructs. Methods Self-report measures of self-control, emotional processing, self-efficacy for diabetes management, diabetes-specific negative affect, and adherence, and HbA1c from medical records were obtained from 137 adolescents with type 1 diabetes (M age = 13.48 years). Results Emotional processing interacted with self-control to predict HbA1c, such that when adolescents had both low emotional processing and low self-control, HbA1c was poorest. Also, both high emotional processing and self-control buffered negative effects of low capacity in the other in relation to HbA1c. The interaction of emotional processing × self-control predicted HbA1c over diabetes-specific self-efficacy, negative affect, and adherence. Conclusions These findings suggest the importance of emotional processing and self-control for health outcomes in adolescents with diabetes. PMID:22523404

The impact of negative emotions on self-concept abstraction depends on accessible information processing styles.

PubMed

Isbell, Linda M; Rovenpor, Daniel R; Lair, Elicia C

2016-10-01

Research suggests that anger promotes global, abstract processing whereas sadness and fear promote local, concrete processing (see Schwarz & Clore, 2007 for a review). Contrary to a large and influential body of work suggesting that specific affective experiences are tethered to specific cognitive outcomes, the affect-as-cognitive-feedback account maintains that affective experiences confer positive or negative value on currently dominant processing styles, and thus can lead to either global or local processing (Huntsinger, Isbell, & Clore, 2014). The current work extends this theoretical perspective by investigating the impact of discrete negative emotions on the self-concept. By experimentally manipulating information processing styles and discrete negative emotions that vary in appraisals of certainty, we demonstrate that the impact of discrete negative emotions on the spontaneous self-concept depends on accessible processing styles. When global processing was accessible, individuals in angry (negative, high certainty) states generated more abstract statements about themselves than individuals in either sad (Experiment 1) or fearful (Experiment 2; negative, low certainty) states. When local processing was made accessible, however, the opposite pattern emerged, whereby individuals in angry states generated fewer abstract statements than individuals in sad or fearful states. Together these studies provide new insights into the mechanisms through which discrete emotions influence cognition. In contrast to theories assuming a dedicated link between emotions and processing styles, these results suggest that discrete emotions provide feedback about accessible ways of thinking, and are consistent with recent evidence suggesting that the impact of affect on cognition is highly context-dependent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Study of the combinatorial impact of empathy and emotion on the processing of conflicts of interest with the event-related potential technique.

PubMed

He, Xiaoli; Zhang, Ni

2017-01-01

Studies have found that empathy is important in moral development and violence suppression, and emotion also affects empathy. However, the combinatorial effect of emotion and empathy on the processing of conflicts is not known. A total of 44 undergraduate students (23 in low-empathy group and 21 in high-empathy group) were enrolled in this study. They were subjected to positive, negative, and neutral emotion evoking, as well as conflicting or nonconflicting proposals. Event-related potential technology was used to study the combinatorial effects of empathy and emotion on the processing of conflict of interest. We found that under the influence of a positive emotion, both low- and high-empathy groups exhibited lower rejection rates. In the context of conflict, individuals in the high-empathy group showed fewer refusals under positive emotion. In the low-empathy group, there was no significant difference between responses to different emotions, but conflicting proposals induced more negative medial frontal negativity than nonconflicting proposals. Individuals in the low-empathy group showed different late positive potentials when responding to different types of proposals under both neutral and negative emotions, whereas those in the high-empathy group only showed different late positive potentials responding to different types of proposals under negative emotion. Our results indicate that under positive emotion, individuals with low empathy show less difference in processing either conflicting or nonconflicting proposals, whereas under negative emotion, individuals with high empathy show enhanced motivation toward nonconflicting proposals.

Enjoying Sad Music: Paradox or Parallel Processes?

PubMed Central

Schubert, Emery

2016-01-01

Enjoyment of negative emotions in music is seen by many as a paradox. This article argues that the paradox exists because it is difficult to view the process that generates enjoyment as being part of the same system that also generates the subjective negative feeling. Compensation theories explain the paradox as the compensation of a negative emotion by the concomitant presence of one or more positive emotions. But compensation brings us no closer to explaining the paradox because it does not explain how experiencing sadness itself is enjoyed. The solution proposed is that an emotion is determined by three critical processes—labeled motivational action tendency (MAT), subjective feeling (SF) and Appraisal. For many emotions the MAT and SF processes are coupled in valence. For example, happiness has positive MAT and positive SF, annoyance has negative MAT and negative SF. However, it is argued that in an aesthetic context, such as listening to music, emotion processes can become decoupled. The decoupling is controlled by the Appraisal process, which can assess if the context of the sadness is real-life (where coupling occurs) or aesthetic (where decoupling can occur). In an aesthetic context sadness retains its negative SF but the aversive, negative MAT is inhibited, leaving sadness to still be experienced as a negative valanced emotion, while contributing to the overall positive MAT. Individual differences, mood and previous experiences mediate the degree to which the aversive aspects of MAT are inhibited according to this Parallel Processing Hypothesis (PPH). The reason for hesitancy in considering or testing PPH, as well as the preponderance of research on sadness at the exclusion of other negative emotions, are discussed. PMID:27445752

The endocannabinoid system and emotional processing: a pharmacological fMRI study with ∆9-tetrahydrocannabinol.

PubMed

Bossong, Matthijs G; van Hell, Hendrika H; Jager, Gerry; Kahn, René S; Ramsey, Nick F; Jansma, J Martijn

2013-12-01

Various psychiatric disorders such as major depression are associated with abnormalities in emotional processing. Evidence indicating involvement of the endocannabinoid system in emotional processing, and thus potentially in related abnormalities, is increasing. In the present study, we examined the role of the endocannabinoid system in processing of stimuli with a positive and negative emotional content in healthy volunteers. A pharmacological functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was conducted with a placebo-controlled, cross-over design, investigating effects of the endocannabinoid agonist ∆9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on brain function related to emotional processing in 11 healthy subjects. Performance and brain activity during matching of stimuli with a negative ('fearful faces') or a positive content ('happy faces') were assessed after placebo and THC administration. After THC administration, performance accuracy was decreased for stimuli with a negative but not for stimuli with a positive emotional content. Our task activated a network of brain regions including amygdala, orbital frontal gyrus, hippocampus, parietal gyrus, prefrontal cortex, and regions in the occipital cortex. THC interacted with emotional content, as activity in this network was reduced for negative content, while activity for positive content was increased. These results indicate that THC administration reduces the negative bias in emotional processing. This adds human evidence to support the hypothesis that the endocannabinoid system is involved in modulation of emotional processing. Our findings also suggest a possible role for the endocannabinoid system in abnormal emotional processing, and may thus be relevant for psychiatric disorders such as major depression. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. and ECNP. All rights reserved.

Independent and Collaborative Contributions of the Cerebral Hemispheres to Emotional Processing

PubMed Central

Shobe, Elizabeth R.

2014-01-01

Presented is a model suggesting that the right hemisphere (RH) directly mediates the identification and comprehension of positive and negative emotional stimuli, whereas the left hemisphere (LH) contributes to higher level processing of emotional information that has been shared via the corpus callosum. RH subcortical connections provide initial processing of emotional stimuli, and their innervation to cortical structures provides a secondary pathway by which the hemispheres process emotional information more fully. It is suggested that the LH contribution to emotion processing is in emotional regulation, social well-being, and adaptation, and transforming the RH emotional experience into propositional and verbal codes. Lastly, it is proposed that the LH has little ability at the level of emotion identification, having a default positive bias and no ability to identify a stimulus as negative. Instead, the LH must rely on the transfer of emotional information from the RH to engage higher-order emotional processing. As such, either hemisphere can identify positive emotions, but they must collaborate for complete processing of negative emotions. Evidence presented draws from behavioral, neurological, and clinical research, including discussions of subcortical and cortical pathways, callosal agenesis, commissurotomy, emotion regulation, mood disorders, interpersonal interaction, language, and handedness. Directions for future research are offered. PMID:24795597

Sex differences in effective fronto-limbic connectivity during negative emotion processing.

PubMed

Lungu, Ovidiu; Potvin, Stéphane; Tikàsz, Andràs; Mendrek, Adrianna

2015-12-01

In view of the greater prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders in women than in men, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have examined sex-differences in brain activations during emotion processing. Comparatively, sex-differences in brain connectivity received little attention, despite evidence for important fronto-limbic connections during emotion processing across sexes. Here, we investigated sex-differences in fronto-limbic connectivity during negative emotion processing. Forty-six healthy individuals (25 women, 21 men) viewed negative, positive and neutral images during an fMRI session. Effective connectivity between significantly activated regions was examined using Granger causality and psychophysical interaction analyses. Sex steroid hormones and feminine-masculine traits were also measured. Subjective ratings of negative emotional images were higher in women than in men. Across sexes, significant activations were observed in the dorso-medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and the right amygdala. Granger connectivity from right amygdala was significantly greater than that from dmPFC during the 'high negative' condition, an effect driven by men. Magnitude of this effect correlated negatively with highly negative image ratings and feminine traits and positively with testosterone levels. These results highlight critical sex differences in brain connectivity during negative emotion processing and point to the fact that both biological (sex steroid hormones) and psychosocial (gender role and identity) variables contribute to them. As the dmPFC is involved in social cognition and action planning, and the amygdala-in threat detection, the connectivity results suggest that compared to women, men have a more evaluative, rather than purely affective, brain response during negative emotion processing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

No fear, no panic: probing negation as a means for emotion regulation

PubMed Central

Deutsch, Roland; Platte, Petra; Pauli, Paul

2013-01-01

This electroencephalographic study investigated if negating one’s emotion results in paradoxical effects or leads to effective emotional downregulation. Healthy participants were asked to downregulate their emotions to happy and fearful faces by using negated emotional cue words (e.g. no fun, no fear). Cue words were congruent with the emotion depicted in the face and presented prior to each face. Stimuli were presented in blocks of happy and fearful faces. Blocks of passive stimulus viewing served as control condition. Active regulation reduced amplitudes of early event-related brain potentials (early posterior negativity, but not N170) and the late positive potential for fearful faces. A fronto-central negativity peaking at about 250 ms after target face onset showed larger amplitude modulations during downregulation of fearful and happy faces. Behaviorally, negating was more associated with reappraisal than with suppression. Our results suggest that in an emotional context, negation processing could be quite effective for emotional downregulation but that its effects depend on the type of the negated emotion (pleasant vs unpleasant). Results are discussed in the context of dual process models of cognition and emotion regulation. PMID:22490924

The Preponderance of Negative Emotion Words in the Emotion Lexicon: A Cross-Generational and Cross-Linguistic Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schrauf, Robert W.; Sanchez, Julia

2004-01-01

The "working emotion vocabulary" typically shows a preponderance of words for negative emotions (50%) over positive (30%) and neutral (20%) emotions. The theory of affect-as-information suggests that negative emotions signal problems or threat in the environment and are accompanied by detailed and systematic cognitive processing, while…

Positive and negative emotion enhances the processing of famous faces in a semantic judgment task.

PubMed

Bate, Sarah; Haslam, Catherine; Hodgson, Timothy L; Jansari, Ashok; Gregory, Nicola; Kay, Janice

2010-01-01

Previous work has consistently reported a facilitatory influence of positive emotion in face recognition (e.g., D'Argembeau, Van der Linden, Comblain, & Etienne, 2003). However, these reports asked participants to make recognition judgments in response to faces, and it is unknown whether emotional valence may influence other stages of processing, such as at the level of semantics. Furthermore, other evidence suggests that negative rather than positive emotion facilitates higher level judgments when processing nonfacial stimuli (e.g., Mickley & Kensinger, 2008), and it is possible that negative emotion also influences latter stages of face processing. The present study addressed this issue, examining the influence of emotional valence while participants made semantic judgments in response to a set of famous faces. Eye movements were monitored while participants performed this task, and analyses revealed a reduction in information extraction for the faces of liked and disliked celebrities compared with those of emotionally neutral celebrities. Thus, in contrast to work using familiarity judgments, both positive and negative emotion facilitated processing in this semantic-based task. This pattern of findings is discussed in relation to current models of face processing. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Gender-specific effects of emotional modulation on visual temporal order thresholds.

PubMed

Liang, Wei; Zhang, Jiyuan; Bao, Yan

2015-09-01

Emotions affect temporal information processing in the low-frequency time window of a few seconds, but little is known about their effect in the high-frequency domain of some tens of milliseconds. The present study aims to investigate whether negative and positive emotional states influence the ability to discriminate the temporal order of visual stimuli, and whether gender plays a role in temporal processing. Due to the hemispheric lateralization of emotion, a hemispheric asymmetry between the left and the right visual field might be expected. Using a block design, subjects were primed with neutral, negative and positive emotional pictures before performing temporal order judgment tasks. Results showed that male subjects exhibited similarly reduced order thresholds under negative and positive emotional states, while female subjects demonstrated increased threshold under positive emotional state and reduced threshold under negative emotional state. Besides, emotions influenced female subjects more intensely than male subjects, and no hemispheric lateralization was observed. These observations indicate an influence of emotional states on temporal order processing of visual stimuli, and they suggest a gender difference, which is possibly associated with a different emotional stability.

Unconscious and conscious processing of negative emotions examined through affective priming.

PubMed

Okubo, Chisa; Ogawa, Toshiki

2013-04-01

This study investigated unconscious and conscious processes by which negative emotions arise. Participants (26 men, 47 women; M age = 20.3 yr.) evaluated target words that were primed with subliminally or supraliminally presented emotional pictures. Stimulus onset asynchrony was either 200 or 800 msec. With subliminal presentations, reaction times to negative targets were longer than reaction times to positive targets after negative primes for the 200-msec. stimulus onset asynchrony. Reaction times to positive targets after negative or positive primes were shorter when the stimulus onset asynchrony was 800 msec. For supraliminal presentations, reaction times were longer when evaluating targets that followed emotionally opposite primes. When emotional stimuli were consciously distinguished, the evoked emotional states might lead to emotional conflicts, although the qualitatively different effects might be caused when subliminally presented emotion evoking stimulus was appraised unconsciously; that possibility was discussed.

Negative Emotion Weakens the Degree of Self-Reference Effect: Evidence from ERPs

PubMed Central

Fan, Wei; Zhong, Yiping; Li, Jin; Yang, Zilu; Zhan, Youlong; Cai, Ronghua; Fu, Xiaolan

2016-01-01

We investigated the influence of negative emotion on the degree of self-reference effect using event-related potentials (ERPs). We presented emotional pictures and self-referential stimuli (stimuli that accelerate and improve processing and improve memory of information related to an individual’s self-concept) in sequence. Participants judged the color of the target stimulus (self-referential stimuli). ERP results showed that the target stimuli elicited larger P2 amplitudes under neutral conditions than under negative emotional conditions. Under neutral conditions, N2 amplitudes for highly self-relevant names (target stimulus) were smaller than those for any other names. Under negative emotional conditions, highly and moderately self-referential stimuli activated smaller N2 amplitudes. P3 amplitudes activated by self-referential processing under negative emotional conditions were smaller than neutral conditions. In the left and central sites, highly self-relevant names activated larger P3 amplitudes than any other names. But in the central sites, moderately self-relevant names activated larger P3 amplitudes than non-self-relevant names. The findings indicate that negative emotional processing could weaken the degree of self-reference effect. PMID:27733836

Anxiety, emotional processing and depression in people with multiple sclerosis.

PubMed

Gay, Marie-Claire; Bungener, Catherine; Thomas, Sarah; Vrignaud, Pierre; Thomas, Peter W; Baker, Roger; Montel, Sébastien; Heinzlef, Olivier; Papeix, Caroline; Assouad, Rana; Montreuil, Michèle

2017-02-23

Despite the high comorbidity of anxiety and depression in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), little is known about their inter-relationships. Both involve emotional perturbations and the way in which emotions are processed is likely central to both. The aim of the current study was to explore relationships between the domains of mood, emotional processing and coping and to analyse how anxiety affects coping, emotional processing, emotional balance and depression in people with MS. A cross-sectional questionnaire study involving 189 people with MS with a confirmed diagnosis of MS recruited from three French hospitals. Study participants completed a battery of questionnaires encompassing the following domains: i. anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS)); ii. emotional processing (Emotional Processing Scale (EPS-25)); iii. positive and negative emotions (Positive and Negative Emotionality Scale (EPN-31)); iv. alexithymia (Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire) and v. coping (Coping with Health Injuries and Problems-Neuro (CHIP-Neuro) questionnaire. Relationships between these domains were explored using path analysis. Anxiety was a strong predictor of depression, in both a direct and indirect way, and our model explained 48% of the variance of depression. Gender and functional status (measured by the Expanded Disability Status Scale) played a modest role. Non-depressed people with MS reported high levels of negative emotions and low levels of positive emotions. Anxiety also had an indirect impact on depression via one of the subscales of the Emotional Processing Scale ("Unregulated Emotion") and via negative emotions (EPN-31). This research confirms that anxiety is a vulnerability factor for depression via both direct and indirect pathways. Anxiety symptoms should therefore be assessed systematically and treated in order to lessen the likelihood of depression symptoms.

Auditory attention enhances processing of positive and negative words in inferior and superior prefrontal cortex.

PubMed

Wegrzyn, Martin; Herbert, Cornelia; Ethofer, Thomas; Flaisch, Tobias; Kissler, Johanna

2017-11-01

Visually presented emotional words are processed preferentially and effects of emotional content are similar to those of explicit attention deployment in that both amplify visual processing. However, auditory processing of emotional words is less well characterized and interactions between emotional content and task-induced attention have not been fully understood. Here, we investigate auditory processing of emotional words, focussing on how auditory attention to positive and negative words impacts their cerebral processing. A Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study manipulating word valence and attention allocation was performed. Participants heard negative, positive and neutral words to which they either listened passively or attended by counting negative or positive words, respectively. Regardless of valence, active processing compared to passive listening increased activity in primary auditory cortex, left intraparietal sulcus, and right superior frontal gyrus (SFG). The attended valence elicited stronger activity in left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left SFG, in line with these regions' role in semantic retrieval and evaluative processing. No evidence for valence-specific attentional modulation in auditory regions or distinct valence-specific regional activations (i.e., negative > positive or positive > negative) was obtained. Thus, allocation of auditory attention to positive and negative words can substantially increase their processing in higher-order language and evaluative brain areas without modulating early stages of auditory processing. Inferior and superior frontal brain structures mediate interactions between emotional content, attention, and working memory when prosodically neutral speech is processed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Disentangling brain activity related to the processing of emotional visual information and emotional arousal.

PubMed

Kuniecki, Michał; Wołoszyn, Kinga; Domagalik, Aleksandra; Pilarczyk, Joanna

2018-05-01

Processing of emotional visual information engages cognitive functions and induces arousal. We aimed to examine the modulatory role of emotional valence on brain activations linked to the processing of visual information and those linked to arousal. Participants were scanned and their pupil size was measured while viewing negative and neutral images. The visual noise was added to the images in various proportions to parametrically manipulate the amount of visual information. Pupil size was used as an index of physiological arousal. We show that arousal induced by the negative images, as compared to the neutral ones, is primarily related to greater amygdala activity while increasing visibility of negative content to enhanced activity in the lateral occipital complex (LOC). We argue that more intense visual processing of negative scenes can occur irrespective of the level of arousal. It may suggest that higher areas of the visual stream are fine-tuned to process emotionally relevant objects. Both arousal and processing of emotional visual information modulated activity within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Overlapping activations within the vmPFC may reflect the integration of these aspects of emotional processing. Additionally, we show that emotionally-evoked pupil dilations are related to activations in the amygdala, vmPFC, and LOC.

Emotion perception after moderate-severe traumatic brain injury: The valence effect and the role of working memory, processing speed, and nonverbal reasoning.

PubMed

Rosenberg, Hannah; Dethier, Marie; Kessels, Roy P C; Westbrook, R Frederick; McDonald, Skye

2015-07-01

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) impairs emotion perception. Perception of negative emotions (sadness, disgust, fear, and anger) is reportedly affected more than positive (happiness and surprise) ones. It has been argued that this reflects a specialized neural network underpinning negative emotions that is vulnerable to brain injury. However, studies typically do not equate for differential difficulty between emotions. We aimed to examine whether emotion recognition deficits in people with TBI were specific to negative emotions, while equating task difficulty, and to determine whether perception deficits might be accounted for by other cognitive processes. Twenty-seven people with TBI and 28 matched control participants identified 6 basic emotions at 2 levels of intensity (a) the conventional 100% intensity and (b) "equated intensity"-that is, an intensity that yielded comparable accuracy rates across emotions in controls. (a) At 100% intensity, the TBI group was impaired in recognizing anger, fear, and disgust but not happiness, surprise, or sadness and performed worse on negative than positive emotions. (b) At equated intensity, the TBI group was poorer than controls overall but not differentially poorer in recognizing negative emotions. Although processing speed and nonverbal reasoning were associated with emotion accuracy, injury severity by itself was a unique predictor. When task difficulty is taken into account, individuals with TBI show impairment in recognizing all facial emotions. There was no evidence for a specific impairment for negative emotions or any particular emotion. Impairment was accounted for by injury severity rather than being a secondary effect of reduced neuropsychological functioning. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Mothers' depressive symptoms and children's externalizing behavior: Children's negative emotionality in the development of hostile attributions.

PubMed

Wang, Yiji; Dix, Theodore

2017-03-01

This study examined processes that might account for why negatively emotional children are at high risk for externalizing behavior problems when raised by mothers with depressive symptoms. Because negative emotionality regulates adaptation to stress, we predicted that it would undermine children's adjustment to mothers' depressive symptoms by increasing child emotions likely to elicit reciprocal negativity from depressed mothers, bias negatively children's attributions about others, and activate difficult-to-control oppositional responses. In a large sample (N = 1,082) evaluated from 6 months to second grade, results showed that, when mothers had depressive symptoms early in the child's development, children who were high in negative emotionality-but not those who were low-displayed increased risk for externalizing problems in second grade. This risk reflected tendencies for negatively emotional children, when raised by mothers with depressive symptoms, to develop hostile attributions about others and poor self-regulation of the negativity these attributions promote. The findings suggest that, when mothers with depressive symptoms raise negatively emotional children, children's risk for externalizing behavior problems may reflect tendencies for high negative emotion in children and reciprocal negativity in the dyad to undermine the development of attributional and self-regulatory processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

How the Emotional Content of Discourse Affects Language Comprehension

PubMed Central

Jiménez-Ortega, Laura; Martín-Loeches, Manuel; Casado, Pilar; Sel, Alejandra; Fondevila, Sabela; de Tejada, Pilar Herreros; Schacht, Annekathrin; Sommer, Werner

2012-01-01

Emotion effects on cognition have often been reported. However, only few studies investigated emotional effects on subsequent language processing, and in most cases these effects were induced by non-linguistic stimuli such as films, faces, or pictures. Here, we investigated how a paragraph of positive, negative, or neutral emotional valence affects the processing of a subsequent emotionally neutral sentence, which contained either semantic, syntactic, or no violation, respectively, by means of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Behavioral data revealed strong effects of emotion; error rates and reaction times increased significantly in sentences preceded by a positive paragraph relative to negative and neutral ones. In ERPs, the N400 to semantic violations was not affected by emotion. In the syntactic experiment, however, clear emotion effects were observed on ERPs. The left anterior negativity (LAN) to syntactic violations, which was not visible in the neutral condition, was present in the negative and positive conditions. This is interpreted as reflecting modulatory effects of prior emotions on syntactic processing, which is discussed in the light of three alternative or complementary explanations based on emotion-induced cognitive styles, working memory, and arousal models. The present effects of emotion on the LAN are especially remarkable considering that syntactic processing has often been regarded as encapsulated and autonomous. PMID:22479432

Subliminal Emotional Words Impact Syntactic Processing: Evidence from Performance and Event-Related Brain Potentials.

PubMed

Jiménez-Ortega, Laura; Espuny, Javier; de Tejada, Pilar Herreros; Vargas-Rivero, Carolina; Martín-Loeches, Manuel

2017-01-01

Recent studies demonstrate that syntactic processing can be affected by emotional information and that subliminal emotional information can also affect cognitive processes. In this study, we explore whether unconscious emotional information may also impact syntactic processing. In an Event-Related brain Potential (ERP) study, positive, neutral and negative subliminal adjectives were inserted within neutral sentences, just before the presentation of the supraliminal adjective. They could either be correct (50%) or contain a morphosyntactic violation (number or gender disagreements). Larger error rates were observed for incorrect sentences than for correct ones, in contrast to most studies using supraliminal information. Strikingly, emotional adjectives affected the conscious syntactic processing of sentences containing morphosyntactic anomalies. The neutral condition elicited left anterior negativity (LAN) followed by a P600 component. However, a lack of anterior negativity and an early P600 onset for the negative condition were found, probably as a result of the negative subliminal correct adjective capturing early syntactic resources. Positive masked adjectives in turn prompted an N400 component in response to morphosyntactic violations, probably reflecting the induction of a heuristic processing mode involving access to lexico-semantic information to solve agreement anomalies. Our results add to recent evidence on the impact of emotional information on syntactic processing, while showing that this can occur even when the reader is unaware of the emotional stimuli.

Subliminal Emotional Words Impact Syntactic Processing: Evidence from Performance and Event-Related Brain Potentials

PubMed Central

Jiménez-Ortega, Laura; Espuny, Javier; de Tejada, Pilar Herreros; Vargas-Rivero, Carolina; Martín-Loeches, Manuel

2017-01-01

Recent studies demonstrate that syntactic processing can be affected by emotional information and that subliminal emotional information can also affect cognitive processes. In this study, we explore whether unconscious emotional information may also impact syntactic processing. In an Event-Related brain Potential (ERP) study, positive, neutral and negative subliminal adjectives were inserted within neutral sentences, just before the presentation of the supraliminal adjective. They could either be correct (50%) or contain a morphosyntactic violation (number or gender disagreements). Larger error rates were observed for incorrect sentences than for correct ones, in contrast to most studies using supraliminal information. Strikingly, emotional adjectives affected the conscious syntactic processing of sentences containing morphosyntactic anomalies. The neutral condition elicited left anterior negativity (LAN) followed by a P600 component. However, a lack of anterior negativity and an early P600 onset for the negative condition were found, probably as a result of the negative subliminal correct adjective capturing early syntactic resources. Positive masked adjectives in turn prompted an N400 component in response to morphosyntactic violations, probably reflecting the induction of a heuristic processing mode involving access to lexico-semantic information to solve agreement anomalies. Our results add to recent evidence on the impact of emotional information on syntactic processing, while showing that this can occur even when the reader is unaware of the emotional stimuli. PMID:28487640

Emotional processing in anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex

PubMed Central

Etkin, Amit; Egner, Tobias; Kalisch, Raffael

2010-01-01

Negative emotional stimuli activate a broad network, including the medial prefrontal (mPFC) and anterior cingulate (ACC) cortices. An early influential view dichotomized these regions into dorsal-caudal “cognitive” and ventral-rostral “affective” subdivisions. In this review, we examine a wealth of recent research on negative emotions in animals and humans, using the example of fear/anxiety, and conclude that, contrary to the traditional dichotomy, both subdivisions make key contributions to emotional processing. Specifically, dorsal-caudal regions of the ACC/mPFC are involved in appraisal and expression of negative emotion, while ventral-rostral portions of the ACC/mPFC have a regulatory role with respect to limbic regions involved in generating emotional responses. Moreover, this new framework is broadly consistent with emerging data on other negative and positive emotions. PMID:21167765

Machine Learning to Differentiate Between Positive and Negative Emotions Using Pupil Diameter

PubMed Central

Babiker, Areej; Faye, Ibrahima; Prehn, Kristin; Malik, Aamir

2015-01-01

Pupil diameter (PD) has been suggested as a reliable parameter for identifying an individual’s emotional state. In this paper, we introduce a learning machine technique to detect and differentiate between positive and negative emotions. We presented 30 participants with positive and negative sound stimuli and recorded pupillary responses. The results showed a significant increase in pupil dilation during the processing of negative and positive sound stimuli with greater increase for negative stimuli. We also found a more sustained dilation for negative compared to positive stimuli at the end of the trial, which was utilized to differentiate between positive and negative emotions using a machine learning approach which gave an accuracy of 96.5% with sensitivity of 97.93% and specificity of 98%. The obtained results were validated using another dataset designed for a different study and which was recorded while 30 participants processed word pairs with positive and negative emotions. PMID:26733912

Cut! that’s a wrap: regulating negative emotion by ending emotion-eliciting situations

PubMed Central

Vujovic, Lara; Opitz, Philipp C.; Birk, Jeffrey L.; Urry, Heather L.

2014-01-01

Little is known about the potentially powerful set of emotion regulation (ER) processes that target emotion-eliciting situations. We thus studied the decision to end emotion-eliciting situations in the laboratory. We hypothesized that people would try to end negative situations more frequently than neutral situations to regulate distress. In addition, motivated by the selection, optimization, and compensation with ER framework, we hypothesized that failed attempts to end the situation would prompt either (a) greater negative emotion or (b) compensatory use of a different ER process, attentional deployment (AD). Fifty-eight participants (18–26 years old, 67% women) viewed negative and neutral pictures and pressed a key whenever they wished to stop viewing them. After key press, the picture disappeared (“success”) or stayed (“failure”) on screen. To index emotion, we measured corrugator and electrodermal activity, heart rate, and self-reported arousal. To index overt AD, we measured eye gaze. As their reason for ending the situation, participants more frequently reported being upset by high- than low-arousal negative pictures; they more frequently reported being bored by low- than high-arousal neutral pictures. Nevertheless, participants’ negative emotional responding did not increase in the context of ER failure nor did they use overt AD as a compensatory ER strategy. We conclude that situation-targeted ER processes are used to regulate emotional responses to high-arousal negative and low-arousal neutral situations; ER processes other than overt AD may be used to compensate for ER failure in this context. PMID:24592251

Age-related differences in attention and memory toward emotional stimuli.

PubMed

Bi, Dandan; Han, Buxin

2015-09-01

From the perspectives of time perception and motivation, socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) postulates that in comparison with younger adults, older adults tend to prefer positive stimuli and avoid negative stimuli. Currently the cross-cultural consistency of this positivity effect (PE) is still not clear. While empirical evidence for Western populations is accumulating, the validation of the PE in Asians is still rare. The current study compared 28 younger and 24 older Chinese adults in the processing of emotional information. Eye-tracking and recognition data of participants in processing pictures with positive, negative, or neutral emotional information sampled from the International Affection Picture System were collected. The results showed less negative bias for emotional attention in older adults than in younger adults, whereas for emotional recognition, only younger adults showed a negative bias while older adults showed no bias between negative and positive emotional information. Overall, compared with younger adults, emotional processing was more positive in older adults. It was concluded that Chinese older adults show a PE. © 2015 The Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

Dissociation in Rating Negative Facial Emotions between Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia and Major Depressive Disorder.

PubMed

Chiu, Isabelle; Piguet, Olivier; Diehl-Schmid, Janine; Riedl, Lina; Beck, Johannes; Leyhe, Thomas; Holsboer-Trachsler, Edith; Berres, Manfred; Monsch, Andreas U; Sollberger, Marc

2016-11-01

Features of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) such as executive dysfunction, apathy, and impaired empathic abilities are also observed in major depressive disorder (MDD). This may contribute to the reason why early stage bvFTD is often misdiagnosed as MDD. New assessment tools are thus needed to improve early diagnosis of bvFTD. Although emotion processing is affected in bvFTD and MDD, growing evidence indicates that the pattern of emotion processing deficits varies between the two disorders. As such, emotion processing paradigms have substantial potentials to distinguish bvFTD from MDD. The current study compared 25 patients with bvFTD, 21 patients with MDD, 21 patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) dementia, and 31 healthy participants on a novel facial emotion intensity rating task. Stimuli comprised morphed faces from the Ekman and Friesen stimulus set containing faces of each sex with two different degrees of emotion intensity for each of the six basic emotions. Analyses of covariance uncovered a significant dissociation between bvFTD and MDD patients in rating the intensity of negative emotions overall (i.e., bvFTD patients underrated negative emotions overall, whereas MDD patients overrated negative emotions overall compared with healthy participants). In contrast, AD dementia patients rated negative emotions similarly to healthy participants, suggesting no impact of cognitive deficits on rating facial emotions. By strongly differentiating bvFTD and MDDpatients through negative facial emotions, this sensitive and short rating task might help improve the early diagnosis of bvFTD. Copyright © 2016 American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. All rights reserved.

The Distancing-Embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception.

PubMed

Menninghaus, Winfried; Wagner, Valentin; Hanich, Julian; Wassiliwizky, Eugen; Jacobsen, Thomas; Koelsch, Stefan

2017-01-01

Why are negative emotions so central in art reception far beyond tragedy? Revisiting classical aesthetics in the light of recent psychological research, we present a novel model to explain this much discussed (apparent) paradox. We argue that negative emotions are an important resource for the arts in general, rather than a special license for exceptional art forms only. The underlying rationale is that negative emotions have been shown to be particularly powerful in securing attention, intense emotional involvement, and high memorability, and hence is precisely what artworks strive for. Two groups of processing mechanisms are identified that conjointly adopt the particular powers of negative emotions for art's purposes. The first group consists of psychological distancing mechanisms that are activated along with the cognitive schemata of art, representation, and fiction. These schemata imply personal safety and control over continuing or discontinuing exposure to artworks, thereby preventing negative emotions from becoming outright incompatible with expectations of enjoyment. This distancing sets the stage for a second group of processing components that allow art recipients to positively embrace the experiencing of negative emotions, thereby rendering art reception more intense, more interesting, more emotionally moving, more profound, and occasionally even more beautiful. These components include compositional interplays of positive and negative emotions, the effects of aesthetic virtues of using the media of (re)presentation (musical sound, words/language, color, shapes) on emotion perception, and meaning-making efforts. Moreover, our Distancing-Embracing model proposes that concomitant mixed emotions often help integrate negative emotions into altogether pleasurable trajectories.

Can bottom-up processes of attention be a source of 'interference' in situations where top-down control of attention is crucial?

PubMed

Nikolla, Dritan; Edgar, Graham; Catherwood, Dianne; Matthews, Tristan

2018-02-01

In this study, we investigate whether emotionally engaged bottom-up processes of attention can be a source of 'interference' in situations where top-down control of attention is necessary. Participants were asked to monitor and report on a video of a war scenario showing a developing battle in two conditions: emotionally positive and emotionally negative. Half of the participants (n = 15) were exposed to task-irrelevant pictures of positive emotional valence embedded within the scenario; the other half were exposed to task-irrelevant pictures of negative emotional valence. Sensitivity and Bias scores were calculated using signal detection theory. Overall, task accuracy scores were dependent upon the valence; negative pictures had an adverse effect on performance, whereas positive pictures improved performance. We concluded that negative emotional pictures interfered with top-down control of attention by attracting competing bottom-up processes of attention. We found the opposite effect for positive emotional stimuli. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

Negative incidental emotions augment fairness sensitivity.

PubMed

Liu, Cuizhen; Chai, Jing Wen; Yu, Rongjun

2016-04-22

Previous studies have shown that task-unrelated emotions induced incidentally exert carryover effects on individuals' subsequent decisions in financial negotiations. However, the specificity of these emotion effects are not clear. In three experiments, we systematically investigated the role of seven transiently induced basic emotions (disgust, sadness, anger, fear, happiness, surprise and neutral) on rejection of unfair offers using the ultimatum game. We found that all negative emotions (disgust, sadness, anger and fear), but not happiness or surprise, significantly increased rejection rates, suggesting that the effect of incidental negative emotions on fairness is not specific to the type of negative emotion. Our findings highlight the role of fleeting emotions in biasing decision-making processes and suggest that all incidental negative emotions exert similar effects on fairness sensitivity, possibly by potentiating attention towards negative aspects of the situation.

Self-evaluative and emotion processes linked with brooding rumination among adolescents

PubMed Central

Burwell, Rebecca A.

2016-01-01

Rumination has been linked with a number of deleterious outcomes, though relatively little is known about self-evaluative and emotion processes by which it develops. The current investigation uses a prospective, longitudinal design and self-report measures to examine the role of contingent self-worth, perfectionism, negative emotion beliefs, and suppression of negative emotion in predicting the development of brooding and reflective forms of rumination among 168 adolescents (98 girls, 79.6% European-American) undergoing the transition to high school (Mage = 13.58). Results of structural equation modeling indicate that self-evaluative vulnerability (i.e., self-worth contingencies, perfectionism) and negative emotion beliefs, but not the suppression of negative emotion, predict brooding (but not reflective) rumination. The current study demonstrates how brooding is intertwined with views of self and core assumptions about emotion. PMID:25900099

Emotional words facilitate lexical but not early visual processing.

PubMed

Trauer, Sophie M; Kotz, Sonja A; Müller, Matthias M

2015-12-12

Emotional scenes and faces have shown to capture and bind visual resources at early sensory processing stages, i.e. in early visual cortex. However, emotional words have led to mixed results. In the current study ERPs were assessed simultaneously with steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) to measure attention effects on early visual activity in emotional word processing. Neutral and negative words were flickered at 12.14 Hz whilst participants performed a Lexical Decision Task. Emotional word content did not modulate the 12.14 Hz SSVEP amplitude, neither did word lexicality. However, emotional words affected the ERP. Negative compared to neutral words as well as words compared to pseudowords lead to enhanced deflections in the P2 time range indicative of lexico-semantic access. The N400 was reduced for negative compared to neutral words and enhanced for pseudowords compared to words indicating facilitated semantic processing of emotional words. LPC amplitudes reflected word lexicality and thus the task-relevant response. In line with previous ERP and imaging evidence, the present results indicate that written emotional words are facilitated in processing only subsequent to visual analysis.

[Attentional bias and emotional suppression in borderline personality disorder].

PubMed

Fernando, Silvia Carvalho; Griepenstroh, Julia; Urban, Sabine; Driessen, Martin; Beblo, Thomas

2014-01-01

Emotion regulation dysfunctions marked by negative affectivity are a core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). In addition, patients with BPD show disturbed attentional processes which become particularly apparent in the domain of selective attention when emotional stimuli are presented (negative attentional bias). Assuming that emotion regulation is linked to attentional deployment processes, this study aimed (1) to determine whether a negative attentional bias is established by using film clips of fearful faces and (2) to investigate the association between dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies (emotional suppression) and negative attention bias in BPD. We investigated 18 inpatients with BPD and 18 healthy control participants using the modified version of the fearful face-paradigm to assess the inhibition of emotional stimuli. We also administered self-report emotion regulation questionnaires. Compared to the healthy controls, patients with BPD showed significant longer reaction times during the emotional versus the neutral film stimuli in the modified fearful face-paradigm. With regard to the second hypothesis, we failed to find an association between the negative attentional bias and the habitual use of emotional suppression in BPD. In this study, we could confirm an attentional bias for negative stimuli, using complex, dynamic material. Future studies need to address the impact of confounding variables (e. g. comorbid disorders) on the relationship between maladaptive emotion regulation and selective attentional bias.

Effects of Creative Thinking and Its Personality Determinants on Negative Emotion Regulation.

PubMed

Chiu, Fa-Chung; Hsu, Chih-Chun; Lin, Yao-Nan; Liu, Cheng-Hong; Chen, Hsueh-Chih; Lin, Chi-Hsiang

2018-01-01

This study investigated the relationship between creativity and negative emotion, and the effects of integrating creative insight into the reappraisal process on negative emotions. In Study 1, participants' creativity and baseline anxiety levels were measured; then anxiety was induced, and anxiety levels were reassessed. In Study 2, participants wrote about past negative events and then completed the positive and negative affect schedule. They were split into three groups (insight reappraisal, simple reappraisal, or control groups); each of them received a separate intervention, and then they completed positive and negative affect schedule again. In Study 3, participants were randomly assigned to insight reappraisal or control groups; apart from measuring cognitive changes, the procedures were identical to Study 2. All participants were undergraduate students. Results showed that flexibility, originality, risk-taking, and complexity are negatively correlated with anxiety, and that insight reappraisal can induce insight experience and enhance cognitive changes, and reduce negative emotional responses. Therefore, integrating creative insight into the reappraisal process can enhance its effectiveness in reducing negative emotions.

The emotion paradox in the aging brain.

PubMed

Mather, Mara

2012-03-01

This paper reviews age differences in emotion processing and how they may relate to age-related changes in the brain. Compared with younger adults, older adults react less to negative situations, ignore irrelevant negative stimuli better, and remember relatively more positive than negative information. Older adults' ability to insulate their thoughts and emotional reactions from negative situations is likely due to a number of factors, such as being less influenced by interoceptive cues, selecting different emotion regulation strategies, having less age-related decline in prefrontal regions associated with emotional control than in other prefrontal regions, and engaging in emotion regulation strategies as a default mode in their everyday lives. Healthy older adults' avoidance of processing negative stimuli may contribute to their well-maintained emotional well-being. However, when cardiovascular disease leads to additional prefrontal white matter damage, older adults have fewer cognitive control mechanisms available to regulate their emotions, making them more vulnerable to depression. In general, although age-related changes in the brain help shape emotional experience, shifts in preferred strategies and goal priorities are also important influences. © 2012 New York Academy of Sciences.

The emotion paradox in the aging brain

PubMed Central

Mather, Mara

2012-01-01

This paper reviews age differences in emotion processing and how they may relate to age-related changes in the brain. Compared with younger adults, older adults react less to negative situations, ignore irrelevant negative stimuli better, and remember relatively more positive than negative information. Older adults’ ability to insulate their thoughts and emotional reactions from negative situations is likely due to a number of factors, such as being less influenced by interoceptive cues, selecting different emotion regulation strategies, having less age-related decline in prefrontal regions associated with emotional control than in other prefrontal regions, and engaging in emotion regulation strategies as a default mode in their everyday lives. Healthy older adults’ avoidance of processing negative stimuli may contribute to their well-maintained emotional well-being. However, when cardiovascular disease leads to additional prefrontal white matter damage, older adults have fewer cognitive control mechanisms available to regulate their emotions, making them more vulnerable to depression. In general, while age-related changes in the brain help shape emotional experience, shifts in preferred strategies and goal priorities are also important influences. PMID:22409159

The influence of positive and negative emotional associations on semantic processing in depression: an fMRI study.

PubMed

Sass, Katharina; Habel, Ute; Kellermann, Thilo; Mathiak, Klaus; Gauggel, Siegfried; Kircher, Tilo

2014-02-01

In depression, patients suffer from emotional and cognitive deficits, among others in semantic processing. If these semantic deficits are cognitive or interact with emotional dysfunctions, is still an open question. The aim of the current study was to investigate the influence of emotional valence on the neural correlates of semantic priming in major depression. In a lexical decision task, positive, negative, and neutral word pairs were presented during fMRI measurement. Nineteen inpatients and 19 demographically matched controls were recruited. Behaviorally, positive and neutral valence induced a priming effect whereas negative valence induced no effect (controls) or even inhibition (slower RT for related stimuli) in patients. At the neural level, the semantic relation effect revealed similar neural activation in right middle frontal regions for patients and controls. Group differences emerged in the right fusiform gyrus and the ACC. Activity associated with positive valence differed at the DLPFC and amygdala and for negative valence at putamen and cerebellum. The activation of amygdala and DLPFC correlated negatively with the severity of depression. To conclude, semantic processing deficits in depression are modulated by emotional valence of the stimulus on the behavioral as well as on neural level in right-lateralized prefrontal areas and the amygdala. The results highlighted an influence of depression severity on emotion information processing as the severity of symptoms correlated negatively with neural responses to positively and negatively valenced information. Hence, the dysfunctional emotion processing may further enhance the cognitive deficits in depression. Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Reasoning strategies modulate gender differences in emotion processing.

PubMed

Markovits, Henry; Trémolière, Bastien; Blanchette, Isabelle

2018-01-01

The dual strategy model of reasoning has proposed that people's reasoning can be understood asa combination of two different ways of processing information related to problem premises: a counterexample strategy that examines information for explicit potential counterexamples and a statistical strategy that uses associative access to generate a likelihood estimate of putative conclusions. Previous studies have examined this model in the context of basic conditional reasoning tasks. However, the information processing distinction that underlies the dual strategy model can be seen asa basic description of differences in reasoning (similar to that described by many general dual process models of reasoning). In two studies, we examine how these differences in reasoning strategy may relate to processing very different information, specifically we focus on previously observed gender differences in processing negative emotions. Study 1 examined the intensity of emotional reactions to a film clip inducing primarily negative emotions. Study 2 examined the speed at which participants determine the emotional valence of sequences of negative images. In both studies, no gender differences were observed among participants using a counterexample strategy. Among participants using a statistical strategy, females produce significantly stronger emotional reactions than males (in Study 1) and were faster to recognize the valence of negative images than were males (in Study 2). Results show that the processing distinction underlying the dual strategy model of reasoning generalizes to the processing of emotions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Creativity, Psychopathology, and Emotion Processing: A Liberal Response Bias for Remembering Negative Information Is Associated with Higher Creativity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Drus, Marina; Kozbelt, Aaron; Hughes, Robert R.

2014-01-01

To what extent do more creative people process emotional information differently than less creative people? This study examined the role of emotion processing in creativity and its implications for the creativity-psychopathology association. A total of 117 participants performed a memory recognition task for negative, positive, and neutral words;…

Emotional Experience in Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia—No Evidence for a Generalized Hedonic Deficit

PubMed Central

Oorschot, Margreet; Lataster, Tineke; Thewissen, Viviane; Lardinois, Mariëlle; Wichers, Marieke; van Os, Jim; Delespaul, Philippe; Myin-Germeys, Inez

2013-01-01

Background: Deficits in emotion processing are thought to underlie the key negative symptoms flat affect and anhedonia observed in psychotic disorders. This study investigated emotional experience and social behavior in the realm of daily life in a sample of patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, stratified by level of negative symptoms. Methods: Emotional experience and behavior of 149 patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder and 143 controls were explored using the Experience Sampling Method. Results: Patients reported lower levels of positive and higher levels of negative affect compared with controls. High negative symptom patients reported similar emotional stability and capacity to generate positive affect as controls, whereas low negative symptom patients reported increased instability. All participants displayed roughly comparable emotional responses to the company of other people. However, in comparison with controls, patients showed more social withdrawal and preference to be alone while in company, particularly the high negative symptom group. Conclusions: This study revealed no evidence for a generalized hedonic deficit in patients with psychotic spectrum disorders. Lower rather than higher levels of negative symptoms were associated with a pattern of emotional processing which was different from healthy controls. PMID:22021660

Emotion recognition in borderline personality disorder: effects of emotional information on negative bias.

PubMed

Fenske, Sabrina; Lis, Stefanie; Liebke, Lisa; Niedtfeld, Inga; Kirsch, Peter; Mier, Daniela

2015-01-01

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by severe deficits in social interactions, which might be linked to deficits in emotion recognition. Research on emotion recognition abilities in BPD revealed heterogeneous results, ranging from deficits to heightened sensitivity. The most stable findings point to an impairment in the evaluation of neutral facial expressions as neutral, as well as to a negative bias in emotion recognition; that is the tendency to attribute negative emotions to neutral expressions, or in a broader sense to report a more negative emotion category than depicted. However, it remains unclear which contextual factors influence the occurrence of this negative bias. Previous studies suggest that priming by preceding emotional information and also constrained processing time might augment the emotion recognition deficit in BPD. To test these assumptions, 32 female BPD patients and 31 healthy females, matched for age and education, participated in an emotion recognition study, in which every facial expression was preceded by either a positive, neutral or negative scene. Furthermore, time constraints for processing were varied by presenting the facial expressions with short (100 ms) or long duration (up to 3000 ms) in two separate blocks. BPD patients showed a significant deficit in emotion recognition for neutral and positive facial expression, associated with a significant negative bias. In BPD patients, this emotion recognition deficit was differentially affected by preceding emotional information and time constraints, with a greater influence of emotional information during long face presentations and a greater influence of neutral information during short face presentations. Our results are in line with previous findings supporting the existence of a negative bias in emotion recognition in BPD patients, and provide further insights into biased social perceptions in BPD patients.

Event-related potentials reveal preserved attention allocation but impaired emotion regulation in patients with epilepsy and comorbid negative affect.

PubMed

De Taeye, Leen; Pourtois, Gilles; Meurs, Alfred; Boon, Paul; Vonck, Kristl; Carrette, Evelien; Raedt, Robrecht

2015-01-01

Patients with epilepsy have a high prevalence of comorbid mood disorders. This study aims to evaluate whether negative affect in epilepsy is associated with dysfunction of emotion regulation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are used in order to unravel the exact electrophysiological time course and investigate whether a possible dysfunction arises during early (attention) and/or late (regulation) stages of emotion control. Fifty epileptic patients with (n = 25) versus without (n = 25) comorbid negative affect plus twenty-five matched controls were recruited. ERPs were recorded while subjects performed a face- or house-matching task in which fearful, sad or neutral faces were presented either at attended or unattended spatial locations. Two ERP components were analyzed: the early vertex positive potential (VPP) which is normally enhanced for faces, and the late positive potential (LPP) that is typically larger for emotional stimuli. All participants had larger amplitude of the early face-sensitive VPP for attended faces compared to houses, regardless of their emotional content. By contrast, in patients with negative affect only, the amplitude of the LPP was significantly increased for unattended negative emotional expressions. These VPP results indicate that epilepsy with or without negative affect does not interfere with the early structural encoding and attention selection of faces. However, the LPP results suggest abnormal regulation processes during the processing of unattended emotional faces in patients with epilepsy and comorbid negative affect. In conclusion, this ERP study reveals that early object-based attention processes are not compromised by epilepsy, but instead, when combined with negative affect, this neurological disease is associated with dysfunction during the later stages of emotion regulation. As such, these new neurophysiological findings shed light on the complex interplay of epilepsy with negative affect during the processing of emotional visual stimuli and in turn might help to better understand the etiology and maintenance of mood disorders in epilepsy.

Negative incidental emotions augment fairness sensitivity

PubMed Central

Liu, Cuizhen; Chai, Jing Wen; Yu, Rongjun

2016-01-01

Previous studies have shown that task-unrelated emotions induced incidentally exert carryover effects on individuals’ subsequent decisions in financial negotiations. However, the specificity of these emotion effects are not clear. In three experiments, we systematically investigated the role of seven transiently induced basic emotions (disgust, sadness, anger, fear, happiness, surprise and neutral) on rejection of unfair offers using the ultimatum game. We found that all negative emotions (disgust, sadness, anger and fear), but not happiness or surprise, significantly increased rejection rates, suggesting that the effect of incidental negative emotions on fairness is not specific to the type of negative emotion. Our findings highlight the role of fleeting emotions in biasing decision-making processes and suggest that all incidental negative emotions exert similar effects on fairness sensitivity, possibly by potentiating attention towards negative aspects of the situation. PMID:27101931

Self-evaluative and emotion processes linked with brooding rumination among adolescents.

PubMed

Burwell, Rebecca A

2015-06-01

Rumination has been linked with a number of deleterious outcomes, though relatively little is known about self-evaluative and emotion processes by which it develops. The current investigation uses a prospective, longitudinal design and self-report measures to examine the role of contingent self-worth, perfectionism, negative emotion beliefs, and suppression of negative emotion in predicting the development of brooding and reflective forms of rumination among 168 adolescents (98 girls, 79.6% European-American) undergoing the transition to high school (Mage = 13.58). Results of structural equation modeling indicate that self-evaluative vulnerability (i.e., self-worth contingencies, perfectionism) and negative emotion beliefs, but not the suppression of negative emotion, predict brooding (but not reflective) rumination. The current study demonstrates how brooding is intertwined with views of self and core assumptions about emotion. Copyright © 2015 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Anterior cingulate hyperactivations during negative emotion processing among men with schizophrenia and a history of violent behavior.

PubMed

Tikàsz, Andràs; Potvin, Stéphane; Lungu, Ovidiu; Joyal, Christian C; Hodgins, Sheilagh; Mendrek, Adrianna; Dumais, Alexandre

2016-01-01

Evidence suggests a 2.1-4.6 times increase in the risk of violent behavior in schizophrenia compared to the general population. Current theories propose that the processing of negative emotions is defective in violent individuals and that dysfunctions within the neural circuits involved in emotion processing are implicated in violence. Although schizophrenia patients show enhanced sensitivity to negative stimuli, there are only few functional neuroimaging studies that have examined emotion processing among men with schizophrenia and a history of violence. The present study aimed to identify the brain regions with greater neurofunctional alterations, as detected by functional magnetic resonance imaging during an emotion processing task, of men with schizophrenia who had engaged in violent behavior compared with those who had not. Sixty men were studied; 20 with schizophrenia and a history of violence, 19 with schizophrenia and no violence, and 21 healthy men were scanned while viewing positive, negative, and neutral images. Negative images elicited hyperactivations in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), left and right lingual gyrus, and the left precentral gyrus in violent men with schizophrenia, compared to nonviolent men with schizophrenia and healthy men. Neutral images elicited hyperactivations in the right and left middle occipital gyrus, left lingual gyrus, and the left fusiform gyrus in violent men with schizophrenia, compared to the other two groups. Violent men with schizophrenia displayed specific increases in ACC in response to negative images. Given the role of the ACC in information integration, these results indicate a specific dysfunction in the processing of negative emotions that may trigger violent behavior in men with schizophrenia.

The Interplay Among Children's Negative Family Representations, Visual Processing of Negative Emotions, and Externalizing Symptoms.

PubMed

Davies, Patrick T; Coe, Jesse L; Hentges, Rochelle F; Sturge-Apple, Melissa L; van der Kloet, Erika

2018-03-01

This study examined the transactional interplay among children's negative family representations, visual processing of negative emotions, and externalizing symptoms in a sample of 243 preschool children (M age  = 4.60 years). Children participated in three annual measurement occasions. Cross-lagged autoregressive models were conducted with multimethod, multi-informant data to identify mediational pathways. Consistent with schema-based top-down models, negative family representations were associated with attention to negative faces in an eye-tracking task and their externalizing symptoms. Children's negative representations of family relationships specifically predicted decreases in their attention to negative emotions, which, in turn, was associated with subsequent increases in their externalizing symptoms. Follow-up analyses indicated that the mediational role of diminished attention to negative emotions was particularly pronounced for angry faces. © 2017 The Authors. Child Development © 2017 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Positive and negative symptom scores are correlated with activation in different brain regions during facial emotion perception in schizophrenia patients: a voxel-based sLORETA source activity study.

PubMed

Kim, Do-Won; Kim, Han-Sung; Lee, Seung-Hwan; Im, Chang-Hwan

2013-12-01

Schizophrenia is one of the most devastating of all mental illnesses, and has dimensional characteristics that include both positive and negative symptoms. One problem reported in schizophrenia patients is that they tend to show deficits in face emotion processing, on which negative symptoms are thought to have stronger influence. In this study, four event-related potential (ERP) components (P100, N170, N250, and P300) and their source activities were analyzed using EEG data acquired from 23 schizophrenia patients while they were presented with facial emotion picture stimuli. Correlations between positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS) scores and source activations during facial emotion processing were calculated to identify the brain areas affected by symptom scores. Our analysis demonstrates that PANSS positive scores are negatively correlated with major areas of the left temporal lobule for early ERP components (P100, N170) and with the right middle frontal lobule for a later component (N250), which indicates that positive symptoms affect both early face processing and facial emotion processing. On the other hand, PANSS negative scores are negatively correlated with several clustered regions, including the left fusiform gyrus (at P100), most of which are not overlapped with regions showing correlations with PANSS positive scores. Our results suggest that positive and negative symptoms affect independent brain regions during facial emotion processing, which may help to explain the heterogeneous characteristics of schizophrenia. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Investigating the effect of respiratory bodily threat on the processing of emotional pictures.

PubMed

Juravle, Georgiana; Stoeckel, Maria Cornelia; Rose, Michael; Gamer, Matthias; Büchel, Christian; Wieser, Matthias Johannes; von Leupoldt, Andreas

2014-12-01

It has been demonstrated that emotions can substantially impact the perception and neural processing of breathlessness, but little is known about the reverse interaction. Here, we examined the impact of breathlessness on emotional picture processing. The continuous EEG was recorded while volunteers viewed positive/neutral/negative emotional pictures under conditions of resistive-load-induced breathlessness, auditory noise, and an unloaded baseline. Breathlessness attenuated P1 and early posterior negativity (EPN) ERP amplitudes, irrespective of picture valence. Moreover, as expected, larger amplitudes for positive and negative pictures relative to neutral pictures were found for EPN and the late positive potential (LPP) ERPs, which were not affected by breathlessness. The results suggest that breathlessness impacts on the early attention-related neural processing of picture stimuli without influencing the later cognitive processing of emotional contents. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Emotion word processing: does mood make a difference?

PubMed

Sereno, Sara C; Scott, Graham G; Yao, Bo; Thaden, Elske J; O'Donnell, Patrick J

2015-01-01

Visual emotion word processing has been in the focus of recent psycholinguistic research. In general, emotion words provoke differential responses in comparison to neutral words. However, words are typically processed within a context rather than in isolation. For instance, how does one's inner emotional state influence the comprehension of emotion words? To address this question, the current study examined lexical decision responses to emotionally positive, negative, and neutral words as a function of induced mood as well as their word frequency. Mood was manipulated by exposing participants to different types of music. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions-no music, positive music, and negative music. Participants' moods were assessed during the experiment to confirm the mood induction manipulation. Reaction time results confirmed prior demonstrations of an interaction between a word's emotionality and its frequency. Results also showed a significant interaction between participant mood and word emotionality. However, the pattern of results was not consistent with mood-congruency effects. Although positive and negative mood facilitated responses overall in comparison to the control group, neither positive nor negative mood appeared to additionally facilitate responses to mood-congruent words. Instead, the pattern of findings seemed to be the consequence of attentional effects arising from induced mood. Positive mood broadens attention to a global level, eliminating the category distinction of positive-negative valence but leaving the high-low arousal dimension intact. In contrast, negative mood narrows attention to a local level, enhancing within-category distinctions, in particular, for negative words, resulting in less effective facilitation.

Neuronal coding of implicit emotion categories in the subcallosal cortex in patients with depression.

PubMed

Laxton, Adrian W; Neimat, Joseph S; Davis, Karen D; Womelsdorf, Thilo; Hutchison, William D; Dostrovsky, Jonathan O; Hamani, Clement; Mayberg, Helen S; Lozano, Andres M

2013-11-15

The subcallosal cingulate and adjacent ventromedial prefrontal cortex (collectively referred to here as the subcallosal cortex or SCC) have been identified as key brain areas in emotional processing. The SCC's role in affective valuation as well as severe mood and motivational disturbances, such as major depression, has been largely inferred from measures of neuronal population activity using functional neuroimaging. On the basis of imaging studies, it is unclear whether the SCC predominantly processes 1) negatively valenced affective content, 2) affective arousal, or 3) category-specific affective information. To clarify these putative functional roles of the SCC, we measured single neuron activity in the SCC of 15 human subjects undergoing deep brain stimulation for depression while they viewed emotionally evocative images grouped into categories that varied in emotional valence (pleasantness) and arousal. We found that the majority of responsive neurons were modulated by specific emotion categories, rather than by valence or arousal alone. Moreover, although these emotion-category-specific neurons responded to both positive and negative emotion categories, a significant majority were selective for negatively valenced emotional content. These findings reveal that single SCC neuron activity reflects the automatic valuational processing and implicit emotion categorization of visual stimuli. Furthermore, because of the predominance of neuronal signals in SCC conveying negative affective valuations and the increased activity in this region among depressed people, the effectiveness of depression therapies that alter SCC neuronal activity may relate to the down-regulation of a previously negative emotional processing bias. © 2013 Society of Biological Psychiatry.

Perceptual processing of natural scenes at rapid rates: Effects of complexity, content, and emotional arousal

PubMed Central

Bradley, Margaret M.; Lang, Peter J.

2013-01-01

During rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), the perceptual system is confronted with a rapidly changing array of sensory information demanding resolution. At rapid rates of presentation, previous studies have found an early (e.g., 150–280 ms) negativity over occipital sensors that is enhanced when emotional, as compared with neutral, pictures are viewed, suggesting facilitated perception. In the present study, we explored how picture composition and the presence of people in the image affect perceptual processing of pictures of natural scenes. Using RSVP, pictures that differed in perceptual composition (figure–ground or scenes), content (presence of people or not), and emotional content (emotionally arousing or neutral) were presented in a continuous stream for 330 ms each with no intertrial interval. In both subject and picture analyses, all three variables affected the amplitude of occipital negativity, with the greatest enhancement for figure–ground compositions (as compared with scenes), irrespective of content and emotional arousal, supporting an interpretation that ease of perceptual processing is associated with enhanced occipital negativity. Viewing emotional pictures prompted enhanced negativity only for pictures that depicted people, suggesting that specific features of emotionally arousing images are associated with facilitated perceptual processing, rather than all emotional content. PMID:23780520

Perceived social pressure not to experience negative emotion is linked to selective attention for negative information.

PubMed

Bastian, Brock; Pe, Madeline Lee; Kuppens, Peter

2017-02-01

Social norms and values may be important predictors of how people engage with and regulate their negative emotional experiences. Previous research has shown that social expectancies (the perceived social pressure not to feel negative emotion (NE)) exacerbate feelings of sadness. In the current research, we examined whether social expectancies may be linked to how people process emotional information. Using a modified classical flanker task involving emotional rather than non-emotional stimuli, we found that, for those who experienced low levels of NE, social expectancies were linked to the selective avoidance of negative emotional information. Those who experienced high levels of NE did not show a selective avoidance of negative emotional information. The findings suggest that, for people who experience many NEs, social expectancies may lead to discrepancies between how they think they ought to feel and the kind of emotional information they pay attention to.

Cognitive biases in processing infant emotion by women with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder in pregnancy or after birth: A systematic review.

PubMed

Webb, Rebecca; Ayers, Susan

2015-01-01

Perinatal psychological problems such as post-natal depression are associated with poor mother-baby interaction, but the reason for this is not clear. One explanation is that mothers with negative mood have biased processing of infant emotion. This review aimed to synthesise research on processing of infant emotion by pregnant or post-natal women with anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Systematic searches were carried out on 11 electronic databases using terms related to negative affect, childbirth and perception of emotion. Fourteen studies were identified which looked at the effect of depression, anxiety and PTSD on interpretation of infant emotional expressions (k = 10), or reaction times when asked to ignore emotional expressions (k = 4). Results suggest mothers with depression and anxiety are more likely to identify negative emotions (i.e., sadness) and less accurate at identifying positive emotions (i.e., happiness) in infant faces. Additionally, women with depression may disengage faster from positive and negative infant emotional expressions. Very few studies examined PTSD (k = 2), but results suggest biases towards specific infant emotions may be influenced by characteristics of the traumatic event. The implications of this research for mother-infant interaction are explored.

Emotional priming with facial exposures in euthymic patients with bipolar disorder.

PubMed

Kim, Taek Su; Lee, Su Young; Ha, Ra Yeon; Kim, Eosu; An, Suk Kyoon; Ha, Kyooseob; Cho, Hyun-Sang

2011-12-01

People with bipolar disorder have abnormal emotional processing. We investigated the automatic and controlled emotional processing via a priming paradigm with subliminal and supraliminal facial exposure. We compared 20 euthymic bipolar patients and 20 healthy subjects on their performance in subliminal and supraliminal tasks. Priming tasks consisted of three different primes according to facial emotions (happy, sad, and neutral) followed by a neutral face as a target stimulus. The prime stimuli were presented subliminally (17 msec) or supraliminally (1000 msec). In subliminal tasks, both patients and controls judged the neutral target face as significantly more unpleasant (negative judgment shift) when presented with negative emotion primes compared with positive primes. In supraliminal tasks, bipolar subjects showed significant negative judgment shift, whereas healthy subjects did not. There was a significant group × emotion interaction for the judgment rate in supraliminal tasks. Our finding of persistent affective priming even at conscious awareness may suggest that bipolar patients have impaired cognitive control on emotional processing rather than automatically spreading activation of emotion.

The facilitating effect of positive emotions during an emotional Stroop task.

PubMed

Liu, Xingyu; Yang, Yisheng; Jiang, Songxiu; Li, Jie

2018-05-08

Prior research has shown that negative emotions, even though task irrelevant, are capable of delaying a participant's response to the color in which a negative emotional word is presented, a phenomenon known as the 'emotional Stroop effect'. However, relatively little is known about whether positive emotions have a similar or an opposite effect. The current study sets out to confirm the facilitating effect of positive emotions on color naming, which is predicted by Barbara Fredrickson's 'broaden and build' theory. Our results indicate that positive emotions did facilitate such processing in both of the study's experiments. We also found a significant difference in early posterior negativity amplitudes between positive and neutral stimuli, which was related to the 'fast effect'. Overall, the study's findings suggest that positive emotions can be detected quickly and automatically, and that this kind of prioritizing facilitates the ongoing cognitive processing.

Negative Emotion Does Not Modulate Rapid Feature Integration Effects

PubMed Central

Trübutschek, Darinka; Egner, Tobias

2012-01-01

Emotional arousal at encoding is known to facilitate later memory recall. In the present study, we asked whether this emotion-modulation of episodic memory is also evident at very short time scales, as measured by “feature integration effects,” the moment-by-moment binding of relevant stimulus and response features in episodic memory. This question was motivated by recent findings that negative emotion appears to potentiate first-order trial sequence effects in classic conflict tasks, which has been attributed to emotion-modulation of conflict-driven cognitive control processes. However, these effects could equally well have been carried by emotion-modulation of mnemonic feature binding processes, which were perfectly confounded with putative control processes in these studies. In the present experiments, we tried to shed light on this question by testing explicitly whether feature integration processes, assessed in isolation of conflict–control, are in fact susceptible to negative emotion-modulation. For this purpose, we adopted a standard protocol for assessing the rapid binding of stimulus and response features in episodic memory (Experiment 1) and paired it with the presentation of either neutral or fearful background face stimuli, shown either at encoding only (Experiment 2), or at both encoding and retrieval (Experiment 3). Whereas reliable feature integration effects were observed in all three experiments, no evidence for emotion-modulation of these effects was detected, in spite of significant effects of emotion on response times. These findings suggest that rapid feature integration of foreground stimulus and response features is not subject to modulation by negative emotional background stimuli and further suggest that previous reports of emotion-modulated trial–transition effects are likely attributable to the effects of emotion on cognitive control processes. PMID:22509172

Event-related potentials in response to emotional words in patients with major depressive disorder and healthy controls.

PubMed

Liu, Hong; Yin, Hui-fang; Wu, Da-xing; Xu, Shu-jing

2014-01-01

Dysfunctional cognitive processing and abnormal brain activation in response to emotional stimuli have long been recognized as core features of the major depressive disorder (MDD). The aim of this study was to examine how Chinese patients with MDD process Chinese emotional words presented to either the left (LH) or right hemisphere (RH). Reaction time (RT) and the late positive component of the event-related potential were measured while subjects judged the valence (positive or negative) of emotional words written in Chinese. Compared to healthy controls, patients with MDD exhibited slower RTs in response to negative words. In all subjects, the RTs in response to negative words were significantly faster than RTs in response to positive words presented to the LH, as well as significantly faster than responses to negative words presented to the RH. Compared to healthy controls, MDD patients exhibited reduced activation of the central and left regions of the brain in response to both negative and positive words. In healthy controls, the posterior brain areas were more active than the anterior brain areas when responding to negative words. All individuals showed faster RTs in response to negative words compared to positive words. In addition, MDD patients showed lateralization of brain activity in response to emotional words, whereas healthy individuals did not show this lateralization. Posterior brain areas appear to play an especially important role in discriminating and experiencing negative emotional words. This study provides further evidence in support of the negative bias hypothesis and the emotional processing theory.

The temporal deployment of emotion regulation strategies during negative emotional episodes.

PubMed

Kalokerinos, Elise K; Résibois, Maxime; Verduyn, Philippe; Kuppens, Peter

2017-04-01

Time is given a central place in theoretical models of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998, 2015), but key questions regarding the role of time remain unanswered. We investigated 2 such unanswered questions. First, we explored when different emotion regulation strategies were used within the course of an emotional episode in daily life. Second, we investigated the association between the temporal deployment of strategies and negative emotional experience. We conducted a daily diary study in which participants (N = 74) drew an intensity profile depicting the temporal unfolding of their negative emotional experience across daily events (N = 480), and mapped their usage of emotion regulation strategies onto this intensity profile. Strategies varied in their temporal deployment, with suppression and rumination occurring more at the beginning of the episode, and reappraisal and distraction occurring more toward the end of the episode. Strategies also varied in their association with negative emotion: rumination was positively associated with negative emotion, and reappraisal and distraction were negatively associated with negative emotion. Finally, both rumination and reappraisal interacted with time to predict negative emotional experience. Rumination was more strongly positively associated with negative emotions at the end of the episode than the beginning, but reappraisal was more strongly negatively associated with negative emotion at the beginning of the episode than the end. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for timing in the study of emotion regulation, as well as the necessity of studying these temporal processes in daily life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Oscillatory brain dynamics associated with the automatic processing of emotion in words.

PubMed

Wang, Lin; Bastiaansen, Marcel

2014-10-01

This study examines the automaticity of processing the emotional aspects of words, and characterizes the oscillatory brain dynamics that accompany this automatic processing. Participants read emotionally negative, neutral and positive nouns while performing a color detection task in which only perceptual-level analysis was required. Event-related potentials and time frequency representations were computed from the concurrently measured EEG. Negative words elicited a larger P2 and a larger late positivity than positive and neutral words, indicating deeper semantic/evaluative processing of negative words. In addition, sustained alpha power suppressions were found for the emotional compared to neutral words, in the time range from 500 to 1000ms post-stimulus. These results suggest that sustained attention was allocated to the emotional words, whereas the attention allocated to the neutral words was released after an initial analysis. This seems to hold even when the emotional content of the words is task-irrelevant. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Anterior cingulate hyperactivations during negative emotion processing among men with schizophrenia and a history of violent behavior

PubMed Central

Tikàsz, Andràs; Potvin, Stéphane; Lungu, Ovidiu; Joyal, Christian C; Hodgins, Sheilagh; Mendrek, Adrianna; Dumais, Alexandre

2016-01-01

Background Evidence suggests a 2.1–4.6 times increase in the risk of violent behavior in schizophrenia compared to the general population. Current theories propose that the processing of negative emotions is defective in violent individuals and that dysfunctions within the neural circuits involved in emotion processing are implicated in violence. Although schizophrenia patients show enhanced sensitivity to negative stimuli, there are only few functional neuroimaging studies that have examined emotion processing among men with schizophrenia and a history of violence. Objective The present study aimed to identify the brain regions with greater neurofunctional alterations, as detected by functional magnetic resonance imaging during an emotion processing task, of men with schizophrenia who had engaged in violent behavior compared with those who had not. Methods Sixty men were studied; 20 with schizophrenia and a history of violence, 19 with schizophrenia and no violence, and 21 healthy men were scanned while viewing positive, negative, and neutral images. Results Negative images elicited hyperactivations in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), left and right lingual gyrus, and the left precentral gyrus in violent men with schizophrenia, compared to nonviolent men with schizophrenia and healthy men. Neutral images elicited hyperactivations in the right and left middle occipital gyrus, left lingual gyrus, and the left fusiform gyrus in violent men with schizophrenia, compared to the other two groups. Discussion Violent men with schizophrenia displayed specific increases in ACC in response to negative images. Given the role of the ACC in information integration, these results indicate a specific dysfunction in the processing of negative emotions that may trigger violent behavior in men with schizophrenia. PMID:27366072

Increased positive versus negative affective perception and memory in healthy volunteers following selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibition.

PubMed

Harmer, Catherine J; Shelley, Nicholas C; Cowen, Philip J; Goodwin, Guy M

2004-07-01

Antidepressants that inhibit the reuptake of serotonin (SSRIs) or norepinephrine (SNRIs) are effective in the treatment of disorders such as depression and anxiety. Cognitive psychological theories emphasize the importance of correcting negative biases of information processing in the nonpharmacological treatment of these disorders, but it is not known whether antidepressant drugs can directly modulate the neural processing of affective information. The present study therefore assessed the actions of repeated antidepressant administration on perception and memory for positive and negative emotional information in healthy volunteers. Forty-two male and female volunteers were randomly assigned to 7 days of double-blind intervention with the SSRI citalopram (20 mg/day), the SNRI reboxetine (8 mg/day), or placebo. On the final day, facial expression recognition, emotion-potentiated startle response, and memory for affect-laden words were assessed. Questionnaires monitoring mood, hostility, and anxiety were given before and after treatment. In the facial expression recognition task, citalopram and reboxetine reduced the identification of the negative facial expressions of anger and fear. Citalopram also abolished the increased startle response found in the context of negative affective images. Both antidepressants increased the relative recall of positive (versus negative) emotional material. These changes in emotional processing occurred in the absence of significant differences in ratings of mood and anxiety. However, reboxetine decreased subjective ratings of hostility and elevated energy. Short-term administration of two different antidepressant types had similar effects on emotion-related tasks in healthy volunteers, reducing the processing of negative relative to positive emotional material. Such effects of antidepressants may ameliorate the negative biases in information processing that characterize mood and anxiety disorders. They also suggest a mechanism of action potentially compatible with cognitive theories of anxiety and depression.

Facial feedback and autonomic responsiveness reflect impaired emotional processing in Parkinson's Disease.

PubMed

Balconi, Michela; Pala, Francesca; Manenti, Rosa; Brambilla, Michela; Cobelli, Chiara; Rosini, Sandra; Benussi, Alberto; Padovani, Alessandro; Borroni, Barbara; Cotelli, Maria

2016-08-11

Emotional deficits are part of the non-motor features of Parkinson's disease but few attention has been paid to specific aspects such as subjective emotional experience and autonomic responses. This study aimed to investigate the mechanisms of emotional recognition in Parkinson's Disease (PD) using the following levels: explicit evaluation of emotions (Self-Assessment Manikin) and implicit reactivity (Skin Conductance Response; electromyographic measure of facial feedback of the zygomaticus and corrugator muscles). 20 PD Patients and 34 healthy controls were required to observe and evaluate affective pictures during physiological parameters recording. In PD, the appraisal process on both valence and arousal features of emotional cues were preserved, but we found significant impairment in autonomic responses. Specifically, in comparison to healthy controls, PD patients revealed lower Skin Conductance Response values to negative and high arousing emotional stimuli. In addition, the electromyographic measures showed defective responses exclusively limited to negative and high arousing emotional category: PD did not show increasing of corrugator activity in response to negative emotions as happened in heathy controls. PD subjects inadequately respond to the emotional categories which were considered more "salient": they had preserved appraisal process, but impaired automatic ability to distinguish between different emotional contexts.

Emotion word processing: does mood make a difference?

PubMed Central

Sereno, Sara C.; Scott, Graham G.; Yao, Bo; Thaden, Elske J.; O'Donnell, Patrick J.

