Neural correlates of emotional intelligence in a visual emotional oddball task: an ERP study

The 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine enhances early visual processing for salient socio-emotional stimuli

The 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) has long been used non-medically, and it is currently under investigation for its potential therapeutic benefits. Both uses may be related to its ability to enhance empathy, sociability, emotional processing and its anxiolytic effects. However, the neural mechanisms underlying these effects, and their specificity to MDMA compared to other stimulants, are not yet fully understood. Here, using electroencephalography (EEG), we investigated the effects of MDMA and a prototypic stimulant, methamphetamine (MA), on early visual processing of socio-emotional stimuli in an oddball emotional faces paradigm. Specifically, we examined whether MDMA or MA enhance the processing of facial expressions, compared to placebo, during the early stages of visual perception. MDMA enhanced an event-related component that is sensitive to detecting faces (N170), specifically for happy and angry expressions compared to neutral faces. MA did not affect this measure, and neither drug altered other components of the response to emotional faces. These findings provide novel insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the effects of MDMA on socio-emotional processing and may have implications for the therapeutic use of MDMA in the treatment of social anxiety and other psychiatric disorders.

Mass-univariate analysis of scalp ERPs reveals large effects of gaze fixation location during face processing that only weakly interact with face emotional expression

Decoding others' facial expressions is critical for social functioning. To clarify the neural correlates of expression perception depending on where we look on the face, three combined gaze-contingent ERP experiments were analyzed using robust mass-univariate statistics. Regardless of task, fixation location impacted face processing from 50 to 350 ms, maximally around 120 ms, reflecting retinotopic mapping around C2 and P1 components. Fixation location also impacted majorly the N170-P2 interval while weak effects were seen at the face-sensitive N170 peak. Results question the widespread assumption that faces are processed holistically into an indecomposable perceptual whole around the N170. Rather, face processing is a complex and view-dependent process that continues well beyond the N170. Expression and fixation location interacted weakly during the P1-N170 interval, supporting a role for the mouth and left eye in fearful and happy expression decoding. Expression effects were weakest at the N170 peak but strongest around P2, especially for fear, reflecting task-independent affective processing. Results suggest N170 reflects a transition between processes rather than the maximum of a holistic face processing stage. Focus on this peak should be replaced by data-driven analyses of the epoch using robust statistics to fully unravel the early visual processing of faces and their affective content.

The effect of sad mood on early sensory event-related potentials to task-irrelevant faces

It has been shown that the perceiver's mood affects the perception of emotional faces, but it is not known how mood affects preattentive brain responses to emotional facial expressions. To examine the question, we experimentally induced sad and neutral mood in healthy adults before presenting them with task-irrelevant pictures of faces while an electroencephalography was recorded. Sad, happy, and neutral faces were presented to the participants in an ignore oddball condition. Differential responses (emotional - neutral) for the P1, N170, and P2 amplitudes were extracted and compared between neutral and sad mood conditions. Emotional facial expressions modulated all the components, and an interaction effect of expression by mood was found for P1: an emotional modulation to happy faces, which was found in neutral mood condition, disappeared in sad mood condition. For N170 and P2, we found larger response amplitudes for both emotional faces, regardless of the mood. The results add to the previous behavioral findings showing that mood already affects low-level cortical feature encoding of task-irrelevant faces.

Measuring cognitive load of digital interface combining event-related potential and BubbleView

Helmet mounted display systems (HMDs) are high-performance display devices for modern aircraft. We propose a novel method combining event-related potentials (ERPs) and BubbleView to measure cognitive load under different HMD interfaces. The distribution of the subjects' attention resources is reflected by analyzing the BubbleView, and the input of the subjects' attention resources on the interface is reflected by analyzing the ERP's P3b and P2 components. The results showed that the HMD interface with more symmetry and a simple layout had less cognitive load, and subjects paid more attention to the upper portion of the interface. Combining the experimental data of ERP and BubbleView, we can obtain a more comprehensive, objective, and reliable HMD interface evaluation result. This approach has significant implications for the design of digital interfaces and can be utilized for the iterative evaluation of HMD interfaces.

Aberrant social feedback processing and its impact on memory, social evaluation, and decision-making among individuals with depressive symptoms

BACKGROUND

Depression is associated with aberrant social feedback processing. However, little is known about the impact of these deficits on individuals' memory, social evaluation, and social decision-making.

