Larger Late Positive Component Amplitudes Research Articles

Empathy for pain in individuals influenced by moral identity: Evidence from an ERP study

Both morality and empathy are crucial in the construction of human society. The influence of morality on empathy also deserves researchers’ attention. This study used event-related potential techniques to control the degree of moral identity of participants through writing tasks and deeply explored the psychological processes and neural mechanisms of moral identity affecting pain empathy. Behavioral results for picture type showed that the response time to the pain pictures was longer than the nonpain pictures, the accuracy of pain pictures was lower than that of nonpain pictures and ratings of pain pictures were rated higher than non-pain picture. Behavioral results for moral identity showed that there were no significant differences in response time, accuracy, and rating. The interaction between picture type and moral identity was not significant. The ERP results showed that people with high moral identity had higher levels of empathy than those with low moral identity, and pain pictures induced smaller N2 amplitudes and larger Late Positive Component (LPC) amplitudes than nonpain pictures. For people with low moral identity, the pain picture amplitudes were not significantly different from the N2 and LPC amplitudes induced by the nonpain pictures. These results suggest that moral identity affects and moderates the early processing of emotional empathy in the N2 representation and the late processing of cognitive empathy in the LPC representation. Individuals with high moral identity are more likely to induce early automated processing of pain to others when stimulated by pain pictures, automatically sharing the negative emotions of others, which is manifested as having more emotional empathy. Individuals with high moral identity exhibit a more refined analytical evaluation of pain pictures and a conscious, top-down control of processing when stimulated by pain pictures, which is manifested as having more cognitive empathy. Whether in the emotional empathy stage or in the cognitive empathy stage, moral identity has an important impact on pain empathy, and higher moral identity is the premise of empathy for the pain of others.

Central nervous activity during an emotional Stroop task in fibromyalgia syndrome

Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is a chronic condition of widespread pain accompanied by symptoms like depression, fatigue and cognitive impairments. In addition to central nervous pain sensitization, emotional dysregulation may be involved in FMS pathogenesis. This study investigated emotional influences on cognitive processing in FMS. Event-related potentials and theta oscillations were recorded during an emotional Stroop task including positive, negative, and neutral adjectives in 36 FMS patients and 35 controls. Patients had larger P3 amplitudes and greater theta power than controls, independent of the emotional word content. In patients, but not controls, negative words were associated with a larger late positive component (LPC) amplitude than positive words. No group difference was seen for P1, early posterior negativity or N4. Reaction times (RTs) were longer in patients than controls, independent of emotional word content. The P3 and theta oscillation findings suggest greater cognitive effort and attentional mobilization in FMS, which is needed to overcome the reduction of attentional resources resulting from central nervous pain sensitization. Although RTs do not support attentional bias in FMS, emotional modulation of the LPC amplitude may reflect preferential central nervous processing of negative information, which could contribute to pain and affective symptoms characterizing FMS. Access to research dataThe research data of the study are available to the public via the Open Science Framework repository (OSF: https://osf.io/tsyre/).

Eye region as a predictor of holistic facial aesthetic judgment: An eventrelated potential study

Event-related potentials (ERP) play an important role in the early detection of emotional arousal. Previous studies of aesthetics have shown that the positive component appearing around 200 ms after stimulus (P2) and the larger late positive component (LPC) are closely related to the early stage of aesthetic judgment. We investigated the temporal features of facial aesthetic judgment on the basis of facial features by using the ERP technique. Participants were instructed to predict holistic face aesthetic level based on the regions of eyes, mouth, or nose. Behavioral results show that holistic score predictions based on the eye region were no different to holistic aesthetic ratings. The ERP analysis results show that beautiful eyes and faces elicited a smaller P2 amplitude and LPC amplitude when judging the holistic aesthetic. The P2 effect of facial aesthetics may reflect automatic processing of facial aesthetics and the difference in LPC may be related to motivational attention to facial aesthetics. Because of the similar ERP effect between the holistic facial aesthetic judgment and the aesthetic judgment of eye region, this region may play a significant role in predicting holistic facial aesthetics. The implication is that the eyes are not only a window to the soul, but also a benchmark of beauty.

