Alpha neural oscillation of females in the luteal phase is sensitive to high risk during sequential risk decisions

Unveiling the Role of Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) in Migraine: A Review of Electrophysiological Studies in Adults and Children

Migraine has been considered a chronic neuronal-based pain disorder characterized by the presence of cortical hyperexcitability. The Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) is the most explored electrophysiological index in migraine. However, the findings show inconsistencies regarding its functional significance. To address this, we conducted a review in both adults and children with migraine without aura to gain a deeper understanding of it and to derive clinical implications. The literature search was conducted in the PubMed, SCOPUS and PsycINFO databases until September 2022m and 34 articles were retrieved and considered relevant for further analysis. The main results in adults showed higher CNV amplitudes (with no habituation) in migraine patients. Electrophysiological abnormalities, particularly focused on the early CNV subcomponent (eCNV), were especially prominent a few days before the onset of a migraine attack, normalizing during and after the attack. We also explored various modulatory factors, including pharmacological treatments-CNV amplitude was lower after the intake of drugs targeting neural hyperexcitability-and other factors such as psychological, hormonal or genetic/familial influences on CNV. Although similar patterns were found in children, the evidence is particularly scarce and less consistent, likely due to the brain's maturation process during childhood. As the first review exploring the relationship between CNV and migraine, this study supports the role of the CNV as a potential neural marker for migraine pathophysiology and the prediction of pain attacks. The importance of further exploring the relationship between this neurophysiological index and childhood migraine is critical for identifying potential therapeutic targets for managing migraine symptoms during its development.

A review and p-curve analysis of research on the menstrual cycle correlates of consumer preferences and economic decisions

A number of studies have been claimed to show that ovarian hormones, whose levels fluctuate throughout the menstrual cycle, affect consumer preferences and financial decisions. The present article aims to critically analyze the literature examining associations between the phases of the menstrual cycle (peri-ovulatory vs. non-ovulatory) with particular consumer preferences (especially regarding clothing choices) and economic decisions (especially in regards to economic games and risk-taking). A search for studies was conducted in Web of Science and Scopus between 2004 and 2022, by combining keywords of the menstrual cycle, consumer preferences, and economic decisions. Once articles were selected, we identified the main findings, the characteristics of the population, and the methods for determining the phases of the cycle. We performed a p-curve analysis on previously reported statistically significant effects. These analyses find evidence for associations between peri-ovulatory status and specific consumer preferences, most strongly for appearance-enhancing products. They yield no compelling evidence for associations between peri-ovulatory status and financial decisions and risk-taking. We offer provisional conclusions and call for additional studies that possess sufficient statistical power to detect true meaningful effects, especially in the domain of financial decisions.

Neural dynamics underlying the processing of implicit form-meaning connections: The dissociative roles of theta and alpha oscillations

Implicit learning plays an important role in the language acquisition. In addition to helping people acquire the form-level rules (e.g., the word order regularities), implicit learning can also facilitate the acquisition of word meanings (i.e., the establishment of connections between the word form and its meanings). Although some behavioral studies have explored the processing of implicit form-meaning connections, the neural dynamics underlying this processing remains unclear. Through examining whether participants could implicitly acquire the literal and metaphorical meanings of novel words, and applying the time-frequency analysis on the electroencephalogram (EEG) data collected in the testing phase, the neural oscillations corresponding to the processing of implicit form-literal and form-metaphorical meaning connections were explored. The results showed that participants in the experimental group could implicitly acquire the form-literal and form-metaphorical meaning connections after training, while participants in the control group who were not trained did not have access to such form-meaning connections. Meanwhile, during the processing of form-literal meaning connections, the greater suppression of alpha oscillations was induced by the testing items that follow the same rules as the training items (i.e., the regular testing items) in the experimental group, whereas the stronger enhancement of theta oscillations was elicited by the regular testing items in the experimental group during the processing of form-metaphorical meaning connections. Our study provides insights for understanding the processing of implicit form-literal and form-metaphorical meaning connections and the neural dynamics underlying the processing.

Social attention, memory, and memory-guided orienting change across the menstrual cycle

Numerous studies have shown that perception of emotion and emotional memory vary across the menstrual cycle. However, most of these studies used stimuli that contained not only emotional but also social elements. Importantly, the social cognitive abilities of individuals are as crucial as emotional abilities for danger avoidance and recruitment of allies. Therefore, the issue that natural hormonal fluctuations may affect emotion processing should be revisited. To investigate whether the effects of the menstrual cycle are emotion-specific or can also be attributed to social information processing, the present study examined social attention across the menstrual cycle in three tasks-visual search, memory, and memory-guided orienting-with a combination of behavioral and eye-tracking measures. We used images of people standing upright with neutral emotion as social distractors and everyday objects with physical properties matched as non-social distractors. Thirty-six healthy women without hormone use and with stable menstrual cycles of 26 - 30 days participated in the three tasks in the late follicular phase (FP) and mid-luteal phase (LP), respectively. During visual search, participants were asked to search for targets accompanied by social or non-social distractors in complex scenes. Social attentional bias, as evidenced by longer search times and shorter gaze behaviors for targets with social distractors, was found in the FP but not in the LP. In the following memory task, memory accuracy for targets was higher in the FP than in the LP, and the memory for targets with social distractors was more precise in both phases. Finally, in the orienting task, targets in social scenes were detected more slowly than in non-social scenes in LP. Taken together, these findings point to the interplay between social attention, memory, and memory-oriented attention and reveal the distinct processing pathways for social information in the FP and LP. The underlying mechanisms from an evolutionary perspective and from behavioral and neural basis were discussed.