Psychophysiology最新文献

Hand-tracking investigations of the Eriksen flanker task demonstrate that the congruency sequence effect observed in response times is the result of a combination of distinct effects observed in initiation times (ITs; time elapsed between stimulus onset and movement initiation) and movement times (MTs; time elapsed between movement initiation and response completion). This suggests that response times reflect the differential functioning of an early process involving global motoric inhibition, observed in ITs, and a later process involving competitive inhibition between response options, observed in MTs. In this study, we sought to link the behavioral and neural dynamics of cognitive control in the flanker task by combining electroencephalography (EEG) with a button release-and-press method that allows for response times to be separated into ITs and MTs. Crucially, this method enabled the examination of initiation-locked event-related potentials (ERPs) in addition to traditional stimulus-locked ERPs. We observed candidate neural correlates of the early global and later competitive inhibitory processes, in early parietal and later central activity respectively. Exploratory cluster-based permutation analyses further supported traditional ERP analyses, providing more precise estimates of the onset and offset of effects underlying the congruency sequence effect. This work indicates that the component processes underlying cognitive control which generate dissociable patterns of effects in ITs and MTs may also generate dissociable patterns of effects in neural measures. Critically, initiation-locked analyses revealed a clearer dissociation of the patterns of effects underlying specific ERP components and shed new light on findings from standard stimulus-locked analyses.

Pain-a complex, highly subjective experience-is shaped by interoceptive signals, especially the systolic and diastolic phases of cardiac rhythmicity. While body ownership illusions (BOI, the perceptual attribution of artificial limbs to one's own body) are modulated by interoceptive signals, their influence on pain processing remains controversial, with conflicting findings in the literature. Critically, it remains unclear whether cardiac-phase-specific pain modulation occurs independently of BOI. To resolve this, we examined: (1) the effects of cardiac cycles, (2) the influence of BOI, and (3) their potential interactions on pain processing. In the present study, we used a virtual reality rubber hand illusion (VR-RHI) paradigm to induce BOI. In the control condition (object, OBJ condition), participants viewed a VR scenario with an inanimate object (cardboard) instead of a rubber hand, which does not induce BOI. Pain stimulation was administered under four experimental conditions: RHI-systole, RHI-diastole, OBJ-systole, and OBJ-diastole. We assessed pain perception-thresholds, intensity and unpleasantness ratings, and somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs)-while delivering painful electrical stimuli timed to systolic or diastolic phases under BOI and control VR conditions. Results demonstrated that compared to the systolic phase, the diastolic phase was associated with significantly lower pain intensity and unpleasantness ratings, along with reduced SEP amplitudes. However, neither BOI nor its interaction with cardiac cycle exerted significant effects on these measures. Our findings suggest that while cardiac cycle modulates pain perception, this effect operates independently of BOI.

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) can be quantified using a myriad of mathematical indices, but the lack of systematic and empirical comparison between these indices complicates the evaluation and interpretation of HRV data. This study assessed the reliability, consistency, and generalizability of structural relationships among 89 HRV indices using a consensus-clustering approach. We analyzed 635 short-term resting-state electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings from two samples of college students with differing psychological profiles. Results from a sample with elevated internalizing symptoms (N = 233)-collected across two sessions, 1 week apart-were compared to evaluate the test-retest reliability of the HRV clusters. To further assess the stability and generalizability of these HRV clusters beyond individuals with elevated internalizing symptoms, these results were compared with a second sample not selected based on psychological symptoms (N = 203). We identified 21 clusters of 70 HRV indices with cross-method, test-retest, and cross-sample robustness. Based on the robust empirical convergence and the relative popularity of some HRV indices in the extant literature, we recommend 13 HRV indices for short-term recordings of resting-state HRV (under 10 min): RMSSD, SDNN, RSA (Porges-Bohrer or Peak-to-Trough method), RSA (Gates method), SD1/SD2 or CSI, SampEn, HF or LnHF, DFA α1, DFA α2, one of the MDFA α1 features, one of the MDFA α2 features, one of the heart rate asymmetry indices, and one of the heart rate fragmentation indices. This approach mitigates the biases that can arise from redundant or highly correlated indices, facilitates clearer interpretation, and enhances the validity of conclusions drawn from HRV analyses.

