Affect is a form of cognition: A neurobiological analysis

Affective theory of mind impairments linked with callous-unemotional traits implicate cognitive control: A pre-registered double-blind randomized controlled trial with a dual-task paradigm

INTRODUCTION

Youth antisocial behavior strongly associates with conduct problems (CP) and callous-unemotional (CU) traits. While CP has links to broad cognitive impairments, CU traits have specific links with cognitive control and affective theory of mind (ToM) difficulties. Evidence suggests cognitive control limitations impact affective processing in ToM amongst youth with elevated CU traits. Here we sought to improve on those initial findings by leveraging a randomized dual-task (within-trial) design to replicate and extend prior findings.

METHODS

In this double-blind, randomized controlled trial, 85 participants (47 % female) were stratified by sex and CU trait severity. The study employed a ToM task with cognitive, affective, and physical conditions, combined with an inhibitory processing task to tax cognitive control. Participants completed single and dual-task trials, counterbalanced to test within-subject effects. Primary hypotheses were tested with both CP and CU traits in the same model using repeated measure mixed effects to examine changes in accuracy and reaction time.

RESULTS

CU traits were uniquely associated with greater impairments in affective ToM under dual-task conditions, reflecting increased difficulty integrating affective information when cognitive demands were increased. CP associated with lower single ToM performance but no change during dual-task trials. Notably, participants resilient to dual-task effects reported fewer antisocial behaviors, even with elevated CU traits.

LIMITATIONS

While appropriately powered for study aims, the sample was underpowered to detect any potential primary and secondary variant interactions on study outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings support a CU trait specific cognitive-affective interaction as a mechanism critical for understanding youth antisocial behavior.

Symptomatic Emotional Responses and Changes in Networks Elicited by Direct Electrical Stimulation

AIM

Emotion is a major area of research in psychology and neuroscience. However, the role of direct electrical stimulation (DES) in emotional localization has not yet been fully explored. This study aimed to analyze the use of DES in examining the local connectivity of brain regions eliciting emotional responses, thereby providing evidence for a new perspective of local changes in brain networks during emotional responses.

METHODS

We reviewed the clinical data of 500 patients with refractory epilepsy who underwent stereoencephalogram (SEEG) implantation to locate the epileptogenic area and functional mapping of the brain. The three-dimensional reconstruction was employed for the qualitative and positioning analysis on the emotional responses elicited using DES. We used Granger causality (GC), directed transfer function (DTF), and partial directed coherence (PDC) to analyze the changes in functional connectivity before and after stimulation in selected patients.

RESULTS

Emotional responses were evoked without aura using DES in 85 contacts in 31 patients, including 35 (41.2%) contacts with fear, 37 (43.5%) contacts with happiness, 6 (7.1%) contacts with anxiety, and 7 (8.2%) contacts with depression. Three contacts of interest in two patients experiencing transient emotional symptoms underwent GC, DTF, and PDC analyses; the analysis revealed significant differences in brain networks before and after stimulation in selected patients.

CONCLUSIONS

DES can evoke emotions across various brain regions, such as the bilateral amygdala, hippocampus, temporal lobe, frontal lobe, insula, cingulate cortex, paracentral gyrus, fusiform, orbitofrontal cortex, left thalamus, and putamen. These elicited emotional experiences may largely result from the alterations in local brain networks.

Genetic Foundations of Inter-individual Neurophysiological Variability

Neurophysiological brain activity shapes cognitive functions and individual traits. Here, we investigated the extent to which individual neurophysiological properties are genetically determined and how these adult traits align with cortical gene expression patterns across development. Using task-free magnetoencephalography in monozygotic and dizygotic twins, as well as unrelated individuals, we found that neurophysiological traits were significantly more similar between monozygotic twins, indicating a strong genetic influence. These heritable brain dynamics were predominantly associated with genes involved in neurotransmission, expressed along a topographical gradient that mirrors major cognitive and psychological functions. Furthermore, the cortical expression patterns of genes that contribute to individual differentiation showed progressive changes throughout development. These findings underscore a persistent genetic influence on neurophysiological activity, supporting individual cognitive and behavioral variability.

Primary Appraisal is Affective not Cognitive: Exploring a Revised Transactional Model of Stress and Coping

In the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping, primary appraisal of stress is considered a cognitive process. Current neuroscience research indicates, however, that our initial awareness of whether something is good, bad, or neutral, is a predominantly affective process, with our core affect being a representation of how the body evaluates life situations over time. We concur with what is now the prevailing view that dualistic theories of mind and body as essentially separate entities are mistaken and have contributed to problematic conceptions of cognition and affect as radically independent operations, one being performed by the mind, the other by the body. In reality, affect and cognition are both bodily processes, and as such are inseparable and interdependent. Affect provides the primary appraisal of the body's current situation, while cognition builds off the affective response, providing a secondary and often more thorough appraisal. We therefore propose a revised, non-dualistic Transactional Model emphasizing the embodied mind in which our core affect provides the foundation for our primary appraisals and a stronger foundation for conducting psychotherapy.

The perceptual primacy of feeling: Affectless visual machines explain a majority of variance in human visually evoked affect

Looking at the world often involves not just seeing things, but feeling things. Modern feedforward machine vision systems that learn to perceive the world in the absence of active physiology, deliberative thought, or any form of feedback that resembles human affective experience offer tools to demystify the relationship between seeing and feeling, and to assess how much of visually evoked affective experiences may be a straightforward function of representation learning over natural image statistics. In this work, we deploy a diverse sample of 180 state-of-the-art deep neural network models trained only on canonical computer vision tasks to predict human ratings of arousal, valence, and beauty for images from multiple categories (objects, faces, landscapes, art) across two datasets. Importantly, we use the features of these models without additional learning, linearly decoding human affective responses from network activity in much the same way neuroscientists decode information from neural recordings. Aggregate analysis across our survey, demonstrates that predictions from purely perceptual models explain a majority of the explainable variance in average ratings of arousal, valence, and beauty alike. Finer-grained analysis within our survey (e.g. comparisons between shallower and deeper layers, or between randomly initialized, category-supervised, and self-supervised models) point to rich, preconceptual abstraction (learned from diversity of visual experience) as a key driver of these predictions. Taken together, these results provide further computational evidence for an information-processing account of visually evoked affect linked directly to efficient representation learning over natural image statistics, and hint at a computational locus of affective and aesthetic valuation immediately proximate to perception.

