Directed attention reduces processing of emotional distracters irrespective of valence and arousal level

Beyond facial expressions: A systematic review on effects of emotional relevance of faces on the N170

The N170 is the most prominent electrophysiological signature of face processing. While facial expressions reliably modulate the N170, there is considerable variance in N170 modulations by other sources of emotional relevance. Therefore, we systematically review and discuss this research area using different methods to manipulate the emotional relevance of inherently neutral faces. These methods were categorized into (1) existing pre-experimental affective person knowledge (e.g., negative attitudes towards outgroup faces), (2) experimentally instructed affective person knowledge (e.g., negative person information), (3) contingency-based affective learning (e.g., fear-conditioning), or (4) the immediate affective context (e.g., emotional information directly preceding the face presentation). For all categories except the immediate affective context category, the majority of studies reported significantly increased N170 amplitudes depending on the emotional relevance of faces. Furthermore, the potentiated N170 was observed across different attention conditions, supporting the role of the emotional relevance of faces on the early prioritized processing of configural facial information, regardless of low-level differences. However, we identified several open research questions and suggest venues for further research.

Room for Feelings: A “Working Memory” Account of Affective Processing

In the past decades, affective science has overwhelmingly demonstrated the unique properties of affective information to bias our attention, memory, and decisions. At the same time, accumulating evidence suggests that neutral and affective representations rely on the same working memory substrates for the selection and computation of information and that they are therefore restricted by the same capacity limitations that these substrates impose. Here, we integrate these insights into a working memory model of affective processing (WMAP). Drawing on competitive access models of working memory, we discuss its role in the various stages of affective processing, from attentional selection to maintenance and memory storage, and resulting feelings and actions. We end our overview with some open questions and future directions.

Electrophysiological correlates of in vivo and virtual reality exposure therapy in spider phobia

Specific phobia can be treated successfully with exposure therapy. Although exposure therapy has strong effects on self-reported ratings and behavioral avoidance, effects on measures derived from electroencephalography (EEG) are scant and unclear. To fill this gap, spider-phobic individuals received either in-vivo or virtual reality exposure treatment. Patients were tested twice (one week before and after treatment), and control subjects once. In each session, EEG was recorded to spider pictures as well as other positive, negative, and neutral pictures. During EEG recording, participants performed a simple detection task while task-irrelevant pictures were shown in the background. The task was used to reduce potential confounding effects from shifts of attention. After the task, subjects were shown the pictures again and rated each in terms of their emotional reaction (arousal and pleasantness). The results showed that before treatment, patients rated spiders as more negative than did control subjects. Patients also showed elevated early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) to spiders. After treatment, the negative emotional ratings of spiders were substantially reduced. Critically, Bayesian analyses suggested that EPN and LPP were unaffected by treatment and that the treatment groups did not differ in their responses (EPN, LPP, and ratings). These findings suggest that the effects of in vivo and virtual reality exposure therapy are similar and that the initial stages of motivated attention (EPN and LPP) are unaffected by treatment.

Do rare emotional scenes enhance LPP modulation?

The slow wave late positive potential (LPP) is one of the most dependable measures of emotional processing in human neuroscience. While LPP positivity shows modest malleability by emotional regulation and competing tasks, its fundamental enhancement by emotional scene perception is extremely reliable. Here we assess the impact of emotional scene frequency (67%, 50% and 17%) on the strength of LPP modulation, across 3 groups of participants, using consistent presentation and analysis methods. The results demonstrate strong consistency in the strength of emotional modulation across frequent, equiprobable, and rare emotion conditions. However, a small enhancement of LPP positivity was found during unpleasant scenes in the rare emotion condition. The LPP thus appears to be largely insensitive to contextual features such as scene frequency and predictability, suggesting that strong emotional cues persistently engage orienting and evaluation processes because this tendency was selected in phylogeny.

Does attentional focus modulate affective information processing in male violent offenders with psychopathic traits?

Antisocial and psychopathic individuals are characterized by a reduced responsivity to affective information. Yet, the role of attentional processes as possible modulator of these deficits is poorly understood. The current study investigated early and late processing of emotional stimuli in a sample of incarcerated offenders while manipulating the attentional focus. Twenty-seven male violent offenders with psychopathic traits and 27 healthy controls completed two experimental tasks while electroencephalography (EEG) data were collected. Task 1 assessed indirect processing of emotional or neutral distractors during a perceptual judgment task, while Task 2 measured direct processing of the emotional or neutral stimuli and required participants to rate the stimuli regarding valence and arousal. EEG data indicated no differences in early stage processing (early posterior negativity) between the experimental groups. However, we found significant group differences with regard to the late processing stage (late positive potential, LPP). Controls showed increased LPP amplitudes in Task 2 as compared to Task 1, indicating that task demands (i.e., attentional focus) had an effect on the processing of the emotional stimuli. In contrast, LPP amplitudes in the violent offender group were largely unaffected by task demands, suggesting specific late alterations in the neural processing of emotional stimuli. In sum, this study provides new evidence for a modulatory impact of attention on affective information processing in male violent offenders with psychopathic traits.

