Visual function and psychological variables in alcohol dependency syndrome

INTRODUCTION

Alcohol Dependence Syndrome (ADS) is defined as excessive alcohol consumption accompanied by psychological, physical, social, and economic disorders. Alcohol consumption affects motor and proprioceptive functions, decreasing motor and cognitive functions and causing attention deficits. We aim to evaluate visual function and attention, and psychological profiles in consumer and abstainer ADS patients.

METHODS

This quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional and correlational study evaluates visual function in a sample of ADS patients. The Portuguese version of the Brief Symptom Inventory was used to assess patients' psychological status. The orthoptic examination protocol for visual function consisted of 11 standardized tests: VA for distance and near, ocular movements, near convergence and accommodation point, cover and prismatic cover tests, fusional vergence for distance and near, near stereoacuity, chromatic vision, contrast sensitivity and visual attention.

RESULTS

The sample included 176 patients. 121 were consumers and 55 were abstainers, aged between 31 and 72. The most affected parameters of visual function were visual acuity (80.39%), contrast sensitivity (67.50%), convergence at distance (66.44%) and near stereopsis (62.75%). Visual function was impacted in both groups. Regarding psychological status, consumers had higher averages for the Depression subscale, followed by Paranoid Ideation and Obsession. Abstainers had the highest averages in the Obsession subscale, followed by Paranoid Ideation and Depression. Statistically significant differences existed between the groups in the subscales for depression (p=.046) and paranoid ideation (p =.042).

CONCLUSION

Changes in visual function and attention, as well as psychopathological function, should be considered in the rehabilitation of ADS patients.

White Matter Microstructural Properties Associated with Impaired Attention in Chronic Schizophrenia: A Multi-Center Study

Attention as a key cognitive function is impaired in schizophrenia, interfering with the normal daily life of the patients. Previous studies on the microstructural correlates of attention in schizophrenia were limited to single fibers, did not include a control group, or did not adjust for drug dosage. In the current study, we investigated the association between microstructural properties of the white matter fibers and attention tests in 81 patients and 79 healthy controls from the Mind Clinical Imaging Consortium database. Integrity measures of superior longitudinal fasciculus, cingulum, genu, and splenium were extracted after tractography. Using an interaction model between diagnosis and microstructural properties, and adjusting for age, gender, acquisition site, education, and cumulative drug usage dose, and after correcting for family-wise error, we showed decreased integrity in the patients and a significant negative association between fractional anisotropy of the tracts and trail making test part A with a greater expected decrease in the attention per unit of decrease of integrity in the patients compared to the healthy controls. Our findings suggest that decreased integrity of the bilateral cingulum, and splenium, are independent of the cumulative drug dosage, age, gender, and site, and may underlie the impaired attention in the schizophrenia.

Quantifying the Attentional Impact of Working Memory Matching Targets and Distractors

Various theoretical proposals have been put forward to explain how memory representations control attention during visual search. In this study, we use the first saccade on each trial as away to quantify the attentional impact of multiple types of representations held in working memory. Across two experiments, we found that a search target maintained in working memory was attended over 20 times more frequently than a non-memory-matching distractor. In addition, an item matching an additional object represented in working memory was attended 2 times more frequently than a non-memory matching distractor. These findings show that there is a measurable attentional impact of items maintained in working memory for a future task, however, such representations have a much weaker attentional impact than working memory representations of search targets.

Learned feature variance is encoded in the target template and drives visual search

Real world visual search targets are frequently imperfect perceptual matches to our internal target templates. For example, the same friend on different occasions is likely to wear different clothes, hairstyles, and accessories, but some of these may be more likely to vary than others. The ability to deal with template-to-target variability is important to visual search in natural environments, but we know relatively little about how feature variability is handled by the attentional system. In these studies, we test the hypothesis that top-down attentional biases are sensitive to the variance of target feature dimensions over time and prioritize information from less-variable dimensions. On each trial, subjects were shown a target cue composed of colored dots moving in a specific direction followed by a working memory probe (30%) or visual search display (70%). Critically, the target features in the visual search display differed from the cue, with one feature drawn from a distribution narrowly centered over the cued feature (low-variance dimension), and the other sampled from a broader distribution (high-variance dimension). The results demonstrate that subjects used knowledge of the likely cue-to-target variance to set template precision and bias attentional selection. Moreover, an individual's working memory precision for each feature predicted search performance. Our results suggest that observers are sensitive to the variance of feature dimensions within a target and use this information to weight mechanisms of attentional selection.

