Spatial frequencies or emotional effects?

Emotion regulation flexibility: EEG/EMG predictors and consequences of switching between reappraisal and distraction strategies

Flexible use of emotion regulation (ER) strategies is central to mental health. To advance our understanding of what drives adaptive strategy-switching decisions, in this preregistered study, we used event-related potentials (late positive potential, LPP and stimulus preceding negativity, SPN) and facial electromyography (EMG corrugator activity) to test the antecedents and consequences of switching to an alternative ER strategy. Participants (N = 63, Mage = 24.8 years, all female) passively watched and then implemented an instructed ER strategy (reappraisal or distraction) in response to high-intensity negative pictures that were either easy or difficult to reinterpret (high or low reappraisal affordance, respectively). Next, they decided to "switch from" or "maintain" the instructed strategy and subsequently implemented the chosen strategy. Reappraisal affordance manipulations successfully induced switching. Regarding antecedents, switching was predicted by the reduced ER efficacy of the current strategy (corrugator, but not LPP). Switching to distraction was additionally predicted by increased responses to the stimulus during passive viewing (corrugator and LPP) and increased anticipatory effort in implementing reappraisal (SPN). Concerning consequences, switching to distraction improved, whereas switching to reappraisal impaired post-choice ER effects (LPP). However, starting with reappraisal was overall more effective than starting with distraction, irrespective of the subsequent decision (corrugator). Our results suggest that switching between ER strategies occurs in accordance with situational demands (stimulus affordances) and is predicted by reduced peripheral physiological ER efficacy. However, only switching to distraction leads to improved regulatory effects. These insights provide neurocognitively grounded starting points for developing interventions targeting ER flexibility.

Introducing the trier univalence neutrality ambivalence (TUNA) database: A picture database differentiating complex attitudes

Using validated stimulus material is crucial for ensuring research comparability and replicability. However, many databases rely solely on bidimensional valence ratings, ranging from negative to positive. While this material might be appropriate for certain studies, it does not reflect the complexity of attitudes and therefore might hamper the unambiguous interpretation of some study results. In fact, most databases cannot differentiate between neutral (i.e., neither positive nor negative) and ambivalent (i.e., simultaneously positive and negative) attitudes. Consequently, even presumably univalent (only positive or negative) stimuli cannot be clearly distinguished from ambivalent ones when selected via bipolar rating scales. In the present research, we introduce the Trier Univalence Neutrality Ambivalence (TUNA) database, a database containing 304,262 validation ratings from heterogeneous samples of 3,232 participants and at least 20 (M = 27.3, SD = 4.84) ratings per self-report scale per picture for a variety of attitude objects on split semantic differential scales. As these scales measure positive and negative evaluations independently, the TUNA database allows to distinguish univalence, neutrality, and ambivalence (i.e., potential ambivalence). TUNA also goes beyond previous databases by validating the stimulus materials on affective outcomes such as experiences of conflict (i.e., felt ambivalence), arousal, anger, disgust, and empathy. The TUNA database consists of 796 pictures and is compatible with other popular databases. It sets a focus on food pictures in various forms (e.g., raw vs. cooked, non-processed vs. highly processed), but includes pictures of other objects that are typically used in research to study univalent (e.g., flowers) and ambivalent (e.g., money, cars) attitudes for comparison. Furthermore, to facilitate the stimulus selection the TUNA database has an accompanying desktop app that allows easy stimulus selection via a multitude of filter options.

Validation of scrambling methods for vocal affect bursts

Studies on perception and cognition require sound methods allowing us to disentangle the basic sensory processing of physical stimulus properties from the cognitive processing of stimulus meaning. Similar to the scrambling of images, the scrambling of auditory signals is aimed at creating stimulus instances that are unrecognizable but have comparable low-level features. In the present study, we generated scrambled stimuli of short vocalizations taken from the Montreal Affective Voices database (Belin et al., Behav Res Methods, 40(2):531-539, 2008) by applying four different scrambling methods (frequency-, phase-, and two time-scrambling transformations). The original stimuli and their scrambled versions were judged by 60 participants for the apparency of a human voice, gender, and valence of the expressions, or, if no human voice was detected, for the valence of the subjective response to the stimulus. The human-likeness ratings were reduced for all scrambled versions relative to the original stimuli, albeit to a lesser extent for phase-scrambled versions of neutral bursts. For phase-scrambled neutral bursts, valence ratings were equivalent to those of the original neutral burst. All other scrambled versions were rated as slightly unpleasant, indicating that they should be used with caution due to their potential aversiveness.

Validation of the open biological negative image set for a Portuguese population: Comparing Japanese and Portuguese samples and an exploration of low-order visual properties of the stimuli

Recently, Shirai and Watanabe Royal Society Open Science, 9(1), 211128 (2022) developed OBNIS (Open Biological Negative Image Set), a comprehensive database containing images (primarily animals but also fruits, mushrooms, and vegetables) that visually elicit disgust, fear, or neither. OBNIS was initially validated for a Japanese population. In this article, we validated the color version of OBNIS for a Portuguese population. In study 1, the methodology of the original article was used. This allowed direct comparisons between the Portuguese and Japanese populations. Aside from a few emotional classification mismatches between disgust, fear, or neither-related images, we found that arousal and valence relate distinctively in both populations. In contrast to the Japanese sample, the Portuguese reported increased arousal for more positive valenced stimuli, suggesting that OBNIS images elicit positive emotions in the Portuguese population. These results showed important cross-cultural differences regarding OBNIS. In study 2, a methodological change was introduced: instead of the three classification options used originally (fear, disgust, or neither), six basic emotions were used (fear, disgust, sadness, surprise, anger, happiness), and a "neither" option, to confirm whether some of the originally "neither-related" images are associated with positive emotions (happiness). Additionally, the low-order visual properties of images (luminosity, contrast, chromatic complexity, and spatial frequency distribution) were explored due to their important role in emotion-related research. A fourth image group associated with happiness was found in the Portuguese sample. Moreover, image groups present differences regarding the low-order visual characteristics, which are correlated with arousal and valence ratings, highlighting the importance of controlling such characteristics in emotion-related research.

Dissociating representations of affect and motion in visual cortices

While a delicious dessert being presented to us may elicit strong feelings of happiness and excitement, the same treat falling slowly away can lead to sadness and disappointment. Our emotional response to the item depends on its visual motion direction. Despite this importance, it remains unclear whether (and how) cortical areas devoted to decoding motion direction represents or integrates emotion with perceived motion direction. Motion-selective visual area V5/MT+ sits, both functionally and anatomically, at the nexus of dorsal and ventral visual streams. These pathways, however, differ in how they are modulated by emotional cues. The current study was designed to disentangle how emotion and motion perception interact, as well as use emotion-dependent modulation of visual cortices to understand the relation of V5/MT+ to canonical processing streams. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), approaching, receding, or static motion after-effects (MAEs) were induced on stationary positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. An independent localizer scan was conducted to identify the visual-motion area V5/MT+. Through univariate and multivariate analyses, we demonstrated that emotion representations in V5/MT+ share a more similar response profile to that observed in ventral visual than dorsal, visual structures. Specifically, V5/MT+ and ventral structures were sensitive to the emotional content of visual stimuli, whereas dorsal visual structures were not. Overall, this work highlights the critical role of V5/MT+ in the representation and processing of visually acquired emotional content. It further suggests a role for this region in utilizing affectively salient visual information to augment motion perception of biologically relevant stimuli.

