Differential temporal salience of earning and saving

A 2-year mental health follow-up study subsequent to COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the mental health and education of college students. This study examined the interrelationships among loneliness, resilience, and COVID-19 fear among college students in Northern Michigan, a region of the United States severely affected by the pandemic. Data were collected from two student cohorts (n = 258), with half surveyed in early 2022 and the other half in mid-2022, two years after pandemic's onset. The Omicron wave peaked in Michigan in January 2022, but by June 2022, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths had significantly declined. Students completed measures of loneliness, resilience, learning difficulty, and psychological symptoms. Key findings are: 1) Participants' fear, loneliness, and academic difficulty decreased over time, reflecting fluctuations in acute situational and emotional states; 2) Unexpectedly, resilience declined from early to mid-2022, suggesting its diminishing protective role under prolonged, pandemic-induced stress; 3) Despite improvements, students continued reporting high academic difficulties. Loneliness, heightened fear, and dampened happiness together contributed to greater academic difficulties; 4) Pre-existing sex differences equalized two years after the pandemic's onset. While modest improvements were noted, enduring academic and mental health impacts signal a need for continued support.

Message framing to promote solar panels

Green technologies, such as solar panels, foster the use of clean energy, yet often involve large-scale investments. Hence, adoption by retail consumers has been a key barrier. Here, we show that message framing can significantly increase customers' serious commitment to adopting solar panels by providing empirical evidence in the field from a large-scale randomized controlled trial with a nationwide online retailer in the Netherlands (N = 26,873 participants). We design four messages aimed at promoting the purchase behavior of solar panel installations. Our messages present outcomes for oneself or for the environment and highlight cost savings versus earnings (for oneself) or reducing emissions versus generating green electricity (for the environment). Across all messages, we observe a higher rate of customers committing to solar panels compared to the baseline. However, the framing in terms of financial savings for oneself was by far the most effective, resulting in a 40% higher level of commitment than the baseline and 30% higher than the average of the other three messages, which were not significantly different in effect from each other. Our results show that message framing is cost-efficient and scalable among retail consumers to promote large-scale investments in green technologies and thus clean energy.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on college students in USA: Two years later

Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) has posed an unprecedented public health challenge for most countries, and the repeated outbreaks of this disease have created a largest disruption of education systems. The intent of this work was to examine the intersection of COVID-19 fear and mental health consequences among college students in Northern Michigan, a region of the U.S. severely affected by the pandemic. This study was conducted from January 17 to February 25, 2022, two years later since the outbreak of the pandemic, and 151 college students (female, 76) were involved. Participants' potential psychological symptoms, anxiety, happiness, learning difficulty, and demographic information were surveyed. We have three main findings. First, 60.3% of students had tested positive for COVID-19, and more female than male students were affected (female, 69.7%; male, 50.7%). Second, there was a high prevalence of mental problems among college students, with 95.7% of the sample experiencing moderate or severe mood disorders. Third, respondents' education was severely affected by the pandemic, averaging a score of 7.6 on a scale of 10 when asked how much their learning quality was affected. They showed increased fear, stress, and decreased happiness, and these were associated with their learning quality change. Given the impact would be far-reaching, not only college students' mental health but also their learning difficulties should be monitored during the pandemic. These findings are alarming and timely, and their implications are discussed.

Social comparisons differentially affect fair and unfair processing in ultimatum bargaining

Several theoretical frameworks have attempted to illustrate the influence of social contexts on decision-making and well-being. Traditional economic models assume that absolute income is the crucial determinant of one's well-being, while the comparative models state that social comparisons influence well-being and decisions. Here we investigated the impact of social comparisons on decision-making using a modified three-player Ultimatum Game and ERP technique. We found two independent effects: First, social comparisons did not affect decision-making when a fair norm was enforced. Second, social comparisons affected fairness consideration for unfair offers only-responders were less likely to accept unfair offers in upward comparisons but more likely to accept unfair offers in downward comparisons. These results revealed that people were envy-free of fair offers while affected mainly by social comparisons when the equality norm was broken. Event-related brain potentials showed that in the early time window (260-320 ms), compared to fair offers, unfair offers elicited a larger negative-going medial frontal negativity (MFN) in upward than parallel and downward comparisons, and in the late stage (320-650 ms), compared to fair offers, unfair offers led to equally less positive-going P300 in upward and downward comparisons relative to parallel comparison. Although partly consistent with the relative standing assumption, both traditional economic models and comparative models require revision to account for the results.