Attention and Information Acquisition: Comparison of Mouse-Click with Eye-Movement Attention Tracking

Attention is crucial as a fundamental prerequisite for perception. The measurement of attention in viewing and recognizing the images that surround us constitutes an important part of eye movement research, particularly in advertising-effectiveness research. Recording eye and gaze (i.e. eye and head) movements is considered the standard procedure for measuring attention. However, alternative measurement methods have been developed in recent years, one of which is mouse-click attention tracking (mcAT) by means of an on-line based procedure that measures gaze motion via a mouse-click (i.e. a hand and finger positioning maneuver) on a computer screen. Here we compared the validity of mcAT with eye movement attention tracking (emAT). We recorded data in a between subject design via emAT and mcAT and analyzed and compared 20 subjects for correlations. The test stimuli consisted of 64 images that were assigned to eight categories. Our main results demonstrated a highly significant correlation (p < 0.001) between mcAT and emAT data. We also found significant differences in correlations between different image categories. For simply structured pictures of humans or animals in particular, mcAT provided highly valid and more consistent results compared to emAT. We concluded that mcAT is a suitable method for measuring the attention we give to the images that surround us, such as photographs, graphics, art or digital and print advertisements.

Pupil Mimicry is the Result of Brightness Perception of the Iris and Pupil

Recent scientific investigations suggest that people automatically mimic each other’s pupil sizes during interaction. However, instead of being a social mimicry effect, it could also be the result of brightness perception. When observers look at individuals with dilated pupils, little of the brighter iris is visible, leading to the perception of a relatively low-illuminated eye region. In the current study we tested whether pupil mimicry remains present when pupils and irises are equalized for luminance values across pupil sizes. We tested several stimulus sets, including faces with static pupils that varied in size across images and dynamic pupils that changed in size over time in videos. Results showed that for traditional, not-luminance-equalized videos, participants’ pupil sizes adapted to the observed pupils, showing a pattern that is roughly in line with pupil mimicry. However, no such pupil response in line with mimicry was seen for static images (regardless of whether they were equalized for luminance) nor for luminance-equalized videos. These findings suggest that only salient, dynamic stimuli attract enough attention to the luminance in the eye region to evoke a pupillary response. However, although such responses suggest pupil mimicry, the underlying factor is the change in brightness within the eye as a function of pupil size rather than social mimicry.

Androgen Deprivation Alters Attention to Sexually Provocative Visual Stimuli in Elderly Men

INTRODUCTION

Testosterone is known to regulate male sexual interest, but the exact way that androgens influence men's sexual cognition remains unclear.

AIM

To investigate the influence of androgen deprivation (AD) on visual responses to sexually suggestive stimuli in men treated for prostate cancer with AD therapy.

METHODS

Patients with AD-treated prostate cancer, patients with prostate cancer not on AD therapy, and age-matched healthy control participants were exposed to images of male and female runway models fully or minimally clothed. Eye tracking was used to compare looking behavior among groups.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Proportion of fixations on fully clothed vs minimally clothed models and proportion of fixations on target areas of interest (ie, legs, chest, pelvis, and face) of fully clothed and minimally clothed models were analyzed and compared among groups.

RESULTS

Although men not on AD exhibited a larger proportion of fixations on the minimally clothed compared with the fully clothed images, there was no difference between the 2 image types for men on AD. This was true regardless of whether the images depicted male or female models. Groups did not differ in their fixations to target areas of interest.

CONCLUSION

These results suggest that testosterone can influence men's visual attention to sexual stimuli; specifically, AD can attenuate the time spent fixated on sexualized targets. Palmer-Hague JL, Tsang V, Skead C, et al. Androgen Deprivation Alters Attention to Sexually Provocative Visual Stimuli in Elderly Men. Sex Med 2017;5:e245-e254.

The Pavlovian craver: Neural and experiential correlates of single trial naturalistic food conditioning in humans

Present-day environments are replete with tempting foods and the current obesity pandemic speaks to humans' inability to adjust to this. Pavlovian processes may be fundamental to such hedonic overeating. However, a lack of naturalistic Pavlovian paradigms in humans makes translational research difficult and important parameters such as implicitness and acquisition speed are unknown. Here we present a novel naturalistic conditioning task: an image of a neutral object was conditioned to marzipan taste in a single trial procedure by asking the participant to eat the 'object' (made from marzipan). Relative to control objects, results demonstrate robust pre- to post-conditioning changes of both subjective ratings and early as well as late event related brain potentials, suggesting contributions of implicit (attentional) and explicit (motivational) processes. Naturalistic single-trial taste-appetitive conditioning is potent in humans and shapes attentional and motivational neural processes that might challenge self-regulation during exposure to tempting foods. Thus, appetitive conditioning processes might contribute to overweight and obesity.