Psychometric properties of the late positive potential in combat-exposed veterans

Neural reactivity to infant emotion cues during pregnancy: Associations with peripartum anxiety and depressive symptoms

BACKGROUND

Pregnancy is marked by physiological and psychosocial changes for women, and event-related potentials (ERP) are comfortable and safe for examining brain function across pregnancy. The late positive potential (LPP) ERP, a measure of allocated attention to emotional stimuli, may provide insight into associations between internalizing symptoms and neural processing of infant emotion cues, which may be particularly salient in this life stage.

METHODS

We developed a task to examine neural and behavioral responses to infant faces in pregnant women (N = 120, Mage=31.09, SD=4.81), the impact of auditory infant cries on the LPP to faces, and associations between the LPP and anxiety and depressive symptoms. Participants matched distressed, happy, and neutral infant faces and shapes as a comparison condition with interspersed auditory conditions (infant cry sounds vs. white noise) while electroencephalogram data were collected. Participants also completed self-report measures of anxiety and depressive symptoms.

RESULTS

Reaction time (RT) was faster for the infant cry vs. white noise condition and when matching shapes vs. infant faces. Depressive symptoms were associated with slower RTs to neutral infant faces. The LPP was enhanced overall to faces vs. shapes, but there was no main effect of auditory condition. Anxiety symptoms were associated with an enhanced LPP to infant distressed faces in the infant cry condition.

CONCLUSIONS

Results support these methods for measuring neural and behavioral responses to infant emotional cues in pregnancy and provide evidence that combinations of auditory and visual stimuli may be particularly useful for capturing emotional processes relevant to anxiety.

Temporal stability of neurophysiological drug cue reactivity before and after acute stress in cannabis users: A test of incentive sensitization

BACKGROUND

Given increasing rates of Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD), objective measures are needed that can reliably index risk and track cannabis use progression. Based on incentive sensitization models, neurophysiological reactivity to cannabis cues, measured with the electroencephalography-recorded late positive potential (LPP), may be a candidate biomarker. To serve as such, the cannabis cue-elicited LPP must demonstrate adequate retest reliability and sensitivity to cannabis use change. Moreover, incentive sensitization theory suggests that state-level contextual variables, such as acute stress, can impact drug cue reactivity. Therefore, the present study evaluated the three-month retest reliability of the cannabis cue-elicited LPP, recorded before and after a laboratory stress induction, as well as its sensitivity to cannabis use change.

METHOD

Cannabis and neutral cue-elicited LPPs were measured in 102 adults reporting frequent cannabis use (86 % with current CUD) before and after an acute stress induction at two lab visits three-months apart. Physiological and subjective stress reactivity were also measured.

RESULTS

Manipulation checks confirmed expected cannabis cue and acute stress effects. Cannabis cue-elicited LPP amplitudes showed significant three-month retest reliability of poor-to-fair through moderate-to-good size. Change in cannabis use frequency significantly predicted change in cannabis cue-elicited LPP amplitudes, particularly at post-stress.

CONCLUSION

Consistent with incentive sensitization models of addiction, the cannabis cue-elicited LPP demonstrated trait-like, moderate three-month stability and responsivity to change in cannabis use behavior. Greater predictive validity of the post-stress LPP may arise through kindling effects of acute stress on incentive salience-related neural activity, which should be explored in future studies.

Emotion regulation and the late positive potential (LPP) in older adults

Emotion regulation (ER) processes in older adults may be important for successful aging. Neural correlates of ER processes have been examined using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), such as the late-positive potential (LPP) during cognitive reappraisal paradigms. The current study sought to extend this research by examining the LPP from an ER task in a sample of 47 community-dwelling older adults between the ages of 60 and 84 years, scoring either high on emotional well-being (as measured by habitual ER use and resiliency; high WB group, n = 20) or low on emotional well-being (as measured by habitual ER use, resiliency, and depression; low WB group, n = 27). Participants viewed unpleasant and neutral images and were instructed to simply react to the images or reappraise their emotional response. Both pre- and post-instruction LPP amplitudes were scored, in addition to self-reported ratings of negative emotion collected during the task. We found greater LPP amplitude to emotionally salient compared to neutral stimuli, reduced LPP amplitude following instructions to reappraise emotional response to stimuli across groups, and a blunted LPP overall for individuals with higher depressive symptoms. Additionally, we demonstrated that older adults with low emotional well-being were less successful at reappraisal according to self-reported ratings of negative emotion, although this was not reflected in the LPP. Collectively, these data suggest that laboratory-based ER tasks might be used to understand abnormal ER use-though the LPP may be more sensitive to depression than individual differences in ER ability.

Emotional processing prospectively modulates the impact of anxiety on COVID-19 pandemic-related post-traumatic stress symptoms: an ERP study

BACKGROUND

Considering that the elevated distress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, in some cases, led to post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), it has been proposed as a specific traumatic event. The present longitudinal study investigated pre-pandemic motivated attention to emotional stimuli, as indexed by Late Positive Potential (LPP) amplitude, in relation with the potential differential role of anxiety and depressive symptoms in predicting PTSS severity related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

A total of 79 university students initially completed self-report measures of depression and anxiety along with a passive viewing task of emotional (pleasant, unpleasant) and neutral pictures while electroencephaloghic activity was recorded. In December 2020, 57 participants completed a questionnaire assessing PTSS.

RESULTS

Significant interactions between anxiety and LPP emerged in predicting pandemic-related PTSS, where greater anxiety symptoms predicted PTSS only in individuals with greater LPP to unpleasant or with reduced LPP to pleasant stimuli.

LIMITATIONS

The prevalence of the female sex, the relatively young age of the participants, as well as the fact that they were all enrolled in a University course might not allow the generalization of the findings.

CONCLUSIONS

Taken together, the present longitudinal study provided novel evidence on EEG predictors of pandemic-related PTSS that might be useful for the prevention and treatment of PTSS. Indeed, assessing anxiety symptoms and pre-trauma LPP to emotional stimuli might be a useful target for identifying individuals that are more vulnerable to the development of PTSS during times of crisis.