Self-reference modulates the processing of emotional stimuli in the absence of explicit self-referential appraisal instructions

Causal Roles of Ventral and Dorsal Neural Systems for Automatic and Control Self-Reference Processing: A Function Lesion Mapping Study

Background: Humans perceive and interpret the world through the lens of self-reference processes, typically facilitating enhanced performance for the task at hand. However, this research has predominantly emphasized the automatic facet of self-reference processing, overlooking how it interacts with control processes affecting everyday situations. Methods: We investigated this relationship between automatic and control self-reference processing in neuropsychological patients performing self-face perception tasks and the Birmingham frontal task measuring executive functions. Results: Principal component analysis across tasks revealed two components: one loaded on familiarity/orientation judgments reflecting automatic self-reference processing, and the other linked to the cross task and executive function indicating control processing requirements. Voxel-based morphometry and track-wise lesion-mapping analyses showed that impairments in automatic self-reference were associated with reduced grey matter in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and right inferior temporal gyrus, and white matter damage in the right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus. Deficits in executive control were linked to reduced grey matter in the bilateral inferior parietal lobule and left anterior insula, and white matter disconnections in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus and arcuate fasciculus. Conclusions: The causal evidence suggests that automatic and control facets of self-reference processes are subserved by distinct yet integrated ventral prefrontal-temporal and dorsal frontal-parietal networks, respectively.

Co-learning companionship benefits word learning in a new language: Evidence from a dual-brain EEG examination

Companionship refers to one's being in the presence of another individual. For adults, acquiring a new language is a highly social activity that often involves learning in the context of companionship. However, the effects of companionship on new language learning have gone relatively underexplored, particularly with respect to word learning. Using a within-subject design, the current study employs electroencephalography to examine how two types of companionship (monitored and co-learning) affect word learning (semantic and lexical) in a new language. Dyads of Chinese speakers of English as a second language participated in a pseudo-word-learning task during which they were placed in monitored and co-learning companionship contexts. The results showed that exposure to co-learning companionship affected the early attention stage of word learning. Moreover, in this early stage, evidence of a higher representation similarity between co-learners showed additional support that co-learning companionship influenced attention. Observed increases in delta and theta interbrain synchronization further revealed that co-learning companionship facilitated semantic access. In all, the similar neural representations and interbrain synchronization between co-learners suggest that co-learning companionship offers important benefits for learning words in a new language.

Morality or competence is more important? The effect of evaluation dimensions on ERP responses to neutral faces depends on contextual valence and self-relevance

Recent studies have shown that the processing of neutral facial expressions could be modulated by the valence and self-relevance of preceding verbal evaluations. However, these studies have not distinguished the dimension (i.e., morality and competence) from verbal evaluations. In fact, there is a hot controversy about whether morality or competence receives more weight. Therefore, using the ERP technique, the current study aimed to address this issue by comparing the influence of morality and competence evaluations on behavioral and neural responses to neutral facial expressions when these evaluations varied with contextual valence and self-relevance. Our ERP results revealed that the early EPN amplitudes were larger for neutral faces after receiving evaluations about self relative to evaluations about senders. Moreover, the EPN was more negative after a competence evaluation relative to a morality evaluation when these evaluations were positive, while this effect was absent when these evaluations were negative. The late LPP was larger after a morality evaluation compared to a competence evaluation when these evaluations were negative and directed to self. However, no significant LPP effect between morality and competence evaluations was observed when these evaluations were positive. The present study extended previous studies by showing that early and late processing stages of faces are affected by the evaluation dimension in a top-down manner and further modulated by contextual valence and self-relevance.

Self-referential information optimizes conflict adaptation

Self-referential information has been shown to optimize behavioral performance in various domains. The present study examined the role of self-referential information as a cue to enhance cognitive control and, more specifically, conflict adaptation. A revised color Stroop task was used with stimuli consisting of possessive pronouns and color words (e.g., "my green"). The results showed that self-referential information reduced conflict adaptation (the congruency sequence effect at trial level in Experiment 1, at block level in Experiment 2, and the list-wide proportion congruency effect at block level in Experiment 3). These findings suggest that self-referential information can act as a cue to optimize conflict adaptation. This study highlights the role of self-referential information in cognitive control adjustments.

The Self-reference Effect Can Modulate Language Syntactic Processing Even Without Explicit Awareness: An Electroencephalography Study

Although it is well established that self-related information can rapidly capture our attention and bias cognitive functioning, whether this self-bias can affect language processing remains largely unknown. In addition, there is an ongoing debate as to the functional independence of language processes, notably regarding the syntactic domain. Hence, this study investigated the influence of self-related content on syntactic speech processing. Participants listened to sentences that could contain morphosyntactic anomalies while the masked face identity (self, friend, or unknown faces) was presented for 16 msec preceding the critical word. The language-related ERP components (left anterior negativity [LAN] and P600) appeared for all identity conditions. However, the largest LAN effect followed by a reduced P600 effect was observed for self-faces, whereas a larger LAN with no reduction of the P600 was found for friend faces compared with unknown faces. These data suggest that both early and late syntactic processes can be modulated by self-related content. In addition, alpha power was more suppressed over the left inferior frontal gyrus only when self-faces appeared before the critical word. This may reflect higher semantic demands concomitant to early syntactic operations (around 150-550 msec). Our data also provide further evidence of self-specific response, as reflected by the N250 component. Collectively, our results suggest that identity-related information is rapidly decoded from facial stimuli and may impact core linguistic processes, supporting an interactive view of syntactic processing. This study provides evidence that the self-reference effect can be extended to syntactic processing.

Event-related alpha power in early stage of facial expression processing in social anxiety: Influence of language context

Accurate interpretation of the emotional information conveyed by others' facial expressions is crucial for social interactions. Event-related alpha power, measured by time-frequency analysis, is a frequently used EEG index of emotional information processing. However, it is still unclear how event-related alpha power varies in emotional information processing in social anxiety groups. In the present study, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) while participants from the social anxiety and healthy control groups viewed facial expressions (angry, happy, neutral) preceded by contextual sentences conveying either a positive or negative evaluation of the subject. The impact of context on facial expression processing in both groups of participants was explored by assessing behavioral ratings and event-related alpha power (0-200 ms after expression presentation). In comparison to the healthy control group, the social anxiety group exhibited significantly lower occipital alpha power in response to angry facial expressions in negative contexts and neutral facial expressions in positive contexts. The influence of language context on facial expression processing in individuals with social anxiety may occur at an early stage of processing.

