Cognitive Neural Mechanisms Research Articles

Group empathy for pain is stronger than individual empathy for pain in the auditory modality.

Humans live in collective groups and are highly sensitive to perceived emotions of a group, including the pain of a group. However, previous research on empathy for pain mainly focused on the suffering of a single individual ("individual empathy for pain"), with limited understanding of empathy for pain to a group ("group empathy for pain"). Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the cognitive neural mechanisms of group empathy for pain in the auditory modality. The study produced group painful voices to simulate the painful voices made by a group, and recruited 34 participants to explore differences between their responses to group painful voices and individual painful voices using the event-related potential (ERP) techniques. The results revealed that group painful voices were rated with higher pain intensity, more negative affective valence, and larger P2 amplitudes than individual painful voices. Furthermore, trait affective empathy scores of the participants were positively correlated with their P2 amplitudes of group painful voices. The results suggested that the group empathy for pain may facilitate affective empathetic processing in auditory modality.

The Memory Bias Toward Negative Context in Episodic Memory in Anxiety Individuals—An Exploratory Study Through ERPs

In order to explore the memory bias toward negative context in anxiety individuals, this study explored the cognitive neural mechanisms of at different cognitive process amongst 30 college students (high and low anxiety groups of 15 people each) by using event-related potentials (ERPs) measurement and source memory multiple-task paradigm. At first, it was found that the ERPs of fearful was stronger than the neutral background in the condition of hit <sub>item w/ source </sub>(both the old item and the source were judged correctly), hit item<sub> w/o source</sub> (the old item was judged correctly and the source was not judged correctly) and latter forgotten (both the old item and the source were not judged correctly) generally in the encoding phase. Combined with the behavior data, reaction times of hit item <sub>w/o source</sub> in fearful context were fasten than neutral context. Secondly, as for the memory bias, ERPs were more positive in fear context than neutral context at Fcz/Cz/Cpz in the 700-900ms in the high anxiety group under the condition of hit <sub>item w/o source</sub>. In addition, ERPs were more positive in fear context than neutral context in the 300-500ms under the condition of latter forgotten in the high anxiety group. In conclusion, the memory bias towards negative stimuli in anxiety individuals was found in the encoding phase, indicating that anxiety still had an impact in the early stages of processing, but not in the deep processing.

How L2 Learners Process Different Means of Time Encoding in a Tenseless Language: An ERP Study of Mandarin.

In the past, research on the cognitive neural mechanism of second language (L2) learners' processing time information has focused on Indo-European languages. It has also focused on the temporal category expressed by morphological changes. However, there has been a lack of research on L2 learners' various time coding means, especially for Mandarin, which lacks morphological changes. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we investigated the cognitive neural mechanism of L2 learners with native Indonesian background in processing two time coding means (time adverbs and aspect markers) in Chinese. Indonesian has time adverb encoding time information similar to that of Chinese, but there are no aspect markers similar to Chinese in Indonesian. We measured ERPs time locked to the time adverb " (cengjing)" and the aspect marker "verb + (verb + guo)" in two different conditions, i.e., a control condition (the correct sentence) and a temporal information violation. The experimental results showed that the native speaker group induced the biphasic N400-P600 effect under the condition of time adverb violation, and induced P600 under the condition of the aspect marker "verb + (verb + guo)" violation. Indonesian L2 learners of Chinese only elicited P600 for the violation of time adverbs, and there was no statistically significant N400 similar to that of Chinese native speakers. In the case of aspect marker violation, we observed no significant ERPs component for the Indonesian L2 learners of Chinese. Both groups of subjects induced elicited a widely distributed and sustained negativity on the post-critical words after "verb + (verb + guo)" and "(cengjing)". This showed that the neural mechanism of Indonesian L2 learners of Chinese processing Chinese time coding differs from that of Chinese native speakers.

Falling into the trap: A study of the cognitive neural mechanisms of immediate rewards impact on consumer attitudes toward forwarding perk advertisements.