2015-01-01

Visual emotion word processing has been in the focus of recent psycholinguistic research. In general, emotion words provoke differential responses in comparison to neutral words. However, words are typically processed within a context rather than in isolation. For instance, how does one's inner emotional state influence the comprehension of emotion words? To address this question, the current study examined lexical decision responses to emotionally positive, negative, and neutral words as a function of induced mood as well as their word frequency. Mood was manipulated by exposing participants to different types of music. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions—no music, positive music, and negative music. Participants' moods were assessed during the experiment to confirm the mood induction manipulation. Reaction time results confirmed prior demonstrations of an interaction between a word's emotionality and its frequency. Results also showed a significant interaction between participant mood and word emotionality. However, the pattern of results was not consistent with mood-congruency effects. Although positive and negative mood facilitated responses overall in comparison to the control group, neither positive nor negative mood appeared to additionally facilitate responses to mood-congruent words. Instead, the pattern of findings seemed to be the consequence of attentional effects arising from induced mood. Positive mood broadens attention to a global level, eliminating the category distinction of positive-negative valence but leaving the high-low arousal dimension intact. In contrast, negative mood narrows attention to a local level, enhancing within-category distinctions, in particular, for negative words, resulting in less effective facilitation. PMID:26379570

Individual Differences in Typical Reappraisal Use Predict Amygdala and Prefrontal Responses

PubMed Central

Drabant, Emily M.; McRae, Kateri; Manuck, Stephen B.; Hariri, Ahmad R.; Gross, James J.

2010-01-01

Background Participants who are instructed to use reappraisal to downregulate negative emotion show decreased amygdala responses and increased prefrontal responses. However, it is not known whether individual differences in the tendency to use reappraisal manifests in similar neural responses when individuals are spontaneously confronted with negative situations. Such spontaneous emotion regulation might play an important role in normal and pathological responses to the emotional challenges of everyday life. Methods Fifty-six healthy women completed a blood oxygenation-level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging challenge paradigm involving the perceptual processing of emotionally negative facial expressions. Participants also completed measures of typical emotion regulation use, trait anxiety, and neuroticism. Results Greater use of reappraisal in everyday life was related to decreased amygdala activity and increased prefrontal and parietal activity during the processing of negative emotional facial expressions. These associations were not attributable to variation in trait anxiety, neuroticism, or the use of another common form of emotion regulation, namely suppression. Conclusions These findings suggest that, like instructed reappraisal, individual differences in reappraisal use are associated with decreased activation in ventral emotion generative regions and increased activation in prefrontal control regions in response to negative stimuli. Such individual differences in emotion regulation might predict successful coping with emotional challenges as well as the onset of affective disorders. PMID:18930182

Visual attention and emotional reactions to negative stimuli: The role of age and cognitive reappraisal.

PubMed

Wirth, Maria; Isaacowitz, Derek M; Kunzmann, Ute

2017-09-01

Prominent life span theories of emotion propose that older adults attend less to negative emotional information and report less negative emotional reactions to the same information than younger adults do. Although parallel age differences in affective information processing and age differences in emotional reactivity have been proposed, they have rarely been investigated within the same study. In this eye-tracking study, we tested age differences in visual attention and emotional reactivity, using standardized emotionally negative stimuli. Additionally, we investigated age differences in the association between visual attention and emotional reactivity, and whether these are moderated by cognitive reappraisal. Older as compared with younger adults showed fixation patterns away from negative image content, while they reacted with greater negative emotions. The association between visual attention and emotional reactivity differed by age group and positive reappraisal. Younger adults felt better when they attended more to negative content rather than less, but this relationship only held for younger adults who did not attach a positive meaning to the negative situation. For older adults, overall, there was no significant association between visual attention and emotional reactivity. However, for older adults who did not use positive reappraisal, decreases in attention to negative information were associated with less negative emotions. The present findings point to a complex relationship between younger and older adults' visual attention and emotional reactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional modulation of experimental pain: a source imaging study of laser evoked potentials

PubMed Central

Stancak, Andrej; Fallon, Nicholas

2013-01-01

Negative emotions have been shown to augment experimental pain. As induced emotions alter brain activity, it is not clear whether pain augmentation during noxious stimulation would be related to neural activation existing prior to onset of a noxious stimulus or alternatively, whether emotional stimuli would only alter neural activity during the period of nociceptive processing. We analyzed the spatio-temporal patterns of laser evoked potentials (LEPs) occurring prior to and during the period of cortical processing of noxious laser stimuli during passive viewing of negative, positive, or neutral emotional pictures. Independent component analysis (ICA) was applied to series of source activation volumes, reconstructed using local autoregressive average model (LAURA). Pain was the strongest when laser stimuli were associated with negative emotional pictures. Prior to laser stimulus and during the first 100 ms after onset of laser stimulus, activations were seen in the left and right medial temporal cortex, cerebellum, posterior cingulate, and rostral cingulate/prefrontal cortex. In all these regions, positive or neutral pictures showed stronger activations than negative pictures. During laser stimulation, activations in the right and left anterior insula, temporal cortex and right anterior and posterior parietal cortex were stronger during negative than neutral or positive emotional pictures. Results suggest that negative emotional stimuli increase activation in the left and right anterior insula and temporal cortex, and right posterior and anterior parietal cortex only during the period of nociceptive processing. The role of background brain activation in emotional modulation of pain appears to be only permissive, and consisting in attenuation of activation in structures maintaining the resting state of the brain. PMID:24062659

Automatic Processing of Emotional Words in the Absence of Awareness: The Critical Role of P2

PubMed Central

Lei, Yi; Dou, Haoran; Liu, Qingming; Zhang, Wenhai; Zhang, Zhonglu; Li, Hong

2017-01-01

It has been long debated to what extent emotional words can be processed in the absence of awareness. Behavioral studies have shown that the meaning of emotional words can be accessed even without any awareness. However, functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have revealed that emotional words that are unconsciously presented do not activate the brain regions involved in semantic or emotional processing. To clarify this point, we used continuous flash suppression (CFS) and event-related potential (ERP) techniques to distinguish between semantic and emotional processing. In CFS, we successively flashed some Mondrian-style images into one participant's eye steadily, which suppressed the images projected to the other eye. Negative, neutral, and scrambled words were presented to 16 healthy participants for 500 ms. Whenever the participants saw the stimuli—in both visible and invisible conditions—they pressed specific keyboard buttons. Behavioral data revealed that there was no difference in reaction time to negative words and to neutral words in the invisible condition, although negative words were processed faster than neutral words in the visible condition. The ERP results showed that negative words elicited a larger P2 amplitude in the invisible condition than in the visible condition. The P2 component was enhanced for the neutral words compared with the scrambled words in the visible condition; however, the scrambled words elicited larger P2 amplitudes than the neutral words in the invisible condition. These results suggest that the emotional processing of words is more sensitive than semantic processing in the conscious condition. Semantic processing was found to be attenuated in the absence of awareness. Our findings indicate that P2 plays an important role in the unconscious processing of emotional words, which highlights the fact that emotional processing may be automatic and prioritized compared with semantic processing in the absence of awareness. PMID:28473785

Automatic Processing of Emotional Words in the Absence of Awareness: The Critical Role of P2.

PubMed

Lei, Yi; Dou, Haoran; Liu, Qingming; Zhang, Wenhai; Zhang, Zhonglu; Li, Hong

2017-01-01

It has been long debated to what extent emotional words can be processed in the absence of awareness. Behavioral studies have shown that the meaning of emotional words can be accessed even without any awareness. However, functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have revealed that emotional words that are unconsciously presented do not activate the brain regions involved in semantic or emotional processing. To clarify this point, we used continuous flash suppression (CFS) and event-related potential (ERP) techniques to distinguish between semantic and emotional processing. In CFS, we successively flashed some Mondrian-style images into one participant's eye steadily, which suppressed the images projected to the other eye. Negative, neutral, and scrambled words were presented to 16 healthy participants for 500 ms. Whenever the participants saw the stimuli-in both visible and invisible conditions-they pressed specific keyboard buttons. Behavioral data revealed that there was no difference in reaction time to negative words and to neutral words in the invisible condition, although negative words were processed faster than neutral words in the visible condition. The ERP results showed that negative words elicited a larger P2 amplitude in the invisible condition than in the visible condition. The P2 component was enhanced for the neutral words compared with the scrambled words in the visible condition; however, the scrambled words elicited larger P2 amplitudes than the neutral words in the invisible condition. These results suggest that the emotional processing of words is more sensitive than semantic processing in the conscious condition. Semantic processing was found to be attenuated in the absence of awareness. Our findings indicate that P2 plays an important role in the unconscious processing of emotional words, which highlights the fact that emotional processing may be automatic and prioritized compared with semantic processing in the absence of awareness.

Linking the Positivity Effect in Attention with Affective Outcomes: Age Group Differences and the Role of Arousal

PubMed Central

Kappes, Cathleen; Streubel, Berit; Droste, Kezia L.; Folta-Schoofs, Kristian

2017-01-01

Despite its assumed importance for emotional well-being, studies investigating the positivity effect (PE) in older adults’ information processing rarely tested its relationship with immediate or general affective outcome measures like emotional reactivity or emotional well-being. Moreover, the arousal level of the to-be-processed emotional stimuli has rarely been taken into account as a moderator for the occurrence of the PE and its relationship with affective outcomes. Age group differences (young vs. old) in attention (i.e., fixation durations using eye tracking) and subjective emotional reactions (i.e., pleasantness ratings) were investigated in response to picture stimuli systematically varied in valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (low vs. high). We examined whether there is a link between age group differences in fixation durations and affective outcomes (i.e., subjective emotional reactions as well as emotional well-being). Older compared to young adults fixated less on the most emotional part in negative but not in positive low-arousing pictures. This age difference did not occur under high arousal. While age group differences in fixation duration did not translate into age group differences in subjective emotional reactions, we found a positive relationship between fixation duration on negative low-arousing pictures and emotional well-being, i.e., negative affect. The present study replicated the well-known PE in attention and emotional reactivity. In line with the idea that the PE reflects top-down-driven processing of affective information, age group differences in fixation durations decreased under high arousal. The present findings are consistent with the idea that age-related changes in the processing of emotional information support older adults’ general emotional well-being. PMID:29163266

Perceiving emotions in neutral faces: expression processing is biased by affective person knowledge.

PubMed

Suess, Franziska; Rabovsky, Milena; Abdel Rahman, Rasha

2015-04-01

According to a widely held view, basic emotions such as happiness or anger are reflected in facial expressions that are invariant and uniquely defined by specific facial muscle movements. Accordingly, expression perception should not be vulnerable to influences outside the face. Here, we test this assumption by manipulating the emotional valence of biographical knowledge associated with individual persons. Faces of well-known and initially unfamiliar persons displaying neutral expressions were associated with socially relevant negative, positive or comparatively neutral biographical information. The expressions of faces associated with negative information were classified as more negative than faces associated with neutral information. Event-related brain potential modulations in the early posterior negativity, a component taken to reflect early sensory processing of affective stimuli such as emotional facial expressions, suggest that negative affective knowledge can bias the perception of faces with neutral expressions toward subjectively displaying negative emotions. © The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

A multifaceted assessment of emotional tolerance and intensity in hoarding.

PubMed

Timpano, Kiara R; Shaw, Ashley M; Cougle, Jesse R; Fitch, Kristin E

2014-09-01

Hoarding is characterized by emotionally reinforced saving behaviors, which often combine with excessive acquisition to give rise to clutter, distress, and impairment. Despite the central role emotional processes are thought to play in hoarding, very little research has directly examined this topic. There is suggestive evidence linking hoarding with several facets of emotional intolerance and avoidance, though one key limitation of this past research has been the exclusive reliance on self-report questionnaires. The aim of the current study was to conduct a multimethod investigation of the relationship between hoarding and perceptions of, and cognitions about, negative emotional states. A large unselected sample of nonclinical young adults (N=213) completed questionnaires, behavioral tasks, and a series of negative mood inductions to assess distress tolerance (DT), appraisals of negative emotions, and emotional intensity and tolerance. Hoarding symptoms were associated with lowered tolerance of negative emotions, as well as perceiving negative emotions as more threatening. Individuals high in hoarding symptoms also experienced more intense emotions during the mood inductions than individuals low in hoarding symptoms, though there was no association with poorer performance on a behavioral index of DT. Across measures, hoarding was consistently associated with experiencing negative emotions more intensely and reporting lower tolerance of them. This relationship was particularly pronounced for the difficulty discarding and acquiring facets of hoarding. Our results offer initial support for the important role of emotional processes in the cognitive-behavioral model of hoarding. A better understanding of emotional dysfunction may play a crucial role in developing more effective treatments for hoarding. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Mothering, fathering, and the regulation of negative and positive emotions in high-functioning preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder.

PubMed

Hirschler-Guttenberg, Yael; Golan, Ofer; Ostfeld-Etzion, Sharon; Feldman, Ruth

2015-05-01

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit difficulties in regulating emotions and authors have called to study the specific processes underpinning emotion regulation (ER) in ASD. Yet, little observational research examined the strategies preschoolers with ASD use to regulate negative and positive emotions in the presence of their mothers and fathers. Forty preschoolers with ASD and 40 matched typically developing children and their mothers and fathers participated. Families were visited twice for identical battery of paradigms with mother or father. Parent-child interactions were coded for parent and child behaviors and children engaged in ER paradigms eliciting negative (fear) and positive (joy) emotions with each parent. ER paradigms were microcoded for negative and positive emotionality, ER strategies, and parent regulation facilitation. During free play, mothers' and fathers' sensitivity and warm discipline were comparable across groups; however, children with ASD displayed lower positive engagement and higher withdrawal. During ER paradigms, children with ASD expressed less positive emotionality overall and more negative emotionality during fear with father. Children with ASD used more simple self-regulatory strategies, particularly during fear, but expressed comparable levels of assistance seeking behavior toward mother and father in negative and positive contexts. Parents of children with ASD used less complex regulation facilitation strategies, including cognitive reappraisal and emotional reframing, and employed simple tactics, such as physical comforting to manage fear and social gaze to maintain joy. Findings describe general and parent- and emotion-specific processes of child ER and parent regulation facilitation in preschoolers with ASD. Results underscore the ability of such children to seek parental assistance during moments of high arousal and the parents' sensitive adaptation to their children's needs. Reduced positive emotionality, rather than increased negative reactivity and self-regulatory efforts, emerges as the consistent element associated with ER processes in this group. © 2014 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

Age-Dependent Positivity-Bias in Children’s Processing of Emotion Terms

PubMed Central

Bahn, Daniela; Vesker, Michael; García Alanis, José C.; Schwarzer, Gudrun; Kauschke, Christina

2017-01-01

Emotions play an important role in human communication, and the daily-life interactions of young children often include situations that require the verbalization of emotional states with verbal means, e.g., with emotion terms. Through them, one can express own emotional states and those of others. Thus, the acquisition of emotion terms allows children to participate more intensively in social contexts – a basic requirement for learning new words and for elaborating socio-emotional skills. However, little is known about how children acquire and process this specific word category, which is positioned between concrete and abstract words. In particular, the influence of valence on emotion word processing during childhood has not been sufficiently investigated. Previous research points to an advantage of positive words over negative and neutral words in word processing. While previous studies found valence effects to be influenced by factors such as arousal, frequency, concreteness, and task, it is still unclear if and how valence effects are also modified by age. The present study compares the performance of children aged from 5 to 12 years and adults in two experimental tasks: lexical decision (word or pseudoword) and emotional categorization (positive or negative). Stimuli consisted of 48 German emotion terms (24 positive and 24 negative) matched for arousal, concreteness, age of acquisition, word class, word length, morphological complexity, frequency, and neighborhood density. Results from both tasks reveal two developmental trends: First, with increasing age children responded faster and more correctly, suggesting that emotion vocabulary gradually becomes more stable and differentiated during middle childhood. Second, the influence of valence varied with age: younger children (5- and 6-year-olds) showed significantly higher performance levels for positive emotion terms compared to negative emotion terms, whereas older children and adults did not. This age-related valence effect in emotion word processing will be discussed with respect to linguistic and methodological aspects. PMID:28798706

Sex differences in brain activation patterns during processing of positively and negatively valenced emotional words.

PubMed

Hofer, Alex; Siedentopf, Christian M; Ischebeck, Anja; Rettenbacher, Maria A; Verius, Michael; Felber, Stephan; Wolfgang Fleischhacker, W

2007-01-01

Previous studies have suggested that men and women process emotional stimuli differently. In this study, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate gender differences in regional cerebral activity during the perception of positive or negative emotions. The experiment comprised two emotional conditions (positively/negatively valenced words) during which fMRI data were acquired. Thirty-eight healthy volunteers (19 males, 19 females) were investigated. A direct comparison of brain activation between men and women revealed differential activation in the right putamen, the right superior temporal gyrus, and the left supramarginal gyrus during processing of positively valenced words versus non-words for women versus men. By contrast, during processing of negatively valenced words versus non-words, relatively greater activation was seen in the left perirhinal cortex and hippocampus for women versus men, and in the right supramarginal gyrus for men versus women. Our findings suggest gender-related neural responses to emotional stimuli and could contribute to the understanding of mechanisms underlying the gender disparity of neuropsychiatric diseases such as mood disorders.

Emotions in word and face processing: early and late cortical responses.

PubMed

Schacht, Annekathrin; Sommer, Werner

2009-04-01

Recent research suggests that emotion effects in word processing resemble those in other stimulus domains such as pictures or faces. The present study aims to provide more direct evidence for this notion by comparing emotion effects in word and face processing in a within-subject design. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded as participants made decisions on the lexicality of emotionally positive, negative, and neutral German verbs or pseudowords, and on the integrity of intact happy, angry, and neutral faces or slightly distorted faces. Relative to neutral and negative stimuli both positive verbs and happy faces elicited posterior ERP negativities that were indistinguishable in scalp distribution and resembled the early posterior negativities reported by others. Importantly, these ERP modulations appeared at very different latencies. Therefore, it appears that similar brain systems reflect the decoding of both biological and symbolic emotional signals of positive valence, differing mainly in the speed of meaning access, which is more direct and faster for facial expressions than for words.

Gender differences in the cognitive control of emotion: An fMRI study.

PubMed

Koch, Kathrin; Pauly, Katharina; Kellermann, Thilo; Seiferth, Nina Y; Reske, Martina; Backes, Volker; Stöcker, Tony; Shah, N Jon; Amunts, Katrin; Kircher, Tilo; Schneider, Frank; Habel, Ute

2007-09-20

The interaction of emotion and cognition has become a topic of major interest. However, the influence of gender on the interplay between the two processes, along with its neural correlates have not been fully analysed so far. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we induced negative emotion using negative olfactory stimulation while male (n=21) and female (n=19) participants performed an n-back verbal working memory task. Based on findings indicating increased emotional reactivity in women, we expected the female participants to exhibit stronger activation in characteristically emotion-associated areas during the interaction of emotional and cognitive processing in comparison to the male participants. Both groups were found to be significantly impaired in their working memory performance by negative emotion induction. However, fMRI analysis revealed distinct differences in neuronal activation between groups. In men, cognitive performance under negative emotion induction was associated with extended activation patterns in mainly prefrontal and superior parietal regions. In women, the interaction between emotion and working memory yielded a significantly stronger response in the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) compared to their male counterparts. Our data suggest that in women the interaction of verbal working memory and negative emotion is associated with relative hyperactivation in more emotion-associated areas whereas in men regions commonly regarded as important for cognition and cognitive control are activated. These results provide new insights in gender-specific cerebral mechanisms.

Written threat: Electrophysiological evidence for an attention bias to affective words in social anxiety disorder.

PubMed

Wabnitz, Pascal; Martens, Ulla; Neuner, Frank

2016-01-01

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with heightened sensitivity to threat cues, typically represented by emotional facial expressions. To examine if this bias can be transferred to a general hypersensitivity or whether it is specific to disorder relevant cues, we investigated electrophysiological correlates of emotional word processing (alpha activity and event-related potentials) in 20 healthy participants and 20 participants with SAD. The experimental task was a silent reading of neutral, positive, physically threatening and socially threatening words (the latter were abusive swear words) while responding to a randomly presented dot. Subsequently, all participants were asked to recall as many words as possible during an unexpected recall test. Participants with SAD showed blunted sensory processing followed by a rapid processing of emotional words during early stages (early posterior negativity - EPN). At later stages, all participants showed enhanced processing of negative (physically and socially threatening) compared to neutral and positive words (N400). Moreover, at later processing stages alpha activity was increased specifically for negative words in participants with SAD but not in healthy controls. Recall of emotional words for all subjects was best for socially threatening words, followed by negative and positive words irrespective of social anxiety. The present findings indicate that SAD is associated with abnormalities in emotional word processing characterised by early hypervigilance to emotional cues followed by cognitive avoidance at later processing stages. Most importantly, the specificity of these attentional biases seems to change as a function of time with a general emotional bias at early and a more specific bias at later processing stages.

Down-Regulation of Negative Emotional Processing by Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: Effects of Personality Characteristics

PubMed Central

Peña-Gómez, Cleofé; Vidal-Piñeiro, Dídac; Clemente, Immaculada C.; Pascual-Leone, Álvaro; Bartrés-Faz, David

2011-01-01

Evidence from neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies indicates that the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is a core region in emotional processing, particularly during down-regulation of negative emotional conditions. However, emotional regulation is a process subject to major inter-individual differences, some of which may be explained by personality traits. In the present study we used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the left DLPFC to investigate whether transiently increasing the activity of this region resulted in changes in the ratings of positive, neutral and negative emotional pictures. Results revealed that anodal, but not cathodal, tDCS reduced the perceived degree of emotional valence for negative stimuli, possibly due to an enhancement of cognitive control of emotional expression. We also aimed to determine whether personality traits (extraversion and neuroticism) might condition the impact of tDCS. We found that individuals with higher scores on the introversion personality dimension were more permeable than extraverts to the modulatory effects of the stimulation. The present study underlines the role of the left DLPFC in emotional regulation, and stresses the importance of considering individual personality characteristics as a relevant variable, although replication is needed given the limited sample size of our study. PMID:21829522

Eat your troubles away: electrocortical and experiential correlates of food image processing are related to emotional eating style and emotional state.

PubMed

Blechert, Jens; Goltsche, Julia E; Herbert, Beate M; Wilhelm, Frank H

2014-02-01

Emotional eating, a trait-like style of food intake in response to negative emotion states, represents an important aspect of overeating and eating related psychopathology. The mechanisms of emotional eating both on experiential and neuronal levels are not well delineated. We recorded event related potentials (ERPs) while individuals with high or low emotional eating style (HEE, n=25; LEE, n=20) viewed and rated pictures of high-caloric food during neutral state vs. negative idiosyncratic emotion induction. Craving ratings increased in HEE and decreased in LEE during negative relative to neutral states. ERPs to food pictures showed an enhanced late positive potential (LPP) over parieto-occipital regions for HEE compared to LEE. Emotional state modulated food picture evoked ERPs over right frontal regions in HEE only. This suggests that appetitive food processing is susceptible to both concurrent emotion and habitual eating style which is of relevance for overeating in healthy and abnormal eating. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Differential emotion attribution to neutral faces of own and other races.

PubMed

Hu, Chao S; Wang, Qiandong; Han, Tong; Weare, Ethan; Fu, Genyue

2017-02-01

Past research has demonstrated differential recognition of emotion on faces of different races. This paper reports the first study to explore differential emotion attribution to neutral faces of different races. Chinese and Caucasian adults viewed a series of Chinese and Caucasian neutral faces and judged their outward facial expression: neutral, positive, or negative. The results showed that both Chinese and Caucasian viewers perceived more Chinese faces than Caucasian faces as neutral. Nevertheless, Chinese viewers attributed positive emotion to Caucasian faces more than to Chinese faces, whereas Caucasian viewers attributed negative emotion to Caucasian faces more than to Chinese faces. Moreover, Chinese viewers attributed negative and neutral emotion to the faces of both races without significant difference in frequency, whereas Caucasian viewers mostly attributed neutral emotion to the faces. These differences between Chinese and Caucasian viewers may be due to differential visual experience, culture, racial stereotype, or expectation of the experiment. We also used eye tracking among the Chinese participants to explore the relationship between face-processing strategy and emotion attribution to neutral faces. The results showed that the interaction between emotion attribution and face race was significant on face-processing strategy, such as fixation proportion on eyes and saccade amplitude. Additionally, pupil size during processing Caucasian faces was larger than during processing Chinese faces.

The emotional startle effect is disrupted by a concurrent working memory task.

PubMed

King, Rosemary; Schaefer, Alexandre

2011-02-01

Working memory (WM) processes are often thought to play an important role in the cognitive regulation of negative emotions. However, little is known about how they influence emotional processing. We report two experiments that tested whether a concurrent working memory task could modulate the emotional startle eyeblink effect, a well-known index of emotional processing. In both experiments, emotionally negative and neutral pictures were viewed in two conditions: a "cognitive load" (CL) condition, in which participants had to actively maintain information in working memory (WM) while viewing the pictures, and a control "no load" (NL) condition. Picture-viewing instructions were identical across CL and NL. In both experiments, results showed a significant reduction of the emotional modulation of the startle eyeblink reflex in the CL condition compared to the NL condition. These findings suggest that a concurrent WM task disrupts emotional processing even when participants are directing visual focus on emotionally relevant information. Copyright © 2010 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Negativity Bias in Dangerous Drivers.

PubMed

Chai, Jing; Qu, Weina; Sun, Xianghong; Zhang, Kan; Ge, Yan

2016-01-01

The behavioral and cognitive characteristics of dangerous drivers differ significantly from those of safe drivers. However, differences in emotional information processing have seldom been investigated. Previous studies have revealed that drivers with higher anger/anxiety trait scores are more likely to be involved in crashes and that individuals with higher anger traits exhibit stronger negativity biases when processing emotions compared with control groups. However, researchers have not explored the relationship between emotional information processing and driving behavior. In this study, we examined the emotional information processing differences between dangerous drivers and safe drivers. Thirty-eight non-professional drivers were divided into two groups according to the penalty points that they had accrued for traffic violations: 15 drivers with 6 or more points were included in the dangerous driver group, and 23 drivers with 3 or fewer points were included in the safe driver group. The emotional Stroop task was used to measure negativity biases, and both behavioral and electroencephalograph data were recorded. The behavioral results revealed stronger negativity biases in the dangerous drivers than in the safe drivers. The bias score was correlated with self-reported dangerous driving behavior. Drivers with strong negativity biases reported having been involved in mores crashes compared with the less-biased drivers. The event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed that the dangerous drivers exhibited reduced P3 components when responding to negative stimuli, suggesting decreased inhibitory control of information that is task-irrelevant but emotionally salient. The influence of negativity bias provides one possible explanation of the effects of individual differences on dangerous driving behavior and traffic crashes.

Negativity Bias in Dangerous Drivers

PubMed Central

Chai, Jing; Qu, Weina; Sun, Xianghong; Zhang, Kan; Ge, Yan

2016-01-01

The behavioral and cognitive characteristics of dangerous drivers differ significantly from those of safe drivers. However, differences in emotional information processing have seldom been investigated. Previous studies have revealed that drivers with higher anger/anxiety trait scores are more likely to be involved in crashes and that individuals with higher anger traits exhibit stronger negativity biases when processing emotions compared with control groups. However, researchers have not explored the relationship between emotional information processing and driving behavior. In this study, we examined the emotional information processing differences between dangerous drivers and safe drivers. Thirty-eight non-professional drivers were divided into two groups according to the penalty points that they had accrued for traffic violations: 15 drivers with 6 or more points were included in the dangerous driver group, and 23 drivers with 3 or fewer points were included in the safe driver group. The emotional Stroop task was used to measure negativity biases, and both behavioral and electroencephalograph data were recorded. The behavioral results revealed stronger negativity biases in the dangerous drivers than in the safe drivers. The bias score was correlated with self-reported dangerous driving behavior. Drivers with strong negativity biases reported having been involved in mores crashes compared with the less-biased drivers. The event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed that the dangerous drivers exhibited reduced P3 components when responding to negative stimuli, suggesting decreased inhibitory control of information that is task-irrelevant but emotionally salient. The influence of negativity bias provides one possible explanation of the effects of individual differences on dangerous driving behavior and traffic crashes. PMID:26765225

The role of high expectations of self and social desirability in emotional processing in individuals with irritable bowel syndrome: A qualitative study.

PubMed

Sibelli, Alice; Chalder, Trudie; Everitt, Hazel; Workman, Paul; Bishop, Felicity L; Moss-Morris, Rona

2017-11-01

Although high levels of distress are associated with the onset and severity of Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), it is unclear how this relates to emotional processing, particularly in relation to maintenance of symptoms and treatment outcome. This qualitative study embedded within a randomized controlled trial aimed to explore how individuals with refractory IBS experience, express, and manage their emotions after either therapist-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (TCBT) or Web-based CBT (WBCBT) compared to treatment as usual (TAU). Cross-sectional qualitative study. Fifty-two semi-structured interviews were conducted at post-treatment with 17 TCBT, 17 WBCBT, and 18 TAU participants. The transcripts were analysed using inductive thematic analysis with grounded theory elements. NVivo 11 was used to compare themes across groups. Across all groups, high expectations of self was a recurring reason for how participants experienced and expressed their emotions. Three themes with subthemes captured how high expectations related to specific aspects of emotional processing: perceived causes of emotions, strategies for coping with emotions (bottling up, avoiding emotions, and active coping strategies), and the perceived interplay between emotions and IBS symptoms. Patients recognized that their IBS symptoms both triggered and were triggered by negative emotions. However, there was a tendency to bottle up or avoid negative emotions for reasons of social desirability regardless of whether patients had CBT for IBS or not. Future psychological interventions in IBS may benefit from addressing negative beliefs about expressing emotions, promoting assertive emotional expression, and encouraging the experience of positive emotions. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? High levels of distress are consistently associated with both the onset and maintenance of IBS symptoms. Little is known about how this relates to the concept of emotional processing. Preliminary findings suggest a positive correlation between poor emotional processing and IBS. However, further studies need to confirm its role in relation to aetiology, maintenance of symptoms, and response to treatment. What does this study add? High expectations of self and social desirability seem to be important aspects shaping the way individuals with IBS experience, express, and manage their emotions. Emotional avoidance and bottling up were reported as key strategies to cope with negative emotions. The study revealed that bottling up is not perceived as an all-or-nothing strategy but can be applied selectively depending on the context. Psychological interventions in IBS may benefit from addressing not only illness-related causes of negative emotions but also personal and social triggers of distress. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

Sex differences in brain activation to emotional stimuli: a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies.

PubMed

Stevens, Jennifer S; Hamann, Stephan

2012-06-01

Substantial sex differences in emotional responses and perception have been reported in previous psychological and psychophysiological studies. For example, women have been found to respond more strongly to negative emotional stimuli, a sex difference that has been linked to an increased risk of depression and anxiety disorders. The extent to which such sex differences are reflected in corresponding differences in regional brain activation remains a largely unresolved issue, however, in part because relatively few neuroimaging studies have addressed this issue. Here, by conducting a quantitative meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies, we were able to substantially increase statistical power to detect sex differences relative to prior studies, by combining emotion studies which explicitly examined sex differences with the much larger number of studies that examined only women or men. We used an activation likelihood estimation approach to characterize sex differences in the likelihood of regional brain activation elicited by emotional stimuli relative to non-emotional stimuli. We examined sex differences separately for negative and positive emotions, in addition to examining all emotions combined. Sex differences varied markedly between negative and positive emotion studies. The majority of sex differences favoring women were observed for negative emotion, whereas the majority of the sex differences favoring men were observed for positive emotion. This valence-specificity was particularly evident for the amygdala. For negative emotion, women exhibited greater activation than men in the left amygdala, as well as in other regions including the left thalamus, hypothalamus, mammillary bodies, left caudate, and medial prefrontal cortex. In contrast, for positive emotion, men exhibited greater activation than women in the left amygdala, as well as greater activation in other regions including the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and right fusiform gyrus. These meta-analysis findings indicate that the amygdala, a key region for emotion processing, exhibits valence-dependent sex differences in activation to emotional stimuli. The greater left amygdala response to negative emotion for women accords with previous reports that women respond more strongly to negative emotional stimuli, as well as with hypothesized links between increased neurobiological reactivity to negative emotion and increased prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders in women. The finding of greater left amygdala activation for positive emotional stimuli in men suggests that greater amygdala responses reported previously for men for specific types of positive stimuli may also extend to positive stimuli more generally. In summary, this study extends efforts to characterize sex differences in brain activation during emotion processing by providing the largest and most comprehensive quantitative meta-analysis to date, and for the first time examining sex differences as a function of positive vs. negative emotional valence. The current findings highlight the importance of considering sex as a potential factor modulating emotional processing and its underlying neural mechanisms, and more broadly, the need to consider individual differences in understanding the neurobiology of emotion. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Nicotine withdrawal modulates frontal brain function during an affective Stroop task

PubMed Central

Modlin, Leslie; Wang, Lihong; Kozink, Rachel V.; McClernon, F. Joseph

2013-01-01

Background Among nicotine-dependent smokers, smoking abstinence disrupts multiple cognitive and affective processes including conflict resolution and emotional information processing (EIP). However, the neurobiological basis of abstinence effects on resolving emotional interference on cognition remains largely uncharacterized. In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate smoking abstinence effects on emotion–cognition interactions. Methods Smokers (n=17) underwent fMRI while performing an affective Stroop task (aST) over two sessions: once following 24-h abstinence and once following smoking as usual. The aST includes trials that serially present incongruent or congruent numerical grids bracketed by neutral or negative emotional distractors and view-only emotional image trials. Statistical analyses were conducted using a statistical threshold of p<0.05 cluster corrected. Results Smoking abstinence increased Stroop blood-oxygenation-level-dependent response in the right middle frontal and rostral anterior cingulate gyri. Moreover, withdrawal-induced negative affect was associated with less activation in frontoparietal regions during negative emotional information processing; whereas, during Stroop trials, negative affect predicted greater activation in frontal regions during negative, but not neutral emotional distractor trials. Conclusion Hyperactivation in the frontal executive control network during smoking abstinence may represent a need to recruit additional executive resources to meet task demands. Moreover, abstinence-induced negative affect may disrupt cognitive control neural circuitry during EIP and place additional demands on frontal executive neural resources during cognitive demands when presented with emotionally distracting stimuli. PMID:21989805

Differential interference effects of negative emotional states on subsequent semantic and perceptual processing

PubMed Central

Gorlick, Marissa A.; Mather, Mara

2012-01-01

Past studies have revealed that encountering negative events interferes with cognitive processing of subsequent stimuli. The present study investigated whether negative events affect semantic and perceptual processing differently. Presentation of negative pictures produced slower reaction times than neutral or positive pictures in tasks that require semantic processing, such as natural/man-made judgments about drawings of objects, commonness judgments about objects, and categorical judgments about pairs of words. In contrast, negative picture presentation did not slow down judgments in subsequent perceptual processing (e.g., color judgments about words, and size judgments about objects). The subjective arousal level of negative pictures did not modulate the interference effects on semantic/perceptual processing. These findings indicate that encountering negative emotional events interferes with semantic processing of subsequent stimuli more strongly than perceptual processing, and that not all types of subsequent cognitive processing are impaired by negative events. PMID:22142207

Differential interference effects of negative emotional states on subsequent semantic and perceptual processing.

PubMed

Sakaki, Michiko; Gorlick, Marissa A; Mather, Mara

2011-12-01

Past studies have revealed that encountering negative events interferes with cognitive processing of subsequent stimuli. The present study investigates whether negative events affect semantic and perceptual processing differently. Presentation of negative pictures produced slower reaction times than neutral or positive pictures in tasks that require semantic processing, such as natural or man-made judgments about drawings of objects, commonness judgments about objects, and categorical judgments about pairs of words. In contrast, negative picture presentation did not slow down judgments in subsequent perceptual processing (e.g., color judgments about words, size judgments about objects). The subjective arousal level of negative pictures did not modulate the interference effects on semantic or perceptual processing. These findings indicate that encountering negative emotional events interferes with semantic processing of subsequent stimuli more strongly than perceptual processing, and that not all types of subsequent cognitive processing are impaired by negative events. (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

Age-related differences in event-related potentials for early visual processing of emotional faces.

PubMed

Hilimire, Matthew R; Mienaltowski, Andrew; Blanchard-Fields, Fredda; Corballis, Paul M

2014-07-01

With advancing age, processing resources are shifted away from negative emotional stimuli and toward positive ones. Here, we explored this 'positivity effect' using event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants identified the presence or absence of a visual probe that appeared over photographs of emotional faces. The ERPs elicited by the onsets of angry, sad, happy and neutral faces were recorded. We examined the frontocentral emotional positivity (FcEP), which is defined as a positive deflection in the waveforms elicited by emotional expressions relative to neutral faces early on in the time course of the ERP. The FcEP is thought to reflect enhanced early processing of emotional expressions. The results show that within the first 130 ms young adults show an FcEP to negative emotional expressions, whereas older adults show an FcEP to positive emotional expressions. These findings provide additional evidence that the age-related positivity effect in emotion processing can be traced to automatic processes that are evident very early in the processing of emotional facial expressions. © The Author (2013). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

The time course of emotional picture processing: an event-related potential study using a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm

PubMed Central

Zhu, Chuanlin; He, Weiqi; Qi, Zhengyang; Wang, Lili; Song, Dongqing; Zhan, Lei; Yi, Shengnan; Luo, Yuejia; Luo, Wenbo

2015-01-01

The present study recorded event-related potentials using rapid serial visual presentation paradigm to explore the time course of emotionally charged pictures. Participants completed a dual-target task as quickly and accurately as possible, in which they were asked to judge the gender of the person depicted (task 1) and the valence (positive, neutral, or negative) of the given picture (task 2). The results showed that the amplitudes of the P2 component were larger for emotional pictures than they were for neutral pictures, and this finding represents brain processes that distinguish emotional stimuli from non-emotional stimuli. Furthermore, positive, neutral, and negative pictures elicited late positive potentials with different amplitudes, implying that the differences between emotions are recognized. Additionally, the time course for emotional picture processing was consistent with the latter two stages of a three-stage model derived from studies on emotional facial expression processing and emotional adjective processing. The results of the present study indicate that in the three-stage model of emotion processing, the middle and late stages are more universal and stable, and thus occur at similar time points when using different stimuli (faces, words, or scenes). PMID:26217276

Emotion-Cognition Interaction in Nonhuman Primates: Cognitive Avoidance of Negative Stimuli in Baboons (Papio papio)

PubMed

Blanchette, Isabelle; Marzouki, Yousri; Claidière, Nicolas; Gullstrand, Julie; Fagot, Joël

2017-01-01

It is well established that emotion and cognition interact in humans, but such an interaction has not been extensively studied in nonhuman primates. We investigated whether emotional value can affect nonhuman primates' processing of stimuli that are only mentally represented, not visually available. In a short-term memory task, baboons memorized the location of two target squares of the same color, which were presented with a distractor of a different color. Through prior long-term conditioning, one of the two colors had acquired a negative valence. Subjects were slower and less accurate on the memory task when the targets were negative than when they were neutral. In contrast, subjects were faster and more accurate when the distractors were negative than when they were neutral. Some of these effects were modulated by individual differences in emotional disposition. Overall, the results reveal a pattern of cognitive avoidance of negative stimuli, and show that emotional value alters cognitive processing in baboons even when the stimuli are not physically present. This suggests that emotional influences on cognition are deeply rooted in evolutionary continuity.

Parental Socialization of Emotion.

PubMed

Eisenberg, Nancy; Cumberland, Amanda; Spinrad, Tracy L

1998-01-01

Recently, there has been a resurgence of research on emotion, including the socialization of emotion. In this article, a heuristic model of factors contributing to the socialization of emotion is presented. Then literature relevant to the socialization of children's emotion and emotion-related behavior by parents is reviewed, including (a) parental reactions to children's emotions, (b) socializers' discussion of emotion, and (c) socializers' expression of emotion. The relevant literature is not conclusive and most of the research is correlational. However, the existing body of data provides initial support for the view that parental socialization practices have effects on children's emotional and social competence and that the socialization process is bidirectional. In particular, parental negative emotionality and negative reactions to children's expression of emotion are associated with children's negative emotionality and low social competence. In addition, possible moderators of effects such as level of emotional arousal are discussed.

Automatic affective processing impairments in patients with deficit syndrome schizophrenia.

PubMed

Strauss, Gregory P; Allen, Daniel N; Duke, Lisa A; Ross, Sylvia A; Schwartz, Jason

2008-07-01

Affective impairments were examined in patients with and without deficit syndrome schizophrenia. Two Emotional Stroop tasks designed to measure automatic processing of emotional information were administered to deficit (n=15) and non-deficit syndrome (n=26) schizophrenia patients classified according to the Schedule for the Deficit Syndrome, and matched non-patient control subjects (n=22). In comparison to non-deficit patients and controls, deficit syndrome patients demonstrated a lack of attention bias for positive information, and an elevated attentional lingering effect for negative information. These findings suggest that positive information fails to automatically capture attention of deficit syndrome patients, and that when negative information captures attention, it produces difficulty in disengagement Attentional abnormalities were significantly correlated with negative symptoms, such that more severe symptoms were associated with less attention bias for positive emotion and a greater lingering effect for negative information. Results are generally consistent with a mood-congruent processing abnormality and suggest that impaired automatic processing may be core to diminished emotional experience symptoms exhibited in deficit syndrome patients.

Amygdala subnuclei response and connectivity during emotional processing.

PubMed

Hrybouski, Stanislau; Aghamohammadi-Sereshki, Arash; Madan, Christopher R; Shafer, Andrea T; Baron, Corey A; Seres, Peter; Beaulieu, Christian; Olsen, Fraser; Malykhin, Nikolai V

2016-06-01

The involvement of the human amygdala in emotion-related processing has been studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for many years. However, despite the amygdala being comprised of several subnuclei, most studies investigated the role of the entire amygdala in processing of emotions. Here we combined a novel anatomical tracing protocol with event-related high-resolution fMRI acquisition to study the responsiveness of the amygdala subnuclei to negative emotional stimuli and to examine intra-amygdala functional connectivity. The greatest sensitivity to the negative emotional stimuli was observed in the centromedial amygdala, where the hemodynamic response amplitude elicited by the negative emotional stimuli was greater and peaked later than for neutral stimuli. Connectivity patterns converge with extant findings in animals, such that the centromedial amygdala was more connected with the nuclei of the basal amygdala than with the lateral amygdala. Current findings provide evidence of functional specialization within the human amygdala. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mindfulness and emotion regulation—an fMRI study

PubMed Central

Lutz, Jacqueline; Herwig, Uwe; Opialla, Sarah; Hittmeyer, Anna; Jäncke, Lutz; Rufer, Michael; Grosse Holtforth, Martin

2014-01-01

Mindfulness—an attentive non-judgmental focus on present experiences—is increasingly incorporated in psychotherapeutic treatments as a skill fostering emotion regulation. Neurobiological mechanisms of actively induced emotion regulation are associated with prefrontally mediated down-regulation of, for instance, the amygdala. We were interested in neurobiological correlates of a short mindfulness instruction during emotional arousal. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated effects of a short mindfulness intervention during the cued expectation and perception of negative and potentially negative pictures (50% probability) in 24 healthy individuals compared to 22 controls. The mindfulness intervention was associated with increased activations in prefrontal regions during the expectation of negative and potentially negative pictures compared to controls. During the perception of negative stimuli, reduced activation was identified in regions involved in emotion processing (amygdala, parahippocampal gyrus). Prefrontal and right insular activations when expecting negative pictures correlated negatively with trait mindfulness, suggesting that more mindful individuals required less regulatory resources to attenuate emotional arousal. Our findings suggest emotion regulatory effects of a short mindfulness intervention on a neurobiological level. PMID:23563850

The selective processing of emotional visual stimuli while detecting auditory targets: an ERP analysis.

PubMed

Schupp, Harald T; Stockburger, Jessica; Bublatzky, Florian; Junghöfer, Markus; Weike, Almut I; Hamm, Alfons O

2008-09-16

Event-related potential studies revealed an early posterior negativity (EPN) for emotional compared to neutral pictures. Exploring the emotion-attention relationship, a previous study observed that a primary visual discrimination task interfered with the emotional modulation of the EPN component. To specify the locus of interference, the present study assessed the fate of selective visual emotion processing while attention is directed towards the auditory modality. While simply viewing a rapid and continuous stream of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures in one experimental condition, processing demands of a concurrent auditory target discrimination task were systematically varied in three further experimental conditions. Participants successfully performed the auditory task as revealed by behavioral performance and selected event-related potential components. Replicating previous results, emotional pictures were associated with a larger posterior negativity compared to neutral pictures. Of main interest, increasing demands of the auditory task did not modulate the selective processing of emotional visual stimuli. With regard to the locus of interference, selective emotion processing as indexed by the EPN does not seem to reflect shared processing resources of visual and auditory modality.

Maternal play behaviors, child negativity, and preterm or low birthweight toddlers' visual-spatial outcomes: testing a differential susceptibility hypothesis.

PubMed

Dilworth-Bart, Janean E; Miller, Kyle E; Hane, Amanda

2012-04-01

We examined the joint roles of child negative emotionality and parenting in the visual-spatial development of toddlers born preterm or with low birthweights (PTLBW). Neonatal risk data were collected at hospital discharge, observer- and parent-rated child negative emotionality was assessed at 9-months postterm, and mother-initiated task changes and flexibility during play were observed during a dyadic play interaction at 16-months postterm. Abbreviated IQ scores, and verbal/nonverbal and visual-spatial processing data were collected at 24-months postterm. Hierarchical regression analyses did not support our hypothesis that the visual-spatial processing of PTLBW toddlers with higher negative emotionality would be differentially susceptible to parenting behaviors during play. Instead, observer-rated distress and a negativity composite score were associated with less optimal visual-spatial processing when mothers were more flexible during the 16-month play interaction. Mother-initiated task changes did not interact with any of the negative emotionality variables to predict any of the 24-month neurocognitive outcomes, nor did maternal flexibility interact with mother-rated difficult temperament to predict the visual-spatial processing outcomes. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Behavioral neuroscience of emotion in aging.

PubMed

Kaszniak, Alfred W; Menchola, Marisa

2012-01-01

Recent research on emotion and aging has revealed a stability of emotional experience from adulthood to older age, despite aging-related decrements in the perception and categorization of emotionally relevant stimuli. Research also shows that emotional expression remains intact with aging. In contrast, other studies provide evidence for an age-related decrease in autonomic nervous system physiological arousal, particularly in response to emotionally negative stimuli, and for shifts in central nervous system physiologic response to emotional stimuli, with increased prefrontal cortex activation and decreased amygdala activation in aging. Research on attention and memory for emotional information supports a decreased processing of negative emotional stimuli (i.e., a decrease in the negativity effect seen in younger adults), and a relative increase in the processing of emotionally positive stimuli (positivity effect). These physiological response and attentional/memory preference differences across increasingly older groups have been interpreted, within socioemotional selectivity theory, as reflecting greater motivation for emotion regulation with aging. According to this theory, as persons age, their perceived future time horizon shrinks, and a greater value is placed upon cultivating close, familiar, and meaningful relationships and other situations that give rise to positive emotional experience, and avoiding, or shifting attention from, those people and situations that are likely to elicit negative emotion. Even though there are central nervous system structural changes in emotion-relevant brain regions with aging, this shift in socioemotional selectivity, and perhaps the decreased autonomic nervous system physiological arousal of emotion with aging, facilitate enhanced emotion regulation with aging.

Service with a smile: do emotional intelligence, gender, and autonomy moderate the emotional labor process?

PubMed

Johnson, Hazel-Anne M; Spector, Paul E

2007-10-01

This survey study of 176 participants from eight customer service organizations investigated how individual factors moderate the impact of emotional labor strategies on employee well-being. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that gender and autonomy were significant moderators of the relationships between emotional labor strategies and the personal outcomes of emotional exhaustion, affective well-being, and job satisfaction. Females were more likely to experience negative consequences when engaging in surface acting. Autonomy served to alleviate negative outcomes for individuals who used emotional labor strategies often. Contrary to our hypotheses, emotional intelligence did not moderate the relationship between the emotional labor strategies and personal outcomes. Results demonstrated how the emotional labor process can influence employee well-being. (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved.

COMT Val(108/158)Met polymorphism effects on emotional brain function and negativity bias.

PubMed

Williams, Leanne M; Gatt, Justine M; Grieve, Stuart M; Dobson-Stone, Carol; Paul, Robert H; Gordon, Evian; Schofield, Peter R

2010-11-15

Biases toward processing negative versus positive information vary as a function of level of awareness, and are modulated by monoamines. Excessive biases are associated with individual differences in mood and emotional stability, and emotional disorder. Here, we examined the impact of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val(108/158)Met polymorphism, involved in dopamine and norepinephrine catabolism, on both emotional brain function and self-reported negativity bias. COMT genotyping and self-reported level of negativity bias were completed for 46 healthy participants taking part in the Brain Resource International Database. Functional MRI was undertaken during perception of facial expressions of fear and happiness presented under unmasked (consciously identified) and masked (to prevent conscious detection) conditions. Structural MR images were also acquired. A greater number of COMT Met alleles predicted increased activation in brainstem, amygdala, basal ganglia and medial prefrontal regions for conscious fear, but decreased activation for conscious happiness. This pattern was also apparent for brainstem activation for the masked condition. Effects were most apparent for females. These differences could not be explained by gray matter variations. The Met-related profile of activation, particularly prefrontally, predicted greater negativity bias associated with risk for emotional disorder. The findings suggest that the COMT Met allele modulates neural substrates of negative versus positive emotion processing. This effect may contribute to negativity biases, which confer susceptibility for emotional disorders. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The role of interpersonal harm in distinguishing regret from guilt.

PubMed

Zeelenberg, Marcel; Breugelmans, Seger M

2008-10-01

Regret and guilt are emotions that are produced by negative outcomes for which one is responsible. Both emotions have received ample attention in the psychological literature; however, it is still unclear to what extent regret and guilt represent distinct psychological processes. We examined the extent to which the distinction between interpersonal harm (negative outcomes for others) and intrapersonal harm (negative outcomes for self) is crucial in differentiating these two emotions. In a series of 3 studies we found that guilt is predominantly felt in situations of interpersonal harm, whereas regret is felt in both situations of interpersonal harm and intrapersonal harm. Moreover, the results show that in situations of interpersonal harm the phenomenology of regret shares many, but not all features with the phenomenology of guilt. We conclude that the emotion processes resulting from interpersonal and intrapersonal harm are clearly distinct, but that regret as an emotion label is applied to both types of processes whereas the emotion label guilt is primarily used to refer to experiences of interpersonal harm. Implications for emotion research are discussed. (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved

Perception of Emotional Facial Expressions in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) at Behavioural and Brain Metabolic Level.

PubMed

Aho-Özhan, Helena E A; Keller, Jürgen; Heimrath, Johanna; Uttner, Ingo; Kassubek, Jan; Birbaumer, Niels; Ludolph, Albert C; Lulé, Dorothée

2016-01-01

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) primarily impairs motor abilities but also affects cognition and emotional processing. We hypothesise that subjective ratings of emotional stimuli depicting social interactions and facial expressions is changed in ALS. It was found that recognition of negative emotions and ability to mentalize other's intentions is reduced. Processing of emotions in faces was investigated. A behavioural test of Ekman faces expressing six basic emotions was presented to 30 ALS patients and 29 age-, gender and education matched healthy controls. Additionally, a subgroup of 15 ALS patients that were able to lie supine in the scanner and 14 matched healthy controls viewed the Ekman faces during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Affective state and a number of daily social contacts were measured. ALS patients recognized disgust and fear less accurately than healthy controls. In fMRI, reduced brain activity was seen in areas involved in processing of negative emotions replicating our previous results. During processing of sad faces, increased brain activity was seen in areas associated with social emotions in right inferior frontal gyrus and reduced activity in hippocampus bilaterally. No differences in brain activity were seen for any of the other emotional expressions. Inferior frontal gyrus activity for sad faces was associated with increased amount of social contacts of ALS patients. ALS patients showed decreased brain and behavioural responses in processing of disgust and fear and an altered brain response pattern for sadness. The negative consequences of neurodegenerative processes in the course of ALS might be counteracted by positive emotional activity and positive social interactions.

Adrenocortical Activity and Emotion Regulation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stansbury, Kathy; Gunnar, Megan R.

1994-01-01

This essay argues that the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) system does not appear to be related to emotion regulation processes in children, although individual differences in emotion processes related to negative emotion temperaments appear to be associated with individual differences in HPA reactivity among normally…

The relationship between negative urgency and generalized anxiety disorder symptoms: the role of intolerance of negative emotions and intolerance of uncertainty.

PubMed

Pawluk, Elizabeth J; Koerner, Naomi

2016-11-01

GAD symptoms are associated with greater negative urgency, a dimension of impulsivity defined as the tendency to act rashly when distressed. This study examined the degree to which intolerance of negative emotional states and intolerance of uncertainty account for the association between negative urgency and GAD symptoms. An analysis of indirect effects evaluated whether intolerance of negative emotions and intolerance of uncertainty uniquely account for the association between negative urgency and GAD symptom severity. Undergraduate students (N = 308) completed measures of GAD symptoms, trait anxiety, negative urgency, distress tolerance, and intolerance of uncertainty. Greater symptoms of GAD, intolerance of negative emotional states, and intolerance of uncertainty were associated with greater negative urgency. There was an indirect relationship between negative urgency and GAD symptoms through intolerance of negative emotional states and intolerance of uncertainty even when controlling for trait anxiety. Intolerance of negative emotional states and intolerance of uncertainty each had an indirect relationship with GAD severity through negative urgency, suggesting possible bi-directional relations. Future studies should examine the role of intolerance of negative emotional states and intolerance of uncertainty in the impulsive behavior of individuals with GAD, and whether impulsive behavior reinforces these processes.

Incidental emotions influence risk preference and outcome evaluation.

PubMed

Zhao, Ding; Gu, Ruolei; Tang, Ping; Yang, Qiwei; Luo, Yue-Jia

2016-10-01

Incidental emotions, which are irrelevant to the current decision, play a significant role in the decision-making process. In this study, to investigate the influence of incidental emotions on behavioral, psychological, and electrophysiological responses in the process of decision making, participants were required to perform a monetary gambling task. During the selection stage, an emotional picture, which was chosen from the Chinese Affective Picture System and fell into one of three categories: negative, neutral, and positive, was presented between two alternatives (small/large amount of bet). The pictures were provided to induce incidental emotions. ERPs and self-rating emotional experiences to outcome feedback were recorded during the task. Behavioral results showed that positive incidental emotions elicited risk preference, but emotional experiences to outcome feedback were not influenced by incidental emotions. The feedback-related negativity amplitudes were larger in the positive emotion condition than in the negative and neutral emotion conditions for small outcomes (including wins and losses), whereas there was no difference between the three conditions for large outcomes. In addition, the amplitudes of P3 were reduced overall in the negative emotion condition. We suggest that incidental emotions have modulated both the option assessment stage (manifested in behavioral choices) and the outcome evaluation stage (manifested in ERP amplitudes) of decision making unconsciously (indicated by unchanged subjective emotional experiences). The current findings have expanded our understanding of the role of incidental emotion in decision making. © 2016 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Attachment Patterns Trigger Differential Neural Signature of Emotional Processing in Adolescents

PubMed Central

Decety, Jean; Huepe, David; Cardona, Juan Felipe; Canales-Johnson, Andres; Sigman, Mariano; Mikulan, Ezequiel; Helgiu, Elena; Baez, Sandra; Manes, Facundo; Lopez, Vladimir; Ibañez, Agustín

2013-01-01

Background Research suggests that individuals with different attachment patterns process social information differently, especially in terms of facial emotion recognition. However, few studies have explored social information processes in adolescents. This study examined the behavioral and ERP correlates of emotional processing in adolescents with different attachment orientations (insecure attachment group and secure attachment group; IAG and SAG, respectively). This study also explored the association of these correlates to individual neuropsychological profiles. Methodology/Principal Findings We used a modified version of the dual valence task (DVT), in which participants classify stimuli (faces and words) according to emotional valence (positive or negative). Results showed that the IAG performed significantly worse than SAG on tests of executive function (EF attention, processing speed, visuospatial abilities and cognitive flexibility). In the behavioral DVT, the IAG presented lower performance and accuracy. The IAG also exhibited slower RTs for stimuli with negative valence. Compared to the SAG, the IAG showed a negative bias for faces; a larger P1 and attenuated N170 component over the right hemisphere was observed. A negative bias was also observed in the IAG for word stimuli, which was demonstrated by comparing the N170 amplitude of the IAG with the valence of the SAG. Finally, the amplitude of the N170 elicited by the facial stimuli correlated with EF in both groups (and negative valence with EF in the IAG). Conclusions/Significance Our results suggest that individuals with different attachment patterns process key emotional information and corresponding EF differently. This is evidenced by an early modulation of ERP components’ amplitudes, which are correlated with behavioral and neuropsychological effects. In brief, attachments patterns appear to impact multiple domains, such as emotional processing and EFs. PMID:23940552

[Regulation of Positive and Negative Emotions as Mediator between Maternal Emotion Socialization and Child Problem Behavior].

PubMed

Fäsche, Anika; Gunzenhauser, Catherine; Friedlmeier, Wolfgang; von Suchodoletz, Antje

2015-01-01

The present study investigated five to six year old children's ability to regulate negative and positive emotions in relation to psychosocial problem behavior (N=53). It was explored, whether mothers' supportive and nonsupportive strategies of emotion socialization influence children's problem behavior by shaping their emotion regulation ability. Mothers reported on children's emotion regulation and internalizing and externalizing problem behavior via questionnaire, and were interviewed about their preferences for socialization strategies in response to children's expression of negative affect. Results showed that children with more adaptive expression of adequate positive emotions had less internalizing behavior problems. When children showed more control of inadequate negative emotions, children were less internalizing as well as externalizing in their behavior. Furthermore, results indicated indirect relations of mothers' socialization strategies with children's problem behavior. Control of inadequate negative emotions mediated the link between non-supportive strategies on externalizing problem behavior. Results suggest that emotion regulatory processes should be part of interventions to reduce the development of problematic behavior in young children. Parents should be trained in dealing with children's emotions in a constructive way.

Parental Socialization of Emotion

PubMed Central

Cumberland, Amanda; Spinrad, Tracy L.

2006-01-01

Recently, there has been a resurgence of research on emotion, including the socialization of emotion. In this article, a heuristic model of factors contributing to the socialization of emotion is presented. Then literature relevant to the socialization of children’s emotion and emotion-related behavior by parents is reviewed, including (a) parental reactions to children’s emotions, (b) socializers’ discussion of emotion, and (c) socializers’ expression of emotion. The relevant literature is not conclusive and most of the research is correlational. However, the existing body of data provides initial support for the view that parental socialization practices have effects on children’s emotional and social competence and that the socialization process is bidirectional. In particular, parental negative emotionality and negative reactions to children’s expression of emotion are associated with children’s negative emotionality and low social competence. In addition, possible moderators of effects such as level of emotional arousal are discussed. PMID:16865170

Early and late temporo-spatial effects of contextual interference during perception of facial affect.

PubMed

Frühholz, Sascha; Fehr, Thorsten; Herrmann, Manfred

2009-10-01

Contextual features during recognition of facial affect are assumed to modulate the temporal course of emotional face processing. Here, we simultaneously presented colored backgrounds during valence categorizations of facial expressions. Subjects incidentally learned to perceive negative, neutral and positive expressions within a specific colored context. Subsequently, subjects made fast valence judgments while presented with the same face-color-combinations as in the first run (congruent trials) or with different face-color-combinations (incongruent trials). Incongruent trials induced significantly increased response latencies and significantly decreased performance accuracy. Contextual incongruent information during processing of neutral expressions modulated the P1 and the early posterior negativity (EPN) both localized in occipito-temporal areas. Contextual congruent information during emotional face perception revealed an emotion-related modulation of the P1 for positive expressions and of the N170 and the EPN for negative expressions. Highest amplitude of the N170 was found for negative expressions in a negatively associated context and the N170 amplitude varied with the amount of overall negative information. Incongruent trials with negative expressions elicited a parietal negativity which was localized to superior parietal cortex and which most likely represents a posterior manifestation of the N450 as an indicator of conflict processing. A sustained activation of the late LPP over parietal cortex for all incongruent trials might reflect enhanced engagement with facial expression during task conditions of contextual interference. In conclusion, whereas early components seem to be sensitive to the emotional valence of facial expression in specific contexts, late components seem to subserve interference resolution during emotional face processing.

Altered processing of visual emotional stimuli in posttraumatic stress disorder: an event-related potential study.

PubMed

Saar-Ashkenazy, Rotem; Shalev, Hadar; Kanthak, Magdalena K; Guez, Jonathan; Friedman, Alon; Cohen, Jonathan E

2015-08-30

Patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) display abnormal emotional processing and bias towards emotional content. Most neurophysiological studies in PTSD found higher amplitudes of event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to trauma-related visual content. Here we aimed to characterize brain electrical activity in PTSD subjects in response to non-trauma-related emotion-laden pictures (positive, neutral and negative). A combined behavioral-ERP study was conducted in 14 severe PTSD patients and 14 controls. Response time in PTSD patients was slower compared with that in controls, irrespective to emotional valence. In both PTSD and controls, response time to negative pictures was slower compared with that to neutral or positive pictures. Upon ranking, both control and PTSD subjects similarly discriminated between pictures with different emotional valences. ERP analysis revealed three distinctive components (at ~300, ~600 and ~1000 ms post-stimulus onset) for emotional valence in control subjects. In contrast, PTSD patients displayed a similar brain response across all emotional categories, resembling the response of controls to negative stimuli. We interpret these findings as a brain-circuit response tendency towards negative overgeneralization in PTSD. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

What makes an art expert? Emotion and evaluation in art appreciation.

PubMed

Leder, Helmut; Gerger, Gernot; Brieber, David; Schwarz, Norbert

2014-01-01

Why do some people like negative, or even disgusting and provocative artworks? Art expertise, believed to influence the interplay among cognitive and emotional processing underlying aesthetic experience, could be the answer. We studied how art expertise modulates the effect of positive-and negative-valenced artworks on aesthetic and emotional responses, measured with self-reports and facial electromyography (EMG). Unsurprisingly, emotionally-valenced art evoked coherent valence as well as corrugator supercilii and zygamoticus major activations. However, compared to non-experts, experts showed attenuated reactions, with less extreme valence ratings and corrugator supercilii activations and they liked negative art more. This pattern was also observed for a control set of International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures suggesting that art experts show general processing differences for visual stimuli. Thus, much in line with the Kantian notion that an aesthetic stance is emotionally distanced, art experts exhibited a distinct pattern of attenuated emotional responses.

The interplay between the anticipation and subsequent online processing of emotional stimuli as measured by pupillary dilatation: the role of cognitive reappraisal.

PubMed

Vanderhasselt, Marie-Anne; Remue, Jonathan; Ng, Kwun Kei; De Raedt, Rudi

2014-01-01

Emotions can occur during an emotion-eliciting event, but they can also arise when anticipating the event. We used pupillary responses, as a measure of effortful cognitive processing, to test whether the anticipation of an emotional stimulus (positive and negative) influences the subsequent online processing of that emotional stimulus. Moreover, we tested whether individual differences in the habitual use of emotion regulation strategies are associated with pupillary responses during the anticipation and/or online processing of this emotional stimulus. Our results show that, both for positive and negative stimuli, pupillary diameter during the anticipation of emotion-eliciting events is inversely and strongly correlated to pupillary responses during the emotional image presentation. The variance in this temporal interplay between anticipation and online processing was related to individual differences in emotion regulation. Specifically, the results show that high reappraisal scores are related to larger pupil diameter during the anticipation which is related to smaller pupillary responses during the online processing of emotion-eliciting events. The habitual use of expressive suppression was not associated to pupillary responses in the anticipation and subsequent online processing of emotional stimuli. Taken together, the current data suggest (most strongly for individuals scoring high on the habitual use of reappraisal) that larger pupillary responses during the anticipation of an emotional stimulus are indicative of a sustained attentional set activation to prepare for an upcoming emotional stimulus, which subsequently directs a reduced need to cognitively process that emotional event. Hence, because the habitual use of reappraisal is known to have a positive influence on emotional well-being, the interplay between anticipation and online processing of emotional stimuli might be a significant marker of this well-being.

Inhibition of Return Is Modulated by Negative Stimuli: Evidence from Subliminal Perception.

PubMed

Pan, Fada; Wu, Xiaogang; Zhang, Li; Ou, Yuhong

2017-01-01

Inhibition of return (IOR) is considered as a "blindness mechanism" that emotional stimuli have no impact on it. Most previous studies suggested that IOR was not modulated by emotional cues. However, one key question they ignored was that only supraliminal presentation of emotional stimuli was used in their experiments. The present experiment is aimed at exploring the possible interaction between the IOR effect and subliminal emotional process. We manipulated three different kinds of valence strength of negative stimuli (high negative, HN; moderate negative, MN; low negative, LN) which were presented under the subliminal perception level and an event-related potentials (ERPs) recording was adopted. The results showed that, compared to MN and HN, the IOR effect triggered by peripheral cues was more significant for LN with aspects of behavioral and electrophysiological data (a reduction P1 effect, more negative on cued trials than on uncued trials for both early posterior Nd and Nd components). This indicated that IOR can be modulated by emotionally relevant stimuli. The automatic processing that was triggered by subliminally negative stimuli of peripheral cues had an influence on the shifting of spatial attention that was triggered by IOR. These two mechanisms may occur in the perceptual stage simultaneously.

Positively Biased Processing of Mother's Emotions Predicts Children's Social and Emotional Functioning.

PubMed

Donohue, Meghan Rose; Goodman, Sherryl H; Tully, Erin C

Risk for internalizing problems and social skills deficits likely emerges in early childhood when emotion processing and social competencies are developing. Positively biased processing of social information is typical during early childhood and may be protective against poorer psychosocial outcomes. We tested the hypothesis that young children with relatively less positively biased attention to, interpretations of, and attributions for their mother's emotions would exhibit poorer prosocial skills and more internalizing problems. A sample of 4- to 6-year-old children ( N =82) observed their mothers express happiness, sadness and anger during a simulated emotional phone conversation. Children's attention to their mother when she expressed each emotion was rated from video. Immediately following the phone conversation, children were asked questions about the conversation to assess their interpretations of the intensity of mother's emotions and misattributions of personal responsibility for her emotions. Children's prosocial skills and internalizing problems were assessed using mother-report rating scales. Interpretations of mother's positive emotions as relatively less intense than her negative emotions, misattributions of personal responsibility for her negative emotions, and lack of misattributions of personal responsibility for her positive emotions were associated with poorer prosocial skills. Children who attended relatively less to mother's positive than her negative emotions had higher levels of internalizing problems. These findings suggest that children's attention to, interpretations of, and attributions for their mother's emotions may be important targets of early interventions for preventing prosocial skills deficits and internalizing problems.

Positively Biased Processing of Mother’s Emotions Predicts Children’s Social and Emotional Functioning

PubMed Central

Donohue, Meghan Rose; Goodman, Sherryl H.; Tully, Erin C.

2016-01-01

Risk for internalizing problems and social skills deficits likely emerges in early childhood when emotion processing and social competencies are developing. Positively biased processing of social information is typical during early childhood and may be protective against poorer psychosocial outcomes. We tested the hypothesis that young children with relatively less positively biased attention to, interpretations of, and attributions for their mother’s emotions would exhibit poorer prosocial skills and more internalizing problems. A sample of 4- to 6-year-old children (N=82) observed their mothers express happiness, sadness and anger during a simulated emotional phone conversation. Children’s attention to their mother when she expressed each emotion was rated from video. Immediately following the phone conversation, children were asked questions about the conversation to assess their interpretations of the intensity of mother’s emotions and misattributions of personal responsibility for her emotions. Children’s prosocial skills and internalizing problems were assessed using mother-report rating scales. Interpretations of mother’s positive emotions as relatively less intense than her negative emotions, misattributions of personal responsibility for her negative emotions, and lack of misattributions of personal responsibility for her positive emotions were associated with poorer prosocial skills. Children who attended relatively less to mother’s positive than her negative emotions had higher levels of internalizing problems. These findings suggest that children’s attention to, interpretations of, and attributions for their mother’s emotions may be important targets of early interventions for preventing prosocial skills deficits and internalizing problems. PMID:28348456

Negative emotion differentiation: its personality and well-being correlates and a comparison of different assessment methods.

PubMed

Erbas, Yasemin; Ceulemans, Eva; Lee Pe, Madeline; Koval, Peter; Kuppens, Peter

2014-01-01

Previous research has shown that individual differences in negative emotion differentiation may play a prominent role in well-being. Yet, many basic questions about negative emotion differentiation remain unanswered, including how it relates and overlaps with related and known dimensions of individual differences and what its possible underlying processes are. To answer these questions, in the current article we present three correlational studies that chart the nomological network of individual differences in negative emotion differentiation in terms of personality, difficulties in identifying and describing feelings, and several indicators of well-being, propose a novel paradigm to assess it in the lab, and explore relationships with a possible underlying mechanism in terms of the motivation to approach or avoid emotions. The results affirm consistent relations between negative emotion differentiation and indicators of adjustment like negative affect, self-esteem, neuroticism, depression and meta-knowledge about one's emotions, and show how it is related to the motivation to experience affective states.

Age Differences in the Influence of Induced Negative Emotion on Decision-Making: The Role of Emotion Regulation.

PubMed

You, Xuqun; Ju, Chengting; Wang, Mo; Zhang, Baoshan; Liu, Pei

2017-11-19

In this study, we hypothesized that there is an age difference in the influence of negative emotion on decision-making and that this age difference is related to emotion regulation strategies. We carried out two studies. In the first, the older and younger adults completed the ultimatum game (UG) while in either an induced negative emotional or a neutral context. In the second, both the older and younger adults completed the UG while in an induced negative emotion while using either emotion reappraisal or expressive suppression to regulate their emotions during the task. The first study showed that, unlike younger adults, the older adults made similar choices in the neutral and negative induction groups. In addition, the older adults predominantly used a reappraisal strategy in both the negative and neutral emotional states, whereas the younger adults predominantly used a suppression strategy in the negative emotional state. In the second study, after the emotion regulation strategies were experimentally manipulated so that both age groups used the same strategy, we found no age difference in decision-making. Our findings indicated that the influence of negative emotion on decision-making differs between older and younger adults and that this age difference was associated with their different emotion regulation processes. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Emotionally enhanced memory for negatively arousing words: storage or retrieval advantage?

PubMed

Nadarevic, Lena

2017-12-01

People typically remember emotionally negative words better than neutral words. Two experiments are reported that investigate whether emotionally enhanced memory (EEM) for negatively arousing words is based on a storage or retrieval advantage. Participants studied non-word-word pairs that either involved negatively arousing or neutral target words. Memory for these target words was tested by means of a recognition test and a cued-recall test. Data were analysed with a multinomial model that allows the disentanglement of storage and retrieval processes in the present recognition-then-cued-recall paradigm. In both experiments the multinomial analyses revealed no storage differences between negatively arousing and neutral words but a clear retrieval advantage for negatively arousing words in the cued-recall test. These findings suggest that EEM for negatively arousing words is driven by associative processes.

Emotional intensity reduces later generalized anxiety disorder symptoms when fear of anxiety and negative problem-solving appraisal are low.

PubMed

Sugiura, Yoshinori; Sugiura, Tomoko

2015-08-01

While research based on the emotion dysregulation model indicates a positive relationship between intense emotions and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptoms, emotion-focused intervention involves the use of techniques to enhance emotional experiences, based on the notion that GAD patients are engaging in avoidance strategies. To reveal the conditions under which intense emotions lead to reduced GAD symptoms, we designed a longitudinal study to monitor changes in GAD symptoms among students (N = 129) over 3 months. Our focus was on possible moderators of the effect of emotional intensity. Results indicated that when fear of emotions and negative appraisals about problem solving were low, negative emotional intensity reduced later GAD symptoms. Moreover, under the condition of high responsibility to continue thinking, emotional intensity tended to reduce later GAD symptoms. Results suggest that reduced fear of emotions and reduced negative appraisals about problem solving may enhance the use of emotional processing techniques (e.g., emotional exposure). The interaction between responsibility to continue thinking and emotional intensity requires further examination. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Emotional conflict occurs at an early stage: evidence from the emotional face-word Stroop task.

PubMed

Zhu, Xiang-ru; Zhang, Hui-jun; Wu, Ting-ting; Luo, Wen-bo; Luo, Yue-jia

2010-06-30

The perceptual processing of emotional conflict was studied using electrophysiological techniques to measure event-related potentials (ERPs). The emotional face-word Stroop task in which emotion words are written in prominent red color across a face was use to study emotional conflict. In each trial, the emotion word and facial expression were either congruent or incongruent (in conflict). When subjects were asked to identify the expression of the face during a trial, the incongruent condition evoked a more negative N170 ERP component in posterior lateral sites than in the congruent condition. In contrast, when subjects were asked to identify the word during a trial, the incongruent condition evoked a less negative N170 component than the congruent condition. The present findings extend our understanding of the control processes involved in emotional conflict by demonstrating that differentiation of emotional congruency begins at an early perceptual processing stage. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Negative emotion does not enhance recall skills in adults with autistic spectrum disorders.

PubMed

Deruelle, C; Hubert, B; Santos, A; Wicker, B

2008-04-01

Recent empirical findings suggest a significant influence of emotion on memory processes. Surprisingly, although emotion-processing difficulties appear to be a hallmark feature in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), their impact on higher-level cognitive functions, such as memory, has not been directly studied in this population. The aim of this study was to address this issue by assessing whether the emotional valence of visual scenes affects recall skills in high-functioning individuals with ASD. To this purpose, their recall performance of neutral and emotional pictures was compared with that of typically developing adults (control group). Results revealed that while typically developing individuals showed enhanced recall skills for negative relative to positive and neutral pictures, individuals with ASD recalled the neutral pictures as well as the emotional ones. Findings of this study thus point to reduced influence of emotion on memory processes in ASD than in typically developing individuals, possibly owing to amygdala dysfunctions.

A Preliminary Study of Sex Differences in Emotional Experience.

PubMed

Reyes-Aguilar, Azalea; Barrios, Fernando A

2016-04-01

Evolutionary approaches have proposed that women possess an advantage over men in emotional functioning to promote attachment for child-rearing. Likewise, sex differences have been reported in traits such as personality and empathy, traits that likely modulate emotional processing. In this preliminary study, sex differences in emotional processing were analyzed, including empathy as a social emotion and personality traits, as well as whether there exist relationships between those measures. Young volunteers (N = 105) indicated the emotional valence, activation, and dominance that they experience in situations categorized as emotionally positive, negative, or neutral. The results of comparison between sexes supported the approach that women showed more sensitivity to high activation and dominance for positive emotions and empathy, and men were more sensitive to negative situations. Correlation analysis showed only one positive relationship between scores of Self-transcendence, a subscale of Temperament and Character Inventory, with activation scores of neutral situations, but not with emotionally charged situations, perhaps because emotions are context-dependent processes while personality traits are considered context-independent descriptions of habits. These findings should be replicated to enrich knowledge about problems in emotional processing. © The Author(s) 2016.

Gender role conflict and emotional approach coping in men with cancer.