Linguistic and emotional responses evoked by pseudoword presentation: An EEG and behavioral study

When the semantic properties of words are turned off, such as in pseudowords, the grammatical properties of the stimuli indicated through suffixes may provide cues to the meaning. The application of electroencephalography (EEG), combined with the pseudoword paradigm, allows for evaluating the effects of verbs and nouns as linguistic categories within the time course of processing. To contribute to the ongoing discussion regarding the functional processing of words from different grammatical classes, we conducted an EEG experiment, followed by a behavioral lexical decision task (LDT). The EEG and LDT indicated different neural and behavioral reactions to the presented grammar classes, allowing for a deeper understanding of the neuro- and psycholinguistic dimensions of grammar.

High media multitasking habit influences self-referential emotional memory

Previous research (Ophir et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 106(37):15583-15587, 10.1073/pnas.0903620106, 2009; Uncapher and Wagner in Proc Natl Acad Sci 115(40):9889-9896, 10.1073/pnas.1611612115, 2018; Wiradhany and Koerts in Media Psychol 24(2):276-303, 10.1080/15213269.2019.1685393, 2021) suggested that different groups (high, low, and moderate) of habitual media multitaskers process information differently. Most of these studies focused on comprehending the cognitive differences among them. But there is considerably less information on their differences in processing emotional stimuli. In this article, using self-referential emotional stimuli ('positive/likeable' and 'negative/dislikeable' words), we aim to examine whether there is any difference in the self-referential emotional memory among different groups of media multitaskers (HMM, MMM, and LMM) using a recall and recognition paradigm. We also investigate whether HMM, MMM, and LMM vary in an emotional categorization task. A total of 120 students (mean age = 20.9 years; males = 84) voluntarily participated and self-reported their preferences for media multitasking using a questionnaire (Ophir et al. 2009). A total of 50 self-referenced words (positive/likeable and negative/dislikeable) were presented to them on a computerized screen for an emotional categorization task. Afterward, they performed a surprise free recall and a recognition task of the same words. Results suggested that HMM were faster in liking 'positive/likeable' words over 'negative/dislikeable' words in emotional categorization tasks in comparison with LMM and MMM. HMM and MMM performed poorly in both the recall and recognition of 'positive/likeable' emotional words compared to LMM. No significant difference was observed in recall and recognition between HMM and MMM. The three groups did not differ significantly in the recall and recognition tasks related to 'negative/dislikeable' emotional words. These findings help understand the differences in processing self-related emotional stimuli among different groups of media multitaskers.

The role of subjective significance, valence and arousal in the explicit processing of emotion-laden words

Emotional categorisation (deciding whether a word is emotional or not) is a task that employs the explicit analysis of the emotional meaning of words. Therefore, it allows for assessing the role of emotional factors, i.e., valence, arousal, and subjective significance, in emotional word processing. The aim of the current experiment was to investigate the role of subjective significance, a reflective form of activation that is similar to arousal (the automatic form), in the processing of emotional meaning. We applied the orthogonal manipulation of three emotional factors. Thus, we were able to precisely differentiate the effects of each factor and search for interactions between them. We expected valence to shape the late positive complex LPC component, while subjective significance and arousal were expected to shape the P300 and N400 components. We observed the effects of subjective significance throughout the whole span of processing, while the arousal effect was present only in the LPC component. We also observed that amplitudes for N400 and LPC discriminated negative from positive valence. The results showed that all factors included in the analysis should be taken into account while explaining the processing of emotion-laden words; especially interesting is the subjective significance, which was shown to shape processing individually, as well as to come into interaction with valence and arousal.

Decoding of Processing Preferences from Language Paradigms by Means of EEG-ERP Methodology: Risk Markers of Cognitive Vulnerability for Depression and Protective Indicators of Well-Being? Cerebral Correlates and Mechanisms

Depression is a frequent mental affective disorder. Cognitive vulnerability models propose two major cognitive risk factors that favor the onset and severity of depressive symptoms. These include a pronounced self-focus, as well as a negative emotional processing bias. According to two-process models of cognitive vulnerability, these two risk factors are not independent from each other, but affect information processing already at an early perceptual processing level. Simultaneously, a processing advantage for self-related positive information including better memory for positive than negative information has been associated with mental health and well-being. This perspective paper introduces a research framework that discusses how EEG-ERP methodology can serve as a standardized tool for the decoding of negative and positive processing biases and their potential use as risk markers of cognitive vulnerability for depression, on the one hand, and as protective indicators of well-being, on the other hand. Previous results from EEG-ERP studies investigating the time-course of self-referential emotional processing are introduced, summarized, and discussed with respect to the specificity of depression-related processing and the importance of EEG-ERP-based experimental testing for well-being and the prevention and treatment of depressive disorders.

An event-relation potential study of self-positivity bias in native and foreign language contexts

Self-positivity bias is a common psychological phenomenon in which individuals often associate positive information with themselves. However, little is known about how self-positivity bias is modulated by different language contexts (e.g., a first vs. second language). To this end, we analyzed behavioral and electrophysiological data to examine whether first or second languages play differential roles in the self-positivity bias effect. We used a modified self-positivity bias task which required Chinese-English bilinguals to judge strings of letters or characters as realwords or not and match associations between identity (self, other) and a geometric shape (circle, triangle). The target words in the experiment consisted of positive, negative, and neutral emotional words. The results showed that in the L2 context, the self-positivity condition elicited a smaller N400 effect relative to the self-negativity condition and a larger late positive component effect relative to the self-negativity and self-neutrality conditions. Furthermore, the other-positivity condition elicited a stronger N400 effect than the other-neutrality condition. These patterns did not emerge in the L1 context. We discuss the implications and contributions of these findings to better understand the interaction between emotion and self-concept in different language contexts.