Living cognition and the nature of organisms

There is no consensus about what cognition is. Different perspectives conceptualize it in different ways. In the same vein, there is no agreement about which systems are truly cognitive. This begs the question, what makes a process or a system cognitive? One of the most conspicuous features of cognition is that it is a set of processes. Cognition, in the end, is a collection of processes such as perception, memory, learning, decision-making, problem-solving, goal-directedness, attention, anticipation, communication, and maybe emotion. There is a debate about what they mean, and which systems possess these processes. One aspect of this problem concerns the level at which cognition and the single processes are conceptualized. To make this scenario clear, evolutionary and self-maintenance arguments are taken. Given the evolutive landscape, one sees processes shared by all organisms and their derivations in specific taxa. No matter which side of the complexity spectrum one favors, the similarities of the simple processes with the complex ones cannot be ignored, and the differences of some complex processes with their simple versions cannot be blurred. A final cognitive framework must make sense of both sides of the spectrum, their differences and similarities. Here, we discuss from an evolutionary perspective the basic elements shared by all living beings and whether these may be necessary and sufficient for understanding the cognitive process. Following these considerations, cognition can be expanded to every living being. Cognition is the set of informational and dynamic processes an organism must interact with and grasp aspects of its world. Understood at their most basic level, perception, memory, learning, problem-solving, decision-making, action, and other cognitive processes are basic features of biological functioning.

Minimal Variation in Functional Connectivity in Relation to Daily Affect

Reported associations between functional connectivity and affective disorder symptoms are minimally reproducible, which can partially be attributed to difficulty capturing highly variable clinical symptoms in cross-sectional study designs. "Dense sampling" protocols, where participants are sampled across multiple sessions, can overcome this limitation by studying associations between functional connectivity and variable clinical states. Here, we characterized effect sizes for the association between functional connectivity and time-varying positive and negative daily affect in a nonclinical cohort. Data were analyzed from 24 adults who attended four research visits, where participants self-reported daily affect using the PANAS-X questionnaire and completed 39 min of functional magnetic resonance imaging across three passive viewing conditions. We modeled positive and negative daily affect in relation to network-level functional connectivity, with hypotheses regarding within-network connectivity of the default mode, salience/cingulo-opercular, frontoparietal, dorsal attention, and visual networks and between-network connectivity of affective subcortical regions (amygdala and nucleus accumbens) with both default mode and salience/cingulo-opercular networks. Effect sizes for associations between affect and network-level functional connectivity were small and nonsignificant across analyses. We additionally report that functional connectivity variance is largely attributable to individual identity with small relative variance (<3%) accounted for by within-subject daily affect variation. These results support previous reports that functional connectivity is dominated by stable subject-specific connectivity patterns, while additionally suggesting relatively minimal influence of day-to-day affect. Researchers planning studies examining functional connectivity in relation to daily affect, or other varying stable states, should therefore anticipate small effect sizes and carefully consider power in study planning.

Control your emotions: evidence for a shared mechanism of cognitive and emotional control

The current investigation examined the bidirectional effects of cognitive control and emotional control and the overlap between these two systems in regulating emotions. Based on recent neural and cognitive findings, we hypothesised that two control systems largely overlap as control recruited for one system (either emotional or cognitive) can be used by the other system. In two experiments, participants completed novel versions of either the Stroop task (Experiment 1) or the Flanker task (Experiment 2) in which the emotional and cognitive control systems were actively manipulated into either a high or low emotional-load condition (achieved by varying the proportions of negative-valence emotional cues) and a high and a low cognitive control condition (achieved through varying the proportion of conflict-laden trials). In both experiments, participants' performance was impaired when both emotional and cognitive control were low, but significantly and similarly improved when one of the two control mechanisms were activated - the emotional or the cognitive. In Experiment 2, performance was further improved when both systems were activated. Our results give further support for a more integrative notion of control in which the two systems (emotional and cognitive control) not only influence each other, but rather extensively overlap.

Valence in perception: Are affective valence and visual brightness integral dimensions in visual experience?

A fundamental question in the domain of affect and conscious perception is whether the former can impact the latter. Traditionally, perception and affect were conceived as largely independent. Against this backdrop, it was recently argued that the affective valence of a stimulus can modulate the perceptual experience of its sensory features. An alternative hypothesis is that perceptual experiences have a valenced aspect over and above their sensory aspects, with these two aspects interacting and comprising integral perceptual dimensions. To test this, we carried out two experiments deploying Wendell Garner's speeded classification paradigm to decide whether visual brightness and affective valence are separable or integral dimensions.We found Garner interference, documenting that brightness and valence are integral dimensions. We did not observe effects of congruity - responses to bright positive stimuli were not faster than to bright negative stimuli - providing no support for affect induced changes in the perception of brightness.

Animal emotions and consciousness: a preliminary assessment of researchers' perceptions and biases and prospects for future progress

Scientists and philosophers have long struggled with the question of whether non-human animals experience emotions or consciousness. Yet, it is unclear where the scientific consensus on these topics lies today. To address this gap, we administered a survey of professional animal behaviour researchers to assess perceptions regarding (i) the taxonomic distribution of emotions and consciousness in non-human animals, (ii) respondents' confidence in this assessment, and (iii) attitudes towards pitfalls and potential for progress when addressing these questions. Respondents (n = 100) ascribe emotionality and consciousness to a broad swath of the animal taxonomy, including non-human primates, other mammals, birds and cephalopods. Respondents' attribution of these phenomena was strongly associated with their confidence in their assessments (R 2 > 0.9), with respondents assuming an absence of emotions and consciousness when they were unsure. We also identify an emergent consensus of the components involved in a functional definition of emotions. Researchers are optimistic that tools either currently exist or will exist in the future to rigorously address these questions (>85%) and that animal behaviour, as a field, should do more to encourage research works on emotions (>70%). We discuss implications for publication bias and future work in this area as well as ethical considerations regarding animal care and use.

Examining contemporaneous and temporal associations of real-time suicidal ideation using network analysis

BACKGROUND

Suicidal ideation arises from a complex interplay of multiple interacting risk factors over time. Recently, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has increased our understanding of factors associated with real-time suicidal ideation, as well as those predicting ideation at the level of hours and days. Here we used statistical network methods to investigate which cognitive-affective risk and protective factors are associated with the temporal dynamics of suicidal ideation.

METHODS

The SAFE study is a longitudinal cohort study of 82 participants with current suicidal ideation who completed 4×/day EMA over 21 days. We modeled contemporaneous (t) and temporal (t + 1) associations of three suicidal ideation components (passive ideation, active ideation, and acquired capability) and their predictors (positive and negative affect, anxiety, hopelessness, loneliness, burdensomeness, and optimism) using multilevel vector auto-regression models.

RESULTS

Contemporaneously, passive suicidal ideation was positively associated with sadness, hopelessness, loneliness, and burdensomeness, and negatively with happiness, calmness, and optimism; active suicidal ideation was positively associated with passive suicidal ideation, sadness, and shame; and acquired capability only with passive and active suicidal ideation. Acquired capability and hopelessness positively predicted passive ideation at t + 1, which in turn predicted active ideation; acquired capability was positively predicted at t + 1 by shame, and negatively by burdensomeness.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings show that systematic real-time associations exist between suicidal ideation and its predictors, and that different factors may uniquely influence distinct components of ideation. These factors may represent important targets for safety planning and risk detection.