Nonlinear Effects of Linearly Increasing Perceptual Load on ERPs to Emotional Pictures

The prioritized processing of emotional as compared to neutral stimuli is reflected in enlarged event-related potentials (ERPs). However, perceptual load theory proposes that under conditions of high perceptual load, information processing is attenuated or abolished. The parametrical effects of load on ERPs to emotional pictures are unknown. To shed light on this question, the current preregistered ERP study (N = 30) systematically investigated the effects of load on ERPs to task-irrelevant negative, neutral, and positive pictures. Crucially, while perceptual input was held constant, perceptual load was systematically manipulated so that it increased linearly across 4 load levels, which was evident in behavioral data. In contrast, load effects on ERP differences between emotional and neutral stimuli did not follow a linear function. For the N1, early posterior negativity and late positive potential, a nonlinear function with reversed emotion effects at the third load level provided the best fit. These findings do not only show that perceptual load attenuates emotional picture processing but also suggest that active processes are initiated to reduce distraction by emotional information. Moreover, these effects of perceptual load on emotional ERP components appear to deviate from theoretically expected functions.

Not Just a Pot: Visual Episodic Memory in Cannabis Users and Polydrug Cannabis Users: ROC and ERP Preliminary Investigation

Background While research has consistently identified an association between long-term cannabis use and memory impairments, few studies have examined this relationship in a polydrug context (i.e., when combining cannabis with other substances). Aims: In this preliminary study, we used event-related potentials to examine the recognition process in a visual episodic memory task in cannabis users (CU) and cannabis polydrug users (PU). We hypothesized that CU and PU will have both-behavioral and psychophysiological-indicators of memory processes affected, compared to matched non-using controls with the PU expressing more severe changes. Methods 29 non-using controls (CG), 24 CU and 27 PU were enrolled into the study. All participants completed a visual learning recognition task while brain electrical activity was recorded. Event-related potentials were calculated for familiar (old) and new images from a signal recorded during a subsequent recognition test. We used receiver operating characteristic curves for behavioral data analysis. Results The groups did not differ in memory performance based on receiver operating characteristic method in accuracy and discriminability indicators nor mean reaction times for old/new images. The frontal old/new effect expected from prior research was observed for all participants, while a parietal old/new effect was not observed. While, the significant differences in the late parietal component (LPC) amplitude was observed between CG and PU but not between CG and CU nor CU and PU. Linear regression analysis was used to examine the mean amplitude of the LPC component as a predictor of memory performance accuracy indicator. LPC amplitude predicts recognition accuracy only in the CG. Conclusion The results showed alterations in recognition memory processing in CU and PU groups compared to CG, which were not manifested on the behavioral level, and were the most prominent in cannabis polydrug users. We interpret it as a manifestation of the cumulative effect of multiple drug usage in the PU group.

Lasting Effects of Using Distraction to Manage Responses to Unpleasant Pictures: Electrophysiological Evidence

Distraction is a widely used form of emotion regulation. Most studies have focused on the influence of distraction on the processing of aversive stimuli during distraction regulation, however, few studies investigated the impact on responses to aversive stimuli when they are re-presented later. This study examined whether processing of unpleasant pictures could be modulated by previous distraction and whether this modulation was associated with the intervals between regulation and re-exposure. Participants were presented with unpleasant images and asked to attend to or distract themselves from the images. After a 5- or 30-minute interval, the participants were re-exposed to the same images in an oddball task. Event-related potential measurements revealed that compared with the previous attention condition, the P3 amplitudes were significantly larger in the 30-min interval group, but not in the 5-min interval group under the previous distraction condition, and that the late positive potential amplitudes were significantly larger in the 30-min interval group, but tended to be smaller in the 5-min interval group. These findings suggest that the effects of distraction were diminished or disappeared after a 5-min interval and reversed after a 30-min interval. This pattern suggests that caution should be exercised in the use of distraction strategies to reduce negative emotions, particularly in cases in which unpleasant images may reappear in everyday life.

Now you feel it, now you don't: Motivated attention to emotional content is modulated by age and task demands

Several studies with younger adults have examined the degree to which emotion captures attention using the event-related potentials (ERP) technique, but it is unknown whether there are age-related differences on this issue. We examined ERP correlates of age-related differences in processing of task-relevant and task-irrelevant emotional material. Participants viewed emotional or neutral images, presented at fixation, flanked by two bars of either differing or matching orientation. In one set of trials, participants decided whether the pictures were presented in black-and-white or color; in another set of trials, they made a match/judgment on the flanking bars. Before the experiment proper, we determined each individual's threshold for line orientation (in the presence of neutral pictures at fixation); mismatch bar stimuli were constructed using this threshold, thus equating baseline performance on the bar tasks across individuals. When attention was focused on the images, ERPs provided evidence for emotion-based processing in the younger group, regardless of valence; older adults showed more differentiated valence-based processing as reflected by a positivity effect (in line with socioemotional selectivity theory). When the images were task-irrelevant, older adults showed no evidence of emotional processing whatsoever; younger adults showed a pattern of suppression in the form of reduced processing of emotional material relative to neutral images. These findings suggest that, once performance on a neutral baseline task is equated, older adults do not exhibit a specific age-related deficit in inhibiting emotional material; they also suggest qualitative differences in processing of to-be-ignored emotional material in younger and older adults.