The verb-self link: An implicit association test study

Agency is defined as the ability to assign and pursue goals. Given people’s focus on achieving their own goals, agency has been found to be strongly linked to the self. In two studies (N = 168), we examined whether this self–agency link is visible from a linguistic perspective. As the preferred grammatical category to convey agency is verbs, we hypothesize that, in the Implicit Association Test (IAT), verbs (vs. nouns) would be associated more strongly with the self (vs. others). Our results confirmed this hypothesis. Participants exhibited particularly fast responses when reading self-related stimuli (e.g., “me” or “my”) and verb stimuli (e.g., “deflect” or “contemplate”) both necessitated pressing an identical rather than different response keys in the IAT (d = .25). The finding connects two streams of literature—on the link between agency and verbs and on the link between self and agency—suggesting a triad between self, agency, and verbs. We argue that this verb–self link (1) opens up new perspectives for understanding linguistic expressions of agency and (2) expands our understanding of how word choice impacts socio-cognitive processing.

A neurobiological perspective on social influence: Serotonin and social adaptation

Humans are inherently social beings. Being suggestible to each other's expectations enables pro-social skills that are crucial for social learning and adaptation. Despite its high relevance for psychiatry, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying social adaptation are still not well understood. This review therefore provides a conceptual framework covering various distinct mechanisms underlying social adaptation and explores the neuropharmacology - in particular the role of the serotonin (5-HT) system - modulating these mechanisms. This article therefore reviews empirical results on social influence processing and reconciles them with recent findings from psychedelic research on social processing to elucidate neurobiological and neuropharmacological underpinnings of social adaptation. Various computational, neurobiological, and neurochemical processes are involved in distinct mechanisms underlying social adaptation such as the multisensory process of social information integration that is crucial for the forming of self-representation and representations of social norms. This is again associated with self- and other-perception during social interactions as well as value-based decision making that guides our behaviour in daily interactions. We highlight the critical role of 5-HT in these processes and suggest that 5-HT can facilitate social learning and may represent an important target for treating psychiatric disorders characterized by impairments in social functioning. This framework also has important implications for psychedelic-assisted therapy as well as for the development of novel treatment approaches and future research directions.

Encoding in a social feedback context enhances and biases behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of long-term recognition memory

Encoding often occurs in social contexts, yet research has hardly addressed their role in verbal memory. In three experiments, we investigated the behavioral and neural effects of encoding context on memory for positive, negative, and neutral adjectives, contrasting a social-feedback group (N = 24) with an explicit verbal-learning (N = 24) and a levels-of-processing group (N = 24). Participants in the social-feedback group were not aware of a recognition session one week later, but their memory was better than the explicit learning or the levels-of-processing groups'. However, they also exhibited the strongest response bias, particularly for positive words. Brain event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed largest early negativities (EPN) and late positivities (LPP) in the social-feedback group. Only in the subsequent slow-wave did the explicit learning group show higher amplitudes than the other two groups, suggesting reliance on strategic rather than automatic processes. Still, context-driven incidental encoding outweighed explicit instructions, specifying a decisive role of social factors in memory.

Increasing Love Feelings, Marital Satisfaction, and Motivated Attention to the Spouse

Abstract. Love typically decreases over time, sometimes leading to divorces. We tested whether positively reappraising the spouse and/or up-regulating positive emotions unrelated to the spouse increases infatuation with and attachment to the spouse, marital satisfaction, and motivated attention to the spouse as measured by the late positive potential (LPP). Married individuals completed a regulation task in which they viewed spouse, pleasant, and neutral pictures without regulation prompt as well as spouse and pleasant pictures that were preceded by regulation prompts. Event-related potentials were recorded, and self-reported infatuation, attachment, and marital satisfaction were assessed. Viewing spouse pictures increased infatuation, attachment, and marital satisfaction compared to viewing pleasant or neutral pictures in the no regulation condition. Thinking about positive aspects of the spouse and increasing positive emotions unrelated to the spouse did not increase infatuation, attachment, and marital satisfaction any further. Motivated attention, measured by the LPP amplitude, was greatest to spouse pictures, intermediate to pleasant pictures, and minimal to neutral pictures. Although the typical up-regulation effect on the LPP amplitude was observed for pleasant pictures, positively reappraising the spouse did not increase the LPP amplitude and hence motivated attention to the spouse any further. This study indicates that looking at spouse pictures increases love and marital satisfaction, which is not due to increased positive emotions unrelated to the spouse. Looking at spouse pictures is an easy strategy that could be used to stabilize marriages in which the main problem is the decline of love feelings over time.

Acute aerobic exercise and attentional focus influence the self-positivity bias in emotional evaluation. Evidence from an experimental study

The influence of aerobic exercise, as a possibly mood-enhancing experience, was investigated for its effect on emotional evaluation of self- vs. other-related emotional (e.g., my/his joy) or neutral (e.g., my/his notes) stimuli. N=30 participants (healthy, female novices, i.e., with no regular, dedicated training schedule) performed four separate sessions of moderate aerobic exercise (22 min of cycling at 60-70% HRmax). Attentional focus was manipulated across exercise bouts (internal focus vs. external focus vs. no instructed attention focus vs. control condition consisting of no exercise and no instructed attention focus). Emotional evaluation of verbal stimuli was assessed 10 minutes after each exercise bout. Exercise increased self-reported positive affect compared to the inactive control condition regardless of attentional focus. Exercising without instructed attentional focus led to faster reaction times in the emotional evaluation task compared to the inactive control condition. Instructed internal or external attentional focus did not affect evaluations (number of valence-congruent responses) or reaction times compared to the no-exercise control condition. Self-reported internal attentional focus during cycling was associated with a subsequently stronger, and in the case of an external focus with a subsequently rather reduced self-positivity bias in the evaluation of self-related, positive vs. other-related positive words.

How does self name influence the neural processing of emotional prosody? An ERP study

In this study, we investigated whether self-relevant information can accelerate the processing of emotional information. Our experiment, based on a passive auditory oddball paradigm, involved recording electroencephalography while participants listened to stimuli comprising their own names (ONs) and unfamiliar names (UNs) spoken with varying emotional prosody. At 220-300 ms, mismatch negativity (MMN) was more negative for ONs and angry prosody than for UNs and neutral prosody, respectively. These results suggest that attention is involuntarily attracted by ONs and emotional prosody, and that both types of information are given priority processing, even under pre-attentive conditions. Importantly, ONs with angry prosody induced more negative MMN than did similar UNs and ONs with neutral prosody, which indicates that the motivational significance embedded in angry prosody promotes the self-reference effect and, thus, involves more attention resources. At 300-500 ms, ONs triggered smaller P3a than did UNs, suggesting that less cognitive resources are required to process self-relevant information. These results suggest that self-relevant and emotional information of preferential processing interact with each other during the pre-attentive stage, with self-reference enhancing the processing of emotional information.

