Promoting Healthy Eating Attitudes Among Uninsured Primary Care Patients.

Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) is a phenomenon where the retrieval of an item impairs memory for items associated to the retrieved item. This effect has been robustly demonstrated with a wide range of stimuli. A few studies have investigated this phenomenon with emotional memories for autobiographical life events and for pathology-specific memories in clinical populations. The present study investigated whether RIF would be observed for stimuli of positive and negative emotional valence in the normal population. On a recognition test, the effect was observed both on measures of accuracy and response time with neutral words, but no RIF was observed for words of negative and positive emotional valence. In addition, RIF was observed only for studied items and did not extend to all members of the studied categories. This observation was made possible by the use of a recognition task in the test phase, and is accounted for in terms of episodic inhibition (Racsmány & Conway, 2006).

Emotion plays an important role in people's everyday routine and work. Using electroencephalograph (EEG) signals to identify emotional states of human brain is one of the most valuable methods for emotion recognition. This paper studied positive and negative emotional valences identification from EEG signals via memory-informed deep neural network with entropy features. To quantify EEG signals over time, we first used sliding time windows to calculate sample entropy in EEG signals. Then we integrated a life-long memory module into deep neural network to accumulate prior knowledge of the entropy features of positive and negative emotional valences during training phase, so as to enhance the performance of emotional valences identification. Finally, we performed our experimental analysis with the SEED (SJTU Emotion EEG Dataset) dataset, a publicly available EEG dataset for emotion analysis. The average accuracy of 92.22% was achieved for the identification of positive and negative emotional valences for 15 subjects in SEED dataset. The experimental results showed that the proposed framework could effectively achieve the identification of positive and negative emotional valences from EEG signals, which had broad application prospects in healthcare decision-making system.

BackgroundLimited data from behavioral and brain-imaging studies indicate that personality traits and physical characteristics are processed differently by the brain. Additionally, electrophysiological results of studies comparing the processing of positive and negative words have produced mixed results. It is therefore not clear how physical and personality attributes with emotional valence (i.e., positive and negative valence) are processed. Thus, this study aimed to examine the neural activity associated with words describing personality traits and physical characteristics with positive or negative emotional valence using Event Related Potentials (ERPs).MethodsA sample of 15 healthy adults (7 men, 8 women) participated in a computerized word categorization task. Participants were asked to categorize visual word stimuli as physical characteristics or personality traits, while ERPs were recorded synchronously.ResultsBehavioral reaction times to negative physical stimuli were shorter compared to negative personality words, however reaction times did not significantly differ for positive stimuli. Electrophysiological results showed that personality stimuli elicited larger P2 and LPC (Late Positive Component) amplitudes compared to physical stimuli, regardless of negative or positive valence. Moreover, negative as compared with positive stimuli elicited larger P2 and LPC amplitudes.ConclusionPersonality and physical stimuli were processed differently regardless of positive or negative valence. These findings suggest that personality traits and physical characteristics are differentially classified and are associated with different motivational significance.

The COVID-19 pandemic saw sudden measures to stop the spread of the virus, closing schools and forcing a shift to remote learning. This study examines the emotions exhibited by students around factors of online learning as they transitioned abruptly from in-person instruction. Student responses to a New York Times writing prompt in March 2020 were analyzed using frequencies and epistemic network analysis (ENA) models. About half of the responses contained positive emotional valence, but more than three quarters had negative emotional valence. The strongest connection was observed between negative emotional valence for instructional format and focus. More specifically, anxiety between the format, focus, and workload were strongly connected, indicative of the difficulties faced by students to maintain focus and balance assignments on learning activities while being at home. At the same time, there was a significant connection between positive and negative emotional valence regarding the instructional format, attributed to mixed and changing emotions with adjusting to online learning. When students did exhibit positive emotions, it was interest in the instructional format linked with interest in schedule, indicating that the scheduling flexibility of the online format was the factor students liked most.

