Emotional salience modulates the forward flow of memory

Conditional response probability (CRP) analyses applied to free recall data indicate that recall occurs for contiguous items with forward-directionality, thought to reflect the shared encoding context of nearby items. We hypothesized that a context disruption, produced by presenting infrequent oddballs, would modulate CRP curves, increasing the forward-flow of recall due to strong binding of items presented after these oddballs to the new encoding context. Seventy young, healthy male and female participants encoded word lists containing either emotional or perceptual oddballs at varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) followed by free recall. Serial recall transitions from emotional, but not perceptual, oddballs were enhanced in the forward direction except at the shortest SOA (1s). The present results provide empirical evidence of CRP modulation selectively by emotional salience and suggest that recall patterns after presenting emotional and perceptual oddballs are mediated by different mechanisms.

Spatial hand representation in anorexia nervosa: a controlled pilot study

Body representation distortion (BRD) is a core criterion of Anorexia Nervosa (AN), and is usually assessed subjectively, focusing on body shape. We aimed to develop a new assessment to evaluate body representation independently from socially-mediated body image, on a body part with low emotional salience (hands). In a monocentric open label pilot study, we measured hand representations based on explicit (verbal) and implicit (tactile) instructions. Participants, with eyes closed, had to point targeted locations (knuckles and nails of each finger) based on verbal instructions and tactile stimulations to evaluate body representations respectively. Ratios between hand width and finger length were compared between AN (n = 31) and controls (n = 31) and correlated with current body mass index, AN subtype and disease duration. To control that hand distortion was specific to body representation, we also assessed object representation. Hand representation’s width/length ratio was significantly increased in patients with AN, whereas no difference was found in object representation. We found no correlation between hand wideness and clinical traits related to eating disorders. Our results propose that BRD is not limited to body parts with high emotional salience, strengthening the hypothesis that anorexia nervosa is associated with profound unspecific BRD.

No Self Without Salience: Affective and Self-relevance Ratings of 552 Emotionally Valenced and Neutral Dutch Words

It is unknown how self-relevance is dependent on emotional salience. Emotional salience encompasses an individual's degree of attraction or aversion to emotionally-valenced information. The current study investigated the interconnection between self and salience through the evaluation of emotional valence and self-relevance. 56 native Dutch participants completed a questionnaire assessing valence, intensity, and self-relevance of 552 Dutch nouns and verbs. One-way repeated-measures ANCOVA investigated the relationship between valence and self, age and gender. Repeated-measures ANCOVA also tested the relationship between valence and self with intensity ratings and effects of gender and age. Results showed a significant main effect of valence for self-relevant words. Intensity analyses showed a main effect of valence but not of self-relevance. There were no significant effects of gender and age. The most important finding presents that self-relevance is dependent on valence. These findings concerning the relationship between self and salience opens avenues to study an individual's self-definition.

Does the Phenomenology of Auditory Hallucinations Differ Across Patients Having Severe Mental Illness With and Without Hearing Impairment?

We compared the experience of auditory hallucinations, in persons who have normal (HN; N = 20), or impaired hearing (HI; N = 20), while experiencing psychoses. We assessed this experience across 42 domains and observed that irrespective of the hearing status, patients most often heard voices mainly in the language that they had learnt first (χ2 = 5.584; P = .018). However, a few experienced hallucinations in languages they “did not know” (3/20; 15%). The voices were most often attributed to both males and females (35/40; 87.5%). Those with hearing impairment heard voices closer to their ears, a hubbub of voices of crowds talking to them, and “as if” stuck or repetitive; often in the hearing-impaired ear. The hearing-impaired subjects also reported hearing nonverbal auditory hallucinations more frequently (χ2 = 17.625; P = .001), and the voices lacked emotional salience (χ2 = 4.055; P = .044). In contrast, the hallucinations were experienced in elaborate detail by the HN (20/20), while those with HI often heard only simple sentences (14/20, P = 0.05). The intensity of the hallucinatory voices remained the same on closing the affected ear or both of the ears in the HI group as compared to the HN group. Interestingly, the use of hearing aids attenuated the intensity of the hallucinations (6/7; 85%) in those with HI.