The error-related negativity (ERN) is a classic electrophysiological index of error detection. However, the present study challenges its classical functional interpretation by analyzing the ERN relative to the termination of erroneous actions (response offsets), a behavioral marker of error cancellation. Our findings reveal that the ERN reflects immediate auto-cancellation of ongoing erroneous behavior. Specifically, our findings corroborate that erroneous responses come with significantly shortened response durations (RDs) compared to correct responses, pointing to an immediate and active cancellation of ongoing motor activity. Crucially, ERN amplitude and latency varied with RDs, indicating that the ERN may reflect not only passive error detection but also the autonomous implementation of corrective behavior. These observations portray human performance monitoring as consisting of two components: a passive component related to detecting action slips, and an active component related to the implementation of behavioral changes. Moreover, these results carry important clinical implications. Abnormal ERN patterns observed in conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and Parkinson's disease may stem not solely from impaired error detection but from disrupted regulation and cancellation of erroneous actions. By integrating behavioral dynamics with electrophysiological measures, our study highlights the need to reconsider the functional significance of the ERN in both cognitive neuroscience and clinical contexts.

Irony is often considered one of the most complex forms of verbal communication and can serve as an important indicator of communication abilities. An ironic statement conveys a meaning that is the opposite of its literal interpretation. The cognitive processes presumed to be involved in interpreting irony include Theory of Mind (ToM), executive functions, and processing style. At the neural level, processing irony has been associated with activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG), precuneus, and inferior parietal lobule, among others. The objective of this study was to examine the cognitive processes and the neural correlates of processing irony in Mexican adults using a novel task designed for Spanish-speaking individuals. A total of 45 participants completed a cognitive assessment and performed a contextual discrepancy task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. With the lowest classification accuracy and the slowest response times, the results showed processing irony to be challenging. As expected, processing irony engaged brain regions primarily associated with ToM (e.g., precuneus) and language processing (e.g., IFG and pSTG). In contrast, the identification of literal and unrelated statements activated motor-related areas. Interestingly, no differential activation was found for the processing of white lies. Furthermore, regression models indicated that processing statements within a given context-whether ironic, unrelated, white lies, or literal-engaged cognitive domains related to executive functions, perceptual processing, and social cognition.

Emotion differentiation reflects how well individuals make fine-grained distinctions between their emotions. Higher emotion differentiation, especially for negative emotion, is associated with a wide range of adaptive emotional responses and improved mental health, but the psychophysiological correlates of emotion differentiation remain underexplored. Here, we examined associations between negative emotion differentiation and autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning at rest in a laboratory setting and across 3 days of ambulatory assessment in daily life. Participants were 80 trauma-exposed adults, half of whom met diagnostic criteria for a primary diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder. Measures of parasympathetic control on the cardiac system (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA), sympathetic control on the cardiac system (pre-ejection period; PEP), and sympathetic control on the eccrine system (electrodermal activity; EDA) were collected. Measures of ANS functioning that reflect the relative influences of the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems were assessed to index ANS functioning within the cardiac system (i.e., cardiac autonomic balance [CAB] and cardiac autonomic regulation [CAR]) and across the cardiac and eccrine systems (i.e., cross-system autonomic balance [CSAB] and cross-system autonomic regulation [CSAR]). After adjusting for relevant covariates, higher negative emotion differentiation was associated with increased RSA and PEP, reflecting greater ANS activity in the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches, respectively. However, these associations were inconsistent across settings, with relationships between negative emotion differentiation and PEP only found in the lab and relationships between negative emotion differentiation and RSA only found in daily life. More consistent across settings were associations between higher emotion differentiation and higher CAR, suggesting composite measures of ANS functioning might be more robust psychophysiological indicators of negative emotion differentiation. Findings clarify the psychophysiological correlates of negative emotion differentiation and contribute to our understanding of how negative emotion differentiation supports better emotion regulation and psychological functioning.

The brain continuously integrates interoceptive signals-such as those arising from cardiac afferents-with sensory input to guide perception, emotion and awareness. Previous research has demonstrated that the timing of external stimuli relative to the cardiac cycle influences perceptual and cognitive processes. However, it remains unclear whether cardiac signals facilitate the access of emotional visual stimuli to conscious awareness. Here, we used a continuous flash suppression (CFS) paradigm to investigate whether the breakthrough of fearful and neutral faces to awareness is modulated by cardiac cycle phase. Fearful and neutral faces were presented to the non-dominant eye in synchrony with participants' heartbeats-either during estimated-cortical systole (ec-systole) or diastole (ec-diastole)-while dynamic Mondrian patterns suppressed visibility in the dominant eye. Results showed that fearful faces presented during estimated-cortical systole (ec-systole) broke through suppression faster and after fewer heartbeat-synchronized presentations than those presented during ec-diastole, suggesting facilitated processing. No significant cardiac modulation was found for neutral faces or in emotion discrimination accuracy, confidence, or response bias. These findings demonstrate that cardiac afferent signals selectively enhance the perceptual salience of motivationally salient (e.g., threat signaling) stimuli, promoting earlier access to consciousness. This study extends prior work by showing that cardiac influences on emotion processing operate even at early, preconscious stages of visual perception.

