International Journal of Psychophysiology最新文献

Abnormal emotional responses in high-trait-anxious (HTA) individuals may be related to the use of emotion regulation strategies. Directed attention is a substrategy of attention deployment, which has been proven to be effective in regulating individual negative emotions. The present study investigated whether HTA women can effectively utilize directed attention to decrease negative emotions. Two studies were conducted using the same directed attention paradigm, with one focusing on event-related potentials (ERPs) and the other utilizing eye-tracking techniques. Participants viewed negative and neutral pictures and rated their negative emotions experienced during viewing. During directed attention, attention was directed towards highly arousing aspects, less arousing aspects of negative pictures, or less arousing aspects of neutral pictures. In study 1, late positive potentials (LPP) were recorded in 26 HTA and 24 low-trait-anxious (LTA) women. In study 2, the latency of first fixation, the proportion of gaze duration and fixations in the specific area were recorded in 27 HTA and 23 LTA women. Both the HTA and LTA groups revealed a decrease in negative emotional ratings and LPP amplitudes when their attention was directed towards the less arousing aspects of negative pictures. Furthermore, in this condition, the HTA group had a shorter latency of first fixation on highly arousing aspects and a higher proportion of gaze duration on less arousing aspects of negative pictures compared to the LTA group. These results indicate that when confronted with negative pictures, HTA women are able to regulate their emotional responses through directed attention, which may be accompanied by attentional vigilance and avoidance tendencies.

In the present study, we aimed to investigate whether long-term music training could improve audio-visual speech integration in Chinese, using event-related brain potential (ERP) measurements. Specifically, we recruited musicians and non-musicians to participate in our experiment where visual Chinese characters were presented simultaneously with congruent or incongruent speech sounds. In order to maintain participants' focus on both auditory and visual modalities, they were instructed to perform a probe detection task. Our study revealed that for the musicians, audiovisual incongruent stimuli elicited larger N1 and N400 amplitudes compared to audiovisual congruent stimuli. Conversely, for the non-musicians, only a larger N400 amplitude was observed for incongruent stimuli relative to congruent stimuli, without a significant difference in N1 amplitude. Furthermore, correlation analyses indicated that more years of music training was associated with a larger N1 effect for the musicians. These results suggest that musicians were capable of detecting character-speech sound incongruence at an earlier time window compared to non-musicians. Overall, our findings provide compelling evidence that music training is associated with better integration of visual characters and auditory speech sounds in language processing.

Performance monitoring has been widely studied during different forced-choice response tasks. Participants typically show longer response times (RTs) and increased accuracy following errors, but there are inconsistencies regarding the connection between error-related event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and behavior, such as RT and accuracy. The specific task in any given study could contribute to these inconsistencies, as different tasks may require distinct cognitive processes that impact ERP-behavior relationships. The present study sought to determine whether task moderates ERP-behavior relationships and whether these relationships are robustly observed when tasks and stimuli are treated as random effects. ERPs and behavioral indices (RTs and accuracy) recorded during flanker, Stroop, and Go/Nogo tasks from 180 people demonstrated a task-specific effect on ERP-behavior relationships, such that larger previous-trial error-related negativity (ERN) predicted longer RTs and greater likelihood of a correct response on subsequent trials during flanker and Stroop tasks but not during Go/Nogo task. Additionally, larger previous-trial error positivity (Pe) predicted faster RTs and smaller variances of RTs on subsequent trials for Stroop and Go/Nogo tasks but not for flanker task. When tasks and stimuli were treated as random effects, ERP-behavior relationships were not observed. These findings support the need to consider the task used for recording performance monitoring measures when interpreting results across studies.

Post-stroke patients often experience psychological distress and autonomic nervous system (ANS) dysregulation, impacting their well-being. This study evaluated the effectiveness of heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback on cognitive, motor, psychological, and ANS functions in sixty-two ischemic stroke patients (43 males, mean age = 60.1) at a Medical Center in southern Taiwan. To prevent interaction, we allocated patients to the HRV biofeedback or control (usual care) group based on their assigned rehabilitation days, with 31 patients in each group. Assessments conducted at baseline, three, and six months included the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), Fugl-Meyer Assessment for Upper Extremities (FMA-UE), Perceived Stress Scale, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scales (HADS), and HRV indices. Mixed-effect models were used to analyze Group by Time interactions. The results revealed significant interactions across all functions. At 3 months, significant improvements in the HRV biofeedback group were observed only in MoCA, FMA-UE, and HADS-depression scores compared to the control group. By 6 months, all measured outcomes demonstrated significant improvements in the biofeedback group relative to the control group. These results suggest that HRV biofeedback may be an effective complementary intervention in post-stroke rehabilitation, warranting further validation.