Reappraisal is less effective than distraction in downregulation of neural responses to physical threats-An event-related potential investigation

Evolutionary threats (ETs), such as predatory animals and heights, elicit stronger fear responses and are more often the subject of specific phobias, as compared to modern threats (MTs, such as guns and motorcycles). Since processing of ET depends on lower-order, phylogenetically conserved neural fear circuits, it may be less susceptible to higher-order (vs. simpler) cognitive emotion regulation. Given the relevance for treatment of specific phobias, we tested this hypothesis in an ERP study. Sixty-one female participants passively watched high- and low-threat pictures of evolutionary (snakes, lizards) and modern (guns, water-guns) origin, and downregulated responses to the high-threat pictures (snakes and guns) using either cognitive reappraisal or a simpler cognitive distraction strategy. ET elicited stronger early (EPN) and sustained (LPP) attention processing compared to MT. Both strategies successfully downregulated subjective and LPP (but not EPN) responses compared to passive watching. Although reappraisal was more effective subjectively, distraction downregulated the LPP earlier and stronger than reappraisal, irrespective of the threat type. These findings provide novel evidence that neural responses to physical threat might be less susceptible to cognitive emotion regulation via higher-order (reappraisal) versus simpler (distraction) strategies, irrespective of the evolutionary or modern relevance of threat. Combining both strategies could be beneficial for the emotion regulation-enhancing interventions for specific phobias. Distraction could be used during initial exposure, to reduce immediate emotion responding and help endure the contact with the feared stimulus, whereas reappraisal could be used subsequently, when emotions are less intense, to change maladaptive thoughts about the stimulus for future encounters.

Is Negative Affect that Bad? The Effect of Affective States on Conventional and Unconventional Creative Thinking in University Students

Introduction

The role of affective states on the creative process has been receiving the attention of researchers and has led to contradictory results. Most research in creativity has emphasized the role of affective states, mainly positive ones, on creativity levels, namely those resulting from divergent thinking tasks that reveal the unconventional way of thinking in the creative process. However, there are no studies to date that focus on the impact of affective states on conventional and unconventional thinking, during the same creative process, which consider a single creative assessment task. The aim of this experimental study was to analyze the effect of induced affective states on both conventional and unconventional thinking of creativity in adults by using the TCT-DP (Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production).

Method

Seventy-five university students, mostly female, with a mean age of 26.95 years, were randomly assigned into three affect elicitation conditions (pleasant vs. unpleasant vs. neutral).

Results

Results indicated that the negative affective state led to higher levels of conventional thinking when compared to positive and neutral affective states. However, no significant differences were found on unconventional thinking across the three conditions.

Conclusions

Our results do not support the assumption that the negative affect has a hindering effect on creativity nor the positive affect increases creativity. Negative affect seems to promote conventional thinking, perhaps due to its cognitive correlates, which can be manifested in focusing attention and analytic thinking. Practical and theoretical implications for future research on the role of affective states on creativity are discussed.

Measurement of the N170 during facial neuromuscular electrical stimulation (fNMES)

BACKGROUND

Studies on facial feedback effects typically employ props or posed facial expressions, which often lack temporal precision and muscle specificity.

NEW METHOD

Facial Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation (fNMES) allows for a controlled influence of contractions of facial muscles, and may be used to advance our understanding of facial feedback effects, especially when combined with Electroencephalography (EEG). However, electrical stimulation introduces significant interference that can mask underlying brain dynamics. Whether established signal processing methods can allow for a reduction of said interference whilst retaining effects of interest, remains unexplored.

RESULTS

We addressed these questions focusing on the classic N170 visual evoked potential, a face-sensitive brain component: 20 participants viewed images of houses, and of sad, happy, and neutral faces. On half of the trials, fNMES was delivered to bilateral lower-face muscles during the presentation of visual stimuli. A larger N170 amplitude was found for faces relative to houses. Interestingly, this was the case both without and during fNMES, regardless of whether the fNMES artefact was removed or not. Moreover, sad facial expressions elicited a larger N170 amplitude relative to neutral facial expressions, both with and without fNMES.

COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS

fNMES offers a more precise way of manipulating proprioceptive feedback from facial muscles, which affords greater diversity in experimental design for studies on facial feedback effects.

CONCLUSIONS

We show that the combining of fNMES and EEG can be achieved and may serve as a powerful means of exploring the impact of controlled proprioceptive inputs on various types of cognitive processing.

Individual- and Connectivity-Based Real-Time fMRI Neurofeedback to Modulate Emotion-Related Brain Responses in Patients with Depression: A Pilot Study

INTRODUCTION

Individual real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback (rtfMRI NF) might be a promising adjuvant in treating depressive symptoms. Further studies showed functional variations and connectivity-related changes in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the insular cortex.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this pilot study was to investigate whether individualized connectivity-based rtfMRI NF training can improve symptoms in depressed patients as an adjunct to a psychotherapeutic programme. The novel strategy chosen for this was to increase connectivity between individualized regions of interest, namely the insula and the dlPFC.

METHODS

Sixteen patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD, ICD-10) and 19 matched healthy controls (HC) participated in a rtfMRI NF training consisting of two sessions with three runs each, within an interval of one week. RtfMRI NF was applied during a sequence of negative emotional pictures to modulate the connectivity between the dlPFC and the insula. The MDD REAL group was divided into a Responder and a Non-Responder group. Patients with an increased connectivity during the second NF session or during both the first and the second NF session were identified as "MDD REAL Responder" (N = 6). Patients that did not show any increase in connectivity and/or a decreased connectivity were identified as "MDD REAL Non-Responder" (N = 7).

RESULTS

Before the rtfMRI sessions, patients with MDD showed higher neural activation levels in ventromedial PFC and the insula than HC; by contrast, HC revealed increased hemodynamic activity in visual processing areas (primary visual cortex and visual association cortex) compared to patients with MDD. The comparison of hemodynamic responses during the first compared to during the last NF session demonstrated significantly increased BOLD-activation in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) in patients and HC, and additionally in the lateral OFC in patients with MDD. These findings were particularly due to the MDD Responder group, as the MDD Non-Responder group showed no increase in this region during the last NF run. There was a decrease of neural activation in emotional processing brain regions in both groups in the last NF run compared to the first: HC showed differences in the insula, parahippocampal gyrus, basal ganglia, and cingulate gyrus. Patients with MDD demonstrated deceased responses in the parahippocampal gyrus. There was no significant reduction of BDI scores after NF training in patients.

CONCLUSIONS

Increased neural activation in the insula and vmPFC in MDD suggests an increased emotional reaction in patients with MDD. The activation of the mOFC could be associated with improved control-strategies and association-learning processes. The increased lOFC activation could indicate a stronger sensitivity to failed NF attempts in MDD. A stronger involvement of visual processing areas in HC may indicate better adaptation to negative emotional stimuli after repeated presentation. Overall, the rtfMRI NF had an impact on neurobiological mechanisms, but not on psychometric measures in patients with MDD.