Electrophysiological evidence for the importance of interpersonalcuriosity

Interpersonal curiosity (IPC) is an important intrinsic motivation in social interaction, yet studies focused on its neural mechanism are rare. In a three-agent (Self, Other, or Computer) interactive gambling task, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) to a cue stimuli indicating whether participants will be informed of their own, of another participant's or the computer's outcomes such that curiosity will be satisfied (CWS) or curiosity will not be satisfied (CWN). The results showed that relative to the CWS cue stimuli the CWN cue evoked a larger late positive component (LPC) between approximately 400ms and 700ms after cue onset in both the Self and Other conditions, but not in the Computer condition. Additionally, participants reported stronger curiosity in the Other's outcomes than in the Computer's outcomes. Most importantly, participants’ subjective rating of curiosity was significantly correlated with the amplitude of the LPC elicited by the CWN cue. Furthermore, scores in the “curiosity about emotion” subscale of the IPC Scale was significantly correlated with the LPC amplitude when the participants learn they will not be informed of the Other's outcomes. We suggest that (1) interpersonal information is of great significance to individuals and IPC is an important social motivator, and (2) LPC amplitude is sensitive toIPC.

Neurophysiologic and neurobehavioral evidence of beneficial effects of prenatal omega-3 fatty acid intake on memory function at school age

The beneficial effects of prenatal and early postnatal intakes of omega-3 (n-3) polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) on cognitive development during infancy are well recognized. However, few studies have examined the extent to which these benefits continue to be evident in childhood. The aim of this study was to examine the relation of n-3 PUFAs and seafood-contaminant intake with memory function in school-age children from a fish-eating community. In a prospective, longitudinal study in Arctic Quebec, we assessed Inuit children (n = 154; mean age: 11.3 y) by using a continuous visual recognition task to measure 2 event-related potential components related to recognition memory processing: the FN400 and the late positive component (LPC). Children were also examined by using 2 well-established neurobehavioral assessments of memory: the Digit span forward from Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children, 4th edition, and the California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version. Repeated-measures analyses of variance revealed that children with higher cord plasma concentrations of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which is an important n-3 PUFA, had a shorter FN400 latency and a larger LPC amplitude; and higher plasma DHA concentrations at the time of testing were associated with increased FN400 amplitude. Cord DHA-related effects were observed regardless of seafood-contaminant amounts. Multiple regression analyses also showed positive associations between cord DHA concentrations and performance on neurobehavioral assessments of memory. To our knowledge, this study provides the first neurophysiologic and neurobehavioral evidence of long-term beneficial effects of n-3 PUFA intake in utero on memory function in school-age children.

Evidence for Attentional Gradient in the Serial Position Memory Curve from Event-related Potentials

The occurrence of primacy versus recency effects in free recall is suggested to reflect either two distinct memory systems, or the operation of a single system that is modulated by allocation of attention and less vulnerable to interference. Behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERPs) measures were used to investigate the encoding substrates of the serial position curve and subsequent recall in young adults. Participants were instructed to remember lists of words consisting of 12 common nouns each presented once every 1.5 sec, with a recall signal following the last word to indicate that all remembered items should be written on paper. This procedure was repeated for 20 different word lists. Both performance and late ERP amplitudes reflected classic recall serial position effects. Greater recall and larger late positive component amplitudes were obtained for the primacy and recency items, with less recall and smaller amplitudes for the middle words. The late positive component was larger for recalled compared to unrecalled primacy items, but it did not differ between memory performance outcomes for the recency items. The close relationship between the enhanced amplitude and primacy retrieval supports the view that this positive component reflects one of a process series related to attentional gradient and encoding of events for storage in memory. Recency effects appear to index operations determined by the anticipation of the last stimulus presentation, which occurred for both recalled and unrecalled memory items. Theoretical implications are discussed.