Reappraisal-related downregulation of amygdala BOLD activation occurs only during the late trial window

During cognitive reappraisal, an individual reinterprets the meaning of an emotional stimulus to regulate the intensity of their emotional response. Prefrontal cortex activity has been found to support reappraisal and is putatively thought to downregulate the amygdala response to these stimuli. The timing of these regulation-related responses during the course of a trial, however, remains poorly understood. In the current fMRI study, participants were instructed to view or reappraise negative images and then rate how negative they felt following each image. The hemodynamic response function was estimated in 11 regions of interest for the entire time course of the trial including image viewing and rating. Notably, within the amygdala there was no evidence of downregulation in the early (picture viewing) window of the trial, only in the late (rating) window, which also correlated with a behavioral measure of reappraisal success. With respect to the prefrontal regions, some (e.g., inferior frontal gyrus) showed reappraisal-related activation in the early window, whereas others (e.g., middle frontal gyrus) showed increased activation primarily in the late window. These results highlight the temporal dynamics of different brain regions during emotion regulation and suggest that the amygdala response to negative images need not be immediately dampened to achieve successful cognitive reappraisal.

War yesterday and today: The image of Russia in British media discourse

The paper focuses on diachronic framing analysis of Russias images in British media discourse. The importance of the research is determined by a need to work out adequate linguistic foundations to counteract information war, generated by some foreign media and aimed at distorting Russias history and eroding its spiritual values. Few scholars have drawn on any systematic research into analysis of Russias images in foreign media discourses of different historical spans. The major objective is to compare Russias images and their emotional charge in the British media in chronologically divided periods of war and peace under the influence of changing historical and ideological factors. The authors account for the mechanisms by which Russias images are framed and transformed in the contexts of the largest war of the XX century and the information war of the XXI century. The material comprises 500 samples per period. The data covering two historical spans are investigated through a framing approach. The criteria for diachronic analysis are dominant diagnostic and prognostic frames, constituting the macroframe WAR. The significant difference in Russias images in war- and peacetime consists in their emotive load: Russias contemporary negative images are contrasted to positive images activated in the retrospective period. The findings support the idea that British media discourse focusing on Russia is subject-centered: Russias image is determined by the geopolitical situation, Great Britains political priorities and objectives, and the bilateral relationship between the countries. The results can be used to further develop the linguistic basics of war theory.

Validation of the City Infant Faces Database in Student and Parent Samples

The City Infant Faces Database (CIFD; Webb et al., 2018) is a database of 154 infant emotional expressions for use in experimental studies of infant facial communication, facial expression recognition, and parental sensitivity. The CIFD was validated only in a small sample from the general public and student midwives and nurses in the UK. This study, therefore, aimed to validate it in a larger sample of Croatian students and parents of 1-12 months old infants. Three-hundred and fifty students (Study 1), 422 mothers and 106 fathers (Study 2) were presented with images of Caucasian infant faces. The students rated images from the CIFD and Tromsø Infant Faces. They also completed questionnaires measuring empathy, alexithymia, and perceiving and expressing emotions. The parents rated the valence of facial expressions of images from the CIFD. The results were consistent with the initial validation in both the students and parents’ sample, except that agreement for negative images was lower for Croatian parents than in the UK study. Compared to the UK study, students rated images as more intense, clear, genuine, and reported stronger internal emotion. Furthermore, there was no difference in accuracy between mothers and fathers or between first-time parents and experienced parents. The CIFD is, therefore, a promising tool for research and should be further validated in other countries, focusing on its predictive validity.

Mental Imagery and Social Pain in Adolescents—Analysis of Imagery Characteristics and Perspective—A Pilot Study

Background: Mental imagery (MI) may play a key role in the development of various mental disorders in adolescents. Adolescence is known to be a fragile life period, in which acceptance by one’s favored peer group is extremely important, and social rejection is particularly painful. This is the first pilot study investigating MI and its relationship to social pain (SP). Method: A sample of 80 adolescents (14–20 years; 75.3% female) completed a web-based quasi-experimental design about the contents and characteristics of their spontaneous positive and negative MI and associated emotions, and were asked to complete the Social Pain Questionnaire, the Becks Depression Inventory and the Social Phobia Inventory. Results: A higher score of SP was significantly associated with increased fear, sadness, and feelings of guilt, and less control over negative MI. Characteristics of negative MI were more precisely predicted by SP scores than depression- and social anxiety scores. Adolescents with higher SP-scores more often reported negative images including social situations and were more likely to perceive negative images in a combination of field-and observer perspectives than adolescents with lower SP scores. Conclusion: SP-sensitivity seems to be linked to unique characteristics of negative MI, which reveals the strong emotional impact of social exclusion in youths. The results do not allow causal conclusions to be drawn, but raise questions about previous studies comparing each imagery perspective individually.