Ultra-Processed Foods Elicit Higher Approach Motivation Than Unprocessed and Minimally Processed Foods

Background

Ultra-processed foods (UPF) are becoming extensively available in the food environments. UPF are industrial formulations that are designed to maximize palatability and consumption through a combination of calorie-dense ingredients and chemical additives. UPFs are also aggressively marketed, which may make them more attractive than unprocessed/minimally processed foods (UMPF). Since consumers' purchase decisions are guided by food-evoked emotions, we aimed to provide evidence that UPF visual cues trigger higher emotional responses and approach motivation than UMPF visual cues, with potential impacts on individuals' intention to consume the UPF over the UMPF.

Methods

Participants (n = 174; 144 women; mean age = 20.7 years; standard deviation = 4.35) performed two tasks. In the first task, 16 pictures of foods (8 UPF and 8 UMPF), and 74 pictures from other affective categories, were presented. After viewing each picture, the participants rated it along two basic dimensions of emotion through the Self-Assessment Manikin scale: pleasantness and arousal. In the second task, the participants viewed the same food pictures, and they rated their intention to consume the foods depicted in the pictures. Each picture was plotted in terms of its mean pleasantness and arousal ratings in a Cartesian plane, which resulted in an affective space.

Results

Pictures of UPF and UMPF were positioned in the upper arm of the boomerang-shaped affective space that represents approach motivation. Pictures containing UPF triggered higher approach motivation and intention to consume than pictures containing UMPF. We also found a stronger association between emotional responses and intention to consume UPF relative to UMPF.

Conclusion

These results shed new light on the role of ultra-processed foods evoked emotions that contribute to less healthy and sustainable food environments.

Gaze patterns reveal aesthetic distance while viewing art

For centuries, Western philosophers have argued that aesthetic experiences differ from common, everyday pleasing sensations, and further, that mental states, such as disinterested contemplation and aesthetic distance, underlie these complex experiences. We empirically tested whether basic perceptual processes of information intake reveal evidence for aesthetic distance, specifically toward visual art. We conducted two eye tracking experiments using appropriately matched visual stimuli (environmental scenes and representational paintings) with 59 participants using two different presentation durations (25 and 6 s). Linear mixed-effects models considering individual differences showed that affective content (pleasantness and arousal), but not stimulus composition (complexity), leads to differential effects when viewing representational paintings in comparison to environmental scenes. We demonstrate that an increase in aesthetic pleasantness induced by representational paintings during a free-viewing task leads to a slower and deeper processing mode than when viewing environmental scenes of motivational relevance, for which we observed the opposite effect. In addition, long presentation durations led to an increase in scanning behavior during visual art perception. These empirical findings inform the debate about how aesthetic experiences differ from everyday perceptual processes by showing that the notion of aesthetic distance may be better understood by examining different modes of viewing.

Features and Extra-Striate Body Area Representations of Diagnostic Body Parts in Anger and Fear Perception

Social species perceive emotion via extracting diagnostic features of body movements. Although extensive studies have contributed to knowledge on how the entire body is used as context for decoding bodily expression, we know little about whether specific body parts (e.g., arms and legs) transmit enough information for body understanding. In this study, we performed behavioral experiments using the Bubbles paradigm on static body images to directly explore diagnostic body parts for categorizing angry, fearful and neutral expressions. Results showed that subjects recognized emotional bodies through diagnostic features from the torso with arms. We then conducted a follow-up functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment on body part images to examine whether diagnostic parts modulated body-related brain activity and corresponding neural representations. We found greater activations of the extra-striate body area (EBA) in response to both anger and fear than neutral for the torso and arms. Representational similarity analysis showed that neural patterns of the EBA distinguished different bodily expressions. Furthermore, the torso with arms and whole body had higher similarities in EBA representations relative to the legs and whole body, and to the head and whole body. Taken together, these results indicate that diagnostic body parts (i.e., torso with arms) can communicate bodily expression in a detectable manner.

Right medial temporal lobe structures particularly impact early stages of affective picture processing

Human vision prioritizes emotional stimuli. This is reflected in stronger electrocortical activation in response to emotional than neutral stimuli, measurable on the surface of the head. Feedback projections from brain structures deep within the medial temporal lobes (mTLs), in particular the amygdala, are thought to give rise to this phenomenon, although causal evidence is rare. Given the many pathways involved in visual processing, the influence of mTL structures could be restricted to specific time windows. Therefore, we delineate the temporal dynamics of the impact of right mTL structures on affective picture processing, investigating event-related potentials (ERPs) in 19 patients (10 female) with right mTL resections and 19 individually matched healthy participants, while they viewed negative and neutral scenes. Groups differed significantly at early- and mid-latency processing stages. Patients with right mTL resection, unlike controls, showed no (P1: 90-140 ms) or marginal (N1: 170-220 ms) emotion modulation. At mid-latency (early posterior negativity: 220-370 ms), emotion modulation over the ipsi-resectional right hemisphere was smaller in patients than in controls, but groups did not differ over the left hemisphere. During late parietal positivities (400-650 ms and 650-900 ms), both groups had similar emotion modulation. Our results demonstrate that right mTL structures attenuate particularly early processing of affectively negative scenes. This is theoretically consistent with an initial amygdala-dependent feedforward sweep in visual emotion processing whose absence is successively compensated. Findings specify the impact of right mTL structures on emotional picture processing and highlight the value of time-resolved measures in affective neuroscience.

Contour features predict valence and threat judgements in scenes

Quickly scanning an environment to determine relative threat is an essential part of survival. Scene gist extracted rapidly from the environment may help people detect threats. Here, we probed this link between emotional judgements and features of visual scenes. We first extracted curvature, length, and orientation statistics of all images in the International Affective Picture System image set and related them to emotional valence scores. Images containing angular contours were rated as negative, and images containing long contours as positive. We then composed new abstract line drawings with specific combinations of length, angularity, and orientation values and asked participants to rate them as positive or negative, and as safe or threatening. Smooth, long, horizontal contour scenes were rated as positive/safe, while short angular contour scenes were rated as negative/threatening. Our work shows that particular combinations of image features help people make judgements about potential threat in the environment.

Insular Cortex Response to Static Visual Sexual Stimuli

Abstract. According to previous research, the insula is important for processing salient and emotional stimuli, but its precise role remains elusive. By combining high spatial and temporal resolution, intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) might contribute to filling this gap. Four drug-resistant epileptic patients with intracranial electrodes in the insula were instructed to watch and rate pictures with sexual content and neutral pictures. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were computed separately for both types of stimuli. Ninety-three percent of the anterior insula (AI) and 85% of the posterior insula (PI) contacts showed differences between ERPs. AI-positive deflections tended to have an earlier onset than PI-positive deflections. The results suggest that the AI generates a P300-like response and contributes to the early phase of the late positive potential, both components found enhanced while viewing emotional stimuli in the ERP literature. The present findings are interpreted as congruent with the role of the AI in maintaining attention to salient stimuli.

