Intentional action processing results from automatic bottom-up attention: An EEG-investigation into the Social Relevance Hypothesis using hypnosis

Hypnotic suggestions cognitively penetrate tactile perception through top-down modulation of semantic contents

Perception is subject to ongoing alterations by learning and top-down influences. Although abundant studies have shown modulation of perception by attention, motivation, content and context, there is an unresolved controversy whether these examples provide true evidence that perception is penetrable by cognition. Here we show that tactile perception assessed as spatial discrimination can be instantaneously and systematically altered merely by the semantic content during hypnotic suggestions. To study neurophysiological correlates, we recorded EEG and SEPs. We found that the suggestion "your index finger becomes bigger" led to improved tactile discrimination, while the suggestion "your index finger becomes smaller" led to impaired discrimination. A hypnosis without semantic suggestions had no effect but caused a reduction of phase-locking synchronization of the beta frequency band between medial frontal cortex and the finger representation in somatosensory cortex. Late SEP components (P80-N140 complex) implicated in attentional processes were altered by the semantic contents, but processing of afferent inputs in SI remained unaltered. These data provide evidence that the psychophysically observed modifiability of tactile perception by semantic contents is not simply due to altered perception-based judgments, but instead is a consequence of modified perceptual processes which change the perceptual experience.

Alterations of social attention in mental disorders: Phenomenology, scope, and future directions for research

Mental disorders often involve changes in the way subjects attend to other people. However, the nature of these modifications and how they unfold in different pathologies are not sufficiently clear. This article addresses these issues from the perspective of phenomenological psychopathology. The primary goal of the article is to suggest a new way of assessing and distinguishing the alterations of social attention in subjects with mental disorders. The first part of the article characterizes the essential properties of a capacity for social attention based on multidisciplinary evidence. This model is then used to examine anomalies in social attention in autism, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and social anxiety disorder. The analysis of alterations in the way subjects with different types of pathologies attend to and with others is followed by a threefold typology, which clarifies the phenomenal nature of impairments of social attention in mental disorders.

The top-down regulation from the prefrontal cortex to insula via hypnotic aversion suggestions reduces smoking craving

Hypnosis has been shown to have treatment effects on nicotine addiction. However, the neural basis of these effects is poorly understood. This preliminary study investigated the neural mechanisms of hypnosis-based treatment on cigarette smoking, specifically, whether the hypnosis involves a top-down or bottom-up mechanism. Two groups of 45 smokers underwent a smoking aversion suggestion and viewed smoking-related pictures and neutral pictures. One group underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning twice (control and hypnotic states), whereas the other group underwent two electroencephalograph sessions. Our study found that self-reported smoking craving decreased in both groups following hypnosis. Smoking cue-elicited activations in the right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) and left insula (lI) and the functional connectivity between the rDLPFC and lI were increased in the hypnotic state compared with the control state. The delta band source waveforms indicated the activation from 390 to 862 ms at the rDLPFC and from 490 to 900 ms at the lI was significantly different between the smoking and neutral conditions in the hypnotic state, suggesting the activation in the rDLPFC preceded that in the lI. These results suggest that the decreased smoking craving via hypnotic aversion suggestions may arise from the top-down regulation of the rDLPFC to the lI. Our findings provide novel neurobiological evidence for understanding the therapeutic effects of hypnosis on nicotine addiction, and the prefrontal-insula circuit may serve as an imaging biomarker to monitor the treatment efficacy noninvasively.

Perception and Cognition Are Largely Independent, but Still Affect Each Other in Systematic Ways: Arguments from Evolution and the Consciousness-Attention Dissociation

The main thesis of this paper is that two prevailing theories about cognitive penetration are too extreme, namely, the view that cognitive penetration is pervasive and the view that there is a sharp and fundamental distinction between cognition and perception, which precludes any type of cognitive penetration. These opposite views have clear merits and empirical support. To eliminate this puzzling situation, we present an alternative theoretical approach that incorporates the merits of these views into a broader and more nuanced explanatory framework. A key argument we present in favor of this framework concerns the evolution of intentionality and perceptual capacities. An implication of this argument is that cases of cognitive penetration must have evolved more recently and that this is compatible with the cognitive impenetrability of early perceptual stages of processing information. A theoretical approach that explains why this should be the case is the consciousness and attention dissociation framework. The paper discusses why concepts, particularly issues concerning concept acquisition, play an important role in the interaction between perception and cognition.

Encapsulated social perception of emotional expressions

In this paper I argue that the detection of emotional expressions is, in its early stages, informationally encapsulated. I clarify and defend such a view via the appeal to data from social perception on the visual processing of faces, bodies, facial and bodily expressions. Encapsulated social perception might exist alongside processes that are cognitively penetrated, and that have to do with recognition and categorization, and play a central evolutionary function in preparing early and rapid responses to the emotional stimuli.