scholarly journals Symposium Title: Affective Computing and Affective Neuroscience

2021 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. S53
Author(s):  
Jing Jin
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Charles ◽  
Caio De Castro Martins ◽  
Marc Cavazza

Prefrontal cortex (PFC) asymmetry is an important marker in affective neuroscience and has attracted significant interest, having been associated with studies of motivation, eating behavior, empathy, risk propensity, and clinical depression. The data presented in this paper are the result of three different experiments using PFC asymmetry neurofeedback (NF) as a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) paradigm, rather than a therapeutic mechanism aiming at long-term effects, using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) which is known to be particularly well-suited to the study of PFC asymmetry and is less sensitive to artifacts. From an experimental perspective the BCI context brings more emphasis on individual subjects' baselines, successful and sustained activation during epochs, and minimal training. The subject pool is also drawn from the general population, with less bias toward specific behavioral patterns, and no inclusion of any patient data. We accompany our datasets with a detailed description of data formats, experiment and protocol designs, as well as analysis of the individualized metrics for definitions of success scores based on baseline thresholds as well as reference tasks. The work presented in this paper is the result of several experiments in the domain of BCI where participants are interacting with continuous visual feedback following a real-time NF paradigm, arising from our long-standing research in the field of affective computing. We offer the community access to our fNIRS datasets from these experiments. We specifically provide data drawn from our empirical studies in the field of affective interactions with computer-generated narratives as well as interfacing with algorithms, such as heuristic search, which all provide a mechanism to improve the ability of the participants to engage in active BCI due to their realistic visual feedback. Beyond providing details of the methodologies used where participants received real-time NF of left-asymmetric increase in activation in their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), we re-establish the need for carefully designing protocols to ensure the benefits of NF paradigm in BCI are enhanced by the ability of the real-time visual feedback to adapt to the individual responses of the participants. Individualized feedback is paramount to the success of NF in BCIs.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Burns ◽  
Matthew D. Lieberman

Social and affective neuroscience studies the neurophysiological underpinnings of psychological experience and behavior as it relates to the world around us. Yet, most neuroimaging methods require the removal of participants from their rich environment and the restriction of meaningful interaction with stimuli. In this Tools of the Trade article, we explain functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a neuroimaging method that can address these concerns. First, we provide an overview of how fNIRS works and how it compares to other neuroimaging methods common in social and affective neuroscience. Next, we describe fNIRS research that highlights its usefulness to the field – when rich stimuli engagement or environment embedding is needed, studies of social interaction, and examples of how it can help the field become more diverse and generalizable across participant populations. Lastly, this article describes how to use fNIRS for neuroimaging research with points of advice that are particularly relevant to social and affective neuroscience studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Marengo ◽  
Kenneth L. Davis ◽  
Gökçe Özkarar Gradwohl ◽  
Christian Montag

AbstractThe Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) were constructed as a self-report assessment to measure individual differences in Jaak Panksepp’s cross-species primary emotional systems: SEEKING, PLAY, CARE (positive emotions) and FEAR, SADNESS, ANGER (negative emotions). Beginning with the first published work on the ANPS in 2003, individual differences on the ANPS measures of these six primary emotional systems have been consistently linked to Big Five personality traits. From a theoretical perspective, these primary emotional systems arising from subcortical regions, shed light on the nature of the Big Five personality traits from an evolutionary perspective, because each of these primary emotional systems represent a tool for survival endowing mammalian species with inherited behavioral programs to react appropriately to complex environments. The present work revisited 21 available samples where both ANPS and Big Five measures have been administered. Our meta-analytical analysis provides solid evidence that high SEEKING relates to high Openness to Experience, high PLAY to high Extraversion, high CARE/low ANGER to high Agreeableness and high FEAR/SADNESS/ANGER to high Neuroticism. This seems to be true regardless of the ANPS inventory chosen, although much more work is needed in this area. Associations between primary emotional systems and Conscientiousness were in the lower effect size area across all six primary emotions, thereby supporting the idea that Conscientiousness rather seems to be less directly related with the subcortical primary emotions and likely is the most cognitive/cortical personality construct out of the Big Five. In sum, the present work underlines the idea that individual differences in primary emotional systems represent evolutionarily ancient foundations of human personality, given their a) meaningful links to the prominent Big Five model and b) their origins lying in subcortical areas of the human brain.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Sanwald ◽  
◽  
Katharina Widenhorn-Müller ◽  
Carlos Schönfeldt-Lecuona ◽  
Christian Montag ◽  
...  

Abstract Background An early onset of depression is associated with higher chronicity and disability, more stressful life events (SLEs), higher negative emotionality as described by the primary emotion SADNESS and more severe depressive symptomatology compared to depression onset later in life. Additionally, methylation of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) is associated with SLEs and depressive symptoms. Methods We investigated the relation of SLEs, SLC6A4 methylation in peripheral blood, the primary emotions SADNESS and SEEKING (measured by the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales) as well as depressive symptom severity to age at depression onset in a sample of N = 146 inpatients suffering from major depression. Results Depressed women showed higher SADNESS (t (91.05) = − 3.17, p = 0.028, d = − 0.57) and higher SLC6A4 methylation (t (88.79) = − 2.95, p = 0.02, d = − 0.55) compared to men. There were associations between SLEs, primary emotions and depression severity, which partly differed between women and men. The Akaike information criterion (AIC) indicated the selection of a model including sex, SLEs, SEEKING and SADNESS for the prediction of age at depression onset. SLC6A4 methylation was not related to depression severity, age at depression onset or SLEs in the entire group, but positively related to depression severity in women. Conclusions Taken together, we provide further evidence that age at depression onset is associated with SLEs, personality and depression severity. However, we found no associations between age at onset and SLC6A4 methylation. The joint investigation of variables originating in biology, psychology and psychiatry could make an important contribution to understanding the development of depressive disorders by elucidating potential subtypes of depression.


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