Subjective burdens among informal caregivers of critically ill patients: a cross-sectional study in rural Shandong, China

BACKGROUND

Informal caregivers are the main source of care for the critically ill, especially after discharge or during the terminal stages at home. However, the concern for informal caregivers is often overshadowed by critically ill patients. The purpose of this study is to determine the influencing factors of the subjective burden of informal caregivers and to seek solutions accordingly.

METHODS

Between July and August 2019, a cross-sectional study was conducted in Shandong, China, focusing on family caregivers and critically ill patients. Subjective caregiver burden was measured by the Chinese version of Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI). The stress process model was used to identify conditions relevant to the caregiving burden and to assess their impact on family caregivers.

RESULTS

554 samples were selected for analysis. The average scores of Zarit Caregiver Burden Interview (ZBI) scores in this study was 30.37±19.04 (n=554). ZBI scores of older, less educated, and spouse caregivers were significantly lower (4.12; 95%CI, 0.42 to 7.81; P =0.029). Objective and subjective burdens increased proportionally. Secondary role stress factors included the higher out-of-pocket (OOP) costs of critical diseases and lower household income, both of which increased caregivers' subjective burdens (1.28; 95%CI, -0.06 to 2.63; p=0.062). Formal medical aid systems played a positive role in reducing subjective caregiving burdens (-7.31; 95%CI, -13.23 to -1.40; p=0.016).

CONCLUSIONS

Health policies should address both the direct medical burdens and the intangible psychological burdens of critical diseases.

Differential color tuning of the mesolimbic reward system

Visual wavelengths are not only associated with the subjective experience of color but also have long been thought to regulate affect. Here we examined the attracting rewarding properties of opposite ends of the wavelength spectrum, as well as their individual variation. As reward is multifaceted, we sought convergent evidence from subjective and objective behavioral and attentional indices, as well as its neural reward system bases. On average, short (blue) relative to long (red) wavelengths were judged subjectively more pleasant and had objectively greater behavioral and attentional salience, regulating speed of simple color discriminations and perception of temporal order. Consistent with reward, these color effects were magnified following monetary reinforcement. Pronounced individual differences in color effects were related to reward but not punishment sensitivity, with blue relative to red preference associated with high relative to low reward sensitivity. An fMRI study revealed these individual differences were supported by color-dependent functional coupling between the visual cortices and mesolimbic reward circuitry. Our findings reveal the reward bases of color, demonstrating color is a potent regulator of perception, action, and neural dynamics.

Emotional Objectivity: Neural Representations of Emotions and Their Interaction with Cognition

Recent advances in our understanding of information states in the human brain have opened a new window into the brain's representation of emotion. While emotion was once thought to constitute a separate domain from cognition, current evidence suggests that all events are filtered through the lens of whether they are good or bad for us. Focusing on new methods of decoding information states from brain activation, we review growing evidence that emotion is represented at multiple levels of our sensory systems and infuses perception, attention, learning, and memory. We provide evidence that the primary function of emotional representations is to produce unified emotion, perception, and thought (e.g., “That is a good thing”) rather than discrete and isolated psychological events (e.g., “That is a thing. I feel good”). The emergent view suggests ways in which emotion operates as a fundamental feature of cognition, by design ensuring that emotional outcomes are the central object of perception, thought, and action.