METHODS

We examined event-related potentials (ERPs) during the processing of social feedback with different emotional valences and intensities, among individuals with high and low depressive symptoms. After three days, participants performed a recall test, along with social evaluation and money allocation.

RESULTS

Compared with the control group, participants with depressive symptoms showed larger occipital P1 and parietal P3 amplitudes to negative social feedback, as well as larger frontal feedback-related negativity toward highly positive social feedback; this indicates toward altered attentional allocation, encoding, and anticipation in social feedback processing. After three days of social feedback processing, individuals in the depressive symptom group recalled negative social feedback better and gave less positive evaluations and allocated less money to the senders of highly negative social feedback compared with control group participants. Notably, ERPs predicted subsequent memory, social evaluation, and decision-making, suggesting a significant impact of aberrant social feedback processing on social cognition and behaviors in depression.

LIMITATIONS

Individuals with depressive symptoms rather than patients with depressive disorders were recruited and therefore caution is needed in applying the findings to clinical populations.

CONCLUSIONS

Individuals with depressive symptoms exhibit negative bias in anticipation, attentional allocation, and encoding processes during social feedback processing, which further influences their memory, social evaluation, and social decision-making in the long run. These aberrant biases should be targeted to prevent the development of major depressive disorders.

The effects of sleep deprivation on the processing of emotional facial expressions in young adults with and without ADHD

The ability to recognize emotions from facial expressions is essential to the development of complex social cognition behaviors, and impairments in this ability are associated with poor social competence. This study aimed to examine the effects of sleep deprivation on the processing of emotional facial expressions and nonfacial stimuli in young adults with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Thirty-five men (mean age 25.4) with (n = 19) and without (n = 16) ADHD participated in the study. During the five days preceding the experimental session, the participants were required to sleep at least seven hours per night (23:00/24:00–7:00/9:00) and their sleep was monitored via actigraphy. On the morning of the experimental session, the participants completed a 4-stimulus visual oddball task combining facial and nonfacial stimuli, and repeated it after 25 h of sustained wakefulness. At baseline, both study groups had poorer performance in response to facial rather than non-facial target stimuli on all indices of the oddball task, with no differences between the groups. Following sleep deprivation, rates of omission errors, commission errors and reaction time variability increased significantly in the ADHD group but not in the control group. Time and target type (face/non-face) did not have an interactive effect on any indices of the oddball task. Young adults with ADHD are more sensitive to the negative effects of sleep deprivation on attentional processes, including those related to the processing of emotional facial expressions. As poor sleep and excessive daytime sleepiness are common in individuals with ADHD, it is feasible that poor sleep quality and quantity play an important role in cognitive functioning deficits, including the processing of emotional facial expressions that are associated with ADHD.

Maternal antenatal anxiety and electrophysiological functioning amongst a sub-set of preschoolers participating in the GUSTO cohort

BACKGROUND

Antenatal maternal anxiety is a risk for offspring psychological and cognitive difficulties. The preschool years represent an important time for brain development, and so may be a window for intervention. However, electrophysiological investigations of maternal anxiety and preschoolers' brain functioning are lacking. We ask whether anxiety symptoms predict neurophysiology, and consider timing specificity (26-weeks antenatal or 24-months postnatal), form of insult (anxiety symptoms, per se, or also depression symptoms), and offspring gender.

METHODS

The sample consisted of a subset of 71 mothers and their 3 year old children taking part in the prospective birth cohort, GUSTO. Mothers provided antenatal (26 weeks) and postnatal (2 years) anxiety and depressive symptomatology data, respectively via the "State Trait Anxiety Questionnaire" and the "Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale." Offspring provided electrophysiological data, obtained while they indicated the emotional expression of actors whose facial expressions remained consistent throughout a pre-switch block, but were reversed at "post-switch."

RESULTS

Three electrophysiological components linked to different information processing stages were identified. The two earliest occurring components (i.e., the N1 and P2) differed across blocks. During post-switch, both were significantly predicted by maternal anxiety, after controlling for pre-switch neurophysiology. Similar results were observed with depression. Antenatal mental health remained a significant predictor after controlling for postnatal mental health.