In the context of digital marketing, consumers often express aversion to perk advertisements yet find it challenging to resist the temptation and forward it, resulting in inconsistent attitudes and behaviors. This study, based on the Associative Propositional Evaluation model and the Confirmation Bias theory, utilizes event-related potential experiments to identify the interactive impacts of immediate rewards and information diagnosticity in advertisements on consumer attitude change in specific contexts. The research findings indicate that when rewards were present, information diagnosticity positively influences attitude change and the willingness to forward. However, when rewards were absent, the impact of information diagnosticity on attitude change and the willingness to forward is not significant, and neuroscientific evidence supports these findings. Theoretically, this study extends the research perspective on attitude change in online advertising contexts and broadens the application of the Associative Propositional Evaluation model in the field of consumer attitude change towards advertisements. In practice, this research holds significant guiding value for constraining platform manipulation of consumer cognitive behaviors, guiding the healthy development of platform economics, and promoting digital technology ethics.

How Time Pressure Modulates Individual Differences in the Functional Connectivity of Chunk Memory in Chess Games

Previous studies on the chess game demonstrated that chess experts strongly rely on the activation of memory chunks to manifest accurate decision-making. Although the chunk memory might be affected by temporal constraints, it is unclear why the performance of chess experts is not significantly dropped under time pressure. In this study, our objective is to examine the variations in cognitive neural mechanisms between chess experts and novices under time pressure. The underlying cognitive neural mechanism was carefully inspected by accessing the chess game performance between 20 local experienced and 20 inexperienced chess players with 1-minute and 5-minute time constraints. In addition, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) recordings were carried out for each individual from the two groups while playing a 1-minute or 5-minute chess game. It was discovered that under temporal constraints, players exhibited different patterns of functional connectivity in frontal-parietal regions, suggesting that temporal stress can enhance segmentation processes in chess games. In particular, the experienced group exhibited significantly enhanced functional connectivity networks under time pressure including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, and postcentral gyrus, which demonstrated the important role of the segmentation process for experienced players under time pressure. Our study found that experienced players were able to enhance recall, reorganize, and integrate chunks to improve chess performance under time pressure.

Cognitive mechanisms and neurological foundations of companion animals' role in enhancing human psychological well-being.

The impact of companion animals on human psychological health has garnered widespread attention. Research demonstrates that companion animals contribute positively in various ways, including reducing depression, anxiety, stress, and fostering positive emotions in humans. Recent studies have revealed significant changes in the activity levels of human emotion-related cortical areas (such as the frontal cortex and amygdala) and neurotransmitter (e.g., oxytocin, cortisol) secretion due to interaction with companion animals. However, research in this domain is still in a nascent stage, with many unknowns in the cognitive neural mechanisms involved. This paper proposes that to understand the cognitive mechanisms through which companion animals affect human psychological health, we need to examine changes in emotional cognitive processing. It aims to uncover the neurological underpinnings of how companion animals enhance human psychological well-being from the perspective of brain connectivity. This approach is expected to provide theoretical support and direction for future research and practical applications in this field.

Research on the cognitive neural mechanism of privacy empowerment illusion cues regarding comprehensibility and interpretability for privacy disclosures

In the era of artificial intelligence, privacy empowerment illusion has become a crucial means for digital enterprises and platforms to “manipulate” users and create an illusion of control. This topic has also become an urgent and pressing concern for current research. However, the existing studies are limited in terms of their perspectives and methodologies, making it challenging to fully explain why users express concerns about privacy empowerment illusion but repeatedly disclose their personal information. This study combines the associative-propositional evaluation model (APE) and cognitive load theory, using event-related potential (ERP) technology to investigate the underlying mechanisms of how the comprehensibility and interpretability of privacy empowerment illusion cues affect users’ immediate attitudes and privacy disclosure behaviours; these mechanisms are mediated by psychological processing and cognitive load differences. Behavioural research results indicate that in the context of privacy empowerment illusion cues with low comprehensibility, users are more inclined to disclose their private information when faced with high interpretability than they are when faced with low interpretability. EEG results show that in the context of privacy empowerment illusion cues with low comprehensibility, high interpretability induces greater P2 amplitudes than does low interpretability; low interpretability induces greater N2 amplitudes than does high interpretability. This study extends the scopes of the APE model and cognitive load theory in the field of privacy research, providing new insights into privacy attitudes. Doing so offers a valuable framework through which digital enterprises can gain a deeper understanding of users’ genuine privacy attitudes and immediate reactions under privacy empowerment illusion situations. This understanding can help increase user privacy protection and improve their overall online experience, making it highly relevant and beneficial.

