Mindfulness Meditation Improves Musical Aesthetic Emotion Processing in Young Adults

This study explored the behavioral and neural correlates of mindfulness meditation improvement in musical aesthetic emotion processing (MAEP) in young adults, using the revised across-modal priming paradigm. Sixty-two participants were selected from 652 college students who assessed their mindfulness traits using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). According to the 27% ratio of the high and low total scores, participants were divided into two subgroups: high trait group (n =31) and low trait group (n =31). Participants underwent facial recognition and emotional arousal tasks while listening to music, and simultaneously recorded event-related potentials (ERPs). The N400, P3, and late positive component (LPC) were investigated. The behavioral results showed that mindfulness meditation improved executive control abilities in emotional face processing and effectively regulated the emotional arousal of repeated listening to familiar music among young adults. These improvements were associated with positive changes in key neural signatures of facial recognition (smaller P3 and larger LPC effects) and emotional arousal (smaller N400 and larger LPC effects). Our results show that P3, N400, and LPC are important neural markers for the improvement of executive control and regulating emotional arousal in musical aesthetic emotion processing, providing new evidence for exploring attention training and emotional processing. We revised the affecting priming paradigm and E-prime 3.0 procedure to fulfill the simultaneous measurement of music listening and experimental tasks and provide a new experimental paradigm to simultaneously detect the behavioral and neural correlates of mindfulness-based musical aesthetic processing.

Relaxing music and the self: Insights from the perception of spontaneous sensations

Spontaneous sensations (SPS) are bodily sensations that can be perceived even in the absence of any external trigger and are related to self-referential and self-awareness processes. In this study, we investigated whether music, and in particular its emotional arousal dimension, could act as an external stimulus with the ability to modulate SPS. Thirty-two volunteers engaged in an SPS task (focusing on their hands) after having been exposed to high-arousing and low-arousing music. Results showed that after listening to low-arousing, relaxing music (compared to high-arousing, exciting music), participants perceived SPS more intensely, reported more numerous deep interoceptive sensations, and were more confident in specifying the location of these SPS, while their spatial characteristics decreased. These results suggest that relaxing music promoted increased perception by focusing attention on small areas of the hand. By showing for the first time that music can be used as an effective stimulus for modulating SPS, these findings suggest that, by promoting self-awareness processes, the relaxing nature of music can significantly increase the representation of the self.

Senior high school students’ self-efficacy and its relation to engagement in online class setting in a private university in the south of Metro Manila

This study explored the self-efficacy of senior high school Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students (N = 134) in an online physics class in terms of gender and its relationship to engagement. The study employed a descriptive correlation research design. Adapted instruments namely ‘Sources of Self-Efficacy in Science Course – Physics’ (SSSCP) and ‘Engagement in Physics Scale’ (EPS) were used to collect the data from the students. SSSCP was correlated with the scores of ‘Self-Efficacy for Academic Milestone-Strength’ scale for its validity. Reliability and validity of EPS was examined through Cronbach alpha and confirmatory factor analysis with acceptable results. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while independent samples t-test, Cohen’s d, and Pearson r correlation were used to test the hypotheses. It was revealed that both male and female students have a high level of self-efficacy in the following: overall, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and performance accomplishment with an average level for the emotional arousal. Furthermore, a significant difference across gender was found only on the emotional arousal sub-level with a small effect size of 0.32. Moreover, positive correlation was found between overall self-efficacy and overall engagement as well as on cognitive engagement. On the other hand, a negative correlation was revealed between overall self-efficacy and emotional engagement. Focusing on increasing the self-efficacy of students in an online physics class should be practiced by teachers in order to increase engagement.

Individual Differences in Concurrent Developmental Trajectories of Pain and Insomnia in Adolescents Are Predicted by Chronotype and Arousal-causing Pre-sleep Behaviors.