Controlling Unpleasant Thoughts: Adjustments of Cognitive Control Based on Previous-Trial Load in a Working Memory Task

Dynamic cognitive control adjustments are important for integrating thoughts and actions that take place during dynamic changes of environmental demands and support goal-directed behavior. We investigated, in a working memory (WM) paradigm, whether dynamic adjustments in cognitive control based on previous trial load influence the neural response to neutral or unpleasant distracters. We also investigated whether individual self-reported abilities in controlling thoughts influence this effect. Participants performed a WM change detection task with low or high WM-related cognitive demands. An unpleasant or a neutral distractive image was presented at the beginning of each trial, prior to the WM task. We tested for control adjustments that were associated with the load level of the preceding trial task (N-1) on the neural response to the subsequent distractive image. We found an effect of the prior WM task load on a parieto-occipital waveform event-related potential (ERP) that appeared between 200 and 300 ms after the neutral distracter onset. This effect was not observed for the unpleasant distracter. Individual ability for controlling thoughts may influence the effect of cognitive control adjustments on distracter processing during the unpleasant condition. These findings provide evidence that: (1) dynamic cognitive control adjustments are impaired by unpleasant distracters; and (2) the ability to control unpleasant thoughts is linked to individual differences in flexible cognitive control adjustments and shielding of WM representations from unpleasant distracters.

Neurophysiological correlates of collective perceptual decision-making

Humans frequently perform tasks collaboratively in daily life. Collaborating with others may or may not result in higher task performance than if one were to complete the task alone (i.e., a collective benefit). A recent study on collective benefits in perceptual decision-making showed that dyad members with similar individual performances attain collective benefit. However, little is known about the physiological basis of these results. Here, we replicate this earlier work and also investigate the neurophysiological correlates of decision-making using EEG. In a two-interval forced-choice task, co-actors individually indicated presence of a target stimulus with a higher contrast and then indicated their confidence on a rating scale. Viewing the individual ratings, dyads made a joint decision. Replicating earlier work, we found a positive correlation between the similarity of individual performances and collective benefit. We analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs) in three phases (i.e., stimulus onset, response and feedback) using explorative cluster mass permutation tests. At stimulus onset, ERPs were significantly linearly related to our manipulation of contrast differences, validating our manipulation of task difficulty. For individual and joint responses, we found a significant centro-parietal error-related positivity for correct versus incorrect responses, which suggests that accuracy is already evaluated at the response level. At feedback presentation, we found a significant late positive fronto-central potential elicited by incorrect joint responses. In sum, these results demonstrate that response- and feedback-related components elicited by an error-monitoring system differentially integrate conflicting information exchanged during the joint decision-making process.

Self-Interest Induces Counter- Empathy at the Late Stage of Empathic Responses to Others' Economic Payoffs

Previous studies have found that individuals exhibit empathic responses when others are treated unfairly. However, there remains a lack of clarity over the extent to which self-interest regulates these empathic responses, and in identifying which component of empathy is more likely to be affected. To investigate these issues, an experiment was designed based on a money distribution task with two conditions [observation condition (OC) vs. participation condition (PC)], and carried out using scalp-recorded event-related potentials (ERPs). Behavioral data showed that the participants' empathic responses were consistent with their coplayers' emotional expressions in the OC, whereas they were inconsistent with the coplayers' expressions in the PC. The electrophysiological data showed that the neural encoding of facial expressions (reflected in the N170) was not affected by self-interest. However, the late stage of empathic responses (LPP) showed a decline when participants' self-interest was involved. Disadvantageous inequality and relatively fair distribution to others elicited a more pronounced feedback-related negativity (FRN) than advantageous inequality distribution in both the OC and PC. As the late stage of empathic responses is also indexed by the LPP amplitude, these results indicate that the participants were more concerned for their own outcomes than for others' benefits when self-interest was involved, which reduced their empathy toward their coplayers at the late stage of empathic responses.

Positive affective priming decreases the middle late positive potential response to negative images

INTRODUCTION

This study aims to expand on previous literature showing that incidental emotion state priming in a specific domain leads to a higher probability that the primed emotion domain will be activated during a subsequent task.

METHODS

To that end, we investigated the influence of happy, fearful, and neutral incidental emotion state priming on subsequent responses to emotionally negative and neutral pictures, measured by the event-related potential (ERP) late positive potential (LPP). New to our study, we examined the influence of affective priming on the LPP response (analyzed separately at early and middle latency ranges) to emotional pictures in both the foveal and extrafoveal presentation locations.