Neural Correlates of Affective Stimulus Evaluation: A Case-by-Case Analysis

A recent study provided first evidence that neural correlates of affective stimulus evaluation, that is, the early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP), can be assessed at the individual case level. Expanding the case-by-case approach, the main aim of the present study was to explore the process of affective stimulus evaluation within the individual participant with respect to multiple emotional stimulus classes. Towards this end, each participant viewed separate blocks of low and high arousing pictures from behavior systems of predator fear, disease avoidance, and sexual reproduction. 13 out of 16 participants showed larger EPN and LPP amplitudes for higher than lower arousing stimuli for all three behavior systems. Furthermore, rather than indicating a general lack of emotional modulation, cases of non-significant EPN (N= 3) and LPP (N= 2) tests in individual participants appeared to be specific to a single emotion category. Overall, assessing the emotional modulation of the EPN and LPP across multiple behavior systems strengthens the case-by-case approach regarding an effect "common-to-all" as well as by differentiating non-significant effects within individuals in terms of a content-specific or general phenomenon. Implications for revealing a general principle of emotion functioning and biomarker development are discussed.

Close - but not distant - conditioned flanker emotion affects crowding

Crowding is affected by conditioned stimulus emotion. This effect is clearly observed for conditioned flankers, but only marginally pronounced for conditioned targets. Studies on the processing of emotional stimuli suggest that the magnitude of the emotional effect depends on the presentation depth in that effects of emotion increase with decreasing distance to the observer in depth. Based on respective findings, we investigate crowding with stimuli of conditioned negative and neutral emotion across real depth; that is, stimuli were either presented closer, at or farther away than the fixation depth. Conditioned emotion of flankers affected crowding when flankers were presented closer than or at fixation depth, which is also the distance the target was presented at. Farther away than the fixation depth, flanker emotion did not alter crowding (Experiment 1a). Conditioned target emotion, however, did only show weak effects on crowding; neither when flankers (Experiment 1b) nor when targets were varied in depth (Experiment 2) there was a clear effect of target emotion, replicating findings in two-dimensional settings. Taken together, the results suggest that flanker's emotional associations can become important for crowding, although, it depends on the special processing characteristics of stimulus emotion in depth. The conditioned emotion of targets scarcely affected crowding.

Attention orientation to pleasantness and depressive symptomatology predict autonomic reactivity

Depression is characterised by attentional bias to emotional information and dysregulated autonomic reactivity. Despite its relevance to understanding depressive mechanisms, the association between attentional bias and autonomic reactivity to emotional information remains poorly characterised. This study compared behavioural and autonomic responses to emotional images in 32 participants in whom subclinical depressive symptomatology was quantified using the Beck Depression Inventory. Pairs of emotional and neutral images (unpleasant-neutral, U-N; pleasant-neutral, P-N; neutral-neutral, N-N) were presented while attentional indices (eye movements) and autonomic activity (skin conductance responses, SCRs; heart rate, HR) were recorded. Results showed that all recorded ocular parameters indicated a preferential orientation and maintenance of attention to emotional images. SCRs were associated with a valence effect on fixation latency: lower fixation latency to pleasant stimuli leads to lower SCRs whereas the opposite was observed for unpleasant stimuli. Finally, stepwise linear regression analysis revealed that latency of fixation to pleasant images and scores of depression predicted SCRs of participants. Thus, our research reveals an association between autonomic reactivity and attentional bias to pleasant information, on the one hand, and depressive symptomatology on the other. Present findings therefore suggest that depressive individuals may benefit from attention training towards pleasant information in association with autonomic biofeedback procedures.

MATTER in emotion research: Spanish standardization of an affective image set

Pictures with affective content have been widely used in the scientific study of emotions, from two main perspectives: on the one hand, dimensional theories claiming that affective experiences can be described according to a few fundamental dimensions such as valence and arousal, and on the other hand, discrete-category theories proposing the presence of a number of basic and universal emotions. Although it has been demonstrated that these two approaches are not mutually exclusive, the existing standardized affective picture databases have been created from the dimensional perspective, which has led to important gaps for research focused on discrete emotions. The present work introduces MATTER, a new database comprising 540 pictures depicting disgusting, fearful, neutral, erotic, mirthful and incongruent content, which provides normative values (total N = 368, mean = 120.47 ratings/picture) in valence and arousal dimensions, as well as in discrete affective (disgust, fear, erotica and mirth) and cognitive (incongruence and interest) features. A tentative classification into discrete categories is presented, and the physical properties of each picture are reported. Our findings suggest that MATTER constitutes a modern and suitable set of affective images including, for the first time, both mirth- and incongruence-related pictures. Additionally, it will enable the examination of affective and cognitive processes in fear/disgust and humor/incongruence fields.

Neural Mechanism of Affective Perception: Evidence from Phase and Causality Analysis in the Cerebral Cortex

Emotion plays an important role in people's lives. However, the neural mechanism of affective perception is still unclear. In this study, steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) were used to explore information processing speed and interactions among cortical structures involved in affective perception. Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures selected from the International Affective Picture System were presented either in intact or phase-scrambled form at a fixed frequency, where the induced SSVEPs could be used as a frequency marker of brain activity with high temporal resolution and signal-to-noise ratio. Source estimation methods were used to reconstruct the cortical signals. The information processing of affective images was studied by phase and causal connection analysis in the cortical space to investigate the information processing speed of the local brain region and the dynamic interactions across brain regions. Experimental results showed that affective and semantic perception was accompanied by the acceleration of information processing speed in the ventral pathway. Unpleasant emotions had the fastest information processing speed in the ventral stream compared with pleasant and neutral emotions, including the middle occipital gyrus and the middle temporal gyrus, with a right hemisphere bias. In addition, unpleasant emotions were stronger than pleasant emotions in long-term causal connections in the bilateral middle temporal gyrus, and the direction was from the right hemisphere to the left hemisphere. These results provide unique insights into the cortical activities for affective perception and support the view that unpleasant emotions have priority in information perception in the middle temporal gyrus compared with pleasant and neutral emotions, with a right hemisphere bias.

Autonomic reactivity to emotion: A marker of sub-clinical anxiety and depression symptoms?

Anxiety and depression are both characterized by dysregulated autonomic reactivity to emotion. However, most experiments until now have focused on autonomic reactivity to stimuli presented in central vision (CV) even if affective saliency is also observed in peripheral vision (PV). We compared autonomic reactivity to CV and PV emotional stimulation in 58 participants with high anxious (HA) or low anxious (LA) and high depressive (HD) or low depressive (LD) symptomatology, based on STAI-B and BDI scores, respectively. Unpleasant (U), pleasant (P), and neutral (N) pictures from IAPS were presented at three eccentricities (0°: CV; -12 and 12°: PV). Skin conductance (SC), skin temperature, pupillary diameter, and heart rate (HR) were recorded. First, HA participants showed greater pupil dilation to emotional than to neutral stimuli in PV than in CV. Second, in contrast to HD, the valence effect indexed by SC and emotional arousal effect indexed by skin temperature were observed in LD. Third, both anxiety and depression lead to a valence effect indexed by pupillary light reflex and heart rate. These results suggest a hyperreactivity to emotion and hypervigilance to PV in anxiety. Depression is associated with an attenuation of positive effect and a global blunted autonomic reactivity to emotion. Moreover, anxiety mostly modulates the early processes of autonomic reactivity whereas depression mainly affects the later processes. The differential impact of emotional information over the visual field suggests the use of new stimulation strategies in order to attenuate anxious and depressive symptoms.