The affective grounds of the mind. The Affective Pertinentization (APER) model

The paper presents the Affective Pertinentization model (APER), a theory of the affect and its role it plays in meaning-making. APER views the affect as the basic form of making sense of reality. It consists of a global, bipolar pattern of neurophysiological activity through which the organism maps the instant-by-instant variation of its environment. Such a pattern of neuropsychological activity is constituted by a plurality of bipolar affective dimensions, each of which maps a component of the environmental variability. The affect has a pluri-componential structure defining a multidimensional affective landscape that foregrounds (i.e., makes pertinent) a certain pattern of facets of the environment (e.g., its pleasantness/unpleasantness) relevant to survival, while backgrounding the others. Doing so, the affect grounds the following cognitive processes. Accordingly, meaning-making can be modeled as a function of the dimensionality of the affective landscape. The greater the dimensionality of the affective landscape, the more differentiated the system of meaning is. Following a brief review of current theories pertaining to the affect, the paper proceeds discussing the APER's core tenets - the multidimensional view of the affect, its semiotic function, and the concepts of Affective Landscape and Phase Space of Meaning. The paper then proceeds deepening the relationship between the APER model and other theories, highlighting how the APER succeeds in framing original conceptualizations of several challenging issues - the intertwinement between affect and sensory modalities, the manner in which the mind constitutes the content of the experience, the determinants of psychopathology, the intertwinement of mind and culture, and the spreading of affective forms of thinking and behaving in society. Finally, the unsolved issues and future developments of the model are briefly envisaged.

Interoceptive attention and mood in daily life: an experience-sampling study

Theories of emotion ascribe a fundamental role to the processing of bodily signals (interoception) in emotional experience. Despite evidence consistent with this, current knowledge is limited by a focus on interoceptive accuracy and laboratory-based interoception measures. This experience-sampling study examines how state interoceptive attention and state emotional experience are related in everyday life, providing the first data to our knowledge examining: (1) within-subject fluctuations in interoceptive attention across domains, and (2) the relationship between trait and state interoception. Compared with rates of exteroceptive attention (auditory attention: engaged 83% of the time), interoceptive signals captured attention approximately 20% of the time, with substantial within- and between-person variability across domains. There were relationships between interoceptive attention and emotion in daily life (greater attention being associated with more negative valence and fatigue) that were specific to interoceptive attention (different patterns were observed with exteroceptive attention). State measures of interoceptive (but not exteroceptive) attention were correlated with the trait interoceptive attention, but not accuracy. Results underscore the relationship between interoceptive attention and emotion, providing new insights into interoceptive attention and the structure of interoceptive ability. Future research should examine the source(s) of within- and between-person variability in interoceptive and exteroceptive attention and its relationship with emotional experience. This article is part of the theme issue 'Sensing and feeling: an integrative approach to sensory processing and emotional experience'.

The dark and bright side of the numbers: how emotions influence mental number line accuracy and bias

The traditional view of cognition as detached from emotions is recently being questioned. This study aimed to investigate the influence of emotional valence on the accuracy and bias in the representation of numbers on the mental number line (MNL). The study included 164 participants who were randomly assigned into two groups with induced positive and negative emotional valence using matched arousal film clips. Participants performed a computerised number-to-position (CNP) task to estimate the position of numbers on a horizontal line. The results showed that participants in the positive valence group exhibited a rightward bias, while those in the negative valence group showed an opposite pattern. The analysis of mean absolute error revealed that the negative valence group had higher error rates compared to the positive valence group. Furthermore, the MNL estimation pattern analysis indicated that a two-cycle cyclic power model (CPM) best explained the data for both groups. These findings suggest that emotional valence influences the spatial representation of numbers on the MNL and affects accuracy in numerical estimations. Our findings are finally discussed in terms of body-specificity and the Brain's Asymmetric Frequency Tuning (BAFT) theories. The study provides new insights into the interplay between emotions and numerical cognition.

The Cerebellum as an Embodying Machine

Whereas emotion theorists often keep their distance from the embodied approach, theorists of embodiment tend to treat emotion as a mainly physiologic process. However, intimate links between emotions and the body suggest that emotions are privileged phenomena to attempt to reintegrate mind and body and that the body helps the mind in shaping emotional responses. To date, research has favored the cerebrum over other parts of the brain as a substrate of embodied emotions. However, given the widely demonstrated contribution of the cerebellum to emotional processing, research in affective neuroscience should consider embodiment theory as a useful approach for evaluating the cerebellar role in emotion and affect. The aim of this review is to insert the cerebellum among the structures needed to embody emotions, providing illustrative examples of cerebellar involvement in embodied emotions (as occurring in empathic abilities) and in impaired identification and expression of embodied emotions (as occurring in alexithymia).

Active Inference and Social Actors: Towards a Neuro-Bio-Social Theory of Brains and Bodies in Their Worlds

Although research including biological concepts and variables has gained more prominence in sociology, progress assimilating the organ of experience, the brain, has been theoretically and technically challenging. Formal uptake and assimilation have thus been slow. Within psychology and neuroscience, the traditional brain, which has made brief appearances in sociological research, is a "bottom-up" processor in which sensory signals are passed up the neural hierarchy where they are eventually cognitively and emotionally processed, after which actions and responses are generated. In this paper, we introduce the Active Inference Framework (AIF), which casts the brain as a Bayesian "inference engine" that tests its "top-down" predictive models against "bottom-up" sensory error streams in its attempts to resolve uncertainty and make the world more predictable. After assembling and presenting key concepts in the AIF, we describe an integrated neuro-bio-social model that prioritizes the microsociological assertion that the scene of action is the situation, wherein brains enculturate. Through such social dynamics, enculturated brains share models of the world with one another, enabling collective realities that disclose the actions afforded in those times and places. We conclude by discussing this neuro-bio-social model within the context of exemplar sociological research areas, including the sociology of stress and health, the sociology of emotions, and cognitive cultural sociology, all areas where the brain has received some degree of recognition and incorporation. In each case, sociological insights that do not fit naturally with the traditional brain model emerge intuitively from the predictive AIF model, further underscoring the interconnections and interdependencies between these areas, while also providing a foundation for a probabilistic sociology.

Criminal behaviors: A theory of mind problem?

Theory of mind (ToM) has been addressed in relation to functional alterations of certain brain regions and their connections. The objective is to evaluate ToM in imprisoned criminal offenders and to analyze their relationship with the functions linked to the prefrontal cortex according to their expression in neuropsychological tests. The sample was composed of 52 subjects. 27 committed instrumental homicides and 25 crimes of sale and/or possession of narcotics. A control group was taken, 19 healthy subjects at liberty. The Faux-Pas (FP) and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes tests were used. A neuropsychological battery of executive functions and functions related to the frontal lobes and Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) was also applied. The criminal groups have comparable performances in all measures. The control group (in freedom) showed higher performance, with statistical significance, in the Faux-Pas test. Moderate negative correlations were found between the FP and the PCL-R. A distinction between affective and cognitive ToM could be affirmed, with people deprived of liberty presenting deficient functioning in the cognitive ToM test. This difference in performance could be linked to the disruptive event with the social norm and not so much with the violent homicide act itself.