Negative news dominates fast and slow brain responses and social judgments even after source credibility evaluation

Remedies to counter the impact of misinformation are in high demand, but little is known about the neuro-cognitive consequences of untrustworthy information and how they can be mitigated. In this preregistered study, we investigated the effects of social-emotional headline contents on social judgments and brain responses and whether they can be modulated by explicit evaluations of the trustworthiness of the media source. Participants (N = 30) evaluated -and clearly discerned- the trustworthiness of news sources before they were exposed to person-related news headlines. Despite this intervention, social judgments and brain responses were dominated largely by emotional headline contents. Results suggest differential effects of source credibility might depend on headline valence. Electrophysiological indexes of fast emotional and arousal-related brain responses, as well as correlates of slow evaluative processing were enhanced for persons associated with positive headline contents from trusted sources, but not when positive headlines stemmed from distrusted sources. In contrast, negative headlines dominated fast and slow brain responses unaffected by explicit source credibility evaluations. These results provide novel insights into the brain mechanisms underlying the "success" of emotional news from untrustworthy sources, suggesting a pronounced susceptibility to negative information even from distrusted sources that is reduced for positive contents. The differential pattern of responses to misinformation in mind and brain sheds light on the cognitive mechanisms underlying the processing of misinformation and possible strategies to avoid their potentially detrimental effects.

Can ambient odors influence the recognition of emotional words? A behavioral and event-related potentials study

Odor context can affect the recognition of facial expressions. However, there is no evidence to date that odor can regulate the processing of emotional words conveyed by visual words. An emotional word recognition task was combined with event-related potential technology. Briefly, 49 adults were randomly divided into three odor contexts (pleasant odor, unpleasant odor, and no odor) to judge the valence of emotional words (positive, negative, and neutral). Both behavioral and Electroencephalography (EEG) data were collected. Both the pleasant odor and unpleasant odor contexts shortened the response time of the subjects to emotional words. In addition, negative words induced greater amplitudes of early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) than the positive and neutral words. However, the neutral words induced a larger N400 amplitude than the positive and negative words. More importantly, the processing of emotional words was found to be modulated by external odor contexts. For example, during the earlier (P2) processing stages, pleasant and unpleasant odor contexts induced greater P2 amplitudes than the no odor context. In the unpleasant odor context, negative words with the same odor valence induced greater P2 amplitudes than the positive words. During the later (N400) stages, various regions of the brain regions exhibited different results. For example, in the left and right frontal areas of the brain, exposure to positive words in a pleasant odor context resulted in a smaller N400 amplitude than exposure to neutral words in the same context. Meanwhile, in the left and right central regions, emotional words with the same valence as pleasant or unpleasant odor contexts elicited the minimum N400 amplitude. Individuals are very sensitive to emotional information. With deeper processing, different cognitive processes are reflected and they can be modulated by external odors. In the early and late stages of word processing, both pleasant and unpleasant odor contexts exhibited an undifferentiated dominance effect and could specifically modulate affectively congruent words.

Feel Thine Own Self – Mood Congruency Evaluation of Emotional State Adjectives

Abstract. The goal of the study was to explore event-related potential (ERP) differences during the processing of emotional adjectives that were evaluated as congruent or incongruent with the current mood. We hypothesized that the first effects of congruence evaluation would be evidenced during the earliest stages of semantic analysis. Sixty mood adjectives were presented separately for 1,000 ms each during two sessions of mood induction. After each presentation, participants evaluated to what extent the word described their mood. The results pointed to incongruence marking of adjective’s meaning with current mood during early attention orientation and semantic access stages (the P150 component time window). This was followed by enhanced processing of congruent words at later stages. As a secondary goal the study also explored word valence effects and their relation to congruence evaluation. In this regard, no significant effects were observed on the ERPs; however, a negativity bias (enhanced responses to negative adjectives) was noted on the behavioral data (RTs), which could correspond to the small differences traced on the late positive potential.

Depressive rumination is correlated with brain responses during self-related processing

BACKGROUND

Rumination, a tendency to focus on negative self-related thoughts, is a central symptom of depression. Studying the self-related aspect of such symptoms is challenging because of the need to distinguish self effects from the emotional content of task stimuli. This study employed an emotionally neutral self-related paradigm to investigate possible altered self-processing in depression and its link to rumination.

METHODS

People with major depressive disorder (n = 25) and controls (n = 25) underwent task-based electro-encephalogram recording. We studied late event-related potentials, along with low-frequency oscillatory power. We compared electroencephalogram metrics between groups and correlated them with depressive symptoms and reported rumination.

RESULTS

Participants with major depressive disorder displayed a difference in late positive potentials across frontocentral electrodes between self-related and non-self-related conditions. We found no such difference in controls. The magnitude of this difference was positively correlated with depressive symptoms and reported rumination. Participants with major depressive disorder also had elevated theta oscillation power at central electrodes in self-related conditions, a finding that we did not see in controls.

LIMITATIONS

Patients with major depressive disorder were medicated at the time of the study. The group studied was primarily female, so the observed effects may have been sex-specific.

CONCLUSION

Rumination appears to be linked to altered self-related processing in depression, independent of stimuli-related emotional confounds. This connection between self-related processing and depression may point to a self disorder as a core component of depression.

Emotional news affects social judgments independent of perceived media credibility

How does the credibility we attribute to media sources influence our opinions and judgments derived from news? Participants read headlines about the social behavior of depicted unfamiliar persons from websites of trusted or distrusted well-known German news media. As a consequence, persons paired with negative or positive headlines were judged more negative or positive than persons associated with neutral information independent of source credibility. Likewise, electrophysiological signatures of slow and controlled evaluative brain activity revealed a dominant influence of emotional headline contents regardless of credibility. Modulations of earlier brain responses associated with arousal and reflexive emotional processing show an effect of negative news and suggest that distrusted sources may even enhance the impact of negative headlines. These findings demonstrate that though we may have distinct perceptions about the credibility of media sources, information processing and social judgments rely on the emotional content of headlines, even when they stem from sources we distrust.

