The Right Hemisphere Is Responsible for the Greatest Differences in Human Brain Response to High-Arousing Emotional versus Neutral Stimuli: A MEG Study

Consumer Visual and Affective Bias for Soothing Dolls

Soothing dolls are becoming increasingly popular in a society with a lot of physical and mental stress. Many products are also combined with soothing dolls to stimulate consumers' desire for impulse buying. However, there is no research on the relationship between consumers' purchasing behavior, consumers' preference for soothing dolls, and visual preference. The purpose of this study was to examine the possible factors that affect the emotional and visual preferences of soothing dolls. Two local stores' sales lists were used to extract three different types of dolls. The 2D and 3D versions of these three dolls were used. Subjective emotional preferences were examined by the self-assessment manikin (SAM) scale, with 5-point Likert scales for valence and arousal factors. An eye tracker was used to examine visual preferences, both before and after positive/negative emotion stimulation by the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). There were 37 subjects involved, with an age range of 20-28 years. The experimental results show that the average valence/arousal scores for 2D/3D dolls were (3.80, 3.74) and (2.65, 2.68), respectively. There was no statistical difference, but both 2D and 3D pictures had high valence scores. Eye tracker analysis revealed no gaze difference in visual preference between 2D and 3D dolls. After negative emotional picture stimulation, the observation time of the left-side doll decreased from 2.307 (std 0.905) to 1.947 (std 1.038) seconds, p < 0.001; and that of the right-side picture increased from 1.898 (std 0.907) to 2.252 (std 1.046) seconds, p < 0.001. The average observation time ratio of the eye on the 3D doll was 40.6%, higher than that on the 2D doll (34.3%, p = 0.02). Soothing dolls may be beneficial for emotion relaxation. Soothing dolls always have high valence features according to the SAM evaluation's measurement. Moreover, this study proposes a novel research model using an eye-tracker and the SAM for the SOR framework.

Cortical Sources of Respiratory Mechanosensation, Laterality, and Emotion: An MEG Study

Airway obstruction activates mechanoreceptors that project to the cerebral cortices in humans, as evidenced by scalp encephalography recordings of cortical neuronal activation, i.e., respiratory-related evoked potential (RREP). However, neural evidence of both high spatial and temporal resolution of occlusion-elicited cortical activation in healthy individuals is lacking. In the present study, we tested our hypothesis that inspiratory mechanical stimuli elicit neural activation in cortical structures that can be recorded using magnetoencephalography (MEG). We further examined the relationship between depression and respiratory symptoms and hemispheric dominance in terms of emotional states. A total of 14 healthy nonsmoking participants completed a respiratory symptom questionnaire and a depression symptom questionnaire, followed by MEG and RREP recordings of inspiratory occlusion. Transient inspiratory occlusion of 300 ms was provided randomly every 2 to 4 breaths, and approximately 80 occlusions were collected in every study participant. Participants were required to press a button for detection when they sensed occlusion. Respiratory-related evoked fields (RREFs) and RREP peaks were identified in terms of latencies and amplitudes in the right and left hemispheres. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was further used to examine differences in peak amplitudes between the right and left hemispheres. Our results showed that inspiratory occlusion elicited RREF M1 peaks between 80 and 100 ms after triggering. Corresponding neuromagnetic responses peaked in the sensorimotor cortex, insular cortex, lateral frontal cortex, and middle frontal cortex. Overall, the RREF M1 peak amplitude in the right insula was significantly higher than that in the left insula (p = 0.038). The RREP data also showed a trend of higher N1 peak amplitudes in the right hemisphere compared to the left (p = 0.064, one-tailed). Subgroup analysis revealed that the laterality index of sensorimotor cortex activation was significantly different between higher- and lower-depressed individuals (−0.33 vs. −0.02, respectively; p = 0.028). For subjective ratings, a significant relationship was found between an individual’s depression level and their respiratory symptoms (Spearman’s rho = 0.54, p = 0.028, one-tailed). In summary, our results demonstrated that the inspiratory occlusion paradigm is feasible to elicit an RREF M1 peak with MEG. Our imaging results showed that cortical neurons were activated in the sensorimotor, frontal, middle temporal, and insular cortices for the M1 peak. Respiratory occlusion elicited higher cortical neuronal activation in the right insula compared to the left, with a higher tendency for right laterality in the sensorimotor cortex for higher-depressed rather than lower-depressed individuals. Higher levels of depression were associated with higher levels of respiratory symptoms. Future research with a larger sample size is recommended to investigate the role of emotion and laterality in cerebral neural processing of respiratory sensation.