Watching emotional movies: affective reactions and gender differences

Cognitive Costs of Reappraisal Depend on Both Emotional Stimulus Intensity and Individual Differences in Habitual Reappraisal

Recent models of emotion regulation suggest that the cognitive costs of reappraisal depend on stimulus intensity and habitual reappraisal. In the current experiment, we tested these hypotheses by manipulating the intensity of unpleasant and pleasant images, which participants reappraised, viewed, or suppressed their emotions to. To assess cognitive costs, we measured participants’ performance on a concurrent simple reaction time task. Participants also reported on their everyday use of reappraisal and suppression. Higher intensity stimuli were associated with greater cognitive costs of reappraisal, for unpleasant, but not pleasant pictures. Also, greater habitual reappraisal predicted lower cognitive costs of reappraisal and greater reductions in subjective feelings. Results support the role of stimulus intensity and habitual use of reappraisal in predicting the cognitive costs of reappraisal.

Effects of Intranasal Oxytocin on Emotion Regulation in Insecure Adolescents: Study Protocol for a Double-Blind, Randomized Controlled Trial

Background

Emotional dysregulation and impaired attachment are potential contributors to the development of psychopathology in adolescence. This raises the question of whether oxytocin (OT), the paradigmatic “attachment hormone,” may be beneficial in such contexts. Recent evidence suggests that intranasal administration of OT increases affiliative behavior, including trust and empathy. OT may also facilitate social reciprocity by attenuating the stress response to interpersonal conflict. To date, few studies have investigated the effects of intranasal oxytocin (IN-OT) on neurophysiological emotion regulation strategies in healthy adolescents, particularly during parent-adolescent interaction. To understand these mechanisms, our study will examine the effects of IN-OT on emotion regulation in adolescents during parent-adolescent stressful interactions, and on each adolescent’s visual and neurophysiological strategies when visualizing attachment-related pictures. We hypothesize that IN-OT will influence psychophysiological outcomes under conditions of stress. We predict that IN-OT will momentarily increase feelings of safety and attenuate stress and hostile behavior during conflict situations. OT may also enhance attachment security by increasing comfort and proximity-seeking, and reducing neurophysiological hyperactivation.

Objective

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effects of IN-OT on insecure adolescents by studying their behavior and discourse during a disagreement with one of their parents. Their neurophysiological responses to pictures eliciting attachment-related emotions and their visual exploration strategies will also be investigated.

Methods

In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled parallel-group design, 60 healthy male adolescents classified as insecurely attached will receive 24 international units (IU) of IN-OT versus placebo (PB), 45 minutes before the experimental tasks. Each adolescent will then be invited to engage in an experimental conflict discussion with one of his parents. The conflict session will be videotaped and coded for verbal and non-verbal interaction behavior, using the Goal-Corrected Partnership in Adolescence Coding System (GPACS). Each adolescent will then be asked to visualize attachment-related pictures on a screen. Eye-tracking (ET) and neurophysiological responses, including electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate (HR), will be recorded simultaneously and continuously during attachment-related picture viewing (Besançon Affective Picture Set-Adolescents, BAPS-Ado).

Results

Enrollment for the study was completed in May 2016. Data analysis commenced in July 2016. Study results will be submitted for publication in the winter of 2017.

Conclusions

OT is a complex molecule with many facets that are not yet fully understood. This experimental protocol will increase scientific and clinical knowledge of emotion regulation skills in insecure adolescents by assessing the impact of IN-OT on parent-adolescent interaction and on the visual processing of attachment-related emotions. Positive results could lead to therapeutic uses of IN-OT to treat emotion dysregulation in adolescence.

Assessing the effects of cocaine dependence and pathological gambling using group-wise sparse representation of natural stimulus FMRI data

Assessing functional brain activation patterns in neuropsychiatric disorders such as cocaine dependence (CD) or pathological gambling (PG) under naturalistic stimuli has received rising interest in recent years. In this paper, we propose and apply a novel group-wise sparse representation framework to assess differences in neural responses to naturalistic stimuli across multiple groups of participants (healthy control, cocaine dependence, pathological gambling). Specifically, natural stimulus fMRI (N-fMRI) signals from all three groups of subjects are aggregated into a big data matrix, which is then decomposed into a common signal basis dictionary and associated weight coefficient matrices via an effective online dictionary learning and sparse coding method. The coefficient matrices associated with each common dictionary atom are statistically assessed for each group separately. With the inter-group comparisons based on the group-wise correspondence established by the common dictionary, our experimental results demonstrated that the group-wise sparse coding and representation strategy can effectively and specifically detect brain networks/regions affected by different pathological conditions of the brain under naturalistic stimuli.