PubMed

Hoyt, Michael A

2009-10-01

The utility of emotional approach coping (EAC), or expressing and processing emotions, has been equivocal for men. Gender role conflict, or the negative cognitive, emotional and behavioural consequences associated with male gender role socialisation, likely shape coping responses and may negatively affect the efficacy of men's emotion-directed coping efforts and adjustment to cancer. Perceptions of receptiveness of one's interpersonal environment may be particularly important to the effectiveness of EAC. This study examined the relationships among EAC, gender role conflict, and distress in a group of 183 men with cancer. Structural equation modelling revealed that higher gender role conflict was associated with lower emotional expression, which in turn was associated with greater distress. Gender role conflict was not related to emotional processing. Higher gender role conflict also was associated directly with more distress. In subsequent analyses, social constraints and age were examined as possible moderators of EAC. Emotional expression was related to more psychological distress for those in highly constrained environments; and emotional processing was associated with more distress with younger age. Emotional expression may be particularly affected by social influences related to gender and social receptivity. More research is needed to better distinguish constructive and unconstructive emotional processing.

The Emergence of Parent-Child Coercive Processes in Toddlerhood

PubMed Central

Chang, Hyein; Shaw, Daniel S.

2015-01-01

Parent-child coercion typically emerges in toddlerhood with the child’s first acts of willful defiance and the parent’s first disciplinary attempts. We explored how parents and children may contribute to this process by examining bidirectional and interactive effects between child and maternal negative behavior in 310 low-income, ethnically diverse boys. Using multiple informants and methods, child negative emotionality and maternal negative control were assessed at 18 months and child disruptive behavior and maternal negative control were measured at 24 months. Indicative of parent effects, maternal negative control at 18 months amplified the relation between children’s negative emotionality at 18 months and disruptive behavior at 24 months. Child effects were found in an unexpected direction such that children’s negative emotionality at 18 months predicted decreases in mothers’ negative control at 24 months. Findings are discussed within a transactional framework that emphasizes mutual influence of children and parents over the course of development. PMID:26068801

Neural correlates of processing "self-conscious" vs. "basic" emotions.

PubMed

Gilead, Michael; Katzir, Maayan; Eyal, Tal; Liberman, Nira

2016-01-29

Self-conscious emotions are prevalent in our daily lives and play an important role in both normal and pathological behavior. Despite their immense significance, the neural substrates that are involved in the processing of such emotions are surprisingly under-studied. In light of this, we conducted an fMRI study in which participants thought of various personal events which elicited feelings of negative and positive self-conscious (i.e., guilt, pride) or basic (i.e., anger, joy) emotions. We performed a conjunction analysis to investigate the neural correlates associated with processing events that are related to self-conscious vs. basic emotions, irrespective of valence. The results show that processing self-conscious emotions resulted in activation within frontal areas associated with self-processing and self-control, namely, the mPFC extending to the dACC, and within the lateral-dorsal prefrontal cortex. Processing basic emotions resulted in activation throughout relatively phylogenetically-ancient regions of the cortex, namely in visual and tactile processing areas and in the insular cortex. Furthermore, self-conscious emotions differentially activated the mPFC such that the negative self-conscious emotion (guilt) was associated with a more dorsal activation, and the positive self-conscious emotion (pride) was associated with a more ventral activation. We discuss how these results shed light on the nature of mental representations and neural systems involved in self-reflective and affective processing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Looking on the bright side: biased attention and the human serotonin transporter gene.

PubMed

Fox, Elaine; Ridgewell, Anna; Ashwin, Chris

2009-05-22

Humans differ in terms of biased attention for emotional stimuli and these biases can confer differential resilience and vulnerability to emotional disorders. Selective processing of positive emotional information, for example, is associated with enhanced sociability and well-being while a bias for negative material is associated with neuroticism and anxiety. A tendency to selectively avoid negative material might also be associated with mental health and well-being. The neurobiological mechanisms underlying these cognitive phenotypes are currently unknown. Here we show for the first time that allelic variation in the promotor region of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) is associated with differential biases for positive and negative affective pictures. Individuals homozygous for the long allele (LL) showed a marked bias to selectively process positive affective material alongside selective avoidance of negative affective material. This potentially protective pattern was absent among individuals carrying the short allele (S or SL). Thus, allelic variation on a common genetic polymorphism was associated with the tendency to selectively process positive or negative information. The current study is important in demonstrating a genotype-related alteration in a well-established processing bias, which is a known risk factor in determining both resilience and vulnerability to emotional disorders.

NEVER forget: negative emotional valence enhances recapitulation.

PubMed

Bowen, Holly J; Kark, Sarah M; Kensinger, Elizabeth A

2018-06-01

A hallmark feature of episodic memory is that of "mental time travel," whereby an individual feels they have returned to a prior moment in time. Cognitive and behavioral neuroscience methods have revealed a neurobiological counterpart: Successful retrieval often is associated with reactivation of a prior brain state. We review the emerging literature on memory reactivation and recapitulation, and we describe evidence for the effects of emotion on these processes. Based on this review, we propose a new model: Negative Emotional Valence Enhances Recapitulation (NEVER). This model diverges from existing models of emotional memory in three key ways. First, it underscores the effects of emotion during retrieval. Second, it stresses the importance of sensory processing to emotional memory. Third, it emphasizes how emotional valence - whether an event is negative or positive - affects the way that information is remembered. The model specifically proposes that, as compared to positive events, negative events both trigger increased encoding of sensory detail and elicit a closer resemblance between the sensory encoding signature and the sensory retrieval signature. The model also proposes that negative valence enhances the reactivation and storage of sensory details over offline periods, leading to a greater divergence between the sensory recapitulation of negative and positive memories over time. Importantly, the model proposes that these valence-based differences occur even when events are equated for arousal, thus rendering an exclusively arousal-based theory of emotional memory insufficient. We conclude by discussing implications of the model and suggesting directions for future research to test the tenets of the model.

Neural activity, neural connectivity, and the processing of emotionally valenced information in older adults: links with life satisfaction.

PubMed

Waldinger, Robert J; Kensinger, Elizabeth A; Schulz, Marc S

2011-09-01

This study examines whether differences in late-life well-being are linked to how older adults encode emotionally valenced information. Using fMRI with 39 older adults varying in life satisfaction, we examined how viewing positive and negative images would affect activation and connectivity of an emotion-processing network. Participants engaged most regions within this network more robustly for positive than for negative images, but within the PFC this effect was moderated by life satisfaction, with individuals higher in satisfaction showing lower levels of activity during the processing of positive images. Participants high in satisfaction showed stronger correlations among network regions-particularly between the amygdala and other emotion processing regions-when viewing positive, as compared with negative, images. Participants low in satisfaction showed no valence effect. Findings suggest that late-life satisfaction is linked with how emotion-processing regions are engaged and connected during processing of valenced information. This first demonstration of a link between neural recruitment and late-life well-being suggests that differences in neural network activation and connectivity may account for the preferential encoding of positive information seen in some older adults.

Neural Activity, Neural Connectivity, and the Processing of Emotionally-Valenced Information in Older Adults: Links with Life Satisfaction

PubMed Central

Waldinger, Robert J.; Kensinger, Elizabeth A.; Schulz, Marc S.

2013-01-01

This study examines whether differences in late-life well-being are linked to how older adults encode emotionally-valenced information. Using fMRI with 39 older adults varying in life satisfaction, we examined how viewing positive and negative images affected activation and connectivity of an emotion-processing network. Participants engaged most regions within this network more robustly for positive than for negative images, but within the PFC this effect was moderated by life satisfaction, with individuals higher in satisfaction showing lower levels of activity during the processing of positive images. Participants high in satisfaction showed stronger correlations among network regions – particularly between the amygdala and other emotion processing regions – when viewing positive as compared to negative images. Participants low in satisfaction showed no valence effect. Findings suggest that late-life satisfaction is linked with how emotion-processing regions are engaged and connected during processing of valenced information. This first demonstration of a link between neural recruitment and late-life well-being suggests that differences in neural network activation and connectivity may account for the preferential encoding of positive information seen in some older adults. PMID:21590504

The neural basis of emotions varies over time: different regions go with onset- and offset-bound processes underlying emotion intensity.

PubMed

Résibois, Maxime; Verduyn, Philippe; Delaveau, Pauline; Rotgé, Jean-Yves; Kuppens, Peter; Van Mechelen, Iven; Fossati, Philippe

2017-08-01

According to theories of emotion dynamics, emotions unfold across two phases in which different types of processes come to the fore: emotion onset and emotion offset. Differences in onset-bound processes are reflected by the degree of explosiveness or steepness of the response at onset, and differences in offset-bound processes by the degree of accumulation or intensification of the subsequent response. Whether onset- and offset-bound processes have distinctive neural correlates and, hence, whether the neural basis of emotions varies over time, still remains unknown. In the present fMRI study, we address this question using a recently developed paradigm that allows to disentangle explosiveness and accumulation. Thirty-one participants were exposed to neutral and negative social feedback, and asked to reflect on its contents. Emotional intensity while reading and thinking about the feedback was measured with an intensity profile tracking approach. Using non-negative matrix factorization, the resulting profile data were decomposed in explosiveness and accumulation components, which were subsequently entered as continuous regressors of the BOLD response. It was found that the neural basis of emotion intensity shifts as emotions unfold over time with emotion explosiveness and accumulation having distinctive neural correlates. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press.

The neural basis of emotions varies over time: different regions go with onset- and offset-bound processes underlying emotion intensity

PubMed Central

Verduyn, Philippe; Delaveau, Pauline; Rotgé, Jean-Yves; Kuppens, Peter; Van Mechelen, Iven; Fossati, Philippe

2017-01-01

Abstract According to theories of emotion dynamics, emotions unfold across two phases in which different types of processes come to the fore: emotion onset and emotion offset. Differences in onset-bound processes are reflected by the degree of explosiveness or steepness of the response at onset, and differences in offset-bound processes by the degree of accumulation or intensification of the subsequent response. Whether onset- and offset-bound processes have distinctive neural correlates and, hence, whether the neural basis of emotions varies over time, still remains unknown. In the present fMRI study, we address this question using a recently developed paradigm that allows to disentangle explosiveness and accumulation. Thirty-one participants were exposed to neutral and negative social feedback, and asked to reflect on its contents. Emotional intensity while reading and thinking about the feedback was measured with an intensity profile tracking approach. Using non-negative matrix factorization, the resulting profile data were decomposed in explosiveness and accumulation components, which were subsequently entered as continuous regressors of the BOLD response. It was found that the neural basis of emotion intensity shifts as emotions unfold over time with emotion explosiveness and accumulation having distinctive neural correlates. PMID:28402478

Functional connections between activated and deactivated brain regions mediate emotional interference during externally directed cognition.

PubMed

Di Plinio, Simone; Ferri, Francesca; Marzetti, Laura; Romani, Gian Luca; Northoff, Georg; Pizzella, Vittorio

2018-04-24

Recent evidence shows that task-deactivations are functionally relevant for cognitive performance. Indeed, higher cognitive engagement has been associated with higher suppression of activity in task-deactivated brain regions - usually ascribed to the Default Mode Network (DMN). Moreover, a negative correlation between these regions and areas actively engaged by the task is associated with better performance. DMN regions show positive modulation during autobiographical, social, and emotional tasks. However, it is not clear how processing of emotional stimuli affects the interplay between the DMN and executive brain regions. We studied this interplay in an fMRI experiment using emotional negative stimuli as distractors. Activity modulations induced by the emotional interference of negative stimuli were found in frontal, parietal, and visual areas, and were associated with modulations of functional connectivity between these task-activated areas and DMN regions. A worse performance was predicted both by lower activity in the superior parietal cortex and higher connectivity between visual areas and frontal DMN regions. Connectivity between right inferior frontal gyrus and several DMN regions in the left hemisphere was related to the behavioral performance. This relation was weaker in the negative than in the neutral condition, likely suggesting less functional inhibitions of DMN regions during emotional processing. These results show that both executive and DMN regions are crucial for the emotional interference process and suggest that DMN connections are related to the interplay between externally-directed and internally-focused processes. Among DMN regions, superior frontal gyrus may be a key node in regulating the interference triggered by emotional stimuli. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Opioids, pain, the brain, and hyperkatifeia: a framework for the rational use of opioids for pain.

PubMed

Shurman, Joseph; Koob, George F; Gutstein, Howard B

2010-07-01

Opioids have relieved more human suffering than any other medication, but their use is still fraught with significant concerns of misuse, abuse, and addiction. This theoretical article explores the hypothesis that opioid misuse in the context of pain management produces a hypersensitivity to emotional distress, termed hyperkatifeia. In the misuse of opioids, neural substrates that mediate positive emotional states (brain reward systems) are compromised, and substrates mediating negative emotional states (brain stress systems) are enhanced. A reflection and early marker of such a nonhomeostatic state may be the development of opioid-induced hyperkatifeia, defined as the increased intensity of the constellation of negative emotional/motivational symptoms and signs observed during withdrawal from drugs of abuse (derived from the Greek "katifeia" for dejection or negative emotional state) and is most likely to occur in subjects in whom the opioid produces a break with homeostasis and less likely to occur when the opioid is restoring homeostasis, such as in effective pain treatment. When the opioid appropriately relieves pain, opponent processes are not engaged. However, if the opioid is administered in excess of need because of overdose, pharmacokinetic variables, or treating an individual without pain, then the body will react to that perturbation by engaging opponent processes in the domains of both pain (hyperalgesia) and negative emotional states (hyperkatifeia). Repeated engagement of opponent processes without time for the brain's emotional systems to reestablish homeostasis will further drive changes in emotional processes that may produce opioid abuse or addiction, particularly in individuals with genetic or environmental vulnerability.

Perception of Emotional Facial Expressions in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) at Behavioural and Brain Metabolic Level

PubMed Central

Aho-Özhan, Helena E. A.; Keller, Jürgen; Heimrath, Johanna; Uttner, Ingo; Kassubek, Jan; Birbaumer, Niels; Ludolph, Albert C.; Lulé, Dorothée

2016-01-01

Introduction Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) primarily impairs motor abilities but also affects cognition and emotional processing. We hypothesise that subjective ratings of emotional stimuli depicting social interactions and facial expressions is changed in ALS. It was found that recognition of negative emotions and ability to mentalize other’s intentions is reduced. Methods Processing of emotions in faces was investigated. A behavioural test of Ekman faces expressing six basic emotions was presented to 30 ALS patients and 29 age-, gender and education matched healthy controls. Additionally, a subgroup of 15 ALS patients that were able to lie supine in the scanner and 14 matched healthy controls viewed the Ekman faces during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Affective state and a number of daily social contacts were measured. Results ALS patients recognized disgust and fear less accurately than healthy controls. In fMRI, reduced brain activity was seen in areas involved in processing of negative emotions replicating our previous results. During processing of sad faces, increased brain activity was seen in areas associated with social emotions in right inferior frontal gyrus and reduced activity in hippocampus bilaterally. No differences in brain activity were seen for any of the other emotional expressions. Inferior frontal gyrus activity for sad faces was associated with increased amount of social contacts of ALS patients. Conclusion ALS patients showed decreased brain and behavioural responses in processing of disgust and fear and an altered brain response pattern for sadness. The negative consequences of neurodegenerative processes in the course of ALS might be counteracted by positive emotional activity and positive social interactions. PMID:27741285

The mediation effect of menstrual phase on negative emotion processing: evidence from N2.

PubMed

Wu, Haiyan; Chen, Chunping; Cheng, Dazhi; Yang, Suyong; Huang, Ruiwang; Cacioppo, Stephanie; Luo, Yue-Jia

2014-01-01

Numerous studies have shown a 'negativity bias' in emotion processing and effect of menstrual phase on emotion processing. Most of these results, however, did not match the arousal of different types of stimuli. The present study examined the time course of negative emotion processing across different menstrual phases (e.g., late luteal/premenstrual phase and follicular phase) when the arousal level of negative and neutral stimuli was equal. Following previous studies, an oddball paradigm was utilized in present study. Participants viewed neutral and negative (highly (HN) and moderately negative (MN)) stimuli with matched arousal and were asked to make deviant vs. standard judgments. The behavioral results showed a higher accuracy for HN stimuli than neutral stimuli, and the other comparisons were not significant. The major event-related potential (ERP) finding was that N2 amplitude was larger for MN than neutral in the late luteal phase, whereas such difference was absent during the follicular phase. Moreover, The N2 for HN stimuli was larger in late luteal phase than in follicular phase. Therefore, female may be with higher sensitivity to MN stimuli during late luteal phase than during follicular phase when the arousal of stimuli was well controlled. These results provide additional insight to premenstrual affective syndrome and affective disorder.

An Electrophysiological Investigation of Emotional Abnormalities in Groups at Risk for Schizophrenia-Spectrum Personality Disorders

PubMed Central

Martin, Elizabeth A.; Karcher, Nicole R.; Bartholow, Bruce D.; Siegle, Greg J.; Kerns, John G.

2017-01-01

Both extreme levels of social anhedonia (SocAnh) and perceptual aberration/magical ideation (PerMag) are associated with risk for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and with emotional abnormalities. Yet, the nature of any psychophysiological-measured affective abnormality, including the role of automatic/controlled processes, is unclear. We examined the late positive potential (LPP) during passive viewing (to assess automatic processing) and during cognitive reappraisal (to assess controlled processing) in three groups: SocAnh, PerMag, and controls. The SocAnh group exhibited an increased LPP when viewing negative images. Further, SocAnh exhibited greater reductions in the LPP for negative images when told to use strategies to alter negative emotion. Similar to SocAnh, PerMag exhibited an increased LPP when viewing negative images. However, PerMag also exhibited an increased LPP when viewing positive images as well as an atypical decreased LPP when increasing positive emotion. Overall, these results suggest that at-risk groups are associated with shared and unique automatic and controlled abnormalities. PMID:28174121

Neural Mechanisms of Cognitive Reappraisal of Negative Self-Beliefs in Social Anxiety Disorder

PubMed Central

Goldin, Philippe R.; Ball, Tali M.; Werner, Kelly; Heimberg, Richard; Gross, James J.

2009-01-01

Background Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by distorted negative self-beliefs (NSBs) which are thought to enhance emotional reactivity, interfere with emotion regulation, and undermine social functioning. Cognitive reappraisal is a type of emotion regulation used to alter NSBs, with the goal of modulating emotional reactivity. Despite its relevance, little is known about the neural bases and temporal features of cognitive reappraisal in patients with SAD. Methods Twenty-seven patients with SAD and 27 healthy controls (HC) were trained to react and to implement cognitive reappraisal in order to down-regulate negative emotional reactivity to NSBs while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and providing ratings of negative emotion experience. Results Behaviorally, compared with HC, patients with SAD reported greater negative emotion both while reacting to and reappraising NSBs. However, when cued, participants in both groups were able to use cognitive reappraisal to decrease emotion. Neurally, reacting to NSBs resulted in early amygdala response in both groups. Reappraising NSBs resulted in greater early cognitive control, language, and visual processing in HC, but greater late cognitive control, visceral, and visual processing in patients with SAD. Functional connectivity analysis during reappraisal identified more regulatory regions inversely related to left amygdala in HCs than in patients with SAD. Reappraisal-related brain regions that differentiated patients and controls were associated with negative emotion ratings and cognitive reappraisal self-efficacy. Conclusions Findings regarding cognitive reappraisal suggest neural timing, connectivity, and brain-behavioral associations specific to patients with SAD, and elucidate neural mechanisms that might serve as biomarkers of interventions for SAD. PMID:19717138

Rejection of unfair offers can be driven by negative emotions, evidence from modified ultimatum games with anonymity.

PubMed

Ma, Ning; Li, Nan; He, Xiao-Song; Sun, De-Lin; Zhang, Xiaochu; Zhang, Da-Ren

2012-01-01

The rejection of unfair offers can be affected by both negative emotions (e.g. anger and moral disgust) and deliberate cognitive processing of behavioral consequences (e.g. concerns of maintaining social fairness and protecting personal reputation). However, whether negative emotions are sufficient to motivate this behavior is still controversial. With modified ultimatum games, a recent study (Yamagishi T, et al. (2009) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106:11520-11523) found that people reject unfair offers even when this behavior increases inequity, and even when they could not communicate to the proposers. Yamagishi suggested that rejection of unfair offers could occur without people's concerning of maintaining social fairness, and could be driven by negative emotions. However, as anonymity was not sufficiently guaranteed in Yamagishi's study, the rejection rates in their experiments may have been influenced by people's concerns of protecting personal reputation (reputational concerns) in addition to negative emotions; thus, it was unclear whether the rejection was driven by negative emotions, or by reputational concerns, or both. In the present study, with specific methods to ensure anonymity, the effect of reputational concerns was successfully ruled out. We found that in a private situation in which rejection could not be driven by reputational concerns, the rejection rates of unfair offers were significantly larger than zero, and in public situations in which rejection rates could be influenced by both negative emotions and reputational concerns, rejection rates were significantly higher than that in the private situation. These results, together with Yamagishi's findings, provided more complete evidence suggesting (a) that the rejection of unfair offers can be driven by negative emotions and (b) that deliberate cognitive processing of the consequences of the behavior can increase the rejection rate, which may benefit social cooperation.

Verbal responses, depressive symptoms, reminiscence functions and cognitive emotion regulation in older women receiving individual reminiscence therapy.

PubMed

Wu, Dongmei; Chen, Taolin; Yang, Hao; Gong, Qiyong; Hu, Xiuying

2018-07-01

To examine the effectiveness of individual reminiscence therapy in community-dwelling older women with depressive symptoms and to explore the characteristics of participants' verbalisation in the process. Previous studies have found reminiscence was related to depression and anxiety. Although reminiscence therapy is widely used to reduce depression, little is known about how it works, and the content of verbalisations might provide one explanation. The study employed a one-group pretest-post-test design. Twenty-seven participants underwent 6-week interventions of individual reminiscence therapy at home that were conducted by one nurse and induced through seeing old photographs. The Geriatric Depression Scale, Zung Self-rating Anxiety Scale, Reminiscence Functions Scale and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire were used to measure the emotional states, reminiscence functions and cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Participants' verbalisations were categorised using the Client Behavior System. Reminiscence therapy relieved depression and anxiety. Both the reminiscence function and cognitive emotion regulation became more favourable after interventions. Furthermore, higher frequencies of recounting, cognitive-behavioural exploration and affective exploration were noted in the process. Participants with more severe depressive symptoms tended to display a higher frequency of affective exploration. The reduction in depression, self-negative reminiscence and negative-focused emotion regulation were respectively associated with verbalisations. Individual reminiscence therapy might relieve negative emotion and improve reminiscence function and cognitive emotion regulation. The participants' verbalisation is worthy of our attention, due to its correlation with the severity of depression and its mitigating effects on the depression, anxiety, self-negative reminiscence and negative-focused regulation in older women. The results contribute to our understanding of the therapeutic procedure and suggest a need for more research on the therapeutic processes. Study on processes could help training novice clinical interveners so that reminiscence therapy can work better on emotional disorders in clinical practice. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Gender Differences in Emotion Regulation: An fMRI Study of Cognitive Reappraisal.

PubMed

McRae, Kateri; Ochsner, Kevin N; Mauss, Iris B; Gabrieli, John J D; Gross, James J

2008-04-01

Despite strong popular conceptions of gender differences in emotionality and striking gender differences in the prevalence of disorders thought to involve emotion dysregulation, the literature on the neural bases of emotion regulation is nearly silent regarding gender differences (Gross, 2007; Ochsner & Gross, in press). The purpose of the present study was to address this gap in the literature. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we asked male and female participants to use a cognitive emotion regulation strategy (reappraisal) to down-regulate their emotional responses to negatively valenced pictures. Behaviorally, men and women evidenced comparable decreases in negative emotion experience. Neurally, however, gender differences emerged. Compared with women, men showed (a) lesser increases in prefrontal regions that are associated with reappraisal, (b) greater decreases in the amygdala, which is associated with emotional responding, and (c) lesser engagement of ventral striatal regions, which are associated with reward processing. We consider two non-competing explanations for these differences. First, men may expend less effort when using cognitive regulation, perhaps due to greater use of automatic emotion regulation. Second, women may use positive emotions in the service of reappraising negative emotions to a greater degree. We then consider the implications of gender differences in emotion regulation for understanding gender differences in emotional processing in general, and gender differences in affective disorders.

Gender Differences in Emotion Regulation: An fMRI Study of Cognitive Reappraisal

PubMed Central

McRae, Kateri; Ochsner, Kevin N.; Mauss, Iris B.; Gabrieli, John J. D.; Gross, James J.

2009-01-01

Despite strong popular conceptions of gender differences in emotionality and striking gender differences in the prevalence of disorders thought to involve emotion dysregulation, the literature on the neural bases of emotion regulation is nearly silent regarding gender differences (Gross, 2007; Ochsner & Gross, in press). The purpose of the present study was to address this gap in the literature. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we asked male and female participants to use a cognitive emotion regulation strategy (reappraisal) to down-regulate their emotional responses to negatively valenced pictures. Behaviorally, men and women evidenced comparable decreases in negative emotion experience. Neurally, however, gender differences emerged. Compared with women, men showed (a) lesser increases in prefrontal regions that are associated with reappraisal, (b) greater decreases in the amygdala, which is associated with emotional responding, and (c) lesser engagement of ventral striatal regions, which are associated with reward processing. We consider two non-competing explanations for these differences. First, men may expend less effort when using cognitive regulation, perhaps due to greater use of automatic emotion regulation. Second, women may use positive emotions in the service of reappraising negative emotions to a greater degree. We then consider the implications of gender differences in emotion regulation for understanding gender differences in emotional processing in general, and gender differences in affective disorders. PMID:29743808

Facial emotion processing in pediatric social anxiety disorder: Relevance of situational context.

PubMed

Schwab, Daniela; Schienle, Anne

2017-08-01

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) typically begins in childhood. Previous research has demonstrated that adult patients respond with elevated late positivity (LP) to negative facial expressions. In the present study on pediatric SAD, we investigated responses to negative facial expressions and the role of social context information. Fifteen children with SAD and 15 non-anxious controls were first presented with images of negative facial expressions with masked backgrounds. Following this, the complete images which included context information, were shown. The negative expressions were either a result of an emotion-relevant (e.g., social exclusion) or emotion-irrelevant elicitor (e.g., weight lifting). Relative to controls, the clinical group showed elevated parietal LP during face processing with and without context information. Both groups differed in their frontal LP depending on the type of context. In SAD patients, frontal LP was lower in emotion-relevant than emotion-irrelevant contexts. We conclude that SAD patients direct more automatic attention towards negative facial expressions (parietal effect) and are less capable in integrating affective context information (frontal effect). Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Looking to the eyes influences the processing of emotion on face-sensitive event-related potentials in 7-month-old infants.

PubMed

Vanderwert, Ross E; Westerlund, Alissa; Montoya, Lina; McCormick, Sarah A; Miguel, Helga O; Nelson, Charles A

2015-10-01

Previous studies in infants have shown that face-sensitive components of the ongoing electroencephalogram (the event-related potential, or ERP) are larger in amplitude to negative emotions (e.g., fear, anger) versus positive emotions (e.g., happy). However, it is still unclear whether the negative emotions linked with the face or the negative emotions alone contribute to these amplitude differences. We simultaneously recorded infant looking behaviors (via eye-tracking) and face-sensitive ERPs while 7-month-old infants viewed human faces or animals displaying happy, fear, or angry expressions. We observed that the amplitude of the N290 was greater (i.e., more negative) to angry animals compared to happy or fearful animals; no such differences were obtained for human faces. Eye-tracking data highlighted the importance of the eye region in processing emotional human faces. Infants that spent more time looking to the eye region of human faces showing fearful or angry expressions had greater N290 or P400 amplitudes, respectively. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Relating specific emotions to intrinsic motivation: on the moderating role of positive and negative emotion differentiation.

PubMed

Vandercammen, Leen; Hofmans, Joeri; Theuns, Peter

2014-01-01

Despite the fact that studies on self-determination theory have traditionally disregarded the explicit role of emotions in the motivation eliciting process, research attention for the affective antecedents of motivation is growing. We add to this emerging research field by testing the moderating role of emotion differentiation -individual differences in the extent to which people can differentiate between specific emotions- on the relationship between twelve specific emotions and intrinsic motivation. To this end, we conducted a daily diary study (N = 72) and an experience sampling study (N = 34). Results showed that the relationship between enthusiasm, cheerfulness, optimism, contentedness, gloominess, miserableness, uneasiness (in both studies 1 and 2), calmness, relaxation, tenseness, depression, worry (only in Study 1) on one hand and intrinsic motivation on the other hand was moderated by positive emotion differentiation for the positive emotions and by negative emotion differentiation for the negative emotions. Altogether, these findings suggest that for people who are unable to distinguish between different specific positive emotions the relationship between those specific positive emotions and intrinsic motivation is stronger, whereas the relationship between specific negative emotions and intrinsic motivation is weaker for people who are able to distinguish between the different specific negative emotions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

FMRI Study of Neural Responses to Implicit Infant Emotion in Anorexia Nervosa

PubMed Central

Leppanen, Jenni; Cardi, Valentina; Paloyelis, Yannis; Simmons, Andy; Tchanturia, Kate; Treasure, Janet

2017-01-01

Difficulties in social–emotional processing have been proposed to play an important role in the development and maintenance of anorexia nervosa (AN). Few studies, thus far, have investigated neural processes that underlie these difficulties, including processing emotional facial expressions. However, the majority of these studies have investigated neural responses to adult emotional display, which may be confounded by elevated sensitivity to social rank and threat in AN. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the neural processes underlying implicit processing of positively and negatively valenced infant emotional display in AN. Twenty-one adult women with AN and twenty-six healthy comparison (HC) women were presented with images of positively valenced, negatively valenced, and neutral infant faces during a fMRI scan. Significant differences between the groups in positive > neutral and negative > neutral contrasts were investigated in a priori regions of interest, including the bilateral amygdala, insula, and lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC). The findings revealed that the AN participants showed relatively increased recruitment while the HC participants showed relatively reduced recruitment of the bilateral amygdala and the right dorsolateral PFC in the positive > neutral contrast. In the negative > neutral contrast, the AN group showed relatively increased recruitment of the left posterior insula while the HC groups showed relatively reduced recruitment of this region. These findings suggest that people with AN may engage in implicit prefrontal down-regulation of elevated limbic reactivity to positively social–emotional stimuli. PMID:28567026

Musical chords and emotion: major and minor triads are processed for emotion.

PubMed

Bakker, David Radford; Martin, Frances Heritage

2015-03-01

Musical chords are arguably the smallest building blocks of music that retain emotional information. Major chords are generally perceived as positive- and minor chords as negative-sounding, but there has been debate concerning how early these emotional connotations may be processed. To investigate this, emotional facial stimuli and musical chord stimuli were simultaneously presented to participants, and facilitation of processing was measured via event-related potential (ERP) amplitudes. Decreased amplitudes of the P1 and N2 ERP components have been found to index the facilitation of early processing. If simultaneously presented musical chords and facial stimuli are perceived at early stages as belonging to the same emotional category, then early processing should be facilitated for these congruent pairs, and ERP amplitudes should therefore be decreased as compared to the incongruent pairs. ERPs were recorded from 30 musically naive participants as they viewed happy, sad, and neutral faces presented simultaneously with a major or minor chord. When faces and chords were presented that contained congruent emotional information (happy-major or sad-minor), processing was facilitated, as indexed by decreased N2 ERP amplitudes. This suggests that musical chords do possess emotional connotations that can be processed as early as 200 ms in naive listeners. The early stages of processing that are involved suggest that major and minor chords have deeply connected emotional meanings, rather than superficially attributed ones, indicating that minor triads possess negative emotional connotations and major triads possess positive emotional connotations.

Emotion-cognition interaction in people at familial high risk for schizophrenia: the impact of sex differences.

PubMed

Phillips, Laura K; Giuliano, Anthony J; Lee, Erica H; Faraone, Stephen V; Tsuang, Ming T; Seidman, Larry J

2011-11-01

Cognitive deficits are fundamental to schizophrenia, and research suggests that negative emotion abnormally interferes with certain cognitive processes in those with the illness. To a lesser extent, cognitive impairment is found in persons at risk for schizophrenia, but there is limited research on the impact of emotion on cognitive processing in at-risk groups. It is unknown whether interference of negative emotion precedes illness and contributes to vulnerability for the disorder. We studied the extent to which negative emotional information interferes with working memory in 21 adolescent and young adult first-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia and 22 community controls. Groups were comparable in age, sex, education, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Primary measures were n-back tasks varying in cognitive load (1-back, 2-back, 3-back) with emotional faces (neutral, happy, fearful) as stimuli. The control group's response times (RTs) and the women's RTs, regardless of group, differed depending on the emotion condition. In contrast, the RTs of the relatives and of the men, regardless of group, did not differ by emotion. This study is the first to examine emotion-cognition interactions in relatives of individuals with schizophrenia. Reduced efficiency in processing emotional information may contribute to a greater vulnerability for schizophrenia that may be heightened in men. Additional research with larger samples of men and women is needed to test these preliminary findings.

The Influence of Agreeableness and Ego Depletion on Emotional Responding.

PubMed

Finley, Anna J; Crowell, Adrienne L; Harmon-Jones, Eddie; Schmeichel, Brandon J

2017-10-01

Agreeable individuals report more intense withdrawal-oriented negative emotions across aversive situations. Two studies tested the hypothesis that self-regulatory depletion (i.e., ego depletion) moderates the relationship between trait Agreeableness and negative emotional responding. Ego depletion was manipulated using a writing task. Emotional responding was measured with startle eye-blink responses (Study 1, N = 71) and self-reported valence, arousal, and empathic concern (Study 2, N = 256) during emotional picture viewing. Trait Agreeableness was measured using a questionnaire. In Study 1, Agreeableness predicted especially large startle responses during aversive images and especially small startles during appetitive images. After exercising self-control, the relationship between startle magnitudes and Agreeableness decreased. In Study 2, Agreeableness predicted more empathic concern for aversive images, which in turn predicted heightened self-reported negative emotions. After exercising self-control, the relationship between Agreeableness and empathic concern decreased. Agreeable individuals exhibit heightened negative emotional responding. Ego depletion reduced the link between Agreeableness and negative emotional responding in Study 1 and moderated the indirect effect of Agreeableness on negative emotional responding via empathic concern in Study 2. Empathic concern appears to be a resource-intensive process underlying heightened responding to aversive stimuli among agreeable persons. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Negative emotional experiences arouse rumination and affect working memory capacity.

PubMed

Curci, Antonietta; Lanciano, Tiziana; Soleti, Emanuela; Rimé, Bernard

2013-10-01

Following an emotional experience, individuals are confronted with the persistence of ruminative thoughts that disturb the undertaking of other activities. In the present study, we experimentally tested the idea that experiencing a negative emotion triggers a ruminative process that drains working memory (WM) resources normally devoted to other tasks. Undergraduate participants of high versus low WM capacity were administered the operation-word memory span test (OSPAN) as a measure of availability of WM resources preceding and following the presentation of negative emotional versus neutral material. Rumination was assessed immediately after the second OSPAN session and at a 24-hr delay. Results showed that both the individual's WM capacity and the emotional valence of the material influenced WM performance and the persistence of ruminative thoughts. Following the experimental induction, rumination mediated the relationship between the negative emotional state and the concomitant WM performance. Based on these results, we argue that ruminative processes deplete WM resources, making them less available for concurrent tasks; in addition, rumination tends to persist over time. These findings have implications for the theoretical modeling of the long-term effects of emotions in both daily life and clinical contexts.

Positive Effects of Talking about the Negative: Family Narratives of Negative Experiences and Preadolescents' Perceived Competence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marin, Kelly A.; Bohanek, Jennifer G.; Fivush, Robyn

2008-01-01

Family narratives about the past are an important context for the socialization of emotion, but relations between expression of negative emotion and children's emerging competence are conflicting. In this study, 24 middle-class two-parent families narrated a shared negative experience together and we examined the process (initiations and…

Empathy costs: Negative emotional bias in high empathisers.

PubMed

Chikovani, George; Babuadze, Lasha; Iashvili, Nino; Gvalia, Tamar; Surguladze, Simon

2015-09-30

Excessive empathy has been associated with compassion fatigue in health professionals and caregivers. We investigated an effect of empathy on emotion processing in 137 healthy individuals of both sexes. We tested a hypothesis that high empathy may underlie increased sensitivity to negative emotion recognition which may interact with gender. Facial emotion stimuli comprised happy, angry, fearful, and sad faces presented at different intensities (mild and prototypical) and different durations (500ms and 2000ms). The parameters of emotion processing were represented by discrimination accuracy, response bias and reaction time. We found that higher empathy was associated with better recognition of all emotions. We also demonstrated that higher empathy was associated with response bias towards sad and fearful faces. The reaction time analysis revealed that higher empathy in females was associated with faster (compared with males) recognition of mildly sad faces of brief duration. We conclude that although empathic abilities were providing for advantages in recognition of all facial emotional expressions, the bias towards emotional negativity may potentially carry a risk for empathic distress. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Gender differences in pain: do emotions play a role?

PubMed

Rhudy, Jamie L; Williams, Amy E

2005-12-01

Research suggests that the influence of gender on the processing and experience of pain is a result of several mechanisms. One mediating variable is emotion, which may modulate pain through an interaction of valence (pleasant-unpleasant) and arousal (calm-excited). This review examines whether gender differences in the experience and processing of emotion contribute to differences in the modulation and perception of pain. An English-language search of MEDLINE and PsycINFO was conducted from 1887 to May 2005. Additional literature was obtained from reference lists of articles retained in the initial search. Emotion appears to influence pain through a valence-by-arousal interaction. Specifically, negatively valenced emotions with low to moderate arousal (eg, anxiety) enhance pain, whereas negatively valenced emotions with high arousal (eg, fear) reduce pain. In contrast, positively valenced emotions always reduce pain, as long as minimal arousal is achieved. Some evidence suggests that women are more sensitive than men to threat-related stimuli and thus experience more negative affect than men. This would generally lead to enhanced pain perception in women. It is also possible that women are more likely than men to experience negative affect with high arousal (intense fear) and thus pain inhibition. However, the relatively lower base rate of intense negative emotions is not likely to contribute much to gender differences in pain. Evidence also suggests that men may be more sensitive to positive events, particularly sexual/erotic stimuli, which may lead to more positive emotion-induced pain reduction in men, relative to women. This review suggests that gender differences in the experience of pain may arise from differences in the experience and processing of emotion that, in turn, differentially alter pain processing. Specifically, the system associated with negative affect may be more attuned to threatening stimuli in women, and the system associated with positive affect may be more attuned to pleasurable stimuli in men. However, there is a paucity of research directly addressing this issue; much of the research on this topic has failed to test a comprehensive model of emotion, failed to use adequate manipulation checks, or failed to use within-subject experimental designs that control for intra- and interindividual differences. Therefore, it is concluded that additional research is warranted.

The valence-specific laterality effect in free viewing conditions: The influence of sex, handedness, and response bias.

PubMed

Rodway, Paul; Wright, Lynn; Hardie, Scott

2003-12-01

The right hemisphere has often been viewed as having a dominant role in the processing of emotional information. Other evidence indicates that both hemispheres process emotional information but their involvement is valence specific, with the right hemisphere dealing with negative emotions and the left hemisphere preferentially processing positive emotions. This has been found under both restricted (Reuter-Lorenz & Davidson, 1981) and free viewing conditions (Jansari, Tranel, & Adophs, 2000). It remains unclear whether the valence-specific laterality effect is also sex specific or is influenced by the handedness of participants. To explore this issue we repeated Jansari et al.'s free-viewing laterality task with 78 participants. We found a valence-specific laterality effect in women but not men, with women discriminating negative emotional expressions more accurately when the face was presented on the left-hand side and discriminating positive emotions more accurately when those faces were presented on the right-hand side. These results indicate that under free viewing conditions women are more lateralised for the processing of facial emotion than are men. Handedness did not affect the lateralised processing of facial emotion. Finally, participants demonstrated a response bias on control trials, where facial emotion did not differ between the faces. Participants selected the left-hand side more frequently when they believed the expression was negative and the right-hand side more frequently when they believed the expression was positive. This response bias can cause a spurious valence-specific laterality effect which might have contributed to the conflicting findings within the literature.

The Cognitive Building Blocks of Emotion Regulation: Ability to Update Working Memory Moderates the Efficacy of Rumination and Reappraisal on Emotion

PubMed Central

Pe, Madeline Lee; Raes, Filip; Kuppens, Peter

2013-01-01

The ability to regulate emotions is a critical component of healthy emotional functioning. Therefore, it is important to determine factors that contribute to the efficacy of emotion regulation. The present article examined whether the ability to update emotional information in working memory is a predictor of the efficacy of rumination and reappraisal on affective experience both at the trait level (Study 1) and in daily life (Study 2). In both studies, results revealed that the relationship between use of reappraisal and high arousal negative emotions was moderated by updating ability. Specifically, use of reappraisal was associated with decreased high arousal negative emotions for participants with high updating ability, while no significant relationship was found for those with low updating ability. In addition, both studies also revealed that the relationship between rumination and high arousal negative emotions was moderated by updating ability. In general, use of rumination was associated with elevated high arousal negative emotions. However, this relationship was blunted for participants with high updating ability. That is, use of rumination was associated with less elevated high arousal negative emotions for participants with high updating ability. These results identify the ability to update emotional information in working memory as a crucial process modulating the efficacy of emotion regulation efforts. PMID:23874872

The cognitive building blocks of emotion regulation: ability to update working memory moderates the efficacy of rumination and reappraisal on emotion.

PubMed

Pe, Madeline Lee; Raes, Filip; Kuppens, Peter

2013-01-01

The ability to regulate emotions is a critical component of healthy emotional functioning. Therefore, it is important to determine factors that contribute to the efficacy of emotion regulation. The present article examined whether the ability to update emotional information in working memory is a predictor of the efficacy of rumination and reappraisal on affective experience both at the trait level (Study 1) and in daily life (Study 2). In both studies, results revealed that the relationship between use of reappraisal and high arousal negative emotions was moderated by updating ability. Specifically, use of reappraisal was associated with decreased high arousal negative emotions for participants with high updating ability, while no significant relationship was found for those with low updating ability. In addition, both studies also revealed that the relationship between rumination and high arousal negative emotions was moderated by updating ability. In general, use of rumination was associated with elevated high arousal negative emotions. However, this relationship was blunted for participants with high updating ability. That is, use of rumination was associated with less elevated high arousal negative emotions for participants with high updating ability. These results identify the ability to update emotional information in working memory as a crucial process modulating the efficacy of emotion regulation efforts.

Relating Specific Emotions to Intrinsic Motivation: On the Moderating Role of Positive and Negative Emotion Differentiation

PubMed Central

Vandercammen, Leen; Hofmans, Joeri; Theuns, Peter

2014-01-01

Despite the fact that studies on self-determination theory have traditionally disregarded the explicit role of emotions in the motivation eliciting process, research attention for the affective antecedents of motivation is growing. We add to this emerging research field by testing the moderating role of emotion differentiation –individual differences in the extent to which people can differentiate between specific emotions– on the relationship between twelve specific emotions and intrinsic motivation. To this end, we conducted a daily diary study (N = 72) and an experience sampling study (N = 34). Results showed that the relationship between enthusiasm, cheerfulness, optimism, contentedness, gloominess, miserableness, uneasiness (in both studies 1 and 2), calmness, relaxation, tenseness, depression, worry (only in Study 1) on one hand and intrinsic motivation on the other hand was moderated by positive emotion differentiation for the positive emotions and by negative emotion differentiation for the negative emotions. Altogether, these findings suggest that for people who are unable to distinguish between different specific positive emotions the relationship between those specific positive emotions and intrinsic motivation is stronger, whereas the relationship between specific negative emotions and intrinsic motivation is weaker for people who are able to distinguish between the different specific negative emotions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. PMID:25517984

The neural correlates of priming emotion and reward systems for conflict processing in alcoholics.

PubMed

Schulte, T; Jung, Y-C; Sullivan, E V; Pfefferbaum, A; Serventi, M; Müller-Oehring, E M

2017-12-01

Emotional dysregulation in alcoholism (ALC) may result from disturbed inhibitory mechanisms. We therefore tested emotion and alcohol cue reactivity and inhibitory processes using negative priming. To test the neural correlates of cue reactivity and negative priming, 26 ALC and 26 age-matched controls underwent functional MRI performing a Stroop color match-to-sample task. In cue reactivity trials, task-irrelevant emotion and alcohol-related pictures were interspersed between color samples and color words. In negative priming trials, pictures primed the semantic content of an alcohol or emotion Stroop word. Behaviorally, both groups showed response facilitation to picture cue trials and response inhibition to primed trials. For cue reactivity to emotion and alcohol pictures, ALC showed midbrain-limbic activation. By contrast, controls activated frontoparietal executive control regions. Greater midbrain-hippocampal activation in ALC correlated with higher amounts of lifetime alcohol consumption and higher anxiety. With negative priming, ALC exhibited frontal cortical but not midbrain-hippocampal activation, similar to the pattern observed in controls. Higher frontal activation to alcohol-priming correlated with less craving and to emotion-priming with fewer depressive symptoms. The findings suggest that neurofunctional systems in ALC can be primed to deal with upcoming emotion- and alcohol-related conflict and can overcome the prepotent midbrain-limbic cue reactivity response.

Mindlessly Polite: A Conceptual Replication of the Emotional Seesaw Effect on Compliance and Information Processing

PubMed Central

Kaczmarek, Magdalena C.; Steffens, Melanie C.

2017-01-01

Recent studies demonstrated that the sequential induction of contrasting negative and positive emotions can be used as a social influence technique. The original field experiments found that whenever a sudden change in the emotional dynamic occurs – from negative to positive or vice versa – an increase in compliant behavior and an impairment in cognitive functioning can be observed. The goal of the present experiments was a conceptual replication and extension of the results in a more controlled and counterbalanced fashion. To this aim a novel emotion induction technique was created using an outcome related expectancy violation to induce and change emotions. In a first experiment, the influence of contrasting emotions (vs. only one emotion) on compliance, message processing and information recall was assessed among 80 undergraduate students. We were able to show that a positive, then negative experience, and vice versa, led to losses in processing efficacy, not only leaving individuals momentarily vulnerable to social influence attempts, but also impairing information recall. We replicated this pattern of findings in a second experiment (N = 41). The implications of this innovative induction technique and its findings for theory and future research on the emerging field on contrasting emotions as social-influence techniques are discussed. PMID:28270788

Level of processing modulates the neural correlates of emotional memory formation

PubMed Central

Ritchey, Maureen; LaBar, Kevin S.; Cabeza, Roberto

2010-01-01

Emotion is known to influence multiple aspects of memory formation, including the initial encoding of the memory trace and its consolidation over time. However, the neural mechanisms whereby emotion impacts memory encoding remain largely unexplored. The present study employed a levels-of-processing manipulation to characterize the impact of emotion on encoding with and without the influence of elaborative processes. Participants viewed emotionally negative, neutral, and positive scenes under two conditions: a shallow condition focused on the perceptual features of the scenes and a deep condition that queried their semantic meaning. Recognition memory was tested 2 days later. Results showed that emotional memory enhancements were greatest in the shallow condition. FMRI analyses revealed that the right amygdala predicted subsequent emotional memory in the shallow more than deep condition, whereas the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex demonstrated the reverse pattern. Furthermore, the association of these regions with the hippocampus was modulated by valence: the amygdala-hippocampal link was strongest for negative stimuli, whereas the prefrontal-hippocampal link was strongest for positive stimuli. Taken together, these results suggest two distinct activation patterns underlying emotional memory formation: an amygdala component that promotes memory during shallow encoding, especially for negative information, and a prefrontal component that provides extra benefits during deep encoding, especially for positive information. PMID:20350176

Mindlessly Polite: A Conceptual Replication of the Emotional Seesaw Effect on Compliance and Information Processing.

PubMed

Kaczmarek, Magdalena C; Steffens, Melanie C

2017-01-01

Recent studies demonstrated that the sequential induction of contrasting negative and positive emotions can be used as a social influence technique. The original field experiments found that whenever a sudden change in the emotional dynamic occurs - from negative to positive or vice versa - an increase in compliant behavior and an impairment in cognitive functioning can be observed. The goal of the present experiments was a conceptual replication and extension of the results in a more controlled and counterbalanced fashion. To this aim a novel emotion induction technique was created using an outcome related expectancy violation to induce and change emotions. In a first experiment, the influence of contrasting emotions (vs. only one emotion) on compliance, message processing and information recall was assessed among 80 undergraduate students. We were able to show that a positive, then negative experience, and vice versa, led to losses in processing efficacy, not only leaving individuals momentarily vulnerable to social influence attempts, but also impairing information recall. We replicated this pattern of findings in a second experiment ( N = 41). The implications of this innovative induction technique and its findings for theory and future research on the emerging field on contrasting emotions as social-influence techniques are discussed.

Level of processing modulates the neural correlates of emotional memory formation.

PubMed

Ritchey, Maureen; LaBar, Kevin S; Cabeza, Roberto

2011-04-01

Emotion is known to influence multiple aspects of memory formation, including the initial encoding of the memory trace and its consolidation over time. However, the neural mechanisms whereby emotion impacts memory encoding remain largely unexplored. The present study used a levels-of-processing manipulation to characterize the impact of emotion on encoding with and without the influence of elaborative processes. Participants viewed emotionally negative, neutral, and positive scenes under two conditions: a shallow condition focused on the perceptual features of the scenes and a deep condition that queried their semantic meaning. Recognition memory was tested 2 days later. Results showed that emotional memory enhancements were greatest in the shallow condition. fMRI analyses revealed that the right amygdala predicted subsequent emotional memory in the shallow more than deep condition, whereas the right ventrolateral PFC demonstrated the reverse pattern. Furthermore, the association of these regions with the hippocampus was modulated by valence: the amygdala-hippocampal link was strongest for negative stimuli, whereas the prefrontal-hippocampal link was strongest for positive stimuli. Taken together, these results suggest two distinct activation patterns underlying emotional memory formation: an amygdala component that promotes memory during shallow encoding, especially for negative information, and a prefrontal component that provides extra benefits during deep encoding, especially for positive information.

Processing of emotional reactivity and emotional memory over sleep

PubMed Central

Baran, Bengi; Pace-Schott, Edward F.; Ericson, Callie; Spencer, Rebecca M. C.

2012-01-01

Sleep enhances memories, particularly emotional memories. As such, it has been suggested that sleep deprivation may reduce post-traumatic stress disorder. This presumes that emotional memory consolidation is paralleled by a reduction in emotional reactivity, an association that has not yet been examined. In the present experiment, we utilized an incidental memory task in humans and obtained valence and arousal ratings during two sessions separated either by 12 hours of daytime wake or 12 hours including overnight sleep. Recognition accuracy was greater following sleep relative to wake for both negative and neutral pictures. While emotional reactivity to negative pictures was greatly reduced over wake, the negative emotional response was relatively preserved over sleep. Moreover, protection of emotional reactivity was associated with greater time in REM sleep. Recognition accuracy, however, was not associated with REM. Thus, we provide the first evidence that sleep enhances emotional memory while preserving emotional reactivity. PMID:22262901

Attachment Representation Moderates the Influence of Emotional Context on Information Processing

PubMed Central

Leyh, Rainer; Heinisch, Christine; Kungl, Melanie T.; Spangler, Gottfried

2016-01-01

The induction of emotional states has repeatedly been shown to affect cognitive processing capacities. At a neurophysiological level, P3 amplitude responses that are associated with attention allocation have been found to be reduced to task-relevant stimuli during emotional conditions as compared to neutral conditions suggesting a draining impact of emotion on cognitive resources. Attachment theory claims that how individuals regulate their emotions is guided by an internal working model (IWM) of attachment that has formed early in life. While securely attached individuals are capable of freely evaluating their emotions insecurely attached ones tend to either suppress or heighten the emotional experience in a regulatory effort. To explore how attachment quality moderates the impact of emotional contexts on information processing event-related potentials (ERPs) in 41 individuals were assessed. Subjects were instructed to detect neutral target letters within an oddball paradigm. Various images taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) served as background pictures and represented negative, positive and neutral task-irrelevant contexts. Attachment representation was assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and individuals were assigned to one of three categories (secure, insecure-dismissing, insecure-preoccupied). At a behavioral level, the study revealed that negative emotionally conditions were associated with the detection of less target stimuli in insecure-dismissing subjects. Accordingly, ERPs yielded reduced P3 amplitudes in insecure-dismissing subjects when given a negative emotional context. We interpret these findings in terms of less sufficient emotion regulation strategies in insecure-dismissing subjects at the cost of accurate behavioral performance. The study suggests that attachment representation differentially moderates the relationship between emotional contexts and information processing most evident in insecure-dismissing subjects. PMID:27375467

Attachment Representation Moderates the Influence of Emotional Context on Information Processing.

PubMed

Leyh, Rainer; Heinisch, Christine; Kungl, Melanie T; Spangler, Gottfried

2016-01-01

The induction of emotional states has repeatedly been shown to affect cognitive processing capacities. At a neurophysiological level, P3 amplitude responses that are associated with attention allocation have been found to be reduced to task-relevant stimuli during emotional conditions as compared to neutral conditions suggesting a draining impact of emotion on cognitive resources. Attachment theory claims that how individuals regulate their emotions is guided by an internal working model (IWM) of attachment that has formed early in life. While securely attached individuals are capable of freely evaluating their emotions insecurely attached ones tend to either suppress or heighten the emotional experience in a regulatory effort. To explore how attachment quality moderates the impact of emotional contexts on information processing event-related potentials (ERPs) in 41 individuals were assessed. Subjects were instructed to detect neutral target letters within an oddball paradigm. Various images taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) served as background pictures and represented negative, positive and neutral task-irrelevant contexts. Attachment representation was assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and individuals were assigned to one of three categories (secure, insecure-dismissing, insecure-preoccupied). At a behavioral level, the study revealed that negative emotionally conditions were associated with the detection of less target stimuli in insecure-dismissing subjects. Accordingly, ERPs yielded reduced P3 amplitudes in insecure-dismissing subjects when given a negative emotional context. We interpret these findings in terms of less sufficient emotion regulation strategies in insecure-dismissing subjects at the cost of accurate behavioral performance. The study suggests that attachment representation differentially moderates the relationship between emotional contexts and information processing most evident in insecure-dismissing subjects.

Neural correlates of experienced moral emotion: an fMRI investigation of emotion in response to prejudice feedback.

PubMed

Fourie, Melike M; Thomas, Kevin G F; Amodio, David M; Warton, Christopher M R; Meintjes, Ernesta M

2014-01-01

Guilt, shame, and embarrassment are quintessential moral emotions with important regulatory functions for the individual and society. Moral emotions are, however, difficult to study with neuroimaging methods because their elicitation is more intricate than that of basic emotions. Here, using functional MRI (fMRI), we employed a novel social prejudice paradigm to examine specific brain regions associated with real-time moral emotion, focusing on guilt and related moral-negative emotions. The paradigm induced intense moral-negative emotion (primarily guilt) in 22 low-prejudice individuals through preprogrammed feedback indicating implicit prejudice against Black and disabled people. fMRI data indicated that this experience of moral-negative emotion was associated with increased activity in anterior paralimbic structures, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and anterior insula, in addition to areas associated with mentalizing, including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus. Of significance was prominent conflict-related activity in the supragenual ACC, which is consistent with theories proposing an association between acute guilt and behavioral inhibition. Finally, a significant negative association between self-reported guilt and neural activity in the pregenual ACC suggested a role of self-regulatory processes in response to moral-negative affect. These findings are consistent with the multifaceted self-regulatory functions of moral-negative emotions in social behavior.

Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) on Emotion Regulation in Social Anxiety Disorder

PubMed Central

Goldin, Philippe R.; Gross, James J.

2014-01-01

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is an established program shown to reduce symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression. MBSR is believed to alter emotional responding by modifying cognitive–affective processes. Given that social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by emotional and attentional biases as well as distorted negative self-beliefs, we examined MBSR-related changes in the brain-behavior indices of emotional reactivity and regulation of negative self-beliefs in patients with SAD. Sixteen patients underwent functional MRI while reacting to negative self-beliefs and while regulating negative emotions using 2 types of attention deployment emotion regulation—breath-focused attention and distraction-focused attention. Post-MBSR, 14 patients completed neuroimaging assessments. Compared with baseline, MBSR completers showed improvement in anxiety and depression symptoms and self-esteem. During the breath-focused attention task (but not the distraction-focused attention task), they also showed (a) decreased negative emotion experience, (b) reduced amygdala activity, and (c) increased activity in brain regions implicated in attentional deployment. MBSR training in patients with SAD may reduce emotional reactivity while enhancing emotion regulation. These changes might facilitate reduction in SAD-related avoidance behaviors, clinical symptoms, and automatic emotional reactivity to negative self-beliefs in adults with SAD. PMID:20141305

Cognitive and physiological markers of emotional awareness in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

PubMed

Parr, L A

2001-11-01

The ability to understand emotion in others is one of the most important factors involved in regulating social interactions in primates. Such emotional awareness functions to coordinate activity among group members, enable the formation of long-lasting individual relationships, and facilitate the pursuit of shared interests. Despite these important evolutionary implications, comparative studies of emotional processing in humans and great apes are practically nonexistent, constituting a major gap in our understanding of the extent to which emotional awareness has played an important role in shaping human behavior and societies. This paper presents the results of two experiments that examine chimpanzees' responses to emotional stimuli. First, changes in peripheral skin temperature were measured while subjects viewed three categories of emotionally negative video scenes; conspecifics being injected with needles (INJ), darts and needles alone (DART), and conspecific directing agonism towards the veterinarians (CHASE). Second, chimpanzees were required to use facial expressions to categorize emotional video scenes, i.e., favorite food and objects and veterinarian procedures, according to their positive and negative valence. With no prior training, subjects spontaneously matched the emotional videos to conspecific facial expressions according to their shared emotional meaning, indicating that chimpanzee facial expressions are processed emotionally, as are human expressions. Decreases in peripheral skin temperature, indicative of negative sympathetic arousal, were significantly lower when subjects viewed the INJ and DART videos, compared to the CHASE videos, indicating greater negative arousal when viewing conspecifics being injected with needles, and needles themselves, than when viewing conspecifics engaged in general agonism.

Emotional arousal impairs association-memory: Roles of amygdala and hippocampus.

PubMed

Madan, Christopher R; Fujiwara, Esther; Caplan, Jeremy B; Sommer, Tobias

2017-08-01

Emotional arousal is well-known to enhance memory for individual items or events, whereas it can impair association memory. The neural mechanism of this association memory impairment by emotion is not known: In response to emotionally arousing information, amygdala activity may interfere with hippocampal associative encoding (e.g., via prefrontal cortex). Alternatively, emotional information may be harder to unitize, resulting in reduced availability of extra-hippocampal medial temporal lobe support for emotional than neutral associations. To test these opposing hypotheses, we compared neural processes underlying successful and unsuccessful encoding of emotional and neutral associations. Participants intentionally studied pairs of neutral and negative pictures (Experiments 1-3). We found reduced association-memory for negative pictures in all experiments, accompanied by item-memory increases in Experiment 2. High-resolution fMRI (Experiment 3) indicated that reductions in associative encoding of emotional information are localizable to an area in ventral-lateral amygdala, driven by attentional/salience effects in the central amygdala. Hippocampal activity was similar during both pair types, but a left hippocampal cluster related to successful encoding was observed only for negative pairs. Extra-hippocampal associative memory processes (e.g., unitization) were more effective for neutral than emotional materials. Our findings suggest that reduced emotional association memory is accompanied by increases in activity and functional coupling within the amygdala. This did not disrupt hippocampal association-memory processes, which indeed were critical for successful emotional association memory formation. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gender Differences in the Cognitive Control of Emotion: An fMRI Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koch, Kathrin; Pauly, Katharina; Kellermann, Thilo; Seiferth, Nina Y.; Reske, Martina; Backes, Volker; Stocker, Tony; Shah, N. Jon; Amunts, Katrin; Kircher, Tilo; Schneider, Frank; Habel, Ute

2007-01-01

The interaction of emotion and cognition has become a topic of major interest. However, the influence of gender on the interplay between the two processes, along with its neural correlates have not been fully analysed so far. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we induced negative emotion using negative olfactory stimulation…

Neural correlates of emotional regulation while viewing films.

PubMed

Shimamura, Arthur P; Marian, Diane E; Haskins, Andrew L

2013-03-01

Negative and arousal-inducing film clips were used to assess the neural correlates of emotional expression and suppression. Compared to viewing neutral clips, both negative (disgusting) and arousal (action) clips activated primarily posterior regions in the parietal and occipital cortex when participants were instructed to express their emotions. When instructed to suppress their emotions while viewing negative clips, a broad frontoparietal network was activated that included lateral, medial, and orbital regions in the prefrontal cortex as well as lateral and medial regions of the posterior parietal cortex. The suppression of arousal clips also activated prefrontal and parietal regions, though not to the same extent as the suppression of negative clips. The findings demonstrate the potency of using movies to engage emotional processes and highlight a broad frontoparietal network that is engaged during the suppression of negative film clips.

Culture, attention, and emotion.

PubMed

Grossmann, Igor; Ellsworth, Phoebe C; Hong, Ying-yi

2012-02-01

This research provides experimental evidence for cultural influence on one of the most basic elements of emotional processing: attention to positive versus negative stimuli. To this end, we focused on Russian culture, which is characterized by brooding and melancholy. In Study 1, Russians spent significantly more time looking at negative than positive pictures, whereas Americans did not show this tendency. In Study 2, Russian Latvians were randomly primed with symbols of each culture, after which we measured the speed of recognition for positive versus negative trait words. Biculturals were significantly faster in recognizing negative words (as compared with baseline) when primed with Russian versus Latvian cultural symbols. Greater identification with Russian culture facilitated this effect. We provide a theoretical discussion of mental processes underlying cultural differences in emotion research.

Rumination and emotions in nonsuicidal self-injury and eating disorder behaviors: a preliminary test of the emotional cascade model.

PubMed

Arbuthnott, Alexis E; Lewis, Stephen P; Bailey, Heidi N

2015-01-01

This study examined relations between repeated rumination trials and emotions in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) and eating disorder behaviors (EDBs) within the context of the emotional cascade model (Selby, Anestis, & Joiner, 2008). Rumination was repeatedly induced in 342 university students (79.2% female, Mage = 18.61, standard error = .08); negative and positive emotions were reported after each rumination trial. Repeated measures analyses of variance were used to examine the relations between NSSI and EDB history and changes in emotions. NSSI history associated with greater initial increases in negative emotions, whereas EDB history associated with greater initial decreases in positive emotions. Baseline negative emotional states and trait emotion regulation mediated the relation between NSSI/EDB history and emotional states after rumination. Although NSSI and EDBs share similarities in emotion dysregulation, differences also exist. Both emotion dysregulation and maladaptive cognitive processes should be targeted in treatment for NSSI and EDBs. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Neural Bases of Social Anxiety Disorder: Emotional Reactivity and Cognitive Regulation During Social and Physical Threat

PubMed Central

Goldin, Philippe R.; Manber, Tali; Hakimi, Shabnam; Canli, Turhan; Gross, James J.

2014-01-01

Context Social anxiety disorder is thought to involve emotional hyper-reactivity, cognitive distortions, and ineffective emotion regulation. While the neural bases of emotional reactivity to social stimuli have been described, the neural bases of emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation during social and physical threat, and their relationship to social anxiety symptom severity, have yet to be investigated. Objective This study investigated behavioral and neural correlates of emotional reactivity and cognitive regulation in patients and controls during processing of social and physical threat stimuli. Design Participants were trained to implement cognitive-linguistic regulation of emotional reactivity induced by social (harsh facial expressions) and physical (violent scenes) threat while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and providing behavioral ratings of negative emotion experience. Setting Academic psychology department. Participants 15 adults with social anxiety disorder and 17 demographically-matched healthy controls. Main Outcome Measures Blood oxygen level dependent signal and negative emotion ratings. Results Behaviorally, patients reported greater negative emotion than controls during social and physical threat, but showed equivalent reduction in negative emotion following cognitive regulation. Neurally, viewing social threat resulted in greater emotion-related neural responses in patients than controls, with social anxiety symptom severity related to activity in a network of emotion and attention processing regions in patients only. Viewing physical threat produced no between-group differences. Regulation during social threat resulted in greater cognitive and attention regulation-related brain activation in controls compared to patients. Regulation during physical threat produced greater cognitive control-related response (i.e., right DLPFC) in patients compared to controls. Conclusions Compared to controls, patients demonstrated exaggerated negative emotion reactivity and reduced cognitive regulation related neural activation, specifically for social threat stimuli. These findings help to elucidate potential neural mechanisms of emotion regulation that might serve as biomarkers for interventions for social anxiety disorder. PMID:19188539

The effect of age on memory for emotional faces.

PubMed

Grady, Cheryl L; Hongwanishkul, Donaya; Keightley, Michelle; Lee, Wendy; Hasher, Lynn

2007-05-01

Prior studies of emotion suggest that young adults should have enhanced memory for negative faces and that this enhancement should be reduced in older adults. Several studies have not shown these effects but were conducted with procedures different from those used with other emotional stimuli. In this study, researchers examined age differences in recognition of faces with emotional or neutral expressions, using trial-unique stimuli, as is typically done with other types of emotional stimuli. They also assessed the influence of personality traits and mood on memory. Enhanced recognition for negative faces was found in young adults but not in older adults. Recognition of faces was not influenced by mood or personality traits in young adults, but lower levels of extraversion and better emotional sensitivity predicted better negative face memory in older adults. These results suggest that negative expressions enhance memory for faces in young adults, as negative valence enhances memory for words and scenes. This enhancement is absent in older adults, but memory for emotional faces is modulated in older adults by personality traits that are relevant to emotional processing. (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved

Resting lateralized activity predicts the cortical response and appraisal of emotions: an fNIRS study.

PubMed

Balconi, Michela; Grippa, Elisabetta; Vanutelli, Maria Elide

2015-12-01

This study explored the effect of lateralized left-right resting brain activity on prefrontal cortical responsiveness to emotional cues and on the explicit appraisal (stimulus evaluation) of emotions based on their valence. Indeed subjective responses to different emotional stimuli should be predicted by brain resting activity and should be lateralized and valence-related (positive vs negative valence). A hemodynamic measure was considered (functional near-infrared spectroscopy). Indeed hemodynamic resting activity and brain response to emotional cues were registered when subjects (N = 19) viewed emotional positive vs negative stimuli (IAPS). Lateralized index response during resting state, LI (lateralized index) during emotional processing and self-assessment manikin rating were considered. Regression analysis showed the significant predictive effect of resting activity (more left or right lateralized) on both brain response and appraisal of emotional cues based on stimuli valence. Moreover, significant effects were found as a function of valence (more right response to negative stimuli; more left response to positive stimuli) during emotion processing. Therefore, resting state may be considered a predictive marker of the successive cortical responsiveness to emotions. The significance of resting condition for emotional behavior was discussed. © The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Trait anxiety and attenuated negative affect differentiation: a vulnerability factor to consider?

PubMed

Matt, Lindsey M; Fresco, David M; Coifman, Karin G

2016-11-01

Describing emotional experiences using distinct terms, or affect differentiation, has been associated with emotion regulation and adaptive behavior under stress. There is little data, however, examining the association between differentiation and dispositional factors underlying psychopathology. The current study examines the association between differentiation and trait anxiety (TA) given prior evidence of cognitive biases in TA relevant to higher order processing of emotional experiences. We examined cross-sectionally, via lab-based repeated assessment, the association between differentiation of negative and positive experiences and TA. Two hundred twenty-two adults completed an emotion reactivity task including repeated assessments of affect. We hypothesized that individuals higher in trait anxiety (HTA) would have greater difficulty differentiating their experiences. HTA individuals exhibited lower levels of negative affect (NA) differentiation even when controlling for depression. Although negative emotion intensity was consistently associated with lower differentiation, this did not account for the influence of HTA on differentiation. These data suggest that HTA individuals have greater difficulty differentiating negative emotions, regardless of negative emotion intensity and depression. As HTA is common to many emotional disorders; this evidence suggests that poor differentiation may also be an important transdiagnostic consideration in models of risk and of affective disease.

The dark side of emotion: the addiction perspective.

PubMed

Koob, George F

2015-04-15

Emotions are "feeling" states and classic physiological emotive responses that are interpreted based on the history of the organism and the context. Motivation is a persistent state that leads to organized activity. Both are intervening variables and intimately related and have neural representations in the brain. The present thesis is that drugs of abuse elicit powerful emotions that can be interwoven conceptually into this framework. Such emotions range from pronounced euphoria to a devastating negative emotional state that in the extreme can create a break with homeostasis and thus an allostatic hedonic state that has been considered key to the etiology and maintenance of the pathophysiology of addiction. Drug addiction can be defined as a three-stage cycle-binge/intoxication, withdrawal/negative affect, and preoccupation/anticipation-that involves allostatic changes in the brain reward and stress systems. Two primary sources of reinforcement, positive and negative reinforcement, have been hypothesized to play a role in this allostatic process. The negative emotional state that drives negative reinforcement is hypothesized to derive from dysregulation of key neurochemical elements involved in the brain incentive salience and stress systems. Specific neurochemical elements in these structures include not only decreases in incentive salience system function in the ventral striatum (within-system opponent processes) but also recruitment of the brain stress systems mediated by corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), dynorphin-κ opioid systems, and norepinephrine, vasopressin, hypocretin, and substance P in the extended amygdala (between-system opponent processes). Neuropeptide Y, a powerful anti-stress neurotransmitter, has a profile of action on compulsive-like responding for drugs similar to a CRF1 receptor antagonist. Other stress buffers include nociceptin and endocannabinoids, which may also work through interactions with the extended amygdala. The thesis argued here is that the brain has specific neurochemical neurocircuitry coded by the hedonic extremes of pleasant and unpleasant emotions that have been identified through the study of opponent processes in the domain of addiction. These neurochemical systems need to be considered in the context of the framework that emotions involve the specific brain regions now identified to differentially interpreting emotive physiological expression. Published by Elsevier B.V.

The dark side of emotion: the addiction perspective

PubMed Central

Koob, George F.

2015-01-01

Emotions are “feeling” states and classic physiological emotive responses that are interpreted based on the history of the organism and the context. Motivation is a persistent state that leads to organized activity. Both are intervening variables and intimately related and have neural representations in the brain. The present thesis is that drugs of abuse elicit powerful emotions that can be interwoven conceptually into this framework. Such emotions range from pronounced euphoria to a devastating negative emotional state that in the extreme can create a break with homeostasis and thus an allostatic hedonic state that has been considered key to the etiology and maintenance of the pathophysiology of addiction. Drug addiction can be defined as a three-stage cycle—binge/intoxication, withdrawal/negative affect, and preoccupation/anticipation—that involves allostatic changes in the brain reward and stress systems. Two primary sources of reinforcement, positive and negative reinforcement, have been hypothesized to play a role in this allostatic process. The negative emotional state that drives negative reinforcement is hypothesized to derive from dysregulation of key neurochemical elements involved in the brain incentive salience and stress systems. Specific neurochemical elements in these structures include not only decreases in incentive salience system function in the ventral striatum (within-system opponent processes) but also recruitment of the brain stress systems mediated by corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), dynorphin-κ opioid systems, and norepinephrine, vasopressin, hypocretin, and substance P in the extended amygdala (between-system opponent processes). Neuropeptide Y, a powerful anti-stress neurotransmitter, has a profile of action on compulsive-like responding for drugs similar to a CRF1 antagonist. Other stress buffers include nociceptin and endocannabinoids, which may also work through interactions with the extended amygdala. The thesis argued here is that the brain has specific neurochemical neurocircuitry coded by the hedonic extremes of pleasant and unpleasant emotions that have been identified through the study of opponent processes in the domain of addiction. These neurochemical systems need to be considered in the context of the framework that emotions involve the specific brain regions now identified as differentially interpreting emotive physiological expression. PMID:25583178

Selective attention determines emotional responses to novel visual stimuli.

PubMed

Raymond, Jane E; Fenske, Mark J; Tavassoli, Nader T

2003-11-01

Distinct complex brain systems support selective attention and emotion, but connections between them suggest that human behavior should reflect reciprocal interactions of these systems. Although there is ample evidence that emotional stimuli modulate attentional processes, it is not known whether attention influences emotional behavior. Here we show that evaluation of the emotional tone (cheery/dreary) of complex but meaningless visual patterns can be modulated by the prior attentional state (attending vs. ignoring) used to process each pattern in a visual selection task. Previously ignored patterns were evaluated more negatively than either previously attended or novel patterns. Furthermore, this emotional devaluation of distracting stimuli was robust across different emotional contexts and response scales. Finding that negative affective responses are specifically generated for ignored stimuli points to a new functional role for attention and elaborates the link between attention and emotion. This finding also casts doubt on the conventional marketing wisdom that any exposure is good exposure.

Manipulating affective state influences conditioned appetitive responses.

PubMed

Arnaudova, Inna; Krypotos, Angelos-Miltiadis; Effting, Marieke; Kindt, Merel; Beckers, Tom

2017-10-06

Affective states influence how individuals process information and behave. Some theories predict emotional congruency effects (e.g. preferential processing of negative information in negative affective states). Emotional congruency should theoretically obstruct the learning of reward associations (appetitive learning) and their ability to guide behaviour under negative mood. Two studies tested the effects of the induction of a negative affective state on appetitive Pavlovian learning, in which neutral stimuli were associated with chocolate (Experiment 1) or alcohol (Experiment 2) rewards. In both experiments, participants showed enhanced approach tendencies towards predictors of reward after a negative relative to a positive performance feedback manipulation. This increase was related to a reduction in positive affect in Experiment 1 only. No effects of the manipulation on conditioned reward expectancies, craving, or consumption were observed. Overall, our findings support the idea of counter-regulation, rather than emotional congruency effects. Negative affective states might therefore serve as a vulnerability factor for addiction, through increasing conditioned approach tendencies.

Emotions while awaiting lung transplantation: A comprehensive qualitative analysis.

PubMed

Brügger, Aurelia; Aubert, John-David; Piot-Ziegler, Chantal

2014-07-01

Patients awaiting lung transplantation are at risk of negative emotional and physical experiences. How do they talk about emotions? Semi-structured interviews were performed (15 patients). Categorical analysis focusing on emotion-related descriptions was organized into positive-negative-neutral descriptions: for primary and secondary emotions, evaluation processes, coping strategies, personal characteristics, emotion descriptions associated with physical states, (and) contexts were listed. Patients develop different strategies to maintain positive identity and attitude, while preserving significant others from extra emotional load. Results are discussed within various theoretical and research backgrounds, in emphasizing their importance in the definition of emotional support starting from the patient's perspective.

Alpha 2B adrenoceptor genotype moderates effect of reboxetine on negative emotional memory bias in healthy volunteers.