An ERP investigation of age differences in the negativity bias for self-relevant and non-self-relevant stimuli

As we age, we show increased attention and memory for positive versus negative information, and a key event-related potential (ERP) marker of emotion processing, the late positive potential (LPP), is sensitive to these changes. In young adults the emotion effect on the LPP is also quite sensitive to the self-relevance of stimuli. Here we investigated whether the shift toward positive stimuli with age would be magnified by self-relevance. Participants read 2-sentence scenarios that were either self-relevant or non-self-relevant with a neutral, positive, or negative critical word in the second sentence. The LPP was largest for self-relevant negative information in young adults, with no significant effects of emotion for non-self-relevant scenarios. In contrast, older adults showed a smaller negativity bias, and the effect of emotion was not modulated by self-relevance. The 3-way interaction of age, emotion, and self-relevance suggests that the presence of self-relevant stimuli may reduce or inhibit effects of emotion for non-self-relevant stimuli on the LPP in young adults, but that older adults do not show this effect to the same extent.

Does Attentional Focus Influence Psychophysiological Responses to an Acute Bout of Exercise? Evidence From an Experimental Study Using a Repeated-Measures Design

Attentional focus during aerobic exercise has been studied in the context of sports performance, injury prevention and affective experience. Previous research suggests that an additional mental task parallel to the physical activity might influence exercise experience and performance. It has been tested if attentional focus influences cardiovascular activity, positive/negative affect, and subjective exertion during a cycling exercise. Data from N = 30 female participants has been collected using a repeated measures design, with the following experimental manipulations: (A) an internal attention focus (i.e., paying attention to force production of the quadriceps muscles), (B) an external attention focus (i.e., paying attention to changes in brightness in the cycling track simulation), and as control conditions, (C) exercise without attention focus (i.e., no specific instruction was given) and (D) no exercise, no attention focus. Subjective affect and subjective exertion were assessed, and changes in cardiovascular activity were recorded via mobile impedance cardiography (ICG) at rest, during and after the exercise, including HR, HRV (RMSSD, HF), PEP, CO, SV, LVET, and RSA. Exercise was associated with adaptations in cardiovascular activity, positive/negative affect, and subjective exertion. However, this did not interact with attentional focus. The original hypothesis could not be supported: instructed attentional focus does not influence affect, exertion, or cardiovascular activity during a cycling exercise. Therefore, attentional focusing during exercise does not appear to put notable additional mental demands on the physically active participant. Nonetheless, impedance cardiography delivered reliable measurements even during the cycling exercise.

The Human Self Has Two Serial Aspects and Is Dynamic: A Concept Based on Neurophysiological Evidence Supporting a Multiple Aspects Self Theory (MAST)

The self is an increasingly central topic in current neuroscience. Understanding the neural processes that are involved in self-referential processing and functioning may also be crucial to understanding consciousness. The current short communication goes beyond the typical concept that the self is singular, as has been assumed from neuroanatomical descriptions of the self by fMRI and PET studies. Long ago, theoretically, the idea of multiple aspects of the human self-arose, highlighting a dynamic organizational structure, but an increasing number of electrophysiological brain imaging studies, searching for the temporal dynamics of self-referential brain processes, now has empirical evidence supporting their existence. This short communication focuses on the theoretical idea of a dynamic self and provides first preliminary empirical evidence, including results from own studies of the authors, in support of, and highlights the serial dynamics of the human self, suggesting a primitive Me1 and an elaborate Me2 (a non-personal and a personal self). By focusing on the temporal dimension of the self, we propose that multiple aspects of the self can be distinguished based on their temporal sequence. A multiple aspects Self Theory (MAST) is proposed. This model is meant as a theoretical framework for future studies providing further support.

Twitter, time and emotions

The study of temporal trajectories of emotions shared in tweets has shown that both positive and negative emotions follow nonlinear circadian (24 h) and circaseptan (7-day) patterns. But to this point, such findings could be instrument-dependent as they rely exclusively on coding using the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count. Further, research has shown that self-referential content has higher relevance and meaning for individuals, compared with other types of content. Investigating the specificity of self-referential material in temporal patterns of emotional expression in tweets is of interest, but current research is based upon generic textual productions. The temporal variations of emotions shared in tweets through emojis have not been compared to textual analyses to date. This study hence focuses on several comparisons: (i) between Self-referencing tweets versus Other topic tweets, (ii) between coding of textual productions versus coding of emojis, and finally (iii) between coding of textual productions using different sentiment analysis tools (the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count-LIWC; the Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner-VADER and the Hu Liu sentiment lexicon-Hu Liu). In a collection of more than 7 million Self-referencing and close to 18 million Other topic content-coded tweets, we identified that (i) similarities and differences in terms of shape and amplitude can be observed in temporal trajectories of expressed emotions between Self-referring and Other topic tweets, (ii) that all tools feature significant circadian and circaseptan patterns in both datasets but not always, and there is often a correspondence in the shape of circadian and circaseptan patterns, and finally (iii) that circadian and circaseptan patterns obtained from the coding of emotional expression in emojis sometimes depart from those of the textual analysis, indicating some complementarity in the use of both modes of expression. We discuss the implications of our findings from the perspective of the literature on emotions and well-being.