Prior Reward Conditioning Dampens Hippocampal and Striatal Responses during an Associative Memory Task

Offering reward during encoding typically leads to better memory [Adcock, R. A., Thangavel, A., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S.,Knutson, B., & Gabrieli, J. D. E. Reward-motivated learning: Mesolimbic activation precedes memory formation. Neuron, 50, 507-517, 2006]. Whether such memory benefit persists when tested in a different task context remains, however, largely understudied [Wimmer, G. E., & Buechel, C. Reactivation of reward-related patterns from single past episodes supports memory-based decision making. Journal of Neuroscience, 36, 2868-2880, 2016]. Here, we ask whether reward at encoding leads to a generalized advantage across learning episodes, a question of high importance for any everyday life applications, from education to patient rehabilitation. Although we confirmed that offering monetary reward increased responses in the ventral striatum and pleasantness judgments for pictures used as stimuli, this immediate beneficial effect of reward did not carry over to a subsequent and different picture-location association memory task during which no reward was delivered. If anything, a trend for impaired memory accuracy was observed for the initially high-rewarded pictures as compared to low-rewarded ones. In line with this trend in behavioral performance, fMRI activity in reward (i.e., ventral striatum) and in memory (i.e., hippocampus) circuits was reduced during the encoding of new associations using previously highly rewarded pictures (compared to low-reward pictures). These neural effects extended to new pictures from same, previously highly rewarded semantic category. Twenty-four hours later, delayed recall of associations involving originally highly rewarded items was accompanied by decreased functional connectivity between the hippocampus and two brain regions implicated in value-based learning, the ventral striatum and the ventromedial PFC. We conclude that acquired reward value elicits a downward value-adjustment signal in the human reward circuit when reactivated in a novel nonrewarded context, with a parallel disengagement of memory-reward (hippocampal-striatal) networks, likely to undermine new associative learning. Although reward is known to promote learning, here we show how it may subsequently hinder hippocampal and striatal responses during new associative memory formation.

Early posterior negativity in humans to pictures of snakes and spiders: effects of proximity

Snakes have proven to drive early attentional capture due to their evolutionary importance, as reflected by the early posterior negativity (EPN). The EPN snake effect might be partly driven by the proximity of the animal. In this study, by employing full-body (medium shot) and head-focused (close-up) pictures, we investigated whether the relative nearness (proximity) of the animal on the picture affects the snake EPN effect. We presented thirty participants with medium shot and close-up snake, spider and bird pictures in a rapid serial presentation paradigm at a presentation rate of three frames per second. We extracted the mean EPN activity from the 225–330 ms time frame after stimulus onset at the parietal–occipital cluster (PO3, O1, Oz, O2, PO4). The results indicate enhanced EPN for snake pictures as compared to spider and bird pictures. In addition, medium-shot snake pictures elicited higher EPN amplitudes than close-up snake pictures, suggesting that the EPN is higher when local, high spatial frequency attributes are visible. Spatial frequency analysis of the stimuli indicated that medium-shot snake pictures possess more power in the high spatial frequency bands, compared to medium-shot spider and bird pictures.

Effects of Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement Versus Social Support on Negative Affective Interference During Inhibitory Control Among Opioid-Treated Chronic Pain Patients: A Pilot Mechanistic Study

BACKGROUND

Among opioid-treated chronic pain patients, deficient response inhibition in the context of emotional distress may contribute to maladaptive pain coping and prescription opioid misuse. Interventions that aim to bolster cognitive control and reduce emotional reactivity (e.g., mindfulness) may remediate response inhibition deficits, with consequent clinical benefits.

PURPOSE

To test the hypothesis that a mindfulness-based intervention, Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE), can reduce the impact of clinically relevant, negative affective interference on response inhibition function in an opioid-treated chronic pain sample.

METHODS

We examined data from a controlled trial comparing adults with chronic pain and long-term prescription opioid use randomized to either MORE (n = 27) treatment or to an active support group comparison condition (n = 30). Participants completed an Emotional Go/NoGo Task at pre- and post-treatment, which measured response inhibition in neutral and clinically relevant, negative affective contexts (i.e., exposure to pain-related visual stimuli).

RESULTS

Repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated that compared with the support group, participants in MORE evidenced significantly greater reductions from pre- to post-treatment in errors of commission on trials with pain-related distractors relative to trials with neutral distractors, group × time × condition F(1,55) = 4.14, p = .047, η2partial = .07. Mindfulness practice minutes and increased nonreactivity significantly predicted greater emotional response inhibition. A significant inverse association was observed between improvements in emotional response inhibition and treatment-related reductions in pain severity by 3-month follow-up.

CONCLUSIONS

Study results provide preliminary evidence that MORE enhances inhibitory control function in the context of negative emotional interference.

Impact of emotionally negative information on attentional processes in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease

Impairments of emotional processing have been reported in Alzheimer's disease (AD), consistently with the existence of early amygdala atrophy in the pathology. In this study, we hypothesized that patients with AD might show a deficit of orientation toward emotional information under conditions of visual search. Eighteen patients with AD, 24 age-matched controls, and 35 young controls were eye-tracked while they performed a visual search task on a computer screen. The target was a vehicle with implicit (negative or neutral) emotional content, presented concurrently with one, three, or five non-vehicle neutral distractors. The task was to find the target and to report whether a break in the target frame was on the left or on the right side. Both control groups detected negative targets more efficiently than they detected neutral targets, showing facilitated engagement toward negative information. In contrast, patients with AD showed no influence of emotional information on engagement delays. However, all groups reported the frame break location more slowly for negative than for neutral targets (after accounting for the last fixation delay), showing a more difficult disengagement from negative information. These findings are the first to highlight a selective lack of emotional influence on engagement processes in patients with AD. The involvement of amygdala alterations in this behavioral impairment remains to be investigated.

Attentional bias towards negative stimuli in healthy individuals and the effects of trait anxiety

This study aimed to investigate the time course of attentional bias for negative information in healthy individuals and to assess the associated influence of trait anxiety. Thirty-eight healthy volunteers performed an emotional dot-probe task with pairs of negative and neutral scenes, presented for either 1 or 2 s and followed by a target placed at the previous location of either negative or neutral stimulus. Analyses included eye movements during the presentation of the scenes and response times associated with target localization. In a second step, analyses focused on the influence of trait anxiety. While there was no significant difference at the behavioral level, the eye-tracking data revealed that negative information held longer attention than neutral stimuli once fixated. This initial maintenance bias towards negative pictures then increased with increasing trait anxiety. However, at later processing stages, only individuals with the highest trait anxiety appeared to fixate longer on negative pictures than neutral pictures, individuals with low trait anxiety showing the opposite pattern. This study provides novel evidence that healthy individuals display an attentional maintenance bias towards negative stimuli, which is associated with trait anxiety.