RESULTS

Following both fearful and neutral incidental state priming, both the early and middle LPP latency ranges overwhelmingly differentiated between negative and neutral pictures. Following happy incidental state priming, however, the LPP response failed to differentiate between negative and neutral pictures by the middle LPP latency range (800-1,000 ms). These results suggest that incidental happy states can have a protective effect when viewing aversive stimuli. Additionally, the LPP showed greater sensitivity to negative stimuli when presented extrafoveally compared to foveally.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, our findings suggest that incidental affective state and stimulus location influence emotional processing differentially for emotionally negative and emotionally neutral stimuli.

Threat-conditioned contexts modulate the late positive potential to faces-A mobile EEG/virtual reality study

In everyday life, the motivational value of faces is bound to the contexts in which faces are perceived. Electrophysiological studies have demonstrated that inherent negatively valent contexts modulate cortical face processing as assessed with ERP components. However, it is not well understood whether learned (rather than inherent) and three-dimensional aversive contexts similarly modulate the neural processing of faces. Using full immersive virtual reality (VR) and mobile EEG techniques, 25 participants underwent a differential fear conditioning paradigm, in which one virtual room was paired with an aversive noise burst (threat context) and another with a nonaversive noise burst (safe context). Subsequently, avatars with neutral or angry facial expressions were presented in the threat and safe contexts while EEG was recorded. Analysis of the late positive potential (LPP), which presumably indicates motivational salience, revealed a significant interaction of context (threat vs. safe) and face type (neutral vs. angry). Neutral faces evoked increased LPP amplitudes in threat versus safe contexts, while angry faces evoked increased early LPP amplitudes regardless of context. In addition to indicating that threat-conditioned contexts alter the processing of ambiguous faces, the present study demonstrates the successful integration of EEG and VR with particular relevance for affective neuroscience research.

Emotional Content Modulates Attentional Visual Orientation During Free Viewing of Natural Images

Visual attention is the process that enables us to select relevant visual stimuli in our environment to achieve a goal or perform adaptive behaviors. In this process, bottom-up mechanisms interact with top-down mechanisms underlying the automatic and voluntary orienting of attention. Cognitive functions, such as emotional processing, can influence visual attention by increasing or decreasing the resources destined for processing stimuli. The relationship between attention and emotion has been explored mainly in the field of automatic attentional capturing; especially, emotional stimuli are suddenly presented and detection rates or reaction times are recorded. Unlike these paradigms, natural visual scenes may be comprised in multiple stimuli with different emotional valences. In this setting, the mechanisms supporting voluntary visual orientation, under the influence of the emotional components of stimuli, are unknown. We employed a mosaic of pictures with different emotional valences (positive, negative, and neutral) and explored the dynamics of attentional visual orientation, assessed by eye tracking and measurements of pupil diameter. We found that pictures with affective content display increased dwelling times when compared to neutral pictures with a larger effect for negative pictures. The valence, regardless of the arousal levels, was the main factor driving the behavioral modulation of visual orientation. On the other hand, the visual exploration was accompanied by a systematic pupillary response, with the pupil contraction and dilation influenced by the arousal levels, with minor effects driven by the valence. Our results emphasize that arousal and valence should be considered different dimensions of emotional processing both interacting with cognitive processes such as visual attention.

Cigarette cues capture attention of smokers and never-smokers, but for different reasons

BACKGROUND

While the notion that smokers reliably show higher reactivity to cigarette-related versus neutral cues is both theoretically and empirically supported, it is unclear why never-smokers also show enhanced brain responses to cigarette-related cues.

METHODS

Using a repetitive picture viewing paradigm, in which responses evoked by affective cues are more resistant to habituation, we assessed the effects of stimulus repetition on event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by pleasant, unpleasant, cigarette-related, and neutral images in 34 smokers (SMO) and 34 never-smokers (NEV). We examined the early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive potential (LPP), two ERP components which are sensitive to a picture's motivational qualities.

RESULTS

Before stimulus repetition, pleasant, unpleasant, and cigarette-related cues produced greater EPN and LPP amplitudes than neutral cues in all subjects. During stimulus repetition, both components were similarly modulated by emotional arousal, such that pleasant, unpleasant, and cigarette-related cues evoked greater EPN and LPP amplitude, relative to neutral. Smoking status did not modulate these effects. While there were no group differences in self-reported stimulus ratings of valence for pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral stimuli, NEV rated cigarette-related cues as unpleasant. We observed a moderate, negative correlation between LPP amplitude and self-reported valence ratings of cigarette-related cues among NEV.

CONCLUSIONS

These data suggest that cigarette-related cues capture attentional resources of both SMO and NEV, but for different reasons. For SMO, cigarette-related cues have acquired motivational significance through repeated associations with nicotine delivery, whereas for NEV, cigarette-related cues are perceived as unpleasant.

Cardiorespiratory concerns shape brain responses during automatic panic-related scene processing in patients with panic disorder

BACKGROUND

Increased automatic processing of threat-related stimuli has been proposed as a key element in panic disorder. Little is known about the neural basis of automatic processing, in particular to task-irrelevant, panic-related, ecologically valid stimuli, or about the association between brain activation and symptomatology in patients with panic disorder.