PubMed

Gibbs, Ayana A; Bautista, Carla E; Mowlem, Florence D; Naudts, Kris H; Duka, Theodora

2013-10-23

Evidence suggests that emotional memory plays a role in the pathophysiology of depression/anxiety disorders. Noradrenaline crucially modulates emotional memory. Genetic variants involved in noradrenergic signaling contribute to individual differences in emotional memory and vulnerability to psychopathology. A functional deletion polymorphism in the α-2B adrenoceptor gene (ADRA2B) has been linked to emotional memory and post-traumatic stress disorder. The noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor reboxetine attenuates enhanced memory for negative stimuli in healthy and depressed individuals. We examined whether the effect of reboxetine on emotional memory in healthy individuals would be moderated by ADRA2B genotype. ADRA2B deletion carriers demonstrated enhanced emotional memory for negative stimuli compared with deletion noncarriers, consistent with prior studies. Reboxetine attenuated enhanced memory for negative stimuli in deletion noncarriers but had no significant effect in deletion carriers. This is the first demonstration of genetic variation influencing antidepressant drug effects on emotional processing in healthy humans.

Lateralization of affective processing in the insula.

PubMed

Duerden, Emma G; Arsalidou, Marie; Lee, Minha; Taylor, Margot J

2013-09-01

Evidence from electrophysiological and functional neuroimaging studies has suggested strong lateralization of affective processing within the insular cortices; however, little is known about the spatial location of these processes in these regions. Using quantitative meta-analytic methods the laterality of: (1) emotional processing; (2) stimulus valence (positive vs. negative); (3) perception vs. experience of emotion; and (4) sex-differences were assessed using the data from 143 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. Activation in response to all emotional stimuli occurred in bilateral anterior and mid-insula, and the left posterior insula. Positive emotional stimuli were associated with activation in the left anterior and mid-insula, while negative emotional stimuli activated bilateral anterior and mid-insula. Activation in response to the perception and experience of emotions was highest in bilateral anterior insula, and within the mid and posterior insula it was left lateralized. In males, emotional stimuli predominantly activated the left anterior/mid-insula and right posterior insula, whereas females activated bilateral anterior insula and the left mid and posterior insula. Spatial distinctions observed in emotional processing and its subcategories can provide a comprehensive account of the role of the insular cortices in affect processing, which could aid in understanding deficits seen in psychiatric or developmental disorders. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Emotional Stroop as an Emotion Regulation Task.

PubMed

Kappes, Cathleen; Bermeitinger, Christina

2016-01-01

The present studies investigate age differences observed when performing the emotional Stroop task considered as an expression of emotion regulation. Previous studies employing this task showed mixed findings regarding age differences, with a lack of evidence for positivity effects. However, moderating factors such as arousal or dispositional (emotion) regulation strategies were mostly not taken into account. Moreover, relations between Stroop effects and emotional reactions were not examined. In two studies (Study 1/2: nyoung = 26/41; nold = 19/39), an emotional Stroop task was employed and valence (negative, neutral, positive [Study 2 only]) and arousal of the word stimuli were varied. Additionally, flexible goal adjustment (FGA), positive and negative affect in the last 12 months, and change in momentary affect (Study 2 only) were measured. Study 1 showed larger emotional Stroop effects (ESE) in older than younger adults with medium arousing negative words. We also found correlations between FGA (positive correlation) as well as negative affect (negative correlation) and the ESE with medium arousing negative words. Study 2 corroborates these findings by exhibiting positive change in momentary affect with larger ESEs for medium arousing negative words in the older age group. The findings emphasize the importance of including arousal level and dispositional regulation measures (such as FGA) as moderating factors in age differences and within-group differences in emotion regulation. Although we did not find evidence for a positivity effect, processing in the emotional Stroop task was related to positive change in momentary affect and less negative affect in the older age group. Taken together, our experiments demonstrate that the emotional Stroop task is suited as a measure for emotion induction and related emotion regulation mechanisms.

Relation between social information processing and intimate partner violence in dating couples.

PubMed

Setchell, Sarah; Fritz, Patti Timmons; Glasgow, Jillian

2017-07-01

We used couple-level data to predict physical acts of intimate partner violence (IPV) from self-reported negative emotions and social information-processing (SIP) abilities among 100 dating couples (n = 200; mean age = 21.45 years). Participants read a series of hypothetical conflict situation vignettes and responded to questionnaires to assess negative emotions and various facets of SIP including attributions for partner behavior, generation of response alternatives, and response selection. We conducted a series of negative binomial mixed-model regressions based on the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM; Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006, Dyadic data analysis. New York, NY: Guilford Press). There were significant results for the response generation and negative emotion models. Participants who generated fewer coping response alternatives were at greater risk of victimization (actor effect). Women were at greater risk of victimization if they had partners who generated fewer coping response alternatives (sex by partner interaction effect). Generation of less competent coping response alternatives predicted greater risk of perpetration among men, whereas generation of more competent coping response alternatives predicted greater risk of victimization among women (sex by actor interaction effects). Two significant actor by partner interaction effects were found for the negative emotion models. Participants who reported discrepant levels of negative emotions from their partners were at greatest risk of perpetration. Participants who reported high levels of negative emotions were at greatest risk of victimization if they had partners who reported low levels of negative emotions. This research has implications for researchers and clinicians interested in addressing the problem of IPV. Aggr. Behav. 43:329-341, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Attentional deployment is not necessary for successful emotion regulation via cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression.

PubMed

Bebko, Genna M; Franconeri, Steven L; Ochsner, Kevin N; Chiao, Joan Y

2014-06-01

According to appraisal theories of emotion, cognitive reappraisal is a successful emotion regulation strategy because it involves cognitively changing our thoughts, which, in turn, change our emotions. However, recent evidence has challenged the importance of cognitive change and, instead, has suggested that attentional deployment may at least partly explain the emotion regulation success of cognitive reappraisal. The purpose of the current study was to examine the causal relationship between attentional deployment and emotion regulation success. We examined 2 commonly used emotion regulation strategies--cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression-because both depend on attention but have divergent behavioral, experiential, and physiological outcomes. Participants were either instructed to regulate emotions during free-viewing (unrestricted image viewing) or gaze-controlled (restricted image viewing) conditions and to self-report negative emotional experience. For both emotion regulation strategies, emotion regulation success was not altered by changes in participant control over the (a) direction of attention (free-viewing vs. gaze-controlled) during image viewing and (b) valence (negative vs. neutral) of visual stimuli viewed when gaze was controlled. Taken together, these findings provide convergent evidence that attentional deployment does not alter subjective negative emotional experience during either cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression, suggesting that strategy-specific processes, such as cognitive appraisal and response modulation, respectively, may have a greater impact on emotional regulation success than processes common to both strategies, such as attention.

Retro-Active Emotion: Do Negative Emotional Stimuli Disrupt Consolidation in Working Memory?

PubMed

Kandemir, Güven; Akyürek, Elkan G; Nieuwenstein, Mark R

2017-01-01

While many studies have shown that a task-irrelevant emotionally arousing stimulus can interfere with the processing of a shortly following target, it remains unclear whether an emotional stimulus can also retro-actively interrupt the ongoing processing of an earlier target. In two experiments, we examined whether the presentation of a negative emotionally arousing picture can disrupt working memory consolidation of a preceding visual target. In both experiments, the effects of negative emotional pictures were compared with the effects of neutral pictures. In Experiment 1, the pictures were entirely task-irrelevant whereas in Experiment 2 the pictures were associated with a 2-alternative forced choice task that required participants to respond to the color of a frame surrounding the pictures. The results showed that the appearance of the pictures did not interfere with target consolidation when the pictures were task-irrelevant, whereas such interference was observed when the pictures were associated with a 2-AFC task. Most importantly, however, the results showed no effects of whether the picture had neutral or emotional content. Implications for further research are discussed.

Emotion words and categories: evidence from lexical decision.

PubMed

Scott, Graham G; O'Donnell, Patrick J; Sereno, Sara C

2014-05-01

We examined the categorical nature of emotion word recognition. Positive, negative, and neutral words were presented in lexical decision tasks. Word frequency was additionally manipulated. In Experiment 1, "positive" and "negative" categories of words were implicitly indicated by the blocked design employed. A significant emotion-frequency interaction was obtained, replicating past research. While positive words consistently elicited faster responses than neutral words, only low frequency negative words demonstrated a similar advantage. In Experiments 2a and 2b, explicit categories ("positive," "negative," and "household" items) were specified to participants. Positive words again elicited faster responses than did neutral words. Responses to negative words, however, were no different than those to neutral words, regardless of their frequency. The overall pattern of effects indicates that positive words are always facilitated, frequency plays a greater role in the recognition of negative words, and a "negative" category represents a somewhat disparate set of emotions. These results support the notion that emotion word processing may be moderated by distinct systems.

Neural Correlates of Task-Irrelevant First and Second Language Emotion Words – Evidence from the Emotional Face–Word Stroop Task

PubMed Central

Fan, Lin; Xu, Qiang; Wang, Xiaoxi; Zhang, Feng; Yang, Yaping; Liu, Xiaoping

2016-01-01

Emotionally valenced words have thus far not been empirically examined in a bilingual population with the emotional face–word Stroop paradigm. Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to identify the facial expressions of emotion with their first (L1) or second (L2) language task-irrelevant emotion words superimposed on the face pictures. We attempted to examine how the emotional content of words modulated behavioral performance and cerebral functioning in the bilinguals’ two languages. The results indicated that there were significant congruency effects for both L1 and L2 emotion words, and that identifiable differences in the magnitude of the Stroop effect between the two languages were also observed, suggesting L1 is more capable of activating the emotional response to word stimuli. For event-related potentials data, an N350–550 effect was observed only in the L1 task with greater negativity for incongruent than congruent trials. The size of the N350–550 effect differed across languages, whereas no identifiable language distinction was observed in the effect of conflict slow potential (conflict SP). Finally, more pronounced negative amplitude at 230–330 ms was observed in L1 than in L2, but only for incongruent trials. This negativity, likened to an orthographic decoding N250, may reflect the extent of attention to emotion word processing at word-form level, while the N350–550 reflects a complicated set of processes in the conflict processing. Overall, the face–word congruency effect has reflected identifiable language distinction at 230–330 and 350-550 ms, which provides supporting evidence for the theoretical proposals assuming attenuated emotionality of L2 processing. PMID:27847485

Automatic Processing of Changes in Facial Emotions in Dysphoria: A Magnetoencephalography Study.

PubMed

Xu, Qianru; Ruohonen, Elisa M; Ye, Chaoxiong; Li, Xueqiao; Kreegipuu, Kairi; Stefanics, Gabor; Luo, Wenbo; Astikainen, Piia

2018-01-01

It is not known to what extent the automatic encoding and change detection of peripherally presented facial emotion is altered in dysphoria. The negative bias in automatic face processing in particular has rarely been studied. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to record automatic brain responses to happy and sad faces in dysphoric (Beck's Depression Inventory ≥ 13) and control participants. Stimuli were presented in a passive oddball condition, which allowed potential negative bias in dysphoria at different stages of face processing (M100, M170, and M300) and alterations of change detection (visual mismatch negativity, vMMN) to be investigated. The magnetic counterpart of the vMMN was elicited at all stages of face processing, indexing automatic deviance detection in facial emotions. The M170 amplitude was modulated by emotion, response amplitudes being larger for sad faces than happy faces. Group differences were found for the M300, and they were indexed by two different interaction effects. At the left occipital region of interest, the dysphoric group had larger amplitudes for sad than happy deviant faces, reflecting negative bias in deviance detection, which was not found in the control group. On the other hand, the dysphoric group showed no vMMN to changes in facial emotions, while the vMMN was observed in the control group at the right occipital region of interest. Our results indicate that there is a negative bias in automatic visual deviance detection, but also a general change detection deficit in dysphoria.

Emotions and memory in borderline personality disorder.

PubMed

Winter, Dorina; Elzinga, Bernet; Schmahl, Christian

2014-01-01

Memory processes such as encoding, storage, and retrieval of information are influenced by emotional content. Because patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are particularly susceptible to emotional information, it is relevant to understand whether such memory processes are altered in this patient group. This systematic literature review collects current evidence on this issue. Research suggests that emotional information interferes more strongly with information processing and learning in BPD patients than in healthy controls. In general, BPD patients do not seem to differ from healthy control subjects in their ability to memorize emotional information, but they tend to have specific difficulties forgetting negative information. Also, BPD patients seem to recall autobiographical, particularly negative events with stronger arousal than healthy controls, while BPD patients also show specific temporo-prefrontal alterations in neural correlates. No substantial evidence was found that the current affective state influences learning and memory in BPD patients any differently than in healthy control subjects. In general, a depressive mood seems to both deteriorate and negatively bias information processing and memories, while there is evidence that dissociative symptoms impair learning and memory independently of stimulus valence. This review discusses methodological challenges of studies on memory and emotions in BPD and makes suggestions for future research and clinical implications. © 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Hemispheric asymmetry of emotion words in a non-native mind: a divided visual field study.

PubMed

Jończyk, Rafał

2015-05-01

This study investigates hemispheric specialization for emotional words among proficient non-native speakers of English by means of the divided visual field paradigm. The motivation behind the study is to extend the monolingual hemifield research to the non-native context and see how emotion words are processed in a non-native mind. Sixty eight females participated in the study, all highly proficient in English. The stimuli comprised 12 positive nouns, 12 negative nouns, 12 non-emotional nouns and 36 pseudo-words. To examine the lateralization of emotion, stimuli were presented unilaterally in a random fashion for 180 ms in a go/no-go lexical decision task. The perceptual data showed a right hemispheric advantage for processing speed of negative words and a complementary role of the two hemispheres in the recognition accuracy of experimental stimuli. The data indicate that processing of emotion words in non-native language may require greater interhemispheric communication, but at the same time demonstrates a specific role of the right hemisphere in the processing of negative relative to positive valence. The results of the study are discussed in light of the methodological inconsistencies in the hemifield research as well as the non-native context in which the study was conducted.

Emotional intelligence and attentional bias for threat-related emotion under stress.

PubMed

Davis, Sarah K

2018-06-01

Emotional intelligence (EI) can buffer potentially harmful effects of situational and chronic stressors to safeguard psychological wellbeing (e.g., Mikolajczak, Petrides, Coumans & Luminet, ), yet understanding how and when EI operates to promote adaptation remains a research priority. We explored whether EI (both trait and ability) modulated early attentional processing of threat-related emotion under conditions of stress. Using a dot probe paradigm, eye movement (fixation to emotive facial stimuli, relative to neutral) and manual reaction time data were collected from 161 adults aged 18-57 years (mean age = 25.24; SD = 8.81) exposed to either a stressful (failure task) or non-stressful (control) situation. Whilst emotion management ability and trait wellbeing corresponded to avoidance of negative emotion (angry and sad respectively), high trait sociability and emotionality related to a bias for negative emotions. With most effects not restricted to stressful conditions, it is unclear whether EI underscores 'adaptive' processing, which carries implications for school-based social and emotional learning programs. © 2018 Scandinavian Psychological Associations and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Acute tryptophan depletion attenuates conscious appraisal of social emotional signals in healthy female volunteers.

PubMed

Beacher, Felix D C C; Gray, Marcus A; Minati, Ludovico; Whale, Richard; Harrison, Neil A; Critchley, Hugo D

2011-02-01

Acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) decreases levels of central serotonin. ATD thus enables the cognitive effects of serotonin to be studied, with implications for the understanding of psychiatric conditions, including depression. To determine the role of serotonin in conscious (explicit) and unconscious/incidental processing of emotional information. A randomized, double-blind, cross-over design was used with 15 healthy female participants. Subjective mood was recorded at baseline and after 4 h, when participants performed an explicit emotional face processing task, and a task eliciting unconscious processing of emotionally aversive and neutral images presented subliminally using backward masking. ATD was associated with a robust reduction in plasma tryptophan at 4 h but had no effect on mood or autonomic physiology. ATD was associated with significantly lower attractiveness ratings for happy faces and attenuation of intensity/arousal ratings of angry faces. ATD also reduced overall reaction times on the unconscious perception task, but there was no interaction with emotional content of masked stimuli. ATD did not affect breakthrough perception (accuracy in identification) of masked images. ATD attenuates the attractiveness of positive faces and the negative intensity of threatening faces, suggesting that serotonin contributes specifically to the appraisal of the social salience of both positive and negative salient social emotional cues. We found no evidence that serotonin affects unconscious processing of negative emotional stimuli. These novel findings implicate serotonin in conscious aspects of active social and behavioural engagement and extend knowledge regarding the effects of ATD on emotional perception.

Event-Related Potentials Elicited by Pre-Attentive Emotional Changes in Temporal Context

PubMed Central

Fujimura, Tomomi; Okanoya, Kazuo

2013-01-01

The ability to detect emotional change in the environment is essential for adaptive behavior. The current study investigated whether event-related potentials (ERPs) can reflect emotional change in a visual sequence. To assess pre-attentive processing, we examined visual mismatch negativity (vMMN): the negative potentials elicited by a deviant (infrequent) stimulus embedded in a sequence of standard (frequent) stimuli. Participants in two experiments pre-attentively viewed visual sequences of Japanese kanji with different emotional connotations while ERPs were recorded. The visual sequence in Experiment 1 consisted of neutral standards and two types of emotional deviants with a strong and weak intensity. Although the results indicated that strongly emotional deviants elicited more occipital negativity than neutral standards, it was unclear whether these negativities were derived from emotional deviation in the sequence or from the emotional significance of the deviants themselves. In Experiment 2, the two identical emotional deviants were presented against different emotional standards. One type of deviants was emotionally incongruent with the standard and the other type of deviants was emotionally congruent with the standard. The results indicated that occipital negativities elicited by deviants resulted from perceptual changes in a visual sequence at a latency of 100–200 ms and from emotional changes at latencies of 200–260 ms. Contrary to the results of the ERP experiment, reaction times to deviants showed no effect of emotional context; negative stimuli were consistently detected more rapidly than were positive stimuli. Taken together, the results suggest that brain signals can reflect emotional change in a temporal context. PMID:23671693

Event-related potentials elicited by pre-attentive emotional changes in temporal context.

PubMed

Fujimura, Tomomi; Okanoya, Kazuo

2013-01-01

The ability to detect emotional change in the environment is essential for adaptive behavior. The current study investigated whether event-related potentials (ERPs) can reflect emotional change in a visual sequence. To assess pre-attentive processing, we examined visual mismatch negativity (vMMN): the negative potentials elicited by a deviant (infrequent) stimulus embedded in a sequence of standard (frequent) stimuli. Participants in two experiments pre-attentively viewed visual sequences of Japanese kanji with different emotional connotations while ERPs were recorded. The visual sequence in Experiment 1 consisted of neutral standards and two types of emotional deviants with a strong and weak intensity. Although the results indicated that strongly emotional deviants elicited more occipital negativity than neutral standards, it was unclear whether these negativities were derived from emotional deviation in the sequence or from the emotional significance of the deviants themselves. In Experiment 2, the two identical emotional deviants were presented against different emotional standards. One type of deviants was emotionally incongruent with the standard and the other type of deviants was emotionally congruent with the standard. The results indicated that occipital negativities elicited by deviants resulted from perceptual changes in a visual sequence at a latency of 100-200 ms and from emotional changes at latencies of 200-260 ms. Contrary to the results of the ERP experiment, reaction times to deviants showed no effect of emotional context; negative stimuli were consistently detected more rapidly than were positive stimuli. Taken together, the results suggest that brain signals can reflect emotional change in a temporal context.

Eyes wide shut: amygdala mediates eyes-closed effect on emotional experience with music.

PubMed

Lerner, Yulia; Papo, David; Zhdanov, Andrey; Belozersky, Libi; Hendler, Talma

2009-07-15

The perceived emotional value of stimuli and, as a consequence the subjective emotional experience with them, can be affected by context-dependent styles of processing. Therefore, the investigation of the neural correlates of emotional experience requires accounting for such a variable, a matter of an experimental challenge. Closing the eyes affects the style of attending to auditory stimuli by modifying the perceptual relationship with the environment without changing the stimulus itself. In the current study, we used fMRI to characterize the neural mediators of such modification on the experience of emotionality in music. We assumed that closed eyes position will reveal interplay between different levels of neural processing of emotions. More specifically, we focused on the amygdala as a central node of the limbic system and on its co-activation with the Locus Ceruleus (LC) and Ventral Prefrontal Cortex (VPFC); regions involved in processing of, respectively, 'low', visceral-, and 'high', cognitive-related, values of emotional stimuli. Fifteen healthy subjects listened to negative and neutral music excerpts with eyes closed or open. As expected, behavioral results showed that closing the eyes while listening to emotional music resulted in enhanced rating of emotionality, specifically of negative music. In correspondence, fMRI results showed greater activation in the amygdala when subjects listened to the emotional music with eyes closed relative to eyes open. More so, by using voxel-based correlation and a dynamic causal model analyses we demonstrated that increased amygdala activation to negative music with eyes closed led to increased activations in the LC and VPFC. This finding supports a system-based model of perceived emotionality in which the amygdala has a central role in mediating the effect of context-based processing style by recruiting neural operations involved in both visceral (i.e. 'low') and cognitive (i.e. 'high') related processes of emotions.

Age-related perspectives and emotion processing.

PubMed

Lynchard, Nicholas A; Radvansky, Gabriel A

2012-12-01

Emotion is processed differently in younger and older adults. Older adults show a positivity effect, whereas younger adults show a negativity effect. Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that these effects can be elicited in any age group when age-related perspectives are manipulated. To examine this, younger and older adults were oriented to actual and age-contrasting possible selves. Emotion activations were assessed using lexical decision. In line with socioemotional selectivity theory, shifts in emotion orientation varied according to perspective, with both younger and older adults showing a negativity effect when a younger adult perspective was taken and a positivity effect when an older adult perspective was taken. 2013 APA, all rights reserved

An electrophysiological investigation of emotional abnormalities in groups at risk for schizophrenia-spectrum personality disorders.

PubMed

Martin, Elizabeth A; Karcher, Nicole R; Bartholow, Bruce D; Siegle, Greg J; Kerns, John G

2017-03-01

Both extreme levels of social anhedonia (SocAnh) and perceptual aberration/magical ideation (PerMag) are associated with risk for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and with emotional abnormalities. Yet, the nature of any psychophysiological-measured affective abnormality, including the role of automatic/controlled processes, is unclear. We examined the late positive potential (LPP) during passive viewing (to assess automatic processing) and during cognitive reappraisal (to assess controlled processing) in three groups: SocAnh, PerMag, and controls. The SocAnh group exhibited an increased LPP when viewing negative images. Further, SocAnh exhibited greater reductions in the LPP for negative images when told to use strategies to alter negative emotion. Similar to SocAnh, PerMag exhibited an increased LPP when viewing negative images. However, PerMag also exhibited an increased LPP when viewing positive images as well as an atypical decreased LPP when increasing positive emotion. Overall, these results suggest that at-risk groups are associated with shared and unique automatic and controlled abnormalities. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Emotional anticipation after delivery - a longitudinal neuroimaging study of the postpartum period.

PubMed

Gingnell, Malin; Toffoletto, Simone; Wikström, Johan; Engman, Jonas; Bannbers, Elin; Comasco, Erika; Sundström-Poromaa, Inger

2017-03-08

Neuroimaging research has begun to unveil the mechanisms behind emotion processing during the postpartum period, which, in turn, may be of relevance for the development of postpartum depression. The present study sought to longitudinally investigate the neural correlates of emotion anticipation during the postpartum period in healthy women. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was employed to measure the blood oxygen level-dependent signal in the brain in response to anticipation of negative emotional stimuli and during processing of images with positive or negative valence. The participating women were scanned twice: the first scan occurred during the first 48 hours after delivery, and the second was performed 4-6 weeks after delivery. The early postpartum period was characterized by higher anterior cingulate cortex reactivity during anticipation of negative emotional stimuli than the late postpartum period. This was accompanied by a negative relationship with insular reactivity during the early postpartum period and a trend towards an increase in insular reactivity in the late postpartum period. Thus, during the first four weeks of the postpartum period, a diminished top-down regulatory feedback on emotion-related areas of the brain was noted. This finding suggests a physiologically important adaptation during the healthy postpartum period.

The effect of a brief mindfulness induction on processing of emotional images: an ERP study.

PubMed

Eddy, Marianna D; Brunyé, Tad T; Tower-Richardi, Sarah; Mahoney, Caroline R; Taylor, Holly A

2015-01-01

The ability to effectively direct one's attention is an important aspect of regulating emotions and a component of mindfulness. Mindfulness practices have been established as effective interventions for mental and physical illness; however, the underlying neural mechanisms of mindfulness and how they relate to emotional processing have not been explored in depth. The current study used a within-subjects repeated measures design to examine if focused breathing, a brief mindfulness induction, could modulate event-related potentials (ERPs) during emotional image processing relative to a control condition. We related ERP measures of processing positive, negative, and neutral images (the P300 and late positive potential - LPP) to state and trait mindfulness measures. Overall, the brief mindfulness induction condition did not influence ERPs reflecting emotional processing; however, in the brief mindfulness induction condition, those participants who reported feeling more decentered (a subscale of the Toronto Mindfulness Scale) after viewing the images had reduced P300 responses to negative versus neutral images.

The effect of a brief mindfulness induction on processing of emotional images: an ERP study

PubMed Central

Eddy, Marianna D.; Brunyé, Tad T.; Tower-Richardi, Sarah; Mahoney, Caroline R.; Taylor, Holly A.

2015-01-01

The ability to effectively direct one’s attention is an important aspect of regulating emotions and a component of mindfulness. Mindfulness practices have been established as effective interventions for mental and physical illness; however, the underlying neural mechanisms of mindfulness and how they relate to emotional processing have not been explored in depth. The current study used a within-subjects repeated measures design to examine if focused breathing, a brief mindfulness induction, could modulate event-related potentials (ERPs) during emotional image processing relative to a control condition. We related ERP measures of processing positive, negative, and neutral images (the P300 and late positive potential – LPP) to state and trait mindfulness measures. Overall, the brief mindfulness induction condition did not influence ERPs reflecting emotional processing; however, in the brief mindfulness induction condition, those participants who reported feeling more decentered (a subscale of the Toronto Mindfulness Scale) after viewing the images had reduced P300 responses to negative versus neutral images. PMID:26441766

Differential emotional processing in concrete and abstract words.

PubMed

Yao, Bo; Keitel, Anne; Bruce, Gillian; Scott, Graham G; O'Donnell, Patrick J; Sereno, Sara C

2018-02-12

Emotion (positive and negative) words are typically recognized faster than neutral words. Recent research suggests that emotional valence, while often treated as a unitary semantic property, may be differentially represented in concrete and abstract words. Studies that have explicitly examined the interaction of emotion and concreteness, however, have demonstrated inconsistent patterns of results. Moreover, these findings may be limited as certain key lexical variables (e.g., familiarity, age of acquisition) were not taken into account. We investigated the emotion-concreteness interaction in a large-scale, highly controlled lexical decision experiment. A 3 (Emotion: negative, neutral, positive) × 2 (Concreteness: abstract, concrete) design was used, with 45 items per condition and 127 participants. We found a significant interaction between emotion and concreteness. Although positive and negative valenced words were recognized faster than neutral words, this emotion advantage was significantly larger in concrete than in abstract words. We explored potential contributions of participant alexithymia level and item imageability to this interactive pattern. We found that only word imageability significantly modulated the emotion-concreteness interaction. While both concrete and abstract emotion words are advantageously processed relative to comparable neutral words, the mechanisms of this facilitation are paradoxically more dependent on imageability in abstract words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Midbrain-Driven Emotion and Reward Processing in Alcoholism

PubMed Central

Müller-Oehring, E M; Jung, Y-C; Sullivan, E V; Hawkes, W C; Pfefferbaum, A; Schulte, T

2013-01-01

Alcohol dependence is associated with impaired control over emotionally motivated actions, possibly associated with abnormalities in the frontoparietal executive control network and midbrain nodes of the reward network associated with automatic attention. To identify differences in the neural response to alcohol-related word stimuli, 26 chronic alcoholics (ALC) and 26 healthy controls (CTL) performed an alcohol-emotion Stroop Match-to-Sample task during functional MR imaging. Stroop contrasts were modeled for color-word incongruency (eg, word RED printed in green) and for alcohol (eg, BEER), positive (eg, HAPPY) and negative (eg, MAD) emotional word content relative to congruent word conditions (eg, word RED printed in red). During color-Stroop processing, ALC and CTL showed similar left dorsolateral prefrontal activation, and CTL, but not ALC, deactivated posterior cingulate cortex/cuneus. An interaction revealed a dissociation between alcohol-word and color-word Stroop processing: ALC activated midbrain and parahippocampal regions more than CTL when processing alcohol-word relative to color-word conditions. In ALC, the midbrain region was also invoked by negative emotional Stroop words thereby showing significant overlap of this midbrain activation for alcohol-related and negative emotional processing. Enhanced midbrain activation to alcohol-related words suggests neuroadaptation of dopaminergic midbrain systems. We speculate that such tuning is normally associated with behavioral conditioning to optimize responses but here contributed to automatic bias to alcohol-related stimuli. PMID:23615665

Midbrain-driven emotion and reward processing in alcoholism.

PubMed

Müller-Oehring, E M; Jung, Y-C; Sullivan, E V; Hawkes, W C; Pfefferbaum, A; Schulte, T

2013-09-01

Alcohol dependence is associated with impaired control over emotionally motivated actions, possibly associated with abnormalities in the frontoparietal executive control network and midbrain nodes of the reward network associated with automatic attention. To identify differences in the neural response to alcohol-related word stimuli, 26 chronic alcoholics (ALC) and 26 healthy controls (CTL) performed an alcohol-emotion Stroop Match-to-Sample task during functional MR imaging. Stroop contrasts were modeled for color-word incongruency (eg, word RED printed in green) and for alcohol (eg, BEER), positive (eg, HAPPY) and negative (eg, MAD) emotional word content relative to congruent word conditions (eg, word RED printed in red). During color-Stroop processing, ALC and CTL showed similar left dorsolateral prefrontal activation, and CTL, but not ALC, deactivated posterior cingulate cortex/cuneus. An interaction revealed a dissociation between alcohol-word and color-word Stroop processing: ALC activated midbrain and parahippocampal regions more than CTL when processing alcohol-word relative to color-word conditions. In ALC, the midbrain region was also invoked by negative emotional Stroop words thereby showing significant overlap of this midbrain activation for alcohol-related and negative emotional processing. Enhanced midbrain activation to alcohol-related words suggests neuroadaptation of dopaminergic midbrain systems. We speculate that such tuning is normally associated with behavioral conditioning to optimize responses but here contributed to automatic bias to alcohol-related stimuli.

Neural Processing of Emotional Musical and Nonmusical Stimuli in Depression

PubMed Central

Atchley, Ruth Ann; Chrysikou, Evangelia; Martin, Laura E.; Clair, Alicia A.; Ingram, Rick E.; Simmons, W. Kyle; Savage, Cary R.

2016-01-01

Background Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and striatum are part of the emotional neural circuitry implicated in major depressive disorder (MDD). Music is often used for emotion regulation, and pleasurable music listening activates the dopaminergic system in the brain, including the ACC. The present study uses functional MRI (fMRI) and an emotional nonmusical and musical stimuli paradigm to examine how neural processing of emotionally provocative auditory stimuli is altered within the ACC and striatum in depression. Method Nineteen MDD and 20 never-depressed (ND) control participants listened to standardized positive and negative emotional musical and nonmusical stimuli during fMRI scanning and gave subjective ratings of valence and arousal following scanning. Results ND participants exhibited greater activation to positive versus negative stimuli in ventral ACC. When compared with ND participants, MDD participants showed a different pattern of activation in ACC. In the rostral part of the ACC, ND participants showed greater activation for positive information, while MDD participants showed greater activation to negative information. In dorsal ACC, the pattern of activation distinguished between the types of stimuli, with ND participants showing greater activation to music compared to nonmusical stimuli, while MDD participants showed greater activation to nonmusical stimuli, with the greatest response to negative nonmusical stimuli. No group differences were found in striatum. Conclusions These results suggest that people with depression may process emotional auditory stimuli differently based on both the type of stimulation and the emotional content of that stimulation. This raises the possibility that music may be useful in retraining ACC function, potentially leading to more effective and targeted treatments. PMID:27284693

The effect of emotion on articulation rate in persistence and recovery of childhood stuttering.

PubMed

Erdemir, Aysu; Walden, Tedra A; Jefferson, Caswell M; Choi, Dahye; Jones, Robin M

2018-06-01

This study investigated the possible association of emotional processes and articulation rate in pre-school age children who stutter and persist (persisting), children who stutter and recover (recovered) and children who do not stutter (nonstuttering). The participants were ten persisting, ten recovered, and ten nonstuttering children between the ages of 3-5 years; who were classified as persisting, recovered, or nonstuttering approximately 2-2.5 years after the experimental testing took place. The children were exposed to three emotionally-arousing video clips (baseline, positive and negative) and produced a narrative based on a text-free storybook following each video clip. From the audio-recordings of these narratives, individual utterances were transcribed and articulation rates were calculated. Results indicated that persisting children exhibited significantly slower articulation rates following the negative emotion condition, unlike recovered and nonstuttering children whose articulation rates were not affected by either of the two emotion-inducing conditions. Moreover, all stuttering children displayed faster rates during fluent compared to stuttered speech; however, the recovered children were significantly faster than the persisting children during fluent speech. Negative emotion plays a detrimental role on the speech-motor control processes of children who persist, whereas children who eventually recover seem to exhibit a relatively more stable and mature speech-motor system. This suggests that complex interactions between speech-motor and emotional processes are at play in stuttering recovery and persistency; and articulation rates following negative emotion or during stuttered versus fluent speech might be considered as potential factors to prospectively predict persistence and recovery from stuttering. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effects of subcallosal cingulate deep brain stimulation on negative self-bias in patients with treatment-resistant depression.

PubMed

Hilimire, Matthew R; Mayberg, Helen S; Holtzheimer, Paul E; Broadway, James M; Parks, Nathan A; DeVylder, Jordan E; Corballis, Paul M

2015-01-01

The cognitive neuropsychological model states that antidepressant treatment alters emotional biases early in treatment, and after this initial change in emotional processing, environmental and social interactions allow for long-term/sustained changes in mood and behavior. Changes in negative self-bias after chronic subcallosal cingulate (SCC) deep brain stimulation (DBS) were investigated with the hypothesis that treatment would lead to changes in emotional biases followed by changes in symptom severity. Patients (N = 7) with treatment-resistant depression were assessed at three time points: pre-treatment; after one month stimulation; and after six months stimulation. The P1, P2, P3, and LPP (late positive potential) components of the event-related potential elicited by positive and negative trait adjectives were recorded in both a self-referential task and a general emotion recognition task. Results indicate that DBS reduced automatic attentional bias toward negative words early in treatment, as indexed by the P1 component, and controlled processing of negative words later in treatment, as indexed by the P3 component. Reduction in negative words endorsed as self-descriptive after six months DBS was associated with reduced depression severity after six months DBS. Change in emotional processing may be restricted to the self-referential task. Together, these results suggest that the cognitive neuropsychological model, developed to explain the time-course of monoamine antidepressant treatment, may also be used as a framework to interpret the antidepressant effects of SCC DBS. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Political conservatism predicts asymmetries in emotional scene memory.

PubMed

Mills, Mark; Gonzalez, Frank J; Giuseffi, Karl; Sievert, Benjamin; Smith, Kevin B; Hibbing, John R; Dodd, Michael D

2016-06-01

Variation in political ideology has been linked to differences in attention to and processing of emotional stimuli, with stronger responses to negative versus positive stimuli (negativity bias) the more politically conservative one is. As memory is enhanced by attention, such findings predict that memory for negative versus positive stimuli should similarly be enhanced the more conservative one is. The present study tests this prediction by having participants study 120 positive, negative, and neutral scenes in preparation for a subsequent memory test. On the memory test, the same 120 scenes were presented along with 120 new scenes and participants were to respond whether a scene was old or new. Results on the memory test showed that negative scenes were more likely to be remembered than positive scenes, though, this was true only for political conservatives. That is, a larger negativity bias was found the more conservative one was. The effect was sizeable, explaining 45% of the variance across subjects in the effect of emotion. These findings demonstrate that the relationship between political ideology and asymmetries in emotion processing extend to memory and, furthermore, suggest that exploring the extent to which subject variation in interactions among emotion, attention, and memory is predicted by conservatism may provide new insights into theories of political ideology. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Psilocybin biases facial recognition, goal-directed behavior, and mood state toward positive relative to negative emotions through different serotonergic subreceptors.

PubMed

Kometer, Michael; Schmidt, André; Bachmann, Rosilla; Studerus, Erich; Seifritz, Erich; Vollenweider, Franz X

2012-12-01

Serotonin (5-HT) 1A and 2A receptors have been associated with dysfunctional emotional processing biases in mood disorders. These receptors further predominantly mediate the subjective and behavioral effects of psilocybin and might be important for its recently suggested antidepressive effects. However, the effect of psilocybin on emotional processing biases and the specific contribution of 5-HT2A receptors across different emotional domains is unknown. In a randomized, double-blind study, 17 healthy human subjects received on 4 separate days placebo, psilocybin (215 μg/kg), the preferential 5-HT2A antagonist ketanserin (50 mg), or psilocybin plus ketanserin. Mood states were assessed by self-report ratings, and behavioral and event-related potential measurements were used to quantify facial emotional recognition and goal-directed behavior toward emotional cues. Psilocybin enhanced positive mood and attenuated recognition of negative facial expression. Furthermore, psilocybin increased goal-directed behavior toward positive compared with negative cues, facilitated positive but inhibited negative sequential emotional effects, and valence-dependently attenuated the P300 component. Ketanserin alone had no effects but blocked the psilocybin-induced mood enhancement and decreased recognition of negative facial expression. This study shows that psilocybin shifts the emotional bias across various psychological domains and that activation of 5-HT2A receptors is central in mood regulation and emotional face recognition in healthy subjects. These findings may not only have implications for the pathophysiology of dysfunctional emotional biases but may also provide a framework to delineate the mechanisms underlying psylocybin's putative antidepressant effects. Copyright © 2012 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Emotion regulation strategies mediate the associations of positive and negative affect to upper extremity physical function.

PubMed

Talaei-Khoei, Mojtaba; Nemati-Rezvani, Hora; Fischerauer, Stefan F; Ring, David; Chen, Neal; Vranceanu, Ana-Maria

2017-05-01

The Gross process model of emotion regulation holds that emotion-eliciting situations (e.g. musculoskeletal illness) can be strategically regulated to determine the final emotional and behavioral response. Also, there is some evidence that innate emotional traits may predispose an individual to a particular regulating coping style. We enrolled 107 patients with upper extremity musculoskeletal illness in this cross-sectional study. They completed self-report measures of positive and negative affect, emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), upper extremity physical function, pain intensity, and demographics. We used Preacher and Hayes' bootstrapping approach to process analysis to infer the direct effect of positive and negative affect on physical function as well as their indirect effects through activation of emotion regulation strategies. Negative affect was associated with decreased physical function. The association was partly mediated by expressive suppression (b (SE)=-.10 (.05), 95% BCa CI [-.21, -.02]). Positive affect was associated with increased physical function. Cognitive reappraisal partially mediated this association (b (SE)=.11 (.05), 95% BCa CI [.03, .24]). After controlling for pain intensity, the ratio of the mediated effect to total effect grew even larger in controlled model comparing to uncontrolled model (33% vs. 26% for expressive suppression and 32% vs. 30% for cognitive reappraisal). The relationships between affect, emotion regulation strategies and physical function appear to be more dependent on the emotional response to an orthopedic condition rather than the intensity of the nociceptive stimulation of the pain. Findings support integration of emotion regulation training in skill-based psychotherapy in this population to mitigate the effect of negative affect and enhance the influence of positive affect on physical function. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Positive emotion impedes emotional but not cognitive conflict processing.

PubMed

Zinchenko, Artyom; Obermeier, Christian; Kanske, Philipp; Schröger, Erich; Kotz, Sonja A

2017-06-01

Cognitive control enables successful goal-directed behavior by resolving a conflict between opposing action tendencies, while emotional control arises as a consequence of emotional conflict processing such as in irony. While negative emotion facilitates both cognitive and emotional conflict processing, it is unclear how emotional conflict processing is affected by positive emotion (e.g., humor). In 2 EEG experiments, we investigated the role of positive audiovisual target stimuli in cognitive and emotional conflict processing. Participants categorized either spoken vowels (cognitive task) or their emotional valence (emotional task) and ignored the visual stimulus dimension. Behaviorally, a positive target showed no influence on cognitive conflict processing, but impeded emotional conflict processing. In the emotional task, response time conflict costs were higher for positive than for neutral targets. In the EEG, we observed an interaction of emotion by congruence in the P200 and N200 ERP components in emotional but not in cognitive conflict processing. In the emotional conflict task, the P200 and N200 conflict effect was larger for emotional than neutral targets. Thus, our results show that emotion affects conflict processing differently as a function of conflict type and emotional valence. This suggests that there are conflict- and valence-specific mechanisms modulating executive control.

Processing emotional words in two languages with one brain: ERP and fMRI evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals.

PubMed

Chen, Peiyao; Lin, Jie; Chen, Bingle; Lu, Chunming; Guo, Taomei

2015-10-01

Emotional words in a bilingual's second language (L2) seem to have less emotional impact compared to emotional words in the first language (L1). The present study examined the neural mechanisms of emotional word processing in Chinese-English bilinguals' two languages by using both event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Behavioral results show a robust positive word processing advantage in L1 such that responses to positive words were faster and more accurate compared to responses to neutral words and negative words. In L2, emotional words only received higher accuracies than neutral words. In ERPs, positive words elicited a larger early posterior negativity and a smaller late positive component than neutral words in L1, while a trend of reduced N400 component was found for positive words compared to neutral words in L2. In fMRI, reduced activation was found for L1 emotional words in both the left middle occipital gyrus and the left cerebellum whereas increased activation in the left cerebellum was found for L2 emotional words. Altogether, these results suggest that emotional word processing advantage in L1 relies on rapid and automatic attention capture while facilitated semantic retrieval might help processing emotional words in L2. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Individual and interpersonal emotion regulation among adults with substance use disorders and matched controls.

PubMed

Dingle, Genevieve A; Neves, Diana da Costa; Alhadad, Sakinah S J; Hides, Leanne

2018-06-01

Self-report studies show that negative emotional states and ineffective use of emotion regulation strategies are key maintaining factors of substance use disorders (SUD). However, experimental research into emotional processing in adults with SUD is in its infancy. Theoretical conceptualizations of emotion regulation have shifted from a focus on individual (internal) processes to one that encompasses social and interpersonal functions - including the regulation of facial expression of emotion. The purpose of this study was to examine the individual and interpersonal emotion regulation capacity of 35 adults in residential treatment diagnosed with a SUD compared to 35 demographically matched controls (both samples M age  = 25 years; 37% females). Participants completed a facial emotion expression flexibility task while viewing emotive images, as well as the Difficulties of Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) and the Social (Emotion) Expectancy Scale (SES). Adults in SUD treatment experienced significantly more emotion regulation difficulties on all DERS subscales than controls. They also reported higher levels of negative self-evaluation and social expectancies not to feel negative emotions (anxiety and depression) compared to controls. Moreover, when viewing emotive images, the treatment sample showed significantly less flexibility of their emotional expression compared to the control sample. These findings demonstrate that the awareness, expression, and regulation of emotions are particularly difficult for people with SUD and this may maintain their substance use and provide an important target for treatment. Compared to matched controls, adults with substance use disorders self-report significantly more difficulties with emotional awareness and regulation. Compared to matched controls, adults with substance use disorders report significantly greater expectancies not to show depression and anxiety. When viewing positive and negative images, adults with substance use disorders are significantly less flexible in their facial expression of emotion than matched controls in response to regulatory instructions. Emotion regulation should be measured and addressed as part of substance use disorder treatment. © 2017 Commonwealth of Australia. British Journal of Clinical Psychology © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

On the Automaticity of Emotion Processing in Words and Faces: Event-Related Brain Potentials Evidence from a Superficial Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rellecke, Julian; Palazova, Marina; Sommer, Werner; Schacht, Annekathrin

2011-01-01

The degree to which emotional aspects of stimuli are processed automatically is controversial. Here, we assessed the automatic elicitation of emotion-related brain potentials (ERPs) to positive, negative, and neutral words and facial expressions in an easy and superficial face-word discrimination task, for which the emotional valence was…

Emotional event-related potentials are reduced if negative pictures presented at fixation are unattended.

PubMed

Wiens, Stefan; Sand, Anders; Norberg, Joakim; Andersson, Per

2011-05-20

Viewing of emotional pictures elicits two event-related potentials (ERPs) to emotional versus neutral pictures: an early posterior negativity (EPN) and a late positive potential (LPP). Because it is unresolved whether these indexes of emotional processing are reduced to task-irrelevant pictures at fixation, negative and neutral pictures from the International Affective Picture Set (IAPS) were shown at fixation together with 6 letters that surrounded the pictures. In separate tasks, participants were instructed to attend either the pictures or the letters. When the pictures were task relevant, results showed an EPN and LPP. In contrast, when the pictures were task irrelevant, the EPN was eliminated and the LPP reduced. Performance was high in both tasks (hit rates>87%), but somewhat better when the pictures were relevant. However, analyses showed no relationship between this performance difference and the differences in EPN and LPP between tasks. These results suggest that emotional processing of strong, negative pictures is sensitive to manipulations of attention even if the pictures are shown at fixation. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Emotional Processing of Infants Displays in Eating Disorders

PubMed Central

Cardi, Valentina; Corfield, Freya; Leppanen, Jenni; Rhind, Charlotte; Deriziotis, Stephanie; Hadjimichalis, Alexandra; Hibbs, Rebecca; Micali, Nadia; Treasure, Janet

2014-01-01

Aim The aim of this study is to examine emotional processing of infant displays in people with Eating Disorders (EDs). Background Social and emotional factors are implicated as causal and maintaining factors in EDs. Difficulties in emotional regulation have been mainly studied in relation to adult interactions, with less interest given to interactions with infants. Method A sample of 138 women were recruited, of which 49 suffered from Anorexia Nervosa (AN), 16 from Bulimia Nervosa (BN), and 73 were healthy controls (HCs). Attentional responses to happy and sad infant faces were tested with the visual probe detection task. Emotional identification of, and reactivity to, infant displays were measured using self-report measures. Facial expressions to video clips depicting sad, happy and frustrated infants were also recorded. Results No significant differences between groups were observed in the attentional response to infant photographs. However, there was a trend for patients to disengage from happy faces. People with EDs also reported lower positive ratings of happy infant displays and greater subjective negative reactions to sad infants. Finally, patients showed a significantly lower production of facial expressions, especially in response to the happy infant video clip. Insecure attachment was negatively correlated with positive facial expressions displayed in response to the happy infant and positively correlated with the intensity of negative emotions experienced in response to the sad infant video clip. Conclusion People with EDs do not have marked abnormalities in their attentional processing of infant emotional faces. However, they do have a reduction in facial affect particularly in response to happy infants. Also, they report greater negative reactions to sadness, and rate positive emotions less intensively than HCs. This pattern of emotional responsivity suggests abnormalities in social reward sensitivity and might indicate new treatment targets. PMID:25463051

Investigating the Neural Correlates of Emotion–Cognition Interaction Using an Affective Stroop Task

PubMed Central

Raschle, Nora M.; Fehlbaum, Lynn V.; Menks, Willeke M.; Euler, Felix; Sterzer, Philipp; Stadler, Christina

2017-01-01

The human brain has the capacity to integrate various sources of information and continuously adapts our behavior according to situational needs in order to allow a healthy functioning. Emotion–cognition interactions are a key example for such integrative processing. However, the neuronal correlates investigating the effects of emotion on cognition remain to be explored and replication studies are needed. Previous neuroimaging studies have indicated an involvement of emotion and cognition related brain structures including parietal and prefrontal cortices and limbic brain regions. Here, we employed whole brain event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during an affective number Stroop task and aimed at replicating previous findings using an adaptation of an existing task design in 30 healthy young adults. The Stroop task is an indicator of cognitive control and enables the quantification of interference in relation to variations in cognitive load. By the use of emotional primes (negative/neutral) prior to Stroop task performance, an emotional variation is added as well. Behavioral in-scanner data showed that negative primes delayed and disrupted cognitive processing. Trials with high cognitive demand furthermore negatively influenced cognitive control mechanisms. Neuronally, the emotional primes consistently activated emotion-related brain regions (e.g., amygdala, insula, and prefrontal brain regions) while Stroop task performance lead to activations in cognition networks of the brain (prefrontal cortices, superior temporal lobe, and insula). When assessing the effect of emotion on cognition, increased cognitive demand led to decreases in neural activation in response to emotional stimuli (negative > neutral) within prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and insular cortex. Overall, these results suggest that emotional primes significantly impact cognitive performance and increasing cognitive demand leads to reduced neuronal activation in emotion related brain regions, and therefore support previous findings investigating emotion–cognition interaction in healthy adults. Moreover, emotion and cognition seem to be tightly related to each other, as indicated by shared neural networks involved in both of these processes. Emotion processing, cognitive control, and their interaction are crucial for healthy functioning and a lack thereof is related to psychiatric disorders such as, disruptive behavior disorders. Future studies may investigate the neural characteristics of children and adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders. PMID:28919871

Positive emotion modulates cognitive control: an event-related potentials study.

PubMed

Xue, Song; Cui, Jingjing; Wang, Kangcheng; Zhang, Songyan; Qiu, Jiang; Luo, Yuejia

2013-04-01

There is substantial evidence to indicate that negative emotion can modulate cognitive control processing. However, only a few studies have investigated this effect with positive emotion. Therefore, the present study explored the electrophysiological correlates of the impact of positive emotional stimuli on cognitive control, using event-related potentials (ERPs). Sixteen healthy young adults completed a modified Simon task (Simon, 1969). Behavioral data indicated that reaction times were faster for positive emotional stimuli than for neutral emotional stimuli in the incongruent condition, but not in the congruent condition, which suggested that positive emotion expedited conflict resolution. The ERP data showed that two negative ERP components (N300-400 and N450-550) were associated with the positive emotional stimuli in the incongruent minus congruent condition. It is suggested that these components may respectively be related to the conflict monitoring (N300-400) and response selection (N450-550) stages of cognitive control processing. Overall, our results indicated that positive emotion could facilitate cognitive control processing. These results are in line with the neuropsychological theory, according to which, positive emotion could modulate cognitive control mediated by increased dopamine levels in frontal brain areas. © 2013 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology © 2013 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Effects of empathic social responses on the emotions of the recipient.

PubMed

Seehausen, Maria; Kazzer, Philipp; Bajbouj, Malek; Heekeren, Hauke R; Jacobs, Arthur M; Klann-Delius, Gisela; Menninghaus, Winfried; Prehn, Kristin

2016-03-01

Empathy is highly relevant for social behavior and can be verbally expressed by voicing sympathy and concern (emotional empathy) as well as by paraphrasing or stating that one can mentally reconstruct and understand another person's thoughts and feelings (cognitive empathy). In this study, we investigated the emotional effects and neural correlates of receiving empathic social responses after negative performance feedback and compared the effects of emotionally vs. cognitively empathic comments. 20 participants (10 male) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while receiving negative performance feedback for a cognitive task. Performance feedback was followed by verbal comments either expressing cognitive and emotional empathy or demonstrating a lack of empathy. Empathic comments in general led to less negative self-reported feelings and calmer breathing. At the neural level, empathic comments induced activity in regions associated with social cognition and emotion processing, specifically in right postcentral gyrus and left cerebellum (cognitively empathic comments), right precentral gyrus, the opercular part of left inferior frontal gyrus, and left middle temporal gyrus (emotionally empathic comments), as well as the orbital part of the left middle frontal gyrus and left superior parietal gyrus (emotionally empathic vs. unempathic comments). The study shows that cognitively and emotionally empathic comments appear to be processed in partially separable neural systems. Furthermore, confirming and expanding on another study on the same subject, the present results demonstrate that the social display of cognitive empathy exerts almost as positive effects on the recipient's feelings and emotions in states of distress as emotionally empathic response does. This can be relevant for professional settings in which strong negative emotions need to be de-escalated while maintaining professional impartiality, which may allow the display of cognitive but not emotional empathy. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mother-Child Affect and Emotion Socialization Processes across the Late Preschool Period: Predictions of Emerging Behaviour Problems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Newland, Rebecca P.; Crnic, Keith A.

2011-01-01

The current study examined concurrent and longitudinal relations between maternal negative affective behaviour and child negative emotional expression in preschool age children with (n=96) or without (n=126) an early developmental risk, as well as the predictions of later behaviour problems. Maternal negative affective behaviour, child…

Differential effects of cognitive load on emotion: Emotion maintenance versus passive experience.

PubMed

DeFraine, William C

2016-06-01

Two separate lines of research have examined the effects of cognitive load on emotional processing with similar tasks but seemingly contradictory results. Some research has shown that the emotions elicited by passive viewing of emotional images are reduced by subsequent cognitive load. Other research has shown that such emotions are not reduced by cognitive load if the emotions are actively maintained. The present study sought to compare and resolve these 2 lines of research. Participants either passively viewed negative emotional images or maintained the emotions elicited by the images, and after a delay rated the intensity of the emotion they were feeling. Half of trials included a math task during the delay to induce cognitive load, and the other half did not. Results showed that cognitive load reduced the intensity of negative emotions during passive-viewing of emotional images but not during emotion maintenance. The present study replicates the findings of both lines of research, and shows that the key factor is whether or not emotions are actively maintained. Also, in the context of previous emotion maintenance research, the present results support the theoretical idea of a separable emotion maintenance process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Examining the interplay among negative emotionality, cognitive functioning, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptom severity.

PubMed

Healey, Dione M; Marks, David J; Halperin, Jeffrey M

2011-05-01

Cognition and emotion, traditionally thought of as largely distinct, have recently begun to be conceptualized as dynamically linked processes that interact to influence functioning. This study investigated the moderating effects of cognitive functioning on the relationship between negative emotionality and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptom severity. A total of 216 (140 hyperactive/inattentive; 76 typically developing) preschoolers aged 3-4 years were administered a neuropsychological test battery (i.e., NEPSY). To avoid method bias, child negative emotionality was rated by teachers (Temperament Assessment Battery for Children-Revised), and parents rated symptom severity on the ADHD Rating Scale (ADHD-RS-IV). Hierarchical Linear Regression analyses revealed that both negative emotionality and Perceptual-Motor & Executive Functions accounted for significant unique variance in ADHD symptom severity. Significant interactions indicated that when negative emotionality is low, but not high, neuropsychological functioning accounts for significant variability in ADHD symptoms, with lower functioning predicting more symptoms. Emotional and neuropsychological functioning, both individually and in combination, play a significant role in the expression of ADHD symptom severity.

Effects of Emotional Valence and Arousal on Time Perception

PubMed Central

Van Volkinburg, Heather; Balsam, Peter

2016-01-01

We examined the influence of emotional arousal and valence on estimating time intervals. A reproduction task was used in which images from the International Affective Picture System served as the stimuli to be timed. Experiment 1 assessed the effects of positive and negative valence at a moderate arousal level and Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 with the addition of a high arousal condition. Overestimation increased as a function of arousal during encoding of times regardless of valence. For images presented during reproduction, overestimation occurred at the moderate arousal level for positive and negative valence but underestimation occurred in the negative valence high arousal condition. The overestimation of time intervals produced by emotional arousal during encoding and during reproduction suggests that emotional stimuli affect temporal information processing in a qualitatively different way during different phases of temporal information processing. PMID:27110491

Sex differences in the cerebral lateralization of a cichlid fish when detouring to view emotionally conditioned stimuli.

PubMed

Reddon, Adam R; Hurd, Peter L

2009-09-01

The lateralization of emotion has been described in a variety of animals. The right hemisphere has been implicated in the processing of negative emotions while positive emotions are processed in the left. Most animal studies of this phenomenon to date have used intrinsically emotionally arousing stimuli and there are few examples of lateralized responses to learned emotional triggers. It is known that males and females may demonstrate different patterns of lateralization, and that these sex differences may interact with other variables. We investigated the lateralized response of male and female convict cichlids to emotionally conditioned stimuli. One stimulus was given an appetitive (positive emotional valence) association by pairing with food. The other stimulus was given an aversive (negative emotional valence) association by pairing with a chemical alarm signal. We found that males tend to be more strongly lateralized to aversive stimuli while females are more strongly lateralized when responding to appetitive stimuli.

Individual differences in cognitive control over emotional material modulate cognitive biases linked to depressive symptoms.

PubMed

Everaert, Jonas; Grahek, Ivan; Koster, Ernst H W

2017-06-01

Deficient cognitive control over emotional material and cognitive biases are important mechanisms underlying depression, but the interplay between these emotionally distorted cognitive processes in relation to depressive symptoms is not well understood. This study investigated the relations among deficient cognitive control of emotional information (i.e. inhibition, shifting, and updating difficulties), cognitive biases (i.e. negative attention and interpretation biases), and depressive symptoms. Theory-driven indirect effect models were constructed, hypothesising that deficient cognitive control over emotional material predicts depressive symptoms through negative attention and interpretation biases. Bootstrapping analyses demonstrated that deficient inhibitory control over negative material was related to negative attention bias which in turn predicted a congruent bias in interpretation and subsequently depressive symptoms. Both shifting and updating impairments in response to negative material had an indirect effect on depression severity through negative interpretation bias. No evidence was found for direct effects of deficient cognitive control over emotional material on depressive symptoms. These findings may help to formulate an integrated understanding of the cognitive foundations of depressive symptoms.

Rejection of Unfair Offers Can Be Driven by Negative Emotions, Evidence from Modified Ultimatum Games with Anonymity

PubMed Central

Ma, Ning; Li, Nan; He, Xiao-Song; Sun, De-Lin; Zhang, Xiaochu; Zhang, Da-Ren

2012-01-01

The rejection of unfair offers can be affected by both negative emotions (e.g. anger and moral disgust) and deliberate cognitive processing of behavioral consequences (e.g. concerns of maintaining social fairness and protecting personal reputation). However, whether negative emotions are sufficient to motivate this behavior is still controversial. With modified ultimatum games, a recent study (Yamagishi T, et al. (2009) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106∶11520–11523) found that people reject unfair offers even when this behavior increases inequity, and even when they could not communicate to the proposers. Yamagishi suggested that rejection of unfair offers could occurr without people’s concerning of maintaining social fairness, and could be driven by negative emotions. However, as anonymity was not sufficiently guaranteed in Yamagishi’s study, the rejection rates in their experiments may have been influenced by people’s concerns of protecting personal reputation (reputational concerns) in addition to negative emotions; thus, it was unclear whether the rejection was driven by negative emotions, or by reputational concerns, or both. In the present study, with specific methods to ensure anonymity, the effect of reputational concerns was successfully ruled out. We found that in a private situation in which rejection could not be driven by reputational concerns, the rejection rates of unfair offers were significantly larger than zero, and in public situations in which rejection rates could be influenced by both negative emotions and reputational concerns, rejection rates were significantly higher than that in the private situation. These results, together with Yamagishi’s findings, provided more complete evidence suggesting (a) that the rejection of unfair offers can be driven by negative emotions and (b) that deliberate cognitive processing of the consequences of the behavior can increase the rejection rate, which may benefit social cooperation. PMID:22761845

Maternal Attachment Style and Responses to Adolescents’ Negative Emotions: The Mediating Role of Maternal Emotion Regulation

PubMed Central

Jones, Jason D.; Brett, Bonnie E.; Ehrlich, Katherine B.; Lejuez, Carl W.; Cassidy, Jude

2014-01-01

SYNOPSIS Objective Previous research has examined the developmental consequences, particularly in early childhood, of parents’ supportive and unsupportive responses to children’s negative emotions. Much less is known about factors that explain why parents respond in ways that may support or undermine their children’s emotions, and even less is known about how these parenting processes unfold with adolescents. We examined the associations between mothers’ attachment styles and their distress, harsh, and supportive responses to their adolescents’ negative emotions two years later and whether these links were mediated by maternal emotion regulation difficulties. Design Mothers in a longitudinal study (n = 230) reported on their attachment style, difficulties regulating their emotions, and their hypothetical responses to their adolescents’ negative emotions, respectively, at consecutive laboratory visits one year apart. Results Mothers who reported greater attachment-related avoidance and anxiety reported having greater difficulties with emotion regulation one year later. Emotion dysregulation, in turn, predicted more distressed, harsher, and less supportive maternal responses to adolescents’ negative emotions the following year. In addition, greater avoidance directly predicted harsher maternal responses two years later. Conclusions These findings extend previous research by identifying maternal attachment style as a predictor of responses to adolescent distress and by documenting the underlying role of emotion dysregulation in the link between adult attachment style and parenting. PMID:25568638

Associations between maternal negative affect and adolescent's neural response to peer evaluation

PubMed Central

Tan, Patricia Z.; Lee, Kyung Hwa; Dahl, Ronald E.; Nelson, Eric E.; Stroud, Laura J.; Siegle, Greg J.; Morgan, Judith K.; Silk, Jennifer S.

2016-01-01

Parenting is often implicated as a potential source of individual differences in youths’ emotional information processing. The present study examined whether parental affect is related to an important aspect of adolescent emotional development, response to peer evaluation. Specifically, we examined relations between maternal negative affect, observed during parent–adolescent discussion of an adolescent-nominated concern with which s/he wants parental support, and adolescent neural responses to peer evaluation in 40 emotionally healthy and depressed adolescents. We focused on a network of ventral brain regions involved in affective processing of social information: the amygdala, anterior insula, nucleus accumbens, and subgenual anterior cingulate, as well as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Maternal negative affect was not associated with adolescent neural response to peer rejection. However, longer durations of maternal negative affect were associated with decreased responsivity to peer acceptance in the amygdala, left anterior insula, subgenual anterior cingulate, and left nucleus accumbens. These findings provide some of the first evidence that maternal negative affect is associated with adolescents’ neural processing of social rewards. Findings also suggest that maternal negative affect could contribute to alterations in affective processing, specifically, dampening the saliency and/or reward of peer interactions during adolescence. PMID:24613174

Effects of worry on physiological and subjective reactivity to emotional stimuli in generalized anxiety disorder and nonanxious control participants.

PubMed

Llera, Sandra J; Newman, Michelle G

2010-10-01

The present study examined the effect of worry versus relaxation and neutral thought activity on both physiological and subjective responding to positive and negative emotional stimuli. Thirty-eight participants with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and 35 nonanxious control participants were randomly assigned to engage in worry, relaxation, or neutral inductions prior to sequential exposure to each of four emotion-inducing film clips. The clips were designed to elicit fear, sadness, happiness, and calm emotions. Self reported negative and positive affect was assessed following each induction and exposure, and vagal activity was measured throughout. Results indicate that worry (vs. relaxation) led to reduced vagal tone for the GAD group, as well as higher negative affect levels for both groups. Additionally, prior worry resulted in less physiological and subjective responding to the fearful film clip, and reduced negative affect in response to the sad clip. This suggests that worry may facilitate avoidance of processing negative emotions by way of preventing a negative emotional contrast. Implications for the role of worry in emotion avoidance are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

The impact of verbal framing on brain activity evoked by emotional images.

PubMed

Kisley, Michael A; Campbell, Alana M; Larson, Jenna M; Naftz, Andrea E; Regnier, Jesse T; Davalos, Deana B

2011-12-01

Emotional stimuli generally command more brain processing resources than non-emotional stimuli, but the magnitude of this effect is subject to voluntary control. Cognitive reappraisal represents one type of emotion regulation that can be voluntarily employed to modulate responses to emotional stimuli. Here, the late positive potential (LPP), a specific event-related brain potential (ERP) component, was measured in response to neutral, positive and negative images while participants performed an evaluative categorization task. One experimental group adopted a "negative frame" in which images were categorized as negative or not. The other adopted a "positive frame" in which the exact same images were categorized as positive or not. Behavioral performance confirmed compliance with random group assignment, and peak LPP amplitude to negative images was affected by group membership: brain responses to negative images were significantly reduced in the "positive frame" group. This suggests that adopting a more positive appraisal frame can modulate brain activity elicited by negative stimuli in the environment.

Are Plasma Oxytocin and Vasopressin Levels Reflective of Amygdala Activation during the Processing of Negative Emotions? A Preliminary Study.

PubMed

Motoki, Kosuke; Sugiura, Motoaki; Takeuchi, Hikaru; Kotozaki, Yuka; Nakagawa, Seishu; Yokoyama, Ryoichi; Kawashima, Ryuta

2016-01-01

Plasma oxytocin (OT) and arginine vasopressin (AVP) are associated with individual differences in emotional responses and behaviors. The amygdala is considered to be an important brain region for regulating emotion-based behavior, with OT and AVP modulating activity in the amygdala during the processing of negative emotions. In particular, increased OT levels may diminish amygdala activation (anxiolytic effects) and enhanced AVP levels may augment amygdala activation (anxiogenic effects) when negative emotions are processed. A growing body of research has shown that the effects of OT and AVP are modulated by sex: the aforementioned anxiolytic effects of OT and the anxiogenic effects of AVP occur in men, but not in women. However, we have little knowledge regarding the biological mechanisms underlying OT and AVP plasma levels or their respective anxiogenic and anxiolytic effects; similarly, little is known about the causes and nature of sex differences related to these neuropeptides and their effects on emotional processing. In the current study, we focused on the neural functions associated with the biological mechanisms underlying such effects. We hypothesized that amygdala activation would correlate with trait plasma OT (anxiolytic effects) and AVP (anxiogenic effects) levels because the amygdala is thought to affect the coordinated release of these neuropeptides following affective experiences. We further hypothesized that the effects would be modulated by sex. We assessed 51 participants (male and female) using a paradigm involving negative emotion in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging and measurements of plasma OT and AVP levels. We determined that increased plasma AVP levels were positively associated with amygdala activation (anxiogenic effects) in men, but not in women. These findings highlight the potential underlying neural mechanisms of plasma AVP levels in men.

Internally and externally generated emotions in people with acquired brain injury: preservation of emotional experience after right hemisphere lesions

PubMed Central

Salas Riquelme, Christian E.; Radovic, Darinka; Castro, Osvaldo; Turnbull, Oliver H.

2015-01-01

The study of emotional changes after brain injury has contributed enormously to the understanding of the neural basis of emotion. However, little attention has been placed on the methods used to elicit emotional responses in people with brain damage. Of particular interest are subjects with right hemisphere [RH] cortical lesions, who have been described as presenting impairment in emotional processing. In this article, an internal and external mood induction procedure [MIP] was used to trigger positive and negative emotions, in a sample of 10 participants with RH damage, and 15 healthy controls. Emotional experience was registered by using a self-report questionnaire. As observed in previous studies, internal and external MIPs were equally effective in eliciting the target emotion, but the internal procedure generated higher levels of intensity. Remarkably, participants with RH lesions were equally able to experience both positive and negative affect. The results are discussed in relation to the role of the RH in the capacity to experience negative emotions. PMID:25762951

Internally and externally generated emotions in people with acquired brain injury: preservation of emotional experience after right hemisphere lesions.

PubMed

Salas Riquelme, Christian E; Radovic, Darinka; Castro, Osvaldo; Turnbull, Oliver H

2015-01-01

The study of emotional changes after brain injury has contributed enormously to the understanding of the neural basis of emotion. However, little attention has been placed on the methods used to elicit emotional responses in people with brain damage. Of particular interest are subjects with right hemisphere [RH] cortical lesions, who have been described as presenting impairment in emotional processing. In this article, an internal and external mood induction procedure [MIP] was used to trigger positive and negative emotions, in a sample of 10 participants with RH damage, and 15 healthy controls. Emotional experience was registered by using a self-report questionnaire. As observed in previous studies, internal and external MIPs were equally effective in eliciting the target emotion, but the internal procedure generated higher levels of intensity. Remarkably, participants with RH lesions were equally able to experience both positive and negative affect. The results are discussed in relation to the role of the RH in the capacity to experience negative emotions.

Distinctive amygdala subregions involved in emotion-modulated Stroop interference

PubMed Central

Han, Hyun Jung; Lee, Kanghee; Kim, Hyun Taek; Kim, Hackjin

2014-01-01

Despite the well-known role of the amygdala in mediating emotional interference during tasks requiring cognitive resources, no definite conclusion has yet been reached regarding the differential roles of functionally and anatomically distinctive subcomponents of the amygdala in such processes. In this study, we examined female participants and attempted to separate the neural processes for the detection of emotional information from those for the regulation of cognitive interference from emotional distractors by adding a temporal gap between emotional stimuli and a subsequent cognitive Stroop task. Reaction time data showed a significantly increased Stroop interference effect following emotionally negative stimuli compared with neutral stimuli, and functional magnetic resonance imaging data revealed that the anterior ventral amygdala (avAMYG) showed greater responses to negative stimuli compared with neutral stimuli. In addition, individuals who scored high in neuroticism showed greater posterior dorsal amygdala (pdAMYG) responses to incongruent compared with congruent Stroop trials following negative stimuli, but not following neutral stimuli. Taken together, the findings of this study demonstrated functionally distinctive contributions of the avAMYG and pdAMYG to the emotion-modulated Stroop interference effect and suggested that the avAMYG encodes associative values of emotional stimuli whereas the pdAMYG resolves cognitive interference from emotional distractors. PMID:23543193

"Disorganized in time": impact of bottom-up and top-down negative emotion generation on memory formation among healthy and traumatized adolescents.

PubMed

Guillery-Girard, Bérengère; Clochon, Patrice; Giffard, Bénédicte; Viard, Armelle; Egler, Pierre-Jean; Baleyte, Jean-Marc; Eustache, Francis; Dayan, Jacques

2013-09-01

"Travelling in time," a central feature of episodic memory is severely affected among individuals with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) with two opposite effects: vivid traumatic memories are unorganized in temporality (bottom-up processes), non-traumatic personal memories tend to lack spatio-temporal details and false recognitions occur more frequently that in the general population (top-down processes). To test the effect of these two types of processes (i.e. bottom-up and top-down) on emotional memory, we conducted two studies in healthy and traumatized adolescents, a period of life in which vulnerability to emotion is particularly high. Using negative and neutral images selected from the international affective picture system (IAPS), stimuli were divided into perceptual images (emotion generated by perceptual details) and conceptual images (emotion generated by the general meaning of the material). Both categories of stimuli were then used, along with neutral pictures, in a memory task with two phases (encoding and recognition). In both populations, we reported a differential effect of the emotional material on encoding and recognition. Negative perceptual scenes induced an attentional capture effect during encoding and enhanced the recollective distinctiveness. Conversely, the encoding of conceptual scenes was similar to neutral ones, but the conceptual relatedness induced false memories at retrieval. However, among individuals with PTSD, two subgroups of patients were identified. The first subgroup processed the scenes faster than controls, except for the perceptual scenes, and obtained similar performances to controls in the recognition task. The second subgroup group desmonstrated an attentional deficit in the encoding task with no benefit from the distinctiveness associated with negative perceptual scenes on memory performances. These findings provide a new perspective on how negative emotional information may have opposite influences on memory in normal and traumatized individuals. It also gives clues to understand how intrusive memories and overgeneralization takes place in PTSD. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Attention and memory bias to facial emotions underlying negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

PubMed

Jang, Seon-Kyeong; Park, Seon-Cheol; Lee, Seung-Hwan; Cho, Yang Seok; Choi, Kee-Hong

2016-01-01

This study assessed bias in selective attention to facial emotions in negative symptoms of schizophrenia and its influence on subsequent memory for facial emotions. Thirty people with schizophrenia who had high and low levels of negative symptoms (n = 15, respectively) and 21 healthy controls completed a visual probe detection task investigating selective attention bias (happy, sad, and angry faces randomly presented for 50, 500, or 1000 ms). A yes/no incidental facial memory task was then completed. Attention bias scores and recognition errors were calculated. Those with high negative symptoms exhibited reduced attention to emotional faces relative to neutral faces; those with low negative symptoms showed the opposite pattern when faces were presented for 500 ms regardless of the valence. Compared to healthy controls, those with high negative symptoms made more errors for happy faces in the memory task. Reduced attention to emotional faces in the probe detection task was significantly associated with less pleasure and motivation and more recognition errors for happy faces in schizophrenia group only. Attention bias away from emotional information relatively early in the attentional process and associated diminished positive memory may relate to pathological mechanisms for negative symptoms.

The Effect of Self-Referential Expectation on Emotional Face Processing

PubMed Central

McKendrick, Mel; Butler, Stephen H.; Grealy, Madeleine A.

2016-01-01

The role of self-relevance has been somewhat neglected in static face processing paradigms but may be important in understanding how emotional faces impact on attention, cognition and affect. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of self-relevant primes on processing emotional composite faces. Sentence primes created an expectation of the emotion of the face before sad, happy, neutral or composite face photos were viewed. Eye movements were recorded and subsequent responses measured the cognitive and affective impact of the emotion expressed. Results indicated that primes did not guide attention, but impacted on judgments of valence intensity and self-esteem ratings. Negative self-relevant primes led to the most negative self-esteem ratings, although the effect of the prime was qualified by salient facial features. Self-relevant expectations about the emotion of a face and subsequent attention to a face that is congruent with these expectations strengthened the affective impact of viewing the face. PMID:27175487

In the face of emotions: event-related potentials in supraliminal and subliminal facial expression recognition.

PubMed

Balconi, Michela; Lucchiari, Claudio

2005-02-01

Is facial expression recognition marked by specific event-related potentials (ERPs) effects? Are conscious and unconscious elaborations of emotional facial stimuli qualitatively different processes? In Experiment 1, ERPs elicited by supraliminal stimuli were recorded when 21 participants viewed emotional facial expressions of four emotions and a neutral stimulus. Two ERP components (N2 and P3) were analyzed for their peak amplitude and latency measures. First, emotional face-specificity was observed for the negative deflection N2, whereas P3 was not affected by the content of the stimulus (emotional or neutral). A more posterior distribution of ERPs was found for N2. Moreover, a lateralization effect was revealed for negative (right lateralization) and positive (left lateralization) facial expressions. In Experiment 2 (20 participants), 1-ms subliminal stimulation was carried out. Unaware information processing was revealed to be quite similar to aware information processing for peak amplitude but not for latency. In fact, unconscious stimulation produced a more delayed peak variation than conscious stimulation.

How does context affect assessments of facial emotion? The role of culture and age

PubMed Central

Ko, Seon-Gyu; Lee, Tae-Ho; Yoon, Hyea-Young; Kwon, Jung-Hye; Mather, Mara

2010-01-01

People from Asian cultures are more influenced by context in their visual processing than people from Western cultures. In this study, we examined how these cultural differences in context processing affect how people interpret facial emotions. We found that younger Koreans were more influenced than younger Americans by emotional background pictures when rating the emotion of a central face, especially those younger Koreans with low self-rated stress. In contrast, among older adults, neither Koreans nor Americans showed significant influences of context in their face emotion ratings. These findings suggest that cultural differences in reliance on context to interpret others' emotions depend on perceptual integration processes that decline with age, leading to fewer cultural differences in perception among older adults than among younger adults. Furthermore, when asked to recall the background pictures, younger participants recalled more negative pictures than positive pictures, whereas older participants recalled similar numbers of positive and negative pictures. These age differences in the valence of memory were consistent across culture. PMID:21038967

The Effect of Self-Referential Expectation on Emotional Face Processing.