Neural correlates of aggression outcome expectation and their association with aggression: A voxel-based morphometry study

BackgroundAggression outcome expectation is an important cognitive factor of aggression. Discovering the neural mechanism of aggression outcome expectation is conducive to developing aggression research. However, the neural correlates underlying aggression outcome expectation and its effect remain elusive. MethodsWe utilized voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to unravel the neural architecture of aggression outcome expectation measured by the Social Emotional Information Processing Assessment for Adults and its relationship with aggression measured by the Buss Perry Aggression Questionnaire in a sample of 185 university students (114 female; mean age = 19.94 ± 1.62 years; age range: 17–32 years). ResultsWe found a significantly positive correlation between aggression outcome expectation and the regional gray matter volume (GMV) in the right middle temporal gyrus (MTG) (x = 55.5, y = −58.5, z = 1.5; t = 3.35; cluster sizes = 352, p < 0.05, GRF corrected). Moreover, aggression outcome expectation acted as a mediator underlying the association between the right MTG volume and aggression. ConclusionsThese results revealed the neural correlates of aggression outcome expectation and its effect on aggression for the first time, which may contribute to our understanding of the cognitive neural mechanism of aggression and potentially identifying neurobiological markers for aggression.

The cognitive neural mechanism of trait anxiety influences mind wandering: An ERP study

Converging evidence from behavioral and neuroscience studies demonstrated that our attention to the external world is influenced by emotion, especially anxiety. However, little is known about how trait anxiety influences neural and behavioral responses during mind wandering. The present study aimed to examine the neural and cognitive time courses of how trait anxiety affects mind wandering. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 20 individuals with high trait anxiety and 20 with low trait anxiety when they performed the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) in which they were asked to respond to frequent ‘‘nontargets’’ (digits 0–6, 8–9) but withhold responses to infrequent ‘‘targets’’ (the digit 7). We compared the behavioral performance and electroencephalographic waves between the high and low trait anxiety groups during states of “mind wandering” (fail to withhold a response to the target number) and being “on-task” (correctly withhold a response to the target number). Results showed that a larger late positive component (LPC, 400–950 ms) was elicited when participants were “on task” than when they were mind wandering. Additionally, a larger late slow waveform (LSW, 950–1050 ms) was elicited in the high trait anxiety group than in the low trait anxiety group. Moreover, there was a positive correlation between self-reported trait anxiety scores and the LSW amplitudes during mind wandering. It was proposed that the effect of trait anxiety on the cognitive neural mechanism underlying attentional processing was primarily reflected in a later process involving the redistribution of cognitive resources.

Embracing beauty through leftward movements: An ERP study on metaphorical association between hand actions and aesthetic judgments

In this study, we examined the metaphorical association between aesthetic judgments of faces and horizontal hand movements as well as their cognitive neural mechanisms using a joint categorical response task. In the “aesthetic-action” metaphorical representation situation, participants were asked to classify beautiful/ugly faces by moving the mouse to the left or the right. The results showed that the joint categorization condition “judge beautiful-move mouse left, judge ugly-move mouse right” had a shorter reaction time than the “judge beautiful-move mouse right, judge ugly-move mouse left” condition, which was accompanied by larger amplitudes of the early component N170, EPN, and the late component P300. Combining the behavioral and event-related potentials (ERPs) results, the present study demonstrated a metaphorical association between horizontal hand actions and aesthetic judgments. It suggested that horizontal hand actions can affect the speed of aesthetic judgments by influencing processing fluency, emotional arousal level, categorization motivation, and attentional resources. These findings provide new perspectives to better understand the cognitive process of aesthetic judgments and provide a basis for applying embodied cognition and metaphor theory to the field of aesthetic psychology.

Identifying the impact of unconscious fear on adolescent anxiety: Cognitive neural mechanisms and interventions

Identifying the impact of unconscious fear on adolescent anxiety: Cognitive neural mechanisms and interventions

Empathy does not Always Lead to Equal Treatment: Cognitive Neural Mechanisms of Empathy-induced Unfair Behavior

Empathy does not Always Lead to Equal Treatment: Cognitive Neural Mechanisms of Empathy-induced Unfair Behavior

The cognitive neural mechanisms of age-related decline in mnemonic discrimination and its application

The cognitive neural mechanisms of age-related decline in mnemonic discrimination and its application

Altered electrophysiology mechanism related to inhibitory control in adults with insomnia