Resolving population dynamics and interactions of multiple triplet excitons one molecule at a time

Resolving the population dynamics of multiple triplet excitons on time scales comparable to their lifetimes is a key challenge for multiexciton harvesting strategies, such as singlet fission. We show that this information can be obtained from fluorescence quenching dynamics and stochastic kinetic modeling simulations of single nanoparticles comprising self-assembled aggregated chains of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT). These multichromophoric structures exhibit the elusive J-aggregate type excitonic coupling leading to delocalized intrachain excitons that undergo facile triplet formation mediated by interchain charge transfer states. We propose that P3HT J-aggregates can serve as a useful testbed for elucidating the presence of multiple triplets and understanding factors governing their interactions over a broad range of time scales. Stochastic kinetic modeling is then used to simulate discrete population dynamics and estimate higher order rate constants associated with triplet-triplet and singlet-triplet annihilation. Together with the quasi-CW nature of the experiment, the model reveals the expected amounts of triplets at equilibrium per molecule. Our approach is also amenable to a variety of other systems, e.g., singlet fission active molecular arrays, and can potentially inform design and optimization strategies to improve triplet harvesting yields.

Yellow is for safety: perceptual and affective perspectives

Is there a link between color and safety? Yellow is often used in safety contexts. Using the Singapore accident record datasets, Ho et al. provided evidence that yellow taxis have fewer accidents than blue taxis (Ho et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 114(12):3074-3078, 2017). Does yellow differentially influence attention and action and if so is this related to purely visual or affective factors? Here, we examined the visual priority of yellow relative to luminance matched colors at opposing ends of the wavelength spectrum (i.e., red and blue), using a temporal order judgment task, between color pairs. Despite being matched in arousal, when yellow and blue were pitted against each other, yellow was consistently seen as occurring first, even when objectively appearing second at short stimulus onset asynchronies. Despite being matched in valence, yellow again showed a larger temporal priority when it was pitted against red. Yellow temporal priority bias was modulated by individual differences in regulatory focus, highlighting a potential affective-motivational origin. These results support that yellow is a safety color, having a temporal advantage, and further evidence that colors have special influences on cognition, perception and behavior.

Neural activity to threat in ventromedial prefrontal cortex correlates with individual differences in anxiety and reward processing

Emotion studies show that ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) plays a critical role in negative affect evaluation. Here we investigated two questions: Does the neural sensitivity to threat of bodily harm in vmPFC alter as anxiety levels increase? If the neural sensitivity to threat in vmPFC reflects a kind of general emotional processing, does it predict reward processing? To address these questions, we first recorded participants' self-reported anxiety. In an investigation of neural responses in vmPFC (Session 1), we measured brain activity (fMRI) associated with the anticipation of threat, using a sphere based ROI approach. In a behavioral experiment (Session 2), participants' reward processing efficiency was evaluated when they performed a visual discrimination task in which they had the opportunity to earn cash rewards. We found that across participants, there were tightly coupled associations between signal changes in the vmPFC and self-reported state anxiety. Specifically, participants who showed more activation in vmPFC to threat also exhibited greater behavioral efficiency in reward processing. Path analysis revealed a closely interconnected network of vmPFC (cortical) and VS (ventral striatum, subcortical) which predicted reward processing. Therefore, in addition to negative affect evaluation, neural sensitivity in vmPFC correlated with both anxiety and reward-related metrics. These results support an emerging model in which the vmPFC functions to defend the organism from acute stress and facilitate reward processes.

Reward priming eliminates color-driven affect in perception

Brain and behavior evidence suggests that colors have distinct affective properties. Here, we investigated how reward influences color-driven affect in perception. In Experiment 1, we assessed competition between blue and red patches during a temporal-order judgment (TOJ) across a range of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). During the value reinforcement, reward was linked to either blue (version 1) or red (version 2) in the experiment. The same stimuli then served as test ones in the following unrewarded, unspeeded TOJ task. Our analysis showed that blue patches were consistently seen as occurring first, even when objectively appearing 2nd at short SOAs. This accelerated perception of blue over red was disrupted by prior primes related to reward (vs. neutral) but not perceptional (blue vs. red) priming. Experiment 2 replicated the findings of Experiment 1 while uncoupling action and stimulus values. These results are consistent with the blue-approach and red-avoidance motivation hypothesis and highlight an active nature of the association of reward priming and color processing. Together, the present study implies a link between reward and color affect and contributes to the understanding of how reward influences color affect in visual processing.