Anatomical specificity of functional amygdala imaging of responses to stimuli with positive and negative emotional valence

The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of emotional regulation on the brain systems of voluntary control in primary school children. Participants were 16 children (10 female) aged 7.90±0.4 years. They performed a modified version of the Dots task, which is used to assess the ability to switch between actions and to inhibit habitual reactions. Facial patterns with neutral, positive and negative emotional valence were used as target stimuli in the test. The analysis of ERPs showed that the reactivity of the frontal and parietal cortical areas in response to the stimuli with a positive emotional valence was more pronounced than the reactivity of these areas to the stimuli with a negative emotional valence. This suggests the influence of emotional-motivational regulation on the brain mechanisms of cognitive control in children aged 7-8 years.

Different facial EMG-reactions of extraverts and introverts to pictures with positive, negative and neutral valence

IntroductionConsidering the relevance of the emotional state, it is necessary to understand how daily stimuli can modulate the emotions. Animated short films are common stimuli, but it is unknown how they can modulate the emotional state. The study aimed to evaluate: how participants’ emotional state changed after watching animated short films with positive or negative emotional valence in an online experiment; the relationship between participants’ baseline score on an Emotional Intensity Scale and their potential change in the main emotion after watching the films; and the association between the initial main emotion valence and the potential change in this emotion with participants’ sociodemographic information.MethodsA sample of 2,269 participants recruited during COVID-19 pandemic were randomly assigned to either watch a negative or positive animated short film.ResultsThe results showed that, after watching a film with negative valence, participants were in a more negative emotional state than at baseline and compared with those who watched the film with positive valence. Also, individuals who had a negative baseline emotion and maintained the same emotion after the film had presented higher baseline emotional state scores (more negative emotion) than those who changed their emotions. In addition, the individuals who kept the baseline emotion had an association with age, marital status, level of education and psychiatric disorders, use of medication, and emotional awareness, while the individuals who changed the baseline emotion had an association with age, gender, and following or not social distancing recommendations.ConclusionBaseline emotional state may influence the response to animated short films and sociodemographic characteristics are associated with the initial main emotion valence and its potential change in this emotion.

Age-related differences involved in the neural substrates of emotional face perception were investigated in young and old healthy volunteers. The subjects were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging while they were judging the gender of faces with negative, positive, or neutral emotional valence. The results showed that both the predominant activation in young subjects and reduced activity in old subjects contributed to a significant age difference in the left amygdala during the perception of negative faces. Activity in the right parahippocampal gyrus during the perception of positive faces diminished with advancing age. Neural activity in the angular gyrus and lingual gyrus of the right hemisphere was reduced in the old subjects during the perception of positive faces. There was no region where old subjects had greater activity than young subjects during the task. In old subjects, the overall activity in the right hippocampus during the task correlated negatively with age, whereas the activity in the right parahippocampal gyrus correlated positively with neuropsychological performance. There was no significant correlation between subjects' characteristics and signal change in young subjects. These results indicate the age-associated vulnerability of the medial temporal lobe structures including the amygdala, hippocampus, and parahippocampal gyrus during face perception. The dissociation with reduced activity in the left amygdala and the right parahippocampal gyrus may suggest that aging differentially affects neural responses to faces with negative or positive emotional valence. The parieto-occipital lobe, which has been found to be involved in face processing, also showed a functional decline associated with aging.