METHODS

The present event-related functional MRI (fMRI) study compared brain responses to task-irrelevant, panic-related and neutral visual stimuli in medication-free patients with panic disorder and healthy controls. Panic-related and neutral scenes were presented while participants performed a spatially nonoverlapping bar orientation task. Correlation analyses investigated the association between brain responses and panic-related aspects of symptomatology, measured using the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI).

RESULTS

We included 26 patients with panic disorder and 26 heatlhy controls in our analysis. Compared with controls, patients with panic disorder showed elevated activation in the amygdala, brainstem, thalamus, insula, anterior cingulate cortex and midcingulate cortex in response to panic-related versus neutral task-irrelevant stimuli. Furthermore, fear of cardiovascular symptoms (a subcomponent of the ASI) was associated with insula activation, whereas fear of respiratory symptoms was associated with brainstem hyperactivation in patients with panic disorder.

LIMITATIONS

The additional implementation of measures of autonomic activation, such as pupil diameter, heart rate, or electrodermal activity, would have been informative during the fMRI scan as well as during the rating procedure.

CONCLUSION

Results reveal a neural network involved in the processing of panic-related distractor stimuli in patients with panic disorder and suggest an automatic weighting of panic-related information depending on the magnitude of cardiovascular and respiratory symptoms. Insula and brainstem activations show function-related associations with specific components of panic symptomatology.

The influence of affective state on exogenous attention to emotional distractors: behavioral and electrophysiological correlates

The interplay between exogenous attention to emotional distractors and the baseline affective state has not been well established yet. The present study aimed to explore this issue through behavioral measures and event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants (N = 30) completed a digit categorization task depicted over negative, positive or neutral distractor background pictures, while they experienced negative, positive and neutral affective states elicited by movie scenes. Behavioral results showed higher error rates and longer reaction times for negative distractors than for neutral and positive ones, irrespective of the current emotional state. Neural indices showed that the participants' affective state modulated N1 amplitudes, irrespective of distractor type, while the emotional charge of distractors modulated N2, irrespective of the emotional state. Importantly, an interaction of state and distractor type was observed in LPP. These results demonstrate that exogenous attention to emotional distractors is independent from modulating effects of the emotional baseline state at early, automatic stages of processing. However, attention to emotional distractors and affective state interact at later latencies.

Emotional Picture Perception: Repetition Effects in Free-Viewing and during an Explicit Categorization Task

Several studies have found that, despite a decrease in the overall amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP) with repeated presentation of the same picture, emotional stimuli continue to elicit a larger LPP than neutral ones. These findings seem to support the hypothesis that the affective modulation of the LPP reflects a mandatory process and does not rely on stimulus novelty. However, in these studies participants were asked to merely look at the pictures, without carrying out any additional task (free-viewing), making picture emotionality the most salient aspect of the stimulus, despite its repetition. The current study aimed to examine the impact of an explicit categorization task on the emotional processing of repeated pictures. To this purpose, ERPs to novel and repeated pictures were measured during free-viewing as well as during an explicit categorization task, where the emotional content of the pictures was task-irrelevant. The within-subject comparison between the free-viewing and task context revealed that the overall LPP habituated more rapidly in the free-viewing condition, but, more importantly, the LPP affective modulation was unaffected by task requirements during both novel and repeated presentations. These results suggest that the affective modulation of the LPP reflects an automatic engagement of cortico-limbic motivational systems, which continues to take place regardless of stimulus novelty and task context.

RETRACTED: The effects of perceptual load in processing emotional facial expression in psychotic disorders

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/article-withdrawal). This article has been retracted at the request of the authors and Editor-in-Chief. The Authors have recently discovered an error in the database that affects the results and, consequently, the discussion, conclusions and abstract of this article on the effects of perceptual load and task-irrelevant facial expression during a target-letter discrimination task in psychotic disorders. The error was discovered by the Authors during the analysis of new data using the same experimental task, but collected from a distinct clinical sample, and involves a systematic error in the database: pictures of one actor were coded as depicting the same valence (angry, happy, neutral) during the programming of the experimental task, regardless of the real facial expression portraited by the picture in each trial. As a result, the information provided by the ‘Emotion’ variable in the database, created by the E-Prime software for each participant during the performance of the task, was not correct. Because the Authors used the ‘Emotion’ variable to perform the statistical analysis, the results of lower accuracy for individuals diagnosed with psychotic disorders in trials where the task-irrelevant stimuli are happy facial expressions - as revealed by a significant interaction between group and facial expression (p = .016) and between group, perceptual load and facial expression (p = .027) - are not correct, thus partially affecting the discussion, conclusions and abstract of the manuscript. Besides the ‘Emotion’ variable, the raw database contains the filename of the picture presented in each trial. Therefore, the Authors were able to correct the error and to re-analyse the data, and will proceed with the submission for publication of the corrected version of the manuscript. The error had no influence on the design and procedure of the experimental task, as the order of the pictures was fully randomized per participant. The Authors apologize for the inconvenience caused by these mistakes and agree with the retraction. The Authors advise all researchers to pay special attention when scripting/coding the stimuli to be used in the experimental tasks, and to confirm all scripting/coding with independent researchers, whenever possible, to prevent mistakes (Strand, 2021). The Journal apologizes that these errors were not detected during peer review.