PubMed

McKendrick, Mel; Butler, Stephen H; Grealy, Madeleine A

2016-01-01

The role of self-relevance has been somewhat neglected in static face processing paradigms but may be important in understanding how emotional faces impact on attention, cognition and affect. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of self-relevant primes on processing emotional composite faces. Sentence primes created an expectation of the emotion of the face before sad, happy, neutral or composite face photos were viewed. Eye movements were recorded and subsequent responses measured the cognitive and affective impact of the emotion expressed. Results indicated that primes did not guide attention, but impacted on judgments of valence intensity and self-esteem ratings. Negative self-relevant primes led to the most negative self-esteem ratings, although the effect of the prime was qualified by salient facial features. Self-relevant expectations about the emotion of a face and subsequent attention to a face that is congruent with these expectations strengthened the affective impact of viewing the face.

Parsing cognitive and emotional empathy deficits for negative and positive stimuli in frontotemporal dementia.

PubMed

Oliver, Lindsay D; Mitchell, Derek G V; Dziobek, Isabel; MacKinley, Julia; Coleman, Kristy; Rankin, Katherine P; Finger, Elizabeth C

2015-01-01

Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder characterized by frontal and temporal lobe atrophy primarily affecting social cognition and emotion, including loss of empathy. Many consider empathy to be a multidimensional construct, including cognitive empathy (the ability to adopt and understand another's perspective) and emotional empathy (the capacity to share another's emotional experience). Cognitive and emotional empathy deficits have been associated with bvFTD; however, little is known regarding the performance of patients with bvFTD on behavioural measures of emotional empathy, and whether empathic responses differ for negative versus positive stimuli. 24 patients with bvFTD and 24 healthy controls completed the Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET; Dziobek et al., 2008), a performance-based task that taps both cognitive and emotional facets of empathy, and allows for the discrimination of responses to negative versus positive realistic images. MET scores were also compared with caregiver ratings of patient behaviour on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, which assesses patients' everyday demonstrations of perspective taking and empathic concern. Patients with bvFTD were less accurate than controls at inferring mental states for negative and positive stimuli. They also demonstrated lower levels of shared emotional experience, more positive emotional reactions, and diminished arousal to negative social stimuli relative to controls. Patients showed reduced emotional reactions to negative non-social stimuli as well. Lastly, the MET and IRI measures of emotional empathy were found to be significantly correlated within the bvFTD group. The results suggest that patients with bvFTD show a global deficit in cognitive empathy, and deficient emotional empathy for negative, but not positive, experiences. Further, a generalized emotional processing impairment for negative stimuli was observed, which could contribute to the emotional empathy deficit. This work highlights potential treatment targets and a means to assess the impact of novel therapies on socioemotional impairment in bvFTD. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Age-Related Changes in Amygdala-Frontal Connectivity during Emotional Face Processing from Childhood into Young Adulthood

PubMed Central

Wu, Minjie; Kujawa, Autumn; Lu, Lisa H.; Fitzgerald, Daniel A.; Klumpp, Heide; Fitzgerald, Kate D.; Monk, Christopher S.; Phan, K. Luan

2016-01-01

The ability to process and respond to emotional facial expressions is a critical skill for healthy social and emotional development. There has been growing interest in understanding the neural circuitry underlying development of emotional processing, with previous research implicating functional connectivity between amygdala and frontal regions. However, existing work has focused on threatening emotional faces, raising questions regarding the extent to which these developmental patterns are specific to threat or to emotional face processing more broadly. In the current study, we examined age-related changes in brain activity and amygdala functional connectivity during an fMRI emotional face matching task (including angry, fearful and happy faces) in 61 healthy subjects aged 7–25 years. We found age-related decreases in ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) activity in response to happy faces but not to angry or fearful faces, and an age-related change (shifting from positive to negative correlation) in amygdala-anterior cingulate cortex/medial prefrontal cortex (ACC/mPFC) functional connectivity to all emotional faces. Specifically, positive correlations between amygdala and ACC/mPFC in children changed to negative correlations in adults, which may suggest early emergence of bottom-up amygdala excitatory signaling to ACC/mPFC in children and later development of top-down inhibitory control of ACC/mPFC over amygdala in adults. Age-related changes in amygdala-ACC/mPFC connectivity did not vary for processing of different facial emotions, suggesting changes in amygdala-ACC/mPFC connectivity may underlie development of broad emotional processing, rather than threat-specific processing. PMID:26931629

Human sex differences in emotional processing of own-race and other-race faces.

PubMed

Ran, Guangming; Chen, Xu; Pan, Yangu

2014-06-18

There is evidence that women and men show differences in the perception of affective facial expressions. However, none of the previous studies directly investigated sex differences in emotional processing of own-race and other-race faces. The current study addressed this issue using high time resolution event-related potential techniques. In total, data from 25 participants (13 women and 12 men) were analyzed. It was found that women showed increased N170 amplitudes to negative White faces compared with negative Chinese faces over the right hemisphere electrodes. This result suggests that women show enhanced sensitivity to other-race faces showing negative emotions (fear or disgust), which may contribute toward evolution. However, the current data showed that men had increased N170 amplitudes to happy Chinese versus happy White faces over the left hemisphere electrodes, indicating that men show enhanced sensitivity to own-race faces showing positive emotions (happiness). In this respect, men might use past pleasant emotional experiences to boost recognition of own-race faces.

Indirect Effect of Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone Receptor 1 Gene Variation on Negative Emotionality and Alcohol Use via Right Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex

PubMed Central

Glaser, Yi G.; Zubieta, Jon-Kar; Hsu, David T.; Villafuerte, Sandra; Mickey, Brian J.; Trucco, Elisa M.; Burmeister, Margit; Zucker, Robert A.

2014-01-01

Variations in the corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 1 (CRHR1) gene have been found to interact with stress in modulating excessive alcohol consumption. However, the neural mechanisms through which CRHR1 influences this risk in humans is largely unknown. This study examined the influence of an intronic CRHR1 gene variant, rs110402, on brain responses to negative emotional words, negative emotional traits, and alcohol use in adolescents and young adults at high risk for alcoholism. Childhood stress was investigated as a potential moderator. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that a region in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) was more engaged during negative emotional word processing in G homozygotes than in A allele carriers (p(FWE corrected) < 0.01, N = 77). Moreover, an indirect effect of genotype on negative emotionality via rVLPFC activation (p < 0.05, N = 69) was observed, which was further moderated by childhood stress (p < 0.05, N = 63). Specifically, with low childhood stress, G homozygotes exhibited lower levels of negative emotionality associated with greater rVLPFC activation, suggesting that the rVLPFC is involved in reappraisal that neutralizes negative emotional responses. In addition, we found that genotype indirectly modulated excessive alcohol consumption (p < 0.05, N = 69). Specifically, G homozygotes showed greater rVLPFC activation and had lower levels of negative emotionality, which were associated with fewer binge-drinking days and fewer alcohol related problems. This work provides support for a model in which CRHR1 gene variation modulates the risk of problem drinking via an internalizing/negative affect pathway involving rVLPFC and reappraisal of negative emotion. PMID:24623788

Indirect effect of corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 1 gene variation on negative emotionality and alcohol use via right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex.

PubMed

Glaser, Yi G; Zubieta, Jon-Kar; Hsu, David T; Villafuerte, Sandra; Mickey, Brian J; Trucco, Elisa M; Burmeister, Margit; Zucker, Robert A; Heitzeg, Mary M

2014-03-12

Variations in the corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 1 (CRHR1) gene have been found to interact with stress in modulating excessive alcohol consumption. However, the neural mechanisms through which CRHR1 influences this risk in humans is largely unknown. This study examined the influence of an intronic CRHR1 gene variant, rs110402, on brain responses to negative emotional words, negative emotional traits, and alcohol use in adolescents and young adults at high risk for alcoholism. Childhood stress was investigated as a potential moderator. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that a region in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) was more engaged during negative emotional word processing in G homozygotes than in A allele carriers (p(FWE corrected) < 0.01, N = 77). Moreover, an indirect effect of genotype on negative emotionality via rVLPFC activation (p < 0.05, N = 69) was observed, which was further moderated by childhood stress (p < 0.05, N = 63). Specifically, with low childhood stress, G homozygotes exhibited lower levels of negative emotionality associated with greater rVLPFC activation, suggesting that the rVLPFC is involved in reappraisal that neutralizes negative emotional responses. In addition, we found that genotype indirectly modulated excessive alcohol consumption (p < 0.05, N = 69). Specifically, G homozygotes showed greater rVLPFC activation and had lower levels of negative emotionality, which were associated with fewer binge-drinking days and fewer alcohol related problems. This work provides support for a model in which CRHR1 gene variation modulates the risk of problem drinking via an internalizing/negative affect pathway involving rVLPFC and reappraisal of negative emotion.

Monetary incentives at retrieval promote recognition of involuntarily learned emotional information.

PubMed

Yan, Chunping; Li, Yunyun; Zhang, Qin; Cui, Lixia

2018-03-07

Previous studies have suggested that the effects of reward on memory processes are affected by certain factors, but it remains unclear whether the effects of reward at retrieval on recognition processes are influenced by emotion. The event-related potential was used to investigate the combined effect of reward and emotion on memory retrieval and its neural mechanism. The behavioral results indicated that the reward at retrieval improved recognition performance under positive and negative emotional conditions. The event-related potential results indicated that there were significant interactions between the reward and emotion in the average amplitude during recognition, and the significant reward effects from the frontal to parietal brain areas appeared at 130-800 ms for positive pictures and at 190-800 ms for negative pictures, but there were no significant reward effects of neutral pictures; the reward effect of positive items appeared relatively earlier, starting at 130 ms, and that of negative pictures began at 190 ms. These results indicate that monetary incentives at retrieval promote recognition of involuntarily learned emotional information.

Effects of valence and arousal on emotional word processing are modulated by concreteness: Behavioral and ERP evidence from a lexical decision task.

PubMed

Yao, Zhao; Yu, Deshui; Wang, Lili; Zhu, Xiangru; Guo, Jingjing; Wang, Zhenhong

2016-12-01

We investigated whether the effects of valence and arousal on emotional word processing are modulated by concreteness using event-related potentials (ERPs). The stimuli included concrete words (Experiment 1) and abstract words (Experiment 2) that were organized in an orthogonal design, with valence (positive and negative) and arousal (low and high) as factors in a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, the impact of emotion on the effects of concrete words mainly resulted from the contribution of valence. Positive concrete words were processed more quickly than negative words and elicited a reduction of N400 (300-410ms) and enhancement of late positive complex (LPC; 450-750ms), whereas no differences in response times or ERPs were found between high and low levels of arousal. In Experiment 2, the interaction between valence and arousal influenced the impact of emotion on the effects of abstract words. Low-arousal positive words were associated with shorter response times and a reduction of LPC amplitudes compared with high-arousal positive words. Low-arousal negative words were processed more slowly and elicited a reduction of N170 (140-200ms) compared with high-arousal negative words. The present study indicates that word concreteness modulates the contributions of valence and arousal to the effects of emotion, and this modulation occurs during the early perceptual processing stage (N170) and late elaborate processing stage (LPC) for emotional words and at the end of all cognitive processes (i.e., reflected by response times). These findings support an embodied theory of semantic representation and help clarify prior inconsistent findings regarding the ways in which valance and arousal influence different stages of word processing, at least in a lexical decision task. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Sex differences and emotion regulation: an event-related potential study.

PubMed

Gardener, Elyse K T; Carr, Andrea R; Macgregor, Amy; Felmingham, Kim L

2013-01-01

Difficulties in emotion regulation have been implicated as a potential mechanism underlying anxiety and mood disorders. It is possible that sex differences in emotion regulation may contribute towards the heightened female prevalence for these disorders. Previous fMRI studies of sex differences in emotion regulation have shown mixed results, possibly due to difficulties in discriminating the component processes of early emotional reactivity and emotion regulation. The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine sex differences in N1 and N2 components (reflecting early emotional reactivity) and P3 and LPP components (reflecting emotion regulation). N1, N2, P3, and LPP were recorded from 20 men and 23 women who were instructed to "increase," "decrease," and "maintain" their emotional response during passive viewing of negative images. Results indicated that women had significantly greater N1 and N2 amplitudes (reflecting early emotional reactivity) to negative stimuli than men, supporting a female negativity bias. LPP amplitudes increased to the "increase" instruction, and women displayed greater LPP amplitudes than men to the "increase" instruction. There were no differences to the "decrease" instruction in women or men. These findings confirm predictions of the female negativity bias hypothesis and suggest that women have greater up-regulation of emotional responses to negative stimuli. This finding is highly significant in light of the female vulnerability for developing anxiety disorders.

Acute aerobic exercise helps overcome emotion regulation deficits.

PubMed

Bernstein, Emily E; McNally, Richard J

2017-06-01

Although colloquial wisdom and some studies suggest an association between regular aerobic exercise and emotional well-being, the nature of this link remains poorly understood. We hypothesised that aerobic exercise may change the way people respond to their emotions. Specifically, we tested whether individuals experiencing difficulties with emotion regulation would benefit from a previous session of exercise and show swifter recovery than their counterparts who did not exercise. Participants (N = 80) completed measures of emotion response tendencies, mood, and anxiety, and were randomly assigned to either stretch or jog for 30 minutes. All participants then underwent the same negative and positive mood inductions, and reported their emotional responses. Analyses showed that more perceived difficulty generating regulatory strategies and engaging in goal-directed behaviours after the negative mood induction predicted more intense and persistent negative affect in response to the stressor, as would be expected. Interactions revealed that aerobic exercise attenuated these effects. Moderate aerobic exercise may help attenuate negative emotions for participants initially experiencing regulatory difficulties. This study contributes to the literature on aerobic exercise's therapeutic effects with experimental data, specifically in the realm of emotional processing.

Acute tryptophan depletion attenuates conscious appraisal of social emotional signals in healthy female volunteers

PubMed Central

Gray, Marcus A.; Minati, Ludovico; Whale, Richard; Harrison, Neil A.; Critchley, Hugo D.

2010-01-01

Rationale Acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) decreases levels of central serotonin. ATD thus enables the cognitive effects of serotonin to be studied, with implications for the understanding of psychiatric conditions, including depression. Objective To determine the role of serotonin in conscious (explicit) and unconscious/incidental processing of emotional information. Materials and methods A randomized, double-blind, cross-over design was used with 15 healthy female participants. Subjective mood was recorded at baseline and after 4 h, when participants performed an explicit emotional face processing task, and a task eliciting unconscious processing of emotionally aversive and neutral images presented subliminally using backward masking. Results ATD was associated with a robust reduction in plasma tryptophan at 4 h but had no effect on mood or autonomic physiology. ATD was associated with significantly lower attractiveness ratings for happy faces and attenuation of intensity/arousal ratings of angry faces. ATD also reduced overall reaction times on the unconscious perception task, but there was no interaction with emotional content of masked stimuli. ATD did not affect breakthrough perception (accuracy in identification) of masked images. Conclusions ATD attenuates the attractiveness of positive faces and the negative intensity of threatening faces, suggesting that serotonin contributes specifically to the appraisal of the social salience of both positive and negative salient social emotional cues. We found no evidence that serotonin affects unconscious processing of negative emotional stimuli. These novel findings implicate serotonin in conscious aspects of active social and behavioural engagement and extend knowledge regarding the effects of ATD on emotional perception. PMID:20596858

The effects of drugs on human models of emotional processing: an account of antidepressant drug treatment.

PubMed

Pringle, Abbie; Harmer, Catherine J

2015-12-01

Human models of emotional processing suggest that the direct effect of successful antidepressant drug treatment may be to modify biases in the processing of emotional information. Negative biases in emotional processing are documented in depression, and single or short-term dosing with conventional antidepressant drugs reverses these biases in depressed patients prior to any subjective change in mood. Antidepressant drug treatments also modulate emotional processing in healthy volunteers, which allows the consideration of the psychological effects of these drugs without the confound of changes in mood. As such, human models of emotional processing may prove to be useful for testing the efficacy of novel treatments and for matching treatments to individual patients or subgroups of patients.

Differences in male and female subjective experience and physiological reactions to emotional stimuli.

PubMed

Poláčková Šolcová, Iva; Lačev, Alek

2017-07-01

Research based on self-reported data often indicates that women are the more emotional sex. The present study examined differences in emotion between the sexes across two components of the emotional process: subjective experience and physiological reactions to emotional stimuli. During the experimental study, participants (N=124; 22.5±2.88; 51 males) subjectively rated their emotional experience (valence and intensity) towards presented positive and negative affective stimuli, while physiological reactions (facial electromyography, heart rate, skin conductance, and finger skin temperature) were measured during expositions. Results from self-reports suggest that women declared more intensive emotional experiences for positive and negative stimuli and rated negative stimuli as more negative in comparison to men. Physiological measurements showed differences between the sexes in the physiological baseline measurements (facial electromyography, skin conductance and finger skin temperature). However, physiological responses towards positive or negative emotional stimuli did not prove to be different between men and women, except for finger skin temperature. Relations between self-reported subjective experiences and physiological changes were weak and insignificant. Collectively, our findings suggest certain emotional differences experienced between men and women. These differences can be found specifically in self-reported subjective experiences, while significant differences were not predominantly present in recorded physiological reactions. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Prefrontal mediation of emotion regulation in social anxiety disorder during laughter perception.

PubMed

Kreifelts, Benjamin; Brück, Carolin; Ethofer, Thomas; Ritter, Jan; Weigel, Lena; Erb, Michael; Wildgruber, Dirk

2017-02-01

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by negatively biased perception of social cues and deficits in emotion regulation. While negatively biased perception is thought to maintain social anxiety, emotion regulation represents an ability necessary to overcome both biased perception and social anxiety. Here, we used laughter as a social threat in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study to identify cerebral mediators linking SAD with attention and interpretation biases and their modification through cognitive emotion regulation in the form of reappraisal. We found that reappraisal abolished the negative laughter interpretation bias in SAD and that this process was directly mediated through activation patterns of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) serving as a cerebral pivot between biased social perception and its normalization through reappraisal. Connectivity analyses revealed reduced prefrontal control over threat-processing sensory cortices (here: the temporal voice area) during cognitive emotion regulation in SAD. Our results indicate a central role for the left DLPFC in SAD which might represent a valuable target for future research on interventions either aiming to directly modulate cognitive emotion regulation in SAD or to evaluate its potential as physiological marker for psychotherapeutic interventions relying on emotion regulation. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Effect of Stimulus Valence on Lexical Retrieval in Younger and Older Adults.

PubMed

Blackett, Deena Schwen; Harnish, Stacy M; Lundine, Jennifer P; Zezinka, Alexandra; Healy, Eric W

2017-07-12

Although there is evidence that emotional valence of stimuli impacts lexical processes, there is limited work investigating its specific impact on lexical retrieval. The current study aimed to determine the degree to which emotional valence of pictured stimuli impacts naming latencies in healthy younger and older adults. Eighteen healthy younger adults and 18 healthy older adults named positive, negative, and neutral images, and reaction time was measured. Reaction times for positive and negative images were significantly longer than reaction times for neutral images. Reaction times for positive and negative images were not significantly different. Whereas older adults demonstrated significantly longer naming latencies overall than younger adults, the discrepancy in latency with age was far greater when naming emotional pictures. Emotional arousal of pictures appears to impact naming latency in younger and older adults. We hypothesize that the increase in naming latency for emotional stimuli is the result of a necessary disengagement of attentional resources from the emotional images prior to completion of the naming task. We propose that this process may affect older adults disproportionately due to a decline in attentional resources as part of normal aging, combined with a greater attentional preference for emotional stimuli.

A brain-computer interface for potential non-verbal facial communication based on EEG signals related to specific emotions

PubMed Central

Kashihara, Koji

2014-01-01

Unlike assistive technology for verbal communication, the brain-machine or brain-computer interface (BMI/BCI) has not been established as a non-verbal communication tool for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients. Face-to-face communication enables access to rich emotional information, but individuals suffering from neurological disorders, such as ALS and autism, may not express their emotions or communicate their negative feelings. Although emotions may be inferred by looking at facial expressions, emotional prediction for neutral faces necessitates advanced judgment. The process that underlies brain neuronal responses to neutral faces and causes emotional changes remains unknown. To address this problem, therefore, this study attempted to decode conditioned emotional reactions to neutral face stimuli. This direction was motivated by the assumption that if electroencephalogram (EEG) signals can be used to detect patients' emotional responses to specific inexpressive faces, the results could be incorporated into the design and development of BMI/BCI-based non-verbal communication tools. To these ends, this study investigated how a neutral face associated with a negative emotion modulates rapid central responses in face processing and then identified cortical activities. The conditioned neutral face-triggered event-related potentials that originated from the posterior temporal lobe statistically significantly changed during late face processing (600–700 ms) after stimulus, rather than in early face processing activities, such as P1 and N170 responses. Source localization revealed that the conditioned neutral faces increased activity in the right fusiform gyrus (FG). This study also developed an efficient method for detecting implicit negative emotional responses to specific faces by using EEG signals. A classification method based on a support vector machine enables the easy classification of neutral faces that trigger specific individual emotions. In accordance with this classification, a face on a computer morphs into a sad or displeased countenance. The proposed method could be incorporated as a part of non-verbal communication tools to enable emotional expression. PMID:25206321

A brain-computer interface for potential non-verbal facial communication based on EEG signals related to specific emotions.

PubMed

Kashihara, Koji

2014-01-01

Unlike assistive technology for verbal communication, the brain-machine or brain-computer interface (BMI/BCI) has not been established as a non-verbal communication tool for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients. Face-to-face communication enables access to rich emotional information, but individuals suffering from neurological disorders, such as ALS and autism, may not express their emotions or communicate their negative feelings. Although emotions may be inferred by looking at facial expressions, emotional prediction for neutral faces necessitates advanced judgment. The process that underlies brain neuronal responses to neutral faces and causes emotional changes remains unknown. To address this problem, therefore, this study attempted to decode conditioned emotional reactions to neutral face stimuli. This direction was motivated by the assumption that if electroencephalogram (EEG) signals can be used to detect patients' emotional responses to specific inexpressive faces, the results could be incorporated into the design and development of BMI/BCI-based non-verbal communication tools. To these ends, this study investigated how a neutral face associated with a negative emotion modulates rapid central responses in face processing and then identified cortical activities. The conditioned neutral face-triggered event-related potentials that originated from the posterior temporal lobe statistically significantly changed during late face processing (600-700 ms) after stimulus, rather than in early face processing activities, such as P1 and N170 responses. Source localization revealed that the conditioned neutral faces increased activity in the right fusiform gyrus (FG). This study also developed an efficient method for detecting implicit negative emotional responses to specific faces by using EEG signals. A classification method based on a support vector machine enables the easy classification of neutral faces that trigger specific individual emotions. In accordance with this classification, a face on a computer morphs into a sad or displeased countenance. The proposed method could be incorporated as a part of non-verbal communication tools to enable emotional expression.

Prior cognitive activity implicitly modulates subsequent emotional responses to subliminally presented emotional stimuli.

PubMed

Iida, Saea; Nakao, Takashi; Ohira, Hideki

2012-06-01

It has been reported that engagement in several kinds of cognitive activity can successfully inhibit unpleasant emotions. In this study, we tried to replicate the previous finding that cognitive activity can modulate subsequent psychological and physiological emotional processes and to investigate whether prior cognitive activity can attenuate implicit emotional processes triggered by subliminal emotional stimuli. Sixty students were randomly divided into three groups (cognitive task group, noncognitive task group, control group). The cognitive task group was asked to engage in an n-back task, while the control group was asked to stay calm. The noncognitive task group was asked to do a handgrip-squeezing task. All participants then engaged in a version of a subliminal affective priming task where they were unconsciously exposed to affectively negative pictures. The cognitive task group showed lower negative experiences after the subliminal affective priming task and a substantial reduction in their heart rate responses, as compared with the other groups. These results provide evidence that engagement in cognitive activity can attenuate emotional processes in an automatic and unconscious manner.

The social regulation of emotion and updating negative contents of working memory.

PubMed

Flores, Luis E; Berenbaum, Howard

2017-06-01

The social regulation of emotion reduces negative affect and may also help remove negative contents from working memory. The present studies investigated whether the social regulation of emotion (in the form of handholding) altered the ability to update negative contents from working memory and whether a person's level of desired emotional closeness moderated this effect. In each of 2 studies, an unselected sample of undergraduate students completed an emotional working memory task that measured the ability to remove irrelevant information from working memory and a self-report questionnaire measuring their level of desired emotional closeness. In Study 1 (N = 109), the task consisted only of negative images, and each participant performed half of the task while holding someone's hand and the other half while not holding someone's hand. Study 2 (N = 195) included a few changes (e.g., using both negative and neutral images, altering the control condition to consist of holding a stress ball, using a between-participants design, measuring comfort with handholding) to address a few potential alternative explanations. Overall, there appeared to be a better ability to update negative contents of working memory in the handholding condition of each study than the control condition among people with high desired emotional closeness but not among people with low desired emotional closeness. The present findings provide evidence that the social regulation of emotion can facilitate the removal of irrelevant negative contents of working memory. This process may be one way in which supportive relationships protect against psychological distress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Changes in attention to an emotional task after sleep deprivation: neurophysiological and behavioral findings.

PubMed

Alfarra, Ramey; Fins, Ana I; Chayo, Isaac; Tartar, Jaime L

2015-01-01

While sleep loss is shown to have widespread effects on cognitive processes, little is known about the impact of sleep loss on emotion processes. In order to expand on previous behavioral and physiological findings on how sleep loss influences emotion processing, we administered positive, negative, and neutral affective visual stimuli to individuals after one night of sleep deprivation while simultaneously acquiring EEG event related potential (ERP) data and recording affective behavioral responses. We compared these responses to a baseline testing session. We specifically looked at the late positive potential (LPP) component of the visual ERP as an established sensitive measure of attention to emotionally-charged visual stimuli. Our results show that after sleep deprivation, the LPP no longer discriminates between emotional and non-emotional pictures; after sleep deprivation the LPP amplitude was of similar amplitude for neutral, positive, and negative pictures. This effect was driven by an increase in the LPP to neutral pictures. Our behavioral measures show that, relative to baseline testing, emotional pictures are rated as less emotional following sleep deprivation with a concomitant reduction in emotional picture-induced anxiety. We did not observe any change in cortisol concentrations after sleep deprivation before or after emotional picture exposure, suggesting that the observed changes in emotion processing are independent of potential stress effects of sleep deprivation. Combined, our findings suggest that sleep loss interferes with proper allocation of attention resources during an emotional task. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A longitudinal research on the development of emotional autonomy during adolescence.

PubMed

Parra, Agueda; Oliva, Alfredo

2009-05-01

The purpose of the present paper was to study the development of emotional autonomy through adolescence analysing its association with family relationships. The development of emotional autonomy involves an increase in adolescents' subjective sense of his or her independence, especially in relation to parents. From some scholars emotional autonomy is a normative manifestation of the detachment process from parents, however, others point out that detachment from parental ties is not the norm, so high level of adolescent emotional autonomy is the consequence of negative family relationships. In our study a sample of 101 adolescents were followed for 5 years, from early to middle adolescence, and completed questionnaires to measure their emotional autonomy and the quality of their family relationships. Our results showed that over the course of adolescence some dimensions of emotional autonomy increase, meanwhile others decrease, so the global level of emotional autonomy global level remains stable. On the other hand, emotional autonomy is associated with negative family relationships, so emotional autonomy, more than a necessary process to become adult, could be indicating an insecure attachment to parents.

Aberrant interference of auditory negative words on attention in patients with schizophrenia.

PubMed

Iwashiro, Norichika; Yahata, Noriaki; Kawamuro, Yu; Kasai, Kiyoto; Yamasue, Hidenori

2013-01-01

Previous research suggests that deficits in attention-emotion interaction are implicated in schizophrenia symptoms. Although disruption in auditory processing is crucial in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, deficits in interaction between emotional processing of auditorily presented language stimuli and auditory attention have not yet been clarified. To address this issue, the current study used a dichotic listening task to examine 22 patients with schizophrenia and 24 age-, sex-, parental socioeconomic background-, handedness-, dexterous ear-, and intelligence quotient-matched healthy controls. The participants completed a word recognition task on the attended side in which a word with emotionally valenced content (negative/positive/neutral) was presented to one ear and a different neutral word was presented to the other ear. Participants selectively attended to either ear. In the control subjects, presentation of negative but not positive word stimuli provoked a significantly prolonged reaction time compared with presentation of neutral word stimuli. This interference effect for negative words existed whether or not subjects directed attention to the negative words. This interference effect was significantly smaller in the patients with schizophrenia than in the healthy controls. Furthermore, the smaller interference effect was significantly correlated with severe positive symptoms and delusional behavior in the patients with schizophrenia. The present findings suggest that aberrant interaction between semantic processing of negative emotional content and auditory attention plays a role in production of positive symptoms in schizophrenia. (224 words).

Explicit attention interferes with selective emotion processing in human extrastriate cortex.

PubMed

Schupp, Harald T; Stockburger, Jessica; Bublatzky, Florian; Junghöfer, Markus; Weike, Almut I; Hamm, Alfons O

2007-02-22

Brain imaging and event-related potential studies provide strong evidence that emotional stimuli guide selective attention in visual processing. A reflection of the emotional attention capture is the increased Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) for pleasant and unpleasant compared to neutral images (approximately 150-300 ms poststimulus). The present study explored whether this early emotion discrimination reflects an automatic phenomenon or is subject to interference by competing processing demands. Thus, emotional processing was assessed while participants performed a concurrent feature-based attention task varying in processing demands. Participants successfully performed the primary visual attention task as revealed by behavioral performance and selected event-related potential components (Selection Negativity and P3b). Replicating previous results, emotional modulation of the EPN was observed in a task condition with low processing demands. In contrast, pleasant and unpleasant pictures failed to elicit increased EPN amplitudes compared to neutral images in more difficult explicit attention task conditions. Further analyses determined that even the processing of pleasant and unpleasant pictures high in emotional arousal is subject to interference in experimental conditions with high task demand. Taken together, performing demanding feature-based counting tasks interfered with differential emotion processing indexed by the EPN. The present findings demonstrate that taxing processing resources by a competing primary visual attention task markedly attenuated the early discrimination of emotional from neutral picture contents. Thus, these results provide further empirical support for an interference account of the emotion-attention interaction under conditions of competition. Previous studies revealed the interference of selective emotion processing when attentional resources were directed to locations of explicitly task-relevant stimuli. The present data suggest that interference of emotion processing by competing task demands is a more general phenomenon extending to the domain of feature-based attention. Furthermore, the results are inconsistent with the notion of effortlessness, i.e., early emotion discrimination despite concurrent task demands. These findings implicate to assess the presumed automatic nature of emotion processing at the level of specific aspects rather than considering automaticity as an all-or-none phenomenon.

Explicit attention interferes with selective emotion processing in human extrastriate cortex

PubMed Central

Schupp, Harald T; Stockburger, Jessica; Bublatzky, Florian; Junghöfer, Markus; Weike, Almut I; Hamm, Alfons O

2007-01-01

Background Brain imaging and event-related potential studies provide strong evidence that emotional stimuli guide selective attention in visual processing. A reflection of the emotional attention capture is the increased Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) for pleasant and unpleasant compared to neutral images (~150–300 ms poststimulus). The present study explored whether this early emotion discrimination reflects an automatic phenomenon or is subject to interference by competing processing demands. Thus, emotional processing was assessed while participants performed a concurrent feature-based attention task varying in processing demands. Results Participants successfully performed the primary visual attention task as revealed by behavioral performance and selected event-related potential components (Selection Negativity and P3b). Replicating previous results, emotional modulation of the EPN was observed in a task condition with low processing demands. In contrast, pleasant and unpleasant pictures failed to elicit increased EPN amplitudes compared to neutral images in more difficult explicit attention task conditions. Further analyses determined that even the processing of pleasant and unpleasant pictures high in emotional arousal is subject to interference in experimental conditions with high task demand. Taken together, performing demanding feature-based counting tasks interfered with differential emotion processing indexed by the EPN. Conclusion The present findings demonstrate that taxing processing resources by a competing primary visual attention task markedly attenuated the early discrimination of emotional from neutral picture contents. Thus, these results provide further empirical support for an interference account of the emotion-attention interaction under conditions of competition. Previous studies revealed the interference of selective emotion processing when attentional resources were directed to locations of explicitly task-relevant stimuli. The present data suggest that interference of emotion processing by competing task demands is a more general phenomenon extending to the domain of feature-based attention. Furthermore, the results are inconsistent with the notion of effortlessness, i.e., early emotion discrimination despite concurrent task demands. These findings implicate to assess the presumed automatic nature of emotion processing at the level of specific aspects rather than considering automaticity as an all-or-none phenomenon. PMID:17316444

Emotional valence and arousal affect reading in an interactive way: Neuroimaging evidence for an approach-withdrawal framework

PubMed Central

Citron, Francesca M.M.; Gray, Marcus A.; Critchley, Hugo D.; Weekes, Brendan S.; Ferstl, Evelyn C.

2014-01-01

A growing body of literature shows that the emotional content of verbal material affects reading, wherein emotional words are given processing priority compared to neutral words. Human emotions can be conceptualised within a two-dimensional model comprised of emotional valence and arousal (intensity). These variables are at least in part distinct, but recent studies report interactive effects during implicit emotion processing and relate these to stimulus-evoked approach-withdrawal tendencies. The aim of the present study was to explore how valence and arousal interact at the neural level, during implicit emotion word processing. The emotional attributes of written word stimuli were orthogonally manipulated based on behavioural ratings from a corpus of emotion words. Stimuli were presented during an fMRI experiment while 16 participants performed a lexical decision task, which did not require explicit evaluation of a word′s emotional content. Results showed greater neural activation within right insular cortex in response to stimuli evoking conflicting approach-withdrawal tendencies (i.e., positive high-arousal and negative low-arousal words) compared to stimuli evoking congruent approach vs. withdrawal tendencies (i.e., positive low-arousal and negative high-arousal words). Further, a significant cluster of activation in the left extra-striate cortex was found in response to emotional than neutral words, suggesting enhanced perceptual processing of emotionally salient stimuli. These findings support an interactive two-dimensional approach to the study of emotion word recognition and suggest that the integration of valence and arousal dimensions recruits a brain region associated with interoception, emotional awareness and sympathetic functions. PMID:24440410

Disruption of emotion and conflict processing in HIV infection with and without alcoholism comorbidity.

PubMed

Schulte, Tilman; Müller-Oehring, Eva M; Sullivan, Edith V; Pfefferbaum, Adolf

2011-05-01

Alcoholism and HIV-1 infection each affect components of selective attention and cognitive control that may contribute to deficits in emotion processing based on closely interacting fronto-parietal attention and frontal-subcortical emotion systems. Here, we investigated whether patients with alcoholism, HIV-1 infection, or both diseases have greater difficulty than healthy controls in resolving conflict from emotional words with different valences. Accordingly, patients with alcoholism (ALC, n = 20), HIV-1 infection (HIV, n = 20), ALC + HIV comorbidity (n = 22), and controls (CTL, n = 16) performed an emotional Stroop Match-to-Sample task, which assessed the contribution of emotion (happy, angry) to cognitive control (Stroop conflict processing). ALC + HIV showed greater Stroop effects than HIV, ALC, or CTL for negative (ANGRY) but not for positive (HAPPY) words, and also when the cue color did not match the Stroop stimulus color; the comorbid group performed similarly to the others when cue and word colors matched. Furthermore, emotionally salient face cues prolonged color-matching responses in all groups. HIV alone, compared with the other three groups, showed disproportionately slowed color-matching time when trials featured angry faces. The enhanced Stroop effects prominent in ALC + HIV suggest difficulty in exercising attentional top-down control on processes that consume attentional capacity, especially when cognitive effort is required to ignore negative emotions.

The Cognitive Consequences of Emotion Regulation: An ERP Investigation

PubMed Central

Deveney, C.M.; Pizzagalli, D.A.

2008-01-01

Increasing evidence suggests that emotion regulation (ER) strategies modulate encoding of information presented during regulation; however, no studies have assessed the impact of cognitive reappraisal ER strategies on the processing of stimuli presented after the ER period. Participants in the present study regulated emotions to unpleasant pictures and then judged whether a word was negative or neutral. Electromyographic measures (corrugator supercilli) confirmed that individuals increased and decreased negative affect according to ER condition. Event-related potential analyses revealed smallest N400 amplitudes to negative and neutral words presented after decreasing unpleasant emotions and smallest P300 amplitudes to words presented after increasing unpleasant emotions whereas reaction time data failed to show ER modulations. Results are discussed in the context of the developing ER literature, as well as theories of emotional incongruity (N400) and resource allocation (P300). PMID:18221443

Decreased Pain Perception by Unconscious Emotional Pictures

PubMed Central

Peláez, Irene; Martínez-Iñigo, David; Barjola, Paloma; Cardoso, Susana; Mercado, Francisco

2016-01-01

Pain perception arises from a complex interaction between a nociceptive stimulus and different emotional and cognitive factors, which appear to be mediated by both automatic and controlled systems. Previous evidence has shown that whereas conscious processing of unpleasant stimuli enhances pain perception, emotional influences on pain under unaware conditions are much less known. The aim of the present study was to investigate the modulation of pain perception by unconscious emotional pictures through an emotional masking paradigm. Two kinds of both somatosensory (painful and non-painful) and emotional stimulation (negative and neutral pictures) were employed. Fifty pain-free participants were asked to rate the perception of pain they were feeling in response to laser-induced somatosensory stimuli as faster as they can. Data from pain intensity and reaction times were measured. Statistical analyses revealed a significant effect for the interaction between pain and emotional stimulation, but surprisingly this relationship was opposite to expected. In particular, lower pain intensity scores and longer reaction times were found in response to negative images being strengthened this effect for painful stimulation. Present findings suggest a clear pain perception modulation by unconscious emotional contexts. Attentional capture mechanisms triggered by unaware negative stimulation could explain this phenomenon leading to a withdrawal of processing resources from pain. PMID:27818642

Decreased Pain Perception by Unconscious Emotional Pictures.

PubMed

Peláez, Irene; Martínez-Iñigo, David; Barjola, Paloma; Cardoso, Susana; Mercado, Francisco

2016-01-01

Pain perception arises from a complex interaction between a nociceptive stimulus and different emotional and cognitive factors, which appear to be mediated by both automatic and controlled systems. Previous evidence has shown that whereas conscious processing of unpleasant stimuli enhances pain perception, emotional influences on pain under unaware conditions are much less known. The aim of the present study was to investigate the modulation of pain perception by unconscious emotional pictures through an emotional masking paradigm. Two kinds of both somatosensory (painful and non-painful) and emotional stimulation (negative and neutral pictures) were employed. Fifty pain-free participants were asked to rate the perception of pain they were feeling in response to laser-induced somatosensory stimuli as faster as they can. Data from pain intensity and reaction times were measured. Statistical analyses revealed a significant effect for the interaction between pain and emotional stimulation, but surprisingly this relationship was opposite to expected. In particular, lower pain intensity scores and longer reaction times were found in response to negative images being strengthened this effect for painful stimulation. Present findings suggest a clear pain perception modulation by unconscious emotional contexts. Attentional capture mechanisms triggered by unaware negative stimulation could explain this phenomenon leading to a withdrawal of processing resources from pain.

Happier People Show Greater Neural Connectivity during Negative Self-Referential Processing.

PubMed

Kim, Eun Joo; Kyeong, Sunghyon; Cho, Sang Woo; Chun, Ji-Won; Park, Hae-Jeong; Kim, Jihye; Kim, Joohan; Dolan, Raymond J; Kim, Jae-Jin

2016-01-01

Life satisfaction is an essential component of subjective well-being and provides a fundamental resource for optimal everyday functioning. The goal of the present study was to examine how life satisfaction influences self-referential processing of emotionally valenced stimuli. Nineteen individuals with high life satisfaction (HLS) and 21 individuals with low life satisfaction (LLS) were scanned using functional MRI while performing a face-word relevance rating task, which consisted of 3 types of face stimuli (self, public other, and unfamiliar other) and 3 types of word stimuli (positive, negative, and neutral). We found a significant group x word valence interaction effect, most strikingly in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex. In the positive word condition dorsal medial prefrontal cortex activity was significantly higher in the LLS group, whereas in the negative word condition it was significantly higher in the HLS group. The two groups showed distinct functional connectivity of the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex with emotional processing-related regions. The findings suggest that, in response to emotional stimuli, individuals with HLS may successfully recruit emotion regulation-related regions in contrast to individuals with LLS. The difference in functional connectivity during self-referential processing may lead to an influence of life satisfaction on responses to emotion-eliciting stimuli.

Aging and goal-directed emotional attention: distraction reverses emotional biases.

PubMed

Knight, Marisa; Seymour, Travis L; Gaunt, Joshua T; Baker, Christopher; Nesmith, Kathryn; Mather, Mara

2007-11-01

Previous findings reveal that older adults favor positive over negative stimuli in both memory and attention (for a review, see Mather & Carstensen, 2005). This study used eye tracking to investigate the role of cognitive control in older adults' selective visual attention. Younger and older adults viewed emotional-neutral and emotional-emotional pairs of faces and pictures while their gaze patterns were recorded under full or divided attention conditions. Replicating previous eye-tracking findings, older adults allocated less of their visual attention to negative stimuli in negative-neutral stimulus pairings in the full attention condition than younger adults did. However, as predicted by a cognitive-control-based account of the positivity effect in older adults' information processing tendencies (Mather & Knight, 2005), older adults' tendency to avoid negative stimuli was reversed in the divided attention condition. Compared with younger adults, older adults' limited attentional resources were more likely to be drawn to negative stimuli when they were distracted. These findings indicate that emotional goals can have unintended consequences when cognitive control mechanisms are not fully available.

Vocal and visual stimulation, congruence and lateralization affect brain oscillations in interspecies emotional positive and negative interactions.

PubMed

Balconi, Michela; Vanutelli, Maria Elide

2016-01-01

The present research explored the effect of cross-modal integration of emotional cues (auditory and visual (AV)) compared with only visual (V) emotional cues in observing interspecies interactions. The brain activity was monitored when subjects processed AV and V situations, which represented an emotional (positive or negative), interspecies (human-animal) interaction. Congruence (emotionally congruous or incongruous visual and auditory patterns) was also modulated. electroencephalography brain oscillations (from delta to beta) were analyzed and the cortical source localization (by standardized Low Resolution Brain Electromagnetic Tomography) was applied to the data. Frequency band (mainly low-frequency delta and theta) showed a significant brain activity increasing in response to negative compared to positive interactions within the right hemisphere. Moreover, differences were found based on stimulation type, with an increased effect for AV compared with V. Finally, delta band supported a lateralized right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) activity in response to negative and incongruous interspecies interactions, mainly for AV. The contribution of cross-modality, congruence (incongruous patterns), and lateralization (right DLPFC) in response to interspecies emotional interactions was discussed at light of a "negative lateralized effect."

Emotional reactivity and regulation in individuals with psychopathic traits: Evidence for a disconnect between neurophysiology and self-report.

PubMed

Ellis, Jennifer D; Schroder, Hans S; Patrick, Christopher J; Moser, Jason S

2017-10-01

Individuals with psychopathic traits often demonstrate blunted reactivity to negative emotional stimuli. However, it is not yet clear whether these individuals also have difficulty regulating their emotional responses to negative stimuli. To address this question, participants with varying levels of psychopathic traits (indexed by the Triarchic Measure of Psychopathy; Patrick, 2010) completed a task in which they passively viewed, increased, or decreased their emotions to negative picture stimuli while electrocortical activity was recorded. During passive viewing of negative images, higher boldness, but not higher disinhibition or meanness, was associated with reduced amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP), an ERP that indexes reactivity to emotionally relevant stimuli. However, all participants demonstrated expected enhancement of the LPP when asked to increase their emotional response. Participants did not show expected suppression of the LPP when asked to decrease their emotional response. Contrary to the electrophysiological data, individuals with higher boldness did not self-report experiencing blunted emotional response during passive viewing trials, and they reported experiencing greater emotional reactivity relative to other participants when regulating (e.g., both increasing and decreasing) their emotions. Results suggest inconsistency between physiological and self-report indices of emotion among high-bold individuals during both affective processing and regulation. © 2017 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Stress and selective attention: the interplay of mood, cortisol levels, and emotional information processing.

PubMed

Ellenbogen, Mark A; Schwartzman, Alex E; Stewart, Jane; Walker, Claire-Dominique

2002-11-01

The effects of a stressful challenge on the processing of emotional words were examined in college students. Stress induction was achieved using a competitive computer task, where the individual either repeatedly lost or won against a confederate. Mood, attention, and cortisol were recorded during the study. There were four findings: (1) Participants in the negative stressor condition were faster to shift attention away from negative words than positive or neutral words; (2) attentional shifts away from negative words were associated with stress-induced mood lowering; (3) participants in the negative stress condition with elevated scores on the Beck Depression Inventory were slow to disengage attention from all stimuli; and (4) elevated depression scores were associated with lower cortisol change from baseline during the experimental phase, and with higher cortisol levels during the recovery phase. These findings point to information-processing strategies as a means to regulate emotion, and to atypical features of cognitive and adrenocortical function that may serve as putative risk markers of depression.

Negative ion treatment increases positive emotional processing in seasonal affective disorder.

PubMed

Harmer, C J; Charles, M; McTavish, S; Favaron, E; Cowen, P J

2012-08-01

Antidepressant drug treatments increase the processing of positive compared to negative affective information early in treatment. Such effects have been hypothesized to play a key role in the development of later therapeutic responses to treatment. However, it is unknown whether these effects are a common mechanism of action for different treatment modalities. High-density negative ion (HDNI) treatment is an environmental manipulation that has efficacy in randomized clinical trials in seasonal affective disorder (SAD). The current study investigated whether a single session of HDNI treatment could reverse negative affective biases seen in seasonal depression using a battery of emotional processing tasks in a double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized study. Under placebo conditions, participants with seasonal mood disturbance showed reduced recognition of happy facial expressions, increased recognition memory for negative personality characteristics and increased vigilance to masked presentation of negative words in a dot-probe task compared to matched healthy controls. Negative ion treatment increased the recognition of positive compared to negative facial expression and improved vigilance to unmasked stimuli across participants with seasonal depression and healthy controls. Negative ion treatment also improved recognition memory for positive information in the SAD group alone. These effects were seen in the absence of changes in subjective state or mood. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that early change in emotional processing may be an important mechanism for treatment action in depression and suggest that these effects are also apparent with negative ion treatment in seasonal depression.

An exploratory analysis of emotion dynamics between mothers and adolescents during conflict discussions.

PubMed

Main, Alexandra; Paxton, Alexandra; Dale, Rick

2016-09-01

Dynamic patterns of influence between parents and children have long been considered key to understanding family relationships. Despite this, most observational research on emotion in parent-child interactions examines global behaviors at the expense of exploring moment-to-moment fluctuations in emotions that are important for relational outcomes. Using recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) and growth curve analysis, this investigation explored emotion dynamics during parent-adolescent conflict interactions, focusing not only on concurrently shared emotional states but also on time-lagged synchrony of parents' and adolescents' emotions relative to one another. Mother-adolescent dyads engaged in a 10-min conflict discussion and reported on their satisfaction with the process and outcome of the discussion. Emotions were coded using the Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF) and were collapsed into the following categories: negativity, positivity, and validation/interest. RQA and growth curve analyses revealed that negative and positive emotions were characterized by a concurrently synchronous pattern across all dyads, with the highest recurrence rates occurring around simultaneity. However, lower levels of concurrent synchrony of negative emotions were associated with higher discussion satisfaction. We also found that patterns of negativity differed with age: Mothers led negativity in dyads with younger adolescents, and adolescents led negativity in dyads with older adolescents. In contrast to negative and positive emotions, validation/interest showed the time-lagged pattern characteristic of turn-taking, and more highly satisfied dyads showed stronger patterns of time-lagged coordination in validation/interest. Our findings underscore the dynamic nature of emotions in parent-adolescent interactions and highlight the important contributions of these moment-to-moment dynamics toward overall interaction quality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Associations between the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) rs53576 polymorphism and emotional processing of social and nonsocial cues: an event-related potential (ERP) study.

PubMed

Choi, Damee; Minote, Natsumi; Watanuki, Shigeki

2017-01-26

Oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene polymorphisms are related to individual differences in emotional processing of social cues. However, whether OXTR polymorphisms affect emotional processing of nonsocial cues remains unclear. The present study investigated the relationship between the OXTR rs53576 polymorphism and emotional processing of social cues and nonsocial cues. Event-related potentials were recorded from 88 male participants while images of humans and images of objects were presented as social cues and nonsocial cues, respectively. First, the results showed that GG carriers of OXTR rs53576 showed more negative N1 (50-200 ms) than AA carriers in response to images of both humans and objects. Second, GG carriers showed more negative N2 (200-320 ms) than AA carriers in response to images of humans but not in response to images of objects. Third, GG carriers showed more negative N2 in response to images of humans than images of objects, whereas AA carriers showed the opposite pattern. Fourth, we observed no difference in late positive potential (600-1000 ms) to images of humans or objects that depended on the OXTR rs53576 polymorphism. These results suggest that the OXTR rs53576 polymorphism affects emotional processing of not only social cues but also nonsocial cues in the very early stage (reflected in N1); however, the data also suggest that the OXTR rs53576 polymorphism is related specifically to increased emotional processing of social cues in the middle stage (reflected in N2).

Cognitive and emotional processing of pleasant and unpleasant experiences in major depression: A matter of vantage point?

PubMed

Pfaltz, Monique C; Wu, Gwyneth W Y; Liu, Guanyu; Tankersley, Amelia P; Stilley, Ashley M; Plichta, Michael M; McNally, Richard J

2017-03-01

In nonclinical populations, adopting a third-person perspective as opposed to a first-person perspective while analyzing negative emotional experiences fosters understanding of these experiences and reduces negative emotional reactivity. We assessed whether this generalizes to people with major depression (MD). Additionally, we assessed whether the emotion-reducing effects of adopting a third-person perspective also occur when subjects with MD and HC subjects analyze positive experiences. Seventy-two MD subjects and 82 HC subjects analyzed a happy and a negative experience from either a first-person or a third-person perspective. Unexpectedly, we found no emotion-reducing effects of third-person perspective in either group thinking about negative events. However, across groups, third-person perspective was associated with less recounting of negative experiences and with a clearer, more coherent understanding of them. Negative affect decreased and positive affect increased in both groups analyzing happy experiences. In MD subjects, decreases in depressive affect were stronger for the third-person perspective. In both groups, positive affect increased and negative affect decreased more strongly for the third-person perspective. While reflecting on their positive memory, MD subjects adopted their assigned perspective for a shorter amount of time (70%) than HC subjects (78%). However, percentage of time participants adopted their assigned perspective was unrelated to the significant effects we found. Both people suffering from MD and healthy individuals may benefit from processing pleasant experiences, especially when adopting a self-distant perspective. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Electrophysiological correlates of encoding and retrieving emotional events.

PubMed

Koenig, Stefanie; Mecklinger, Axel

2008-04-01

This study examined the impact of emotional content on encoding and retrieval processes. Event-related potentials were recorded in a source recognition memory task. During encoding, a posterior positivity for positive and negative pictures (250-450 ms) that presumably reflects attentional capturing of emotionally valenced stimuli was found. Additionally, positive events, which were also rated as less arousing than negative events, gave rise to anterior and posterior slow wave activity as compared with neutral and negative events and also showed enhanced recognition memory. It is assumed that positive low-arousing events enter controlled and elaborated encoding processes that are beneficial for recognition memory performance. The high arousal of negative events may interfere with controlled encoding mechanisms and attenuate item recognition and the quality of remembering. Moreover, topographically distinct late posterior negativities were obtained for the retrieval of the context features location and time that support the view that this component reflects processes in service of reconstructing the study episode by binding together contextual details with an item and that varies with the kind of episodic detail to be retrieved. (Copyright) 2008 APA.

Emotional bias of sleep-dependent processing shifts from negative to positive with aging.

PubMed

Jones, Bethany J; Schultz, Kurt S; Adams, Sydney; Baran, Bengi; Spencer, Rebecca M C

2016-09-01

Age-related memory decline has been proposed to result partially from impairments in memory consolidation over sleep. However, such decline may reflect a shift toward selective processing of positive information with age rather than impaired sleep-related mechanisms. In the present study, young and older adults viewed negative and neutral pictures or positive and neutral pictures and underwent a recognition test after sleep or wake. Subjective emotional reactivity and affect were also measured. Compared with waking, sleep preserved valence ratings and memory for positive but not negative pictures in older adults and negative but not positive pictures in young adults. In older adults, memory for positive pictures was associated with slow wave sleep. Furthermore, slow wave sleep predicted positive affect in older adults but was inversely related to positive affect in young adults. These relationships were strongest for older adults with high memory for positive pictures and young adults with high memory for negative pictures. Collectively, these results indicate preserved but selective sleep-dependent memory processing with healthy aging that may be biased to enhance emotional well-being. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Negative emotional reactivity moderates the relations between family cohesion and internalizing and externalizing symptoms in adolescence✩

PubMed Central

Rabinowitz, Jill A.; Osigwe, Ijeoma; Drabick, Deborah A.G.; Reynolds, Maureen D.

2016-01-01

Lower family cohesion is associated with adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems. However, there are likely individual differences in youth's responses to family processes. For example, adolescents higher in negative emotional reactivity, who often exhibit elevated physiological responsivity to context, may be differentially affected by family cohesion. We explored whether youth's negative emotional reactivity moderated the relation between family cohesion and youth's symptoms and tested whether findings were consistent with the diathesis-stress model or differential susceptibility hypothesis. Participants were 651 adolescents (M = 12.99 ± .95 years old; 72% male) assessed at two time points (Time 1, ages 12–14; Time 2, age 16) in Pittsburgh, PA. At Time 1, mothers reported on family cohesion and youth reported on their negative emotional reactivity. At Time 2, youth reported on their symptoms. Among youth higher in negative emotional reactivity, lower family cohesion predicted higher symptoms than higher family cohesion, consistent with the diathesis-stress model. PMID:27718379

Stress and puberty-related hormone reactivity, negative emotionality, and parent--adolescent relationships.

PubMed

Marceau, Kristine; Dorn, Lorah D; Susman, Elizabeth J

2012-08-01

Hormone reactivity to stressors and hormones that rapidly change at puberty are hypothesized to influence moods, which may in turn affect parent-child relationship quality. The present study investigated whether reactivity of testosterone, DHEA, and cortisol in a clinic setting (venipuncture paradigm) predicted negative emotionality and family problems at Time 1 (0 months), Time 2 (6 months), and Time 3 (12 months) in a sample of 56 boys (M = 12.72, SD = 1.32 years) and 52 girls (M = 11.99, SD = 1.55 years). Reactivity of each hormone, negative emotionality, and family problems were measured at each of three laboratory visits. Testosterone reactivity at the first assessment predicted family problems one year later. DHEA stress reactivity was related to concurrent negative emotionality at six and 12 months. Cortisol reactivity did not predict negative emotionality or family problems. Reactivity of different hormones that change at puberty may play an important role in adolescent moods and family processes during puberty. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Upward Spirals of Positive Emotions Counter Downward Spirals of Negativity: Insights from the Broaden-and-Build Theory and Affective Neuroscience on The Treatment of Emotion Dysfunctions and Deficits in Psychopathology

PubMed Central

Garland, Eric L.; Fredrickson, Barbara; Kring, Ann M.; Johnson, David P.; Meyer, Piper S.; Penn, David L.

2010-01-01

This review integrates Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions with advances in affective neuroscience regarding plasticity in the neural circuitry of emotions to inform the treatment of emotion deficits within psychopathology. We first present a body of research showing that positive emotions broaden cognition and behavioral repertoires, and in so doing, build durable biopsychosocial resources that support coping and flourishing mental health. Next, by explicating the processes through which momentary experiences of emotions may accrue into self-perpetuating emotional systems, the current review proposes an underlying architecture of state-trait interactions that engenders lasting affective dispositions. This theoretical framework is then used to elucidate the cognitive-emotional mechanisms underpinning three disorders of affect regulation, depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. In turn, two mind training interventions, mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation, are highlighted as means of generating positive emotions that may counter the negative affective processes implicated in these disorders. We conclude with the proposition that positive emotions may exert a countervailing force on the dysphoric, fearful, or anhedonic states characteristic of persons with psychopathology typified by emotional dysfunctions. PMID:20363063

Lower body weight is associated with less negative emotions in sad autobiographical memories of patients with anorexia nervosa.

PubMed

Brockmeyer, Timo; Grosse Holtforth, Martin; Bents, Hinrich; Herzog, Wolfgang; Friederich, Hans-Christoph

2013-12-15

Food restriction and weight-loss have been proposed to represent pathogenic mechanisms of emotion regulation in anorexia nervosa (AN). However, there is a lack of studies empirically examining this hypothesis. Therefore, the present study compared 25 women with AN and 25 healthy control women (HC) regarding spontaneous emotional processing of autobiographic memories. Participants' idiographic memories of sad autobiographic events were analyzed using computerized, quantitative text analysis as an unobtrusive approach of nonreactive assessment. Compared to HC, AN patients retrieved more negative but a comparable number of positive emotions. Moreover, the lesser the body weight in AN patients, the lesser negative emotions they retrieved, irrespective of current levels of depressive symptoms and duration of illness. No such association was found in HC. These preliminary findings are in line with models of AN proposing that food restriction and weight-loss may be negatively reinforced by the alleviation of aversive emotional responses. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Emotionality and self-regulation, threat appraisal, and coping in children of divorce.

PubMed

Lengua, L J; Sandler, I N; West, S G; Wolchik, S A; Curran, P J

1999-01-01

A model of the effects of children's temperament (negative and positive emotionality, impulsivity and attention focusing) on post-divorce threat appraisals, coping (active and avoidant), and psychological symptoms (depression and conduct problems) was investigated. The study utilized a sample of 223 mothers and children (ages 9 to 12 years) who had experienced divorce within the last two years. Evidence was found of direct effects of child-report negative emotionality on children's threat perceptions and of child-report positive emotionality and impulsivity on children's coping. Indirect effects of negative emotionality on active and avoidant coping through threat appraisal were found. Direct effects of the temperament variables on symptoms were also found. Cross group analyses indicated that the models were robust to age differences, but gender differences were found in the relation between negative emotionality and depression. The results of this study indicate that temperament and threat appraisals are important predictors of children's post-divorce symptoms, and that temperament is a predictor of children's appraisal and coping process.

"Opening an emotional dimension in me": changes in emotional reactivity and emotion regulation in a case of executive impairment after left fronto-parietal damage.

PubMed

Salas, Christian E; Radovic, Darinka; Yuen, Kenneth S L; Yeates, Giles N; Castro, O; Turnbull, Oliver H

2014-01-01

Dysexecutive impairment is a common problem after brain injury, particularly after damage to the lateral surface of the frontal lobes. There is a large literature describing the cognitive deficits associated with executive impairment after dorsolateral damage; however, little is known about its impact on emotional functioning. This case study describes changes in a 72-year-old man (Professor F) who became markedly dysexecutive after a left fron-to-parietal stroke. Professor F's case is remarkable in that, despite exhibiting typical executive impairments, abstraction and working memory capacities were spared. Such preservation of insight-related capacities allowed him to offer a detailed account of his emotional changes. Quantitative and qualitative tools were used to explore changes in several well-known emotional processes. The results suggest that Professor F's two main emotional changes were in the domain of emotional reactivity (increased experience of both positive and negative emotions) and emotion regulation (down-regulation of sadness). Professor F related both changes to difficulties in his thinking process, especially a difficulty generating and manipulating thoughts during moments of negative arousal. These results are discussed in relation to the literature on executive function and emotion regulation. The relevance of these findings for neuropsychological rehabilitation and for the debate on the neural basis of emotional processes is addressed.

Coaching to vision versus coaching to improvement needs: a preliminary investigation on the differential impacts of fostering positive and negative emotion during real time executive coaching sessions

PubMed Central

Howard, Anita R.

2015-01-01

Drawing on intentional change theory (ICT; Boyatzis, 2006), this study examined the differential impact of inducing coaching recipients’ vision/positive emotion versus improvement needs/negative emotion during real time executive coaching sessions. A core aim of the study was to empirically test two central ICT propositions on the effects of using the coached person’s Positive Emotional Attractor (vision/PEA) versus Negative Emotional Attractor (improvement needs/NEA) as the anchoring framework of a onetime, one-on-one coaching session on appraisal of 360° feedback and discussion of possible change goals. Eighteen coaching recipients were randomly assigned to two coaching conditions, the coaching to vision/PEA condition and the coaching to improvement needs/NEA condition. Two main hypotheses were tested. Hypothesis1 predicted that participants in the vision/PEA condition would show higher levels of expressed positive emotion during appraisal of 360° feedback results and discussion of change goals than recipients in the improvement needs/NEA condition. Hypothesis2 predicted that vision/PEA participants would show lower levels of stress immediately after the coaching session than improvement needs/NEA participants. Findings showed that coaching to vision/the PEA fostered significantly lower levels of expressed negative emotion and anger during appraisal of 360° feedback results as compared to coaching to improvements needs/the NEA. Vision-focused coaching also fostered significantly greater exploration of personal passions and future desires, and more positive engagement during 360° feedback appraisal. No significant differences between the two conditions were found in emotional processing during discussion of change goals or levels of stress immediately after the coaching session. Current findings suggest that vision/PEA arousal versus improvement needs/NEA arousal impact the coaching process in quite different ways; that the coach’s initial framing of the session predominantly in the PEA (or, alternatively, predominantly in the NEA) fosters emotional processing that is driven by this initial framing; and that both the PEA (and associated positive emotions) and NEA (and associated negative emotions) play an important and recurrent role in shaping the change process. Further study on these outcomes will enable researchers to shed more light on the differential impact of the PEA versus NEA on intentional change, and how to leverage the benefits of both emotional attractors. Findings also suggest that coaches can benefit from better understanding the importance of tapping intrinsic motivation and personal passions through coaching to vision/the PEA. Coaches additionally may benefit from better understanding how to leverage the long-term advantages, and restorative benefits, of positive emotions during coaching engagements. The findings also highlight coaches’ need to appreciate the impact of timing effects on coaching intentional change, and how coaches can play a critical role in calibrating the pace and focus of work on intentional change. Early arousal of the coachee’s PEA, accompanied by recurrent PEA–NEA induction, may help coachees be/become more creative, optimistic, and resilient during a given change process. Overall, primary focus on vision/PEA and secondary focus on improvement needs/NEA may better equip coaches and coaching recipients to work together on building robust learning, development, and change. Keywords-133pt executive coaching, vision, improvement needs, positive emotion, negative emotion, emotional appraisal, intentional change, positive psychology PMID:25964768

Coaching to vision versus coaching to improvement needs: a preliminary investigation on the differential impacts of fostering positive and negative emotion during real time executive coaching sessions.

PubMed

Howard, Anita R

2015-01-01

Drawing on intentional change theory (ICT; Boyatzis, 2006), this study examined the differential impact of inducing coaching recipients' vision/positive emotion versus improvement needs/negative emotion during real time executive coaching sessions. A core aim of the study was to empirically test two central ICT propositions on the effects of using the coached person's Positive Emotional Attractor (vision/PEA) versus Negative Emotional Attractor (improvement needs/NEA) as the anchoring framework of a onetime, one-on-one coaching session on appraisal of 360° feedback and discussion of possible change goals. Eighteen coaching recipients were randomly assigned to two coaching conditions, the coaching to vision/PEA condition and the coaching to improvement needs/NEA condition. Two main hypotheses were tested. Hypothesis1 predicted that participants in the vision/PEA condition would show higher levels of expressed positive emotion during appraisal of 360° feedback results and discussion of change goals than recipients in the improvement needs/NEA condition. Hypothesis2 predicted that vision/PEA participants would show lower levels of stress immediately after the coaching session than improvement needs/NEA participants. Findings showed that coaching to vision/the PEA fostered significantly lower levels of expressed negative emotion and anger during appraisal of 360° feedback results as compared to coaching to improvements needs/the NEA. Vision-focused coaching also fostered significantly greater exploration of personal passions and future desires, and more positive engagement during 360° feedback appraisal. No significant differences between the two conditions were found in emotional processing during discussion of change goals or levels of stress immediately after the coaching session. Current findings suggest that vision/PEA arousal versus improvement needs/NEA arousal impact the coaching process in quite different ways; that the coach's initial framing of the session predominantly in the PEA (or, alternatively, predominantly in the NEA) fosters emotional processing that is driven by this initial framing; and that both the PEA (and associated positive emotions) and NEA (and associated negative emotions) play an important and recurrent role in shaping the change process. Further study on these outcomes will enable researchers to shed more light on the differential impact of the PEA versus NEA on intentional change, and how to leverage the benefits of both emotional attractors. Findings also suggest that coaches can benefit from better understanding the importance of tapping intrinsic motivation and personal passions through coaching to vision/the PEA. Coaches additionally may benefit from better understanding how to leverage the long-term advantages, and restorative benefits, of positive emotions during coaching engagements. The findings also highlight coaches' need to appreciate the impact of timing effects on coaching intentional change, and how coaches can play a critical role in calibrating the pace and focus of work on intentional change. Early arousal of the coachee's PEA, accompanied by recurrent PEA-NEA induction, may help coachees be/become more creative, optimistic, and resilient during a given change process. Overall, primary focus on vision/PEA and secondary focus on improvement needs/NEA may better equip coaches and coaching recipients to work together on building robust learning, development, and change. Keywords-133pt executive coaching, vision, improvement needs, positive emotion, negative emotion, emotional appraisal, intentional change, positive psychology.

Pain and Emotion: A Biopsychosocial Review of Recent Research

PubMed Central

Lumley, Mark A.; Cohen, Jay L.; Borszcz, George S.; Cano, Annmarie; Radcliffe, Alison M.; Porter, Laura S.; Schubiner, Howard; Keefe, Francis J.

2011-01-01

Objective and Method Research on emotion and pain has burgeoned. We review the last decade’s literature, focusing on links between emotional processes and persistent pain. Results Neurobiological research documents the neural processes that distinguish affective from sensory pain dimensions, link emotion and pain, and generate central nervous system pain sensitization. Psychological research demonstrates that greater pain is related to emotional stress and limited emotional awareness, expression, and processing. Social research shows the potential importance of emotional communication, empathy, attachment, and rejection. Conclusions Emotions are integral to the conceptualization, assessment, and treatment of persistent pain. Research should clarify when to eliminate or attenuate negative emotions, and when to access, experience, and express them. Theory and practice should integrate emotion into cognitive-behavioral models of persistent pain. PMID:21647882

Attention and emotion: an ERP analysis of facilitated emotional stimulus processing.

PubMed

Schupp, Harald T; Junghöfer, Markus; Weike, Almut I; Hamm, Alfons O

2003-06-11

Recent event-related potential studies observed an early posterior negativity (EPN) reflecting facilitated processing of emotional images. The present study explored if the facilitated processing of emotional pictures is sustained while subjects perform an explicit non-emotional attention task. EEG was recorded from 129 channels while subjects viewed a rapid continuous stream of images containing emotional pictures as well as task-related checkerboard images. As expected, explicit selective attention to target images elicited large P3 waves. Interestingly, emotional stimuli guided stimulus-driven selective encoding as reflected by augmented EPN amplitudes to emotional stimuli, in particular to stimuli of evolutionary significance (erotic contents, mutilations, and threat). These data demonstrate the selective encoding of emotional stimuli while top-down attentional control was directed towards non-emotional target stimuli.

The influence of work characteristics, emotional display rules and affectivity on burnout and job satisfaction: A survey among geriatric care workers.

PubMed

Rouxel, Géraldine; Michinov, Estelle; Dodeler, Virginie

2016-10-01

Previous studies have demonstrated that geriatric care employees are exposed to a large number of factors that can affect their levels of job satisfaction and occupational stress. Although working with elderly people is emotionally demanding, little research has been done on the role played by perceptions of emotional display rules, alongside more traditional work characteristics and individual factors, in the prediction of geriatric care employees' wellbeing. The aim of the present study was to examine the role played by work characteristics (job demands, job control, emotional display rules) and individual (affectivity) factors to predict job satisfaction and burnout among French geriatric care nurses. Questionnaires were sent to 891 employees working in 32 geriatric care centers in France. A total of 371 valid questionnaires (response rate: 41.60%) were analyzed using structural equation modeling techniques. Results revealed two main processes of burnout and job satisfaction among women geriatric care workers, namely a salutogenic process and a pathogenic process. As expected, negative affectivity, low job status, perceived negative display rules and job demands are involved in the pathogenic process; while positive affectivity, perceived positive display rules and job control are implied in the salutogenic one. More specifically, as expected, negative affectivity is a positive predictor of burnout, both directly and indirectly through its impact on perceived negative display rules and job demands. Moreover, negative affectivity was negatively related to job satisfaction. Simultaneously, positive affectivity can predict job satisfaction, both directly and indirectly through its impact on perceived positive display rules and job control. Positive affectivity is also a negative predictor of burnout. Practical implications are discussed to support intervention programs that develop healthy workplaces, and also to inform nurses about how to manage emotional display rules in retirement homes. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Brain Processing of Emotional Scenes in Aging: Effect of Arousal and Affective Context

PubMed Central

Mathieu, Nicolas Gilles; Gentaz, Edouard; Harquel, Sylvain; Vercueil, Laurent; Chauvin, Alan; Bonnet, Stéphane; Campagne, Aurélie

2014-01-01

Research on emotion showed an increase, with age, in prevalence of positive information relative to negative ones. This effect is called positivity effect. From the cerebral analysis of the Late Positive Potential (LPP), sensitive to attention, our study investigated to which extent the arousal level of negative scenes is differently processed between young and older adults and, to which extent the arousal level of negative scenes, depending on its value, may contextually modulate the cerebral processing of positive (and neutral) scenes and favor the observation of a positivity effect with age. With this aim, two negative scene groups characterized by two distinct arousal levels (high and low) were displayed into two separate experimental blocks in which were included positive and neutral pictures. The two blocks only differed by their negative pictures across participants, as to create two negative global contexts for the processing of the positive and neutral pictures. The results show that the relative processing of different arousal levels of negative stimuli, reflected by LPP, appears similar between the two age groups. However, a lower activity for negative stimuli is observed with the older group for both tested arousal levels. The processing of positive information seems to be preserved with age and is also not contextually impacted by negative stimuli in both younger and older adults. For neutral stimuli, a significantly reduced activity is observed for older adults in the contextual block of low-arousal negative stimuli. Globally, our study reveals that the positivity effect is mainly due to a modulation, with age, in processing of negative stimuli, regardless of their arousal level. It also suggests that processing of neutral stimuli may be modulated with age, depending on negative context in which they are presented to. These age-related effects could contribute to justify the differences in emotional preference with age. PMID:24932857

Approach and Withdrawal Tendencies during Written Word Processing: Effects of Task, Emotional Valence, and Emotional Arousal

PubMed Central

Citron, Francesca M. M.; Abugaber, David; Herbert, Cornelia

2016-01-01

The affective dimensions of emotional valence and emotional arousal affect processing of verbal and pictorial stimuli. Traditional emotional theories assume a linear relationship between these dimensions, with valence determining the direction of a behavior (approach vs. withdrawal) and arousal its intensity or strength. In contrast, according to the valence-arousal conflict theory, both dimensions are interactively related: positive valence and low arousal (PL) are associated with an implicit tendency to approach a stimulus, whereas negative valence and high arousal (NH) are associated with withdrawal. Hence, positive, high-arousal (PH) and negative, low-arousal (NL) stimuli elicit conflicting action tendencies. By extending previous research that used several tasks and methods, the present study investigated whether and how emotional valence and arousal affect subjective approach vs. withdrawal tendencies toward emotional words during two novel tasks. In Study 1, participants had to decide whether they would approach or withdraw from concepts expressed by written words. In Studies 2 and 3 participants had to respond to each word by pressing one of two keys labeled with an arrow pointing upward or downward. Across experiments, positive and negative words, high or low in arousal, were presented. In Study 1 (explicit task), in line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, PH and NL words were responded to more slowly than PL and NH words. In addition, participants decided to approach positive words more often than negative words. In Studies 2 and 3, participants responded faster to positive than negative words, irrespective of their level of arousal. Furthermore, positive words were significantly more often associated with “up” responses than negative words, thus supporting the existence of implicit associations between stimulus valence and response coding (positive is up and negative is down). Hence, in contexts in which participants' spontaneous responses are based on implicit associations between stimulus valence and response, there is no influence of arousal. In line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, arousal seems to affect participants' approach-withdrawal tendencies only when such tendencies are made explicit by the task, and a minimal degree of processing depth is required. PMID:26779067

Approach and Withdrawal Tendencies during Written Word Processing: Effects of Task, Emotional Valence, and Emotional Arousal.

PubMed

Citron, Francesca M M; Abugaber, David; Herbert, Cornelia

2015-01-01

The affective dimensions of emotional valence and emotional arousal affect processing of verbal and pictorial stimuli. Traditional emotional theories assume a linear relationship between these dimensions, with valence determining the direction of a behavior (approach vs. withdrawal) and arousal its intensity or strength. In contrast, according to the valence-arousal conflict theory, both dimensions are interactively related: positive valence and low arousal (PL) are associated with an implicit tendency to approach a stimulus, whereas negative valence and high arousal (NH) are associated with withdrawal. Hence, positive, high-arousal (PH) and negative, low-arousal (NL) stimuli elicit conflicting action tendencies. By extending previous research that used several tasks and methods, the present study investigated whether and how emotional valence and arousal affect subjective approach vs. withdrawal tendencies toward emotional words during two novel tasks. In Study 1, participants had to decide whether they would approach or withdraw from concepts expressed by written words. In Studies 2 and 3 participants had to respond to each word by pressing one of two keys labeled with an arrow pointing upward or downward. Across experiments, positive and negative words, high or low in arousal, were presented. In Study 1 (explicit task), in line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, PH and NL words were responded to more slowly than PL and NH words. In addition, participants decided to approach positive words more often than negative words. In Studies 2 and 3, participants responded faster to positive than negative words, irrespective of their level of arousal. Furthermore, positive words were significantly more often associated with "up" responses than negative words, thus supporting the existence of implicit associations between stimulus valence and response coding (positive is up and negative is down). Hence, in contexts in which participants' spontaneous responses are based on implicit associations between stimulus valence and response, there is no influence of arousal. In line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, arousal seems to affect participants' approach-withdrawal tendencies only when such tendencies are made explicit by the task, and a minimal degree of processing depth is required.

Emotion processing facilitates working memory performance.

PubMed

Lindström, Björn R; Bohlin, Gunilla

2011-11-01

The effect of emotional stimulus content on working memory performance has been investigated with conflicting results, as both emotion-dependent facilitation and impairments are reported in the literature. To clarify this issue, 52 adult participants performed a modified visual 2-back task with highly arousing positive stimuli (sexual scenes), highly arousing negative stimuli (violent death) and low-arousal neutral stimuli. Emotional stimulus processing was found to facilitate task performance relative to that of neutral stimuli, both in regards to response accuracy and reaction times. No emotion-dependent differences in false-alarm rates were found. These results indicate that emotional information can have a facilitating effect on working memory maintenance and processing of information.

Associations between maternal negative affect and adolescent's neural response to peer evaluation.