CONCLUSION

In combination with past work, these findings suggest the importance of reducing symptoms in women prior to and during pregnancy, and offering support to offspring early in development.

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

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

An EEG Study on Emotional Intelligence and Advertising Message Effectiveness

Some electroencephalography (EEG) studies have investigated emotional intelligence (EI), but none have examined the relationships between EI and commercial advertising messages and related consumer behaviors. This study combines brain (EEG) techniques with an EI psychometric to explore the brain responses associated with a range of advertisements. A group of 45 participants (23 females, 22 males) had their EEG recorded while watching a series of advertisements selected from various marketing categories such as community interests, celebrities, food/drink, and social issues. Participants were also categorized as high or low in emotional intelligence (n = 34). The EEG data analysis was centered on rating decision-making in order to measure brain responses associated with advertising information processing for both groups. The findings suggest that participants with high and low emotional intelligence (EI) were attentive to different types of advertising messages. The two EI groups demonstrated preferences for “people” or “object,” related advertising information. This suggests that differences in consumer perception and emotions may suggest why certain advertising material or marketing strategies are effective or not.

Predicting risk decisions in a modified Balloon Analogue Risk Task: Conventional and single-trial ERP analyses

Event-related potential (ERP) has the potential to reveal the temporal neurophysiological dynamics of risk decision-making, but this potential has not been fully explored in previous studies. When predicting risk decision with ERPs, most studies focus on between-trial analysis that reflects feedback learning, while within-trial analysis that could directly link option assessment with behavioral output has been largely ignored. Suitable task design is crucial for applying within-trial prediction. In this study, we used a modified version of the classic Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). In each trial of the task, participants made multiple rounds of decisions between a risky option (pump up the balloon) and a safe option (cash out). Behavioral results show that as the level of economic risk increased, participants were less willing to make a risky decision and also needed a longer response time to do so. In general, the ERP results showed distinct characteristics compared with previous findings based on between-trial prediction, particularly about the role of the P1 component. Specifically, both the P1 (amplitude and latency) and P3 (amplitude) components evoked by current outcomes predicted subsequent decisions. We suggest that these findings indicate the importance of selective attention (indexed by the P1) and motivational functions (indexed by the P3), which may help clarify the cognitive mechanism of risk decision-making. The theoretical significance of these findings is discussed.

Neurobiological correlates of emotional intelligence in voice and face perception networks

Facial expressions and voice modulations are among the most important communicational signals to convey emotional information. The ability to correctly interpret this information is highly relevant for successful social interaction and represents an integral component of emotional competencies that have been conceptualized under the term emotional intelligence. Here, we investigated the relationship of emotional intelligence as measured with the Salovey-Caruso-Emotional-Intelligence-Test (MSCEIT) with cerebral voice and face processing using functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging. MSCEIT scores were positively correlated with increased voice-sensitivity and gray matter volume of the insula accompanied by voice-sensitivity enhanced connectivity between the insula and the temporal voice area, indicating generally increased salience of voices. Conversely, in the face processing system, higher MSCEIT scores were associated with decreased face-sensitivity and gray matter volume of the fusiform face area. Taken together, these findings point to an alteration in the balance of cerebral voice and face processing systems in the form of an attenuated face-vs-voice bias as one potential factor underpinning emotional intelligence.

Impaired Working Memory Updating for Emotional Stimuli in Depressed Patients

Although two previous studies have demonstrated that depressed individuals showed deficits in working memory (WM) updating of both negative and positive contents, the effects were confounded by shifting dysfunctions and the detailed neural mechanism associated with the failure in N-back task is not clear. Using a 2-back task, the current study examined the WM updating of positive, negative and neutral contents in depressed patients. It is found that depressed patients performed poorer than healthy controls only when updating positive material. Using event-related potential (ERP) technique, the current study also investigated the neural correlates of updating deficits in depression. According to previous studies, the n-back task was divided into three sub-processes, i.e., encoding, matching and maintaining. Our ERP results showed that depressed patients had smaller occipital P1 for positive material compared to healthy controls, indicating their insensitivity to positive items on early encoding stage. Besides, depressed patients had larger frontal P2 and parietal late positive potential (LPP) than healthy controls irrespective of the valence of the words, reflecting that patients are inefficient during matching (P2) and maintaining (LPP) processes. These two mechanisms (insufficient attention to positive stimuli and low efficiency in matching and maintaining) together lead to the deficits of WM updating in depression.

