Responses to External Emotions or their Transitions at Central to Peripheral Nervous System Levels: A Methodological Contribution to Mental Health

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-152
Author(s):  
Bingren Zhang ◽  
Chu Wang ◽  
Chanchan Shen ◽  
Wei Wang

Background: Responses to external emotional-stimuli or their transitions might help to elucidate the scientific background and assist the clinical management of psychiatric problems, but pure emotional-materials and their utilization at different levels of neurophysiological processing are few. Objective: We aimed to describe the responses at central and peripheral levels in healthy volunteers and psychiatric patients when facing external emotions and their transitions. Methods: Using pictures and sounds with pure emotions of Disgust, Erotica, Fear, Happiness, Neutral, and Sadness or their transitions as stimuli, we have developed a series of non-invasive techniques, i.e., the event-related potentials, functional magnetic resonance imaging, excitatory and inhibitory brainstem reflexes, and polygraph, to assess different levels of neurophysiological responses in different populations. Results: Sample outcomes on various conditions were specific and distinguishable at cortical to peripheral levels in bipolar I and II disorder patients compared to healthy volunteers. Conclusions: Methodologically, designs with these pure emotions and their transitions are applicable, and results per se are specifically interpretable in patients with emotion-related problems.

2002 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 285-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verner J. Knott ◽  
Colleen Mahoney ◽  
Tove Gunnarsson ◽  
Jacques Bradwejn ◽  
Jakov Shlik

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (8) ◽  
pp. 1135-1148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annett Schirmer ◽  
Sonja A. Kotz

The present study investigated the interaction of emotional prosody and word valence during emotional comprehension in men and women. In a prosody-word interference task, participants listened to positive, neutral, and negative words that were spoken with a happy, neutral, and angry prosody. Participants were asked to rate word valence while ignoring emotional prosody, or vice versa. Congruent stimuli were responded faster and more accurately as compared to incongruent emotional stimuli. This behavioral effect was more salient for the word valence task than for the prosodic task and was comparable between men and women. The event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed a smaller N400 amplitude for congruent as compared to emotionally incongruent stimuli. This ERP effect, however, was significant only for the word valence judgment and only for female listeners. The present data suggest that the word valence judgment was more difficult and more easily influenced by task-irrelevant emotional information than the prosodic task in both men and women. Furthermore, although emotional prosody and word valence may have a similar influence on an emotional judgment in both sexes, ERPs indicate sex differences in the underlying processing. Women, but not men, show an interaction between prosody and word valence during a semantic processing stage.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenglong Cao ◽  
Jian Song ◽  
Binbin Liu ◽  
Jianren Yue ◽  
Yuzhao Lu ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Cognitive impairments have been reported in patients with pituitary adenoma; however, there is a lack of knowledge of investigating the emotional stimuli processing in pituitary patients. Thus, we aimed to investigate whether there is emotional processing dysfunction in pituitary patients by recording and analyzing the late positive potential (LPP) elicited by affective stimuli.Methods: Evaluation of emotional stimuli processing by LPP Event related potentials (ERPs) was carried out through central- parietal electrode sites (C3, Cz, C4, P3, Pz, P4) on the head of the patients and healthy controls (HCs).Results: In the negative stimuli, the amplitude of LPP was 2.435 ± 0.419μV for HCs and 0.656 ± 0.427μV for patient group respectively ( p = 0.005). In the positive stimuli, the elicited electric potential 1.450 ± 0.316μV for HCs and 0.495 ± 0.322μV for patient group respectively ( p = 0.040). Moreover, the most obvious difference of LPP amplitude between the two groups existed in the right parietal region. On the right hemisphere (at the P4 site), the elicited electric potential was 1.993 ± 0.299μV for HCs and 0.269 ± 0.305μV for patient group respectively( p = 0.001).Conclusion: There are functional dysfunction of emotional stimuli processing in pituitary adenoma patients. Our research provides the electrophysiological evidence for the presence of cognitive dysfunction which need to be intervened in the pituitary adenoma patients.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 254-278
Author(s):  
Lisa V. Eberhardt ◽  
Ferdinand Pittino ◽  
Anna Scheins ◽  
Anke Huckauf ◽  
Markus Kiefer ◽  
...  

