Biological Psychology最新文献

Although previous studies have shown that both advisors' social status and confidence level affect advisees' advice-taking behavior, it is currently unclear the mechanisms of their common actions. Here, using event-related potentials, we investigated how both advisors' social status and confidence level independently or jointly influence advice-taking behavior. Specifically, participants were asked to make choices in a dot-estimation task and then they would receive high- and low-confidence advice from advisors with high- and low-status. Behaviorally, an interaction effect between advisors' status and confidence was found, suggesting that individuals were more likely to take high-confidence (vs. low-confidence) advice whether it was from high-status or low-status advisors. However, such an effect of confidence was larger for high-status advisors rather than for low-status advisors. On the electrophysiological level, during the early stage of processing advice, an interaction effect between advisors' status and confidence was only observed on the theta power rather than the FRN component, suggesting that the larger theta power was observed for low-confidence (vs. high-confidence) advice from low-status advisors rather than high-status advisors. Besides, although the larger P3 and beta power were found for advice from high-status advisors (vs. low-status advisors) or advice with high-confidence (vs. low-confidence), no interaction effect between status and confidence was found. Taken together, our findings suggested that advisors' status and confidence might affect the multiple stages in different ways during processing advice.

Poor emotion regulation is associated with cardiovascular disease risk, with altered cardiovascular responses to psychological stress a possible underlying mechanism. However, prior research has predominantly focused on instructed (laboratory-based) emotion regulation; there is limited conclusive research on the relationship between every-day (habitual) emotion regulation and cardiovascular responses to active psychological stress. As such, this study aimed to examine the associations between two common habitual emotion regulation strategies-cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression-and cardiovascular stress responses across three independent laboratory studies, each involving a different active acute psychological stress task. Participants (Study 1: N = 239, 64.9 % female; Study 2: N = 289, 51.9 % female, Study 3: N = 169, 50.9 % female) underwent cardiovascular monitoring during a 10-min baseline and subsequent stress task (Study 1: mental arithmetic task; Study 2: speech task; Study 3: Multisource Interference/Stroop tasks). Participants also completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and ratings of perceived task stressfulness. Cardiovascular reactivity (stress mean - baseline mean) was calculated for systolic/diastolic blood pressure and heart rate for each study. Across all three studies, regression analyses demonstrated no statistically significant linear associations between habitual emotion regulation and cardiovascular reactivity (ps ≥ .10) or self-reported perceived stress (ps ≥ .06), both before and after controlling for demographic covariates. This investigation furthers our understanding of how habitual emotion regulation strategies may-or may not-impact cardiovascular stress responses, thus providing valuable insights into the complex relationship between emotion regulation and long-term cardiovascular health.

Previous research has found functional connectivity in various networks to be altered in psychopathy and has theorised a link between these networks and the self-control-related deficits observed in psychopathy. However, this theory has yet to be tested adequately and empirically. The present study investigated the association between psychopathy, self-control, and intrinsic functional connectivity in 179 healthy adults from the MPI Leipzig Mind Brain Body dataset. Participants completed an affective switching task and questionnaires relating to psychopathy and self-control and underwent resting-state fMRI scans. Functional connectivity matrices were extracted for each subject, and network-based statistics was used to identify intrinsic resting-state functional networks associated with psychopathy scores. Significant networks that are positively and negatively associated with psychopathy emerged in the analyses. The functional connections that correlated positively with psychopathy was mostly characterised by strong connections between the default mode network and salience network, while the functional connections negatively correlated with psychopathy was largely characterised by strong within-dorsal attention network connectivity. Both the psychopathy-associated positive and negative networks were significantly correlated with measures of self-control and impulsivity. Furthermore, the negative network mediated the relationship between psychopathy and affective task-switching. Findings suggest that alterations in intrinsic functional connectivity are significantly implicated in psychopathy; these alterations possibly account for some self-control related deficits observed in psychopathy.

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is widely linked with emotional phenomena, including appraisal, modulation, and reward processing. Its perigenual part is suggested to mediate the appetitive value of stimulation. In our previous study, besides changes in evoked MEG responses, we were able to induce an apparent behavioral bias toward more positive valence while interpreting the ambiguous, morphed faces after the effect of excitatory tDCS stimulation of the perigenual ventromedial cortex (pgVM). In the present study, we reanalyze these data to reveal the importance of functional links between the vmPFC and other brain areas during the perception of emotional (fearful or happy) faces. Using the Directed Transfer Function method, we estimated MEG source-based effective connectivity on the 1.5 sec epochs during the passive presentation of facial stimuli in two counterbalanced sessions, preceded by either an excitatory or inhibitory tDCS session. We observed a prominent session effect as the connectivity changed after excitatory compared to inhibitory stimulation. These included increased outflows from the pgVM to most analyzed cortical regions, especially in the right hemisphere, a massive decrease in source activity in the right temporal region, and increased transfer of visual information towards many network nodes. Some interaction effects were also visible, with no involvement of the pgVM itself but with other nodes of the considered network. Overall, our data show that the stimulation focused at the pgVM elicited widespread network effects, including the areas mediating attention, visual processing, and emotions, as well as those associated with regulatory functions.

