Different influences of moral violation with and without physical impurity on face processing: An event-related potentials study

It has been widely accepted that moral violations that involve impurity (such as spitting in public) induce the emotion of disgust, but there has been a debate about whether moral violations that do not involve impurity (such as swearing in public) also induce the same emotion. The answer to this question may have implication for understanding where morality comes from and how people make moral judgments. This study aimed to compared the neural mechanisms underlying two kinds of moral violation by using an affective priming task to test the effect of sentences depicting moral violation behaviors with and without physical impurity on subsequent detection of disgusted faces in a visual search task. After reading each sentence, participants completed the face search task. Behavioral and electrophysiological (event-related potential, or ERP) indices of affective priming (P2, N400, LPP) and attention allocation (N2pc) were analyzed. Results of behavioral data and ERP data showed that moral violations both with and without impurity promoted the detection of disgusted faces (RT, N2pc); moral violations without impurity impeded the detection of neutral faces (N400). No priming effect was found on P2 and LPP. The results suggest both types of moral violation influenced the processing of disgusted faces and neutral faces, but the neural activity with temporal characteristics was different.

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Pupil Dilation and the Slow Wave ERP Reflect Surprise about Choice Outcome Resulting from Intrinsic Variability in Decision Confidence

Cerebral Cortex ◽

10.1093/cercor/bhab032 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jan Willem de Gee ◽

Camile M C Correa ◽

Matthew Weaver ◽

Tobias H Donner ◽

Simon van Gaal

Keyword(s):

Slow Wave ◽

Animal Cognition ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Decision Task ◽

Intrinsic Variability ◽

Wave Event ◽

The Face ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Physiological Markers

Abstract Central to human and animal cognition is the ability to learn from feedback in order to optimize future rewards. Such a learning signal might be encoded and broadcasted by the brain’s arousal systems, including the noradrenergic locus coeruleus. Pupil responses and the positive slow wave component of event-related potentials reflect rapid changes in the arousal level of the brain. Here, we ask whether and how these variables may reflect surprise: the mismatch between one’s expectation about being correct and the outcome of a decision, when expectations fluctuate due to internal factors (e.g., engagement). We show that during an elementary decision task in the face of uncertainty both physiological markers of phasic arousal reflect surprise. We further show that pupil responses and slow wave event-related potential are unrelated to each other and that prediction error computations depend on feedback awareness. These results further advance our understanding of the role of central arousal systems in decision-making under uncertainty.

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Neural dynamics of trainee teachers' emotional conflict processing: An event-related potential study

Social Behavior and Personality An International Journal ◽

10.2224/sbp.8473 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 47 (7) ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

Li Jin ◽

Xu Li ◽

Jiamei Lu ◽

Nianqu Chen ◽

Lin Cheng ◽

...

Keyword(s):

School Context ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

The Body ◽

Educational Context ◽

Congruent Condition ◽

Slow Potential ◽

Emotional Conflict ◽

Trainee Teachers ◽

Related Potentials

We investigated emotional conflict in an educational context with an emotional body–word Stroop paradigm, examining whether the N450 (a late fronto-central phasic negative event-related potential signature) and slow potential (SP) effects could be evoked in trainee teachers. The N450 effect is characterized by topography and negative polarity of an incongruent minus congruent difference potential, and the SP effect has positive polarity (incongruent minus congruent difference potential). Positive and negative body language examples were obtained from pupils in an actual school context, and emotional words were selected. Compound stimuli were presented, each comprising a congruent or incongruent word displayed across a body image. Event-related potentials were recorded while participants judged body expression valence. Reaction times were longer and accuracies were lower for the incongruent compared to the congruent condition. The N450 component amplitude in the incongruent condition was more negative than in the congruent condition. Results showed a behavioral interference effect and an N450 effect for trainee teachers in this context, thus indicating that the body–word task was efficient in assessing emotional conflict in an educational context, and trainee teachers' perception of body expressions of students could be influenced by emotional signals. The findings further the understanding of emotional conflict in an educational context.