The Human Affectome

Over the last decades, theoretical perspectives in the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences have proliferated rather than converged due to differing assumptions about what human affective phenomena are and how they work. These metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions, shaped by academic context and values, have dictated affective constructs and operationalizations. However, an assumption about the purpose of affective phenomena can guide us to a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. In this capstone paper, we home in on a nested teleological principle for human affective phenomena in order to synthesize metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. Under this framework, human affective phenomena can collectively be considered algorithms that either adjust based on the human comfort zone (affective concerns) or monitor those adaptive processes (affective features). This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope the Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research.

Event-related delta and theta responses may reflect the valence discrimination in the emotional oddball task

How emotion and cognition interact is still a matter of debate. Investigation of this interaction in terms of the brain oscillatory dynamics appears to be an essential approach. To investigate this topic, we designed two separate three-stimulus oddball tasks, including emotional stimuli with different valences. Twenty healthy young subjects were included in the study. They completed two tasks, namely: the positive emotional oddball task and the negative emotional oddball task. Each task included the target, non-target, and distractor stimuli. Positive and negative pictures were the target stimuli in the positive and negative emotional oddball task. We asked participants to determine the number of target stimuli in each task. During sessions, EEGs were recorded with 32 electrodes. We found that (negative) target stimuli elicit higher delta (1-3.5 Hz) and theta (4-7 Hz) power responses but not the phase-locking responses compared to (positive) distractor stimuli during the negative oddball task. On the other hand, the same effect was not seen during the positive emotional oddball task. Here, we showed that the valence dimension interacted with the target status. Finally, we summarized our results that the presence of negative distractors attenuated the target effect of the positive stimuli due to the negative bias.

Animal Emotions and Consciousness: Researchers' Perceptions, Biases, and Prospects for Future Progress

Do animals have emotions? Scientists and philosophers have long struggled with this question, with debates ranging from whether animals experience an "internal world" to whether we are capable of studying it. Recently, theoretical, and methodological advances have rekindled this debate, yet, it is unclear where the scientific consensus on these topics lies today. To address this gap, we administered a survey of professional animal behavior researchers to assess perceptions regarding (1) the taxonomic distribution of emotions and consciousness in non-human animals, (2) respondents' confidence in this assessment, and (3) attitudes towards potential for progress and possible pitfalls when addressing these questions. In general, animal behavior researchers (n=100) ascribed emotionality and consciousness to a broad swath of the animal taxa, including non-human primates, other mammals, birds, and cephalopods, with varying degrees of confidence. There was a strong positive relationship between how likely a respondent was to attribute emotions to a given taxa and their confidence in that assessment, with respondents assuming an absence of emotions and consciousness when they were unsure. In addition, respondents' assessments were shaped by several traits (e.g., advanced cognitive abilities, consciousness) that they also admitted were not necessary for an animal to experience emotions. Ultimately, a large majority of researchers were optimistic that tools either currently exist or will exist in the future to rigorously address these questions (>85%) and that animal behavior, as a field, should do more to encourage emotions research (71%). We discuss implications of our findings for publication bias, ethical considerations, and identify an emergent consensus for the need of a functional definition of emotions to facilitate future work.

Development and validation of the Work-Home Integration Questionnaire (WHIQ)

The boundaries between work and private life are gradually blurring. More and more employees are involved in work during leisure time through cognitions, emotions or behaviours, in both negative and positive ways. This so-called work-home integration (WHI) can, on the one hand, hampers the necessary recovery from work and result in strain but, on the other hand, also restores resources and result in beneficial outcomes. In order to enhance our understanding of WHI and capture all its different forms, we suggest a new conceptualisation and measure of WHI. We therefore developed and validated the Work-Home Integration Questionnaire (WHIQ) in English, German and Slovene simultaneously using two cross-sectional studies (Study 1: N = 848; Study 2: N = 555) and a two-wave longitudinal study with a time lag of 1 month (Study 3: N = 379). Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed a three-factor structure with (1) negative cognitive-affective involvement, (2) positive cognitive-affective involvement and (3) behavioural involvement. Moreover, the WHIQ showed measurement invariance across the three languages and the results provide evidence for convergent, discriminant and incremental validity. Overall, the WHIQ is a reliable, valid and short measure to assess the extent to which employees are involved in work during leisure time.

Using the Research Domain Criteria as a framework to integrate psychophysiological findings into stress management and psychotherapy interventions

Research on the psychophysiology of stress is expanding rapidly, but the field lacks a clear integrative framework to help translate research findings into empirically supported stress interventions. The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) is an excellent candidate to explore as a framework to integrate stress research. The RDoC framework is a dimensional, multi-modal approach to psychopathology proposed as an alternative to categorical approaches used by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). The goal of this paper is to explore the RDoC as a framework to integrate psychophysiology research into therapeutic interventions for stress. The RDoC consists of six domains: negative valence systems, positive valence systems, cognitive systems, social processes systems, arousal/regulatory systems, and sensorimotor systems, and provides an excellent structure for integrating information from multiple levels of functioning including physiology, behavior, and self-report, as well as genes, molecules, cells, and brain circuits. Integrating psychophysiological research on stress using the RDoC framework can direct and amplify stress management and psychotherapeutic interventions. First, the RDoC provides a clear foundation for conceptualizing the stress response in terms of important concepts such as allostasis and adaptation. In this perspective, the terms "allostatic response" or "adaptation response" are more descriptive terms than "stress response" in understanding bodily responses to life threats and challenges. Second, psychophysiological approaches can be used in the context of modalities such as biofeedback and mindfulness to both collect psychophysiological data and then integrate that data into a broader therapeutic framework. Heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback is being used more frequently as part of a therapeutic intervention package with stress management and psychotherapy, and HRV data is also used to provide outcome evidence on the efficacy of treatment. Mindfulness practices are commonly used in combination with stress management and psychotherapy, and psychophysiological data (HRV, EEG, blood pressure, etc.) is often collected to explore and understand mind/body relationships. In conclusion, the lack of a clear framework to assess and understand mind/body functioning limits current stress research and interventions. The RDoC provides a strong framework to assess and integrate physiological and psychological data and improve stress interventions.

A theoretical and clinical perspective of an embodied view in psychotherapy of somatic symptoms disorders

In this paper, we offer some ideas for the treatment of somatoform patients and related pathologies based on the concept of embodiment. Embodiment refers to the interplay between body and mind in behavior. The word refers to giving a body to something, "incarnate". Spinoza wrote extensively about the topic in the 17th century. In the 20th century, picking up on Spinoza's work, Damasio presented extensive and important neuro-scientific evidence that feelings can be direct perceptions of internal body states, substantiating the growing understanding of emotions and feelings as a core component of the embodied experience. Here, we summarize the evidence for the intersection of emotion and cognition in the body, which impinges on the effectiveness of using the body and movement in psychotherapy and the management of somatic symptoms and related disorders. We present evidence indicating that movement would be a way to reach unconscious processes dealing with body-mind interaction and body awareness.