Twin mechanisms: Rapid scene recognition involves both feedforward and feedback processing

The low spatial frequency (LSF) component of visual information rapidly conveyed coarse information for global perception, while the high spatial frequency (HSF) component delivered fine-grained information for detailed analyses. The feedforward theorists deemed that a coarse-to-fine process was sufficient for a rapid scene recognition. Based on the response priming paradigm, the present study aimed to deeply explore how different spatial frequency interacted with each other during rapid scene recognition. The response priming paradigm posited that as long as the prime slide could be rapidly recognized, the prime-target system was behaviorally equivalent to a feedforward system. Adopting broad spatial frequency images, experiment 1 revealed a typical response priming effect. But in experiment 2, when the HSF and the LSF components of the same pictures were separately presented, neither the LSF-to-HSF sequence nor the HSF-to-LSF sequence reproduced the response priming effect. These results demonstrated that LSF or HSF component alone was not sufficient for rapid scene recognition and, further, that the integration of different spatial frequency needed some early feedback loops. These findings supported that the local recurrent processing loops among early visual cortex was involved during rapid scene recognition.

Global Image Properties Predict Ratings of Affective Pictures

Affective pictures are widely used in studies of human emotions. The objects or scenes shown in affective pictures play a pivotal role in eliciting particular emotions. However, affective processing can also be mediated by low-level perceptual features, such as local brightness contrast, color or the spatial frequency profile. In the present study, we asked whether image properties that reflect global image structure and image composition affect the rating of affective pictures. We focused on 13 global image properties that were previously associated with the esthetic evaluation of visual stimuli, and determined their predictive power for the ratings of five affective picture datasets (IAPS, GAPED, NAPS, DIRTI, and OASIS). First, we used an SVM-RBF classifier to predict high and low ratings for valence and arousal, respectively, and achieved a classification accuracy of 58–76% in this binary decision task. Second, a multiple linear regression analysis revealed that the individual image properties account for between 6 and 20% of the variance in the subjective ratings for valence and arousal. The predictive power of the image properties varies for the different datasets and type of ratings. Ratings tend to share similar sets of predictors if they correlate positively with each other. In conclusion, we obtained evidence from non-linear and linear analyses that affective pictures evoke emotions not only by what they show, but they also differ by how they show it. Whether the human visual system actually uses these perceptive cues for emotional processing remains to be investigated.

Family Risk for Depression and Prioritization of Religion or Spirituality: Early Neurophysiological Modulations of Motivated Attention

The personal importance of religion or spirituality (R/S) has been associated with a lower risk for major depression (MDD), suicidal behavior, reduced cortical thinning and increased posterior EEG alpha, which has also been linked to antidepressant treatment response in MDD. Building on prior event-related potential (ERP) findings using an emotional hemifield paradigm, this study examined whether abnormal early (preconscious) responsivity to negative arousing stimuli, which is indicative of right parietotemporal dysfunction in both MDD patients and individuals at clinical high risk for MDD, is likewise moderated by R/S. We reanalyzed 72-channel ERP data from 127 individuals at high or low family risk for MDD (Kayser et al., 2017, NeuroImage Clin. 14, 692-707) after R/S stratification (low R/S importance, low/high risk, n = 38/61; high R/S importance, n = 15/13). ERPs were transformed to reference-free current source density (CSD) and quantified by temporal principal components analysis (tPCA). This report focused on N2 sink (peak latency 212 ms), the earliest prominent CSD-tPCA component previously found to be sensitive to emotional content. While overall N2 sink reflected activation of occipitotemporal cortex (prestriate/cuneus), as estimated via a distributed inverse solution, affective significance was marked by a relative (i.e., superimposed) positivity. Statistical analyses employed both non-parametric permutation tests and repeated measures ANOVA for mixed factorial designs with unstructured covariance matrix, including sex, age, and clinical covariates. Participants with low R/S importance, independent of risk status, showed greater ERP responsivity to negative than neutral stimuli, particularly over the right hemisphere. In contrast, early emotional ERP responsivity and asymmetry was substantially reduced for high risk individuals with high R/S importance, however, enhanced for low risk individuals with high R/S importance. Hemifield modulations of these effects (i.e., emotional ERP enhancements with left visual field/right hemisphere stimulus presentations) further corroborated these observations. Results suggest down-regulation of a right-lateralized network for salience detection at an early processing stage in high risk and high R/S importance individuals, presumably to prevent overactivation of ventral brain regions further downstream. These findings may point to a neurophysiological mechanism underlying resilience of families at risk for depression with high R/S prioritization.

Blurring attenuates the early posterior negativity in response to snake stimuli

Previous event-related potential studies have reported enhanced Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) in response to snake pictures compared to pictures of other animals. This EPN snake effect may be partly driven by specific snake skin patterns. In this study, by using blurred pictures to make these patterns less visible, we explored whether the relative absence of such local features will attenuate the EPN snake effect. Non-blurred and blurred pictures of snakes, spiders, and birds were presented in a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm with a rate of three pictures per second. The EPN mean activity was extracted from the 225-330 ms time frame after stimulus onset at the parietal-occipital cluster (PO3, O1, Oz, O2, PO4). The results show an enhanced EPN in response to snake pictures compared to spider and bird pictures. Non-blurred snake pictures elicited much larger EPN amplitudes than blurred snake pictures, suggesting that the EPN is larger for snake pictures when the local features of the snake skin are clearly visible. Yet, blurred snake pictures elicited higher EPN amplitudes when compared to blurred spider and bird pictures, suggesting a complementary role for the more global features of snakes. Spatial frequency analysis of the stimuli indicated excess energy for high spatial frequencies in non-blurred snake compared to spider and bird pictures.

Effects of hunger on emotional arousal responses and attention/memory biases

In this study, we examined how emotional arousal interacts with hunger states and the processing of food stimuli. In general, arousal enhances the processing of high-priority information at the expense of lower priority information (Mather & Sutherland, 2011). Because food has been a biologically relevant stimulus in primates throughout evolution, detecting it in the environment and remembering its location has high priority. In our study, inducing arousal enhanced attention to subsequent food stimuli. In addition, we manipulated whether participants were hungry or sated to examine how hunger states would influence emotional processing. Previous research reveals that being hungry is associated with increases in norepinephrine, a key neurotransmitter involved in the arousal response. We found that, when sated, participants showed greater pupil dilation to emotional than neutral stimuli. In contrast, when hungry, pupil dilation responses were as strong to neutral as to emotional stimuli. Thus, when hungry, participants were less effective at differentiating the intensity of arousal responses to emotional versus neutral stimuli because of high arousal responses to neutral stimuli. Memory for food stimuli was enhanced compared with memory for nonfood stimuli for all participants but especially for hungry participants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional bias varies with stimulus type, arousal and task setting: Meta-analytic evidences

Emotional bias, which describes human's asymmetric processing of emotional stimuli, consists of negativity bias (Increased response to negative over positive stimuli) and positivity offset (the reversed phenomenon). Previous studies suggest that stimulus arousal (high/low), stimulus type (scenic/verbal), cultural background (Eastern/Western), and task setting (explicit/implicit) may modulate emotional bias, but with inconclusive findings. To address how the profile of emotional bias varies with these factors, a meta-analysis of emotional P3 event-related potential amplitudes was performed. Forty-nine effect sizes from 38 studies involving 1263 subjects were calculated using Hedges'g. The results highlight significant moderators of arousal, stimulus type, and task setting. Specifically, high-arousal stimuli enhance negativity bias relative to low-arousal stimuli; scenic stimulus leads to a negativity bias while verbal stimulus is linked with a positivity offset; explicit emotion tasks lead to negativity bias, whereas implicit emotion tasks do not exhibit emotional bias. These results indicate that emotional bias is labile depending on stimulus arousal, stimulus type and task setting. The implication of these findings for emotion regulation is discussed.