Whose Pictures, Whose Reality? Lines of Tradition in the Development of Topics, Negativity, and Power in the Photojournalistic Competition World Press Photo

Initially founded in 1955 as a platform for Dutch photojournalists to increase international exposure, the World Press Photo competition has grown into the most prestigious contest of photojournalism worldwide, making it an important arena for journalism research. Using qualitative and quantitative content analyses, this study examines all photos shown in the competitions from 1960 to 2020 (N = 11,789) considering the origin of jury members (N = 686), participants (N = 132,800), placements (N = 2347) and the Human Development Index (HDI) of the countries. The topics displayed on the photos, their degree of negativity, and potential power structures in the photos are analysed over time both in terms of continental and HDI-related differences. Significant results show that Africa, Asia, and South America are more frequently depicted by the topic conflict and characterised by negative images than continents with industrialised nations (Australia/Oceania, Europe, North America). Participating European countries have a significantly higher average number of jury members, participants, and placements than participating countries from Africa, Asia, and South America, which seems to account for a dominant Eurocentric view. Implications and critical discussions are summarized in three interim conclusions at the end of this extended paper.

The perceived destination image of Indonesia: An assessment on travel blogs written by the industry’s top markets

<p>The tourist gaze theory suggests that tourists are taught by the destination marketing organisation to know how, when, and where to look. However, the birth of travel blogs has challenged this image as they offer the public “unfiltered” information. Travel bloggers have become more powerful in influencing the decision making of potential tourists. This study employs textual and photographic content analysis to investigate the destination image of Indonesia held by the industry’s key markets; Singapore and Australia. 106 blog entries and over 1,500 pictures were content analysed, and the results suggest that overall tourists tended to have positive images of Indonesia. International tourists are still very much concentrated in the traditionally popular places such as Bali and Jakarta. Negative images of Indonesia include inadequate infrastructure, ineffective wildlife protection, and westernisation of Bali. Natural and cultural resources are proven in this thesis to be Indonesia’s top tourism products. Influenced by their cultural backgrounds, Singaporean and Australian bloggers have demonstrated a dissimilar tourist gaze. The current study also analysed the bloggers’ image of Indonesia as opposed to the image projected by the government through the national tourism brand “Wonderful Indonesia”. The results indicate a narrow gap between the two images. Implications for Indonesian tourism practitioners include stronger law enforcement to preserve local culture and natural attractions, and recognising the market’s preference to promote other destinations. Recommendations for future research are discussed.</p>

The perceived destination image of Indonesia: An assessment on travel blogs written by the industry’s top markets

<p>The tourist gaze theory suggests that tourists are taught by the destination marketing organisation to know how, when, and where to look. However, the birth of travel blogs has challenged this image as they offer the public “unfiltered” information. Travel bloggers have become more powerful in influencing the decision making of potential tourists. This study employs textual and photographic content analysis to investigate the destination image of Indonesia held by the industry’s key markets; Singapore and Australia. 106 blog entries and over 1,500 pictures were content analysed, and the results suggest that overall tourists tended to have positive images of Indonesia. International tourists are still very much concentrated in the traditionally popular places such as Bali and Jakarta. Negative images of Indonesia include inadequate infrastructure, ineffective wildlife protection, and westernisation of Bali. Natural and cultural resources are proven in this thesis to be Indonesia’s top tourism products. Influenced by their cultural backgrounds, Singaporean and Australian bloggers have demonstrated a dissimilar tourist gaze. The current study also analysed the bloggers’ image of Indonesia as opposed to the image projected by the government through the national tourism brand “Wonderful Indonesia”. The results indicate a narrow gap between the two images. Implications for Indonesian tourism practitioners include stronger law enforcement to preserve local culture and natural attractions, and recognising the market’s preference to promote other destinations. Recommendations for future research are discussed.</p>