PubMed

Tan, Patricia Z; Lee, Kyung Hwa; Dahl, Ronald E; Nelson, Eric E; Stroud, Laura J; Siegle, Greg J; Morgan, Judith K; Silk, Jennifer S

2014-04-01

Parenting is often implicated as a potential source of individual differences in youths' emotional information processing. The present study examined whether parental affect is related to an important aspect of adolescent emotional development, response to peer evaluation. Specifically, we examined relations between maternal negative affect, observed during parent-adolescent discussion of an adolescent-nominated concern with which s/he wants parental support, and adolescent neural responses to peer evaluation in 40 emotionally healthy and depressed adolescents. We focused on a network of ventral brain regions involved in affective processing of social information: the amygdala, anterior insula, nucleus accumbens, and subgenual anterior cingulate, as well as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Maternal negative affect was not associated with adolescent neural response to peer rejection. However, longer durations of maternal negative affect were associated with decreased responsivity to peer acceptance in the amygdala, left anterior insula, subgenual anterior cingulate, and left nucleus accumbens. These findings provide some of the first evidence that maternal negative affect is associated with adolescents' neural processing of social rewards. Findings also suggest that maternal negative affect could contribute to alterations in affective processing, specifically, dampening the saliency and/or reward of peer interactions during adolescence. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Can human-like Bots control collective mood: agent-based simulations of online chats

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tadić, Bosiljka; Šuvakov, Milovan

2013-10-01

Using an agent-based modeling approach, in this paper, we study self-organized dynamics of interacting agents in the presence of chat Bots. Different Bots with tunable ‘human-like’ attributes, which exchange emotional messages with agents, are considered, and the collective emotional behavior of agents is quantitatively analyzed. In particular, using detrended fractal analysis we determine persistent fluctuations and temporal correlations in time series of agent activity and statistics of avalanches carrying emotional messages of agents when Bots favoring positive/negative affects are active. We determine the impact of Bots and identify parameters that can modulate that impact. Our analysis suggests that, by these measures, the emotional Bots induce collective emotion among interacting agents by suitably altering the fractal characteristics of the underlying stochastic process. Positive emotion Bots are slightly more effective than negative emotion Bots. Moreover, Bots which periodically alternate between positive and negative emotion can enhance fluctuations in the system, leading to avalanches of agent messages that are reminiscent of self-organized critical states.

Salience of the lambs: a test of the saliency map hypothesis with pictures of emotive objects.

PubMed

Humphrey, Katherine; Underwood, Geoffrey; Lambert, Tony

2012-01-25

Humans have an ability to rapidly detect emotive stimuli. However, many emotional objects in a scene are also highly visually salient, which raises the question of how dependent the effects of emotionality are on visual saliency and whether the presence of an emotional object changes the power of a more visually salient object in attracting attention. Participants were shown a set of positive, negative, and neutral pictures and completed recall and recognition memory tests. Eye movement data revealed that visual saliency does influence eye movements, but the effect is reliably reduced when an emotional object is present. Pictures containing negative objects were recognized more accurately and recalled in greater detail, and participants fixated more on negative objects than positive or neutral ones. Initial fixations were more likely to be on emotional objects than more visually salient neutral ones, suggesting that the processing of emotional features occurs at a very early stage of perception.

Attention Bias of Avoidant Individuals to Attachment Emotion Pictures.

PubMed

Liu, Ying; Ding, Yi; Lu, Luluzi; Chen, Xu

2017-01-27

How attachment style affects emotion processing is tightly connected with individuals' attention bias. This experiment explored avoidant individuals' attentional engagement and attentional disengagement using a cue-target paradigm in fMRI. The experimental group consisted of 17 avoidant participants, while the control group consisted of 16 secure participants; these were identified by the Experiences in Close Relationships inventory and the Relationship Questionnaire. Each reacted to pictures of positive parent-child attachment, negative parent-child attachment, positive romantic attachment, negative romantic attachment, and neutral non-attachment. Behaviorally, avoidant individuals were slower than secure individuals in responding to emotions and their attentional disengagement effect for negative parent-child emotions was stronger than positive ones. fMRI results showed that avoidant compared to secure individuals activated more strongly in the right superior temporal gyrus, middle occipital gyrus, and the left medial frontal gyrus, middle occipital gyrus, supplementary motor area, and cingulate gyrus. They also showed stronger activation in disengaging from positive than negative emotions in the bilateral fusiform and middle occipital gyri. In conclusion, avoidant individuals could detect emotions as effective as secure individuals in attentioal engaging stages. They can disengage from positive emotions with effective cognitive resources and were harder to get rid of negative emotions with insufficient resource.

Are event-related potentials to dynamic facial expressions of emotion related to individual differences in the accuracy of processing facial expressions and identity?

PubMed

Recio, Guillermo; Wilhelm, Oliver; Sommer, Werner; Hildebrandt, Andrea

2017-04-01

Despite a wealth of knowledge about the neural mechanisms behind emotional facial expression processing, little is known about how they relate to individual differences in social cognition abilities. We studied individual differences in the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by dynamic facial expressions. First, we assessed the latent structure of the ERPs, reflecting structural face processing in the N170, and the allocation of processing resources and reflexive attention to emotionally salient stimuli, in the early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive complex (LPC). Then we estimated brain-behavior relationships between the ERP factors and behavioral indicators of facial identity and emotion-processing abilities. Structural models revealed that the participants who formed faster structural representations of neutral faces (i.e., shorter N170 latencies) performed better at face perception (r = -.51) and memory (r = -.42). The N170 amplitude was not related to individual differences in face cognition or emotion processing. The latent EPN factor correlated with emotion perception (r = .47) and memory (r = .32), and also with face perception abilities (r = .41). Interestingly, the latent factor representing the difference in EPN amplitudes between the two neutral control conditions (chewing and blinking movements) also correlated with emotion perception (r = .51), highlighting the importance of tracking facial changes in the perception of emotional facial expressions. The LPC factor for negative expressions correlated with the memory for emotional facial expressions. The links revealed between the latency and strength of activations of brain systems and individual differences in processing socio-emotional information provide new insights into the brain mechanisms involved in social communication.

Age-related changes in amygdala-frontal connectivity during emotional face processing from childhood into young adulthood.

PubMed

Wu, Minjie; Kujawa, Autumn; Lu, Lisa H; Fitzgerald, Daniel A; Klumpp, Heide; Fitzgerald, Kate D; Monk, Christopher S; Phan, K Luan

2016-05-01

The ability to process and respond to emotional facial expressions is a critical skill for healthy social and emotional development. There has been growing interest in understanding the neural circuitry underlying development of emotional processing, with previous research implicating functional connectivity between amygdala and frontal regions. However, existing work has focused on threatening emotional faces, raising questions regarding the extent to which these developmental patterns are specific to threat or to emotional face processing more broadly. In the current study, we examined age-related changes in brain activity and amygdala functional connectivity during an fMRI emotional face matching task (including angry, fearful, and happy faces) in 61 healthy subjects aged 7-25 years. We found age-related decreases in ventral medial prefrontal cortex activity in response to happy faces but not to angry or fearful faces, and an age-related change (shifting from positive to negative correlation) in amygdala-anterior cingulate cortex/medial prefrontal cortex (ACC/mPFC) functional connectivity to all emotional faces. Specifically, positive correlations between amygdala and ACC/mPFC in children changed to negative correlations in adults, which may suggest early emergence of bottom-up amygdala excitatory signaling to ACC/mPFC in children and later development of top-down inhibitory control of ACC/mPFC over amygdala in adults. Age-related changes in amygdala-ACC/mPFC connectivity did not vary for processing of different facial emotions, suggesting changes in amygdala-ACC/mPFC connectivity may underlie development of broad emotional processing, rather than threat-specific processing. Hum Brain Mapp 37:1684-1695, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In the ear of the beholder: how age shapes emotion processing in nonverbal vocalizations.

PubMed

Lima, César F; Alves, Tiago; Scott, Sophie K; Castro, São Luís

2014-02-01

It is well established that emotion recognition of facial expressions declines with age, but evidence for age-related differences in vocal emotions is more limited. This is especially true for nonverbal vocalizations such as laughter, sobs, or sighs. In this study, 43 younger adults (M = 22 years) and 43 older ones (M = 61.4 years) provided multiple emotion ratings of nonverbal emotional vocalizations. Contrasting with previous research, which often includes only one positive emotion (happiness) versus several negative ones, we examined 4 positive and 4 negative emotions: achievement/triumph, amusement, pleasure, relief, anger, disgust, fear, and sadness. We controlled for hearing loss and assessed general cognitive decline, cognitive control, verbal intelligence, working memory, current affect, emotion regulation, and personality. Older adults were less sensitive than younger ones to the intended vocal emotions, as indicated by decrements in ratings on the intended emotion scales and accuracy. These effects were similar for positive and negative emotions, and they were independent of age-related differences in cognitive, affective, and personality measures. Regression analyses revealed that younger and older participants' responses could be predicted from the acoustic properties of the temporal, intensity, fundamental frequency, and spectral profile of the vocalizations. The two groups were similarly efficient in using the acoustic cues, but there were differences in the patterns of emotion-specific predictors. This study suggests that ageing produces specific changes on the processing of nonverbal vocalizations. That decrements were not attenuated for positive emotions indicates that they cannot be explained by a positivity effect in older adults. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Gender-specific disruptions in emotion processing in younger adults with depression.

PubMed

Wright, Sara L; Langenecker, Scott A; Deldin, Patricia J; Rapport, Lisa J; Nielson, Kristy A; Kade, Allison M; Own, Lawrence S; Akil, Huda; Young, Elizabeth A; Zubieta, Jon-Kar

2009-01-01

One of the principal theories regarding the biological basis of major depressive disorder (MDD) implicates a dysregulation of emotion-processing circuitry. Gender differences in how emotions are processed and relative experience with emotion processing might help to explain some of the disparities in the prevalence of MDD between women and men. This study sought to explore how gender and depression status relate to emotion processing. This study employed a 2 (MDD status) x 2 (gender) factorial design to explore differences in classifications of posed facial emotional expressions (N=151). For errors, there was an interaction between gender and depression status. Women with MDD made more errors than did nondepressed women and men with MDD, particularly for fearful and sad stimuli (Ps <.02), which they were likely to misinterpret as angry (Ps <.04). There was also an interaction of diagnosis and gender for response cost for negative stimuli, with significantly greater interference from negative faces present in women with MDD compared to nondepressed women (P=.01). Men with MDD, conversely, performed similarly to control men (P=.61). These results provide novel and intriguing evidence that depression in younger adults (<35 years) differentially disrupts emotion processing in women as compared to men. This interaction could be driven by neurobiological and social learning mechanisms, or interactions between them, and may underlie differences in the prevalence of depression in women and men. (c) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

DHEA Enhances Emotion Regulation Neurocircuits and Modulates Memory for Emotional Stimuli

PubMed Central

Sripada, Rebecca K; Marx, Christine E; King, Anthony P; Rajaram, Nirmala; Garfinkel, Sarah N; Abelson, James L; Liberzon, Israel

2013-01-01

Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is a neurosteroid with anxiolytic, antidepressant, and antiglucocorticoid properties. It is endogenously released in response to stress, and may reduce negative affect when administered exogenously. Although there have been multiple reports of DHEA's antidepressant and anxiolytic effects, no research to date has examined the neural pathways involved. In particular, brain imaging has not been used to link neurosteroid effects to emotion neurocircuitry. To investigate the brain basis of DHEA's impact on emotion modulation, patients were administered 400 mg of DHEA (N=14) or placebo (N=15) and underwent 3T fMRI while performing the shifted-attention emotion appraisal task (SEAT), a test of emotional processing and regulation. Compared with placebo, DHEA reduced activity in the amygdala and hippocampus, enhanced connectivity between the amygdala and hippocampus, and enhanced activity in the rACC. These activation changes were associated with reduced negative affect. DHEA reduced memory accuracy for emotional stimuli, and also reduced activity in regions associated with conjunctive memory encoding. These results demonstrate that DHEA reduces activity in regions associated with generation of negative emotion and enhances activity in regions linked to regulatory processes. Considering that activity in these regions is altered in mood and anxiety disorders, our results provide initial neuroimaging evidence that DHEA may be useful as a pharmacological intervention for these conditions and invite further investigation into the brain basis of neurosteroid emotion regulatory effects. PMID:23552182

The five-factor model of impulsivity-like traits and emotional lability in aggressive behavior.

PubMed

Dvorak, Robert D; Pearson, Matthew R; Kuvaas, Nicholas J

2013-01-01

Factors that increase automatic psychological processes may result in impulsive action and, consequently, aggressive behavior. The current cross-sectional study examined the association between the five-factor model of impulsivity-like traits (negative urgency, positive urgency, premeditation, perseverance, and sensation seeking), emotional lability, and physically aggressive behaviors among college students (n = 481) in a negative binomial hurdle model. In the logistic portion of the model, emotional lability was related to a higher likelihood of engaging in aggressive acts in the past 6 months. The association between emotional lability and the likelihood of aggressive behavior was moderated by two impulsivity-like traits: negative urgency and positive urgency. Specifically, emotional lability was related to engaging in aggressive acts among those with high negative urgency, and among those with low positive urgency. In the count portion of the model, emotional lability was uniquely related to the number of aggressive acts in the past 6 months. Our results indicate that emotional lability and facets of impulsivity interactively relate to engagement in aggressive behavior, suggesting that these variables be integrated into models of aggression. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Emotional inertia and external events: The roles of exposure, reactivity, and recovery.

PubMed

Koval, Peter; Brose, Annette; Pe, Madeline L; Houben, Marlies; Erbas, Yasemin; Champagne, Dominique; Kuppens, Peter

2015-10-01

Increased moment-to-moment predictability, or inertia, of negative affect has been identified as an important dynamic marker of psychological maladjustment, and increased vulnerability to depression in particular. However, little is known about the processes underlying emotional inertia. The current article examines how the emotional context, and people's responses to it, are related to emotional inertia. We investigated how individual differences in the inertia of negative affect (NA) are related to individual differences in exposure, reactivity, and recovery from emotional events, in daily life (assessed using experience sampling) as well as in the lab (assessed using an emotional film-clip task), among 200 participants commencing their first year of tertiary education. This dual-method approach allowed us to assess affective responding on different timescales, and in response to standardized as well as idiographic emotional stimuli. Our most consistent finding, across both methods, was that heightened NA inertia is related to decreased NA recovery following negative stimuli, suggesting that higher levels of inertia may be mostly driven by impairments in affect repair following negative events. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotions and emotional approach and avoidance strategies in fibromyalgia.

PubMed

van Middendorp, Henriët; Lumley, Mark A; Jacobs, Johannes W G; van Doornen, Lorenz J P; Bijlsma, Johannes W J; Geenen, Rinie

2008-02-01

Disturbances in emotional functioning may contribute to psychological and physical symptoms in patients with fibromyalgia. This study examined emotions and emotion-regulation strategies in women with fibromyalgia and in controls, and how these variables relate to symptoms of fibromyalgia. We compared 403 women with fibromyalgia to 196 control women using self-report questionnaires. Negative emotions and the use of emotional-avoidance strategies were elevated, and positive emotions were reduced, in fibromyalgia patients; the alexithymia scale "difficulty identifying feelings" showed a large deviation from normal. Emotional-approach measures were not deviant. In the fibromyalgia sample, emotional-avoidance strategies were highly correlated with more mental distress and were modestly correlated with more pain and fatigue, while emotional-approach strategies were only minimally related to better functioning. We tested two interaction models. The intense experiencing of emotions was related to more pain only in patients who lack the ability to process or describe emotions. Although fibromyalgia patients showed deficits in the experiencing of positive affect, positive affect did not buffer the association between pain and negative affect. This study demonstrates increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions, as well as increased emotional-avoidance strategies, in women with fibromyalgia. Research should test whether interventions that reduce emotional avoidance lead to health improvements in women with fibromyalgia.

Linking Emotion Regulation Strategies to Affective Events and Negative Emotions at Work

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Diefendorff, James M.; Richard, Erin M.; Yang, Jixia

2008-01-01

This study examined the use of specific forms of emotion regulation at work, utilizing Gross's [Gross, J. J. (1998). "The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review." "Review of General Psychology" 2, 271-299] process-based framework of emotion regulation as a guiding structure. In addition to examining employee self-reported…

Dissociative tendencies and facilitated emotional processing.

PubMed

Oathes, Desmond J; Ray, William J

2008-10-01

Dissociation is a process linked to lapses of attention, history of abuse or trauma, compromised emotional memory, and a disintegrated sense of self. It is theorized that dissociation stems from avoiding emotional information, especially negative emotion, to protect a fragile psyche. The present study tested whether or not dissociaters do actually avoid processing emotion by asking groups scoring high or low on the Dissociative Experiences Scale to judge the affective valence of several types of emotional stimuli. Manipulations of valence, modality (pictures or words), task complexity, and personal relevance lead to results suggesting that dissociation is linked to facilitated rather than deficient emotional processing. Our results are consistent with a theory that sensitivity to emotional material may be a contributing factor in subsequent dissociation to avoid further elaboration of upsetting emotion in these individuals. The findings for dissociation further exemplify the influence of individual differences in the link between cognition and emotion. (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved

The Impact of Experiential Avoidance on the Inference of Characters' Emotions: Evidence for an Emotional Processing Bias.

PubMed

Pickett, Scott M; Kurby, Christopher A

2010-12-01

Experiential avoidance is a functional class of maladaptive strategies that contribute to the development and maintenance of psychopathology. Although previous research has demonstrated group differences in the interpretation of aversive stimuli, there is limited work on the influence of experiential avoidance during the online processing of emotion. An experimental design investigated the influence of self-reported experiential avoidance during emotion processing by assessing emotion inferences during the comprehension of narratives that imply different emotions. Results suggest that experiential avoidance is partially characterized by an emotional information processing bias. Specifically, individuals reporting higher experiential avoidance scores exhibited a bias towards activating negative emotion inferences, whereas individuals reporting lower experiential avoidance scores exhibited a bias towards activating positive emotion inferences. Minimal emotional inference was observed for the non-bias affective valence. Findings are discussed in terms of the implications of experiential avoidance as a cognitive vulnerability for psychopathology.

Emotion-Bracelet: A Web Service for Expressing Emotions through an Electronic Interface.

PubMed

Martinez, Alicia; Estrada, Hugo; Molina, Alejandra; Mejia, Manuel; Perez, Joaquin

2016-11-24

The mechanisms to communicate emotions have dramatically changed in the last 10 years with social networks, where users massively communicate their emotional states by using the Internet. However, people with socialization problems have difficulty expressing their emotions verbally or interpreting the environment and providing an appropriate emotional response. In this paper, a novel solution called the Emotion-Bracelet is presented that combines a hardware device and a software system. The proposed approach identifies the polarity and emotional intensity of texts published on a social network site by performing real-time processing using a web service. It also shows emotions with a LED matrix using five emoticons that represent positive, very positive, negative, very negative, and neutral states. The Emotion-Bracelet is designed to help people express their emotions in a non-intrusive way, thereby expanding the social aspect of human emotions.

Emotion-Bracelet: A Web Service for Expressing Emotions through an Electronic Interface

PubMed Central

Martinez, Alicia; Estrada, Hugo; Molina, Alejandra; Mejia, Manuel; Perez, Joaquin

2016-01-01

The mechanisms to communicate emotions have dramatically changed in the last 10 years with social networks, where users massively communicate their emotional states by using the Internet. However, people with socialization problems have difficulty expressing their emotions verbally or interpreting the environment and providing an appropriate emotional response. In this paper, a novel solution called the Emotion-Bracelet is presented that combines a hardware device and a software system. The proposed approach identifies the polarity and emotional intensity of texts published on a social network site by performing real-time processing using a web service. It also shows emotions with a LED matrix using five emoticons that represent positive, very positive, negative, very negative, and neutral states. The Emotion-Bracelet is designed to help people express their emotions in a non-intrusive way, thereby expanding the social aspect of human emotions. PMID:27886130

Conflict, negative emotion, and reports of partners' relationship maintenance in same-sex couples.

PubMed

Ogolsky, Brian G; Gray, Christine R

2016-03-01

The literature on relationship maintenance has focused primarily on the beneficial outcomes of maintenance, and, as a result, little is known about relational processes that may interfere with reports of partners' maintenance. The authors examine how daily conflict influences individuals' reports of their partners' maintenance, and how a constructive communication style buffers this influence by reducing negative emotion on conflict days. In a daily diary study of 98 same-sex couples in romantic relationships, they found that the negative association between conflict and reports of a partner's relationship maintenance was mediated by negative emotion. That is, there was an indirect effect by which daily conflict was associated with higher levels of daily negative emotion, which was associated with reports of lower levels of partners' relationship maintenance. This indirect effect was moderated by couples' overall level of constructive communication such that higher levels diminished the degree to which couples experienced negative emotion on days with episodes of relational conflict. The authors discuss results in the context of interpersonal theory and provide implications for clinicians and practitioners. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Repetition-Related Reductions in Neural Activity during Emotional Simulations of Future Events.

PubMed

Szpunar, Karl K; Jing, Helen G; Benoit, Roland G; Schacter, Daniel L

2015-01-01

Simulations of future experiences are often emotionally arousing, and the tendency to repeatedly simulate negative future outcomes has been identified as a predictor of the onset of symptoms of anxiety. Nonetheless, next to nothing is known about how the healthy human brain processes repeated simulations of emotional future events. In this study, we present a paradigm that can be used to study repeated simulations of the emotional future in a manner that overcomes phenomenological confounds between positive and negative events. The results show that pulvinar nucleus and orbitofrontal cortex respectively demonstrate selective reductions in neural activity in response to frequently as compared to infrequently repeated simulations of negative and positive future events. Implications for research on repeated simulations of the emotional future in both non-clinical and clinical populations are discussed.

Negative attention bias and processing deficits during the cognitive reappraisal of unpleasant emotions in HIV+ women.

PubMed

McIntosh, Roger C; Tartar, Jaime L; Widmayer, Susan; Rosselli, Monica

2015-01-01

Deficits in emotional processing may be attributed to HIV disease or comorbid psychiatric disorders. Electrocortical markers of emotional attention, i.e., amplitude of the P2 and late positive potential (LPP), were compared between 26 HIV+ women and 25 healthy controls during an emotional regulation paradigm. HIV+ women showed early attention bias to negative stimuli indexed by greater P2 amplitude. In contrast, compared with the passive viewing of unpleasant images, HIV+ women demonstrated attenuation of the early and late LPP during positive reappraisal. This interaction remained significant after adjusting for individual differences in apathy, anxiety, and depression. Post hoc analyses implicated time since HIV diagnosis with LPP attenuation during positive reappraisal. Advancing HIV disease may disrupt neural generators associated with the cognitive reappraisal of emotions independent of psychiatric function.

Positive emotional context eliminates the framing effect in decision-making.

PubMed

Cassotti, Mathieu; Habib, Marianne; Poirel, Nicolas; Aïte, Ania; Houdé, Olivier; Moutier, Sylvain

2012-10-01

Dual-process theories have suggested that emotion plays a key role in the framing effect in decision-making. However, little is known about the potential impact of a specific positive or negative emotional context on this bias. We investigated this question with adult participants using an emotional priming paradigm. First, participants were presented with positive or negative affective pictures (i.e., pleasant vs. unpleasant photographs). Afterward, participants had to perform a financial decision-making task that was unrelated to the pictures previously presented. The results revealed that the presentation framed in terms of gain or loss no longer affected subjects' decision-making following specific exposure to emotionally pleasant pictures. Interestingly, a positive emotional context did not globally influence risk-taking behavior but specifically decreased the risk propensity in the loss frame. This finding confirmed that a positive emotional context can reduce loss aversion, and it strongly reinforced the dual-process view that the framing effect stems from an affective heuristic belonging to intuitive System 1.

Helping yourself helps others: Linking children's emotion regulation to prosocial behavior through sympathy and trust.

PubMed

Song, Ju-Hyun; Colasante, Tyler; Malti, Tina

2018-06-01

Although emotionally well-regulated children are more likely to behave prosocially, the psychological processes that connect their emotion regulation abilities and prosocial behavior are less clear. We tested if other-oriented sympathy and trust mediated the links between emotion regulation capacities (i.e., resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA], negative emotional intensity, and sadness regulation) and prosocial behavior in an ethnically diverse sample of 4- and 8-year-olds (N = 131; 49% girls). Resting RSA was calculated from children's electrocardiogram data in response to a nondescript video. Sympathy was child and caregiver reported, whereas negative emotional intensity, sadness regulation, trust, and prosocial behavior were caregiver reported. Regardless of age, higher resting RSA was linked to higher sympathy, which was associated with higher prosocial behavior. The positive link between sadness regulation and prosocial behavior was mediated by higher sympathy and trust. Children's other-oriented psychological processes may play important roles in translating certain emotion regulation capacities into prosocial behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Effects of valence and arousal on written word recognition: time course and ERP correlates.

PubMed

Citron, Francesca M M; Weekes, Brendan S; Ferstl, Evelyn C

2013-01-15

Models of affect assume a two-dimensional framework, composed of emotional valence and arousal. Although neuroimaging evidence supports a neuro-functional distinction of their effects during single word processing, electrophysiological studies have not yet compared the effects of arousal within the same category of valence (positive and negative). Here we investigate effects of arousal and valence on written lexical decision. Amplitude differences between emotion and neutral words were seen in the early posterior negativity (EPN), the late positive complex and in a sustained slow positivity. In addition, trends towards interactive effects of valence and arousal were observed in the EPN, showing larger amplitude for positive, high-arousal and negative, low-arousal words. The results provide initial evidence for interactions between arousal and valence during processing of positive words and highlight the importance of both variables in studies of emotional stimulus processing. Crown Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Neural responses to negative feedback are related to negative emotionality in healthy adults

PubMed Central

Santesso, Diane L.; Bogdan, Ryan; Birk, Jeffrey L.; Goetz, Elena L.; Holmes, Avram J.

2012-01-01

Prior neuroimaging and electrophysiological evidence suggests that potentiated responses in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), particularly the rostral ACC, may contribute to abnormal responses to negative feedback in individuals with elevated negative affect and depressive symptoms. The feedback-related negativity (FRN) represents an electrophysiological index of ACC-related activation in response to performance feedback. The purpose of the present study was to examine the FRN and underlying ACC activation using low resolution electromagnetic tomography source estimation techniques in relation to negative emotionality (a composite index including negative affect and subclinical depressive symptoms). To this end, 29 healthy adults performed a monetary incentive delay task while 128-channel event-related potentials were recorded. We found that enhanced FRNs and increased rostral ACC activation in response to negative—but not positive—feedback was related to greater negative emotionality. These results indicate that individual differences in negative emotionality—a putative risk factor for emotional disorders—modulate ACC-related processes critically implicated in assessing the motivational impact and/or salience of environmental feedback. PMID:21917847

Enhancing retention through reconsolidation: negative emotional arousal following retrieval enhances later recall.

PubMed

Finn, Bridgid; Roediger, Henry L

2011-06-01

When information is retrieved from memory, it enters a labile state rendering it amenable to change. This process of reconsolidation may explain, in part, the benefits that are observed in later retention following retrieval of information on an initial test. We examined whether the benefits of retrieval could be modulated by an emotional event occurring after retrieval. Participants studied Swahili-English vocabulary pairs. On a subsequent cued-recall test, each retrieval was followed by a blank screen, a neutral picture, or a picture inducing negative affect. Performance on a final cued-recall test was best for items whose initial retrieval was followed by negative pictures. This outcome occurred when a negative picture was presented immediately after (Experiment 1) or 2 s after (Experiment 2) successful retrieval, but not when it was presented after restudy of the vocabulary pair (Experiment 3). Postretrieval reconsolidation via emotional processing may enhance the usual positive effects of retrieval.

The influence of negative emotion on the Simon effect as reflected by p300.

PubMed

Ma, Qingguo; Shang, Qian

2013-01-01

The Simon effect refers to the phenomenon that reaction time (RT) is faster when stimulus and response location are congruent than when they are not. This study used the priming-target paradigm to explore the influence of induced negative emotion on the Simon effect with event-related potential techniques (ERPs). The priming stimuli were composed of two kinds of pictures, the negative and neutral pictures, selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). The target stimuli included chessboards of two color types. One was red and black the other one was green and black. Each chessboard was presented on the left or the right of the screen. The participants were asked to press the response keys according to the colors of the chessboards. It was called the congruent condition if the chessboard and the response key were on the same side, otherwise incongruent condition. In this study, the emotion-priming Simon effect was found in terms of RT and P300. Negative emotion compared with neutral emotion significantly enhanced the Simon effect in the cognitive process, reflected by a larger difference of P300 latency between the incongruent and congruent trials. The results suggest that the induced negative emotion influenced the Simon effect at the late stage of the cognitive process, and the P300 latency could be considered as the reference measure. These findings may be beneficial to researches in psychology and industrial engineering in the future.

Dispositional negativity: An integrative psychological and neurobiological perspective

PubMed Central

Shackman, Alexander J.; Tromp, Do P. M.; Stockbridge, Melissa D.; Kaplan, Claire M.; Tillman, Rachael M.; Fox, Andrew S.

2016-01-01

Dispositional negativity—the propensity to experience and express more frequent, intense, or enduring negative affect—is a fundamental dimension of childhood temperament and adult personality. Elevated levels of dispositional negativity can have profound consequences for health, wealth, and happiness, drawing the attention of clinicians, researchers, and policy makers. Here, we highlight recent advances in our understanding of the psychological and neurobiological processes linking stable individual differences in dispositional negativity to momentary emotional states. Self-report data suggest that three key pathways—increased stressor reactivity, tonic increases in negative affect, and increased stressor exposure—explain most of the heightened negative affect that characterizes individuals with a more negative disposition. Of these three pathways, tonically elevated, indiscriminate negative affect appears to be most central to daily life and most relevant to the development of psychopathology. New behavioral and biological data provide insights into the neural systems underlying these three pathways and motivate the hypothesis that seemingly ‘tonic’ increases in negative affect may actually reflect increased reactivity to stressors that are remote, uncertain, or diffuse. Research focused on humans, monkeys, and rodents suggests that this indiscriminate negative affect reflects trait-like variation in the activity and connectivity of several key brain regions, including the central extended amygdala and parts of the prefrontal cortex. Collectively, these observations provide an integrative psychobiological framework for understanding the dynamic cascade of processes that bind emotional traits to emotional states and, ultimately, to emotional disorders and other kinds of adverse outcomes. PMID:27732016

Hypoactive medial prefrontal cortex functioning in adults reporting childhood emotional maltreatment.

PubMed

van Harmelen, Anne-Laura; van Tol, Marie-José; Dalgleish, Tim; van der Wee, Nic J A; Veltman, Dick J; Aleman, André; Spinhoven, Philip; Penninx, Brenda W J H; Elzinga, Bernet M

2014-12-01

Childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM) has adverse effects on medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) morphology, a structure that is crucial for cognitive functioning and (emotional) memory and which modulates the limbic system. In addition, CEM has been linked to amygdala hyperactivity during emotional face processing. However, no study has yet investigated the functional neural correlates of neutral and emotional memory in adults reporting CEM. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated CEM-related differential activations in mPFC during the encoding and recognition of positive, negative and neutral words. The sample (N = 194) consisted of patients with depression and/or anxiety disorders and healthy controls (HC) reporting CEM (n = 96) and patients and HC reporting no abuse (n = 98). We found a consistent pattern of mPFC hypoactivation during encoding and recognition of positive, negative and neutral words in individuals reporting CEM. These results were not explained by psychopathology or severity of depression or anxiety symptoms, or by gender, level of neuroticism, parental psychopathology, negative life events, antidepressant use or decreased mPFC volume in the CEM group. These findings indicate mPFC hypoactivity in individuals reporting CEM during emotional and neutral memory encoding and recognition. Our findings suggest that CEM may increase individuals' risk to the development of psychopathology on differential levels of processing in the brain; blunted mPFC activation during higher order processing and enhanced amygdala activation during automatic/lower order emotion processing. These findings are vital in understanding the long-term consequences of CEM. © The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between regional gray matter volume in the bilateral temporal pole and critical thinking disposition.

PubMed

Yao, Xiaonan; Yuan, Shuge; Yang, Wenjing; Chen, Qunlin; Wei, Dongtao; Hou, Yuling; Zhang, Lijie; Qiu, Jiang; Yang, Dong

2018-04-01

Critical thinking enables people to form sound beliefs and provides a basis for emotional life. Research has indicated that individuals with better critical thinking disposition can better recognize and regulate their emotions, though the neuroanatomical mechanisms involved in this process remain to be elucidated. Further, the influence of emotional intelligence on the relationship between brain structure and critical thinking disposition has not been examined. The present study utilized voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to investigate the neural structures underlying critical thinking disposition in a large sample of college students (N = 296). Regional gray matter volume (rGMV) in the bilateral temporal pole, which reflects an individual's ability to process social and emotional information, was negatively correlated with critical thinking disposition. In addition, rGMV in bilateral para hippocampal regions -regions involved in contextual association/emotional regulation-exhibited negative correlation with critical thinking disposition. Further analysis revealed that emotional intelligence moderated the relationship between rGMV of the temporal pole and critical thinking disposition. Specifically, critical thinking disposition was associated with decreased GMV of the temporal pole for individuals who have relatively higher emotional intelligence rather than lower emotional intelligence. The results of the present study indicate that people who have higher emotional intelligence exhibit more effective and automatic processing of emotional information and tend to be strong critical thinkers.

Living Slow and Being Moral : Life History Predicts the Dual Process of Other-Centered Reasoning and Judgments.

PubMed

Zhu, Nan; Hawk, Skyler T; Chang, Lei

2018-06-01

Drawing from the dual process model of morality and life history theory, the present research examined the role of cognitive and emotional processes as bridges between basic environmental challenges (i.e., unpredictability and competition) and other-centered moral orientation (i.e., prioritizing the welfare of others). In two survey studies, cognitive and emotional processes represented by future-oriented planning and emotional attachment, respectively (Study 1, N = 405), or by perspective taking and empathic concern, respectively (Study 2, N = 424), positively predicted other-centeredness in prosocial moral reasoning (Study 1) and moral judgment dilemmas based on rationality or intuition (Study 2). Cognitive processes were more closely related to rational aspects of other-centeredness, whereas the emotional processes were more closely related to the intuitive aspects of other-centeredness (Study 2). Finally, the cognitive and emotional processes also mediated negative effects of unpredictability (i.e., negative life events and childhood financial insecurity), as well as positive effects of individual-level, contest competition (i.e., educational and occupational competition) on other-centeredness. Overall, these findings support the view that cognitive and emotional processes do not necessarily contradict each other. Rather, they might work in concert to promote other-centeredness in various circumstances and might be attributed to humans' developmental flexibility in the face of environmental challenges.

Appetitive Motivation and Negative Emotion Reactivity among Remitted Depressed Youth

PubMed Central

Hankin, Benjamin L.; Wetter, Emily K.; Flory, Kate

2012-01-01

Depression has been characterized as involving altered appetitive motivation and emotional reactivity. Yet no study has examined objective indices of emotional reactivity when the appetitive/approach system is suppressed in response to failure to attain a self-relevant goal and desired reward. Three groups of youth (N = 98, ages 9–15; remitted depressed, n = 34; externalizing disordered without depression, n = 30, and healthy controls, n = 34) participated in a novel reward striving task designed to activate the appetitive/approach motivation system. Objective facial expressions of emotion were videotaped and coded throughout both failure (i.e., nonreward) and control (success and reward) conditions. Observational coding of facial expressions as well as youths’ subjective emotion reports showed that the remitted depressed youth specifically exhibited more negative emotional reactivity to failure in the reward striving task, but not the control condition. Neither externalizing disordered (i.e., ADHD, CD, and/ or ODD) nor control youth displayed greater negative emotional reactivity in either the failure or control condition. Findings suggest that depression among youth is related to dysregulated appetitive motivation and associated negative emotional reactivity after failing to achieve an important, self-relevant goal and not attaining reward. These deficits in reward processing appear to be specific to depression as externalizing disordered youth did not display negative emotional reactivity to failure after their appetitive motivation system was activated. PMID:22901275

Appetitive motivation and negative emotion reactivity among remitted depressed youth.

PubMed

Hankin, Benjamin L; Wetter, Emily K; Flory, Kate

2012-01-01

Depression has been characterized as involving altered appetitive motivation and emotional reactivity. Yet no study has examined objective indices of emotional reactivity when the appetitive/approach system is suppressed in response to failure to attain a self-relevant goal and desired reward. Three groups of youth (N = 98, ages 9-15; remitted depressed, n = 34; externalizing disordered without depression, n = 30; and healthy controls, n = 34) participated in a novel reward striving task designed to activate the appetitive/approach motivation system. Objective facial expressions of emotion were videotaped and coded throughout both failure (i.e., nonreward) and control (success and reward) conditions. Observational coding of facial expressions as well as youths' subjective emotion reports showed that the remitted depressed youth specifically exhibited more negative emotional reactivity to failure in the reward striving task, but not the control condition. Neither externalizing disordered (i.e., attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, and/or oppositional defiant disorder) nor control youth displayed greater negative emotional reactivity in either the failure or control condition. Findings suggest that depression among youth is related to dysregulated appetitive motivation and associated negative emotional reactivity after failing to achieve an important, self-relevant goal and not attaining reward. These deficits in reward processing appear to be specific to depression as externalizing disordered youth did not display negative emotional reactivity to failure after their appetitive motivation system was activated.

The Time Course of Emotion Effects in First and Second Language Processing: A Cross Cultural ERP Study with German–Spanish Bilinguals

PubMed Central

Conrad, Markus; Recio, Guillermo; Jacobs, Arthur M.

2011-01-01

To investigate whether second language processing is characterized by the same sensitivity to the emotional content of language – as compared to native language processing – we conducted an EEG study manipulating word emotional valence in a visual lexical decision task. Two groups of late bilinguals – native speakers of German and Spanish with sufficient proficiency in their respective second language – performed each a German and a Spanish version of the task containing identical semantic material: translations of words in the two languages. In contrast to theoretical proposals assuming attenuated emotionality of second language processing, a highly similar pattern of results was obtained across L1 and L2 processing: event related potential waves generally reflected an early posterior negativity plus a late positive complex for words with positive or negative valence compared to neutral words regardless of the respective test language and its L1 or L2 status. These results suggest that the coupling between cognition and emotion does not qualitatively differ between L1 and L2 although latencies of respective effects differed about 50–100 ms. Only Spanish native speakers currently living in the L2 country showed no effects for negative as compared to neutral words presented in L2 – potentially reflecting a predominant positivity bias in second language processing when currently being exposed to a new culture. PMID:22164150

Interplay between affect and arousal in recognition memory.

PubMed

Greene, Ciara M; Bahri, Pooja; Soto, David

2010-07-23

Emotional states linked to arousal and mood are known to affect the efficiency of cognitive performance. However, the extent to which memory processes may be affected by arousal, mood or their interaction is poorly understood. Following a study phase of abstract shapes, we altered the emotional state of participants by means of exposure to music that varied in both mood and arousal dimensions, leading to four different emotional states: (i) positive mood-high arousal; (ii) positive mood-low arousal; (iii) negative mood-high arousal; (iv) negative mood-low arousal. Following the emotional induction, participants performed a memory recognition test. Critically, there was an interaction between mood and arousal on recognition performance. Memory was enhanced in the positive mood-high arousal and in the negative mood-low arousal states, relative to the other emotional conditions. Neither mood nor arousal alone but their interaction appears most critical to understanding the emotional enhancement of memory.

Associations among Negative Parenting, Attention Bias to Anger, and Social Anxiety among Youth

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gulley, Lauren D.; Oppenheimer, Caroline W.; Hankin, Benjamin L.

2014-01-01

Theories of affective learning suggest that early experiences contribute to emotional disorders by influencing the development of processing biases for negative emotional stimuli. Although studies have shown that physically abused children preferentially attend to angry faces, it is unclear whether youth exposed to more typical aspects of negative…

Effects of Anger Awareness and Expression Training versus Relaxation Training on Headaches: A Randomized Trial

PubMed Central

Slavin-Spenny, Olga; Lumley, Mark A.; Thakur, Elyse R.; Nevedal, Dana C.; Hijazi, Alaa M.

2013-01-01

Background and purpose Stress contributes to headaches, and effective interventions for headaches routinely include relaxation training (RT) to directly reduce negative emotions and arousal. Yet, suppressing negative emotions, particularly anger, appears to augment pain, and experimental studies suggest that expressing anger may reduce pain. Therefore, we developed and tested anger awareness and expression training (AAET) on people with headaches. Methods Young adults with headaches (N = 147) were randomized to AAET, RT, or a wait-list control. We assessed affect during sessions, and process and outcome variables at baseline and 4 weeks after treatment. Results On process measures, both interventions increased self-efficacy to manage headaches, but only AAET reduced alexithymia and increased emotional processing and assertiveness. Yet, both interventions were equally effective at improving headache outcomes relative to controls. Conclusions Enhancing anger awareness and expression may improve chronic headaches, although not more than RT. Researchers should study which patients are most likely to benefit from emotional expression versus emotional reduction approaches to chronic pain. PMID:23620190

Staying Cool when Things Get Hot: Emotion Regulation Modulates Neural Mechanisms of Memory Encoding

PubMed Central

Hayes, Jasmeet Pannu; Morey, Rajendra A.; Petty, Christopher M.; Seth, Srishti; Smoski, Moria J.; McCarthy, Gregory; LaBar, Kevin S.

2010-01-01

During times of emotional stress, individuals often engage in emotion regulation to reduce the experiential and physiological impact of negative emotions. Interestingly, emotion regulation strategies also influence memory encoding of the event. Cognitive reappraisal is associated with enhanced memory while expressive suppression is associated with impaired explicit memory of the emotional event. However, the mechanism by which these emotion regulation strategies affect memory is unclear. We used event-related fMRI to investigate the neural mechanisms that give rise to memory formation during emotion regulation. Twenty-five participants viewed negative pictures while alternately engaging in cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, or passive viewing. As part of the subsequent memory design, participants returned to the laboratory two weeks later for a surprise memory test. Behavioral results showed a reduction in negative affect and a retention advantage for reappraised stimuli relative to the other conditions. Imaging results showed that successful encoding during reappraisal was uniquely associated with greater co-activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus, amygdala, and hippocampus, suggesting a possible role for elaborative encoding of negative memories. This study provides neurobehavioral evidence that engaging in cognitive reappraisal is advantageous to both affective and mnemonic processes. PMID:21212840

Emotion Words, Regardless of Polarity, Have a Processing Advantage over Neutral Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kousta, Stavroula-Thaleia; Vinson, David P.; Vigliocco, Gabriella

2009-01-01

Despite increasing interest in the interface between emotion and cognition, the role of emotion in cognitive tasks is unclear. According to one hypothesis, negative valence is more relevant for survival and is associated with a general slowdown of the processing of stimuli, due to a defense mechanism that freezes activity in the face of threat.…

Murder, She Wrote

PubMed Central

Nasrallah, Maha; Carmel, David; Lavie, Nilli

2009-01-01

Enhanced sensitivity to information of negative (compared to positive) valence has an adaptive value, for example, by expediting the correct choice of avoidance behavior. However, previous evidence for such enhanced sensitivity has been inconclusive. Here we report a clear advantage for negative over positive words in categorizing them as emotional. In 3 experiments, participants classified briefly presented (33 ms or 22 ms) masked words as emotional or neutral. Categorization accuracy and valence-detection sensitivity were both higher for negative than for positive words. The results were not due to differences between emotion categories in either lexical frequency, extremeness of valence ratings, or arousal. These results conclusively establish enhanced sensitivity for negative over positive words, supporting the hypothesis that negative stimuli enjoy preferential access to perceptual processing. PMID:19803583

How does context affect assessments of facial emotion? The role of culture and age.

PubMed

Ko, Seon-Gyu; Lee, Tae-Ho; Yoon, Hyea-Young; Kwon, Jung-Hye; Mather, Mara

2011-03-01

People from Asian cultures are more influenced by context in their visual processing than people from Western cultures. In this study, we examined how these cultural differences in context processing affect how people interpret facial emotions. We found that younger Koreans were more influenced than younger Americans by emotional background pictures when rating the emotion of a central face, especially those younger Koreans with low self-rated stress. In contrast, among older adults, neither Koreans nor Americans showed significant influences of context in their face emotion ratings. These findings suggest that cultural differences in reliance on context to interpret others' emotions depend on perceptual integration processes that decline with age, leading to fewer cultural differences in perception among older adults than among younger adults. Furthermore, when asked to recall the background pictures, younger participants recalled more negative pictures than positive pictures, whereas older participants recalled similar numbers of positive and negative pictures. These age differences in the valence of memory were consistent across culture. (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

Machiavellian emotion regulation in a cognitive reappraisal task: An fMRI study.

PubMed

Deak, Anita; Bodrogi, Barbara; Biro, Brigitte; Perlaki, Gabor; Orsi, Gergely; Bereczkei, Tamas

2017-06-01

Affective coldness is one of the main features of Machiavellianism. Recent studies have revealed that Machiavellians are emotionally detached and that this "affective blunting" is associated with intense feelings, emotional instability, negative emotions, and difficulty in enduring distress. We used brain-imaging techniques to investigate emotion regulation in Machiavellianism at a neuropsychological level. We used situations in which participants were required to demonstrate emotional flexibility to explore the controversy surrounding the fact that Machiavellianism is associated with both cold-mindedness and emotional instability. Participants performed a reappraisal task in which emotionally evocative pictures (from the International Affective Picture System) were presented in different contexts (negative, positive, and neutral). They were asked to interpret a scenario according to its title and to reinterpret it according to another context created by a new title (e.g., negatively labeled pictures shifted to positively labeled ones). During task performance, Machiavellians showed increased activation of brain regions associated with emotion generation-for example, the amygdala and insula. This indicates that Machiavellian individuals are able to be involved emotionally in social situations. Increased activation in the temporal and parahippocampal regions during reappraisal suggests that Machiavellians use semantic-perceptual processes to construct alternative interpretations of the same situation and have enhanced memory for emotional stimuli. Furthermore, they seem to possess an intense awareness that leads them to shift attention from external to internal information to detect environmental changes. These cognitive processes may enable them to adjust their behavior quickly. This study supports the flexibility hypothesis of Machiavellianism and suggests that Machiavellians' approach to emotion regulation is linked to their rational mode of thinking.

Meditation-induced neuroplastic changes in amygdala activity during negative affective processing.

PubMed

Leung, Mei-Kei; Lau, Way K W; Chan, Chetwyn C H; Wong, Samuel S Y; Fung, Annis L C; Lee, Tatia M C

2018-06-01

Recent evidence suggests that the effects of meditation practice on affective processing and resilience have the potential to induce neuroplastic changes within the amygdala. Notably, literature speculates that meditation training may reduce amygdala activity during negative affective processing. Nonetheless, studies have thus far not verified this speculation. In this longitudinal study, participants (N = 21, 9 men) were trained in awareness-based compassion meditation (ABCM) or matched relaxation training. The effects of meditation training on amygdala activity were examined during passive viewing of affective and neutral stimuli in a non-meditative state. We found that the ABCM group exhibited significantly reduced anxiety and right amygdala activity during negative emotion processing than the relaxation group. Furthermore, ABCM participants who performed more compassion practice had stronger right amygdala activity reduction during negative emotion processing. The lower right amygdala activity after ABCM training may be associated with a general reduction in reactivity and distress. As all participants performed the emotion processing task in a non-meditative state, it appears likely that the changes in right amygdala activity are carried over from the meditation practice into the non-meditative state. These findings suggest that the distress-reducing effects of meditation practice on affective processing may transfer to ordinary states, which have important implications on stress management.

Emotion impairs extrinsic source memory--An ERP study.

PubMed

Mao, Xinrui; You, Yuqi; Li, Wen; Guo, Chunyan

2015-09-01

Substantial advancements in understanding emotional modulation of item memory notwithstanding, controversies remain as to how emotion influences source memory. Using an emotional extrinsic source memory paradigm combined with remember/know judgments and two key event-related potentials (ERPs)-the FN400 (a frontal potential at 300-500 ms related to familiarity) and the LPC (a later parietal potential at 500-700 ms related to recollection), our research investigated the impact of emotion on extrinsic source memory and the underlying processes. We varied a semantic prompt (either "people" or "scene") preceding a study item to manipulate the extrinsic source. Behavioral data indicated a significant effect of emotion on "remember" responses to extrinsic source details, suggesting impaired recollection-based source memory in emotional (both positive and negative) relative to neutral conditions. In parallel, differential FN400 and LPC amplitudes (correctly remembered - incorrectly remembered sources) revealed emotion-related interference, suggesting impaired familiarity and recollection memory of extrinsic sources associated with positive or negative items. These findings thus lend support to the notion of emotion-induced memory trade off: while enhancing memory of central items and intrinsic/integral source details, emotion nevertheless disrupts memory of peripheral contextual details, potentially impairing both familiarity and recollection. Importantly, that positive and negative items result in comparable memory impairment suggests that arousal (vs. affective valence) plays a critical role in modulating dynamic interactions among automatic and elaborate processes involved in memory. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Brain Responses to Emotional Images Related to Cognitive Ability in Older Adults

PubMed Central

Foster, Shannon M.; Davis, Hasker P.; Kisley, Michael A.

2013-01-01

Older adults have been shown to exhibit a positivity effect in processing of emotional stimuli, seemingly focusing more on positive than negative information. Whether this reflects purposeful changes or an unintended side-effect of declining cognitive abilities is unclear. For the present study older adults displaying a wide range of cognitive abilities completed measures of attention, visual and verbal memory, executive functioning, and processing speed, as well as a socioemotional measure of time perspective. Regression analyses examined the ability of these variables to predict neural responsivity to select emotional stimuli as measured with the late positive potential (LPP), an event-related brain potential (ERP). Stronger cognitive functioning was associated with higher LPP amplitude in response to negative images (i.e., greater processing). This does not support a voluntary avoidance of negative information processing in older adults for this particular measure of attentional allocation. A model is proposed to reconcile this finding with the extant literature that has demonstrated positivity effects in measures of later, controlled attentional allocation. PMID:23276213

Effects of Oxytocin and Vasopressin on Preferential Brain Responses to Negative Social Feedback.

PubMed

Gozzi, Marta; Dashow, Erica M; Thurm, Audrey; Swedo, Susan E; Zink, Caroline F

2017-06-01

Receiving negative social feedback can be detrimental to emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being, and fear of negative social feedback is a prominent feature of mental illnesses that involve social anxiety. A large body of evidence has implicated the neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin in the modulation of human neural activity underlying social cognition, including negative emotion processing; however, the influence of oxytocin and vasopressin on neural activity elicited during negative social evaluation remains unknown. Here 21 healthy men underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design to determine how intranasally administered oxytocin and vasopressin modulated neural activity when receiving negative feedback on task performance from a study investigator. We found that under placebo, a preferential response to negative social feedback compared with positive social feedback was evoked in brain regions putatively involved in theory of mind (temporoparietal junction), pain processing (anterior insula and supplementary motor area), and identification of emotionally important visual cues in social perception (right fusiform). These activations weakened with oxytocin and vasopressin administration such that neural responses to receiving negative social feedback were not significantly greater than positive social feedback. Our results show effects of both oxytocin and vasopressin on the brain network involved in negative social feedback, informing the possible use of a pharmacological approach targeting these regions in multiple disorders with impairments in social information processing.

Ugly aesthetic perception associated with emotional changes in experience of art by behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia patients.

PubMed

Boutoleau-Bretonnière, Claire; Bretonnière, Cédric; Evrard, Christelle; Rocher, Laetitia; Mazzietti, Audric; Koenig, Olivier; Vercelletto, Martine; Derkinderen, Pascal; Thomas-Antérion, Catherine

2016-08-01

The aesthetic experience through art is a window into the study of emotions. Patients with behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) have early alteration of emotional processing. A new appreciation of art has been reported in some of these patients. We designed a computerized task using 32 abstract paintings that allowed us to investigate the integrity of patients' emotions when viewing the artwork. We evaluated both conscious and explicit appraisal of emotions [aesthetic judgment (beautiful/ugly), emotional relevance (affected or not by the painting), emotional valence (pleasant/unpleasant), emotional reaction (adjective choice) and arousal] and unconscious processing. Fifteen bvFTD patients and 15 healthy controls were included. BvFTD patients reported that they were "little touched" by the paintings. Aesthetic judgment was very different between the two groups: the paintings were considered ugly (negative aesthetic bias) and unpleasant (negative emotional bias) more often by the patients than by controls. Valence and aesthetic judgments correlated in both groups. In addition, there was a positive bias in the implicit task and for explicit emotional responses. Patients frequently chose the word "sad" and rarely expressed themselves with such adjectives as "happy". Our results suggest that bvFTD patients can give an aesthetic judgment, but present abstraction difficulties, as spectators, resulting from impairments in the cognitive processes involved. They also have difficulties in terms of emotional processes with the loss of the ability to feel the emotion per se (i.e., to feel an emotion faced with art) linked to behaviour assessment. This cognitive approach allows us to better understand which spectators are bvFTD patients and to show interactions between emotions and behavioural disorders. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The effects of cognitive style and emotional trade-off difficulty on information processing in decision-making.

PubMed

Wang, Dawei; Hao, Leilei; Maguire, Phil; Hu, Yixin

2016-12-01

This study investigated the effects of cognitive style and emotional trade-off difficulty (ETOD) on information processing in decision-making. Eighty undergraduates (73.75% female, M = 21.90), grouped according to their cognitive style (field-dependent or field-independent), conducted an Information Display Board (IDB) task, through which search time, search depth and search pattern were measured. Participants' emotional states were assessed both before and after the IDB task. The results showed that participants experienced significantly more negative emotion under high ETOD compared to those under low ETOD. While both cognitive style and ETOD had significant effects on search time and search depth, only ETOD significantly influenced search pattern; individuals in both cognitive style groups tended to use attribute-based processing under high ETOD and to use alternative-based processing under low ETOD. There was also a significant interaction between cognitive style and ETOD for search time and search depth. We propose that these results are best accounted for by the coping behaviour framework under high ETOD, and by the negative emotion hypothesis under low ETOD. © 2016 International Union of Psychological Science.

Comparative functional neuroanatomy between implicit and explicit memory tasks under negative emotional condition in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Song, Xiao-Li; Kim, Gwang-Won; Moon, Chung-Man; Jeong, Gwang-Woo

To evaluate the brain activation patterns in response to negative emotion during implicit and explicit memory in patients with schizophrenia. Fourteen patients with schizophrenia and 14 healthy controls were included in this study. The 3.0T fMRI was obtained while the subjects performed the implicit and explicit retrievals with unpleasant words. The different predominant brain activation areas were observed during the implicit retrieval and explicit with unpleasant words. The differential neural mechanisms between implicit and explicit memory tasks associated with negative emotional processing in schizophrenia. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Mouth-licking by dogs as a response to emotional stimuli.

PubMed

Albuquerque, Natalia; Guo, Kun; Wilkinson, Anna; Resende, Briseida; Mills, Daniel S

2018-01-01

Dogs are able to perceptually discriminate emotional displays of conspecifics and heterospecifics and possess the cognitive prototypes for emotional categorisation, however, it remains unclear whether dogs can respond appropriately to this information. One way to assess associations between specific behaviours and the perception of emotionally competent stimuli is to look at other reliable measures that are related to cognitive and physiological processing. Using a cross-modal preferential looking paradigm (Albuquerque et al., 2016), we presented dogs with pairs of facial expressions (positive and negative) combined with an emotionally charged vocalisation (positive or negative) or a control sound (neutral) and coded their mouth-licking behaviour. We found an effect of the valence of the face image dogs were seeing on the onset of the mouth-licking, with higher frequencies of this behaviour in response to the negative faces compared to images with positive valence. However, neither the sound being played nor the interaction between image valence and sound affected the behaviour. We also found an effect of species with mouth-licking occurring more often towards human stimuli. This spontaneous differential behavioural response, combined with previous evidence of cognitive emotional processing in these animals, suggests that dogs may have a functional understanding of emotional expressions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Emotional reactivity and regulation in preschool-age children who stutter.

PubMed

Ntourou, Katerina; Conture, Edward G; Walden, Tedra A

2013-09-01

This study experimentally investigated behavioral correlates of emotional reactivity and emotion regulation and their relation to speech (dis)fluency in preschool-age children who do (CWS) and do not (CWNS) stutter during emotion-eliciting conditions. Participants (18 CWS, 14 boys; 18 CWNS, 14 boys) completed two experimental tasks (1) a neutral ("apples and leaves in a transparent box," ALTB) and (2) a frustrating ("attractive toy in a transparent box," ATTB) task, both of which were followed by a narrative task. Dependent measures were emotional reactivity (positive affect, negative affect), emotion regulation (self-speech, distraction) exhibited during the ALTB and the ATTB tasks, percentage of stuttered disfluencies (SDs) and percentage of non-stuttered disfluencies (NSDs) produced during the narratives. Results indicated that preschool-age CWS exhibited significantly more negative emotion and more self-speech than preschool-age CWNS. For CWS only, emotion regulation behaviors (i.e., distraction, self-speech) during the experimental tasks were predictive of stuttered disfluencies during the subsequent narrative tasks. Furthermore, for CWS there was no relation between emotional processes and non-stuttered disfluencies, but CWNS's negative affect was significantly related to nonstuttered disfluencies. In general, present findings support the notion that emotional processes are associated with childhood stuttering. Specifically, findings are consistent with the notion that preschool-age CWS are more emotionally reactive than CWNS and that their self-speech regulatory attempts may be less than effective in modulating their emotions. The reader will be able to: (a) communicate the relevance of studying the role of emotion in developmental stuttering close to the onset of stuttering and (b) describe the main findings of the present study in relation to previous studies that have used different methodologies to investigate the role of emotion in developmental stuttering of young children who stutter. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Reduced neural activity of the prefrontal cognitive control circuitry during response inhibition to negative words in people with schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Vercammen, Ans; Morris, Richard; Green, Melissa J.; Lenroot, Rhoshel; Kulkarni, Jayashri; Carr, Vaughan J.; Weickert, Cynthia Shannon; Weickert, Thomas W.

2012-01-01

Background Schizophrenia is characterized by deficits in executive control and impairments in emotion processing. This study assessed the nature and extent of potential alterations in the neural substrates supporting the interaction between cognitive control mechanisms and emotion attribution processes in people with schizophrenia. Methods Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed during a verbal emotional go/no-go task. People with schizophrenia and healthy controls responded to word stimuli of a prespecified emotional valence (positive, negative or neutral) while inhibiting responses to stimuli of a different valence. Results We enrolled 20 people with schizophrenia and 23 controls in the study. Healthy controls activated an extensive dorsal prefrontal–parietal network while inhibiting responses to negative words compared to neutral words, but showed deactivation of the midcingulate cortex while inhibiting responses to positive words compared to neutral words. People with schizophrenia failed to activate this network during response inhibition to negative words, whereas during response inhibition to positive words they did not deactivate the cingulate, but showed increased responsivity in the frontal cortex. Limitations Sample heterogeneity is characteristic of studies of schizophrenia and may have contributed to more variable neural responses in the patient sample despite the care taken to control for potentially confounding variables. Conclusion Our results showed that schizophrenia is associated with aberrant modulation of neural responses during the interaction between cognitive control and emotion processing. Failure of the frontal circuitry to regulate goal-directed behaviour based on emotion attributions may contribute to deficits in psychosocial functioning in daily life. PMID:22617625

Unconscious Processing of Facial Emotional Valence Relation: Behavioral Evidence of Integration between Subliminally Perceived Stimuli.

PubMed

Liu, Chengzhen; Sun, Zhiyi; Jou, Jerwen; Cui, Qian; Zhao, Guang; Qiu, Jiang; Tu, Shen

2016-01-01

Although a few studies have investigated the integration between some types of unconscious stimuli, no research has yet explored the integration between unconscious emotional stimuli. This study was designed to provide behavioral evidence for the integration between unconsciously perceived emotional faces (same or different valence relation) using a modified priming paradigm. In two experiments, participants were asked to decide whether two faces in the target, which followed two subliminally presented faces of same or different emotional expressions, were of the same or different emotional valence. The interstimulus interval (ISI) between the prime and the target was manipulated (0, 53, 163 ms). In Experiment 1, prime visibility was assessed post-experiment. In Experiment 2, it was assessed on each trial. Interestingly, in both experiments, unconsciously processed valence relation of the two faces in the prime generated a negative priming effect in the response to the supraliminally presented target, independent of the length of ISI. Further analyses suggested that the negative priming was probably caused by a motor response incongruent relation between the subliminally perceived prime and the supraliminally perceived target. The visual feature incongruent relation across the prime and target was not found to play a role in the negative priming. Because the negative priming was found at short ISI, an attention mechanism as well as a motor inhibition mechanism were proposed in the generation of the negative priming effect. Overall, this study indicated that the subliminal valence relation was processed, and that integration between different unconsciously perceived stimuli could occur.

Unconscious Processing of Facial Emotional Valence Relation: Behavioral Evidence of Integration between Subliminally Perceived Stimuli

PubMed Central

Jou, Jerwen; Cui, Qian; Zhao, Guang; Qiu, Jiang; Tu, Shen

2016-01-01

Although a few studies have investigated the integration between some types of unconscious stimuli, no research has yet explored the integration between unconscious emotional stimuli. This study was designed to provide behavioral evidence for the integration between unconsciously perceived emotional faces (same or different valence relation) using a modified priming paradigm. In two experiments, participants were asked to decide whether two faces in the target, which followed two subliminally presented faces of same or different emotional expressions, were of the same or different emotional valence. The interstimulus interval (ISI) between the prime and the target was manipulated (0, 53, 163 ms). In Experiment 1, prime visibility was assessed post-experiment. In Experiment 2, it was assessed on each trial. Interestingly, in both experiments, unconsciously processed valence relation of the two faces in the prime generated a negative priming effect in the response to the supraliminally presented target, independent of the length of ISI. Further analyses suggested that the negative priming was probably caused by a motor response incongruent relation between the subliminally perceived prime and the supraliminally perceived target. The visual feature incongruent relation across the prime and target was not found to play a role in the negative priming. Because the negative priming was found at short ISI, an attention mechanism as well as a motor inhibition mechanism were proposed in the generation of the negative priming effect. Overall, this study indicated that the subliminal valence relation was processed, and that integration between different unconsciously perceived stimuli could occur. PMID:27622600

Maternal Attachment Representation and Neurophysiological Processing during the Perception of Infants’ Emotional Expressions

PubMed Central

Leyh, Rainer; Heinisch, Christine; Behringer, Johanna; Reiner, Iris; Spangler, Gottfried

2016-01-01

The perception of infant emotions is an integral part of sensitive caregiving within the mother-child relationship, a maternal ability which develops in mothers during their own attachment history. In this study we address the association between maternal attachment representation and brain activity underlying the perception of infant emotions. Event related potentials (ERPs) of 32 primiparous mothers were assessed during a three stimulus oddball task presenting negative, positive and neutral emotion expressions of infants as target, deviant or standard stimuli. Attachment representation was assessed with the Adult Attachment Interview during pregnancy. Securely attached mothers recognized emotions of infants more accurately than insecurely attached mothers. ERPs yielded amplified N170 amplitudes for insecure mothers when focusing on negative infant emotions. Secure mothers showed enlarged P3 amplitudes to target emotion expressions of infants compared to insecure mothers, especially within conditions with frequent negative infant emotions. In these conditions, P3 latencies were prolonged in insecure mothers. In summary, maternal attachment representation was found associated with brain activity during the perception of infant emotions. This further clarifies psychological mechanisms contributing to maternal sensitivity. PMID:26862743

Maternal Attachment Representation and Neurophysiological Processing during the Perception of Infants' Emotional Expressions.

PubMed

Leyh, Rainer; Heinisch, Christine; Behringer, Johanna; Reiner, Iris; Spangler, Gottfried

2016-01-01

The perception of infant emotions is an integral part of sensitive caregiving within the mother-child relationship, a maternal ability which develops in mothers during their own attachment history. In this study we address the association between maternal attachment representation and brain activity underlying the perception of infant emotions. Event related potentials (ERPs) of 32 primiparous mothers were assessed during a three stimulus oddball task presenting negative, positive and neutral emotion expressions of infants as target, deviant or standard stimuli. Attachment representation was assessed with the Adult Attachment Interview during pregnancy. Securely attached mothers recognized emotions of infants more accurately than insecurely attached mothers. ERPs yielded amplified N170 amplitudes for insecure mothers when focusing on negative infant emotions. Secure mothers showed enlarged P3 amplitudes to target emotion expressions of infants compared to insecure mothers, especially within conditions with frequent negative infant emotions. In these conditions, P3 latencies were prolonged in insecure mothers. In summary, maternal attachment representation was found associated with brain activity during the perception of infant emotions. This further clarifies psychological mechanisms contributing to maternal sensitivity.

Anger, Fear, Uncertainty, and Attitudes: A Test of the Cognitive-Functional Model.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nabi, Robin L.

2002-01-01

Explains that the cognitive-functional model of discrete negative emotions and attitude change attempts to bridge the theoretical gap between "emotional" and "rational" approaches to persuasion by focusing on how emotions motivate attention to and processing of persuasive messages. Explores the effects two emotions, anger and fear, and two levels…

Physiological and cognitive consequences of suppressing and expressing emotion in dyadic interactions.

PubMed

Peters, Brett J; Overall, Nickola C; Jamieson, Jeremy P

2014-10-01

Engaging in emotional suppression typically has negative consequences. However, relatively little is known about response-focused emotion regulation processes in dyadic interactions. We hypothesized that interacting with suppressive partners would be more threatening than interacting with expressive partners. To test predictions, two participants independently watched a negatively-valenced video and then discussed their emotional responses. One participant (the regulator) was assigned to express/suppress affective signals during the interaction. Their partner was given no special instructions prior to the interaction. Engaging in suppression versus expression elicited physiological responses consistent with threat-sympathetic arousal and increased vasoconstriction-in anticipation of and during dyadic interactions. Partners of emotional suppressors also exhibited more threat responses during the interaction, but not before, compared to partners of emotional expressors. Partner and interaction appraisals mirrored physiological findings. Emotional suppressors found the task more uncomfortable and intense while their partners reported them as being poor communicators. This work broadens our understanding of connections between emotion regulation, physiological responses, and cognitive processes in dyads. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Neurocognitive correlates of the effects of yoga meditation practice on emotion and cognition: a pilot study

PubMed Central

Froeliger, Brett E.; Garland, Eric L.; Modlin, Leslie A.; McClernon, F. Joseph

2012-01-01

Mindfulness meditation involves attending to emotions without cognitive fixation of emotional experience. Over time, this practice is held to promote alterations in trait affectivity and attentional control with resultant effects on well-being and cognition. However, relatively little is known regarding the neural substrates of meditation effects on emotion and cognition. The present study investigated the neurocognitive correlates of emotion interference on cognition in Yoga practitioners and a matched control group (CG) underwent fMRI while performing an event-related affective Stroop task. The task includes image viewing trials and Stroop trials bracketed by neutral or negative emotional distractors. During image viewing trials, Yoga practitioners exhibited less reactivity in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) to negative as compared to neutral images; whereas the CG had the opposite pattern. A main effect of valence (negative > neutral) was observed in limbic regions (e.g., amygdala), of which the magnitude was inversely related to dlPFC activation. Exploratory analyses revealed that the magnitude of amygdala activation predicted decreased self-reported positive affect in the CG, but not among Yoga practitioners. During Stroop trials, Yoga practitioners had greater activation in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) during Stroop trials when negative, compared to neutral, emotional distractor were presented; the CG exhibited the opposite pattern. Taken together, these data suggest that though Yoga practitioners exhibit limbic reactivity to negative emotional stimuli, such reactivity does not have downstream effects on later mood state. This uncoupling of viewing negative emotional images and affect among Yoga practitioners may be occasioned by their selective implementation of frontal executive-dependent strategies to reduce emotional interference during competing cognitive demands and not during emotional processing per se. PMID:22855674

Origin of Emotion Effects on ERP Correlates of Emotional Word Processing: The Emotion Duality Approach.

PubMed

Imbir, Kamil Konrad; Jarymowicz, Maria Teresa; Spustek, Tomasz; Kuś, Rafał; Żygierewicz, Jarosław

2015-01-01

We distinguish two evaluative systems which evoke automatic and reflective emotions. Automatic emotions are direct reactions to stimuli whereas reflective emotions are always based on verbalized (and often abstract) criteria of evaluation. We conducted an electroencephalography (EEG) study in which 25 women were required to read and respond to emotional words which engaged either the automatic or reflective system. Stimulus words were emotional (positive or negative) and neutral. We found an effect of valence on an early response with dipolar fronto-occipital topography; positive words evoked a higher amplitude response than negative words. We also found that topographically specific differences in the amplitude of the late positive complex were related to the system involved in processing. Emotional stimuli engaging the automatic system were associated with significantly higher amplitudes in the left-parietal region; the response to neutral words was similar regardless of the system engaged. A different pattern of effects was observed in the central region, neutral stimuli engaging the reflective system evoked a higher amplitudes response whereas there was no system effect for emotional stimuli. These differences could not be reduced to effects of differences between the arousing properties and concreteness of the words used as stimuli.

Origin of Emotion Effects on ERP Correlates of Emotional Word Processing: The Emotion Duality Approach

PubMed Central

Imbir, Kamil Konrad; Jarymowicz, Maria Teresa; Spustek, Tomasz; Kuś, Rafał; Żygierewicz, Jarosław

2015-01-01

We distinguish two evaluative systems which evoke automatic and reflective emotions. Automatic emotions are direct reactions to stimuli whereas reflective emotions are always based on verbalized (and often abstract) criteria of evaluation. We conducted an electroencephalography (EEG) study in which 25 women were required to read and respond to emotional words which engaged either the automatic or reflective system. Stimulus words were emotional (positive or negative) and neutral. We found an effect of valence on an early response with dipolar fronto-occipital topography; positive words evoked a higher amplitude response than negative words. We also found that topographically specific differences in the amplitude of the late positive complex were related to the system involved in processing. Emotional stimuli engaging the automatic system were associated with significantly higher amplitudes in the left-parietal region; the response to neutral words was similar regardless of the system engaged. A different pattern of effects was observed in the central region, neutral stimuli engaging the reflective system evoked a higher amplitudes response whereas there was no system effect for emotional stimuli. These differences could not be reduced to effects of differences between the arousing properties and concreteness of the words used as stimuli. PMID:25955719

Emotionally negative pictures increase attention to a subsequent auditory stimulus.

PubMed

Tartar, Jaime L; de Almeida, Kristen; McIntosh, Roger C; Rosselli, Monica; Nash, Allan J

2012-01-01

Emotionally negative stimuli serve as a mechanism of biological preparedness to enhance attention. We hypothesized that emotionally negative stimuli would also serve as motivational priming to increase attention resources for subsequent stimuli. To that end, we tested 11 participants in a dual sensory modality task, wherein emotionally negative pictures were contrasted with emotionally neutral pictures and each picture was followed 600 ms later by a tone in an auditory oddball paradigm. Each trial began with a picture displayed for 200 ms; half of the trials began with an emotionally negative picture and half of the trials began with an emotionally neutral picture; 600 ms following picture presentation, the participants heard either an oddball tone or a standard tone. At the end of each trial (picture followed by tone), the participants categorized, with a button press, the picture and tone combination. As expected, and consistent with previous studies, we found an enhanced visual late positive potential (latency range=300-700 ms) to the negative picture stimuli. We further found that compared to neutral pictures, negative pictures resulted in early attention and orienting effects to subsequent tones (measured through an enhanced N1 and N2) and sustained attention effects only to the subsequent oddball tones (measured through late processing negativity, latency range=400-700 ms). Number pad responses to both the picture and tone category showed the shortest response latencies and greatest percentage of correct picture-tone categorization on the negative picture followed by oddball tone trials. Consistent with previous work on natural selective attention, our results support the idea that emotional stimuli can alter attention resource allocation. This finding has broad implications for human attention and performance as it specifically shows the conditions in which an emotionally negative stimulus can result in extended stimulus evaluation. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Impact of acute administration of escitalopram on the processing of emotional and neutral images: a randomized crossover fMRI study of healthy women.

PubMed

Outhred, Tim; Das, Pritha; Felmingham, Kim L; Bryant, Richard A; Nathan, Pradeep J; Malhi, Gin S; Kemp, Andrew H

2014-07-01

Acute neural effects of antidepressant medication on emotion processing biases may provide the foundation on which clinical outcomes are based. Along with effects on positive and negative stimuli, acute effects on neutral stimuli may also relate to antidepressant efficacy, yet these effects are still to be investigated. The present study therefore examined the impact of a single dose of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor escitalopram (20 mg) on positive, negative and neutral stimuli using pharmaco-fMRI. Within a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled crossover design, healthy women completed 2 sessions of treatment administration and fMRI scanning separated by a 1-week washout period. We enrolled 36 women in our study. When participants were administered escitalopram relative to placebo, left amygdala activity was increased and right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) activity was decreased during presentation of positive pictures (potentiation of positive emotion processing). In contrast, escitalopram was associated with decreased left amygdala and increased right IFG activity during presentation of negative pictures (attenuation of negative emotion processing). In addition, escitalopram decreased right IFG activity during the processing of neutral stimuli, akin to the effects on positive stimuli (decrease in negative appraisal). Although we used a women-only sample to reduce heterogeneity, our results may not generalize to men. Potential unblinding, which was related to the subjective occurrence of side effects, occurred in the study; however, manipulation check analyses demonstrated that results were not impacted. These novel findings demonstrate that a single dose of the commonly prescribed escitalopram facilitates a positive information processing bias. These findings provide an important lead for better understanding effects of antidepressant medication.

Effects of speaker emotional facial expression and listener age on incremental sentence processing.

PubMed

Carminati, Maria Nella; Knoeferle, Pia

2013-01-01

We report two visual-world eye-tracking experiments that investigated how and with which time course emotional information from a speaker's face affects younger (N = 32, Mean age  = 23) and older (N = 32, Mean age  = 64) listeners' visual attention and language comprehension as they processed emotional sentences in a visual context. The age manipulation tested predictions by socio-emotional selectivity theory of a positivity effect in older adults. After viewing the emotional face of a speaker (happy or sad) on a computer display, participants were presented simultaneously with two pictures depicting opposite-valence events (positive and negative; IAPS database) while they listened to a sentence referring to one of the events. Participants' eye fixations on the pictures while processing the sentence were increased when the speaker's face was (vs. wasn't) emotionally congruent with the sentence. The enhancement occurred from the early stages of referential disambiguation and was modulated by age. For the older adults it was more pronounced with positive faces, and for the younger ones with negative faces. These findings demonstrate for the first time that emotional facial expressions, similarly to previously-studied speaker cues such as eye gaze and gestures, are rapidly integrated into sentence processing. They also provide new evidence for positivity effects in older adults during situated sentence processing.

Subliminal processing of emotional information in anxiety and depression.

PubMed

Mogg, K; Bradley, B P; Williams, R; Mathews, A

1993-05-01

The study investigated selective processing of emotional information in anxiety and depression using a modified Stroop color naming task. Anxious (n = 19), depressed (n = 18), and normal control (n = 18) subjects were required to name the background colors of anxiety-related, depression-related, positive, categorized, and uncategorized neutral words. Half of the words were presented supraliminally, half subliminally. Anxious subjects, compared with depressed and normal subjects, showed relatively slower color naming for both supraliminal and subliminal negative words. The results suggest a preattentive processing bias for negative information in anxiety.