Abstract Emotional stimuli like emotional faces have been frequently shown to be temporally overestimated compared to neutral ones. This effect has been commonly explained by induced arousal caused by emotional processing leading to the acceleration of an inner-clock-like pacemaker. However, there are some studies reporting contradictory effects and others point to relevant moderating variables. Given this controversy, we aimed at investigating the processes underlying the temporal overestimation of emotional faces by combining behavioral and electrophysiological correlates in a temporal bisection task. We assessed duration estimation of angry and neutral faces using anchor durations of 400 ms and 1600 ms while recording event-related potentials. Subjective ratings and the early posterior negativity confirmed encoding and processing of stimuli’s emotionality. However, temporal ratings did not differ between angry and neutral faces. In line with this behavioral result, the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV), an electrophysiological index of temporal accumulation, was not modulated by the faces’ emotionality. Duration estimates, i.e., short or long responses toward stimuli of ambiguous durations of 1000 ms, were nevertheless associated with a differential CNV amplitude. Interestingly, CNV modulation was already observed at 600–700 ms after stimulus onset, i.e., long before stimulus offset. The results are discussed in light of the information-processing model of time perception as well as regarding possible factors of the experimental setup moderating temporal overestimation of emotional stimuli. In sum, combining behavioral and electrophysiological measures seems promising to more clearly understand the complex processes leading to the illusion of temporal lengthening of emotional faces.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minju Kim ◽  
Jongsu Kim ◽  
Dojin Heo ◽  
Yunjoo Choi ◽  
Taejun Lee ◽  
...  

Using P300-based brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) in daily life should take into account the user’s emotional state because various emotional conditions are likely to influence event-related potentials (ERPs) and consequently the performance of P300-based BCIs. This study aimed at investigating whether external emotional stimuli affect the performance of a P300-based BCI, particularly built for controlling home appliances. We presented a set of emotional auditory stimuli to subjects, which had been selected for each subject based on individual valence scores evaluated a priori, while they were controlling an electric light device using a P300-based BCI. There were four conditions regarding the auditory stimuli, including high valence, low valence, noise, and no sound. As a result, subjects controlled the electric light device using the BCI in real time with a mean accuracy of 88.14%. The overall accuracy and P300 features over most EEG channels did not show a significant difference between the four auditory conditions (p > 0.05). When we measured emotional states using frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) and compared FAA across the auditory conditions, we also found no significant difference (p > 0.05). Our results suggest that there is no clear evidence to support a hypothesis that external emotional stimuli influence the P300-based BCI performance or the P300 features while people are controlling devices using the BCI in real time. This study may provide useful information for those who are concerned with the implementation of a P300-based BCI in practice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 200851
Author(s):  
L. Magyari ◽  
Zs. Huszár ◽  
A. Turzó ◽  
A. Andics

While dogs have remarkable abilities for social cognition and communication, the number of words they learn to recognize typically remains very low. The reason for this limited capacity is still unclear. We hypothesized that despite their human-like auditory abilities for analysing speech sounds, their word processing capacities might be less ready to access phonetic details. To test this, we developed procedures for non-invasive measurement of event-related potentials (ERPs) for language stimuli in awake dogs ( n = 17). Dogs listened to familiar instruction words and phonetically similar and dissimilar nonsense words. We compared two different artefact cleaning procedures on the same data; they led to similar results. An early (200–300 ms; only after one of the cleaning procedures) and a late (650–800 ms; after both cleaning procedures) difference was present in the ERPs for known versus phonetically dissimilar nonsense words. There were no differences between the ERPs for known versus phonetically similar nonsense words. ERPs of dogs who heard the instructions more often also showed larger differences between instructions and dissimilar nonsense words. The study revealed not only dogs' sensitivity to known words, but also their limited capacity to access phonetic details. Future work should confirm the reported ERP correlates of word processing abilities in dogs.


2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Burnette ◽  
Alana Campbell ◽  
Barbara Banz ◽  
Sam Tregillus ◽  
Deana Davalos

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