The onset of both chronic pain and insomnia is high during adolescence. Although a bidirectional relationship between pain and insomnia has support, how pain and sleep co-develop throughout adolescence remains unknown. Both sleep-wake patterns and pre-sleep behaviors that cause arousal may influence the co-development of pain and insomnia. Four waves of longitudinal self-report data were used (Nbaseline = 2767, Agebaseline M = 13.65 years, SD = 0.65). Multidimensional growth mixture modeling was used to identify four subgroups of adolescents with different concurrent trajectories of pain and insomnia. The trajectories followed each other across time in all classes: one class of consistently low pain and insomnia (68.7 %), one class with persistent high symptoms (4.9 %), as well as one class of increasing (13.9 %), and one of decreasing (12.5 %), trajectories. Later sleep-wake patterns and more pre-sleep behaviors causing cognitive-emotional arousal predicted both increasing and decreasing trajectories of concurrent pain and insomnia. The current study showed that developmental trajectories of pain and insomnia follow each other within adolescents and across adolescence. Both sleep-phase focused interventions as well as psychological interventions that focus on pre-sleep behaviors causing cognitive-emotional arousal may prove beneficial for adolescents with comorbid pain and insomnia.

EEG microstate analysis of emotion regulation reveals no sequential processing of valence and emotional arousal

In electroencephalography (EEG), microstates are distributions of activity across the scalp that persist for several tens of milliseconds before changing into a different pattern. Microstate analysis is a way of utilizing EEG as both temporal and spatial imaging tool, but has rarely been applied to task-based data. This study aimed to conceptually replicate microstate findings of valence and emotional arousal processing and investigate the effects of emotion regulation on microstates, using data of an EEG paradigm with 107 healthy adults who actively viewed emotional pictures, cognitively detached from them, or suppressed facial reactions. Within the first 600 ms after stimulus onset only the comparison of viewing positive and negative pictures yielded significant results, caused by different electrodes depending on the microstate. Since the microstates associated with more and less emotionally arousing pictures did not differ, sequential processing could not be replicated. When extending the analysis to 2000 ms after stimulus onset, differences were exclusive to the comparison of viewing and detaching from negative pictures. Intriguingly, we observed the novel phenomenon of a microstate difference that could not be attributed to single electrodes. This suggests that microstate analysis can detect differences beyond those detected by event-related potential analysis.

Decoding subjective emotional arousal from eeg during an immersive virtual reality experience

Immersive virtual reality (VR) enables naturalistic neuroscientific studies while maintaining experimental control, but dynamic and interactive stimuli pose methodological challenges. We here probed the link between emotional arousal, a fundamental property of affective experience, and parieto-occipital alpha power under naturalistic stimulation: 37 young healthy adults completed an immersive VR experience, which included rollercoaster rides, while their EEG was recorded. They then continuously rated their subjective emotional arousal while viewing a replay of their experience. The association between emotional arousal and parieto-occipital alpha power was tested and confirmed by (1) decomposing the continuous EEG signal while maximizing the comodulation between alpha power and arousal ratings and by (2) decoding periods of high and low arousal with discriminative common spatial patterns and a Long Short-Term Memory recurrent neural network. We successfully combine EEG and a naturalistic immersive VR experience to extend previous findings on the neurophysiology of emotional arousal towards real-world neuroscience.

Research on electrodermal activity

In this chapter, a method of physiological measurements—that is detection of electrodermal activity based on the sectonic activity of eccrine sweat glands—is discussed. It is believed that the excretion of sweat, which is regulated by the nervous system acting independently of human will, is an indicator of a person’s emotional arousal as a result of specific stimuli. Hence, the electrodermal reaction can be used in diagnosing emotional arousal caused by, e.g. specific products, advertisements or elements of the in-store space. Electrical activity of the skin is caused by two types of stimuli: sustained and one-off. Sustained stimuli have a continuous effect on the body over a relatively long period of time. On the other hand, one-off stimuli have a relatively strong and very short-lasting effect. This type is defined as novel, unexpected, significant or aversive. Electrodermal activity is measured on the skin surface (Strelau, 2006). Generally speaking, the measurement of electrodermal activity is one of the biometric measurements. Biometrics is a universal term that represents measurements of the body’s physiological responses—not directly of the brain—to external stimuli that are felt through the senses (Pradeep, 2010; Berčík & Rybanská, 2017). The electrodermal method allows to measure either electrical resistance or its inverse, i.e. the electrical conductivity of the skin. These measurements are carried out while a small current flows through the skin from an external source. Electrodermal activity measurement is performed with the use of special electrodes, electrode gels and recording devices. The available equipment for the analysis of electordermal activity is characterised by relatively low cost (compared to other devices for physiological measurements)of purchase and operation. Moreover, the electrodermal activity measurement is non-invasive and carries no risk to the health or life of the test subjects.