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN RESPONSE TO AFFECTIVE AUDIO AND VISUAL INDUCTIONS: EXAMINATION OF NONLINEAR DYNAMICS OF AUTONOMIC SIGNALS

Physiological reflection of emotions can be tracked by autonomic signals. Several studies have been conducted using autonomic signal processing to examine men and women differences during the exposure of affective stimuli. Emotional pictures and music are two commonly used methods to induce affects in an experimental setup. The biological changes have been commonly monitored during a certain emotional inducement protocol, solely. This study was aimed to examine two induction paradigms involved auditory and visual cues using nonlinear dynamical approaches. To this end, various nonlinear parameters of galvanic skin response (GSR) and pulse signals of men and women were examined. The nonlinear analysis was performed using lagged Poincare parameters, detrended fluctuation indices (DFAs), Lyapunov exponents (LEs), some entropy measures, and recurrence quantification analysis (RQA). The Wilcoxon rank sum test was used to show significant differences between the groups. The results indicate that besides the type of affect induction, physiological differences of men and women are notable in negative emotions (sadness and fear). Regardless to the inducements, lagged Poincare parameters of the pulse signals and DFA indices of the GSR have shown significant differences in gender affective responses. However, applying pictorial stimuli, LEs are appropriate indicators for gender discrimination. It is also concluded that GSR dynamics are intensely affected by the kind of stimuli; while this is not validated for the pulse. These findings suggest that different emotional inductions evoked different autonomic responses in men and women, which can be appropriately monitored using nonlinear signal processing approaches.

Gender Differences in Emotional Response: Inconsistency between Experience and Expressivity

The present study investigated gender differences in both emotional experience and expressivity. Heart rate (HR) was recorded as an indicator of emotional experience while the participants watched 16 video clips that induced eight types of emotion (sadness, anger, horror, disgust, neutrality, amusement, surprise, and pleasure). We also asked the participants to report valence, arousal, and motivation as indicators of emotional expressivity. Overall, the results revealed gender differences in emotional experience and emotional expressivity. When watching videos that induced anger, amusement, and pleasure, men showed larger decreases in HR, whereas women reported higher levels of arousal. There was no gender difference in HR when the participants watched videos that induced horror and disgust, but women reported lower valence, higher arousal, and stronger avoidance motivation than did men. Finally, no gender difference was observed in sadness or surprise, although there was one exception-women reported higher arousal when watching videos that induced sadness. The findings suggest that, when watching videos that induce an emotional response, men often have more intense emotional experiences, whereas women have higher emotional expressivity, particularly for negative emotions. In addition, gender differences depend on the specific emotion type but not the valence.

The neural networks of subjectively evaluated emotional conflicts

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.

Effects of emotional videos on postural control in children

The link between emotions and postural control has been rather unexplored in children. The objective of the present study was to establish whether the projection of pleasant and unpleasant videos with similar arousal would lead to specific postural responses such as postural freezing, aversive or appetitive behaviours as a function of age. We hypothesized that postural sway would similarly increase with the viewing of high arousal videos in children and adults, whatever the emotional context. 40 children participated in the study and were divided into two groups of age: group 7-9 years (n=23; mean age=8 years ± 0.7) and group 10-12 years (n=17; mean age=11 years ± 0.7). 19 adults (mean age=25.8 years ± 4.4) also took part in the experiment. They viewed emotional videos while standing still on a force platform. Centre of foot pressure (CoP) displacements were analysed. Antero-posterior, medio-lateral mean speed and sway path length increased similarly with the viewing of high arousal movies in the younger, older children, and adults. Our findings suggest that the development of postural control is not influenced by the maturation of the emotional processing.

A multi-method laboratory investigation of emotional reactivity and emotion regulation abilities in borderline personality disorder

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is conceptualized as a disorder of heightened emotional reactivity and difficulties with emotion regulation. However, findings regarding emotional reactivity in BPD are mixed and there are limited studies examining emotion regulation capabilities in this population.