Attention bias in older women with remitted depression is associated with enhanced amygdala activity and functional connectivity

BACKGROUND

Cognitive bias is a common characteristic of major depressive disorder (MDD) and is posited to remain during remission and contribute to recurrence risk. Attention bias may be related to enhanced amygdala activity or altered amygdala functional connectivity in depression. The current study examined attention bias, brain activity for emotional images, and functional connectivity in post-menopausal women with and without a history of major depression.

METHODS

Attention bias for emotionally valenced images was examined in 33 postmenopausal women with (n=12) and without (n=21) a history of major depression using an emotion dot probe task during fMRI. Group differences in amygdala activity and functional connectivity were assessed using fMRI and examined for correlations to attention performance.

RESULTS

Women with a history of MDD showed greater attentional bias for negative images and greater activity in brain areas including the amygdala for both positive and negative images (pcorr <0.001) than women without a history of MDD. In all participants, amygdala activity for negative images was correlated with attention facilitation for emotional images. Women with a history of MDD had significantly greater functional connectivity between the amygdala and hippocampal complex. In all participants amygdala-hippocampal connectivity was positively correlated with attention facilitation for negative images.

LIMITATIONS

Small sample with unbalanced groups.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings provide evidence for negative attentional bias in euthymic, remitted depressed individuals. Activity and functional connectivity in limbic and attention networks may provide a neurobiological basis for continued cognitive bias in remitted depression.

Observing Grasping Actions Directed to Emotion-Laden Objects: Effects upon Corticospinal Excitability

The motor system is recruited whenever one executes an action as well as when one observes the same action being executed by others. Although it is well established that emotion modulates the motor system, the effect of observing other individuals acting in an emotional context is particularly elusive. The main aim of this study was to investigate the effect induced by the observation of grasping directed to emotion-laden objects upon corticospinal excitability (CSE). Participants classified video-clips depicting the right-hand of an actor grasping emotion-laden objects. Twenty video-clips differing in terms of valence but balanced in arousal level were selected. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were then recorded from the first dorsal interosseous using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) while the participants observed the selected emotional video-clips. During the video-clip presentation, TMS pulses were randomly applied at one of two different time points of grasping: (1) maximum grip aperture, and (2) object contact time. CSE was higher during the observation of grasping directed to unpleasant objects compared to pleasant ones. These results indicate that when someone observes an action of grasping directed to emotion-laden objects, the effect of the object valence promotes a specific modulation over the motor system.

Repetition and ERPs during emotional scene processing: A selective review

A set of studies are reviewed that investigate the effects of repetition during scene perception on event-related potentials, elucidating perceptual, memory and emotional processes. Repetition suppression was consistently found for the amplitude of early frontal N2 and posterior P2 components, which was greatly enhanced for massed, compared to distributed, repetition. Both repetition suppression and enhancement of the amplitude of a centro-parietal positive potential (LPP) were found in specific contexts. Suppression was reliably found following a massive number of repetitions of few items, whereas enhancement is found when repetitions are spaced; enhancement was apparent both during simple free viewing as well as on an explicit recognition test. Regardless of repetition, an enhanced LPP was always found for emotional, compared to neutral, scenes. Taken together, the data suggest that different effects of massed and distributed repetitions on specific ERP components index perceptual priming, habituation, and spontaneous episodic retrieval.

Attentional Bias in Patients with Decompensated Tinnitus: Prima Facie Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

Tinnitus refers to the auditory perception of sound in the absence of external sound or electric stimuli. The influence of tinnitus on cognitive processing is at the cutting edge of ongoing tinnitus research. In this study, we adopted an objective indicator of attentional processing, i.e. the mismatch negativity (MMN), to assess the attentional bias in patients with decompensated tinnitus. Three kinds of pure tones, D1 (8,000 Hz), S (8,500 Hz) and D2 (9,000 Hz), were used to induce event-related potentials (ERPs) in the normal ear. Employing the oddball paradigm, the task was divided into two blocks in which D1 and D2 were set as deviation stimuli, respectively. Only D2 induced a significant MMN in the tinnitus group, while neither D1 nor D2 was able to induce MMN in the control group. In addition, the ERPs in the left hemisphere, which were recorded within the time window of 90-150 ms (ERP 90-150 ms), were significantly higher than those in the right hemisphere in the tinnitus group, while no significant difference was observed in the control group. Lastly, the amplitude of ERP 90-150 ms in the tinnitus group was significantly higher than that in the control group. These findings suggest that patients with decompensated tinnitus showed automatic processing of acoustic stimuli, thereby indicating that these patients allocated more cognitive resources to acoustic stimulus processing. We suggest that the difficulty in disengaging or facilitated attention of patients might underlie this phenomenon. The limitations of the current study are discussed.