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Eliciting and Recording Event Related Potentials (ERPs) in Behaviourally Unresponsive Populations: A Retrospective Commentary on Critical Factors

Brain Sciences ◽

10.3390/brainsci11070835 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (7) ◽

pp. 835

Author(s):

Alexander Rokos ◽

Richard Mah ◽

Rober Boshra ◽

Amabilis Harrison ◽

Tsee Leng Choy ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Event Related Potentials ◽

Stimulus Presentation ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Critical Factors ◽

Healthy Elderly ◽

States Of Consciousness ◽

Long Latency ◽

Eeg Data ◽

Related Potentials ◽

The Relationship

A consistent limitation when designing event-related potential paradigms and interpreting results is a lack of consideration of the multivariate factors that affect their elicitation and detection in behaviorally unresponsive individuals. This paper provides a retrospective commentary on three factors that influence the presence and morphology of long-latency event-related potentials—the P3b and N400. We analyze event-related potentials derived from electroencephalographic (EEG) data collected from small groups of healthy youth and healthy elderly to illustrate the effect of paradigm strength and subject age; we analyze ERPs collected from an individual with severe traumatic brain injury to illustrate the effect of stimulus presentation speed. Based on these critical factors, we support that: (1) the strongest paradigms should be used to elicit event-related potentials in unresponsive populations; (2) interpretation of event-related potential results should account for participant age; and (3) speed of stimulus presentation should be slower in unresponsive individuals. The application of these practices when eliciting and recording event-related potentials in unresponsive individuals will help to minimize result interpretation ambiguity, increase confidence in conclusions, and advance the understanding of the relationship between long-latency event-related potentials and states of consciousness.

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Charged With a Crime: The Neuronal Signature of Processing Negatively Evaluated Faces Under Different Attentional Conditions

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797621996667 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 095679762199666

Author(s):

Sebastian Schindler ◽

Maximilian Bruchmann ◽

Claudia Krasowski ◽

Robert Moeck ◽

Thomas Straube

Keyword(s):

Event Related Potentials ◽

Emotional Information ◽

Early Posterior Negativity ◽

Information Studies ◽

The Face ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Feature Based ◽

Human Faces ◽

Emotional Knowledge ◽

Late Stages

Our brains rapidly respond to human faces and can differentiate between many identities, retrieving rich semantic emotional-knowledge information. Studies provide a mixed picture of how such information affects event-related potentials (ERPs). We systematically examined the effect of feature-based attention on ERP modulations to briefly presented faces of individuals associated with a crime. The tasks required participants ( N = 40 adults) to discriminate the orientation of lines overlaid onto the face, the age of the face, or emotional information associated with the face. Negative faces amplified the N170 ERP component during all tasks, whereas the early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) components were increased only when the emotional information was attended to. These findings suggest that during early configural analyses (N170), evaluative information potentiates face processing regardless of feature-based attention. During intermediate, only partially resource-dependent, processing stages (EPN) and late stages of elaborate stimulus processing (LPP), attention to the acquired emotional information is necessary for amplified processing of negatively evaluated faces.

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Automaticity of Early Sexual Attention: An Event-Related Potential Study

Sexual Abuse ◽

10.1177/10790632211024241 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 107906322110242

Author(s):

Anastasios Ziogas ◽

Benedikt Habermeyer ◽

Wolfram Kawohl ◽

Elmar Habermeyer ◽

Andreas Mokros

Keyword(s):

Sexual Orientation ◽

Sexual Interest ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Forensic Assessment ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Behavioral Measures ◽

Sexual Preferences ◽

Motor Responses ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Promising Line

A promising line of research on forensic assessment of paraphilic sexual interest focuses on behavioral measures of visual attention using sexual stimuli as distractors. The present study combined event-related potentials (ERPs) with behavioral measures to investigate whether detection of a hidden sexual preference can be improved with ERPs. Normal variants of sexual orientation were used for a proof-of-concept investigation. Accordingly, 40 heterosexual and 40 gay men participated in the study. Within each group, half of the participants were instructed to hide their sexual orientation. The results showed that a match between sexual orientation and stimulus delays responses and influences ERP before motor responses. Late ERP components showed higher potential in differentiating hidden sexual preferences than motor responses, thereby showing how ERPs can be used in combination with reaction time measures to potentially facilitate the detection of hidden sexual preferences.