Brain-to-brain coupling during handholding is associated with pain reduction

The mechanisms underlying analgesia related to social touch are not clear. While recent research highlights the role of the empathy of the observer to pain relief in the target, the contribution of social interaction to analgesia is unknown. The current study examines brain-to-brain coupling during pain with interpersonal touch and tests the involvement of interbrain synchrony in pain alleviation. Romantic partners were assigned the roles of target (pain receiver) and observer (pain observer) under pain-no-pain and touch-no-touch conditions concurrent with EEG recording. Brain-to-brain coupling in alpha-mu band (8-12 Hz) was estimated by a three-step multilevel analysis procedure based on running window circular correlation coefficient and post hoc power of the findings was calculated using simulations. Our findings indicate that hand-holding during pain administration increases brain-to-brain coupling in a network that mainly involves the central regions of the pain target and the right hemisphere of the pain observer. Moreover, brain-to-brain coupling in this network was found to correlate with analgesia magnitude and observer's empathic accuracy. These findings indicate that brain-to-brain coupling may be involved in touch-related analgesia.

The role of touch in regulating inter-partner physiological coupling during empathy for pain

The human ability to synchronize with other individuals is critical for the development of social behavior. Recent research has shown that physiological inter-personal synchronization may underlie behavioral synchrony. Nevertheless, the factors that modulate physiological coupling are still largely unknown. Here we suggest that social touch and empathy for pain may enhance interpersonal physiological coupling. Twenty-two romantic couples were assigned the roles of target (pain receiver) and observer (pain observer) under pain/no-pain and touch/no-touch conditions, and their ECG and respiration rates were recorded. The results indicate that the partner touch increased interpersonal respiration coupling under both pain and no-pain conditions and increased heart rate coupling under pain conditions. In addition, physiological coupling was diminished by pain in the absence of the partner’s touch. Critically, we found that high partner’s empathy and high levels of analgesia enhanced coupling during the partner’s touch. Collectively, the evidence indicates that social touch increases interpersonal physiological coupling during pain. Furthermore, the effects of touch on cardio-respiratory inter-partner coupling may contribute to the analgesic effects of touch via the autonomic nervous system.

Beyond Collective Beliefs

This study used data from 818 master’s students, organized into 199 teams, to examine the influence of collective emotional intelligence (EI) on team academic performance (measured by a common academic grade based on two project reports at the team level) above the effects of collective general self-efficacy (GSE) and team-level GSE, termed team potency. All three variables predicted team academic performance positively, beyond the effect of each other. The research model explained 20% of the variance in team academic performance. A negative interaction effect between collective EI and collective GSE was detected, indicating that the two variables may replace each other in teamwork. Exploratory analyses of the four EI dimensions showed that particularly other emotion appraisal and regulation of emotions predicted team academic performance. Finally, maximum EI within each team predicted team academic performance at about the same level as collective EI.

Empathy Predicts an Experimental Pain Reduction During Touch

Previous studies have provided evidence for pain-alleviating effects of segmental tactile stimulation, yet the effect of social touch and its underlying mechanism is still unexplored. Considering that the soma affects the way we think, feel, and interact with others, it has been proposed that touch may communicate emotions, including empathy, interacting with the identity of the toucher. Thus, the goal of the current study was to examine the analgesic effects of social touch, and to test the moderating role of the toucher's empathy in analgesia using an ecological paradigm. Tonic heat stimuli were administered to women. Concurrently, their partners either watched or touched their hands, a stranger touched their hands, or no one interacted with them. The results revealed diminished levels of pain during partners' touch compared with all other control conditions. Furthermore, taking into account the dyadic interaction, only during the touch condition we found 1) a significant relationship between the partners' pain ratings, and 2) a significant negative relationship between the male touchers' empathy and the pain experience of their female partners. The findings highlight the powerful analgesic effect of social touch and suggest that empathy between romantic partners may explain the pain-alleviating effects of social touch.

PERSPECTIVE

Pain research mostly concentrates on different factors around a single pain target, without taking into account various social interactions with the observers. Our findings support the idea that pain perception models should be extended, taking into account some psychological characteristics of observers. Our conclusions are on the basis of advanced statistical methods.