Disruption of Emotion and Conflict Processing in HIV Infection with and without Alcoholism Comorbidity

PubMed Central

Schulte, Tilman; Müller-Oehring, Eva M.; Sullivan, Edith V.; Pfefferbaum, Adolf

2012-01-01

Alcoholism and HIV-1 infection each affect components of selective attention and cognitive control that may contribute to deficits in emotion processing based on closely interacting fronto-parietal attention and frontal-subcortical emotion systems. Here, we investigated whether patients with alcoholism, HIV-1 infection, or both diseases have greater difficulty than healthy controls in resolving conflict from emotional words with different valences. Accordingly, patients with alcoholism (ALC, n = 20), HIV-1 infection (HIV, n = 20), ALC + HIV comorbidity (n = 22), and controls (CTL, n = 16) performed an emotional Stroop Match-to-Sample task, which assessed the contribution of emotion (happy, angry) to cognitive control (Stroop conflict processing). ALC + HIV showed greater Stroop effects than HIV, ALC, or CTL for negative (ANGRY) but not for positive (HAPPY) words, and also when the cue color did not match the Stroop stimulus color; the comorbid group performed similarly to the others when cue and word colors matched. Furthermore, emotionally salient face cues prolonged color-matching responses in all groups. HIV alone, compared with the other three groups, showed disproportionately slowed color-matching time when trials featured angry faces. The enhanced Stroop effects prominent in ALC + HIV suggest difficulty in exercising attentional top-down control on processes that consume attentional capacity, especially when cognitive effort is required to ignore negative emotions. PMID:21418720

Sex-related differences in neural activity during emotion regulation.

PubMed

Mak, Amanda K Y; Hu, Zhi-guo; Zhang, John X X; Xiao, Zhuangwei; Lee, Tatia M C

2009-11-01

The sex disparity in the development of depression has long been an important research topic, but the sex-related differences in neural activity during emotion regulation have been less thoroughly studied. It was hypothesized that, during the regulation of emotion, there would be more activation in the prefrontal regions implicated in cognitive processing for males, while there would be more activation in the prefrontal regions implicated in affective processing for females. This fMRI study recruited 12 females and 12 males who were required to view or to regulate the negative and positive emotion induced by some emotion-arousing pictures. During the regulation of negative emotion, both males and females had stronger activation in the left anterior cingulate gyrus, but males showed more activation in the prefrontal regions in general, including the left dorsolateral and lateral orbitofrontal gyrus as well as the right anterior cingulate gyrus, while females only showed stronger activation in the left medial orbitofrontal gyrus. For the regulation of positive emotion, both males and females showed stronger activation in the left dorsomedial prefrontal gyrus, but males were found to also have stronger activity in the left lateral orbitofrontal gyrus. It was concluded that there are common as well as sex-specific sets of brain regions involved in regulating negative and positive emotion, and the findings may have significant implications for females' vulnerability to developing depression.

Emotion, working memory, and cognitive control in patients with first-onset and previously untreated minor depressive disorders.

PubMed

Li, Mi; Lu, Shengfu; Wang, Gang; Feng, Lei; Fu, Bingbing; Zhong, Ning

2016-06-01

To explore working memory and the ability to process different emotional stimuli in patients with first-onset and untreated minor (mild or moderate) depression. Patients with first-onset and previously untreated minor depression, and healthy controls, were enrolled. Using a modified Sternberg working memory paradigm to investigate the combined effects of emotional stimuli with working memory, participants were exposed to experimental stimuli comprising pictures that represented positive, neutral and negative emotions. Working memory ability was measured using reaction time and accuracy, and emotion-processing ability was measured using pupil diameter. Out of 36 participants (18 patients with minor depression and 18 controls), there were no statistically significant between-group differences in response time and accuracy. Positive stimuli evoked changes in pupil diameter that were significantly smaller in patients with minor depression versus controls, but changes in pupil diameter evoked by negative stimuli were not significantly different between the two groups. Healthy subjects showed a stronger emotional response to positive emotional stimuli than patients with first onset and previously untreated minor depression, but there were no differences in response to negative emotions. There were no statistically significant between-group differences in terms of speed of cognitive response, but this may have been due to the relatively small samples sizes assessed. Studies with larger sample populations are required to further investigate these results. © The Author(s) 2016.

A Sensitive and Specific Neural Signature for Picture-Induced Negative Affect

PubMed Central

Chang, Luke J.; Gianaros, Peter J.; Manuck, Stephen B.; Krishnan, Anjali; Wager, Tor D.

2015-01-01

Neuroimaging has identified many correlates of emotion but has not yet yielded brain representations predictive of the intensity of emotional experiences in individuals. We used machine learning to identify a sensitive and specific signature of emotional responses to aversive images. This signature predicted the intensity of negative emotion in individual participants in cross validation (n =121) and test (n = 61) samples (high–low emotion = 93.5% accuracy). It was unresponsive to physical pain (emotion–pain = 92% discriminative accuracy), demonstrating that it is not a representation of generalized arousal or salience. The signature was comprised of mesoscale patterns spanning multiple cortical and subcortical systems, with no single system necessary or sufficient for predicting experience. Furthermore, it was not reducible to activity in traditional “emotion-related” regions (e.g., amygdala, insula) or resting-state networks (e.g., “salience,” “default mode”). Overall, this work identifies differentiable neural components of negative emotion and pain, providing a basis for new, brain-based taxonomies of affective processes. PMID:26098873

Emotion processing in the aging brain is modulated by semantic elaboration

PubMed Central

Ritchey, Maureen; Bessette-Symons, Brandy; Hayes, Scott M.; Cabeza, Roberto

2010-01-01

The neural correlates of emotion processing have been shown to vary with age: older adults (OAs) exhibit increased frontal activations and, under some circumstances, decreased amygdala activations relative to young adults (YAs) during emotion processing. Some of these differences are additionally modulated by valence, with age-related biases toward positive versus negative stimuli, and are thought to depend on OAs’ capacity for controlled elaboration. However, the role of semantic elaboration in mediating valence effects in the aging brain has not yet been explicitly tested. In the present study, YAs and OAs were scanned while they viewed negative, neutral, and positive pictures during either a deep, elaborative task or a shallow, perceptual task. FMRI results reveal that emotion-related activity in the amygdala is preserved in aging and insensitive to elaboration demands. This study provides novel evidence that differences in valence processing are modulated by elaboration: relative to YAs, OAs show enhanced activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) and ventrolateral PFC in response to positive versus negative stimuli, but only during elaborative processing. These positive valence effects are predicted by individual differences in executive function in OAs for the deep but not shallow task. Finally, psychophysiological interaction analyses reveal age effects on valence-dependent functional connectivity between medial PFC and ventral striatum, as well as age and task effects on medial PFC-retrosplenial cortex interactions. Altogether, these findings provide support for the hypothesis that valence shifts in the aging brain are mediated by controlled processes such as semantic elaboration, self-referential processing, and emotion regulation. PMID:20869375

Emotion processing in the aging brain is modulated by semantic elaboration.

PubMed

Ritchey, Maureen; Bessette-Symons, Brandy; Hayes, Scott M; Cabeza, Roberto

2011-03-01

The neural correlates of emotion processing have been shown to vary with age: older adults (OAs) exhibit increased frontal activations and, under some circumstances, decreased amygdala activations relative to young adults (YAs) during emotion processing. Some of these differences are additionally modulated by valence, with age-related biases toward positive versus negative stimuli, and are thought to depend on OAs' capacity for controlled elaboration. However, the role of semantic elaboration in mediating valence effects in the aging brain has not yet been explicitly tested. In the present study, YAs and OAs were scanned while they viewed negative, neutral, and positive pictures during either a deep, elaborative task or a shallow, perceptual task. fMRI results reveal that emotion-related activity in the amygdala is preserved in aging and insensitive to elaboration demands. This study provides novel evidence that differences in valence processing are modulated by elaboration: relative to YAs, OAs show enhanced activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) and ventrolateral PFC in response to positive versus negative stimuli, but only during elaborative processing. These positive valence effects are predicted by individual differences in executive function in OAs for the deep but not shallow task. Finally, psychophysiological interaction analyses reveal age effects on valence-dependent functional connectivity between medial PFC and ventral striatum, as well as age and task effects on medial PFC-retrosplenial cortex interactions. Altogether, these findings provide support for the hypothesis that valence shifts in the aging brain are mediated by controlled processes such as semantic elaboration, self-referential processing, and emotion regulation. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Negative emotion boosts quality of visual working memory representation.

PubMed

Xie, Weizhen; Zhang, Weiwei

2016-08-01

Negative emotion impacts a variety of cognitive processes, including working memory (WM). The present study investigated whether negative emotion modulated WM capacity (quantity) or resolution (quality), 2 independent limits on WM storage. In Experiment 1, observers tried to remember several colors over 1-s delay and then recalled the color of a randomly picked memory item by clicking a best-matching color on a continuous color wheel. On each trial, before the visual WM task, 1 of 3 emotion conditions (negative, neutral, or positive) was induced by having observers to rate the valence of an International Affective Picture System image. Visual WM under negative emotion showed enhanced resolution compared with neutral and positive conditions, whereas the number of retained representations was comparable across the 3 emotion conditions. These effects were generalized to closed-contour shapes in Experiment 2. To isolate the locus of these effects, Experiment 3 adopted an iconic memory version of the color recall task by eliminating the 1-s retention interval. No significant change in the quantity or quality of iconic memory was observed, suggesting that the resolution effects in the first 2 experiments were critically dependent on the need to retain memory representations over a short period of time. Taken together, these results suggest that negative emotion selectively boosts visual WM quality, supporting the dissociable nature quantitative and qualitative aspects of visual WM representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Reward expectation regulates brain responses to task-relevant and task-irrelevant emotional words: ERP evidence.

PubMed

Wei, Ping; Wang, Di; Ji, Liyan

2016-02-01

We investigated the effect of reward expectation on the processing of emotional words in two experiments using event-related potentials (ERPs). A cue indicating the reward condition of each trial (incentive vs non-incentive) was followed by the presentation of a negative or neutral word, the target. Participants were asked to discriminate the emotional content of the target word in Experiment 1 and to discriminate the color of the target word in Experiment 2, rendering the emotionality of the target word task-relevant in Experiment 1, but task-irrelevant in Experiment 2. The negative bias effect, in terms of the amplitude difference between ERPs for negative and neutral targets, was modulated by the task-set. In Experiment 1, P31 and early posterior negativity revealed a larger negative bias effect in the incentive condition than that in the non-incentive condition. However, in Experiment 2, P31 revealed a diminished negative bias effect in the incentive condition compared with that in the non-incentive condition. These results indicate that reward expectation improves top-down attentional concentration to task-relevant information, with enhanced sensitivity to the emotional content of target words when emotionality is task-relevant, but with reduced differential brain responses to emotional words when their content is task-irrelevant. © The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Processing and memory for emotional and neutral material in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

PubMed Central

Cuddy, Marion; Papps, Benjamin J.; Thambisetty, Madhav; Leigh, P. Nigel; Goldstein, Laura H.

2018-01-01

Several studies have reported changes in emotional memory and processing in people with ALS (pwALS). In this study, we sought to analyse differences in emotional processing and memory between pwALS and healthy controls and to investigate the relationship between emotional memory and self-reported depression. Nineteen pwALS and 19 healthy controls were assessed on measures of emotional processing, emotional memory, verbal memory and depression. Although pwALS and controls did not differ significantly on measures of emotional memory, a subgroup of patients performed poorly on an emotional recognition task. With regard to emotional processing, pwALS gave significantly stronger ratings of emotional valence to positive words than to negative words. Higher ratings of emotional words were associated with better recall in controls but not pwALS. Self-reported depression and emotional processing or memory variables were not associated in either group. In conclusion, the results from this small study suggest that a subgroup of pwALS may show weakened ‘emotional enhancement’, although in the current sample this may reflect general memory impairment rather than specific changes in emotional memory. Nonetheless, different patterns of processing of emotionally-salient material by pwALS may have care and management-related implications. PMID:22873560

A naturalistic study of the directional interpretation process of discrete emotions during high-stakes table tennis matches.

PubMed

Martinent, Guillaume; Ferrand, Claude

2009-06-01

The purpose of this study was to explore the directional interpretation process of discrete emotions experienced by table tennis players during competitive matches by adopting a naturalistic qualitative video-assisted approach. Thirty self-confrontation interviews were conducted with 11 national table tennis players (2 or 3 matches per participants). Nine discrete emotions were identified through the inductive analyses of the participants' transcriptions: anger, anxiety, discouragement, disappointment, disgust, joy, serenity, relief, and hope. Inductive analyses revealed the emergence of 4 categories and 13 themes among the 9 discrete emotions: positive direction (increased concentration, increased motivation, increased confidence, positive sensations, and adaptive behaviors), negative direction (decreased concentration, decreased motivation, too confident, decreased confidence, negative sensations, and maladaptive behaviors), neutral direction (take more risk and take less risk), and no perceived influence on own performance. Results are discussed in terms of current research on directional interpretation and emotions in sport.

Effects of aging on functional connectivity of the amygdala for subsequent memory of negative pictures: a network analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data.

PubMed

St Jacques, Peggy L; Dolcos, Florin; Cabeza, Roberto

2009-01-01

Aging is associated with preserved enhancement of emotional memory, as well as with age-related reductions in memory for negative stimuli, but the neural networks underlying such alterations are not clear. We used a subsequent-memory paradigm to identify brain activity predicting enhanced emotional memory in young and older adults. Activity in the amygdala predicted enhanced emotional memory, with subsequent-memory activity greater for negative stimuli than for neutral stimuli, across age groups, a finding consistent with an overall enhancement of emotional memory. However, older adults recruited greater activity in anterior regions and less activity in posterior regions in general for negative stimuli that were subsequently remembered. Functional connectivity of the amygdala with the rest of the brain was consistent with age-related reductions in memory for negative stimuli: Older adults showed decreased functional connectivity between the amygdala and the hippocampus, but increased functional connectivity between the amygdala and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices. These findings suggest that age-related differences in the enhancement of emotional memory might reflect decreased connectivity between the amygdala and typical subsequent-memory regions, as well as the engagement of regulatory processes that inhibit emotional responses.

Adolescents' aggressive and prosocial behaviors: links with social information processing, negative emotionality, moral affect, and moral cognition.

PubMed

Laible, Deborah J; Murphy, Tia Panfile; Augustine, Mairin

2014-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine whether moral affect, moral cognition, negative emotionality, and attribution biases independently predicted adolescents' prosocial and aggressive behavior in adolescence. A total of 148 adolescents completed self-report measures of prosocial and aggressive behavior, moral affect, moral cognition, negative emotionality, and attribution biases. Although in general all 3 factors (emotional, moral, and social cognitive) were correlated with adolescent social behavior, the most consistent independent predictors of adolescent social behavior were moral affect and cognition. These findings have important implications for intervention and suggest that programs that promote adolescent perspective taking, moral reasoning, and moral affect are needed to reduce aggressive behavior and promote prosocial behavior.

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder and prefrontal reactivity during anticipation of emotional stimuli.

PubMed

Gingnell, Malin; Bannbers, Elin; Wikström, Johan; Fredrikson, Mats; Sundström-Poromaa, Inger

2013-11-01

Premenstrual disorder (PMDD) affects around 5% of women in childbearing ages. An increased sensitivity in emotion processing areas of the brain to variations in ovarian steroid levels has been suggested as part of the pathophysiology in PMDD, but prior neuroimaging studies of emotion processing are yet inconclusive. Previous behavioral studies of women with PMDD have, however, reported enhanced luteal phase startle responsivity during emotional anticipation. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate central neural circuitry activity during anticipation of, and exposure to, emotional stimuli across the menstrual cycle in women with and without PMDD. As compared to healthy controls, women with PMDD displayed significantly enhanced reactivity in the prefrontal cortex during anticipation of, but not exposure to, negative emotional stimuli during the luteal phase. In PMDD patients, BOLD reactivity during anticipation or viewing of negative emotional stimuli was not dependent on absolute levels of estradiol or progesterone. However, progesterone levels were positively correlated with emotion-induced reactivity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to positive emotional stimuli. These findings suggest that cortical emotional circuitry reactivity during anticipation is altered in PMDD during the luteal phase, which might be part of the pathophysiology behind the emotional symptoms or lack of emotional control reported by women with PMDD. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. and ECNP. All rights reserved.

The emotional side of cognitive distraction: Implications for road safety.

PubMed

Chan, Michelle; Singhal, Anthony

2013-01-01

Driver distraction is estimated to be one of the leading causes of motor vehicle accidents. However, little is known about the role of emotional distraction on driving, despite evidence that attention is highly biased toward emotion. In the present study, we used a dual-task paradigm to examine the potential for driver distraction from emotional information presented on roadside billboards. This purpose was achieved using a driving simulator and three different types of emotional information: neutral words, negative emotional words, and positive emotional words. Participants also responded to target words while driving and completed a surprise free recall task of all the words at the end of the study. The findings suggest that driving performance is differentially affected by the valence (negative versus positive) of the emotional content. Drivers had lower mean speeds when there were emotional words compared to neutral words, and this slowing effect lasted longer when there were positive words. This may be due to distraction effects on driving behavior, which are greater for positive arousing stimuli. Moreover, when required to process non-emotional target stimuli, drivers had faster mean speeds in conditions where the targets were interspersed with emotional words compared to neutral words, and again, these effects lasted longer when there were positive words. On the other hand, negative information led to better memory recall. These unique effects may be due to separate processes in the human attention system, particularly related to arousal mechanisms and their interaction with emotion. We conclude that distraction that is emotion-based can modulate attention and decision-making abilities and have adverse impacts on driving behavior for several reasons. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Moderating Effect of Childhood Maltreatment on the Relations Among PTSD Symptoms, Positive Urgency, and Negative Urgency.

PubMed

Price, Matthew; Connor, Julie P; Allen, Holley C

2017-08-01

Childhood maltreatment increases the risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and comorbid substance use disorder (SUD). One pathway by which this occurs is through impaired emotion regulation. Past research has shown that negative urgency, a deficit in the regulation of negative emotions, is strongly related to PTSD in those with comorbid SUD. However, there is minimal research on the relation between positive urgency and PTSD in those with comorbid SUD. The current study investigated the association between childhood maltreatment, positive urgency, negative urgency, and PTSD symptoms among those with SUD. Results suggested that PTSD was associated with negative urgency and positive urgency overall. Childhood maltreatment did not moderate the association between negative urgency and PTSD. Childhood emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and sexual abuse moderated the relation between positive urgency and PTSD (ΔR 2 = .04 to .10). The association between PTSD and positive urgency was only significant at lower levels of emotional abuse and neglect. Future research should further examine the processing of positive emotions in those with PTSD and comorbid SUD. Findings might inform clinical interventions among populations exposed to childhood maltreatment to reduce or prevent the development of psychopathology. Copyright © 2017 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

[Emotional processing in patients with a dissocial personality disorder subtype "psychopathy" according to PCL-R].

PubMed

Weber, Tatjana; Sommer, Monika; Hajak, Göran; Müller, Jürgen

2004-11-01

Functional MRI was used to test the effects of the deficient emotional responsiveness of psychopathic patients on cognitive processes. We used a Simon-paradigm, in which ten healthy volunteers and ten patients with a diagnosis of "psychopathy" (defined by Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised) have to select their spatially defined responses on the basis of a nonspatial stimuli feature. For the emotion induction pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) were selected. At the beginning and intermediated by the Simon-paradigm blocks of positive, negative or neutral pictures were presented. Patients with "psychopathy" exhibited untypical activation patterns in amygdala and prefrontal regions during interferences between negative or positive stimulations and cognitive tasks. These results demonstrated disturbed regulation of emotion-cognition-interaction in "psychopathy" according to PCL-R.

The neural component-process architecture of endogenously generated emotion

PubMed Central

Kanske, Philipp; Singer, Tania

2017-01-01

Abstract Despite the ubiquity of endogenous emotions and their role in both resilience and pathology, the processes supporting their generation are largely unknown. We propose a neural component process model of endogenous generation of emotion (EGE) and test it in two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments (N = 32/293) where participants generated and regulated positive and negative emotions based on internal representations, usin self-chosen generation methods. EGE activated nodes of salience (SN), default mode (DMN) and frontoparietal control (FPCN) networks. Component processes implemented by these networks were established by investigating their functional associations, activation dynamics and integration. SN activation correlated with subjective affect, with midbrain nodes exclusively distinguishing between positive and negative affect intensity, showing dynamics consistent generation of core affect. Dorsomedial DMN, together with ventral anterior insula, formed a pathway supporting multiple generation methods, with activation dynamics suggesting it is involved in the generation of elaborated experiential representations. SN and DMN both coupled to left frontal FPCN which in turn was associated with both subjective affect and representation formation, consistent with FPCN supporting the executive coordination of the generation process. These results provide a foundation for research into endogenous emotion in normal, pathological and optimal function. PMID:27522089

Reducing attentional capture of emotion by broadening attention: increased global attention reduces early electrophysiological responses to negative stimuli.

PubMed

Gable, Philip A; Harmon-Jones, Eddie

2012-05-01

Decades of research has shown the influence of emotion on attentional capture, and more recently, the influence of emotion on neurophysiological processes related to attentional capture. The current research tested whether some of the earliest neurophysiological underpinnings of emotive attentional processes can be influenced by attentional manipulations of broadening versus narrowing. Previous research has shown that negative affects high in motivational intensity (e.g., disgust, fear) cause a relative narrowing of attentional scope (Gable and Harmon-Jones, 2010a; Easterbrook, 1959). Because of the strong link between motivation and attention, attentional scope should also influence the attentional capture of negative stimuli. The current study manipulated a local attentional scope or global attentional scope, then measured attentional capture towards disgust and neutral pictures using the N1 event-related potential component. Results revealed that a manipulated global attentional scope reduced N1 amplitude towards disgust pictures compared to a manipulated local attentional scope. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Attentional bias in clinical depression and anxiety: The impact of emotional and non-emotional distracting information.

PubMed

Lichtenstein-Vidne, L; Okon-Singer, H; Cohen, N; Todder, D; Aue, T; Nemets, B; Henik, A

2017-01-01

Both anxiety and major depression disorder (MDD) were reported to involve a maladaptive selective attention mechanism, associated with bias toward negative stimuli. Previous studies investigated attentional bias using distractors that required processing as part of task settings, and therefore, in our view, these distractors should be regarded as task-relevant. Here, we applied a unique task that used peripheral distractors that presented emotional and spatial information simultaneously. Notably, the emotional information was not associated in any way to the task, and thus was task-irrelevant. The spatial information, however, was task-relevant as it corresponded with task instructions. Corroborating previous findings, anxious patients showed attentional bias toward negative information. MDD patients showed no indication of this bias. Spatial information influenced all groups similarly. These results indicate that anxiety, but not MDD, is associated with an inherent negative information bias, further illustrating that the two closely related disorders are characterized by different processing patterns. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Mutual Influence of Reward Anticipation and Emotion on Brain Activity during Memory Retrieval.

PubMed

Yan, Chunping; Liu, Fang; Li, Yunyun; Zhang, Qin; Cui, Lixia

2017-01-01

Previous studies on the joint effect of reward motivation and emotion on memory retrieval have obtained inconsistent results. Furthermore, whether and how any such joint effect might vary over time remains unclear too. Accordingly, using the event-related potential (ERP) measurement of high temporal resolution, our study investigates the cognitive and brain mechanisms of monetary reward and emotion affecting the retrieval processes of episodic memory. Twenty undergraduate and graduate students participated in the research, and our study's behavioral results indicated that reward (relative to no reward) and negative emotion (relative to positive and neutral emotion) significantly improved recognition performance. The ERP results showed that there were significant interactions between monetary reward and emotion on memory retrieval, and the reward effects of positive, neutral, and negative memory occurred at varied intervals in mean amplitude. The reward effect of positive memory appeared relatively early, at 260-330 ms after the stimulus onset in the frontal-frontocentral area, at 260-500 ms in the centroparietal-parietal area and at 500-700 ms in the frontocentral area. However, the reward effects of neutral and negative memory occurred relatively later, and that of negative memory appeared at 500-700 ms in the frontocentral and centroparietal area and that of neutral memory was at 500-700 ms in the frontocentral and centroparietal-parietal area. Meanwhile, significant FN400 old/new effects were observed in the negative and rewarded positive items, and the old/new effects of negative items appeared earlier at FN400 than positive items. Also, significant late positive component (LPC) old/new effects were found in the positive, negative, and rewarded neutral items. These results suggest that, monetary reward and negative emotion significantly improved recognition performance, and there was a mutual influence between reward and emotion on brain activity during memory retrieval.

HIV-positive females show blunted neurophysiological responses in an emotion-attention dual task paradigm.

PubMed

Tartar, Jaime L; McIntosh, Roger C; Rosselli, Monica; Widmayer, Susan M; Nash, Allan J

2014-06-01

Although HIV is associated with decreased emotional and cognitive functioning, the mechanisms through which affective changes can alter cognitive processes in HIV-infected individuals are unknown. We aimed to clarify this question through testing the extent to which emotionally negative stimuli prime attention to a subsequent infrequently occurring auditory tone in HIV+ compared to HIV- females. Attention to emotional compared to non-emotional pictures was measured via the LPP ERP. Subsequent attention was indexed through the N1 and late processing negativity ERP. We also assessed mood and cognitive functioning in both groups. In HIV- females, emotionally negative pictures, compared to neutral pictures, resulted in an enhanced LPP to the pictures and an enhanced N1 to subsequent tones. The HIV+ group did not show a difference in the LPP measure between picture categories, and accordingly, did not show a priming effect to the subsequent infrequent tones. The ERP findings, combined with neuropsychological deficits, suggest that HIV+ females show impairments in attention to emotionally-laden stimuli and that this impairment might be related to a loss of affective priming. This study is the first to provide physiological evidence that the LPP, a measure of attention to emotionally-charged visual stimuli, is reduced in HIV-infected individuals. These results set the stage for future work aimed at localizing brain activation to emotional stimuli in HIV+ individuals. Copyright © 2013 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Normalization Framework for Emotional Attention

PubMed Central

Zhang, Xilin; Japee, Shruti; Safiullah, Zaid; Ungerleider, Leslie G.

2016-01-01

The normalization model of attention proposes that attention can affect performance by response- or contrast-gain changes, depending on the size of the stimulus and attention field. Here, we manipulated the attention field by emotional valence, negative faces versus positive faces, while holding stimulus size constant in a spatial cueing task. We observed changes in the cueing effect consonant with changes in response gain for negative faces and contrast gain for positive faces. Neuroimaging experiments confirmed that subjects’ attention fields were narrowed for negative faces and broadened for positive faces. Importantly, across subjects, the self-reported emotional strength of negative faces and positive faces correlated, respectively, both with response- and contrast-gain changes and with primary visual cortex (V1) narrowed and broadened attention fields. Effective connectivity analysis showed that the emotional valence-dependent attention field was closely associated with feedback from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) to V1. These findings indicate a crucial involvement of DLPFC in the normalization processes of emotional attention. PMID:27870851

A Normalization Framework for Emotional Attention.

PubMed

Zhang, Xilin; Japee, Shruti; Safiullah, Zaid; Mlynaryk, Nicole; Ungerleider, Leslie G

2016-11-01

The normalization model of attention proposes that attention can affect performance by response- or contrast-gain changes, depending on the size of the stimulus and attention field. Here, we manipulated the attention field by emotional valence, negative faces versus positive faces, while holding stimulus size constant in a spatial cueing task. We observed changes in the cueing effect consonant with changes in response gain for negative faces and contrast gain for positive faces. Neuroimaging experiments confirmed that subjects' attention fields were narrowed for negative faces and broadened for positive faces. Importantly, across subjects, the self-reported emotional strength of negative faces and positive faces correlated, respectively, both with response- and contrast-gain changes and with primary visual cortex (V1) narrowed and broadened attention fields. Effective connectivity analysis showed that the emotional valence-dependent attention field was closely associated with feedback from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) to V1. These findings indicate a crucial involvement of DLPFC in the normalization processes of emotional attention.

Choir singing and creative writing enhance emotion regulation in adults with chronic mental health conditions.

PubMed

Dingle, Genevieve A; Williams, Elyse; Jetten, Jolanda; Welch, Jonathon

2017-11-01

Adults with mental health conditions commonly experience difficulties with emotion regulation which affect their social functioning. Arts-based groups provide opportunities for shared emotional experiences and emotion regulation. This study explores emotion regulation strategies and the emotional effects of arts-based group participation in adults with mental health problems and in controls. The 62 participants included 39 adults with chronic mental health problems who were members of arts-based groups (ABG) and 23 comparison choir (CC) members who were not specifically experiencing mental health problems. The repeated measures design included self-reports of emotion upon waking (T1), the hour before group (T2), end of the group (T3), and evening (T4), as well as participant notes to explain their emotion ratings at each time. They also completed measures of individual and interpersonal emotion regulation. The ABG participants engaged marginally more in affect worsening strategies than CC (p = .057 and .08), but there were no other group differences. All participants reported a significant increase in positive emotions, F (3, 180) = 28.044, p < .001, np2 = .319; and a decrease in negative emotions during the arts-based activity: F (2.637, 155.597) = 21.09, p < .001, np2 = .263. The influence on positive emotions was short-lived, while the effect on negative emotions lasted until evening. Findings show that participation in arts-based groups benefits the emotions of both healthy adults and those experiencing mental health conditions through individual and interpersonal processes. Individuals with chronic mental health conditions often experience difficulties in emotion processing Participation in arts-based groups was associated with significant increases in positive emotions although these were short-lived Negative emotion was significantly decreased during arts-based group activities, and sustained to the evening assessment Adults with chronic mental health conditions were equally able to derive emotional benefits as healthy adults. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

Motivation versus aversive processing during perception.

PubMed

Padmala, Srikanth; Pessoa, Luiz

2014-06-01

Reward facilitates performance and boosts cognitive performance across many tasks. At the same time, negative affective stimuli interfere with performance when they are not relevant to the task at hand. Yet, the investigation of how reward and negative stimuli impact perception and cognition has taken place in a manner that is largely independent of each other. How reward and negative emotion simultaneously contribute to behavioral performance is currently poorly understood. The aim of the present study was to investigate how the simultaneous manipulation of positive motivational processing (here manipulated via reward) and aversive processing (here manipulated via negative picture viewing) influence behavior during a perceptual task. We tested 2 competing hypotheses about the impact of reward on negative picture viewing. On the one hand, suggestions about the automaticity of emotional processing predict that negative picture interference would be relatively immune to reward. On the other, if affective visual processing is not obligatory, as we have argued in the past, reward may counteract the deleterious effect of more potent negative pictures. We found that reward counteracted the effect of potent, negative distracters during a visual discrimination task. Thus, when sufficiently motivated, participants were able to reduce the deleterious impact of bodily mutilation stimuli.

Framing deductive reasoning with emotional content: an fMRI study.

PubMed

Brunetti, M; Perrucci, M G; Di Naccio, M R; Ferretti, A; Del Gratta, C; Casadio, C; Romani, G L

2014-06-01

In the literature concerning the study of emotional effect on cognition, several researches highlight the mechanisms of reasoning ability and the influence of emotions on this ability. However, up to now, no neuroimaging study was specifically devised to directly compare the influence on reasoning performance of visual task-unrelated with semantic task-related emotional information. In the present functional fMRI study, we devised a novel paradigm in which emotionally negative vs. neutral visual stimuli (context) were used as primes, followed by syllogisms composed of propositions with emotionally negative vs. neutral contents respectively. Participants, in the MR scanner, were asked to assess the logical validity of the syllogisms. We have therefore manipulated the emotional state and arousal induced by the visual prime as well as the emotional interference exerted by the syllogism content. fMRI data indicated a medial prefrontal cortex deactivation and lateral/dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation in conditions with negative context. Furthermore, a lateral/dorsolateral prefrontal cortex modulation caused by syllogism content was observed. Finally, behavioral data confirmed the influence of emotional task-related stimuli on reasoning ability, since the performance was worse in conditions with syllogisms involving negative emotions. Therefore, on the basis of these data, we conclude that emotional states can impair the performance in reasoning tasks by means of the delayed general reactivity, whereas the emotional content of the target may require a larger amount of top-down resources to be processed. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Indicators of positive and negative emotions and emotional contagion in pigs.

PubMed

Reimert, Inonge; Bolhuis, J Elizabeth; Kemp, Bas; Rodenburg, T Bas

2013-01-17

For the welfare of group-housed animals, such as pigs, the emotional state of an individual pig is relevant, but also the extent to which pen mates are affected by the distress or pleasure of other individuals, i.e. emotional contagion, a simple form of empathy. Therefore, indicators of positive and negative emotions were investigated in pigs during anticipation and experience of a rewarding (access in pairs to a compartment with straw, peat and chocolate raisins) or aversive (social isolation combined with negative, unpredictable interventions) event. Thereafter the same indicators were investigated in naive pigs during anticipation and experience of a rewarding or aversive event by their trained pen mates. Positive emotions could be indicated by play, barks and tail movements, while negative emotions could be indicated by freezing, defecating, urinating, escape attempts, high-pitched vocalizations (screams, squeals or grunt-squeals), tail low, ears back and ear movements. Salivary cortisol measurements supported these behavioral observations. During anticipation of the aversive event, naive pigs tended to show more tail low. During the aversive event, naive pigs tended to defecate more, while they played more during the rewarding event. These results suggest that pigs might be sensitive to emotional contagion, which could have implications for the welfare of group-housed pigs. Pig emotions and the process of emotional contagion merit, therefore, further research. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Negative Bias in the Perception and Memory of Emotional Information in Alzheimer Disease.

PubMed

Maria, Gomez-Gallego; Juan, Gomez-Garcia

2017-05-01

There is some controversy about the ability of patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) to experience and remember emotional stimuli. This study aims to assess the emotional experience of patients with AD and the existence of emotional enhancement of memory. We also investigated the influence of affective state on these processes. Sixty pictures from the International Affective Picture System were administered to 106 participants (72 patients with AD and 54 controls). Participants performed immediate free recall and recognition tasks. Positive and Negative Affect Schedule was used to assess the participants' current affect. Patients identified the valence of unpleasant pictures better than of others pictures and experienced them as more arousing. Patients and controls recalled and recognized higher number of emotional pictures than of neutral ones. Patients discriminated better the unpleasant pictures. A mood congruent effect was observed on emotional experience but not on memory. Positive affect was associated with better immediate recall and with a more liberal response bias. Patients with AD can identify the emotional content of the stimuli, especially of the unpleasant ones, and the emotional enhancement of memory is preserved. Affective state does not explain the differences in the processing and memory of emotional items between patients and controls.

Distinct neural systems underlying reduced emotional enhancement for positive and negative stimuli in early Alzheimer's disease

PubMed Central

Mistridis, Panagiota; Taylor, Kirsten I.; Kissler, Johanna M.; Monsch, Andreas U.; Kressig, Reto W.; Kivisaari, Sasa L.

2014-01-01

Emotional information is typically better remembered than neutral content, and previous studies suggest that this effect is subserved particularly by the amygdala together with its interactions with the hippocampus. However, it is not known whether amygdala damage affects emotional memory performance at immediate and delayed recall, and whether its involvement is modulated by stimulus valence. Moreover, it is unclear to what extent more distributed neocortical regions involved in e.g., autobiographical memory, also contribute to emotional processing. We investigated these questions in a group of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), which affects the amygdala, hippocampus and neocortical regions. Healthy controls (n = 14), patients with AD (n = 15) and its putative prodrome amnestic mild cognitive impairment (n = 11) completed a memory task consisting of immediate and delayed free recall of a list of positive, negative and neutral words. Memory performance was related to brain integrity in region of interest and whole-brain voxel-based morphometry analyses. In the brain-behavioral analyses, the left amygdala volume predicted the immediate recall of both positive and negative material, whereas at delay, left and right amygdala volumes were associated with performance with positive and negative words, respectively. Whole-brain analyses revealed additional associations between left angular gyrus integrity and the immediate recall of positive words as well as between the orbitofrontal cortex and the delayed recall of negative words. These results indicate that emotional memory impairments in AD may be underpinned by damage to regions implicated in emotional processing as well as frontoparietal regions, which may exert their influence via autobiographical memories and organizational strategies. PMID:24478669

Relationship between cardiac vagal activity and mood congruent memory bias in major depression.

PubMed

Garcia, Ronald G; Valenza, Gaetano; Tomaz, Carlos A; Barbieri, Riccardo

2016-01-15

Previous studies suggest that autonomic reactivity during encoding of emotional information could modulate the neural processes mediating mood-congruent memory. In this study, we use a point-process model to determine dynamic autonomic tone in response to negative emotions and its influence on long-term memory of major depressed subjects. Forty-eight patients with major depression and 48 healthy controls were randomly assigned to either neutral or emotionally arousing audiovisual stimuli. An adaptive point-process algorithm was applied to compute instantaneous estimates of the spectral components of heart rate variability [Low frequency (LF), 0.04-0.15 Hz; High frequency (HF), 0.15-0.4 Hz]. Three days later subjects were submitted to a recall test. A significant increase in HF power was observed in depressed subjects in response to the emotionally arousing stimulus (p=0.03). The results of a multivariate analysis revealed that the HF power during the emotional segment of the stimulus was independently associated with the score of the recall test in depressed subjects, after adjusting for age, gender and educational level (Coef. 0.003, 95%CI, 0.0009-0.005, p=0.008). These results could only be interpreted as responses to elicitation of specific negative emotions, the relationship between HF changes and encoding/recall of positive stimuli should be further examined. Alterations on parasympathetic response to emotion are involved in the mood-congruent cognitive bias observed in major depression. These findings are clinically relevant because it could constitute the mechanism by which depressed patients maintain maladaptive patterns of negative information processing that trigger and sustain depressed mood. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Disentangling fast and slow attentional influences of negative and taboo spoken words in the emotional Stroop paradigm.

PubMed

Bertels, Julie; Kolinsky, Régine

2016-09-01

Although the influence of the emotional content of stimuli on attention has been considered as occurring within trial, recent studies revealed that the presentation of such stimuli would also involve a slow component. The aim of the present study was to investigate fast and slow effects of negative (Exp. 1) and taboo (Exp. 2) spoken words. For this purpose, we used an auditory variant of the emotional Stroop paradigm in which each emotional word was followed by a sequence of neutral words. Replicating results from our previous study, we observed slow but no fast effects of negative and taboo words, which we interpreted as reflecting difficulties to disengage attention from their emotional dimension. Interestingly, while the presentation of a negative word only delayed the processing of the immediately subsequent neutral word, slow effects of taboo words were long-lasting. Nevertheless, such attentional effects were only observed when the emotional words were presented in the first block of trials, suggesting that once participants develop strategies to perform the task, attention-grabbing effects of emotional words disappear. Hence, far from being automatic, the occurrence of these effects would depend on participants' attentional set.

Enhanced emotional interference on working memory performance in adults with ADHD.

PubMed

Marx, Ivo; Domes, Gregor; Havenstein, Carolin; Berger, Christoph; Schulze, Lars; Herpertz, Sabine C

2011-09-01

Subjects with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) suffer from both executive dysfunction and deficits in emotion regulation. However, up to now, there has been no research demonstrating a clear impact of emotional dysregulation on cognitive performance in subjects with ADHD. Male and female adults with ADHD (n=39) and gender- and IQ-matched control subjects (n=40) performed an emotional working memory task (n-back task). In the background of the task, we presented neutral and negative stimuli varied in emotional saliency (negative pictures with low saliency, negative pictures with high saliency), but subjects were instructed to ignore these pictures and to process the working memory task as quickly and as accurately as possible. Compared to control subjects, ADHD patients showed both a general working memory deficit and enhanced distractability by emotionally salient stimuli in terms of lower n-back performance accuracy. In particular, while controls showed impaired WM performance when presented with highly arousing negative background pictures, a comparable decrement was observed in the ADHD group already with lowly arousing pictures. Our results suggest that difficulties in suppressing attention towards emotionally laden stimuli might result from deficient executive control in ADHD.

The Interaction of Emotional Valence and Arousal on Attentional Breadth and Creative Task Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tidikis, Viktoria; Ash, Ivan K.; Collier, Ann Futterman

2017-01-01

Within the literature, there are two opposing views regarding the influencing role of emotions on the creative process. The most commonly held view contends that positive emotions enhance creativity and negative emotions stifle it; yet, some studies show an opposite trend. These contradictory findings can be explained by examining two aspects of…

Emotional Body Odors as Context: Effects on Cardiac and Subjective Responses.

PubMed

Ferreira, Jacqueline; Parma, Valentina; Alho, Laura; Silva, Carlos F; Soares, Sandra C

2018-05-23

Many studies have indicated that the chemical cues from body odors (BOs) of donors experiencing negative emotions can influence the psychophysiological and behavioral response of the observers. However, these olfactory cues have been used mainly as contextual information for processing visual stimuli. Here, for the first time, we evaluate how emotional BO affects the emotional tone of a subsequent BO message. Axillary sweat samples were taken from 20 donors in 3 separate sessions while they watched fear, disgust, or neutral videos. In a double-blind experiment, we assessed the cardiac and subjective responses from 69 participants who were either exposed to negative emotional or neutral BOs. Our results showed a reduced cardiac parasympathetic activity (HF%)-indicating increased stress-when participants smelled the emotional BOs before the neutral BOs, compared to when they smelled neutral followed by emotional BOs. The intensity of the neutral odor also increased following the exposure to both negative BOs. These findings indicate that BOs contain an emotion-dependent chemical cue that affects the perceiver both at the physiological and subjective levels.

Cognitive Bias by Gender Interaction on N170 Response to Emotional Facial Expressions in Major and Minor Depression.

PubMed

Wu, Xingqu; Chen, Jiu; Jia, Ting; Ma, Wentao; Zhang, Yan; Deng, Zihe; Yang, Laiqi

2016-03-01

States of depression are considered to relate to a cognitive bias reactivity to emotional events. Moreover, gender effect may influence differences in emotional processing. The current study is to investigate whether there is an interaction of cognitive bias by gender on emotional processing in minor depression (MiD) and major depression (MaD). N170 component was obtained during a visual emotional oddball paradigm to manipulate the processing of emotional information in 33 MiD, 36 MaD, and 32 controls (CN). Compared with CN, in male, both MiD and MaD had lower N170 amplitudes for happy faces, but MaD had higher N170 amplitudes for sad faces; in female, both MiD and MaD had lower N170 amplitudes for happy and neutral faces, but higher N170 amplitudes for sad faces. Compared with MaD in male, MiD had higher N170 amplitudes for happy faces, lower N170 amplitudes for sad faces; in female, MiD only had higher N170 amplitudes for sad faces. Interestingly, a negative relationship was observed between N170 amplitude and the HDRS score for identification of happy faces in depressed patients while N170 amplitude was positively correlated with the HDRS score for sad faces identification. These results provide novel evidence for the mood-brightening effect with an interaction of cognitive bias by gender on emotional processing. It further suggests that female depression may be more vulnerable than male during emotional face processing with the unconscious negative cognitive bias and depressive syndromes may exist on a spectrum of severity on emotional face processing.

Selective visual attention to emotional words: Early parallel frontal and visual activations followed by interactive effects in visual cortex.

PubMed

Schindler, Sebastian; Kissler, Johanna

2016-10-01

Human brains spontaneously differentiate between various emotional and neutral stimuli, including written words whose emotional quality is symbolic. In the electroencephalogram (EEG), emotional-neutral processing differences are typically reflected in the early posterior negativity (EPN, 200-300 ms) and the late positive potential (LPP, 400-700 ms). These components are also enlarged by task-driven visual attention, supporting the assumption that emotional content naturally drives attention. Still, the spatio-temporal dynamics of interactions between emotional stimulus content and task-driven attention remain to be specified. Here, we examine this issue in visual word processing. Participants attended to negative, neutral, or positive nouns while high-density EEG was recorded. Emotional content and top-down attention both amplified the EPN component in parallel. On the LPP, by contrast, emotion and attention interacted: Explicit attention to emotional words led to a substantially larger amplitude increase than did explicit attention to neutral words. Source analysis revealed early parallel effects of emotion and attention in bilateral visual cortex and a later interaction of both in right visual cortex. Distinct effects of attention were found in inferior, middle and superior frontal, paracentral, and parietal areas, as well as in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Results specify separate and shared mechanisms of emotion and attention at distinct processing stages. Hum Brain Mapp 37:3575-3587, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Modulation of Arm Reaching Movements during Processing of Arm/Hand-Related Action Verbs with and without Emotional Connotation

PubMed Central

Spadacenta, Silvia; Gallese, Vittorio; Fragola, Michele; Mirabella, Giovanni

2014-01-01

The theory of embodied language states that language comprehension relies on an internal reenactment of the sensorimotor experience associated with the processed word or sentence. Most evidence in support of this hypothesis had been collected using linguistic material without any emotional connotation. For instance, it had been shown that processing of arm-related verbs, but not of those leg-related verbs, affects the planning and execution of reaching movements; however, at present it is unknown whether this effect is further modulated by verbs evoking an emotional experience. Showing such a modulation might shed light on a very debated issue, i.e. the way in which the emotional meaning of a word is processed. To this end, we assessed whether processing arm/hand-related verbs describing actions with negative connotations (e.g. to stab) affects reaching movements differently from arm/hand-related verbs describing actions with neutral connotation (e.g. to comb). We exploited a go/no-go paradigm in which healthy participants were required to perform arm-reaching movements toward a target when verbs expressing emotional hand actions, neutral hand actions or foot actions were shown, and to refrain from moving when no-effector-related verbs were presented. Reaction times and percentages of errors increased when the verb involved the same effector as used to give the response. However, we also found that the size of this interference decreased when the arm/hand-related verbs had a negative emotional connotation. Crucially, we show that such modulation only occurred when the verb semantics had to be retrieved. These results suggest that the comprehension of negatively valenced verbs might require the simultaneous reenactment of the neural circuitry associated with the processing of the emotion evoked by their meaning and of the neural circuitry associated with their motor features. PMID:25093410

Positive and negative affective processing exhibit dissociable functional hubs during the viewing of affective pictures.

PubMed

Zhang, Wenhai; Li, Hong; Pan, Xiaohong

2015-02-01

Recent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies using graph theory metrics have revealed that the functional network of the human brain possesses small-world characteristics and comprises several functional hub regions. However, it is unclear how the affective functional network is organized in the brain during the processing of affective information. In this study, the fMRI data were collected from 25 healthy college students as they viewed a total of 81 positive, neutral, and negative pictures. The results indicated that affective functional networks exhibit weaker small-worldness properties with higher local efficiency, implying that local connections increase during viewing affective pictures. Moreover, positive and negative emotional processing exhibit dissociable functional hubs, emerging mainly in task-positive regions. These functional hubs, which are the centers of information processing, have nodal betweenness centrality values that are at least 1.5 times larger than the average betweenness centrality of the network. Positive affect scores correlated with the betweenness values of the right orbital frontal cortex (OFC) and the right putamen in the positive emotional network; negative affect scores correlated with the betweenness values of the left OFC and the left amygdala in the negative emotional network. The local efficiencies in the left superior and inferior parietal lobe correlated with subsequent arousal ratings of positive and negative pictures, respectively. These observations provide important evidence for the organizational principles of the human brain functional connectome during the processing of affective information. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Benefits of emotional integration and costs of emotional distancing.

PubMed

Roth, Guy; Shahar, Bat-Hen; Zohar-Shefer, Yael; Benita, Moti; Moed, Anat; Bibi, Uri; Kanat-Maymon, Yaniv; Ryan, Richard M

2017-12-09

Three studies explored the consequences of the self-determination theory conception of integrative emotion regulation (IER; Ryan & Deci, 2017), which involves an interested stance toward emotions. Emotional, physiological, and cognitive consequences of IER were compared to the consequences of emotional distancing (ED), in relation to a fear-eliciting film. In Study 1, we manipulated emotion regulation by prompting students' (N = 90) IER and ED and also included a control group. Then we tested groups' defensive versus nondefensive emotional processing, coded from post-film written texts. Study 2 (N = 90) and Study 3 (N = 135) used the same emotion regulation manipulations but exposed participants to the fear-eliciting film twice, 72 hr apart, to examine each style's protection from adverse emotional, physiological, and cognitive costs at second exposure. Participants who had been prompted to practice IER were expected to benefit more than participants in the ED and control groups at second exposure, as manifested in lower arousal and better cognitive capacity. Overall, results supported our hypotheses. The current studies provide some support for the assumption that in comparison to ED, taking interest in and accepting one's negative emotions are linked with less defensive processing of negative experiences and with better functioning. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Impairment in the recognition of emotion across different media following traumatic brain injury.

PubMed

Williams, Claire; Wood, Rodger Ll

2010-02-01

The current study examined emotion recognition following traumatic brain injury (TBI) and examined whether performance differed according to the affective valence and type of media presentation of the stimuli. A total of 64 patients with TBI and matched controls completed the Emotion Evaluation Test (EET) and Ekman 60 Faces Test (E-60-FT). Patients with TBI also completed measures of information processing and verbal ability. Results revealed that the TBI group were significantly impaired compared to controls when recognizing emotion on the EET and E-60-FT. A significant main effect of valence was found in both groups, with poor recognition of negative emotions. However, the difference between the recognition of positive and negative emotions was larger in the TBI group. The TBI group were also more accurate recognizing emotion displayed in audiovisual media (EET) than that displayed in still media (E-60-FT). No significant relationship was obtained between emotion recognition tasks and information-processing speed. A significant positive relationship was found between the E-60-FT and one measure of verbal ability. These findings support models of emotion that specify separate neurological pathways for certain emotions and different media and confirm that patients with TBI are vulnerable to experiencing emotion recognition difficulties.

Right Hemispheric Dominance in Processing of Unconscious Negative Emotion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sato, Wataru; Aoki, Satoshi

2006-01-01

Right hemispheric dominance in unconscious emotional processing has been suggested, but remains controversial. This issue was investigated using the subliminal affective priming paradigm combined with unilateral visual presentation in 40 normal subjects. In either left or right visual fields, angry facial expressions, happy facial expressions, or…

Marijuana's acute effects on cognitive bias for affective and marijuana cues.

PubMed

Metrik, Jane; Aston, Elizabeth R; Kahler, Christopher W; Rohsenow, Damaris J; McGeary, John E; Knopik, Valerie S

2015-10-01

Marijuana produces acute increases in positive subjective effects and decreased reactivity to negative affective stimuli, though may also acutely induce anxiety. Implicit attentional and evaluative processes may explicate marijuana's ability to acutely increase positive and negative emotions. This within-subjects study examined whether smoked marijuana with 2.7-3.0% delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), relative to placebo, acutely changed attentional processing of rewarding and negative affective stimuli as well as marijuana-specific stimuli. On 2 separate days, regular marijuana users (N = 89) smoked placebo or active THC cigarette and completed subjective ratings of mood, intoxication, urge to smoke marijuana, and 2 experimental tasks: pleasantness rating (response latency and perceived pleasantness of affective and marijuana-related stimuli) and emotional Stroop (attentional bias to affective stimuli). On the pleasantness rating task, active marijuana increased response latency to negatively valenced and marijuana-related (vs. neutral) visual stimuli, beyond a general slowing of response. Active marijuana also increased pleasantness ratings of marijuana images, although to a lesser extent than placebo due to reduced marijuana urge after smoking. Overall, active marijuana did not acutely change processing of positive emotional stimuli. There was no evidence of attentional bias to affective word stimuli on the emotional Stroop task with the exception of attentional bias to positive word stimuli in the subgroup of marijuana users with cannabis dependence. Marijuana may increase allocation of attentional resources toward marijuana-specific and negatively valenced visual stimuli without altering processing of positively valenced stimuli. Marijuana-specific cues may be more attractive with higher levels of marijuana craving and less wanted with low craving levels. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Marijuana’s Acute Effects on Cognitive Bias for Affective and Marijuana Cues

PubMed Central

Metrik, Jane; Aston, Elizabeth R.; Kahler, Christopher W.; Rohsenow, Damaris J.; McGeary, John E.; Knopik, Valerie S.

2015-01-01

Marijuana produces acute increases in positive subjective effects and decreased reactivity to negative affective stimuli, though may also acutely induce anxiety. Implicit attentional and evaluative processes may explicate marijuana’s ability to acutely increase positive and negative emotions. This within-subjects study examined whether smoked marijuana with 2.7–3.0 % delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), relative to placebo, acutely changed attentional processing of rewarding and negative affective stimuli as well as marijuana-specific stimuli. On two separate days, regular marijuana users (N=89) smoked placebo or active THC cigarette and completed subjective ratings of mood, intoxication, urge to smoke marijuana, and two experimental tasks: Pleasantness Rating (response latency and perceived pleasantness of affective and marijuana-related stimuli) and Emotional Stroop (attentional bias to affective stimuli). On the Pleasantness Rating task, active marijuana increased response latency to negatively-valenced and marijuana-related (vs. neutral) visual stimuli, beyond a general slowing of response. Active marijuana also increased pleasantness ratings of marijuana images, although to a lesser extent than placebo due to reduced marijuana urge after smoking. Overall, active marijuana did not acutely change processing of positive emotional stimuli. There was no evidence of attentional bias to affective word stimuli on the Emotional Stroop task with the exception of attentional bias to positive word stimuli in the subgroup of marijuana users with cannabis dependence. Marijuana may increase allocation of attentional resources towards marijuana-specific and negatively-valenced visual stimuli without altering processing of positively-valenced stimuli. Marijuana-specific cues may be more attractive with higher levels of marijuana craving and less wanted with low craving levels. PMID:26167716

Preattentive processing, poststimulus elaboration, and memory for emotionally arousing stimuli.

PubMed

Migita, Mai; Otani, Hajime; Libkuman, Terry M; Sheffert, Sonya M

2011-01-01

Christianson (1992) proposed two mechanisms to explain emotionally enhanced memory: preattentive processing and poststimulus elaboration. Experiment 1 examined these processes by instructing participants to perform (1) a concurrent distractor task, (2) a continuous distractor task, or (3) both while viewing the negatively arousing, positively arousing, and neutral pictures. Recall of negatively arousing pictures showed a small decline in one of the distractor conditions, indicating that elaboration plays a minor role in remembering these pictures. Experiment 2 partially replicated Experiment 1 with an intentional learning instruction to investigate whether participants in Experiment 1 were anticipating a recall test. For all three picture types, recall declined in the continuous distractor task condition, indicating that elaboration played a role, even when the pictures were negatively arousing. Overall, these results were consistent with the notion that remembering negatively valenced stimuli is largely based on preattentive processing with a minor role played by poststimulus elaboration.

Emotion speeds up conflict resolution: a new role for the ventral anterior cingulate cortex?

PubMed

Kanske, Philipp; Kotz, Sonja A

2011-04-01

It has been hypothesized that processing of conflict is facilitated by emotion. Emotional stimuli signal significance in a situation. Thus, when an emotional stimulus is task relevant, more resources may be devoted to conflict processing to reduce the time that an organism is unable to act. In the present electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, we employed a conflict task and manipulated the emotional content and prosody of auditory target stimuli. In line with our hypothesis, reaction times revealed faster conflict resolution for emotional stimuli. Early stages of event-related potential conflict processing were modulated by emotion as indexed in an enhanced frontocentral negativity at 420 ms. FMRI yielded conflict activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), a crucial part of the executive control network. The right ventral ACC (vACC) was activated for conflict processing in emotional stimuli, suggesting that it is additionally activated for conflict processing in emotional stimuli. The amygdala was also activated by emotion. Furthermore, emotion increased functional connectivity between the vACC and activity in the amygdala and the dACC. The results support the hypothesis that emotion speeds up conflict processing and suggest a new role for the vACC in processing conflict in particularly significant situations signaled by emotion.

How Mood and Task Complexity Affect Children's Recognition of Others’ Emotions

PubMed Central

Cummings, Andrew J.; Rennels, Jennifer L.

2013-01-01

Previous studies examined how mood affects children's accuracy in matching emotional expressions and labels (label-based tasks). This study was the first to assess how induced mood (positive, neutral, or negative) influenced 5- to 8-year-olds’ accuracy and reaction time using both context-based tasks, which required inferring a character's emotion from a vignette, and label-based tasks. Both tasks required choosing one of four facial expressions to respond. Children responded more accurately to label-based questions relative to context-based questions at 5 to 7 years of age, but showed no differences at 8 years of age, and when the emotional expression being identified was happiness, sadness, or surprise, but not disgust. For the context-based questions, children were more accurate at inferring sad and disgusted emotions compared to happy and surprised emotions. Induced positive mood facilitated 5-year-olds’ processing (decreased reaction time) in both tasks compared to induced negative and neutral moods. Results demonstrate how task type and children's mood influence children's emotion processing at different ages. PMID:24489442

Behavioral Assessment of Emotion Discrimination, Emotion Regulation, and Cognitive Control in Childhood, Adolescence, and Adulthood

PubMed Central

Tottenham, Nim; Hare, Todd A.; Casey, B. J.

2011-01-01

Emotion discrimination, emotion regulation, and cognitive control are three related, yet separable processes that emerge over the course of development. The current study tested 100 children, adolescents, and adults on an Emotional Go/Nogo task, illustrating the ability of this paradigm to identify the unique developmental patterns for each of these three processes in the context of both positive (happy) and negative emotions (fear, sad, and anger), across three different age groups. Consistent with previous literature, our findings show that emotion discrimination and regulatory abilities (both cognitive control and emotion regulation) improve steadily for each age group, with each age group showing unique patterns of performance. The findings suggest that emotion regulation is constructed from basic cognition control and emotion discrimination skills. The patterns of behavior from the Emotional Go/Nogo task provide normative benchmark data across a wide range of emotions that can be used for future behavioral and neuroimaging studies that examine the developmental construction of emotion regulatory processes. PMID:21716604

Effect of anxiety on memory for emotional information in older adults.

PubMed

Herrera, Sara; Montorio, Ignacio; Cabrera, Isabel

2017-04-01

Several studies have shown that anxiety is associated with a better memory of negative events. However, this anxiety-related memory bias has not been studied in the elderly, in which there is a preferential processing of positive information. To study the effect of anxiety in a recognition task and an autobiographical memory task in 102 older adults with high and low levels of trait anxiety. Negative, positive and neutral pictures were used in the recognition task. In the autobiographical memory task, memories of the participants' lives were recorded, how they felt when thinking about them, and the personal relevance of these memories. In the recognition task, no anxiety-related bias was found toward negative information. Individuals with high trait anxiety were found to remember less positive pictures than those with low trait anxiety. In the autobiographical memory task, both groups remembered negative and positive events equally. However, people with high trait anxiety remembered life experiences with more negative emotions, especially when remembering negative events. Individuals with low trait anxiety tended to feel more positive emotions when remembering their life experiences and most of these referred to feeling positive emotions when remembering negative events. Older adults with anxiety tend to recognize less positive information and to present more negative emotions when remembering life events; while individuals without anxiety have a more positive experience of negative memories.

Metabolic and hormone influences on emotion processing during menopause.

PubMed

Berent-Spillson, Alison; Marsh, Courtney; Persad, Carol; Randolph, John; Zubieta, Jon-Kar; Smith, Yolanda

2017-02-01

Disturbances of emotion regulation and depressive symptoms are common during the menopause transition. Reproductive hormone levels are not directly correlated with depressive symptoms, and other factors may influence mood symptoms during menopause. In this study, we sought to determine the role of metabolic function in mood symptoms during menopause, hypothesizing an association with menopause status and long-term glucose load. We studied 54 women across three menopause transition stages (15 premenopause, 11 perimenopause, and 28 postmenopause), examining effects of age, hormones, and metabolism on mood and neural activation during emotional discrimination. We assessed participants using behavioral and functional MRI measures of negative emotion and emotion discrimination, and glycated hemoglobin A1c, to assess long-term glucose load. We found that emotionally unpleasant images activated emotion regulation (amygdala) and cognitive association brain regions (prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, temporal-parietal-occipital (TPO) junction, hippocampus). Cognitive association region activity increased with menopause stage. Perimenopausal women had left TPO junction activation, and postmenopausal women had prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, and TPO junction activation. Negative affect was associated with decreased amygdala activation, while depression symptoms and negative mood were associated with increased TPO junction activation. Hemoglobin A1c was associated with negative interpretation bias of neutral images and cognitive region recruitment during emotion discrimination. FSH levels, indicating menopause stage, were associated with negative mood. Age was not associated with any behavioral measures or activation patterns during the emotion task. Our results suggest that an interaction between metabolic and hormonal factors may influence emotion regulation, leading to increased risk for depression during menopause. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Smiling faces and cash bonuses: Exploring common affective coding across positive and negative emotional and motivational stimuli using fMRI.

PubMed

Park, Haeme R P; Kostandyan, Mariam; Boehler, C Nico; Krebs, Ruth M

2018-06-01

Although it is clear that emotional and motivational manipulations yield a strong influence on cognition and behaviour, these domains have mostly been investigated in independent research lines. Therefore, it remains poorly understood how far these affective manipulations overlap in terms of their underlying neural activations, especially in light of previous findings that suggest a shared valence mechanism across multiple affective processing domains (e.g., monetary incentives, primary rewards, emotional events). This is particularly interesting considering the commonality between emotional and motivational constructs in terms of their basic affective nature (positive vs. negative), but dissociations in terms of instrumentality, in that only reward-related stimuli are typically associated with performance-contingent outcomes. Here, we aimed to examine potential common neural processes triggered by emotional and motivational stimuli in matched tasks within participants using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Across tasks, we found shared valence effects in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus (part of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), with increased activity for positive and negative stimuli, respectively. Despite this commonality, emotion and reward tasks featured differential behavioural patterns in that negative valence effects (performance costs) were exclusive to emotional stimuli, while positive valence effects (performance benefits) were only observed for reward-related stimuli. Overall, our data suggest a common affective coding mechanism across different task domains and support the idea that monetary incentives entail signed basic valence signals, above and beyond the instruction to perform both gain and loss trials as accurately as possible to maximise the outcome.

Gaze-cueing effect depends on facial expression of emotion in 9- to 12-month-old infants

PubMed Central

Niedźwiecka, Alicja; Tomalski, Przemysław

2015-01-01

Efficient processing of gaze direction and facial expression of emotion is crucial for early social and emotional development. Toward the end of the first year of life infants begin to pay more attention to negative expressions, but it remains unclear to what extent emotion expression is processed jointly with gaze direction at this age. This study sought to establish the interactions of gaze direction and emotion expression in visual orienting in 9- to 12-month-olds. In particular, we tested whether these interactions can be explained by the negativity bias hypothesis and the shared signal hypothesis. We measured saccadic latencies in response to peripheral targets in a gaze-cueing paradigm with happy, angry, and fearful female faces. In the Pilot Experiment three gaze directions were used (direct, congruent with target location, incongruent with target location). In the Main Experiment we sought to replicate the results of the Pilot experiment using a simpler design without the direct gaze condition. In both experiments we found a robust gaze-cueing effect for happy faces, i.e., facilitation of orienting toward the target in the gaze-cued location, compared with the gaze-incongruent location. We found more rapid orienting to targets cued by happy relative to angry and fearful faces. We did not find any gaze-cueing effect for angry or fearful faces. These results are not consistent with the shared signal hypothesis. While our results show differential processing of positive and negative emotions, they do not support a general negativity bias. On the contrary, they indicate that toward the age of 12 months infants show a positivity bias in gaze-cueing tasks. PMID:25713555

Poverty, household chaos, and interparental aggression predict children’s ability to recognize and modulate negative emotions

PubMed Central

Raver, C. Cybele; Blair, Clancy; Garrett-Peters, Patricia

2015-01-01

The following prospective longitudinal study considers the ways that protracted exposure to verbal and physical aggression between parents may take a substantial toll on emotional adjustment for 1,025 children followed from 6 to 58 months of age. Exposure to chronic poverty from infancy to early childhood as well as multiple measures of household chaos were also included as predictors of children’s ability to recognize and modulate negative emotions in order to disentangle the role of interparental conflict from the socioeconomic forces that sometimes accompany it. Analyses revealed that exposure to greater levels of interparental conflict, more chaos in the household, and a higher number of years in poverty can be empirically distinguished as key contributors to 58-month-olds’ ability to recognize and modulate negative emotion. Implications for models of experiential canalization of emotional processes within the context of adversity are discussed. PMID:25215541

Poverty, household chaos, and interparental aggression predict children's ability to recognize and modulate negative emotions.

PubMed

Raver, C Cybele; Blair, Clancy; Garrett-Peters, Patricia

2015-08-01

The following prospective longitudinal study considers the ways that protracted exposure to verbal and physical aggression between parents may take a substantial toll on emotional adjustment for 1,025 children followed from 6 to 58 months of age. Exposure to chronic poverty from infancy to early childhood as well as multiple measures of household chaos were also included as predictors of children's ability to recognize and modulate negative emotions in order to disentangle the role of interparental conflict from the socioeconomic forces that sometimes accompany it. Analyses revealed that exposure to greater levels of interparental conflict, more chaos in the household, and a higher number of years in poverty can be empirically distinguished as key contributors to 58-month-olds' ability to recognize and modulate negative emotion. Implications for models of experiential canalization of emotional processes within the context of adversity are discussed.

Discrete Neural Correlates for the Recognition of Negative Emotions: Insights from Frontotemporal Dementia

PubMed Central

Kumfor, Fiona; Irish, Muireann; Hodges, John R.; Piguet, Olivier

2013-01-01

Patients with frontotemporal dementia have pervasive changes in emotion recognition and social cognition, yet the neural changes underlying these emotion processing deficits remain unclear. The multimodal system model of emotion proposes that basic emotions are dependent on distinct brain regions, which undergo significant pathological changes in frontotemporal dementia. As such, this syndrome may provide important insight into the impact of neural network degeneration upon the innate ability to recognise emotions. This study used voxel-based morphometry to identify discrete neural correlates involved in the recognition of basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and happiness) in frontotemporal dementia. Forty frontotemporal dementia patients (18 behavioural-variant, 11 semantic dementia, 11 progressive nonfluent aphasia) and 27 healthy controls were tested on two facial emotion recognition tasks: The Ekman 60 and Ekman Caricatures. Although each frontotemporal dementia group showed impaired recognition of negative emotions, distinct associations between emotion-specific task performance and changes in grey matter intensity emerged. Fear recognition was associated with the right amygdala; disgust recognition with the left insula; anger recognition with the left middle and superior temporal gyrus; and sadness recognition with the left subcallosal cingulate, indicating that discrete neural substrates are necessary for emotion recognition in frontotemporal dementia. The erosion of emotion-specific neural networks in neurodegenerative disorders may produce distinct profiles of performance that are relevant to understanding the neurobiological basis of emotion processing. PMID:23805313

Emotional Speech Perception Unfolding in Time: The Role of the Basal Ganglia

PubMed Central

Paulmann, Silke; Ott, Derek V. M.; Kotz, Sonja A.

2011-01-01

The basal ganglia (BG) have repeatedly been linked to emotional speech processing in studies involving patients with neurodegenerative and structural changes of the BG. However, the majority of previous studies did not consider that (i) emotional speech processing entails multiple processing steps, and the possibility that (ii) the BG may engage in one rather than the other of these processing steps. In the present study we investigate three different stages of emotional speech processing (emotional salience detection, meaning-related processing, and identification) in the same patient group to verify whether lesions to the BG affect these stages in a qualitatively different manner. Specifically, we explore early implicit emotional speech processing (probe verification) in an ERP experiment followed by an explicit behavioral emotional recognition task. In both experiments, participants listened to emotional sentences expressing one of four emotions (anger, fear, disgust, happiness) or neutral sentences. In line with previous evidence patients and healthy controls show differentiation of emotional and neutral sentences in the P200 component (emotional salience detection) and a following negative-going brain wave (meaning-related processing). However, the behavioral recognition (identification stage) of emotional sentences was impaired in BG patients, but not in healthy controls. The current data provide further support that the BG are involved in late, explicit rather than early emotional speech processing stages. PMID:21437277

Women in the midluteal phase of the menstrual cycle have difficulty suppressing the processing of negative emotional stimuli: An event-related potential study.

PubMed

Lusk, Bethany R; Carr, Andrea R; Ranson, Valerie A; Felmingham, Kim L

2017-08-01

Emotion regulation deficits have been implicated in anxiety and depressive disorders, and these internalising disorders are more prevalent in women than men. Few electrophysiological studies have investigated sex differences in emotional reactivity and emotion regulation controlling for menstrual phase. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 28 early follicular women, 29 midluteal women, and 27 men who completed an emotion regulation task. A novel finding of increased N2 amplitude during suppression was found for midluteal women compared with men. These findings suggest midluteal women may be significantly less able to suppress cortical processing of negative stimuli compared to men. This ERP finding was complemented by behavioral ratings data which revealed that while both early follicular and midluteal women reported more distress than men, midluteal women also reported greater effort when suppressing their responses than men. P1 and N1 components were increased in midluteal women compared to men regardless of instructional set, suggesting greater early attentional processing. No sex or menstrual phase differences were apparent in P3 or LPP. This study underscores the importance of considering menstrual phase when examining sex differences in the cortical processing of emotion regulation and demonstrates that midluteal women may have deficits in down-regulating their neural and behavioural responses.

Visual short-term memory load modulates the early attention and perception of task-irrelevant emotional faces

PubMed Central

Yang, Ping; Wang, Min; Jin, Zhenlan; Li, Ling

2015-01-01

The ability to focus on task-relevant information, while suppressing distraction, is critical for human cognition and behavior. Using a delayed-match-to-sample (DMS) task, we investigated the effects of emotional face distractors (positive, negative, and neutral faces) on early and late phases of visual short-term memory (VSTM) maintenance intervals, using low and high VSTM loads. Behavioral results showed decreased accuracy and delayed reaction times (RTs) for high vs. low VSTM load. Event-related potentials (ERPs) showed enhanced frontal N1 and occipital P1 amplitudes for negative faces vs. neutral or positive faces, implying rapid attentional alerting effects and early perceptual processing of negative distractors. However, high VSTM load appeared to inhibit face processing in general, showing decreased N1 amplitudes and delayed P1 latencies. An inverse correlation between the N1 activation difference (high-load minus low-load) and RT costs (high-load minus low-load) was found at left frontal areas when viewing negative distractors, suggesting that the greater the inhibition the lower the RT cost for negative faces. Emotional interference effect was not found in the late VSTM-related parietal P300, frontal positive slow wave (PSW) and occipital negative slow wave (NSW) components. In general, our findings suggest that the VSTM load modulates the early attention and perception of emotional distractors. PMID:26388763

Effects of emotion and reward motivation on neural correlates of episodic memory encoding: a PET study.

PubMed

Shigemune, Yayoi; Abe, Nobuhito; Suzuki, Maki; Ueno, Aya; Mori, Etsuro; Tashiro, Manabu; Itoh, Masatoshi; Fujii, Toshikatsu

2010-05-01

It is known that emotion and reward motivation promote long-term memory formation. It remains unclear, however, how and where emotion and reward are integrated during episodic memory encoding. In the present study, subjects were engaged in intentional encoding of photographs under four different conditions that were made by combining two factors (emotional valence, negative or neutral; and monetary reward value, high or low for subsequent successful recognition) during H2 15O positron emission tomography (PET) scanning. As for recognition performance, we found significant main effects of emotional valence (negative>neutral) and reward value (high value>low value), without an interaction between the two factors. Imaging data showed that the left amygdala was activated during the encoding conditions of negative pictures relative to neutral pictures, and the left orbitofrontal cortex was activated during the encoding conditions of high reward pictures relative to low reward pictures. In addition, conjunction analysis of these two main effects detected right hippocampal activation. Although we could not find correlations between recognition performance and activity of these three regions, we speculate that the right hippocampus may integrate the effects of emotion (processed in the amygdala) and monetary reward (processed in the orbitofrontal cortex) on episodic memory encoding. 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd and the Japan Neuroscience Society. All rights reserved.

Preschool negative emotionality predicts activity and connectivity of the fusiform face area and amygdala in later childhood.

PubMed

Kann, Sarah J; O'Rawe, Jonathan F; Huang, Anna S; Klein, Daniel N; Leung, Hoi-Chung

2017-09-01

Negative emotionality (NE) refers to individual differences in the propensity to experience and react with negative emotions and is associated with increased risk of psychological disorder. However, research on the neural bases of NE has focused almost exclusively on amygdala activity during emotional face processing. This study broadened this framework by examining the relationship between observed NE in early childhood and subsequent neural responses to emotional faces in both the amygdala and the fusiform face area (FFA) in a late childhood/early adolescent sample. Measures of NE were obtained from children at age 3 using laboratory observations, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were collected when these children were between the ages of 9 and 12 while performing a visual stimulus identity matching task with houses and emotional faces as stimuli. Multiple regression analyses revealed that higher NE at age 3 is associated with significantly greater activation in the left amygdala and left FFA but lower functional connectivity between these two regions during the face conditions. These findings suggest that those with higher early NE have subsequent alterations in both activity and connectivity within an extended network during face processing. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press.

Influences of parent and child negative emotionality on young children's everyday behaviors.

PubMed

Slatcher, Richard B; Trentacosta, Christopher J

2012-10-01

Negative emotionality is linked to unfavorable life outcomes, but studies have yet to examine negative emotionality of parents and children as predictors of children's problem behaviors and negative emotion word use in everyday life. This study used a novel naturalistic recording device called the Electronically Activated Recorder to investigate the separate and interactive influences of parent and child negative emotionality on daily child behaviors in a sample of 35 preschool-aged children over two time points separated by 1 year. Fathers' negative emotionality predicted children's whining at Time 1; mothers' negative emotionality predicted children's negative emotion word use at Time 1 and increases in children's arguing/fighting from Time 1 to Time 2. Parents' ratings of child negative emotionality also were associated with increases in children's arguing/fighting from Time 1 to Time 2, and child negative emotionality moderated the association between mothers' negative emotionality and children's arguing/fighting. Further, children with mothers high in negative emotionality displayed higher levels of problem behaviors when their mothers self-reported low levels of positive emotional expressiveness and/or high levels of negative emotional expressiveness. These findings offer preliminary evidence linking parent and child negative emotionality to everyday child behaviors and suggest that emotional expressiveness may play a key role in moderating the links between maternal negative emotionality and child behavioral problems.

Intrinsic functional connectivity underlying successful emotion regulation of angry faces

PubMed Central

Morawetz, Carmen; Kellermann, Tanja; Kogler, Lydia; Radke, Sina; Blechert, Jens; Derntl, Birgit

2016-01-01

Most of our social interaction is naturally based on emotional information derived from the perception of faces of other people. Negative facial expressions of a counterpart might trigger negative emotions and initiate emotion regulatory efforts to reduce the impact of the received emotional message in a perceiver. Despite the high adaptive value of emotion regulation in social interaction, the neural underpinnings of it are largely unknown. To remedy this, this study investigated individual differences in emotion regulation effectiveness during the reappraisal of angry faces on the underlying functional activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as well as the underlying functional connectivity using resting-state fMRI. Greater emotion regulation ability was associated with greater functional activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, greater functional coupling between activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the amygdala was associated with emotion regulation success. Our findings provide a first link between prefrontal cognitive control and subcortical emotion processing systems during successful emotion regulation in an explicitly social context. PMID:27510495

Negative affectivity: moderator or confound in emotional dissonance-outcome relationships?