Associations between Cognitive Concepts of Self and Emotional Facial Expressions with an Emphasis on Emotion Awareness

Recognising our own and others’ emotions is vital for healthy social development. The aim of the current study was to determine how emotions related to the self or to another influence behavioural expressions of emotion. Facial electromyography (EMG) was used to record spontaneous facial muscle activity in nineteen participants while they passively viewed negative, positive and neutral emotional pictures during three blocks of referential instructions. Each participant imagined themself, another person or no one experiencing the emotional scenario, with the priming words “You”, “Him” or “None” presented before each picture for the respective block of instructions. Emotion awareness (EA) was also recorded using the TAS-20 alexithymia questionnaire. Corrugator supercilii (cs) muscle activity increased significantly between 500 and 1000 ms post stimulus onset during negative and neutral picture presentations, regardless of ownership. Independent of emotion, cs activity was greatest during the “no one” task and lowest during the “self” task from less than 250 to 1000 ms. Interestingly, the degree of cs activation during referential tasks was further modulated by EA. Low EA corresponded to significantly stronger cs activity overall compared with high EA, and this effect was even more pronounced during the “no one” task. The findings suggest that cognitive processes related to the perception of emotion ownership can influence spontaneous facial muscle activity, but that a greater degree of integration between higher cognitive and lower affective levels of information may interrupt or suppress these behavioural expressions of emotion.

Interactions of Emotion and Self-reference in Source Memory: An ERP Study

The way emotional information is encoded (e.g., deciding whether it is self-related or not) has been found to affect source memory. However, few studies have addressed how the emotional quality and self-referential properties of a stimulus interactively modulate brain responses during stimulus encoding and source memory recognition. In the current study, 22 participants completed five study-test cycles with negative, neutral, and positive words encoded in self-referential versus non-self-referential conditions, while event-related potentials of the electroencephalogram were recorded. An advantage of self-referential processing in source memory performance, reflected in increased recognition accuracy, was shown for neutral and positive words. At the electrophysiological level, self-referential words elicited increased amplitudes in later processing stages during encoding (700-1,200 ms) and were associated with the emergence of old/new effects in the 300-500 ms latency window linked to familiarity effects. In the 500-800 ms latency window, old/new effects emerged for all valence conditions except for negative words studied in the non-self-referential condition. Negative self-referential words also elicited a greater mobilization of post-retrieval monitoring processes, reflected in an enhanced mean amplitude in the 800-1,200 ms latency window. Together, the current findings suggest that valence and self-reference interactively modulate source memory. Specifically, negative self-related information is more likely to interfere with the recollection of source memory features.

Evidence for self-positivity bias in a subliminal self-cue: An event-related potential study

Previous studies studies indicate that individuals tend to integrate positive information into their self-concept. However, whether such self-positivity bias would still be observed without an explicit self-related cue is unknown. In the present study, 29 participants were asked to evaluate a series of positive and negative trait adjectives, after the participants were presented with their own name or another name subliminally. During the task, their electroencephalograms were recorded. The results showed participants responded faster to positive traits than to negative traits in the self-name cue conditions. In addition, both the latencies and the amplitudes of the N400 showed significant interaction between name-cue and valence in N400 (240-440 ms) amplitudes. The earlier N400 latencies and smaller N400 amplitudes were associated with positive traits in the self-name cue. These results suggested that the self-positivity bias can also be observed in a subliminally presenting self-cue, indicating the robustness of self-positivity bias.

Impaired Emotional Self-Referential Processing in First-Episode Schizophrenia

Impairments in self-representation are relevant to the expression of psychosis. To date, the characteristics and neural mechanisms of self-impairment in schizophrenia remain unclear. To this end, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to measure brain activity in 56 first-episode patients with schizophrenia and 56 healthy controls. Participants judged personal trait adjectives regarding themselves, their mothers, or a public person, followed by an unexpected old/new recognition test. The recognition score for mother-reference adjectives was lower than that for self-reference adjectives in patients, while the control group showed comparatively high recognition scores for both self- and mother-referential adjectives. In addition, control subjects recognized more negative words, while patients remembered more positive words. ERP data revealed that controls exhibited typical task effects (self-reference = mother-reference > other-reference) during both automatic attention and effortful encoding periods [indexed by P2 and the late positive potential (LPP), respectively]. In contrast, patients only exhibited the task effect in the P2 amplitude. Moreover, controls exhibited larger P2 amplitudes during encoding negative than positive words, whereas patients had enhanced LPP amplitudes during memory retrieval of positive compared to negative words. These findings demonstrated self-representation dysfunction in first-episode schizophrenic patients in mother (the intimate other) referential processing and the absence of a negative memory bias.

Evidence for Altered Neural Processing in Patients With Borderline Personality Disorder

Abstract. Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by difficulties in emotion regulation, self-identity disturbances, self-injurious behavior, and reduced inhibitory control. Event-related potential (ERP) studies have sought to reveal the neural correlates of cognitive distortions and behavioral alterations in BPD. The article presents an overview of the existing ERP literature pertaining to BPD and discusses whether any one of the electrophysiological findings could serve as a reliable and specific marker for BPD. In short, ERP studies investigating P300 tentatively suggest impaired inhibitory control. Moreover, reduced error- and feedback-related processing and impaired response inhibition seem to be associated with impulsivity and risk-taking behavior in BPD patients. However, these findings are not specific for BPD. Regarding emotional and self-referential information processing, individuals with BPD display heightened vigilance toward social threat impacting their cognitive performance in various social-cognitive tasks demonstrating alterations of early negative and late positive potentials. These multifaceted electrophysiological alterations may be attributed to dysfunctional activity and connectivity of frontal brain regions and the limbic system.

Investigating the roles of age, sex, depression, and anxiety for valence and arousal ratings of words: a population-based study

BACKGROUND

The perception of the affective quality of stimuli with regard to valence and arousal has mostly been studied in laboratory experiments. Population-based research may complement such studies by accessing larger, older, better balanced, and more heterogeneous samples. Several characteristics, among them age, sex, depression, or anxiety, were found to be associated with affective quality perception. Here, we intended to transfer valence and arousal rating methods from experimental to population-based research. Our aim was to assess the feasibility of obtaining and determining the structure of valence and arousal ratings in the setting of the large observational BiDirect Study. Moreover, we explored the roles of age, sex, depression, and anxiety for valence and arousal ratings of words.

METHODS

704 participants provided valence and arousal ratings for 12 written nouns pre-categorized as unpleasant, neutral, or pleasant. Predictors of valence and arousal ratings (i.e. age, sex, depression, and anxiety) were analyzed for six outcomes that emerge by combining two affective dimensions with three words categories. Data were modeled with multiple linear regression. Relative predictor importance was quantified by model-explained variance decomposition.