Visual Task Demands and the Auditory Mismatch Negativity: An Empirical Study and a Meta-Analysis

Because the auditory system is particularly useful in monitoring the environment, previous research has examined whether task-irrelevant, auditory distracters are processed even if subjects focus their attention on visual stimuli. This research suggests that attentionally demanding visual tasks decrease the auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) to simultaneously presented auditory distractors. Because a recent behavioral study found that high visual perceptual load decreased detection sensitivity of simultaneous tones, we used a similar task (n = 28) to determine if high visual perceptual load would reduce the auditory MMN. Results suggested that perceptual load did not decrease the MMN. At face value, these nonsignificant findings may suggest that effects of perceptual load on the MMN are smaller than those of other demanding visual tasks. If so, effect sizes should differ systematically between the present and previous studies. We conducted a selective meta-analysis of published studies in which the MMN was derived from the EEG, the visual task demands were continuous and varied between high and low within the same task, and the task-irrelevant tones were presented in a typical oddball paradigm simultaneously with the visual stimuli. Because the meta-analysis suggested that the present (null) findings did not differ systematically from previous findings, the available evidence was combined. Results of this meta-analysis confirmed that demanding visual tasks reduce the MMN to auditory distracters. However, because the meta-analysis was based on small studies and because of the risk for publication biases, future studies should be preregistered with large samples (n > 150) to provide confirmatory evidence for the results of the present meta-analysis. These future studies should also use control conditions that reduce confounding effects of neural adaptation, and use load manipulations that are defined independently from their effects on the MMN.

Altered emotion regulation in obsessive-compulsive disorder as evidenced by the late positive potential

BACKGROUND

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with marked anxiety, which triggers repetitive behaviours or mental rituals. The persistence of pathological anxiety and maladaptive strategies to reduce anxiety point to altered emotion regulation. The late positive potential (LPP) is an event-related brain potential (ERP) that reflects sustained attention to emotional stimuli and is sensitive to emotion-regulation instructions. We hypothesized that patients with OCD show altered electrocortical responses during reappraisal of stimuli triggering their symptoms.

METHOD

To test our hypothesis, ERPs to disorder-relevant, generally aversive and neutral pictures were recorded while participants were instructed to either maintain or reduce emotional responding using cognitive distraction or cognitive reappraisal.

RESULTS

Relative to healthy controls, patients with OCD showed enhanced LPPs in response to disorder-relevant pictures, indicating their prioritized processing. While both distraction and reappraisal successfully reduced the LPP in healthy controls, patients with OCD failed to show corresponding LPP modulation during cognitive reappraisal despite successfully reduced subjective arousal ratings.

CONCLUSIONS

The results point to sustained attention towards emotional stimuli during cognitive reappraisal in OCD and suggest that abnormal emotion regulation should be integrated in models of OCD.

Affective facilitation of early visual cortex during rapid picture presentation at 6 and 15 Hz

The steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), a neurophysiological marker of attentional resource allocation with its generators in early visual cortex, exhibits enhanced amplitude for emotional compared to neutral complex pictures. Emotional cue extraction for complex images is linked to the N1-EPN complex with a peak latency of ∼140-160 ms. We tested whether neural facilitation in early visual cortex with affective pictures requires emotional cue extraction of individual images, even when a stream of images of the same valence category is presented. Images were shown at either 6 Hz (167 ms, allowing for extraction) or 15 Hz (67 ms per image, causing disruption of processing by the following image). Results showed SSVEP amplitude enhancement for emotional compared to neutral images at a presentation rate of 6 Hz but no differences at 15 Hz. This was not due to featural differences between the two valence categories. Results strongly suggest that individual images need to be displayed for sufficient time allowing for emotional cue extraction to drive affective neural modulation in early visual cortex.

Attentional bias to affective faces and complex IAPS images in early visual cortex follows emotional cue extraction

Emotionally arousing stimuli are known to rapidly draw the brain's processing resources, even when they are task-irrelevant. The steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) response, a neural response to a flickering stimulus which effectively allows measurement of the processing resources devoted to that stimulus, has been used to examine this process of attentional shifting. Previous studies have used a task in which participants detected periods of coherent motion in flickering random dot kinematograms (RDKs) which generate an SSVEP, and found that task-irrelevant emotional stimuli withdraw more attentional resources from the task-relevant RDKs than task-irrelevant neutral stimuli. However, it is not clear whether the emotion-related differences in the SSVEP response are conditional on higher-level extraction of emotional cues as indexed by well-known event-related potential (ERPs) components (N170, early posterior negativity, EPN), or if affective bias in competition for visual attention resources is a consequence of a time-invariant shifting process. In the present study, we used two different types of emotional distractors - IAPS pictures and facial expressions - for which emotional cue extraction occurs at different speeds, being typically earlier for faces (at ~170ms, as indexed by the N170) than for IAPS images (~220-280ms, EPN). We found that emotional modulation of attentional resources as measured by the SSVEP occurred earlier for faces (around 180ms) than for IAPS pictures (around 550ms), after the extraction of emotional cues as indexed by visual ERP components. This is consistent with emotion related re-allocation of attentional resources occurring after emotional cue extraction rather than being linked to a time-fixed shifting process.