Dog ownership has been linked to numerous benefits to human health and wellbeing. However, due to the lack of previous research on changes to brain activity during interactions with pet dogs, the underlying psychophysiological mechanisms are still unclear. The aim of the present study was to examine changes in heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and electroencephalogram (EEG) power during interactions between dog owners and their pet dog. Fifty healthy adult dog owners completed baseline psychological measures and pet attachment scales. Subjective units of relaxation (SUR) as well as continuous EEG, HR, and HRV via portable devices were measured during five experimental conditions (baseline resting, relaxation-induction exercise, patting a toy dog, real dog present, and patting a real dog) in participants' homes. SUR was higher in all experimental conditions than at baseline. SUR was also higher during dog interaction than when the dog was present with no interaction. However, SUR during dog interaction was not significantly different from the toy dog and relaxation induction condition. Higher delta, theta, alpha, beta power and HR were found during dog interaction than all other conditions. Higher HRV was found during dog interaction compared to baseline, patting a toy dog, and relaxation-induction exercise, but not significantly different from the real dog present only condition. Lastly, overall HR correlated with psychological measures. Overall, the results show that there are significant changes in brain and heart activity when humans interact with pet dogs, consistent with increases in relaxation and focussed attention. These findings are relevant to understanding the potential mechanisms for health benefits associated with pets.

This study investigated the impact of motivational valence on No-go P3 and N2 by incorporating monetary rewards based on response outcomes. We also investigated how personality differences in terms of the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and behavioral approach system (BAS) influenced No-go N2 and No-go P3. Twenty-eight participants performed Go/No-go tasks (80 % Go and 20 % No-go) under two conditions. In the reward condition, each correct-rejection trial for the No-go stimulus was rewarded with 10 yen (∼6 cents), whereas in the neutral condition, neither monetary rewards nor punishments were contingent on response outcomes. Individual responsiveness to punishment and rewards was evaluated using the BIS and BAS scales. The error rate was significantly lower in the reward condition than in the neutral condition. P3 amplitude for correct-rejection trials (i.e., preceding erroneous muscular activity on the wrong hand) was larger in the reward condition than in the neutral condition; however, N2 amplitudes did not differ between the two conditions. These results suggest that monetary rewards may enhance motor inhibition control. Individuals with a higher BIS score exhibited a larger No-go N2 for correct-rejection in the neutral condition. We conclude that No-go N2 amplitude is modulated by avoidance motivation.

The error-related negativity (ERN) is an event-related potential that is observed after the commission of an error and is hypothesized to index threat sensitivity. The ERN is associated with multiple psychiatric disorders, but it is unclear if similar results are due to higher-order dimensions of psychopathology. When errors are punished, the ERN is further enhanced, which might better isolate threat sensitivity. However, few studies have examined whether psychopathology is associated with punishment enhancement of the ERN. In a clinical sample of 170 adults, the present study examined the association between pathological personality domains and predictable vs. unpredictable punishment-enhanced ERN. Results indicated that the ERN was enhanced when errors were punished compared to not punished. Greater negative emotionality was associated with a greater predictable punishment-enhanced ERN, while greater disinhibition was associated with smaller predictable punishment-enhanced ERN. The study suggests that higher-order pathological personality domains demonstrate discriminate relationships with punishment-enhanced error-related brain activity.

Holistic processing is a fundamental element of face-recognition studies. Some behavioral studies have investigated the impact of rigid facial motion on holistic face processing, yet it is still unclear how rigid motion affects the time course of holistic face processing for different face races. The current study investigated this issue, using the composite face effect (CFE) as a direct measure of holistic processing. Participants were asked to match the identity of the top half of a static composite face with the study face during the test stage, where the study face was either static or rigidly-moving. ERP results showed that rigidly-moving study faces elicited a larger CFE relative to static study faces in the N170 component when recognizing own-race faces. The amplitude of P1, N170 and P2 components indicated that rigid motion facilitated holistic face processing, with differences observed between the hemispheres over time. Specifically, the CFE was only observed after exposure to rigidly-moving faces in the P1 and P2 components of the right hemisphere. Additionally, a greater CFE was observed following exposure to rigidly-moving faces compared to static faces, particularly in the N170 component of the left hemisphere. This study suggests that holistic processing is a fundamental aspect of face perception that applies to both static and moving faces, not just static ones. Furthermore, rigid facial motion improves holistic processing of own-race faces during the structural encoding stage. These findings provide evidence of distinct neural mechanisms underlying the holistic processing of static and moving faces.

Object recognition and visual categorization are typically swift and seemingly effortless tasks that involve numerous underlying processes. In our investigation, we utilized a picture naming task to explore the processing of rarely encountered objects (visual hapaxes) in comparison to common objects. Our aim was to determine the stage at which these rare objects are classified as unnamable. Contrary to our expectations and in contrast to some prior research on event-related potentials (ERPs) with novel and atypical objects, no differences between conditions were observed in the late time windows corresponding to the P300 or N400 components. However, distinctive patterns between hapaxes and common objects surfaced in three early time windows, corresponding to the posterior N1 and P2 waves, as well as a widespread N2 wave. According to the ERP data, the differentiation between hapaxes and common objects occurs within the first 380 ms of the processing line, involving only limited and indirect top-down influence.