While mixed emotions are prevalent, the impact of intentional regulation on these states remains unclear. To investigate how individuals modulate these complex emotional states across experience, expression, and physiology, we propose a three-dimensional extension of the Evaluative Space Model (3D-ESM). We used this model to examine whether negative and positive emotion goals during cognitive reappraisal of emotionally ambivalent stimuli (disgusting-amusing) differentially influence negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) system reactivity. A repeated-measures design exposed 48 women to 20-30 s film clips under three conditions: natural response (no goal), emphasizing the film clip's negative aspects (negative emotion goal), or emphasizing its positive aspects (positive emotion goal). We assessed self-reported feelings (negative, positive), facial muscle reactivity (corrugator supercilii, zygomaticus major electromyography), and autonomic responses (pre-ejection period [PEP], respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA]). Compared to baseline, unregulated mixed emotions evoked NA-PA system coactivation: increased negative and positive feelings, increased corrugator and zygomaticus reactivity, and increased RSA. The negative emotion goal, relative to no goal, caused reciprocal NA-PA system activation: increased negative and decreased positive feelings, increased corrugator and decreased zygomaticus reactivity, and shortened PEP. Conversely, the positive emotion goal elicited reciprocal PA-NA system activation: decreased negative and increased positive feelings, decreased corrugator and increased zygomaticus reactivity, and no difference in PEP or RSA. These findings suggest that reappraisal emphasizing either negative or positive aspects of mixed-emotion contexts can shift experience and expression in the desired direction. We demonstrate that the 3D-ESM effectively predicts regulation effects across response domains.

Individuals experiencing generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) show heightened attention to threat, as suggested by greater amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP). However, amplitude measurements do not fully capitalize on the high temporal resolution of EEG. Specifically, amplitude does not reflect the rate of change in the LPP over a window of interest, which may be important to understand LPP dynamics in individuals with GAD. Indeed, this rate of change of the LPP (i.e., LPP slope) may reflect attentional orienting. The current study leveraged multilevel models to examine the LPP in relation to GAD symptoms. We hypothesized that more-positive LPP slopes to threat images will be associated with GAD symptoms from 400 to 700 ms. Participants (N = 105) passively viewed blocks consisting of threatening or neutral images during EEG recording. Participant-level LPP slopes were estimated using and extracted from multilevel models, and the extracted slopes were examined. LPP slopes were reliable, but they only weakly correlated with mean amplitudes-suggesting LPP slopes may capture an attentional process that could be distinct from that captured by mean amplitudes. When considered as concurrent predictors of GAD, in an early window of the LPP (400-700 ms), the conjunction of the threat-LPP slope and the threat-LPP mean amplitude explained three times as much variance in GAD symptoms as mean amplitude did alone. During a later window of the LPP (700-2000 ms), more-negative LPP slope responses to threat were also related to GAD symptomology. Sensitivity analyses demonstrated that the relationship between the threat-LPP slope and GAD symptoms was largely robust to measurement confounds. Together, the current study is the first to identify that LPP slope is uniquely related to GAD symptoms. Our data further suggest that LPP slope is a unique measure of the broader LPP response that warrants further investigation.

After wordlists of semantic associates are studied, critical lures are not only falsely recognized, but also often attributed to strong semantic associates' contexts, demonstrating vivid context retrieval in false recognition. Why are some critical lures falsely recognized, while others are correctly rejected? Furthermore, why do some falsely recognized critical lures exhibit vivid context retrieval? What cognitive processes support the differentiation of various memorial responses to critical lures? The current study employed event-related potentials to investigate these questions. In the study phase, two pictures were paired with a critical lure's strong and weak associates. In the test phase, participants made old-new responses and, if items were recognized as old, further context memory judgments. The results showed that all kinds of critical lures elicited the early old/new effect, implying that familiarity do not support diverse memorial responses. Crucially, the left-parietal old/new effect was elicited by critical lures attributed to strong semantic associates' contexts, demonstrating that the bottom-up recollection process contributes to vivid false memories. On the other hand, critical lures attributed to other words' contexts elicited the late-posterior-negativity (LPN) old/new effect, suggesting that false memories with less vivid context retrieval rely on the top-down reconstruction process. Furthermore, correctly rejected critical lures elicited neither the left-parietal nor LPN old/new effect, indicating that critical lures were not falsely recognized when neither recollection nor reconstruction retrieved context. Taken together, the current findings elucidate important roles of recollection and reconstruction in retrieving context of false memories and further differentiating various memorial responses to critical lures.