Self-reported trait mindfulness and affective reactivity: a motivational approach using multiple psychophysiological measures

As a form of attention, mindfulness is qualitatively receptive and non-reactive, and is thought to facilitate adaptive emotional responding. One suggested mechanism is that mindfulness facilitates disengagement from an affective stimulus and thereby decreases affective reactivity. However, mindfulness has been conceptualized as a state, intervention, and trait. Because evidence is mixed as to whether self-reported trait mindfulness decreases affective reactivity, we used a multi-method approach to study the relationship between individual differences in self-reported trait mindfulness and electrocortical, electrodermal, electromyographic, and self-reported responses to emotional pictures. Specifically, while participants (N = 51) passively viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant IAPS pictures, we recorded high-density (128 channels) electrocortical, electrodermal, and electromyographic data to the pictures as well as to acoustic startle probes presented during the pictures. Afterwards, participants rated their subjective valence and arousal while viewing the pictures again. If trait mindfulness spontaneously reduces general emotional reactivity, then for individuals reporting high rather than low mindfulness, response differences between emotional and neutral pictures would show relatively decreased early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes, decreased skin conductance responses, and decreased subjective ratings for valence and arousal. High mindfulness would also be associated with decreased emotional modulation of startle eyeblink and P3 amplitudes. Although results showed clear effects of emotion on the dependent measures, in general, mindfulness did not moderate these effects. For most measures, effect sizes were small with rather narrow confidence intervals. These data do not support the hypothesis that individual differences in self-reported trait mindfulness are related to spontaneous emotional responses during picture viewing.

The timing and directional connectivity of human frontoparietal and ventral visual attention networks in emotional scene perception

Electrocortical and hemodynamic measures reliably identify enhanced activity in the ventral and dorsal visual cortices during the perception of emotionally arousing versus neutral images, an effect that may reflect directive feedback from the subcortical amygdala. However, other brain regions strongly modulate visual attention, such as frontal eye fields (FEF) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Here we employ rapid sampling of BOLD signal (4 Hz) in the amygdala, fusiform gyrus (FG), FEF and IPS in 42 human participants as they viewed a series of emotional and neutral natural scene photographs balanced for luminosity and complexity, to test whether emotional discrimination is evident in dorsal structures prior to such discrimination in the amygdala and FG. Granger causality analyses were used to assess directional connectivity within dorsal and ventral networks. Results demonstrate emotionally-enhanced peak BOLD signal in the amygdala, FG, FEF, and IPS, with the onset of BOLD signal discrimination occurring between 2 and 3s after stimulus onset in ventral structures, and between 4 and 5s in FEF and IPS. Granger causality estimates yield stronger directional connectivity from IPS to FEF than the reverse in this emotional picture paradigm. Consistent with a reentrant perspective of emotional scene perception, greater directional connectivity was found from the amygdala to FG compared to the reverse. These data support a perspective in which the registration of emotional scene content is orchestrated by the amygdala and rostral inferotemporal visual cortex.

Effects of attention manipulations on motivated attention to feared and nonfeared negative distracters in spider fear

Background

When people view emotional and neutral pictures, the emotional pictures capture more attention than do neutral pictures. In support, studies with event-related potentials have shown that the early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive potential (LPP) to emotional versus neutral pictures are enhanced when pictures are attended. However, this motivated attention decreases when voluntary attention is directed away from the pictures. Most previous studies included only generally emotional pictures of either negative or positive valence. Because people with spider fear report intense fear of spiders, we examined whether directing attention away from emotional pictures at fixation decreases motivated attention less strongly for spiders than for generally negative distracters.

Results

We recorded event-related potentials from 128 channels to study whether manipulations of attention (i.e., spatial attention and perceptual load) decrease the EPN and the LPP to emotional distracters less strongly for spiders than for fear-irrelevant negative pictures in people with spider fear. Results confirmed that the EPN and the LPP to spiders (vs. neutral pictures) were particularly enhanced in participants with spider fear compared to participants without spider fear. When attention was directed away from the pictures, the EPN and the LPP to spiders (vs. neutral pictures) decreased similarly in fearful and nonfearful participants. Further, in fearful participants, the decrease in the EPN and the LPP was similar for spiders and for fear-irrelevant negative pictures.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that for people with spider fear, directing attention away from emotional pictures at fixation decreases motivated attention to these distracters similarly for spiders as for fear-irrelevant negative pictures. These findings imply that attention to spiders in spider fear does not exceed the level of attention expected from the spider pictures’ high arousal and negative valence (i.e., their intrinsic motivated attention).