PubMed

Abraham, R

1999-01-01

This study was an examination of the impact of negative affectivity on relationships between emotional dissonance, job satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion. Negative affectivity is the predisposition to view life in negative terms. Emotional dissonance originates from the conflict between expressed and experienced emotions. In organizations that require the expression of positive emotions, high negative affectivity individuals may experience conflict between expressed, positive emotions and felt, negative emotions. A moderator effect exists when high negative affectivity individuals experience greater job dissatisfaction and emotional exhaustion. Alternatively, negative affectivity may exert a confounding effect through its relationship to both emotional dissonance and its outcomes. Empirical tests showed that negative affectivity moderated the emotional dissonance-job satisfaction relationship and confounded the emotional dissonance-emotional exhaustion relationship.

Evidence of Rapid Modulation by Social Information of Subjective, Physiological, and Neural Responses to Emotional Expressions

PubMed Central

Mermillod, Martial; Grynberg, Delphine; Pio-Lopez, Léo; Rychlowska, Magdalena; Beffara, Brice; Harquel, Sylvain; Vermeulen, Nicolas; Niedenthal, Paula M.; Dutheil, Frédéric; Droit-Volet, Sylvie

2018-01-01

Recent research suggests that conceptual or emotional factors could influence the perceptual processing of stimuli. In this article, we aimed to evaluate the effect of social information (positive, negative, or no information related to the character of the target) on subjective (perceived and felt valence and arousal), physiological (facial mimicry) as well as on neural (P100 and N170) responses to dynamic emotional facial expressions (EFE) that varied from neutral to one of the six basic emotions. Across three studies, the results showed reduced ratings of valence and arousal of EFE associated with incongruent social information (Study 1), increased electromyographical responses (Study 2), and significant modulation of P100 and N170 components (Study 3) when EFE were associated with social (positive and negative) information (vs. no information). These studies revealed that positive or negative social information reduces subjective responses to incongruent EFE and produces a similar neural and physiological boost of the early perceptual processing of EFE irrespective of their congruency. In conclusion, the article suggests that the presence of positive or negative social context modulates early physiological and neural activity preceding subsequent behavior. PMID:29375330

The neural networks of subjectively evaluated emotional conflicts.

PubMed

Rohr, Christiane S; Villringer, Arno; Solms-Baruth, Carolina; van der Meer, Elke; Margulies, Daniel S; Okon-Singer, Hadas

2016-06-01

Previous work on the neural underpinnings of emotional conflict processing has largely focused on designs that instruct participants to ignore a distracter which conflicts with a target. In contrast, this study investigated the noninstructed experience and evaluation of an emotional conflict, where positive or negative cues can be subjectively prioritized. To this end, healthy participants freely watched short film scenes that evoked emotional conflicts while their BOLD responses were measured. Participants' individual ratings of conflict and valence perception during the film scenes were collected immediately afterwards, and the individual ratings were regressed against the BOLD data. Our analyses revealed that (a) amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex were significantly involved in prioritizing positive or negative cues, but not in subjective evaluations of conflict per se, and (b) superior temporal sulcus (STS) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL), which have been implicated in social cognition and emotion control, were involved in both prioritizing positive or negative cues and subjectively evaluating conflict, and may thus constitute "hubs" or "switches" in emotional conflict processing. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses further revealed stronger functional connectivity between IPL and ventral prefrontal-medial parietal areas in prioritizing negative cues, and stronger connectivity between STS and dorsal-rostral prefrontal-medial parietal areas in prioritizing positive cues. In sum, our results suggest that IPL and STS are important in the subjective evaluation of complex conflicts and influence valence prioritization via prefrontal and parietal control centers. Hum Brain Mapp 37:2234-2246, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Acute withdrawal, protracted abstinence and negative affect in alcoholism: Are they linked?

PubMed Central

Heilig, M.; Egli, M.; Crabbe, J.C.; Becker, H.C.

2012-01-01

The role of withdrawal-related phenomena in development and maintenance of alcohol addiction remains under debate. A “self-medication” framework postulates that emotional changes are induced by a history of alcohol use, persist into abstinence, and are a major factor in maintaining alcoholism. This view initially focused on negative emotional states during early withdrawal: these are pronounced, occur in the vast majority of alcohol dependent patients, and are characterized by depressed mood and elevated anxiety. This concept lost popularity with the realization that, in most patients, these symptoms abate over 3 – 6 weeks of abstinence, while relapse risk persists long beyond this period. More recently, animal data have established that a prolonged history of alcohol dependence induces more subtle neuroadaptations. These confer altered emotional processing that persists long into protracted abstinence. The resulting behavioral phenotype is characterized by excessive voluntary alcohol intake and increased behavioral sensitivity to stress. Emerging human data support the clinical relevance of negative emotionality for protracted abstinence and relapse. These developments prompt a series of research questions: 1) Are processes observed during acute withdrawal, while transient in nature, mechanistically related to those that remain during protracted abstinence? 2) Is susceptibility to negative emotionality in acute withdrawal in part due to heritable factors, similar to what animal models have indicated for susceptibility to physical aspects of withdrawal? 3) To what extent is susceptibility to negative affect that persists into protracted abstinence heritable? PMID:20148778

Social Learning Modulates the Lateralization of Emotional Valence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shamay-Tsoory, Simone G.; Lavidor, Michal; Aharon-Peretz, Judith

2008-01-01

Although neuropsychological studies of lateralization of emotion have emphasized valence (positive vs. negative) or type (basic vs. complex) dimensions, the interaction between the two dimensions has yet to be elucidated. The purpose of the current study was to test the hypothesis that recognition of basic emotions is processed preferentially by…

Expressing Emotions as Evidence in Osteoporosis Narratives: Effects on Message Processing and Intentions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Volkman, Julie E.; Parrott, Roxanne L.

2012-01-01

This study examined the use of different narratives expressing positive or negative emotions, and varying the narrator's perspective on the arousal of discrete emotions, dominant cognitions, perceived evidence quality, and perceived message effectiveness related to osteoporosis behavioral intentions. Formative research led to the creation of…

Processing of Emotional Faces in Patients with Chronic Pain Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study.

PubMed

Giel, Katrin Elisabeth; Paganini, Sarah; Schank, Irena; Enck, Paul; Zipfel, Stephan; Junne, Florian

2018-01-01

Problems in emotion processing potentially contribute to the development and maintenance of chronic pain. Theories focusing on attentional processing have suggested that dysfunctional attention deployment toward emotional information, i.e., attentional biases for negative emotions, might entail one potential developmental and/or maintenance factor of chronic pain. We assessed self-reported alexithymia, attentional orienting to and maintenance on emotional stimuli using eye tracking in 17 patients with chronic pain disorder (CP) and two age- and sex-matched control groups, 17 healthy individuals (HC) and 17 individuals who were matched to CP according to depressive symptoms (DC). In a choice viewing paradigm, a dot indicated the position of the emotional picture in the next trial to allow for strategic attention deployment. Picture pairs consisted of a happy or sad facial expression and a neutral facial expression of the same individual. Participants were asked to explore picture pairs freely. CP and DC groups reported higher alexithymia than the HC group. HC showed a previously reported emotionality bias by preferentially orienting to the emotional face and preferentially maintaining on the happy face. CP and DC participants showed no facilitated early attention to sad facial expressions, and DC participants showed no facilitated early attention to happy facial expressions, while CP and DC participants did. We found no group differences in attentional maintenance. Our findings are in line with the clinical large overlap between pain and depression. The blunted initial reaction to sadness could be interpreted as a failure of the attentional system to attend to evolutionary salient emotional stimuli or as an attempt to suppress negative emotions. These difficulties in emotion processing might contribute to etiology or maintenance of chronic pain and depression.

Low Arousal Positive Emotional Stimuli Attenuate Aberrant Working Memory Processing in Persons with Mild Cognitive Impairment

PubMed Central

Broster, Lucas S; Jenkins, Shonna L; Holmes, Sarah D; Jicha, Gregory A.; Jiang, Yang

2018-01-01

Emotional enhancement effects on memory have been reported to mitigate the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, relative to their manifestation in persons without pathologic aging, these effects may be reduced in magnitude or even deleterious, especially in tasks that more closely model ecologic memory performance. Based upon a synthesis of such reports, we hypothesized that in persons with AD low arousal positive stimuli would evoke relatively intact emotional enhancement effects, but that high arousal negative stimuli would evoke disordered emotional enhancement effects. To assess this, participants with and without mild cognitive impairment (MCI) presumed to be due to AD performed an emotionally-valenced short-term memory task while encephalography was recorded. Results indicated that for persons with MCI, high arousal negative stimuli led to working memory processing patterns previously associated with MCI presumed due to AD and dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. In contrast, low arousal positive stimuli evoked a processing pattern similar to MCI participants’ unaffected spouses. Our current findings suggest that low arousal positive stimuli attenuate working memory deficits of MCI due to Alzheimer’s disease. PMID:29060938

Social approach and emotion recognition in fragile X syndrome.

PubMed

Williams, Tracey A; Porter, Melanie A; Langdon, Robyn

2014-03-01

Evidence is emerging that individuals with Fragile X syndrome (FXS) display emotion recognition deficits, which may contribute to their significant social difficulties. The current study investigated the emotion recognition abilities, and social approachability judgments, of FXS individuals when processing emotional stimuli. Relative to chronological age- (CA-) and mental age- (MA-) matched controls, the FXS group performed significantly more poorly on the emotion recognition tasks, and displayed a bias towards detecting negative emotions. Moreover, after controlling for emotion recognition deficits, the FXS group displayed significantly reduced ratings of social approachability. These findings suggest that a social anxiety pattern, rather than poor socioemotional processing, may best explain the social avoidance observed in FXS.

Child Maltreatment and Neural Systems Underlying Emotion Regulation.

PubMed

McLaughlin, Katie A; Peverill, Matthew; Gold, Andrea L; Alves, Sonia; Sheridan, Margaret A

2015-09-01

The strong associations between child maltreatment and psychopathology have generated interest in identifying neurodevelopmental processes that are disrupted following maltreatment. Previous research has focused largely on neural response to negative facial emotion. We determined whether child maltreatment was associated with neural responses during passive viewing of negative and positive emotional stimuli and effortful attempts to regulate emotional responses. A total of 42 adolescents aged 13 to 19 years, half with exposure to physical and/or sexual abuse, participated. Blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response was measured during passive viewing of negative and positive emotional stimuli and attempts to modulate emotional responses using cognitive reappraisal. Maltreated adolescents exhibited heightened response in multiple nodes of the salience network, including amygdala, putamen, and anterior insula, to negative relative to neutral stimuli. During attempts to decrease responses to negative stimuli relative to passive viewing, maltreatment was associated with greater recruitment of superior frontal gyrus, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and frontal pole; adolescents with and without maltreatment down-regulated amygdala response to a similar degree. No associations were observed between maltreatment and neural response to positive emotional stimuli during passive viewing or effortful regulation. Child maltreatment heightens the salience of negative emotional stimuli. Although maltreated adolescents modulate amygdala responses to negative cues to a degree similar to that of non-maltreated youths, they use regions involved in effortful control to a greater degree to do so, potentially because greater effort is required to modulate heightened amygdala responses. These findings are promising, given the centrality of cognitive restructuring in trauma-focused treatments for children. Copyright © 2015 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Association with emotional information alters subsequent processing of neutral faces

PubMed Central

Riggs, Lily; Fujioka, Takako; Chan, Jessica; McQuiggan, Douglas A.; Anderson, Adam K.; Ryan, Jennifer D.

2014-01-01

The processing of emotional as compared to neutral information is associated with different patterns in eye movement and neural activity. However, the ‘emotionality’ of a stimulus can be conveyed not only by its physical properties, but also by the information that is presented with it. There is very limited work examining the how emotional information may influence the immediate perceptual processing of otherwise neutral information. We examined how presenting an emotion label for a neutral face may influence subsequent processing by using eye movement monitoring (EMM) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) simultaneously. Participants viewed a series of faces with neutral expressions. Each face was followed by a unique negative or neutral sentence to describe that person, and then the same face was presented in isolation again. Viewing of faces paired with a negative sentence was associated with increased early viewing of the eye region and increased neural activity between 600 and 1200 ms in emotion processing regions such as the cingulate, medial prefrontal cortex, and amygdala, as well as posterior regions such as the precuneus and occipital cortex. Viewing of faces paired with a neutral sentence was associated with increased activity in the parahippocampal gyrus during the same time window. By monitoring behavior and neural activity within the same paradigm, these findings demonstrate that emotional information alters subsequent visual scanning and the neural systems that are presumably invoked to maintain a representation of the neutral information along with its emotional details. PMID:25566024

The Route to an Integrative Associative Memory Is Influenced by Emotion

PubMed Central

Murray, Brendan D.; Kensinger, Elizabeth A.

2014-01-01

Though the hippocampus typically has been implicated in processes related to associative binding, special types of associations – such as those created by integrative mental imagery – may be supported by processes implemented in other medial temporal-lobe or sensory processing regions. Here, we investigated what neural mechanisms underlie the formation and subsequent retrieval of integrated mental images, and whether those mechanisms differ based on the emotionality of the integration (i.e., whether it contains an emotional item or not). Participants viewed pairs of words while undergoing a functional MRI scan. They were instructed to imagine the two items separately from one another (“non-integrative” study) or as a single, integrated mental image (“integrative” study). They provided ratings of how successful they were at generating vivid images that fit the instructions. They were then given a surprise associative recognition test, also while undergoing an fMRI scan. The cuneus showed parametric correspondence to increasing imagery success selectively during encoding and retrieval of emotional integrations, while the parahippocampal gyri and prefrontal cortices showed parametric correspondence during the encoding and retrieval of non-emotional integrations. Connectivity analysis revealed that selectively during negative integration, left amygdala activity was negatively correlated with frontal and hippocampal activity. These data indicate that individuals utilize two different neural routes for forming and retrieving integrations depending on their emotional content, and they suggest a potentially disruptive role for the amygdala on frontal and medial-temporal regions during negative integration. PMID:24427267

The level of negative emotions, coping with stress and social support for parents of children suffering from epilepsy.

PubMed

Wojtas, Katarzyna; Oskedra, Iwona; Cepuch, Grazyna; Świderska, Elzbiera

2014-01-01

Child epilepsy can be source of negative emotions and stress in pa- rents. Social support is an external personal resource coupled with the process of coping with difficult situations. The aim of the study evaluation the severity of negative emotions and ways of dealing with the stress of parents of children with epilepsy in relation to the received social support. The study was conducted in one of the children's hospitals in Małopolska, on 213 parents (148 women and 65 men) aged 21 to 66 years. The study used: HADS-M (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale Modified HADS-M, BSSS (Berlin Social Suport Scale), Inventory for Measurement Coping Mini-COPE and the author's questionnaire. Statistical analysis used Pearson and Spearman's correlation and Mann-Whitney test and t-test. Calculations were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 20 Statistical significance was p ≤0.05. The dominant emotion that accompanied the parents was anxiety. Parents have used more strategies based on active coping, and seeking emotional support or instrumental. It has been shown there is a correlation between the level of intensity of negative emotions and social support, and also correlation between social support and ways of coping with stress. Parents expressed negative emotions but not of high severity which may be related to the choice of active coping strategies. Steps should be taken not only to assess the prevalence of negative emotions in a group of parents, but also to reduce the level of their intensity by exposing the importance of social support.

Cigarette graphic warning labels increase both risk perceptions and smoking myth endorsement.

PubMed

Evans, Abigail T; Peters, Ellen; Shoben, Abigail B; Meilleur, Louise R; Klein, Elizabeth G; Tompkins, Mary Kate; Tusler, Martin

2018-02-01

Cigarette graphic warning labels elicit negative emotion, which increases risk perceptions through multiple processes. We examined whether this emotion simultaneously affects motivated cognitions like smoking myth endorsement (e.g. 'exercise can undo the negative effects of smoking') and perceptions of cigarette danger versus other products. 736 adult and 469 teen smokers/vulnerable smokers viewed one of three warning label types (text-only, low emotion graphic or high emotion graphic) four times over two weeks. Emotional reactions to the warnings were reported during the first and fourth exposures. Participants reported how often they considered the warnings, smoking myth endorsement, risk perceptions and perceptions of cigarette danger relative to smokeless tobacco and electronic cigarettes. In structural equation models, emotional reactions influenced risk perceptions and smoking myth endorsement through two processes. Emotion acted as information about risk, directly increasing smoking risk perceptions and decreasing smoking myth endorsement. Emotion also acted as a spotlight, motivating consideration of the warning information. Warning consideration increased risk perceptions, but also increased smoking myth endorsement. Emotional reactions to warnings decreased perceptions of cigarette danger relative to other products. Emotional reactions to cigarette warnings increase smoking risk perceptions, but also smoking myth endorsement and misperceptions that cigarettes are less dangerous than potentially harm-reducing tobacco products.

Socioeconomic disadvantage, neural responses to infant emotions, and emotional availability among first-time new mothers.

PubMed

Kim, Pilyoung; Capistrano, Christian G; Erhart, Andrew; Gray-Schiff, Rachel; Xu, Nanxi

2017-05-15

During the early postpartum period, mothers exhibit increased amygdala responses to positive infant expressions, which are important for positive mother-infant relationships. Socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with altered amygdala response to emotional stimuli as well as more negative mother-infant relationships. However, little is known about the role of socioeconomic disadvantage in neural responses specifically to infants. Thus, we examined whether socioeconomic disadvantage (indexed by lower income-to-needs ratio) is associated with neural responses to infant emotions and parenting behaviors among new mothers. Using fMRI, neural responses to infants' emotional expressions (positive, negative, and neutral faces) were assessed among 39 low- and middle-income first-time mothers during 0-6 postpartum months. Lower income-to-needs ratio was associated with dampened amygdala responses to positive infant faces, but increased amygdala responses to negative infant faces. An indirect effect of socioeconomic disadvantage on emotional availability via amygdala activation suggests that socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with heightened neural sensitivity to infants' negative emotions, which is further associated with mothers' intrusiveness observed during interactions with their own infant. The findings suggest that low-income mothers may be more vulnerable to altered neural processing of infants' emotional expressions which may further influence mothers' emotional availability during interactions with their own infants. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Did you or I say pretty, rude or brief? An ERP study of the effects of speaker's identity on emotional word processing.

PubMed

Pinheiro, Ana P; Rezaii, Neguine; Nestor, Paul G; Rauber, Andréia; Spencer, Kevin M; Niznikiewicz, Margaret

2016-02-01

During speech comprehension, multiple cues need to be integrated at a millisecond speed, including semantic information, as well as voice identity and affect cues. A processing advantage has been demonstrated for self-related stimuli when compared with non-self stimuli, and for emotional relative to neutral stimuli. However, very few studies investigated self-other speech discrimination and, in particular, how emotional valence and voice identity interactively modulate speech processing. In the present study we probed how the processing of words' semantic valence is modulated by speaker's identity (self vs. non-self voice). Sixteen healthy subjects listened to 420 prerecorded adjectives differing in voice identity (self vs. non-self) and semantic valence (neutral, positive and negative), while electroencephalographic data were recorded. Participants were instructed to decide whether the speech they heard was their own (self-speech condition), someone else's (non-self speech), or if they were unsure. The ERP results demonstrated interactive effects of speaker's identity and emotional valence on both early (N1, P2) and late (Late Positive Potential - LPP) processing stages: compared with non-self speech, self-speech with neutral valence elicited more negative N1 amplitude, self-speech with positive valence elicited more positive P2 amplitude, and self-speech with both positive and negative valence elicited more positive LPP. ERP differences between self and non-self speech occurred in spite of similar accuracy in the recognition of both types of stimuli. Together, these findings suggest that emotion and speaker's identity interact during speech processing, in line with observations of partially dependent processing of speech and speaker information. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Transient emotional events and individual affective traits affect emotion recognition in a perceptual decision-making task.

PubMed

Qiao-Tasserit, Emilie; Garcia Quesada, Maria; Antico, Lia; Bavelier, Daphne; Vuilleumier, Patrik; Pichon, Swann

2017-01-01

Both affective states and personality traits shape how we perceive the social world and interpret emotions. The literature on affective priming has mostly focused on brief influences of emotional stimuli and emotional states on perceptual and cognitive processes. Yet this approach does not fully capture more dynamic processes at the root of emotional states, with such states lingering beyond the duration of the inducing external stimuli. Our goal was to put in perspective three different types of affective states (induced affective states, more sustained mood states and affective traits such as depression and anxiety) and investigate how they may interact and influence emotion perception. Here, we hypothesized that absorption into positive and negative emotional episodes generate sustained affective states that outlast the episode period and bias the interpretation of facial expressions in a perceptual decision-making task. We also investigated how such effects are influenced by more sustained mood states and by individual affect traits (depression and anxiety) and whether they interact. Transient emotional states were induced using movie-clips, after which participants performed a forced-choice emotion classification task with morphed facial expressions ranging from fear to happiness. Using a psychometric approach, we show that negative (vs. neutral) clips increased participants' propensity to classify ambiguous faces as fearful during several minutes. In contrast, positive movies biased classification toward happiness only for those clips perceived as most absorbing. Negative mood, anxiety and depression had a stronger effect than transient states and increased the propensity to classify ambiguous faces as fearful. These results provide the first evidence that absorption and different temporal dimensions of emotions have a significant effect on how we perceive facial expressions.

Transient emotional events and individual affective traits affect emotion recognition in a perceptual decision-making task

PubMed Central

Garcia Quesada, Maria; Antico, Lia; Bavelier, Daphne; Vuilleumier, Patrik; Pichon, Swann

2017-01-01

Both affective states and personality traits shape how we perceive the social world and interpret emotions. The literature on affective priming has mostly focused on brief influences of emotional stimuli and emotional states on perceptual and cognitive processes. Yet this approach does not fully capture more dynamic processes at the root of emotional states, with such states lingering beyond the duration of the inducing external stimuli. Our goal was to put in perspective three different types of affective states (induced affective states, more sustained mood states and affective traits such as depression and anxiety) and investigate how they may interact and influence emotion perception. Here, we hypothesized that absorption into positive and negative emotional episodes generate sustained affective states that outlast the episode period and bias the interpretation of facial expressions in a perceptual decision-making task. We also investigated how such effects are influenced by more sustained mood states and by individual affect traits (depression and anxiety) and whether they interact. Transient emotional states were induced using movie-clips, after which participants performed a forced-choice emotion classification task with morphed facial expressions ranging from fear to happiness. Using a psychometric approach, we show that negative (vs. neutral) clips increased participants’ propensity to classify ambiguous faces as fearful during several minutes. In contrast, positive movies biased classification toward happiness only for those clips perceived as most absorbing. Negative mood, anxiety and depression had a stronger effect than transient states and increased the propensity to classify ambiguous faces as fearful. These results provide the first evidence that absorption and different temporal dimensions of emotions have a significant effect on how we perceive facial expressions. PMID:28151976

Self-compassion and reactions to unpleasant self-relevant events: the implications of treating oneself kindly.

PubMed

Leary, Mark R; Tate, Eleanor B; Adams, Claire E; Allen, Ashley Batts; Hancock, Jessica

2007-05-01

Five studies investigated the cognitive and emotional processes by which self-compassionate people deal with unpleasant life events. In the various studies, participants reported on negative events in their daily lives, responded to hypothetical scenarios, reacted to interpersonal feedback, rated their or others' videotaped performances in an awkward situation, and reflected on negative personal experiences. Results from Study 1 showed that self-compassion predicted emotional and cognitive reactions to negative events in everyday life, and Study 2 found that self-compassion buffered people against negative self-feelings when imagining distressing social events. In Study 3, self-compassion moderated negative emotions after receiving ambivalent feedback, particularly for participants who were low in self-esteem. Study 4 found that low-self-compassionate people undervalued their videotaped performances relative to observers. Study 5 experimentally induced a self-compassionate perspective and found that self-compassion leads people to acknowledge their role in negative events without feeling overwhelmed with negative emotions. In general, these studies suggest that self-compassion attenuates people's reactions to negative events in ways that are distinct from and, in some cases, more beneficial than self-esteem. ((c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved).

Offenders with antisocial personality disorder show attentional bias for violence-related stimuli.

PubMed

Domes, Gregor; Mense, Julia; Vohs, Knut; Habermeyer, Elmar

2013-08-30

Offenders with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) may be characterized by a lack in emotional functioning that manifests in irritability and a lack of remorse. The proposed link between ASPD and negative emotionality led to the question of emotional processing anomalies in ASPD. Furthermore, the effect of childhood maltreatment/abuse on emotional processing was tested in the present study. Violent and sexual offenders with ASPD (n=35), without ASPD (n=34), and healthy non-criminal controls (n=24) were compared in an Emotional Stroop Task (EST) using neutral, negative, and violence-related words. Secondary analyses focused on the effect of psychopathic traits and childhood maltreatment. Offenders with ASPD showed a stronger attentional bias to violence-related and negative words as compared to controls. Comparable results were obtained when grouping offenders to high, medium, and low psychopathic subgroups. Offenders with childhood maltreatment specifically showed stronger violence-related attentional bias than non-maltreated offenders. The data suggest that enhanced attention to violence-related stimuli in adult criminal offenders is associated with adverse developmental experiences and delinquency but to a lesser extent with antisocial or psychopathic traits. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Event-related brain responses to emotional words, pictures, and faces – a cross-domain comparison

PubMed Central

Bayer, Mareike; Schacht, Annekathrin

2014-01-01

Emotion effects in event-related brain potentials (ERPs) have previously been reported for a range of visual stimuli, including emotional words, pictures, and facial expressions. Still, little is known about the actual comparability of emotion effects across these stimulus classes. The present study aimed to fill this gap by investigating emotion effects in response to words, pictures, and facial expressions using a blocked within-subject design. Furthermore, ratings of stimulus arousal and valence were collected from an independent sample of participants. Modulations of early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive complex (LPC) were visible for all stimulus domains, but showed clear differences, particularly in valence processing. While emotion effects were limited to positive stimuli for words, they were predominant for negative stimuli in pictures and facial expressions. These findings corroborate the notion of a positivity offset for words and a negativity bias for pictures and facial expressions, which was assumed to be caused by generally lower arousal levels of written language. Interestingly, however, these assumed differences were not confirmed by arousal ratings. Instead, words were rated as overall more positive than pictures and facial expressions. Taken together, the present results point toward systematic differences in the processing of written words and pictorial stimuli of emotional content, not only in terms of a valence bias evident in ERPs, but also concerning their emotional evaluation captured by ratings of stimulus valence and arousal. PMID:25339927

Neurophysiological correlates of emotional directed-forgetting in persons with Schizophrenia: An event-related brain potential study.

PubMed

Patrick, Regan E; Kiang, Michael; Christensen, Bruce K

2015-12-01

Recent research has shown that patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) exhibit reduced directed forgetting (DF) for negative words, suggesting impaired ability to instantiate goal-directed inhibition in order to suppress a competing, emotion-driven responses (i.e., emotional memory enhancement). However, disrupted inhibition is not the only possible mechanism by which patients could manifest reduced emotional DF. Therefore, the primary objective of the current study was to use event-related brain potential (ERP) recordings to investigate alternative hypotheses. ERPs were recorded while patients and controls completed an item-method DF paradigm using negative and neutral words. The N2 indexed goal-directed inhibition of to-be-forgotten items. The late positive potential (LPP) indexed emotional memory enhancement for negative study items. The P300 indexed selective rehearsal of to-be-remembered items. The SCZ group exhibited a reduced DF effect overall, but this was not modulated by emotion. N2 amplitude at anterior sites was larger for forget versus remember cues in the control group only, but this effect was not modulated by emotion. LPP amplitude was greater for negative versus neutral words in both groups, independent of region. P300 amplitude at posterior sites was greater for remember versus forget cues in the control group only. These data suggest that reduced DF in SCZ may be due, in part, to both diminished goal-directed inhibition of to-be-forgotten items and reduced selective rehearsal of to-be-remembered items. However, these data do not support the hypothesis that goal-directed, inhibitory processes are disrupted by competing, emotion-driven processes in SCZ. Patients' ERP data also suggested that they did not exhibit disproportionately heightened encoding of emotional stimuli, nor did they have deficient selective rehearsal of to-be-remembered emotional items. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Self-affirmation increases defensiveness toward health risk information among those experiencing negative emotions: Results from two national samples.

PubMed

Ferrer, Rebecca A; Klein, William M P; Graff, Kaitlin A

2017-04-01

Self-affirmation can promote health behavior change and yield long-term improvements in health via its effect on receptiveness to risk information in behavior change interventions. Across 2 studies, we examined whether the emotional state of the person presented with health risk information moderates self-affirmation effectiveness. Data were collected from 2 U.S. national samples (n = 652, n = 448) via GfK, an Internet-based survey company. Female alcohol consumers completed an emotion induction (fear, anger, or neutral). They then completed a standard self-affirmation (or no-affirmation) essay-writing task, and subsequently received a health message linking alcohol to breast cancer. There was a significant interaction between emotion and self-affirmation conditions, such that self-affirmation reduced the specificity of health behavior change plans among those experiencing negative emotion (Study 1: B = -0.55, p < .001), with consistent but not significant effects for anger (Study 2: B = -.47, p = .069. Among self-affirmed participants, essays were rated as significantly less self-affirming for individuals experiencing negative emotion (or anger). Mediation analyses limited to the self-affirmation condition revealed an indirect effect of negative emotion condition on health behavior change plan specificity via self-affirmation ratings of essay content in Study 1: β = 0.04, p = .041. The salutary effect of self-affirmation on plan specificity was reversed with negative emotion. These findings may be attributed to disruption of the self-affirmation process. Individuals who enter interventions using self-affirmation in a negative emotion state may be less prepared to benefit from other intervention content, and may even be less likely to change health behaviors as a result of the intervention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Self- affirmation increases defensiveness toward health risk information among those experiencing negative emotions: Results from two national samples

PubMed Central

Ferrer, Rebecca A.; Klein, William M.P.; Graff, Kaitlin A.

2017-01-01

Objective Self-affirmation can promote health behavior change and yield long-term improvements in health via its effect on receptiveness to risk information in behavior change interventions. Across two studies, we examined whether the emotional state of the person presented with health risk information moderates self-affirmation effectiveness. Methods Data were collected from two U.S. national samples (n=652, n=448) via GfK, an internet-based survey company. Female alcohol consumers completed an emotion induction (fear, anger, or neutral). They then completed a standard self-affirmation (or no-affirmation) essay-writing task, and subsequently received a health message linking alcohol to breast cancer. Results There was a significant interaction between emotion and self-affirmation conditions, such that self-affirmation reduced the specificity of health behavior change plans among those experiencing negative emotion (Study 1: B= −0.55, p<.001), with consistent but not significant effects for anger (Study 2: B= −.47, p=.069. Among self-affirmed participants, essays were rated as significantly less self-affirming for individuals experiencing negative emotion (or anger). Mediation analyses limited to the self-affirmation condition revealed an indirect effect of negative emotion condition on health behavior change plan specificity via self-affirmation ratings of essay content in Study 1: β=0.04, p=.041. Conclusions The salutary effect of self-affirmation on plan specificity was reversed with negative emotion. These findings may be attributed to disruption of the self-affirmation process. Individuals who enter interventions employing self-affirmation in a negative emotion state may be less prepared to benefit from other intervention content, and may even be less likely to change health behaviors as a result of the intervention. PMID:28206787

Napping reduces emotional attention bias during early childhood.

PubMed

Cremone, Amanda; Kurdziel, Laura B F; Fraticelli-Torres, Ada; McDermott, Jennifer M; Spencer, Rebecca M C

2017-07-01

Sleep loss alters processing of emotional stimuli in preschool-aged children. However, the mechanism by which sleep modifies emotional processing in early childhood is unknown. We tested the hypothesis that a nap, compared to an equivalent time spent awake, reduces biases in attention allocation to affective information. Children (n = 43; M = 55.40 months, SD = 8.05 months) completed a Dot Probe task, which provides a measure of attention biases to emotional stimuli, following a mid-day nap and an equivalent interval spent awake. No emotional attention biases emerged when children napped. However, when nap-deprived, children exhibited biases towards negative and positive stimuli. This emotional bias after wake was greater in children who napped habitually. Gender differences also emerged such that females were more attentive to positive emotional stimuli whereas males showed heightened attention to negative emotional stimuli, regardless of having napped or not. Moreover, greater slow wave activity (SWA) during the nap was associated with faster responding, which suggests that SWA may promote efficiency of attention allocation. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIoZ8mzxQgg. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Mood Detection in Ambiguous Messages: The Interaction Between Text and Emoticons.

PubMed

Aldunate, Nerea; Villena-González, Mario; Rojas-Thomas, Felipe; López, Vladimir; Bosman, Conrado A

2018-01-01

Face-to-face communication has several sources of contextual information that enables language comprehension. This information is used, for instance, to perceive mood of interlocutors, clarifying ambiguous messages. However, these contextual cues are absent in text-based communication. Emoticons have been proposed as cues used to stress the emotional intentions on this channel of communication. Most studies have suggested that their role is to contribute to a more accurate perception of emotions. Nevertheless, it is not clear if their influence on disambiguation is independent of their emotional valence and its interaction with text message valence. In the present study, we designed an emotional congruence paradigm, where participants read a set of messages composed by a positive or negative emotional situation sentence followed by a positive or negative emoticon. Participants were instructed to indicate if the sender was in a good or bad mood. With the aim of analyzing the disambiguation process and observing if the role of the emoticons in disambiguation is different according their valence, we measure the rate of responses of perceived mood and the reaction times (RTs) for each condition. Our results showed that the perceived mood in ambiguous messages tends to be more negative regardless of emotion valence. Nonetheless, we observed that this tendency was not the same for positive and negative emoticons. Specifically, negative mood perception was higher for incongruent positive emoticons. On the other hand, RTs for positive emoticons were faster than for the negative ones. Responses for incongruent messages were slower than for the congruent ones. However, the incongruent condition showed different RTs depending on the emoticons' valence. In the incongruent condition, responses for negative emoticons was the slowest. Results are discussed taking into account previous observations about the potential role of emoticons in mood perception and cognitive processing. We concluded that the role of emoticons in disambiguation and mood perception is due to the interaction of emoticon valence with the entire message.

Mood Detection in Ambiguous Messages: The Interaction Between Text and Emoticons

PubMed Central

Aldunate, Nerea; Villena-González, Mario; Rojas-Thomas, Felipe; López, Vladimir; Bosman, Conrado A.

2018-01-01

Face-to-face communication has several sources of contextual information that enables language comprehension. This information is used, for instance, to perceive mood of interlocutors, clarifying ambiguous messages. However, these contextual cues are absent in text-based communication. Emoticons have been proposed as cues used to stress the emotional intentions on this channel of communication. Most studies have suggested that their role is to contribute to a more accurate perception of emotions. Nevertheless, it is not clear if their influence on disambiguation is independent of their emotional valence and its interaction with text message valence. In the present study, we designed an emotional congruence paradigm, where participants read a set of messages composed by a positive or negative emotional situation sentence followed by a positive or negative emoticon. Participants were instructed to indicate if the sender was in a good or bad mood. With the aim of analyzing the disambiguation process and observing if the role of the emoticons in disambiguation is different according their valence, we measure the rate of responses of perceived mood and the reaction times (RTs) for each condition. Our results showed that the perceived mood in ambiguous messages tends to be more negative regardless of emotion valence. Nonetheless, we observed that this tendency was not the same for positive and negative emoticons. Specifically, negative mood perception was higher for incongruent positive emoticons. On the other hand, RTs for positive emoticons were faster than for the negative ones. Responses for incongruent messages were slower than for the congruent ones. However, the incongruent condition showed different RTs depending on the emoticons’ valence. In the incongruent condition, responses for negative emoticons was the slowest. Results are discussed taking into account previous observations about the potential role of emoticons in mood perception and cognitive processing. We concluded that the role of emoticons in disambiguation and mood perception is due to the interaction of emoticon valence with the entire message. PMID:29670554

Regional cerebral changes and functional connectivity during the observation of negative emotional stimuli in subjects with post-traumatic stress disorder.

PubMed

Mazza, Monica; Tempesta, Daniela; Pino, Maria Chiara; Catalucci, Alessia; Gallucci, Massimo; Ferrara, Michele

2013-10-01

Patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) exhibit exaggerated brain responses to emotionally negative stimuli. Identifying the neural correlates of emotion regulation in these subjects is important for elucidating the neural circuitry involved in emotional dysfunction. The aim of this study was to investigate the functional connectivity between the areas activated during emotional processing of negative stimuli in a sample of individuals affected by PTSD compared to a group of healthy subjects. Ten subjects with PTSD (who survived the L'Aquila 2009 earthquake) and ten healthy controls underwent fMRI during which the participants observed 80 images: 40 pictures with negative emotional valence and 40 neutral (scrambled) stimuli. A higher activation was found in the left posterior (LP) insula for PTSD group and in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) for the healthy group. Two sets of Granger causality modeling analyses were performed to examine the directed influence from LP-insula and vmPFC to other brain regions. Activity in the vmPFC in the healthy group while observing negative stimuli predicted activity in several subcortical regions and insula, while in the PTSD group the LP-insula exerted a positive directed influence on several cortical regions. The hyperactivation in PTSD subjects of subcortical areas such as the insula would underlie the emotional, social, and relational difficulties of PTSD patients.

Does the amygdala response correlate with the personality trait ‘harm avoidance’ while evaluating emotional stimuli explicitly?

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background The affective personality trait ‘harm avoidance’ (HA) from Cloninger’s psychobiological personality model determines how an individual deals with emotional stimuli. Emotional stimuli are processed by a neural network that include the left and right amygdalae as important key nodes. Explicit, implicit and passive processing of affective stimuli are known to activate the amygdalae differently reflecting differences in attention, level of detailed analysis of the stimuli and the cognitive control needed to perform the required task. Previous studies revealed that implicit processing or passive viewing of affective stimuli, induce a left amygdala response that correlates with HA. In this new study we have tried to extend these findings to the situation in which the subjects were required to explicitly process emotional stimuli. Methods A group of healthy female participants was asked to rate the valence of positive and negative stimuli while undergoing fMRI. Afterwards the neural responses of the participants to the positive and to the negative stimuli were separately correlated to their HA scores and compared between the low and high HA participants. Results Both analyses revealed increased neural activity in the left laterobasal (LB) amygdala of the high HA participants while they were rating the positive and the negative stimuli. Conclusions Our results indicate that the left amygdala response to explicit processing of affective stimuli does correlate with HA. PMID:24884791

Triggers of self-conscious emotions in the sexually transmitted infection testing process

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background Self-conscious emotions (shame, guilt and embarrassment) are part of many individuals' experiences of seeking STI testing. These emotions can have negative impacts on individuals' interpretations of the STI testing process, their willingness to seek treatment and their willingness to inform sexual partners in light of positive STI diagnoses. Because of these impacts, researchers have called for more work to be completed on the connections between shame, guilt, embarrassment and STI testing. We examine the specific events in the STI testing process that trigger self-conscious emotions in young adults who seek STI testing; and to understand what it is about these events that triggers these emotions. Semi-structured interviews with 30 adults (21 women, 9 men) in the Republic of Ireland. Findings Seven specific triggers of self-conscious emotions were identified. These were: having unprotected sex, associated with the initial reason for seeking STI testing; talking to partners and peers about the intention to seek STI testing; the experience of accessing STI testing facilities and sitting in clinic waiting rooms; negative interactions with healthcare professionals; receiving a positive diagnosis of an STI; having to notify sexual partners in light of a positive STI diagnosis; and accessing healthcare settings for treatment for an STI. Self-conscious emotions were triggered in each case by a perceived threat to respondents' social identities. Conclusion There are multiple triggers of self-conscious emotions in the STI testing process, ranging from the initial decision to seek testing, right through to the experience of accessing treatment. The role of self-conscious emotions needs to be considered in each component of service design from health promotion approaches, through facility layout to the training of all professionals involved in the STI testing process. PMID:20716339

Glutamate and GABA contributions to medial prefrontal cortical activity to emotion: implications for mood disorders.

PubMed

Stan, Ana D; Schirda, Claudiu V; Bertocci, Michele A; Bebko, Genna M; Kronhaus, Dina M; Aslam, Haris A; LaBarbara, Eduard J; Tanase, Costin; Lockovich, Jeanette C; Pollock, Myrna H; Stiffler, Richelle S; Phillips, Mary L

2014-09-30

The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (MdPFC) and anterior cingulate cortices (ACC) play a critical role in implicit emotion regulation; however the understanding of the specific neurotransmitters that mediate such role is lacking. In this study, we examined relationships between MdPFC concentrations of two neurotransmitters, glutamate and γ-amino butyric acid (GABA), and BOLD activity in ACC during performance of an implicit facial emotion-processing task. Twenty healthy volunteers, aged 20-35 years, were scanned while performing an implicit facial emotion-processing task, whereby presented facial expressions changed from neutral to one of the four emotions: happy, anger, fear, or sad. Glutamate concentrations were measured before and after the emotion-processing task in right MdPFC using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). GABA concentrations were measured in bilateral MdPFC after the emotion-processing task. Multiple regression models were run to determine the relative contribution of glutamate and GABA concentration, age, and gender to BOLD signal in ACC to each of the four emotions. Multiple regression analyses revealed a significant negative correlation between MdPFC GABA concentration and BOLD signal in subgenual ACC (p<0.05, corrected) to sad versus shape contrast. For the anger versus shape contrast, there was a significant negative correlation between age and BOLD signal in pregenual ACC (p<0.05, corrected) and a positive correlation between MdPFC glutamate concentration (pre-task) and BOLD signal in pregenual ACC (p<0.05, corrected). Our findings are the first to provide insight into relationships between MdPFC neurotransmitter concentrations and ACC BOLD signal, and could further understanding of molecular mechanisms underlying emotion processing in healthy and mood-disordered individuals. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Influences of Parent and Child Negative Emotionality on Young Children’s Everyday Behaviors

PubMed Central

Slatcher, Richard B.; Trentacosta, Christopher J.

2012-01-01

Negative emotionality is linked to unfavorable life outcomes, but studies have yet to examine negative emotionality of parents and children as predictors of children’s problem behaviors and negative emotion word use in everyday life. This study used a novel naturalistic recording device called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) to investigate the separate and interactive influences of parent and child negative emotionality on daily child behaviors in a sample of 35 preschool-aged children over two time points separated by one year. Fathers’ negative emotionality predicted children’s whining at Time 1; mothers’ negative emotionality predicted children’s negative emotion word use at Time 1 and increases in children’s arguing/fighting from Time 1 to Time 2. Parents’ ratings of child negative emotionality also were associated with increases in children’s arguing/fighting from Time 1 to Time 2, and child negative emotionality moderated the association between mothers’ negative emotionality and children’s arguing/fighting. Further, children with mothers high in negative emotionality displayed higher levels of problem behaviors when their mothers self-reported low levels of positive emotional expressiveness and/or high levels of negative emotional expressiveness. These findings offer preliminary evidence linking parent and child negative emotionality to everyday child behaviors, and suggest that emotional expressiveness may play a key role in moderating the links between maternal negative emotionality and child behavioral problems. PMID:22390707

Deficits of unconscious emotional processing in patients with major depression: An ERP study.

PubMed

Zhang, Dandan; He, Zhenhong; Chen, Yuming; Wei, Zhaoguo

2016-07-15

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with behavioral and neurobiological evidences of negative bias in unconscious emotional processing. However, little is known about the time course of this deficit. The current study aimed to explore the unconscious processing of emotional facial expressions in MDD patients by means of event-related potentials (ERPs). The ERP responses to subliminally presented happy/neutral/sad faces were recorded in 26 medication-free patients and 26 healthy controls in a backward masking task. Three ERP components were compared between patients and controls. Detection accuracy was at chance level for both groups, suggesting that the process was performed in the absence of conscious awareness of the emotional stimuli. Robust emotion×group interactions were observed in P1, N170 and P3. Compared with the neutral faces, 1) the patients showed larger P1 for sad and smaller P1 for happy faces; however, the controls showed a completely inverse P1 pattern; 2) the controls exhibited larger N170 in the happy but not in the sad trials, whereas patients had comparable larger N170 amplitudes in sad and happy trials; 3) although both groups exhibited larger P3 for emotional faces, the patients showed a priority for sad trials while the controls showed a priority for happy trials. Our data suggested that negative processing bias exists on the unconscious level in individuals with MDD. The ERP measures indicated that the unconscious emotional processing in MDD patients has a time course of three-stage deflection. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The effects of acute inflammation on cognitive functioning and emotional processing in humans: A systematic review of experimental studies.

PubMed

Bollen, Jessica; Trick, Leanne; Llewellyn, David; Dickens, Chris

2017-03-01

The cognitive neuropsychological model of depression proposes that negative biases in the processing of emotionally salient information have a central role in the development and maintenance of depression. We have conducted a systematic review to determine whether acute experimental inflammation is associated with changes to cognitive and emotional processing that are thought to cause and maintain depression. We identified experimental studies in which healthy individuals were administered an acute inflammatory challenge (bacterial endotoxin/vaccination) and standardised tests of cognitive function were performed. Fourteen references were identified, reporting findings from 12 independent studies on 345 participants. Methodological quality was rated strong or moderate for 11 studies. Acute experimental inflammation was triggered using a variety of agents (including endotoxin from E. coli, S. typhi, S. abortus Equi and Hepatitis B vaccine) and cognition was assessed over hours to months, using cognitive tests of i) attention/executive functioning, ii) memory and iii) social/emotional processing. Studies found mixed evidence that acute experimental inflammation caused changes to attention/executive functioning (2 of 6 studies showed improvements in attention executive function compared to control), changes in memory (3 of 5 studies; improved reaction time: reduced memory for object proximity: poorer immediate and delayed memory) and changes to social/emotional processing (4 of 5 studies; reduced perception of emotions, increased avoidance of punishment/loss experiences, and increased social disconnectedness). Acute experimental inflammation causes negative biases in social and emotional processing that could explain observed associations between inflammation and depression. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Unpacking the neural associations of emotion and judgment in emotion-congruent judgment

PubMed Central

Beer, Jennifer S.

2012-01-01

The current study takes a new approach to understand the neural systems that support emotion-congruent judgment. The bulk of previous neural research has inferred emotional influences on judgment from disadvantageous judgments or non-random individual differences. The current study manipulated the influence of emotional information on judgments of stimuli that were equivocally composed of positive and negative attributes. Emotion-congruent processing was operationalized in two ways: neural activation significantly associated with primes that lead to emotionally congruent judgments and neural activation significantly associated with judgments that were preceded by emotionally congruent primes. Distinct regions of medial orbitofrontal cortex were associated with these patterns of emotion-congruent processing. Judgments that were incongruent with preceding primes were associated with dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and lateral orbitofrontal cortex activity. The current study demonstrates a new approach to investigate the neural systems associated with emotion-congruent judgment. The findings suggest that medial OFC may support attentional processes that underlie emotion-congruent judgment. PMID:21511825

Neural Correlates of Emotion Regulation in Patients with Schizophrenia and Non-Affected Siblings

PubMed Central

van der Velde, Jorien; Pijnenborg, Gerdina; Wiersma, Durk; Bruggeman, Richard; Aleman, André

2014-01-01

Background Patients with schizophrenia often experience problems regulating their emotions. Non-affected relatives show similar difficulties, although to a lesser extent, and the neural basis of such difficulties remains to be elucidated. In the current paper we investigated whether schizophrenia patients, non-affected siblings and healthy controls (HC) exhibit differences in brain activation during emotion regulation. Methods All subjects (n = 20 per group) performed an emotion regulation task while they were in an fMRI scanner. The task contained two experimental conditions for the down-regulation of emotions (reappraise and suppress), in which IAPS pictures were used to generate a negative affect. We also assessed whether the groups differed in emotion regulation strategies used in daily life by means of the emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ). Results Though the overall negative affect was higher for patients as well as for siblings compared to HC for all conditions, all groups reported decreased negative affect after both regulation conditions. Nonetheless, neuroimaging results showed hypoactivation relative to HC in VLPFC, insula, middle temporal gyrus, caudate and thalamus for patients when reappraising negative pictures. In siblings, the same pattern was evident as in patients, but only in cortical areas. Conclusions Given that all groups performed similarly on the emotion regulation task, but differed in overall negative affect ratings and brain activation, our findings suggest reduced levels of emotion regulation processing in neural circuits in patients with schizophrenia. Notably, this also holds for siblings, albeit to a lesser extent, indicating that it may be part and parcel of a vulnerability for psychosis. PMID:24941136

Effects of task-irrelevant emotional stimuli on working memory processes in mild cognitive impairment.

PubMed

Berger, Christoph; Erbe, Anna-Katharina; Ehlers, Inga; Marx, Ivo; Hauenstein, Karlheinz; Teipel, Stefan

2015-01-01

Research suggests generally impaired cognitive control functions in working memory (WM) processes in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and incipient Alzheimer's disease (AD). Little is known how emotional salience of task-irrelevant stimuli may modulate cognitive control of WM performance and neurofunctional activation in MCI and AD individuals. We investigated the impact of emotional task-irrelevant visual stimuli on cortical activation during verbal WM. Twelve AD/MCI individuals and 12 age-matched healthy individuals performed a verbal WM (nback-) task with task-irrelevant emotionally neutral and emotionally negative background pictures during fMRI measurement. AD/MCI individuals showed decreased WM performance compared with controls; both AD/MCI and control groups reacted slower during presentation of negative pictures, regardless of WM difficulty. The AD/MCI group showed increased activation in the left hemispheric prefrontal network, higher amygdala and less cerebellar activation with increasing WM task difficulty compared to healthy controls. Correlation analysis between neurofunctional activation and WM performance revealed a negative correlation between task sensitivity and activation in the dorsal anterior cingulum for the healthy controls but not for the AD/MCI group. Our data suggest compensatory activation in prefrontal cortex and amygdala, but also dysfunctional inhibition of distracting information in the AD/MCI group during higher WM task difficulty. Additionally, attentional processes affecting the correlation between WM performance and neurofunctional activation seem to be different between incipient AD and healthy aging.

Epistemic motivation affects the processing of negative emotional stimuli in interpersonal decisions.

PubMed

Wei, Zhenyu; Ruz, María; Zhao, Zhiying; Zheng, Yong

2015-01-01

The present electrophysiological study investigated the role of the need for cognitive closure (NFC) in emotional processing. The NFC is conceptualized as an epistemic motive that is related to how and why people seek out information in social environments. Event-related potentials were recorded while individuals with high NFC (i.e., low epistemic motivation) or low NFC (i.e., high epistemic motivation) performed a modified Ultimatum Game, in which the emotions of happy or angry game agents were employed to predict their most likely offer. High-NFC participants more closely adhered to the decisions rules of the game than low-NFC individuals did. The electrophysiological results showed that the dispositional NFC modified early perceptual components (N170, N200, and P200). The potentials showed that high-NFC subjects had a processing bias to angry faces, whereas low-NFC individuals exhibited no such effects. These findings indicated that high-NFC individuals were more sensitive to negative emotional stimuli than low-NFC individuals in an interpersonal decision-making task.

Epistemic motivation affects the processing of negative emotional stimuli in interpersonal decisions

PubMed Central

Wei, Zhenyu; Ruz, María; Zhao, Zhiying; Zheng, Yong

2015-01-01

The present electrophysiological study investigated the role of the need for cognitive closure (NFC) in emotional processing. The NFC is conceptualized as an epistemic motive that is related to how and why people seek out information in social environments. Event-related potentials were recorded while individuals with high NFC (i.e., low epistemic motivation) or low NFC (i.e., high epistemic motivation) performed a modified Ultimatum Game, in which the emotions of happy or angry game agents were employed to predict their most likely offer. High-NFC participants more closely adhered to the decisions rules of the game than low-NFC individuals did. The electrophysiological results showed that the dispositional NFC modified early perceptual components (N170, N200, and P200). The potentials showed that high-NFC subjects had a processing bias to angry faces, whereas low-NFC individuals exhibited no such effects. These findings indicated that high-NFC individuals were more sensitive to negative emotional stimuli than low-NFC individuals in an interpersonal decision-making task. PMID:26257698

The development of emotion perception in face and voice during infancy.

PubMed

Grossmann, Tobias

2010-01-01

Interacting with others by reading their emotional expressions is an essential social skill in humans. How this ability develops during infancy and what brain processes underpin infants' perception of emotion in different modalities are the questions dealt with in this paper. Literature review. The first part provides a systematic review of behavioral findings on infants' developing emotion-reading abilities. The second part presents a set of new electrophysiological studies that provide insights into the brain processes underlying infants' developing abilities. Throughout, evidence from unimodal (face or voice) and multimodal (face and voice) processing of emotion is considered. The implications of the reviewed findings for our understanding of developmental models of emotion processing are discussed. The reviewed infant data suggest that (a) early in development, emotion enhances the sensory processing of faces and voices, (b) infants' ability to allocate increased attentional resources to negative emotional information develops earlier in the vocal domain than in the facial domain, and (c) at least by the age of 7 months, infants reliably match and recognize emotional information across face and voice.

Burnout is associated with changes in error and feedback processing.

PubMed

Gajewski, Patrick D; Boden, Sylvia; Freude, Gabriele; Potter, Guy G; Falkenstein, Michael

2017-10-01

Burnout is a pattern of complaints in individuals with emotionally demanding jobs that is often seen as a precursor of depression. One often reported symptom of burnout is cognitive decline. To analyze cognitive control and to differentiate between subclinical burnout and mild to moderate depression a double-blinded study was conducted that investigates changes in the processing of performance errors and feedback in a task switching paradigm. Fifty-one of 76 employees from emotionally demanding jobs showed a sufficient number of errors to be included in the analysis. The sample was subdivided into groups with low (EE-) and high (EE+) emotional exhaustion and no (DE-) and mild to moderate depression (DE+). The behavioral data did not significantly differ between the groups. In contrast, in the EE+ group, the error negativity (Ne/ERN) was enhanced while the error positivity (Pe) did not differ between the EE+ and EE- groups. After negative feedback the feedback-related negativity (FRN) was enhanced, while the subsequent positivity (FRP) was reduced in EE+ relative to EE-. None of these effects were observed in the DE+ vs. DE-. These results suggest an upregulation of error and negative feedback processing, while the later processing of negative feedback was attenuated in employees with subclinical burnout but not in mild to moderate depression. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Neural signatures of cognitive and emotional biases in depression

PubMed Central

Fossati, Philippe

2008-01-01

Functional brain imaging studies suggest that depression is a system-level disorder affecting discrete but functionally linked cortical and limbic structures, with abnormalities in the anterior cingulate, lateral, ami medial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, ami hippocampus. Within this circuitry, abnormal corticolimbic interactions underlie cognitive deficits ami emotional impairment in depression. Depression involves biases toward processing negative emotional information and abnormal self-focus in response to emotional stimuli. These biases in depression could reflect excessive analytical self-focus in depression, as well as impaired cognitive control of emotional response to negative stimuli. By combining structural and functional investigations, brain imaging studies mav help to generate novel antidepressant treatments that regulate structural and factional plasticity within the neural network regulating mood and affective behavior.

Napping and the Selective Consolidation of Negative Aspects of Scenes

PubMed Central

Payne, Jessica D.; Kensinger, Elizabeth A.; Wamsley, Erin; Spreng, R. Nathan; Alger, Sara; Gibler, Kyle; Schacter, Daniel L.; Stickgold, Robert

2018-01-01

After information is encoded into memory, it undergoes an offline period of consolidation that occurs optimally during sleep. The consolidation process not only solidifies memories, but also selectively preserves aspects of experience that are emotionally salient and relevant for future use. Here, we provide evidence that an afternoon nap is sufficient to trigger preferential memory for emotional information contained in complex scenes. Selective memory for negative emotional information was enhanced after a nap compared to wakefulness in two control conditions designed to carefully address interference and time-of-day confounds. Although prior evidence has connected negative emotional memory formation to rapid eye movement (REM) sleep physiology, we found that non-REM delta activity and the amount of slow wave sleep (SWS) in the nap were robustly related to the selective consolidation of negative information. These findings suggest that the mechanisms underlying memory consolidation benefits associated with napping and nighttime sleep are not always the same. Finally, we provide preliminary evidence that the magnitude of the emotional memory benefit conferred by sleep is equivalent following a nap and a full night of sleep, suggesting that selective emotional remembering can be economically achieved by taking a nap. PMID:25706830

Mindful attention predicts greater recovery from negative emotions, but not reduced reactivity.

PubMed

Cho, Sinhae; Lee, Hyejeen; Oh, Kyung Ja; Soto, José A

2017-09-01

This study investigated the role of dispositional mindful attention in immediate reactivity to, and subsequent recovery from, laboratory-induced negative emotion. One hundred and fourteen undergraduates viewed blocks of negative pictures followed by neutral pictures. Participants' emotional responses to negative pictures and subsequent neutral pictures were assessed via self-reported ratings. Participants' emotional response to negative pictures was used to index level of emotional reactivity to unpleasant stimuli; emotional response to neutral pictures presented immediately after the negative pictures was used to index level of emotional recovery from pre-induced negative emotion (residual negativity). Results indicated that mindful attention was not associated with the emotional response to negative pictures, but it was associated with reduced negative emotion in response to the neutral pictures presented immediately after the negative pictures, suggesting better recovery as opposed to reduced reactivity. This effect was especially pronounced in later experimental blocks when the accumulation of negative stimuli produced greater negative emotion from which participants had to recover. The current study extends previous findings on the relationship between dispositional mindfulness and reduced negative emotion by demonstrating that mindful attention may facilitate better recovery from negative emotion, possibly through more effective disengagement from previous stimuli.

Comparison of emotional and non-emotional word repetitions in patients with aphasia

PubMed Central

Bakhtiyari, Jalal; Khatoonabadi, Seyyed Ahmad Reza; Dadgar, Hooshang; Bakhtiari, Behrooz Mahmoodi; Khosravizadeh, Parvaneh; Shaygannejad, Vahid

2015-01-01

Background: Aphasia is a language disorder caused by left hemisphere damage. For treatment of aphasia, in some of therapeutic approaches, the right hemisphere (RH) abilities, such as, emotional perception, is used for stimulation of the language process in the left hemisphere. The aim of this study is to investigate emotional word repetition in aphasia after a stroke, in Persian language patients. Materials and Methods: Fifteen aphasic patients (eleven male and four female) between 45 and 65 (58/4 ± 7/8) years of age, participated in this cross-sectional study. A list of 20 emotional words and a list of 20 neutral words as stimuli were prepared and the patients were asked to repeat each word after five seconds; if a patient needed to repeat a word again, it was repeated for him/her again, and the total score for each subject was calculated. The paired t-test was used to test group mean differences and the significant level was 0.05. Results: The mean and standard deviation for emotional word repetitions were 6.93 ± 1.72 and for non-emotional word repetition was 7.10 ± 2.23, and the P value = 0.892, thus, no significant difference between emotional and non-emotional word repetitions was noticed. The mean and standard deviation for the positive emotional word repetitions were 3.53 ± 3.29 and for negative word repetitions were 3.40 ± 3.56, (P = 0.751), with no significant difference between positive and negative emotional word repetitions. Conclusion: Despite the main hypothesis that the right hemisphere is involved in the processing of emotions, it can be stated that both hemispheres are involved in the processing of emotional words, albeit in a different and probably complementary manner. PMID:26436078

Linking children's neuropsychological processing of emotion with their knowledge of emotion expression regulation.

PubMed

Watling, Dawn; Bourne, Victoria J

2007-09-01

Understanding of emotions has been shown to develop between the ages of 4 and 10 years; however, individual differences exist in this development. While previous research has typically examined these differences in terms of developmental and/or social factors, little research has considered the possible impact of neuropsychological development on the behavioural understanding of emotions. Emotion processing tends to be lateralised to the right hemisphere of the brain in adults, yet this pattern is not as evident in children until around the age of 10 years. In this study 136 children between 5 and 10 years were given both behavioural and neuropsychological tests of emotion processing. The behavioural task examined expression regulation knowledge (ERK) for prosocial and self-presentational hypothetical interactions. The chimeric faces test was given as a measure of lateralisation for processing positive facial emotion. An interaction between age and lateralisation for emotion processing was predictive of children's ERK for only the self-presentational interactions. The relationships between children's ERK and lateralisation for emotion processing changes across the three age groups, emerging as a positive relationship in the 10-year-olds. The 10-years-olds who were more lateralised to the right hemisphere for emotion processing tended to show greater understanding of the need for regulating negative emotions during interactions that would have a self-presentational motivation. This finding suggests an association between the behavioural and neuropsychological development of emotion processing.

[Emotional valence of words in schizophrenia].

PubMed

Jalenques, I; Enjolras, J; Izaute, M

2013-06-01

Emotion recognition is a domain in which deficits have been reported in schizophrenia. A number of emotion classification studies have indicated that emotion processing deficits in schizophrenia are more pronounced for negative affects. Given the difficulty of developing material suitable for the study of these emotional deficits, it would be interesting to examine whether patients suffering from schizophrenia are responsive to positively and negatively charged emotion-related words that could be used within the context of remediation strategies. The emotional perception of words was examined in a clinical experiment involving schizophrenia patients. This emotional perception was expressed by the patients in terms of the valence associated with the words. In the present study, we investigated whether schizophrenia patients would assign the same negative and positive valences to words as healthy individuals. Twenty volunteer, clinically stable, outpatients from the Psychiatric Service of the University Hospital of Clermont-Ferrand were recruited. Diagnoses were based on DSM-IV criteria. Global psychiatric symptoms were assessed using the Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS). The patients had to evaluate the emotional valence of a set of 300 words on a 5-point scale ranging from "very unpleasant" to "very pleasant". . The collected results were compared with those obtained by Bonin et al. (2003) [13] from 97 University students. Correlational analyses of the two studies revealed that the emotional valences were highly correlated, i.e. the schizophrenia patients estimated very similar emotional valences. More precisely, it was possible to examine three separate sets of 100 words each (positive words, neutral words and negative words). The positive words that were evaluated were the more positive words from the norms collected by Bonin et al. (2003) [13], and the negative words were the more negative examples taken from these norms. The neutral words reflected the more neutral emotional valences collected. The results suggested that the emotional valences for the negative words were significantly greater in the patients than is observed in the collected norms (P<0.001). Moreover, the emotional valence associated with positive words was significantly lower in the patients than in the collected norms (P<0.001). Nevertheless, only 16 words differed significantly in terms of evaluated emotional valence between patients and young adults. Despite their overall emotional impairments, the patients with schizophrenia had a very similar perception of word valence as controls. This result suggests that the emotional perception of most emotional words is preserved. This research provides data important to consider during rehabilitation. Moreover, this study will make it possible to select stimuli for use in future studies of emotion in patients. Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.

Temporospatial analysis of explicit and implicit processing of negative content during word comprehension.

PubMed

Hinojosa, J A; Albert, J; López-Martín, S; Carretié, L

2014-06-01

Although divergences between explicit and implicit processing of affective content during word comprehension have been reported, the underlying nature of those differences remains in dispute. Prior studies focused on either the timing or the spatial location of the effects. The present study examined the precise dynamics of the processing of negative words when attention is directed to affective content or to non-emotional properties by capitalizing on fine temporal resolution of the event-related potentials (ERPs) and recent advances in source localization. Tasks were used that required accessing knowledge about different semantic properties of negative and neutral words. In the direct task, participants' attention was directed towards emotional information. By contrast, subjects had to decide whether the words' referent could be touched or not in the indirect task. Regardless of being processed explicitly or implicitly, negative compared to neutral words were associated with more errors and greater key pressure responses. Electrophysiologically, affective processing was reflected in larger amplitudes to negative words in a late positive component (LPC) at the scalp level, and in increased activity in the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) at the voxel level. Interestingly, an interaction between emotion and type of task was observed. Negative words were associated with more errors, larger anterior distributed LPC amplitudes and increased activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) in the direct compared to the indirect task. This LPC effect was modulated by the concreteness of the words. Finally, a task effect was found in a posterior negativity around 220ms, with enhanced amplitudes to words in the direct compared to the indirect task. The present results suggest that negative information contained in written language is processed irrespective of controlled attention is directed to it or not, but that this processing is reinforced in the former case. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Patients with bulimia nervosa do not show typical neurodevelopment of cognitive control under emotional influences.

PubMed

Dreyfuss, Michael F W; Riegel, Melissa L; Pedersen, Gloria A; Cohen, Alexandra O; Silverman, Melanie R; Dyke, Jonathan P; Mayer, Laurel E S; Walsh, B Timothy; Casey, B J; Broft, Allegra I

2017-08-30

Bulimia nervosa (BN) emerges in the late teen years and is characterized by binge eating and related compensatory behaviors. These behaviors often co-occur with periods of negative affect suggesting an association between emotions and control over eating behavior. In the current study, we examined how cognitive control and neural processes change under emotional states of arousal in 46 participants with (n=19) and without (n=27) BN from the ages of 18-33 years. Participants performed a go/nogo task consisting of brief negative, positive and neutral emotional cues and sustained negative, positive and neutral emotional states of arousal during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Overall task performance improved with age for healthy participants, but not for patients with BN. These age-dependent behavioral effects were paralleled by diminished recruitment of prefrontal control circuitry in patients with BN with age. Although patients with BN showed no difference in performance on the experimental manipulations of negative emotions, sustained positive emotions related to improved performance among patients with BN. Together the findings highlight a neurodevelopmental approach towards understanding markers of psychopathology and suggest that sustained positive affect may have potential therapeutic effects on maintaining behavioral control in BN. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Response efficacy: the key to minimizing rejection and maximizing acceptance of emotion-based anti-speeding messages.

PubMed

Lewis, I M; Watson, B; White, K M

2010-03-01

This study sought to improve understanding of the persuasive process of emotion-based appeals not only in relation to negative, fear-based appeals but also for appeals based upon positive emotions. In particular, the study investigated whether response efficacy, as a cognitive construct, mediated outcome measures of message effectiveness in terms of both acceptance and rejection of negative and positive emotion-based messages. Licensed drivers (N=406) participated via the completion of an on-line survey. Within the survey, participants received either a negative (fear-based) appeal or one of the two possible positive appeals (pride or humor-based). Overall, the study's findings confirmed the importance of emotional and cognitive components of persuasive health messages and identified response efficacy as a key cognitive construct influencing the effectiveness of not only fear-based messages but also positive emotion-based messages. Interestingly, however, the results suggested that response efficacy's influence on message effectiveness may differ for positive and negative emotion-based appeals such that significant indirect (and mediational) effects were found with both acceptance and rejection of the positive appeals yet only with rejection of the fear-based appeal. As such, the study's findings provide an important extension to extant literature and may inform future advertising message design. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Stress and attitudes toward negative emotions in adolescence].

PubMed

Ozawa, Eiji

2010-12-01

This study investigated the relationship between stress and attitudes toward negative emotions in adolescents. Adolescent students (N=1500) completed a questionnaire that measured attitudes toward negative emotions, emotional-stress reactions, and stress coping. Analysis of date yielded, two factors of the attitudes toward negative emotions: "Negative feelings about negative emotions" and "Capabilities of switching of negative emotions". In order to examine the theoretical relationships among attitudes toward negative emotions, emotional-stress reactions, and stress coping, a hypothetical model was tested by covariance structure analysis. This model predicted that students who have a high level of attitudes toward negative emotions would report enhanced problem solving which promoted stress coping. The results indicated that "Negative feelings about negative emotions" enhanced avoidable coping, and avoidable coping enhanced stress reactions. "Capabilities of switching of negative emotions" was related to a decrease of avoidable coping. Based on the results from covariance structure analysis and a multiple population analysis, the clinical significance and developmental characteristics were discussed.

Emotional memory retrieval. rTMS stimulation on left DLPFC increases the positive memories.

PubMed

Balconi, Michela; Ferrari, Chiara

2012-09-01

A suggestive hypothesis proposed that the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) may be identified as the site of emotion-memory integration, since it was shown to be sensitive to the encoding and retrieval of emotional content. In the present research we explored the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in memory retrieval of positive vs. negative emotional stimuli. This effect was analyzed by using an rTMS paradigm that induced a cortical activation of the left DLPFC. Subjects were required to perform a task consisting of two experimental phases: an encoding phase, where some lists composed by positive and negative emotional words were presented to the subjects; a retrieval phase, where the old stimuli and the new stimuli were presented for a recognition performance. The rTMS stimulation was provided during the retrieval phase over the left DLPFC. We found that the rTMS stimulation over this area affects the memory retrieval of positive emotional material, with higher memory efficiency (reduced RTs). This result suggested that left DLPFC activation promotes the memory retrieval of emotional information. Secondly, the valence model of emotional cue processing may explain decreasing of RTs, by pointing out the distinct role the left hemisphere has in positive emotional cue processing.

Emotional Diathesis, Emotional Stress, and Childhood Stuttering

PubMed Central

Conture, Edward G.; Walden, Tedra A.; Jones, Robin M.; Kim, Hanjoe

2016-01-01

Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine (a) whether emotional reactivity and emotional stress of children who stutter (CWS) are associated with their stuttering frequency, (b) when the relationship between emotional reactivity and stuttering frequency is more likely to exist, and (c) how these associations are mediated by a 3rd variable (e.g., sympathetic arousal). Method Participants were 47 young CWS (M age = 50.69 months, SD = 10.34). Measurement of participants' emotional reactivity was based on parental report, and emotional stress was engendered by viewing baseline, positive, and negative emotion-inducing video clips, with stuttered disfluencies and sympathetic arousal (indexed by tonic skin conductance level) measured during a narrative after viewing each of the various video clips. Results CWS's positive emotional reactivity was positively associated with percentage of their stuttered disfluencies regardless of emotional stress condition. CWS's negative emotional reactivity was more positively correlated with percentage of stuttered disfluencies during a narrative after a positive, compared with baseline, emotional stress condition. CWS's sympathetic arousal did not appear to mediate the effect of emotional reactivity, emotional stress condition, and their interaction on percentage of stuttered disfluencies, at least during this experimental narrative task following emotion-inducing video clips. Conclusions Results were taken to suggest an association between young CWS's positive emotional reactivity and stuttering, with negative reactivity seemingly more associated with these children's stuttering during positive emotional stress (a stress condition possibly associated with lesser degrees of emotion regulation). Such findings seem to support the notion that emotional processes warrant inclusion in any truly comprehensive account of childhood stuttering. PMID:27327187

Emotional Diathesis, Emotional Stress, and Childhood Stuttering.

PubMed

Choi, Dahye; Conture, Edward G; Walden, Tedra A; Jones, Robin M; Kim, Hanjoe

2016-08-01

The purpose of this study was to determine (a) whether emotional reactivity and emotional stress of children who stutter (CWS) are associated with their stuttering frequency, (b) when the relationship between emotional reactivity and stuttering frequency is more likely to exist, and (c) how these associations are mediated by a 3rd variable (e.g., sympathetic arousal). Participants were 47 young CWS (M age = 50.69 months, SD = 10.34). Measurement of participants' emotional reactivity was based on parental report, and emotional stress was engendered by viewing baseline, positive, and negative emotion-inducing video clips, with stuttered disfluencies and sympathetic arousal (indexed by tonic skin conductance level) measured during a narrative after viewing each of the various video clips. CWS's positive emotional reactivity was positively associated with percentage of their stuttered disfluencies regardless of emotional stress condition. CWS's negative emotional reactivity was more positively correlated with percentage of stuttered disfluencies during a narrative after a positive, compared with baseline, emotional stress condition. CWS's sympathetic arousal did not appear to mediate the effect of emotional reactivity, emotional stress condition, and their interaction on percentage of stuttered disfluencies, at least during this experimental narrative task following emotion-inducing video clips. Results were taken to suggest an association between young CWS's positive emotional reactivity and stuttering, with negative reactivity seemingly more associated with these children's stuttering during positive emotional stress (a stress condition possibly associated with lesser degrees of emotion regulation). Such findings seem to support the notion that emotional processes warrant inclusion in any truly comprehensive account of childhood stuttering.

Pupillary Response to Negative Emotional Stimuli Is Differentially Affected in Meditation Practitioners

PubMed Central

Vasquez-Rosati, Alejandra; Brunetti, Enzo P.; Cordero, Carmen; Maldonado, Pedro E.

2017-01-01

Clinically, meditative practices have become increasingly relevant, decreasing anxiety in patients and increasing antibody production. However, few studies have examined the physiological correlates, or effects of the incorporation of meditative practices. Because pupillary reactivity is a marker for autonomic changes and emotional processing, we hypothesized that the pupillary responses of mindfulness meditation practitioners (MP) and subjects without such practices (non-meditators (NM)) differ, reflecting different emotional processing. In a group of 11 MP and 9 NM, we recorded the pupil diameter using video-oculography while subjects explored images with emotional contents. Although both groups showed a similar pupillary response for positive and neutral images, negative images evoked a greater pupillary contraction and a weaker dilation in the MP group. Also, this group had faster physiological recovery to baseline levels. These results suggest that mindfulness meditation practices modulate the response of the autonomic nervous system, reflected in the pupillary response to negative images and faster physiological recovery to baseline levels, suggesting that pupillometry could be used to assess the potential health benefits of these practices in patients. PMID:28515685

The Role of Intelligence Quotient and Emotional Intelligence in Cognitive Control Processes

PubMed Central

Checa, Purificación; Fernández-Berrocal, Pablo

2015-01-01

The relationship between intelligence quotient (IQ) and cognitive control processes has been extensively established. Several studies have shown that IQ correlates with cognitive control abilities, such as interference suppression, as measured with experimental tasks like the Stroop and Flanker tasks. By contrast, there is a debate about the role of Emotional Intelligence (EI) in individuals' cognitive control abilities. The aim of this study is to examine the relation between IQ and EI, and cognitive control abilities evaluated by a typical laboratory control cognitive task, the Stroop task. Results show a negative correlation between IQ and the interference suppression index, the ability to inhibit processing of irrelevant information. However, the Managing Emotions dimension of EI measured by the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), but not self-reported of EI, negatively correlates with the impulsivity index, the premature execution of the response. These results suggest that not only is IQ crucial, but also competences related to EI are essential to human cognitive control processes. Limitations and implications of these results are also discussed. PMID:26648901

The effects of valence and arousal on the neural activity leading to subsequent memory.

PubMed

Mickley Steinmetz, Katherine R; Kensinger, Elizabeth A

2009-11-01

This study examined how valence and arousal affect the processes linked to subsequent memory for emotional information. While undergoing an fMRI scan, participants viewed neutral pictures and emotional pictures varying by valence and arousal. After the scan, participants performed a recognition test. Subsequent memory for negative or high arousal information was associated with occipital and temporal activity, whereas memory for positive or low arousal information was associated with frontal activity. Regression analyses confirmed that for negative or high arousal items, temporal lobe activity was the strongest predictor of later memory whereas for positive or low arousal items, frontal activity corresponded most strongly with later memory. These results suggest that the types of encoding processes relating to memory (e.g., sensory vs. elaborative processing) can differ based on the affective qualities of emotional information.