METHODS

Twenty-five individuals with BPD and 30 healthy controls (HCs) engaged in a baseline assessment followed by the presentation of neutral and BPD-relevant negative images. Participants were instructed to react as they naturally would to the image, or to use a mindfulness-based or distraction-based strategy to feel less negative. Self-reported and physiological (i.e., heart rate, electrodermal activity, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia) measures were collected.

RESULTS

Compared with the HCs, the BPD group exhibited elevated heart rate and reduced respiratory sinus arrhythmia at baseline. However, there were no differences in emotional reactivity in self-report or physiological indices between the two groups. In addition, the BPD group did not exhibit deficits in the ability to implement either emotion regulation strategy, with the exception that the BPD group reported less positive emotions while distracting compared with the HCs.

LIMITATIONS

This study is limited by a small sample size and the inclusion of a medicated BPD sample.

CONCLUSIONS

Emotion dysregulation in BPD might be better accounted for by abnormal baseline emotional functioning rather than heightened emotional reactivity or deficits in emotion regulation. Treatments for BPD might be enhanced by directly targeting resting state emotional functioning rather than emotional reactions or regulatory attempts.

Evaluative ratings and attention across the life span: emotional arousal and gender

This study was designed to investigate the evolution of emotional processing over the whole adult life span as a function of stimulus arousal and participants' gender. To this end, self-reported affective evaluation and attentional capture prompted by pleasant and unpleasant pictures varying in arousal were measured in a large sample of participants (n = 211) balanced by gender and equally spread across seven decades from 20 to 90 years. Results showed age differences only for affective evaluation of pleasant stimuli, with opposite patterns depending on stimulus arousal. As age increased, low-arousing pleasant cues (e.g. images of babies) were experienced as more pleasant and arousing by both males and females, whereas high-arousing stimuli (e.g. erotic images) were experienced as less pleasant only by females. In contrast, emotional pictures (both pleasant and unpleasant) were effective at capturing attention in a similar way across participants, regardless of age and gender. Taken together, these findings suggest that specific emotional cues prompt different subjective responses across different age groups, while basic mechanisms involved in attentional engagement towards both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli are preserved in healthy ageing.

Sex Differences in Emotional Evaluation of Film Clips: Interaction with Five High Arousal Emotional Categories

The present study aimed to investigate gender differences in the emotional evaluation of 18 film clips divided into six categories: Erotic, Scenery, Neutral, Sadness, Compassion, and Fear. 41 female and 40 male students rated all clips for valence-pleasantness, arousal, level of elicited distress, anxiety, jittery feelings, excitation, and embarrassment. Analysis of positive films revealed higher levels of arousal, pleasantness, and excitation to the Scenery clips in both genders, but lower pleasantness and greater embarrassment in women compared to men to Erotic clips. Concerning unpleasant stimuli, unlike men, women reported more unpleasantness to the Compassion, Sadness, and Fear compared to the Neutral clips and rated them also as more arousing than did men. They further differentiated the films by perceiving greater arousal to Fear than to Compassion clips. Women rated the Sadness and Fear clips with greater Distress and Jittery feelings than men did. Correlation analysis between arousal and the other emotional scales revealed that, although men looked less aroused than women to all unpleasant clips, they also showed a larger variance in their emotional responses as indicated by the high number of correlations and their relatively greater extent, an outcome pointing to a masked larger sensitivity of part of male sample to emotional clips. We propose a new perspective in which gender difference in emotional responses can be better evidenced by means of film clips selected and clustered in more homogeneous categories, controlled for arousal levels, as well as evaluated through a number of emotion focused adjectives.

A communication hub for a decentralized collaboration on studying real-life cognition

Studying the brain’s behavior in situations of real-life complexity is crucial for an understanding of brain function as a whole. However, methodological difficulties and a general lack of public resources are hindering scientific progress in this domain. This channel will serve as a communication hub to collect relevant resources and curate knowledge about working paradigms, available resources, and analysis techniques.