The role of emotions in educational processes: the conceptions of teacher educators

The research shows that a very important part of initial teacher education is to reformulate the beliefs that student teachers bring with them from their school experience. These beliefs, which are intuitive in nature, deal with different educational topics and one area that is currently of great importance, due to the emotional turn that the educational system is experiencing, are the beliefs that student teachers hold about the role of emotions in educational processes. In a world full of views that portray emotions as discrete states that are separate from cognitive processes, it is a priority for initial teacher development to train future teachers to hold conceptions that consider the deep emotional-cognitive integration that exists in the human brain. At the same time, this process requires teacher educators (hereafter referred to as TEs) who hold conceptions on this topic that are aligned with the most current scientific knowledge on the subject. However, we do not know how the conceptions that TEs maintain on this topic are, since, until now, research on conceptions has focused on other types of educational topics. Considering the foregoing, this study aimed to evaluate the conceptions that TEs have on this topic, using a questionnaire of dilemmas that was applied to 68 TEs from different universities. The results obtained show that the TEs maintain perspectives on the role of emotions in the teaching and learning processes that oscillate between dualism and emotional-cognitive integration. In addition, it was found that TEs' perspectives tend to be more integrative when considering attitudinal learning than when considering verbal learning. Finally, the study shows that maintaining integrative perspectives is more difficult when educational situations involve emotions of positive valence that may constitute an obstacle for teaching and learning. The results are discussed, and a series of reflections are elaborated in order to analyze to what extent the beliefs held by TEs are adequate as a cognitive basis for reformulating the conceptions held by student teachers on this issue.

The neurobiological basis of affect is consistent with psychological construction theory and shares a common neural basis across emotional categories

Affective experience colours everyday perception and cognition, yet its fundamental and neurobiological basis is poorly understood. The current debate essentially centers around the communalities and specificities across individuals, events, and emotional categories like anger, sadness, and happiness. Using fMRI during the experience of these emotions, we critically compare the two dominant conflicting theories on human affect. Basic emotion theory posits emotions as discrete universal entities generated by dedicated emotion category-specific neural circuits, while psychological construction theory claims emotional events as unique, idiosyncratic, and constructed by psychological primitives like core affect and conceptualization, which underlie each emotional event and operate in a predictive framework. Based on the findings of 8 a priori-defined model-specific prediction tests on the neural response amplitudes and patterns, we conclude that the neurobiological basis of affect is primarily characterized by idiosyncratic mechanisms and a common neural basis shared across emotion categories, consistent with psychological construction theory. The findings provide further insight into the organizational principles of the neural basis of affect and brain function in general. Future studies in clinical populations with affective symptoms may reveal the corresponding underlying neural changes from a psychological construction perspective.

Cognition as Morphological/Morphogenetic Embodied Computation In Vivo

Cognition, historically considered uniquely human capacity, has been recently found to be the ability of all living organisms, from single cells and up. This study approaches cognition from an info-computational stance, in which structures in nature are seen as information, and processes (information dynamics) are seen as computation, from the perspective of a cognizing agent. Cognition is understood as a network of concurrent morphological/morphogenetic computations unfolding as a result of self-assembly, self-organization, and autopoiesis of physical, chemical, and biological agents. The present-day human-centric view of cognition still prevailing in major encyclopedias has a variety of open problems. This article considers recent research about morphological computation, morphogenesis, agency, basal cognition, extended evolutionary synthesis, free energy principle, cognition as Bayesian learning, active inference, and related topics, offering new theoretical and practical perspectives on problems inherent to the old computationalist cognitive models which were based on abstract symbol processing, and unaware of actual physical constraints and affordances of the embodiment of cognizing agents. A better understanding of cognition is centrally important for future artificial intelligence, robotics, medicine, and related fields.

The integrative approach in the study of resilience in female entrepreneurship

Purpose

This paper aims to understand resilience in entrepreneurial behavior and the major adversities faced by women entrepreneurs and identify theoretical and empirical bases that support the use of the integrative approach as appropriate to studies of resilience in women entrepreneurs.

Design/methodology/approach

In this exploratory-theoretical study, the authors adopted a narrative review of the literature on Female Entrepreneurship, Business and Resilience. The databases researched were: Web of Science, Social Citation Index and Scopus, of which 52 were submitted to analysis through techniques of comparison and contrast between theory, classical studies and applied research.

Findings

The study illuminates the concept of resilience aligned with entrepreneurship and the major adversities of female entrepreneurship. It also indicates the competence of the integrative approach in investigating and analyzing resilience as a complex, functional and emotional phenomenon between women entrepreneurs and their business environment.

Research limitations/implications

This study indicates that the integrative approach can offer an explanatory device about the relationships between affectivity and cognition in the resilient behavior of women when encountering difficulties in the entrepreneurial process. It also indicates paths for future research that can empirically prove the degree of these constructs in the resilient behavior of women entrepreneurs, having the difficulties related to the gender stereotype as a point of interest.

Practical implications

The contribution to the managerial field is to alert women entrepreneurs about the need to understand the role of affectivity and cognition in facing adversity to strengthen their resilient behavior.

Social implications

The contribution to the managerial field is to alert women entrepreneurs about the need to understand the role of affectivity and cognition in facing adversity to strengthen their resilient behavior.

Originality/value

This study provides original evidence that cognitive and affective aspects influence women’s entrepreneurial behavior with the same degree of importance. Therefore, they must be investigated jointly. This discovery brings relevance to theoretical and empirical studies on this topic.

Do we enjoy what we sense and perceive? A dissociation between aesthetic appreciation and basic perception of environmental objects or events

This integrative review rearticulates the notion of human aesthetics by critically appraising the conventional definitions, offerring a new, more comprehensive definition, and identifying the fundamental components associated with it. It intends to advance holistic understanding of the notion by differentiating aesthetic perception from basic perceptual recognition, and by characterizing these concepts from the perspective of information processing in both visual and nonvisual modalities. To this end, we analyze the dissociative nature of information processing in the brain, introducing a novel local-global integrative model that differentiates aesthetic processing from basic perceptual processing. This model builds on the current state of the art in visual aesthetics as well as newer propositions about nonvisual aesthetics. This model comprises two analytic channels: aesthetics-only channel and perception-to-aesthetics channel. The aesthetics-only channel primarily involves restricted local processing for quality or richness (e.g., attractiveness, beauty/prettiness, elegance, sublimeness, catchiness, hedonic value) analysis, whereas the perception-to-aesthetics channel involves global/extended local processing for basic feature analysis, followed by restricted local processing for quality or richness analysis. We contend that aesthetic processing operates independently of basic perceptual processing, but not independently of cognitive processing. We further conjecture that there might be a common faculty, labeled as aesthetic cognition faculty, in the human brain for all sensory aesthetics albeit other parts of the brain can also be activated because of basic sensory processing prior to aesthetic processing, particularly during the operation of the second channel. This generalized model can account not only for simple and pure aesthetic experiences but for partial and complex aesthetic experiences as well.