BackgroundInsomnia disorder (ID), one of the most common psychophysiological disorders, can cause a serious burden on the individual's work and academic performance. Cognitive dysfunction often exists in patients with insomnia, which negatively affects their living quality. Inhibitory control (IC), as a vital cognitive function, allows individuals to suppress attention, behavior, or thoughts that are irrelevant to the task, so as to effectively adapt to the current goal. The earlier studies on the inhibitory control of insomnia patients predominantly used subjective scales for evaluation and that can have drawbacks because they don't provide an objective assessment.MethodsIn order to investigate the inhibitory control function of insomniacs, this research subdivides inhibitory control into response inhibition and conflict inhibition. The response inhibition and conflict inhibition capacities of insomniacs were evaluated using the two-choice oddball task and the color-word stroop task, and accordingly the association between insomnia disorder and inhibitory control capacity as well as its cognitive neural mechanism was able to be examined.ResultsBehavioral results finding, insomniacs conducted the two-choice oddball test and the color-word stroop task with lower accuracy and slower reaction times when compared to healthy sleepers. ERP results finding, when performing the two-choice oddball task, the P3 amplitude of the insomniacs was significantly lower than that of healthy sleepers while there was no significant difference between the two groups' N2 amplitudes. At the same time, when completing the color-word stroop task, the insomniacs' N450 amplitude was significantly lower than that of healthy sleepers.DiscussionThe above findings suggest that in response inhibition tasks, insomniacs may have weaker motor inhibition abilities, and similarly perform weaker conflict monitoring abilities in conflict inhibition tasks, which indicates that insomniacs' inhibitory control is impaired compared to that of healthy sleepers. This study thus relates to the finding at the electrophysiological level that there is a certain correlation between insomnia and a decline in inhibitory control ability, which may suggest that improving inhibitory control function in patients with insomnia is a clinically significant and worthwhile area of adjuvant treatment.

Influence of voluntary action and outcome valence on the sense of agency.

Recent studies have revealed that people might experience a lessened sense of agency for negative consequences by claiming that they were obeying orders. However, little is known about the cognitive neural mechanism behind the reduced sense of agency when individuals are forced to inflict physical harm on others. This study adopted temporal estimation tasks to investigate the internal mechanism of voluntary action on the sense of agency and the moderating effect of outcome valence as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs). In the temporal estimation task, participants were asked to make trade-offs of monetary gains for themselves against painful electric stimuli experienced by strangers, subjectively estimated the perceptual temporal interval between keypress actions (i.e., free or coercive actions) and consequent outcomes (i.e., positive or negative tones) and rated the feeling of control. The results showed that perceived temporal interval was shorter for positive tones compared with negative tones in the coercive condition, and induced more negative N1 and N300 amplitudes, which indicated that the implicit sense of agency was higher. However, the explicit sense of agency was stronger in the free condition than in the coercive condition, which was not influenced by outcome valence. We discuss the implications of utilizing positive feedback and free choice as significant strategies for those experiencing the abnormal sense of agency.

Neuro-safety science: an emerging discipline to reveal the neural mechanisms of safety problems.

At present, the research of safety science discipline is limited to the level of describing psychology and behaviors, because the cognitive neural mechanisms behind them are unknown. This paper introduces an emerging interdiscipline, namely neuro-safety science, which uses the neuroscientific methods to investigate the neural systems behind safely relevant behaviors. Qualitative methods such as literature review method and theoretical model construction method were adopted for this study. Based on the background of neuro-safety science, the definition of neuro-safety science was defined, its connotation was analyzed, and the research contents from two aspects of theoretical research and practical application research were proposed. Methodology system including research principles, research routes, research procedure and research methods, and the paradigm system of neuro-safety science were put forward. At last, the application research on neuro-safety science was forecasted. This paper opens up a new research perspective for the research of safety science, and provide guidance and reference to develop neuro-safety science.