ObjectivePrevious studies have found that resilience is a protective factor against depression, and new antidepressant methods can be developed from the perspective of resilience. However, it remains unclear how resilience protects individuals from depressive symptoms and what neural mechanisms underlie this “protective” effect.MethodsWe recruited 237 participants in our study according to the depression and anxiety clinical scale (HADS) and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), including 100 healthy controls (HADS≤7) and 137 depressed patients (HADS≥8). All participants were evaluated using 53-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to detect cerebral hemodynamic differences during autobiographical memory tasks.ResultsThe results showed that (1) the activation of oxy-Hb in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was significantly higher in the positive emotional valence condition than in the negative emotional valence condition for the groups of depression-high resilience and healthy-low resilience, while there was no significant difference between the positive and negative emotional valences observed in response to for the groups of depression-low resilience and healthy-high resilience. (2) Oxy-Hb activation under positive emotional valence was significantly higher in the group with healthy-low resilience than healthy-high resilience and depression-low resilience. (3) Under the negative emotional valence condition, resilience mediated the indirect effect of depression on oxy-Hb activation in the left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC).ConclusionfNIRS may be a useful tool for diagnosing and characterizing depression in patients with high or low resilience and improving individual resilience may be a new perspective for diagnosing and intervening in depression.

Behavioural and physiological assessment of positive and negative emotion in sheep

Perceived benefits and barriers and self-efficacy affecting the attendance of health education programs among uninsured primary care patients

A pattern of cortical functional connectivity in the source space was studied in a group of right-handed adult participants (N = 44:17 women, 27 men, aged M = 29.61 ± 6.45 years) who retained in their working memory (WM) traces of realistic pictures of positive, neutral, and negative emotional valence while in their working memory (WM) while performing same different task in which participants had to compare an etalon picture against a target picture that followed after a specified delay. A coherence (COH) between pairs of cortical sources chosen in advance according to fMRI data was estimated in the theta frequency range for the period of time preceding the etalon stimulus, distinct sets of functional links are found. The links of the first type that presumably reflect the involvement of sustained attention were between the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, the prefrontal areas, and temporal areas of the right hemispheres. When compared to the rest period, links of this type showed strengthening not only during the retention period but also during the period preceding the etalon picture. The links of the second type presumably reflecting a progressive neocortex-to-hippocampus functional integration with increasing memory load and strengthened exclusively during retention period. Those links were between parietal, temporal and prefrontal cortices in the lateral surface of both hemispheres with the additional inclusion of the posterior cingulate cortex and the medial parietal cortex in the left hemisphere. An impact of emotional valence onto the strength and topography of the functional links of the second type was found. In the left hemisphere, an increase in the strength of cortical interaction was more pronounced for pictures of positive valence than for pictures of either neutral or negative valences. When compared to the pictures of neutral valence, the retention of pictorial information of both positive and negative valence showed some extraneous integration of the cortical areas for the theta rhythm. This finding might be related to the additional load exerted by emotionally colored pictures onto the mechanisms of short-time retention of visual information.

Behaviors related to positive, neutral, or negative valence in Odocoileus virginianus in below-ground-level or ground-level exhibitor and influx of visitors

Stimuli with negative emotional valence are especially apt to influence perception and action because of their crucial role in survival, a property that may not be precisely mirrored by positive emotional stimuli of equal intensity. The aim of this study was to identify the neural circuits differentially coding for positive and negative valence in the implicit processing of facial expressions and words, which are among the main ways human beings use to express emotions. Thirty-six healthy subjects took part in an event-related fMRI experiment. We used an implicit emotional processing task with the visual presentation of negative, positive, and neutral faces and words, as primary stimuli. Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) of the fMRI data was used to test effective brain connectivity within two different anatomo-functional models, for the processing of words and faces, respectively. In our models, the only areas showing a significant differential response to negative and positive valence across both face and word stimuli were early visual cortices, with faces eliciting stronger activations. For faces, DCM revealed that this effect was mediated by a facilitation of activity in the amygdala by positive faces and in the fusiform face area by negative faces; for words, the effect was mainly imputable to a facilitation of activity in the primary visual cortex by positive words. These findings support a role of early sensory cortices in discriminating the emotional valence of both faces and words, where the effect may be mediated chiefly by the subcortical/limbic visual route for faces, and rely more on the direct thalamic pathway to primary visual cortex for words.