RESULTS

Overall, average population-based ratings replicated those found in laboratory settings. The model did not reach statistical significance in the valence dimension. In the arousal dimension, the model explained 5.4% (unpleasant), 4.6% (neutral), and 3.5% (pleasant) of the variance. (Trend) effects of sex on arousal ratings were found in all word categories (unpleasant: increased arousal in women; neutral, pleasant: decreased arousal in women). Effects of age and anxiety (increased arousal) were restricted to the neutral words.

CONCLUSIONS

We report results of valence and arousal ratings of words in the setting of a large, observational, population-based study. Method transfer yielded acceptable data quality. The analyses demonstrated small effects of the selected predictors in the arousal dimension.

The Behavioral and ERP Responses to Self- and Other- Referenced Adjectives

The aim was to investigate behavioral reactions and event-related potential (ERP) responses in healthy participants under conditions of personalized attribution of emotional appraisal vocabulary to one-self or to other people. One hundred and fifty emotionally neutral, positive and negative words describing people's traits were used. Subjects were asked to attribute each word to four types of people: one-self, loved, unpleasant and neutral person. The reaction time during adjectives attribution to one-self and a loved person was shorter than during adjectives attribution to neutral and unpleasant people. Self-related adjectives induced higher amplitudes of the N400 ERP peak in the medial cortical areas in comparison with adjectives related to other people. The amplitude of P300 and P600 depended on the emotional valence of assessments, but not on the personalized attribution. The interaction between the attribution effect and the effect of emotional valence of assessments was observed for the N400 peak in the left temporal area. The maximal amplitude of N400 was revealed under self-attributing of emotionally positive adjectives. Our results supported the hypothesis that the emotional valence of assessments and the processing of information about one-self or others were related to the brain processes that differ from each other in a cortical localization or time dynamics.

Neural mechanisms supporting emotional and self-referential information processing and encoding in older and younger adults

Emotion and self-referential information can both enhance memory, but whether they do so via common mechanisms across the adult lifespan remains underexplored. To address this gap, the current study directly compared, within the same fMRI paradigm, the encoding of emotionally salient and self-referential information in older adults and younger adults. Behavioral results replicated the typical patterns of better memory for emotional than neutral information and for self-referential than non-self-referential materials; these memory enhancements were present for younger and older adults. In neural activity, young and older adults showed similar modulation by emotion, but there were substantial age differences in the way self-referential processing affected neural recruitment. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found little evidence for overlap in the neural mechanisms engaged for emotional and self-referential processing. These results reveal that-just as in cognitive domains-older adults can show similar performance to younger adults in socioemotional domains even though the two age groups engage distinct neural mechanisms. These findings demonstrate the need for future research delving into the neural mechanisms supporting older adults' memory benefits for socioemotional material.

Neural correlations of the influence of self-relevance on moral decision-making involving a trade-off between harm and reward

Although economists have suggested that humans generally prioritize maximizing their own self-interest rather than others' when distributing rewards, recent psychological studies have shown that people are hyperaltruistic when allocating physical harm to themselves and others during moral decision-making. However, little is known about how the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying self-relevance modulate this behavioral tendency under different degrees of physical harm. This study adopted a moral decision-making task to investigate behavioral and neural processes during moral decision-making involving different levels of self-relevance and physical harm. Event-related potentials were measured while participants made trade-offs of different monetary gains for themselves against painful electric shocks experienced by the receivers (self, friend, or stranger). These results suggest that early anterior N1, indexing fast and automatic moral intuitional process, decreased during the strong conflict trade-off decisions involving strong painful electric shocks and much monetary gains. Lower self-relevance enhanced the aversive experience and increased the mental cost of resolving moral conflict, reflected by a larger P260-LPP (300-450 ms) effect during weaker conflict decisions toward strangers than themselves and friends. However, this effect was weaker during strong conflict decisions. When making decisions about whether to shock others to gain money for themselves, participants were hyperaltruistic, foregoing greater self-interest to restrain harm directed toward strangers than themselves or friends. These findings shed light on the neural basis of the tension between egoistic and altruistic tendencies during moral decision-making integrating benefits and harms.

Attending to Eliza: rapid brain responses reflect competence attribution in virtual social feedback processing

In the age of virtual communication, the source of a message is often inferred rather than perceived, raising the question of how sender attributions affect content processing. We investigated this issue in an evaluative feedback scenario. Participants were told that an expert psychotherapist, a layperson or a randomly acting computer was going to give them online positive, neutral or negative personality feedback while high-density EEG was recorded. Sender attribution affected processing rapidly, even though the feedback was on average identical. Event-related potentials revealed a linear increase with attributed expertise beginning 150 ms after disclosure and most pronounced for N1, P2 and early posterior negativity components. P3 and late positive potential amplitudes were increased for both human senders and for emotionally significant (positive or negative) feedback. Strikingly, feedback from a putative expert prompted large P3 responses, even for inherently neutral content. Source analysis localized early enhancements due to attributed sender expertise in frontal and somatosensory regions and later responses in the posterior cingulate and extended visual and parietal areas, supporting involvement of mentalizing, embodied processing and socially motivated attention. These findings reveal how attributed sender expertise rapidly alters feedback processing in virtual interaction and have implications for virtual therapy and online communication.

Emotion and conflict adaptation: the role of phasic arousal and self-relevance

Conflict adaptation reflects the increase in cognitive control after previous conflict between task-relevant and task-irrelevant information. Tonic (sustained) arousal elicited by emotional words embedded in a conflict task has previously been shown to increase conflict adaptation. However, the role of phasic (transient) emotional arousal remains unclear. In Experiment 1 (N = 55), we therefore investigated the effect of phasic arousal using a colour flanker task with negative, positive, and neutral words as stimuli. We hypothesised that phasic arousal elicited in this context will increase conflict adaptation in the subsequent trial. Indeed, when the words were positive or negative as compared to neutral, we observed increased conflict adaptation. In Experiment 2 (N = 54), we examined the role of the self-relevance by presenting words with a self-related pronoun ("my") or sender-related pronoun ("his"/"her"). We expected that emotional words with high self-relevance would lead to stronger effects of emotional arousal on conflict adaptation. Confirming this hypothesis, results showed that emotional words within a self-related context again increased conflict adaptation, whereas this effect was not observed in the sender-related context. Taken together, these results are the first to show that phasic arousal elicited by emotional words increases conflict adaptation, in particular when these words have high self-relevance.