Breath-focused mindfulness alters early and late components during emotion regulation

Breath-focused mindfulness (BFM), which induces changes in brain structure and function, is applied in the clinical treatment of mental disorders as a method to regulate one's emotions. However, whether BFM works through a top-down emotional regulation strategy to alter brain dynamics and its relationship with individual differences in trait mindfulness are unclear. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of 20 healthy BFM-naïve undergraduates were recorded when they conducted BFM/viewing tasks while viewing affective pictures. Participants completed the Attentional Control Scale (ACS) and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). The results indicated that under the viewing condition, positive and negative pictures elicited greater P1, N2, and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes than did neutral pictures. However, BFM attenuated P1, N2, and LPP amplitudes for positive and negative pictures but not for neutral pictures. P1 amplitudes for emotional minus neutral pictures correlated with individual differences in focus attention measured by the ACS, while N2 amplitudes for emotional minus neutral pictures correlated with individual differences in trait mindfulness measured by the MAAS. These observations suggest that, consistent with the dual-process model, BFM is an effective emotion regulation strategy and might activate the dorsal top-down prefrontal system to alter early and late neural dynamics of affective processing.

Cerebellar contribution to vocal emotion decoding: Insights from stroke and neuroimaging

While the role of the cerebellum in emotion recognition has been explored with facial expressions, its involvement in the auditory modality (i.e., emotional prosody) remains to be demonstrated. The present study investigated the recognition of emotional prosody in 15 patients with chronic cerebellar ischaemic stroke and 15 matched healthy controls, using a validated task, as well as clinical, motor, neuropsychological, and psychiatric assessments. We explored the cerebellar lesion-behaviour relationship using voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. Results showed a significant difference between the stroke and healthy control groups, with patients giving erroneous ratings on the Surprise scale when they listened to fearful stimuli. Moreover, voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping revealed that these emotional misattributions correlated with lesions in right Lobules VIIb, VIIIa,b and IX. Interestingly, the posterior cerebellum has previously been found to be involved in affective processing, and Lobule VIIb in rhythm discrimination. These results point to the cerebellum's functional involvement in vocal emotion decoding.

Looming fear stimuli broadens attention in a local-global letter task

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on emotion and global/local processing and presents an empirical study exploring how the combination of motion and emotion influences the focus of attention. In two experiments, fear-related pictures either loomed toward the observer or were stationary, and in one of these experiments the emotional content was masked (i.e., scrambled pictures). In the context of fearful pictures, it was expected that the additional element of looming motion would further focus attention based on looming motion's behaviorally urgent properties. However, the combination of a fearful image and looming motion was shown to broaden as opposed to narrow attention. This effect did not occur with simply neutral/looming or fearful/static images. Further, the separation of the emotional content from looming motion (scrambled pictures) revealed no effect on attentional breadth. This suggests that it is the unique combination of the fear-related content and the looming motion, which is broadening attention.

Pattern matters: Snakes exhibiting triangular and diamond-shaped skin patterns modulate electrophysiological activity in human visual cortex

The neural and perceptual mechanisms that support the efficient visual detection of snakes in humans are still not fully understood. According to the Snake Detection Theory, selection pressures posed by snakes on early primates have shaped the development of the visual system. Previous studies in humans have investigated early visual electrophysiological activity in response to snake images vs. various alternative dangerous or non-dangerous stimuli. These studies have shown that the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) component is selectively elicited by snake or snake-like images. Recent findings yielded the complementary/alternative hypothesis that early humans (and possibly other primates) evolved an aversion especially for potentially harmful triangular shapes, such as teeth, claws or spikes. In the present study we investigated the effect of triangular and diamond-shaped patterns in snake skins on the ERP correlates of visual processing in humans. In the first experiment, we employed pictures of snakes displaying either triangular/diamond-shaped patterns or no particular pattern on their skins, and pictures of frogs as control. Participants observed a random visual presentation of these pictures. Consistent with previous studies, snakes elicited an enhanced negativity between 225 and 300 ms (EPN) compared to frogs. However, snakes featuring triangular/diamond-shaped patterns on their skin produced an enhanced EPN compared to the snakes that did not display such patterns. In a second experiment we used pictures displaying only skin patterns of snakes and frogs. Results from the second experiment confirmed the results of the first experiment, suggesting that triangular snake-skin patterns modulate the activity in human visual cortex. Taken together, our results constitute an important contribution to the snake detection theory.

The role of low-level image features in the affective categorization of rapidly presented scenes

It remains unclear how the visual system is able to extract affective content from complex scenes even with extremely brief (< 100 millisecond) exposures. One possibility, suggested by findings in machine vision, is that low-level features such as unlocalized, two-dimensional (2-D) Fourier spectra can be diagnostic of scene content. To determine whether Fourier image amplitude carries any information about the affective quality of scenes, we first validated the existence of image category differences through a support vector machine (SVM) model that was able to discriminate our intact aversive and neutral images with ~ 70% accuracy using amplitude-only features as inputs. This model allowed us to confirm that scenes belonging to different affective categories could be mathematically distinguished on the basis of amplitude spectra alone. The next question is whether these same features are also exploited by the human visual system. Subsequently, we tested observers' rapid classification of affective and neutral naturalistic scenes, presented briefly (~33.3 ms) and backward masked with synthetic textures. We tested categorization accuracy across three distinct experimental conditions, using: (i) original images, (ii) images having their amplitude spectra swapped within a single affective image category (e.g., an aversive image whose amplitude spectrum has been swapped with another aversive image) or (iii) images having their amplitude spectra swapped between affective categories (e.g., an aversive image containing the amplitude spectrum of a neutral image). Despite its discriminative potential, the human visual system does not seem to use Fourier amplitude differences as the chief strategy for affectively categorizing scenes at a glance. The contribution of image amplitude to affective categorization is largely dependent on interactions with the phase spectrum, although it is impossible to completely rule out a residual role for unlocalized 2-D amplitude measures.

What drives prioritized visual processing? A motivational relevance account

Emotion is fundamental to our being, and an essential aspect guiding behavior when rapid responding is required. This includes whether we approach or avoid a stimulus, and the accompanying physiological responses. A common tenet is that threat-related content drives stimulus processing and biases visual attention, so that rapid responding can be initiated. In this paper, it will be argued instead that prioritization of threatening stimuli should be encompassed within a motivational relevance framework. To more fully understand what is, or is not, prioritized for visual processing one must, however, additionally consider: (i) stimulus ambiguity and perceptual saliency; (ii) task demands, including both perceptual load and cognitive load; and (iii) endogenous/affective states of the individual. Combined with motivational relevance, this then leads to a multifactorial approach to understanding the drivers of prioritized visual processing. This accords with current recognition that the brain basis allowing for visual prioritization is also multifactorial, including transient, dynamic and overlapping networks. Taken together, the paper provides a reconceptualization of how "emotional" information prioritizes visual processing.