Quantum core affect. Color-emotion structure of semantic atom

Psychology suffers from the absence of mathematically-formalized primitives. As a result, conceptual and quantitative studies lack an ontological basis that would situate them in the company of natural sciences. The article addresses this problem by describing a minimal psychic structure, expressed in the algebra of quantum theory. The structure is demarcated into categories of emotion and color, renowned as elementary psychological phenomena. This is achieved by means of quantum-theoretic qubit state space, isomorphic to emotion and color experiences both in meaning and math. In particular, colors are mapped to the qubit states through geometric affinity between the HSL-RGB color solids and the Bloch sphere, widely used in physics. The resulting correspondence aligns with the recent model of subjective experience, producing a unified spherical map of emotions and colors. This structure is identified as a semantic atom of natural thinking-a unit of affectively-colored personal meaning, involved in elementary acts of a binary decision. The model contributes to finding a unified ontology of both inert and living Nature, bridging previously disconnected fields of research. In particular, it enables theory-based coordination of emotion, decision, and cybernetic sciences, needed to achieve new levels of practical impact.

Using the theory of constructed emotion to inform the study of cognition-emotion interactions

In this article I suggest how theories of emotion construction may inform the study of cognition-emotion interactions. To do so, I adopt the two main concepts core affect and emotions as categories: Core affect, one's current affective state, which is defined by the two dimensions pleasure and arousal, is an inherent part of any conscious experience. Specific emotions are understood as categories including highly diverse exemplars. I argue that (1) affective states can and should not be differentiated from cognitive states, and that (2) specific emotions may follow the same principles as other biological or more general categories. I review some empirical evidence in support of these ideas and show avenues for future research.

Adding noise is a confounded nuisance

A wide variety of research and clinical assessments involve presenting speech stimuli in the presence of some kind of noise. Here, I selectively review two theoretical perspectives and discuss ways in which these perspectives may help researchers understand the consequences for listeners of adding noise to a speech signal. I argue that adding noise changes more about the listening task than merely making the signal more difficult to perceive. To fully understand the effects of an added noise on speech perception, we must consider not just how much the noise affects task difficulty, but also how it affects all of the systems involved in understanding speech: increasing message uncertainty, modifying attentional demand, altering affective response, and changing motivation to perform the task.

Interactions between emotions and eating behaviors: Main issues, neuroimaging contributions, and innovative preventive or corrective strategies

Emotional eating is commonly defined as the tendency to (over)eat in response to emotion. Insofar as it involves the (over)consumption of high-calorie palatable foods, emotional eating is a maladaptive behavior that can lead to eating disorders, and ultimately to metabolic disorders and obesity. Emotional eating is associated with eating disorder subtypes and with abnormalities in emotion processing at a behavioral level. However, not enough is known about the neural pathways involved in both emotion processing and food intake. In this review, we provide an overview of recent neuroimaging studies, highlighting the brain correlates between emotions and eating behavior that may be involved in emotional eating. Interaction between neural and neuro-endocrine pathways (HPA axis) may be involved. In addition to behavioral interventions, there is a need for a holistic approach encompassing both neural and physiological levels to prevent emotional eating. Based on recent imaging, this review indicates that more attention should be paid to prefrontal areas, the insular and orbitofrontal cortices, and reward pathways, in addition to regions that play a major role in both the cognitive control of emotions and eating behavior. Identifying these brain regions could allow for neuromodulation interventions, including neurofeedback training, which deserves further investigation.

Psychological Responses to Progressive Exercise Until Voluntary Exhaustion: A Study of Adolescent Male Basketball Players

The affective experience during and after exercise helps determine motivation, commitment, and adherence to sports. Choice reaction time (RT) is critical in decision-making and sports performance. In this within-subjects laboratory experiment, we scrutinized core affect and choice RT in 18 male adolescent basketball players during exercise sessions performed to voluntary exhaustion and during a control condition. The adolescents performed choice RT tasks in one of two exercise conditions and in the control session. Participants' feeling states differed between exercise and control sessions and decreased slightly even after moderate exercise intensity. Core affect also declined as the workload increased, but it remained pleasant-activated in all conditions. The RT errors increased at the peak exercise intensity. These results suggest that while high-intensity training might negatively affect young athletes' feeling states and impair their decision-making, their core affect remained positive, with large inter-individual variability. We discuss the practical implications of these results in adolescents' sports.

Negative Affect and Maladaptive Eating Behavior as a Regulation Strategy in Normal-Weight Individuals: A Narrative Review

Emotions have a powerful influence on eating behavior, and eating behavior can have a powerful effect on emotions. The objective of the present narrative review was to evaluate the relationship between negative affect and maladaptive eating behavior as a regulation strategy in normal-weight individuals. A search of the literature within PubMed®, MEDLINE® and PsycINFO was conducted using a combination of the following terms: “affect”, “negative affect”, “affect regulation” and “maladaptive eating behavior”. A total of 106 papers were identified for full text review and were included in the final set of literature. The manuscript presents an overview of the literature on negative affect and maladaptive eating behavior. It offers a brief overview of restrained, uncontrolled and emotional eating in normal-weight individuals and looks at maladaptive eating behavior used to regulate their affect. Based on the previous research findings, we argue that using more adaptive strategies for emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal) might result in downregulating integral negative affect to food and in improving eating behavior.

School Memories of Preservice Teachers: An Analysis of Their Role in the Conceptions About the Relationships Between Emotions and Teaching/Learning Processes

With the aim of exploring the role of emotional elementary school memories that preservice teachers have, in their conceptions about the relationships between emotions and teaching-learning processes, a study was carried out. The sample consisted of all first-year preservice teacher from one campus of a Chilean public university (167 students). The study used a mixed method research composed of two stages. In the first part (quantitative), the conceptions of the preservice teachers were evaluated by means a dilemma questionnaire. In the second part (qualitative), a retrospective imagery was applied to a subgroup of thirty participants from the total sample with the aim of detecting and analyzing emotionally significant memories of teaching-learning situations in elementary school. The result of the first part of the study showed that most of preservice teachers maintain conceptions that separates affect and cognition as non-integrated processes. The results of the second part revealed that preservice teachers remember different types of experiences, most of them are associated with the characteristic and behavior from their primary school teachers. Finally, the recovered memories were analyzed in terms of their relationship with conceptions, concluding that having experienced fear in school could be a factor related to the type of conceptions held.