Human freezing in response to affective films

Human freezing has been objectively assessed using a passive picture viewing paradigm as an analog for threat. These results should be replicated for other stimuli in order to determine their stability and generalizability. Affective films are used frequently to elicit affective responses, but it is unknown whether they also elicit freezing-like defense responses. To test whether this is the case, 50 participants watched neutral, pleasant and unpleasant film fragments while standing on a stabilometric platform and wearing a polar band to assess heart rate. Freezing-like responses (indicated by overall reduced body sway and heart rate deceleration) were observed for the unpleasant film only. The unpleasant film also elicited early reduced body sway (1-2 s after stimulus onset). Heart rate and body sway were correlated during the unpleasant film only. The results suggest that ecologically valid stimuli like films are adequate stimuli in evoking defense responses. The results also underscore the importance of including time courses in human experimental research on defense reactions in order to delineate different stages in the defense response.

Psychophysiological response patterns to affective film stimuli

Psychophysiological research on emotion utilizes various physiological response measures to index activation of the defense system. Here we tested 1) whether acoustic startle reflex (ASR), skin conductance response (SCR) and heart rate (HR) elicited by highly arousing stimuli specifically reflect a defensive state and 2) the relation between resting heart rate variability (HRV) and affective responding. In a within-subject design, participants viewed film clips with a positive, negative and neutral content. In contrast to SCR and HR, we show that ASR differentiated between negative, neutral and positive states and can therefore be considered as a reliable index of activation of the defense system. Furthermore, resting HRV was associated with affect-modulated characteristics of ASR, but not with SCR or HR. Interestingly, individuals with low-HRV showed less differentiation in ASR between affective states. We discuss the important value of ASR in psychophysiological research on emotion and speculate on HRV as a potential biological marker for demarcating adaptive from maladaptive responding.

The Emotional Movie Database (EMDB): a self-report and psychophysiological study

Film clips are an important tool for evoking emotional responses in the laboratory. When compared with other emotionally potent visual stimuli (e.g., pictures), film clips seem to be more effective in eliciting emotions for longer periods of time at both the subjective and physiological levels. The main objective of the present study was to develop a new database of affective film clips without auditory content, based on a dimensional approach to emotional stimuli (valence, arousal and dominance). The study had three different phases: (1) the pre-selection and editing of 52 film clips (2) the self-report rating of these film clips by a sample of 113 participants and (3) psychophysiological assessment [skin conductance level (SCL) and the heart rate (HR)] on 32 volunteers. Film clips from different categories were selected to elicit emotional states from different quadrants of affective space. The results also showed that sustained exposure to the affective film clips resulted in a pattern of a SCL increase and HR deceleration in high arousal conditions (i.e., horror and erotic conditions). The resulting emotional movie database can reliably be used in research requiring the presentation of non-auditory film clips with different ratings of valence, arousal and dominance.

A review on bio-cooperative control in gait rehabilitation

While gait rehabilitation robots have become increasingly common to automate treadmill training, their efficacy is still controversial. Current robots lack the ability to react compliantly to the user's voluntary effort and cognitive intention. Bio-cooperative control concepts allow integrating the patient into the control loop as part of the plant rather than seeing him as a source of disturbance. Closed loop control is thereby performed on a physiological and psychological level. In this paper, we review the concept of bio-cooperative control implemented with neurological patients during robot-assisted gait rehabilitation. We highlight its clinical importance and review our work on control strategies that allow bio-cooperative control. We finish by discussing the future potential of bio-cooperative control in rehabilitation robotics.

Psychophysiological correlates of sexually and non-sexually motivated attention to film clips in a workload task

Some authors have speculated that the cognitive component (P3) of the Event-Related Potential (ERP) can function as a psychophysiological measure of sexual interest. The aim of this study was to determine if the P3 ERP component in a workload task can be used as a specific and objective measure of sexual motivation by comparing the neurophysiologic response to stimuli of motivational relevance with different levels of valence and arousal. A total of 30 healthy volunteers watched different films clips with erotic, horror, social-positive and social-negative content, while answering an auditory oddball paradigm. Erotic film clips resulted in larger interference when compared to both the social-positive and auditory alone conditions. Horror film clips resulted in the highest levels of interference with smaller P3 amplitudes than erotic and also than social-positive, social-negative and auditory alone condition. No gender differences were found. Both horror and erotic film clips significantly decreased heart rate (HR) when compared to both social-positive and social-negative films. The erotic film clips significantly increased the skin conductance level (SCL) compared to the social-negative films. The horror film clips significantly increased the SCL compared to both social-positive and social-negative films. Both the highly arousing erotic and non-erotic (horror) movies produced the largest decrease in the P3 amplitude, a decrease in the HR and an increase in the SCL. These data support the notion that this workload task is very sensitive to the attentional resources allocated to the film clip, although they do not act as a specific index of sexual interest. Therefore, the use of this methodology seems to be of questionable utility as a specific measure of sexual interest or as an objective measure of the severity of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder.