The Role of Callous-Unemotional Traits on Adolescent Positive and Negative Emotional Reactivity: A Longitudinal Community-Based Study

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with lower emotional reactivity in adolescents. However, since previous studies have focused mainly on reactivity to negative stimuli, it is unclear whether reactivity to positive stimuli is also affected. Further, few studies have addressed the link between CU traits and emotional reactivity in longitudinal community samples, which is important for determining its generalizability and developmental course. In the current study, pupil dilation and self-ratings of arousal and valence were assessed in 100 adolescents (15-17 years) from a community sample, while viewing images with negative and positive valence from the International Affective Pictures System (IAPS). Behavioral traits (CU) were assessed concurrently, as well as at ages 12-15, and 8-9 (subsample, n = 68, low levels of prosocial behavior were used as a proxy for CU traits). The results demonstrate that CU traits assessed at ages 12-15 and 8-9 predicted less pupil dilation to both positive and negative images at ages 15-17. Further, CU traits at ages 12-15 and concurrently were associated with less negative valence ratings for negative images and concurrently to less positive valence ratings for positive images. The current findings demonstrate that CU traits are related to lower emotional reactivity to both negative and positive stimuli in adolescents from a community sample.

Habitual Use of Cognitive Reappraisal Is Associated With Decreased Amplitude of the Late Positive Potential (LPP) Elicited by Threatening Pictures

Abstract. In contrast to our knowledge about instructed emotion regulation, rather little is known about the effects of habitual (or “spontaneous”) emotion regulation on neural processing. We analyzed the relationship between everyday use of cognitive reappraisal (measured by the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, ERQ-R), and the amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP), which is sensitive to down-regulation of negative emotions via reappraisal. Participants viewed a series of neutral and threatening images, and rated them for level of threat. We found increased LPP amplitude for threatening compared to neutral pictures between 500 and 1,500 ms. Crucially, we found smaller LPP amplitudes to threatening versus neutral pictures for participants who used reappraisal more often in everyday life. This relationship between LPP amplitude and the ERQ-R was observed in the 1,000–1,500 ms interval of the LPP, over right centro-parietal electrodes. The current findings indicate that habitual tendency to use reappraisal is associated with reduced amplitude of the LPP in response to threatening pictures, in the absence of any explicit instruction to regulate emotions.

The Influence of Face Inversion and Spatial Frequency on the Self-Positive Expression Processing Advantage

Previous research has examined the impact of late self-evaluation, ignoring the impact of the early visual coding stage and the extraction of facial identity information and expression information on the self-positive expression processing advantage. From the perspective of the processing course, this study examined the stability of the self-positive expression processing advantage and revealed its generation mechanism. In Experiment 1, inverted self-expression and others’ expressive pictures were used to influence early structural coding. In Experiments 2a and 2b, we used expression pictures of high and low spatial frequency, thereby affecting the extraction of facial identity information or expression information in the mid-term stage. The visual search paradigm was adopted in three experiments, asking subjects to respond to the target expression. We found that under the above experimental conditions, the search speed for self-faces was always faster than that for self-angry expressions and others’ faces. These results showed that, compared with others’ expressions and self-angry expressions, self-positive expressions were more prominent and more attractive. These findings suggest that self-expression recognition combines with conceptual self-knowledge to form an abstract and constant processing pattern. Therefore, the processing of self-expression recognition was not affected by the facial orientation and spatial frequencies.

Mapping the Spatiotemporal Evolution of Emotional Processing: An MEG Study Across Arousal and Valence Dimensions

Electrophysiological and functional neuroimaging findings indicate that the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of emotional dimensions (i.e., valence, arousal) constitute a spatially and temporally distributed emotional network, modulated by the arousal and/or valence of the emotional stimuli. We examined the time course and source distribution of gamma time-locked magnetoencephalographic activity in response to a series of emotional stimuli viewed by healthy adults. We used a beamformer and a sliding window analysis to generate a succession of spatial maps of event-related brain responses across distinct levels of valence (pleasant/unpleasant) and arousal (high/low) in 30–100 Hz. Our results show parallel emotion-related responses along specific temporal windows involving mainly dissociable neural pathways for valence and arousal during emotional picture processing. Pleasant valence was localized in the left inferior frontal gyrus, while unpleasant valence in the right occipital gyrus, the precuneus, and the left caudate nucleus. High arousal was processed by the left orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and inferior frontal gyrus, as well as the right middle temporal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, and occipital gyrus. Pleasant by high arousal interaction was localized in the left inferior and superior frontal gyrus, as well as the right caudate nucleus, putamen, and gyrus rectus. Unpleasant by high arousal interaction was processed by the right superior parietal gyrus. Valence was prioritized (onset at ∼60 ms) to all other effects, while pleasant valence was short lived in comparison to unpleasant valence (offsets at ∼110 and ∼320 ms, respectively). Both arousal and valence × arousal interactions emerged relatively early (onset at ∼150 ms, and ∼170 ms, respectively). Our findings support the notion that brain regions differentiate between valence and arousal, and demonstrate, for the first time, that these brain regions may also respond to distinct combinations of these two dimensions within specific time windows.

Low-level image properties in facial expressions

We studied low-level image properties of face photographs and analyzed whether they change with different emotional expressions displayed by an individual. Differences in image properties were measured in three databases that depicted a total of 167 individuals. Face images were used either in their original form, cut to a standard format or superimposed with a mask. Image properties analyzed were: brightness, redness, yellowness, contrast, spectral slope, overall power and relative power in low, medium and high spatial frequencies. Results showed that image properties differed significantly between expressions within each individual image set. Further, specific facial expressions corresponded to patterns of image properties that were consistent across all three databases. In order to experimentally validate our findings, we equalized the luminance histograms and spectral slopes of three images from a given individual who showed two expressions. Participants were significantly slower in matching the expression in an equalized compared to an original image triad. Thus, existing differences in these image properties (i.e., spectral slope, brightness or contrast) facilitate emotion detection in particular sets of face images.

Enhanced early visual processing in response to snake and trypophobic stimuli

Background

Trypophobia refers to aversion to clusters of holes. We investigated whether trypophobic stimuli evoke augmented early posterior negativity (EPN).

Methods

Twenty-four participants filled out a trypophobia questionnaire and watched the random rapid serial presentation of 450 trypophobic pictures, 450 pictures of poisonous animals, 450 pictures of snakes, and 450 pictures of small birds (1800 pictures in total, at a rate of 3 pictures/s). The EPN was scored as the mean activity at occipital electrodes (PO3, O1, Oz, PO4, O2) in the 225–300 ms time window after picture onset.

Results

The EPN was significantly larger for snake pictures than for the other categories, and significantly larger for trypophobic pictures and poisonous animal pictures than for bird pictures. Remarkably, the scores on the trypophobia questionnaire were correlated with the EPN amplitudes for trypophobic pictures at the occipital cluster (r = −.46, p = .025).

Conclusions

The outcome for the EPN indicates that snakes, and to a somewhat lesser extent trypophobic stimuli and poisonous animals, trigger early automatic visual attention. This supports the notion that the aversion that is induced by trypophobic stimuli reflects ancestral threat and has survival value. The possible influence of the spectral composition of snake and trypophobic stimuli on the EPN is discussed.

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

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.