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Phonetic Encoding Contributes to the Processing of Linguistic Prosody at the Word Level: Cross-Linguistic Evidence From Event-Related Potentials

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2021_jslhr-21-00037 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-11

Author(s):

Luodi Yu ◽

Jiajing Zeng ◽

Suiping Wang ◽

Yang Zhang

Keyword(s):

Auditory Processing ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Acoustic Cues ◽

Prosodic Features ◽

Speech Stimuli ◽

Word Level ◽

Acoustic Control ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Prosodic Phonology

Purpose This study aimed to examine whether abstract knowledge of word-level linguistic prosody is independent of or integrated with phonetic knowledge. Method Event-related potential (ERP) responses were measured from 18 adult listeners while they listened to native and nonnative word-level prosody in speech and in nonspeech. The prosodic phonology (speech) conditions included disyllabic pseudowords spoken in Chinese and in English matched for syllabic structure, duration, and intensity. The prosodic acoustic (nonspeech) conditions were hummed versions of the speech stimuli, which eliminated the phonetic content while preserving the acoustic prosodic features. Results We observed language-specific effects on the ERP that native stimuli elicited larger late negative response (LNR) amplitude than nonnative stimuli in the prosodic phonology conditions. However, no such effect was observed in the phoneme-free prosodic acoustic control conditions. Conclusions The results support the integration view that word-level linguistic prosody likely relies on the phonetic content where the acoustic cues embedded in. It remains to be examined whether the LNR may serve as a neural signature for language-specific processing of prosodic phonology beyond auditory processing of the critical acoustic cues at the suprasyllabic level.

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The Role of Leadership Level in College Students’ Decision-Making: Evidence From Event-Related Potential Analysis

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.637323 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Yuwei Yang ◽

Shunshun Du ◽

Hui He ◽

Chengming Wang ◽

Xueke Shan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

College Students ◽

Decision Making ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Economic Decision Making ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Leadership Group ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Acceptance Rates ◽

Economic Transaction

Although risk decision-making plays an important role in leadership practice, the distinction in behavior between humans with differing levels of leadership, as well as the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms involved, remain unclear. In this study, the Ultimatum Game (UG) was utilized in concert with electroencephalograms (EEG) to investigate the temporal course of cognitive and emotional processes involved in economic decision-making between high and low leadership level college students. Behavioral results from this study found that the acceptance rates in an economic transaction, when the partner was a computer under unfair/sub unfair condition, were significantly higher than in transactions with real human partners for the low leadership group, while there was no significant difference in acceptance rates for the high leadership group. Results from Event-Related Potentials (ERP) analysis further indicated that there was a larger P3 amplitude in the low leadership group than in the high leadership group. We concluded that the difference between high and low leadership groups was at least partly due to their different emotional management abilities.

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ERP CORE: An Open Resource for Human Event-Related Potential Research

10.31234/osf.io/4azqm ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Emily S. Kappenman ◽

Jaclyn Farrens ◽

Wendy Zhang ◽

Andrew X Stewart ◽

Steven J Luck

Keyword(s):

Data Processing ◽

Brain Activity ◽

A Priori ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Error Related Negativity ◽