Real-time closed-loop control of cognitive load in neurological patients during robot-assisted gait training

Cognitively challenging training sessions during robot-assisted gait training after stroke were shown to be key requirements for the success of rehabilitation. Despite a broad variability of cognitive impairments amongst the stroke population, current rehabilitation environments do not adapt to the cognitive capabilities of the patient, as cognitive load cannot be objectively assessed in real-time. We provided healthy subjects and stroke patients with a virtual task during robot-assisted gait training, which allowed modulating cognitive load by adapting the difficulty level of the task. We quantified the cognitive load of stroke patients by using psychophysiological measurements and performance data. In open-loop experiments with healthy subjects and stroke patients, we obtained training data for a linear, adaptive classifier that estimated the current cognitive load of patients in real-time. We verified our classification results via questionnaires and obtained 88% correct classification in healthy subjects and 75% in patients. Using the pre-trained, adaptive classifier, we closed the cognitive control loop around healthy subjects and stroke patients by automatically adapting the difficulty level of the virtual task in real-time such that patients were neither cognitively overloaded nor under-challenged.

The effect of trauma on stress reactivity in aggressive youth

To address gaps in the literature related to the contribution of childhood trauma on aggression, we evaluated salivary cortisol and heart rate changes to psychological challenge in aggressive children with various degrees of trauma. We hypothesized that traumatized and aggressive youths will exhibit higher responsiveness to an active challenge (Violent film-VF) than aggressive youth with no trauma but will not differ when viewing a Non-Violent film (NVF). A total of 25 children (aged 9-12; M=15, F=9) with history of aggression were assessed for trauma exposure. Children viewed the two films in randomized order. Four salivary cortisol and pulse measurements were obtained before (T1), 15 min after the start (T2), at the end (T3), and 15 min following the end of the movie (T4). Repeated measures Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) using Film (VF/NVF), Cortisol/Time at T1-T4, Group (Trauma/Non-Trauma), and Film Order were performed with age and gender as covariates. There were significant main effects for Group and Cortisol/Time for the Trauma group showing greater cortisol responsiveness than the Non-Trauma group that was most pronounced during the NVF. These results suggest that aggressive youth with personal history of trauma may exhibit unique biological characteristics, which may have important implications for classification and treatment.

Bradygastric activity of the stomach predicts disgust sensitivity and perceived disgust intensity

The aim of this study was to investigate gastric and non-gastric autonomic responses to disgusting pictures and to assess the relationship between autonomic changes, disgust sensitivity, and perceived disgust intensity. Healthy participants viewed pictures with affectively neutral or disgusting content of either a high or moderate arousal level. Electrogastrogram, electrocardiogram, and electrodermal activity were recorded, and participants' disgust sensitivity and disgust intensity were assessed. No main effect of condition on gastric myoelectrical activity was found. However, stepwise regression analyses indicated that the percentage of bradygastria predicted disgust ratings in case of the highly arousing disgust pictures. When moderately arousing pictures were shown, disgust ratings were predicted by disgust sensitivity, which in turn was predicted by the percentage of bradygastria. Heart periods and respiratory sinus arrhythmia increased to a similar extent during both the highly arousing and moderately arousing picture blocks, while a tendency for larger skin conductance responses during the highly arousing picture block was shown. The results suggest that feelings of disgust may be specifically related to increased bradygastria, which may represent a prodromal sign of vomiting.

Autonomic nervous system activity in emotion: a review

Autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity is viewed as a major component of the emotion response in many recent theories of emotion. Positions on the degree of specificity of ANS activation in emotion, however, greatly diverge, ranging from undifferentiated arousal, over acknowledgment of strong response idiosyncrasies, to highly specific predictions of autonomic response patterns for certain emotions. A review of 134 publications that report experimental investigations of emotional effects on peripheral physiological responding in healthy individuals suggests considerable ANS response specificity in emotion when considering subtypes of distinct emotions. The importance of sound terminology of investigated affective states as well as of choice of physiological measures in assessing ANS reactivity is discussed.