Work-family conflict and dangerous driving behaviours: The mediating role of affect

This study examined the under-studied relationship between work-family conflict and dangerous driving behaviours in a sample of employees, and job-related affect as a mediator of this relationship. The sample consisted of 476 Malaysian drivers (44.7% male; 55.3% female) aged 19-60 years. The participants completed scales measuring bidirectional work family conflict (work interference with family[ WIF]; family interference with work [FIW]), job-related negative affect, dangerous driving behaviours and socio-demographics. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling. Our findings indicate that dangerous driving was predicted by FIW, but not WIF. As predicted, job-related negative affect fully mediated the relationship between WIF and dangerous driving. Furthermore, the effect of FIW on dangerous driving behaviours was partially due to negative affect at work. Mediation path was conditional upon gender, suggesting the indirect effects of the relationship between FIW and dangerous driving behaviours via job affect occurs in males but not females. The findings of this study may be useful as a starting point for both applied and theoretical investigations of the role of the psychological effects of juggling work and family responsibilities and affect in traffic safety.

Levels of Emotional Awareness: Theory and Measurement of a Socio-Emotional Skill

Emotional awareness is the ability to conceptualize and describe one's own emotions and those of others. Over thirty years ago, a cognitive-developmental theory of emotional awareness patterned after Piaget's theory of cognitive development was created as well as a performance measure of this ability called the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS). Since then, a large number of studies have been completed in healthy volunteers and clinical populations including those with mental health or systemic medical disorders. Along the way, there have also been further refinements and adaptations of the LEAS such as the creation of a digital version in addition to further advances in the theory itself. This review aims to provide a comprehensive summary of the evolving theoretical background, measurement methods, and empirical findings with the LEAS. The LEAS is a reliable and valid measure of emotional awareness. Evidence suggests that emotional awareness facilitates better emotion self-regulation, better ability to navigate complex social situations and enjoy relationships, and better physical and mental health. This is a relatively new but promising area of research in the domain of socio-emotional skills. The paper concludes with some recommendations for future research.

Bridging the gap between emotion and joint action

Our daily human life is filled with a myriad of joint action moments, be it children playing, adults working together (i.e., team sports), or strangers navigating through a crowd. Joint action brings individuals (and embodiment of their emotions) together, in space and in time. Yet little is known about how individual emotions propagate through embodied presence in a group, and how joint action changes individual emotion. In fact, the multi-agent component is largely missing from neuroscience-based approaches to emotion, and reversely joint action research has not found a way yet to include emotion as one of the key parameters to model socio-motor interaction. In this review, we first identify the gap and then stockpile evidence showing strong entanglement between emotion and acting together from various branches of sciences. We propose an integrative approach to bridge the gap, highlight five research avenues to do so in behavioral neuroscience and digital sciences, and address some of the key challenges in the area faced by modern societies.

Mental distress through the prism of predictive processing theory

We review the predictive processing theory's take on goals and affect, to shed new light on mental distress and how it develops into psychopathology such as in affective and motivational disorders. This analysis recovers many of the classical factors known to be important in those disorders, like uncertainty and control, but integrates them in a mechanistic model of adaptive and maladaptive cognition and behavior. We derive implications for treatment that have so far remained underexposed in existing predictive processing accounts of mental disorder, specifically with regard to the model-dependent construction of value, the importance of model validation (evidence), and the introduction and learning of new, adaptive beliefs that relieve suffering.

Operationalizing the Relation Between Affect and Cognition With the Somatic Transform

This article introduces the somatic transform that operationalizes the relation between affect and cognition at the psychological level of analysis by capitalizing on the relation between the cognitive-denotative and affective-connotative meaning of concepts as measured with semantic differential rating scales. Following discussion of levels of analysis, the importance of language at the psychological level, and two principles (inextricability and complementarity) summarizing the relation between affect and cognition that are rendered explicit by the somatic transform, we present affect control theory (ACT) and its Bayesian extension (BayesACT) containing the somatic transform. We conclude by identifying examples of inextricability and complementarity in the social science and neuroscience literatures and discussing how our psychological model might be implemented in a realistic neural model.

Translating in times of crisis: A study about the emotional effects of the COVID19 pandemic on the translation of evaluative language

This study explores the emotional impact of contextually-relevant source texts (STs) and their influence on student translators' behavior. During the first weeks of the Spanish COVID-19 lockdown, an experimental study was carried out in which 69 Spanish translation students were instructed to translate two English STs with different evaluative attitudes (i.e. optimistic vs. pessimistic) toward the COVID-19 crisis. The study explored whether the different optimistic vs pessimistic framing of the crisis would influence the students' use of translation strategies (h1), their levels of anxiety (h2) and their levels of affect (h3) after both reading and translating the STs. Results revealed statistically significant differences between the two translation strategies analyzed (i.e. emphasis and attenuation), with more emphasizing strategies than attenuating ones, regardless of the group. Moreover, a significant effect of the interaction between text and group was also reported, which indicated an overall stronger inclination to alter -either mitigating or emphasizing- evaluative language in the pessimistic text. A significant increase in participants' levels of anxiety and negative affect was also found after the pessimistic framing as compared to the optimistic one. Data also pointed to differences between reading and translating in terms of the participant's anxiety levels, with statistically significant higher anxiety scores after reading than translating.

Denotative and connotative management of uncertainty: A computational dual-process model

The interplay between intuitive and deliberative processing is known to be important for human decision making. As independent modes, intuitive processes can take on many forms from associative to constructive, while deliberative processes often rely on some notion of decision theoretic rationality or pattern matching. Dual process models attempt to unify these two modes based on parallel constraint networks or on socially or emotionally oriented adjustments to utility functions. This paper presents a new kind of dual process model that unifies decision theoretic deliberative reasoning with intuitive reasoning based on shared cultural affective meanings in a single Bayesian sequential model. Agents constructed according to this unified model are motivated by a combination of affective alignment (intuitive) and decision theoretic reasoning (deliberative), trading the two off as a function of the uncertainty or unpredictability of the situation. The model also provides a theoretical bridge between decision-making research and sociological symbolic interactionism. Starting with a high-level view of existing models, we advance Bayesian Affect Control Theory (BayesACT) as a promising new type of dual process model that explicitly and optimally (in the Bayesian sense) trades off motivation, action, beliefs and utility. We demonstrate a key component of the model as being sufficient to account for some aspects of classic cognitive biases about fairness and dissonance, and outline how this new theory relates to parallel constraint satisfaction models.

Increased nitro-oxidative stress toxicity as a major determinant of increased blood pressure in mood disorders

BACKGROUND

Hypertension, atherogenicity and insulin resistance are major risk factors of cardiovascular disorder (CVD), which shows a strong comorbidity with major depression (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD). Activated oxidative and nitrosative stress (O&NS), inflammatory pathways, and increased atherogenicity are shared pathways underpinning CVD and mood disorders.