Negative bias in early and late cognitive processing of coronary heart disease patients with depressive symptoms: an EPR study

BackgroundThe purpose of this research was to explore the underlying mechanisms of cognitive impairments in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) who exhibit depressive symptoms. This was accomplished by recording Event-related potentials (ERPs) during the emotional Stroop task, with a specific focus on the temporal dynamics of attentional bias towards various emotional words.MethodsWe selected 17 CHD patients with depressive symptoms and 23 CHD patients without depression using a convenience sampling method from the Affiliated Hospital of Weifang Medical University. Each participant completed an emotional Stroop color-word task, and ERPs were recorded during the task to examine cognitive processing.ResultsCHD patients with depressive symptoms exhibited generally smaller amplitudes of N1, N2, P3 and longer latency of P3 compared to CHD patients without depression. Specifically, the N1 amplitude of negative words was smaller and the P3 amplitude of negative words was larger in the CHD with depressive group compared to the CHD group. Furthermore, within the group of CHD patients with depressive symptoms, negative words elicited a smaller N1 amplitude and larger P3 amplitude compared to positive and neutral words.ConclusionsCHD patients with depressive symptoms demonstrate decreased attentional resources, leading to cognitive impairments. Notably, significant attentional bias occurs during both early and later stages of cognitive processing. This bias is primarily characterized by an enhanced automatic processing of negative information at the early stage and difficulty disengaging from such information at the later stage. These findings contribute to the existing literature on the cognitive neural mechanisms underlying depression in CHD patients.

A Review on the Cognitive Neural Mechanisms of Anaphor Processing During Language Comprehension.

Anaphora is an essential means of maintaining textual coherence, the phenomenon of replacing one word or phrase in the preceding part of a discourse with another. At least two crucial stages are involved in anaphor processing: bonding and resolution. The links between the anaphor and potential antecedents are established in the former stage, which would be evaluated and integrated into the latter stage. We reviewed relevant event-related potential (ERP) studies that examined the time course of anaphor processing and neural oscillation studies that explored energy changes in alpha, theta, and gamma frequency bands, which were associated with attention, working memory retrieval, and integration, respectively. The existing neuroimaging studies revealed the involvement of language processing networks and the Theory of Mind (ToM). Further research should explore the neural correlates and the effects of potential factors on anaphor processing, which could help gain a more comprehensive picture from multiple perspectives.

A Semi-Supervised Speech Deception Detection Algorithm Combining Acoustic Statistical Features and Time-Frequency Two-Dimensional Features.

Human lying is influenced by cognitive neural mechanisms in the brain, and conducting research on lie detection in speech can help to reveal the cognitive mechanisms of the human brain. Inappropriate deception detection features can easily lead to dimension disaster and make the generalization ability of the widely used semi-supervised speech deception detection model worse. Because of this, this paper proposes a semi-supervised speech deception detection algorithm combining acoustic statistical features and time-frequency two-dimensional features. Firstly, a hybrid semi-supervised neural network based on a semi-supervised autoencoder network (AE) and a mean-teacher network is established. Secondly, the static artificial statistical features are input into the semi-supervised AE to extract more robust advanced features, and the three-dimensional (3D) mel-spectrum features are input into the mean-teacher network to obtain features rich in time-frequency two-dimensional information. Finally, a consistency regularization method is introduced after feature fusion, effectively reducing the occurrence of over-fitting and improving the generalization ability of the model. This paper carries out experiments on the self-built corpus for deception detection. The experimental results show that the highest recognition accuracy of the algorithm proposed in this paper is 68.62% which is 1.2% higher than the baseline system and effectively improves the detection accuracy.

Word Structure Tunes Electrophysiological and Hemodynamic Responses in the Frontal Cortex

To date, it is still unclear how word structure might impact lexical processing in the brain for languages with an impoverished system of grammatical morphology such as Chinese. In this study, concurrent electroencephalogram (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) recordings were performed to inspect the temporal and spatial brain activities that are related to Chinese word structure (compound vs. derivation vs. non-morphological) effects. A masked priming paradigm was utilized on three lexical conditions (compound constitute priming, derivation constitute priming, and non-morphological priming) to tap Chinese native speakers' structural sensitivity to differing word structures. The compound vs. derivation structure effect was revealed by the behavioral data as well as the temporal and spatial brain activation patterns. In the masked priming task, Chinese derivations exhibited significantly enhanced brain activation in the frontal cortex and involved broader brain networks as compared with lexicalized compounds. The results were interpreted by the differing connection patterns between constitute morphemes within a given word structure from a spreading activation perspective. More importantly, we demonstrated that the Chinese word structure effect showed a distinct brain activation pattern from that of the dual-route mechanism in alphabetic languages. Therefore, this work paved a new avenue for comprehensively understanding the underlying cognitive neural mechanisms associated with Chinese derivations and coordinate compounds.