Wide Range ◽

Experiment Control ◽

Related Potentials

Event-related potentials (ERPs) are noninvasive measures of human brain activity that index a range of sensory, cognitive, affective, and motor processes. Despite their broad application across basic and clinical research, there is little standardization of ERP paradigms and analysis protocols across studies. To address this, we created ERP CORE (Compendium of Open Resources and Experiments), a set of optimized paradigms, experiment control scripts, data processing pipelines, and sample data (N = 40 neurotypical young adults) for seven widely used ERP components: N170, mismatch negativity (MMN), N2pc, N400, P3, lateralized readiness potential (LRP), and error-related negativity (ERN). This resource makes it possible for researchers to 1) employ standardized ERP paradigms in their research, 2) apply carefully designed analysis pipelines and use a priori selected parameters for data processing, 3) rigorously assess the quality of their data, and 4) test new analytic techniques with standardized data from a wide range of paradigms.

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The Relationship Between Childhood Emotional Abuse and Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions in Healthy Young Men: Event-Related Potential and Behavioral Evidence

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.686529 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Yutong Liu ◽

Huini Peng ◽

Jianhui Wu ◽

Hongxia Duan

Keyword(s):

Facial Expressions ◽

Childhood Maltreatment ◽

Emotional Abuse ◽

Young Men ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Emotional Facial Expressions ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Childhood Emotional Abuse ◽

The Relationship

Background: Individuals exposed to childhood maltreatment present with a deficiency in emotional processing in later life. Most studies have focused mainly on childhood physical or sexual abuse; however, childhood emotional abuse, a core issue underlying different forms of childhood maltreatment, has received relatively little attention. The current study explored whether childhood emotional abuse is related to the impaired processing of emotional facial expressions in healthy young men.Methods: The emotional facial processing was investigated in a classical gender discrimination task while the event-related potentials (ERPs) data were collected. Childhood emotional abuse was assessed by a Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) among 60 healthy young men. The relationship between the score of emotional abuse and the behavioral and the ERP index of emotional facial expression (angry, disgust, and happy) were explored.Results: Participants with a higher score of childhood emotional abuse responded faster on the behavioral level and had a smaller P2 amplitude on the neural level when processing disgust faces compared to neutral faces.Discussion: Individuals with a higher level of childhood emotional abuse may quickly identify negative faces with less cognitive resources consumed, suggesting altered processing of emotional facial expressions in young men with a higher level of childhood emotional abuse.

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Embodiment of sleep-related words: evidence from event-related potentials

10.1101/2020.12.23.424194 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Mareike J. Hülsemann ◽

Björn Rasch

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Processing ◽

Word Processing ◽

Body Position ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

The Body ◽

Semantic Meaning ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Multimodal Networks ◽

Lying Down

AbstractOur thoughts, plans and intentions can influence physiological sleep, but the underlying mechanisms are unknown. According to the theoretical framework of “embodied cognition”, the semantic content of cognitive processes is represented by multimodal networks in the brain which also include body-related functions. Such multimodal representation could offer a mechanism which explains mutual influences between cognition and sleep. In the current study we tested whether sleep-related words are represented in multimodal networks by examining the effect of congruent vs. incongruent body positions on word processing during wakefulness.We experimentally manipulated the body position of 66 subjects (50 females, 16 males, 19-40 years old) between standing upright and lying down. Sleep- and activity-related words were presented around the individual speech recognition threshold to increase task difficulty. Our results show that word processing is facilitated in congruent body positions (sleep words: lying down and activity words: standing upright) compared with incongruent body positions, as indicated by a reduced N400 of the event-related potential (ERP) in the congruent condition with the lowest volume. In addition, early sensory components of the ERP (N180 and P280) were enhanced, suggesting that words were also acoustically better understood when the body position was congruent with the semantic meaning of the word. However, the difference in ERPs did not translate to differences on a behavioural level.Our results support the prediction of embodied processing of sleep- and activity-related words. Body position potentially induces a pre-activation of multimodal networks, thereby enhancing the access to the semantic concepts of words related to current the body position. The mutual link between semantic meaning and body-related function could be a key element in explaining influences of cognitive processing on sleep.

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