Emotional body-word conflict evokes enhanced n450 and slow potential

Adult Age Differences in the Temporal Dynamics of Motivated Attention

Reward-based motivation modulates attention and cognitive control across the life span, but little is known about age differences in the temporal dynamics of motivated attention. The current study examined the effects of financial incentives on visual attention using ERPs. Participants (26 younger, aged 18-33 years; 24 older, aged 65-95 years) completed an incentivized flanker task in which trial-level incentive cues signaled the availability of performance-contingent reward, and subsequent alerting cues signaled the onset of the flanker target. ERP components of interest included cue-related components (incentive-cue P2 and contingent negative variation, and alerting-cue N1) as well as target-related components (target N1 and P3). Transient effects of incentives were assessed by comparing ERP amplitudes across incentive and non-incentive trials from mixed-incentive blocks. Sustained effects of incentives were assessed by comparing ERP amplitudes across non-incentive trials from mixed-incentive blocks and non-incentive trials from pure non-incentive blocks. Younger adults showed transient effects of incentives on all components, whereas older adults showed these effects for incentive-cue P2 and alerting-cue N1 only. Both age groups showed sustained effects of incentives on cue-locked ERPs, but only younger adults showed sustained effects on target-locked ERPs. RT patterns mirrored the ERP findings, in that younger adults showed greater incentive-based modulation than older adults, but at a greater cost to accuracy. Overall, these findings reveal widespread age differences in the dynamics of incentive-motivated attention and cognitive control, particularly at longer timescales.

The Affect Misattribution in the Interpretation of Ambiguous Stimuli in Terms of Warmth vs. Competence: Behavioral Phenomenon and Its Neural Correlates

Warmth and competence are fundamental dimensions of social cognition. This also applies to the interpretation of ambiguous symbolic stimuli in terms of their relation to warmth or competence. The affective state of an individual may affect the way people interpret the neutral stimuli in the environment. As previous findings have shown, it is possible to alter the perception of neutral social stimuli in terms of warmth vs. competence by eliciting an incidental affect with the use of emotion-laden words. In the current experiment, we expected the valence and origin of an affective state, factors ascribing emotionally laden words, to be able to switch the interpretation of the neutral objects. We have shown in behavioural results that negative valence and reflective origins promote the interpretation of unknown objects in terms of competence rather than warmth. Furthermore, electrophysiological-response-locked analyses revealed differences specific to negative valence while making the decision in the ambiguous task and while executing it. The results of the current experiment show that the usage of warmth and competence in social cognition is susceptible to affective state manipulation. In addition, the results are coherent with the evolutionary perspective on social cognition (valence effects) as well as with predictions of the dual mind model of emotion (origin effects).

Arousal, subjective significance and the origin of valence aligned words in the processing of an emotional categorisation task

An emotional categorisation task allows us to study how emotionality is understood and how emotional factors influence decisions. As emotionality is not only the valence but is also composed of activation (arousal and subjective significance) and the type of process needed to produce emotion (origin), we wanted to test the influence of these emotional factors on with a group of stimuli not differing in valence. We predicted that increasing activation levels should lead to increased classification of stimuli as emotional, with a focus on the late processing stages, when explicit word processing occurs, which on the electrophysiological level corresponds to P300, N450 and LPC components. The behavioural results showed that the emotionality of words increased with increasing levels of arousal and subjective significance. Automatically originated words were assessed as more emotional than reflective ones. The amplitude of the N450 component revealed dissociation for subjective significance and origin effects, showing that these two dimensions ascribe distinct properties of emotionality. Finally, the LPC component was susceptible to all affective dimensions used in manipulation. Our study showed that arousal, subjective significance and origin are dimensions of affect that shape the processing of words' emotionality, when the values of valence were aligned among the stimuli.

Acute Exercise and Neurocognitive Development in Preadolescents and Young Adults: An ERP Study

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a single bout of exercise on neurocognitive function in preadolescent children and young adults by determining the modulatory role of age and the neuroelectrical mechanism(s) underlying the association between acute exercise and executive function. Twenty preadolescents and 20 young adults completed the Stroop test, and neuroelectrical activity was recorded during two treatment sessions performed in a counterbalanced order. Exercise treatments involved moderate intensity aerobic exercise for 20 min as the main exercise and two 5 min periods of warm-up and cool-down. The control treatment participants read for a similar duration of time. Acute exercise improved participant reaction times on the Stroop test, regardless of Stroop congruency, and greater beneficial effects were observed in young adults compared to those in preadolescents. The P3 amplitudes increased after acute exercise in preadolescents and young adults, but acute exercise induced lower conflict sustained potential (conflict SP) amplitudes in preadolescent children. Based on these findings, age influences the beneficial effect of acute exercise on cognitive performance in general. Furthermore, the event-related brain potential differences attributed to acute exercise provide a potential clue to the mechanisms that differentiate the effects of acute exercise on individuals from preadolescence to young adulthood.

Cycling on a Bike Desk Positively Influences Cognitive Performance

Purpose

Cycling desks as a means to reduce sedentary time in the office has gained interest as excessive sitting has been associated with several health risks. However, the question rises if people will still be as efficient in performing their desk-based office work when combining this with stationary cycling. Therefore, the effect of cycling at 30% Wmax on typing, cognitive performance and brain activity was investigated.

Methods

After two familiarisation sessions, 23 participants performed a test battery [typing test, Rey auditory verbal learning test (RAVLT), Stroop test and Rosvold continuous performance test (RCPT)] with electroencephalography recording while cycling and sitting on a conventional chair.

Results

Typing performance, performance on the RAVLT and accuracy on the Stroop test and the RCPT did not differ between conditions. Reaction times on the Stroop test and the RCPT were shorter while cycling relative to sitting (p < 0.05). N200, P300, N450 and conflict SP latency and amplitude on the Stroop test and N200 and P300 on the RCPT did not differ between conditions.

Conclusions

This study showed that typing performance and short-term memory are not deteriorated when people cycle at 30% Wmax. Furthermore, cycling had a positive effect on response speed across tasks requiring variable amounts of attention and inhibition.

Emotional Modulation of Conflict Processing in the Affective Domain: Evidence from Event-related Potentials and Event-related Spectral Perturbation Analysis

Previous studies have revealed the impact of emotion on conflict processing. The present study was conducted to investigate whether cognitive control in the affective domain is also affected by emotion. Emotional face-word and body-word Stroop tasks were explored and contrasted, and both behavioural and electrophysiological measures were recorded. Behavioural results showed that both tasks replicated previous robust interference effects. At the physiological level, the two tasks showed dissociable neural activity in the early attention and perception stages. It was also found that the face-word task evoked more pronounced N1 and P2 amplitudes than the body-word task. However, the two tasks evoked comparable N450 amplitudes. At later processing stages, positive slow potentials were modulated by target emotion and congruency. In addition, time-frequency analyses also revealed that the face-word task induced enhanced theta activity compared to the body-word task at both early and later stages of processing. The present findings provide support for the dual competition framework and suggest the dynamic modulation of emotion on cognitive control in the affective domain.