The Image of Syrian Refugees in the Lebanese Press: Case of Al-Akhbar Newspaper

This paper investigates how Syrian refugees are portrayed in the Lebanese press, namely in Al-Akhbar Newspaper. Although there are existing studies that focus on the media representation of Syrian refugees, they allot significant attention to negative images of Syrian refugees presented by a number of Lebanese media outlets. In addition, there is a dearth of studies that scrutinise positive representation of Syrian refugees in the Lebanese press. Owing to these problems, this paper bridges the gap in the current literature through paying further attention to the positive media representation of Syrian refugees in the Lebanese press taking the case of Al-Akhbar Newspaper. In answering the question: how Al-Akhbar depicts Syrian refugees who fled to Lebanon, this paper analyses samples of articles published in Al-Akhbar to highlight the discourse of this Newspaper relating to Syrian refugees. The paper draws on qualitative analysis to arrive at its conclusion. The findings of the paper are significant because they reveal journalistic practices and agenda towards one of the serious issues in Lebanon which suffers from political turmoil and severe economic crisis. As this paper distinguishes between what it calls antagonist and protagonist discourses in reporting Syrian refugees in the Lebanese press, it recommends paying further attention to the protagonist discourse because it reflects good journalistic practice.

A machine learning model of microscopic agglutination test for diagnosis of leptospirosis

Leptospirosis is a zoonosis caused by the pathogenic bacterium Leptospira. The Microscopic Agglutination Test (MAT) is widely used as the gold standard for diagnosis of leptospirosis. In this method, diluted patient serum is mixed with serotype-determined Leptospires, and the presence or absence of aggregation is determined under a dark-field microscope to calculate the antibody titer. Problems of the current MAT method are 1) a requirement of examining many specimens per sample, and 2) a need of distinguishing contaminants from true aggregates to accurately identify positivity. Therefore, increasing efficiency and accuracy are the key to refine MAT. It is possible to achieve efficiency and standardize accuracy at the same time by automating the decision-making process. In this study, we built an automatic identification algorithm of MAT using a machine learning method to determine agglutination within microscopic images. The machine learned the features from 316 positive and 230 negative MAT images created with sera of Leptospira-infected (positive) and non-infected (negative) hamsters, respectively. In addition to the acquired original images, wavelet-transformed images were also considered as features. We utilized a support vector machine (SVM) as a proposed decision method. We validated the trained SVMs with 210 positive and 154 negative images. When the features were obtained from original or wavelet-transformed images, all negative images were misjudged as positive, and the classification performance was very low with sensitivity of 1 and specificity of 0. In contrast, when the histograms of wavelet coefficients were used as features, the performance was greatly improved with sensitivity of 0.99 and specificity of 0.99. We confirmed that the current algorithm judges the positive or negative of agglutinations in MAT images and gives the further possibility of automatizing MAT procedure.

Emotion Regulation and Vulnerability to Depression: A Longitudinal Test of the Diathesis-Stress Model

<p>Maladaptive emotion regulation is an established vulnerability marker for depression. Within a diathesis-stress framework individual differences in emotion regulation constitute sensitivity to stress, such that people who are less able to effectively regulate their emotions are more likely to become depressed when stress is encountered. Markers of maladaptive emotion regulation have been examined from affective, neurological, and cognitive perspectives and, for the most part, have been examined in independent lines of research. As such, the independent and interactive contributions of maladaptive emotion regulation markers are still unknown. The current thesis addresses this gap with a longitudinal study. Emotion regulation markers and depression were assessed at the outset of the study (time one) then life stress and depression were measured three months (time two) and twelve months (time three) later. Three trait measures of emotion regulation were assessed: spontaneous emotion regulation (as indexed by startle reactivity following negative images), frontal and parietal resting EEG asymmetries, and brooding rumination. All emotion regulation markers were found to be independent markers of vulnerability to depression. The emotion regulation markers measured at time one were then tested within a diathesis stress framework to predict stress sensitivity at time two. Poorer online regulation interacted with life stress to predict depression. That is, poor online regulators were sensitive to stress at three months, whereas good online regulators were not. Stress sensitivity was tested again at time three, twelve months after the initial assessment. At this time point frontal asymmetry, parietal asymmetry and life stress interacted to predict depression. When right parietal activity was low, rightward frontal asymmetries showed more sensitivity to stress. However, people with leftward asymmetries showed less stress sensitivity. Brooding predicted depression at three months but not at twelve months and did not interact with stress at either time point. The findings of this thesis show that, within the diathesis-stress framework, online regulation measures indicate short-term sensitivity to stress; however, EEG asymmetry measures show sensitivity to stress in the longer term.</p>