METHODS

The current study examined the effects of lipid hydroperoxides (LOOH), superoxide dismutase (SOD), nitric oxide metabolites (NOx), advanced oxidation protein products (AOPP), and malondialdehyde (MDA) on systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) blood pressure in 96 mood disordered patients and 60 healthy controls.

RESULTS

A large part of the variance in SBP (31.6%) was explained by the regression on a z unit-weighted composite score (based on LOOH, AOPP, SOD, NOx) reflecting nitro-oxidative stress toxicity (NOSTOX), coupled with highly sensitive C-reactive protein, body weight and use of antihypertensives. Increased DBP was best predicted (23.8%) by body mass index and NOSTOX. The most important O&NS biomarkers predicting an increased SBP were in descending order of significance: LOOH, AOPP and SOD. Higher levels of the atherogenic index of plasma, HOMA2 insulin resistance index and basal thyroid-stimulating hormone also contributed to increased SBP independently from NOSTOX. Although there were no significant changes in SBP/DBP in mood disorders, the associations between NOSTOX and blood pressure were significant in patients with mood disorders but not in healthy controls.

CONCLUSIONS

Activated O&NS pathways including increased lipid peroxidation and protein oxidation, which indicates hypochlorous stress, are the most important predictors of an increased BP, especially in patients with mood disorders.

Moral Decision-Making, Stress, and Social Cognition in Frontline Workers vs. Population Groups During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Explorative Study

On March 9, 2020, Italy has gone into "lockdown" because of COVID-19 pandemic, with a national quarantine. All non-essential working activities and schools of all levels have been temporarily closed: consequently, the entire population have been forced to dramatically change their daily habits. The pandemic raised important psychological, moral, social, and economic issues. Our research focused on the moral decision-making of people during an emergency. This paper reports two studies. The aim of Study 1 was to evaluate moral decision-making, level of perceived stress, ability of mentalizing and empathy in university students and Italian workers. 224 front-line workers (FLW), 413 second-line workers (SLW), and 663 university students (US), during Italian Phase 1 of lockdown, completed an online questionnaire. The results of Study 1 showed that participants in the FLW group are more likely to choose utilitarian solutions and judge as morally acceptable actions finalized to saving lives of more people if this requires sacrificing a low number of individuals. At the same time, decision-making was experienced as less unpleasant and less arousing with respect to the other two groups, demonstrating a greater ability to keep emotional control under pressure. In Study 2, we compared the same variables used in Study 1, selecting two professional categories from the FLW group engaged in emergency during COVID-19, namely healthcare providers (n = 82) and public safety personnel (n = 117). Our results showed that healthcare providers were more stressed and emotionally involved than public safety personnel, with higher empathic concern and arousal in moral decision-making. We suggest it is essential providing immediate psychological support and monitoring physical and emotional well-being for workers in the front-line during emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, in order to prevent experiences of moral distress or mental health problems.

Impairments in Peripheral Blood T Effector and T Regulatory Lymphocytes in Bipolar Disorder Are Associated with Staging of Illness and Anti-cytomegalovirus IgG Levels

There is now evidence that, based on cytokine profiles, bipolar disorder (BD) is accompanied by simultaneous activation of the immune-inflammatory response system (IRS) and the compensatory immune-regulatory system (CIRS), and that both components may be associated with the staging of illness. Nevertheless, no BD studies have evaluated the IRS/CIRS ratio using CD (cluster of differentiation) molecules expressed by peripheral blood activated T effector (Teff) and T regulatory (Treg) subpopulations. This study examined Teff/Treg subsets both before and after ex vivo anti-CD3/CD28 stimulation using flow cytometric immunophenotyping in 25 symptomatic remitted BD patients and 21 healthy controls and assessed human cytomegalovirus (HCMV)-specific IgG antibodies. BD is associated with a significantly lowered frequency of unstimulated CD3 + CD8 + CD71+ and CD4 + CD25 + FOXP3 and increased CD4 + CD25 + FOXP3 + CD152+ frequencies and with lowered stimulated frequencies of CD3 + CD8 + CD71+, CD4 + CD25 + FOXP3 + CD152+, and CD4 + CD25 + FOXP3 + GARP cells and, consequently, by an increased stimulated Teff/Treg ratio. Moreover, the number of manic, but not hypomanic or depressive episodes, is significantly and negatively associated with the stimulated proportions of CD3 + CD4 + CD154+, and CD69+ and CD71+ expression on CD4+ and CD8+ cells, while duration of illness (≥ 10 years) is accompanied by a depleted frequency of stimulated CD152+ Treg, and CD154+ and CD71+ CD4+ T cells. BD and anti-human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) IgG levels significantly interact to decrease the expression of CD4 + CD25 + FOXP+GARP T phenotypes. In conclusion, in BD patients, immune injuries, staging, and HCMV seropositivity interact and cause CIRS dysfunctions and exaggerated IRS responses, which play a key role in parainflammation and neuroaffective toxicity. HCMV seropositivity contributes to an immune-risk phenotype in BD.

Where Do We Stand in the Domestic Dog ( Canis familiaris ) Positive-Emotion Assessment: A State-of-the-Art Review and Future Directions

Although there have been a growing number of studies focusing on dog welfare, the research field concerning dog positive-emotion assessment remains mostly unexplored. This paper aims to provide a state-of-the-art review and summary of the scattered and disperse research on dog positive-emotion assessment. The review notably details the current advancement in dog positive-emotion research, what approaches, measures, methods, and techniques have been implemented so far in emotion perception, processing, and response assessment. Moreover, we propose possible future research directions for short-term emotion as well as longer-term emotional states assessment in dogs. The review ends by identifying and addressing some methodological limitations and by pointing out further methodological research needs.

Affect in the Aging Brain: A Neuroimaging Meta-Analysis of Older Vs. Younger Adult Affective Experience and Perception

We report the first functional neuroimaging meta-analysis on age-related differences in adult neural activity during affect. We identified and coded experimental contrasts from 27 studies (published 1997-2018) with 490 older adults (55-87 years, M age  = 69 years) and 470 younger adults (18-39 years, M age  = 24 years). Using multilevel kernel density analysis, we assessed functional brain activation contrasts for older vs. younger adult affect across in-scanner tasks (i.e., affect induction and perception). Relative to older adults, younger adults showed more reliable activation in subcortical structures (e.g., amygdala, thalamus, caudate) and in relatively more posterior aspects of specific brain structures (e.g., posterior insula, mid- and posterior cingulate). In contrast, older adults exhibited more reliable activation in the prefrontal cortex and more anterior aspects of specific brain structures (e.g., anterior insula, anterior cingulate). Meta-analytic coactivation network analyses further revealed that in younger adults, the amygdala and mid-cingulate were more central, locally efficient network nodes, whereas in older adults, regions in the superior and medial prefrontal cortex were more central, locally efficient network nodes. Collectively, these findings help characterize age differences in the brain basis of affect and provide insights for future investigations into the neural mechanisms underlying affective aging.