Resting-state neural network disturbances that underpin the emergence of emotional symptoms in adolescent girls: resting-state fMRI study

BACKGROUND

Subsyndromal emotional symptoms in adolescence may represent precursors for full-blown emotional disorders in early adulthood. Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms that drive this development is essential for prevention.

AIMS

Self-referential processing and emotion regulation are remodelled substantively during adolescence, therefore this study examined integration of key neural networks involved in these processes.

METHOD

At baseline, clinical and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected for 88 adolescent girls (mean age 15 years), and 71 of these girls underwent repeat clinical assessment after 2 years. These 71 girls were then partitioned into two groups depending on the presence (ES+) or absence (ES-) of emotional symptoms, and differences in dynamic functional network connectivity were determined and correlated with clinical variables.

RESULTS

The two groups displayed a differential pattern of functional connectivity involving the left lateral prefrontal network (LPFN). Specifically, in the ES+ group this network displayed positive coupling with the right LPFN but negative coupling with the default mode network, and the inverse of this pattern was found in the ES- group. Furthermore, the coupling strengths between left and right LPFN at the irst time point predicted follow-up depression and state anxiety scores.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest that in adolescent girls, emotional symptoms may emerge as a result of impaired integration between networks involved in self-referential information processing and approach-avoidance behaviours. These impairments can compromise the pursuit of important goals and have an impact on emotion processing and finally may lead to the development of emotional disorders, such as anxiety and depression in adulthood.

DECLARATION OF INTEREST

None.

Processing of affective words in adolescent PTSD-Attentional bias toward social threat

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with a hypersensitivity to potential threat. This hypersensitivity manifests through differential patterns of emotional information processing and has been demonstrated in behavioral and neurophysiological experimental paradigms. However, the majority of research has been focused on adult patients with PTSD. To examine possible differences in underlying neurophysiological patterns for adolescent patients with PTSD after childhood sexual and/or physical abuse (CSA/CPA), ERP correlates of emotional word processing in 38 healthy participants and 40 adolescent participants with PTSD after experiencing CSA/CPA were studied. The experimental paradigm consisted of a passive reading task with neutral, positive (e.g., paradise), physically threatening (e.g., torment), and socially threatening (i.e., swearing, e.g., son of a bitch) words. A modulation of P3 amplitudes by emotional valence was found, with positive words inducing less elevated amplitudes over both groups. Interestingly, in later processing, the PTSD group showed augmented early late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes for socially threatening stimuli, while there were no modulations within the healthy control group. Also, region-specific emotional modulations for anterior and posterior electrode clusters were found. For the anterior LPP, highest activations have been found for positive words, while socially and physically threatening words led to strongest modulations in the posterior LPP cluster. There were no modulations by group or emotional valence at the P1 and EPN stage. The findings suggest an enhanced conscious processing of socially threatening words in adolescent patients with PTSD after CSA/CPA, pointing to the importance of a disjoined examination of threat words in emotional processing research.

The effect of emotional and self-referential contexts on ERP responses towards surprised faces

The perception of surprised faces is demonstrably modulated by emotional context. However, the influence of self-relevance and its interaction with emotional context have not been explored. The present study investigated the effects of contextual valence and self-reference on the perception of surprised faces. Our results revealed that faces in a negative context elicited a larger N170 than those in a neutral context. The EPN was affected by the interaction between contextual valence and self-reference, with larger amplitudes for faces in self-related positive contexts and sender-related negative contexts. Additionally, LPP amplitudes were enhanced for faces in negative contexts relative to neutral and positive contexts, as well as for self-related contexts in comparison to sender-related contexts. Together, these findings help to elucidate the psychophysiological mechanisms underlying the effects of emotional and self-referential contexts on the perception of surprised faces, which are characterized by distinctive ERPs.

The Moderation Effect of Self-Enhancement on the Group-Reference Effect

Previous studies have documented that people tend to respond faster and memorize better to the in-group traits. It may be particularly manifest for ethnic minorities, due to their salient ethnic identity. However, few studies have explored how the valence of traits modulates the in-group preference effect. The present study examined the impacts of ethnic identity salience and the valence of traits on the group-preference effect among 33 Han Chinese in a Tibetan-dominant area and 32 Tibetan participants in a Han-dominant area. Two weeks before the experiment, we measured the ethnic identity salience of participants in both groups. In the formal experiment, we used the group-reference effect (GRE) paradigm with three encoding tasks. The results showed that, regardless of whether ethnic identity was salient, both groups responded faster to positive traits than to negative traits when evaluating their own group, whereas there were no significant difference between the processing of positive traits and negative traits in the out-group evaluation and font judgment tasks. This suggested a pervasive processing advantage of the in-group positive characteristics. The results imply that self-enhancement motivation had a moderation effect on the GRE, as well as the ethnic identity salience may not be necessary for a GRE.

Seeing emotions, reading emotions: Behavioral and ERPs evidence of the regulation of pictures and words

Background

Whilst there has been extensive study of the mechanisms underlying the regulation for pictures, the ability and the mechanisms beyond the regulation of words remains to be clarified. Similarly, the effect of strategy when applying a regulatory process is still poorly explored. The present study seeks to elucidate these issues comparing the effect of regulation and of strategy to both neutral and emotional words and pictures.

Methodology/Principal findings

Thirty young adults applied the strategy of distancing to the emotions elicited by unpleasant and neutral pictures and words while their subjective ratings and ERPs were recorded. At a behavioral level, participants successfully regulated the arousal and the valence of both pictures and words. At a neural level, unpleasant pictures produced an increase in the late positive potential modulated during the regulate condition. Unpleasant linguistic stimuli elicited a posterior negativity as compared to neutral stimuli, but no effect of regulation on ERP was detectable. More importantly, the effect of strategy independently of stimulus type, produced a significant larger Stimulus Preceding Negativity. Dipole reconstruction localized this effect in the middle frontal areas of the brain.

Conclusions

As such, these new psychophysiological findings might help to understand how pictures and words can be regulated by distancing in daily life and clinical contexts, and the neural bases of the effect of strategy for which we suggest an integrative model.