Proactive control in cognitive control is characterized by an individual's ability to maintain representations of goal-relevant information prior to responding to prevent conflicts. Text anxiety is a situation-specific personality trait characterized by excessive fear and worry about exams, accompanied by emotional issues. Individuals with high test anxiety exhibit deficiencies in cognitive control capabilities, but whether there is a defect in proactive control remains unclear. In this study, ERP technology was used to record the brain electrical activity of participants with high and low test anxiety during the performance of the AX-CPT task, and the difference in proactive control ability between the two groups of participants was examined. Behaviorally, individuals with high test anxiety(HTA) exhibited significantly lower accuracy rates in all three conditions compared to those with low test anxiety, and also showed a lower d' Context index. In terms of neural indicators, participants with HTA showed a significantly lower CNV component in the BX pairs than those with low test anxiety, HTA individuals lack the ability to actively maintain cues. Additionally, higher amplitudes of the N2 and P3 were generated in the AY and BX pairs, high test anxiety individuals require more cognitive resources to inhibit cognitive conflict. Results suggests that individuals with HTA exhibit deficiencies in proactive control abilities. This study explores the relationship between such deficits and test anxiety.

In interactive tasks, agents often aim at eliciting a certain response from their partner. Not accomplishing this goal calls for adjusting behavior on the fly. Previous research suggests that such adjustments differ when interacting with a machine or with a fellow human agent. In this study, we investigated whether such differences are also reflected in event-related potentials induced by observing human and machine errors in an interactive setting. In a four-choice reaction time task, participants performed actions that were followed by regular and irregular visual effects. In different conditions, participants were led to believe that they were interacting with another human agent or with a machine so that the irregular effects were attributed either to human errors or to machine malfunctions. We compared observed-error-related negativity (oERN) and observed-error positivity (oP_E) for these two error types. The oP_E was not affected by the experimental manipulation, whereas the oERN amplitude was more pronounced for machine malfunctions than for human errors. This contradicts previous findings that reported behavioral and electrophysiological responses to errors being larger when they are committed by a human agent than if they are caused by machine malfunctions. Our results might suggest that automated systems are expected to operate predictably and, as a consequence, in interactive settings, errors committed by such systems are more salient and elicit a larger prediction error signal than if the same mistake is made by a human agent.

Loneliness is linked to cardiovascular health, with atypical stress reactivity serving as an underlying mediator. This study aimed to investigate the association between loneliness and heart rate variability (HRV) reactivity to acute social stress in younger adults. A total of 92 participants (52 women; mean age = 22.05 ± 2.25 years; range: 17-29 years) completed the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), during which their electrocardiogram (ECG) signals were recorded. HRV was assessed using several measures, including the root mean square of successive differences in inter-beat intervals (RMSSD), the percentage of successive inter-beat intervals differing by more than 50 ms (pNN50), and the high-frequency component of HRV (HF-HRV). Loneliness was measured using the revised UCLA Loneliness Scale. Multiple linear regression models were fitted to examine the associations between loneliness and HRV reactivity, controlling for other covariates including age, sex, BMI, neuroticism, social network size, respiration rate and baseline HRV. In the total sample, loneliness was associated with decreased HRV reactivity, indicating a reduced ability of the autonomic nervous system to regulate cardiovascular function under stress. Sex differences were found in the association between loneliness and HRV reactivity, with women exhibiting more significant correlations. These findings suggest that diminished HRV reactivity to social stress may be a physiological mechanism through which loneliness impacts cardiovascular health.

Hormonal contraceptives (HC) such as the oral contraceptive pill (OC) and the hormonal intrauterine device (IUD) have been associated with depressed mood, but research on their role in anxiety is scarce and inconsistent. In a fear acquisition and extinction paradigm, self-report fear, expectancy, and skin conductance responses (SCR) were assessed, along with sex hormone levels. Naturally cycling (NC) participants were measured during the mid-follicular and mid-luteal phases (within subjects, n = 26) and compared with OC (n = 36) and IUD (n = 25) users. IUD users and -participants in the luteal phase showed overall reduced self-reported CS+ vs CS- differentiation compared to the follicular phase and OC use (which both reflect relatively low levels of endogenous gonadal hormones). This overall reduced differentiation in self-reported fear in the luteal phase was attributed to a generalization of fear from CS+ to CS-. NC-individuals with high premenstrual syndrome (PMS) ratings had higher overall fear ratings regardless of cycle phase. For SCR, hormonal status effects were restricted to specific experimental phases during acquisition. SCR to the CS+ was higher at the end of acquisition in the luteal phase compared to the follicular phase, and in OC users during early acquisition (compared to the follicular phase) and mid acquisition (compared to the IUD group). There were no direct associations with sex hormone levels. These findings demonstrate the impact of menstrual cycle and HC use on fear learning and highlight the need for further research that considers different outcome measures across a wide array of menstrual cycle and HC-related characteristics.

Research on how functional connectivity (FC) during resting-state relates to humor styles and sex is limited. This study aimed to address this knowledge gap by analyzing resting-state fMRI data from 56 healthy participants and measuring FC. In addition, participants completed the Humor Styles Questionnaire. We found distinct FC patterns linked to humor styles that differed by sex. Men demonstrated stronger FC between the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the right anterior insula (rAI), right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) and right frontal pole (rFP), and between the right rostral prefrontal cortex (rRPFC) and rIFG. These patterns were associated with aggressive and self-enhancing humor. Conversely, women exhibited stronger FC between rRPFC and the posterior cingulate gyrus (PCC), left rostral prefrontal cortex (lRPFC) and right thalamus, correlating with self-defeating and less aggressive humor. These findings suggest a neurobiological basis for sex differences in humor, indicating that men's FC between the salience network (SN), particularly in cognitive monitoring regions, may be linked to aggressive humor. Their FC between the executive control network (ECN) and between the SN and ECN are related to self-enhancing humor and reflect an emphasis on executive function. Conversely, women's FC between the SN and default mode network is correlated with self-defeating humor, suggesting a stronger focus on self-reflection and social relationships.