Arousal Level Research Articles

Daily Contributors of Tinnitus Loudness and Distress: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

BackgroundTinnitus is a heterogeneous condition which may be associated with moderate to severe disability, but the reasons why only a subset of individuals is burdened by the condition are not fully clear. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) allows a better understanding of tinnitus by capturing the fluctuations of tinnitus symptoms, such as distress and loudness, and psychological processes, such as emotional arousal, overall stress, mood, and concentration and how these variables interact over time. Whether any of those variables have an influence over the next day, that is, whether any of these variables are auto- or cross-correlated, is still unanswered.ObjectivesAssess whether behavioral and symptom-related data from tinnitus users from the TrackYourTinnitus (TYT) mobile app have an impact on tinnitus loudness and distress on subsequent days.MethodsAnonymized data was collected from 278 users of the iOS or Android TYT apps between 2014 and 2020. Tinnitus-related distress, tinnitus loudness, concentration level, mood, emotional arousal, and overall stress level were assessed using either a slider or the Wong-Baker Pain FACES scale via a daily survey. Three modeling strategies were used to investigate whether tinnitus loudness and distress are affected by previous days symptoms or psychological processes: auto- and cross correlations, regressions with elastic net regularization, and subgrouping within group iterative multiple model estimation (S-GIMME).ResultsNo autocorrelation or cross-correlation was observed at the group level between the variables assessed. However, application of the regression models with elastic net regularization identified individualized predictors of tinnitus loudness and distress for most participants, with the models including contemporaneous and lagged information from the previous day. S-GIMME corroborated these findings by identifying individualized predictors of tinnitus loudness and distress from the previous day.DiscussionWe showed that tinnitus loudness and tinnitus distress are affected by the contemporaneous and lagged dynamics of behavioral and emotional processes measured through EMA. These effects were seen at the group, and individual levels. The relevance EMA and the implications of the insights derived from it for tinnitus care are discussed, especially considering current trends toward the individualization of tinnitus care.

Особенности психологической подготовки лыжника-гонщика

Modern sport is a competitive environment where the bar for the athletes in every aspect of the training is set very high. Psychological preparation of an athlete, along with other types of training, is one of the most important factors in the training process that demands a close attention and should be included in the annual training plan. Ski racing specifics influence the psychologic part of the training process in its own way. The athlete prepares to cope not only with the objective obstacles mostly depending on the weather conditions during the competitions, but with the challenges of a subjective nature due to a human factor. The latter is particularly important during the period of competitions and at the stage immediately preceding the competition. The process of psychological training should be aimed at the adaptation to the process of competitions. The optimal level of arousal and emotional agitation – mental readiness – directly affects the ski racing sport results. Modeling the competitive situation during a training process is a method of reaching that optimal state. The author explores the general and special psychological training methods, discusses the tasks and conditions for their implementation, and highlights the stages of special training.

Pupil-linked Arousal Signals in the Midbrain Superior Colliculus.

The orienting response evoked by the appearance of a salient stimulus is modulated by arousal; however, neural underpinnings for the interplay between orienting and arousal are not well understood. The superior colliculus (SC), causally involved in multiple components of the orienting response including gaze and attention shifts, receives not only multisensory and cognitive inputs but also arousal-regulated inputs from various cortical and subcortical structures. To investigate the impact of moment-by-moment fluctuations in arousal on orienting saccade responses, we used microstimulation of the monkey SC to trigger saccade responses, and we used pupil size and velocity to index the level of arousal at stimulation onset because these measures correlate with changes in brain states and locus coeruleus activity. Saccades induced by SC microstimulation correlated with prestimulation pupil velocity, with higher pupil velocities on trials without evoked saccades than with evoked saccades. In contrast, prestimulation absolute pupil size did not correlate with saccade behavior. Moreover, pupil velocity correlated with evoked saccade latency and metrics. Together, our results demonstrated that small fluctuations in arousal, indexed by pupil velocity, can modulate the saccade response evoked by SC microstimulation in awake behaving monkeys.

Distinguishing between obsessive-compulsive disorder and paraphilias or nonparaphilic sexual disorders in a young patient with sexual thoughts

Nonparaphilic Sexual Addictions (NPSAs), characterized by repetitive sexual thoughts and behaviors, have been suggested as falling within the obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorder. In comparison to individuals with NPSAs, those with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) reported significantly higher levels of fear and avoidance related to their sexual thoughts. Individuals with NPSAs reported elevated levels of sexual arousal associated with their thoughts and a greater degree of sexual pleasure derived from engaging in compulsive behaviors. In the context of this article, we will examine the case of a young patient who, while undergoing various therapeutic trials with antidepressants, has recently aroused suspicion of OCD due to the heightened intensity of his obsessive thoughts, particularly in the realm of sexuality. Additionally, we will highlight, following the specialized literature, some clinical aspects that may guide us in differentiating between these two pathologies.

An Eye Tracking and Event-Related Potentials Study With Visual Stimuli for Adolescents Emotional Issues.

BackgroundPsychological issues are common among adolescents, which have a significant impact on their growth and development. However, the underlying neural mechanisms of viewing visual stimuli in adolescents are poorly understood.Materials and MethodsThis study applied the Chinese version of the DSM-V self-assessment scales to evaluate 73 adolescents’ psychological characteristics for depressive and manic emotional issues. Combined with eye-tracking and event-related potential (ERP), we explored the characteristics of their visual attention and neural processing mechanisms while freely viewing positive, dysphoric, threatening and neutral visual stimuli.ResultsCompared to controls, adolescents with depressive emotional tendencies showed more concentrated looking behavior with fixation distribution index than the controls, while adolescents with manic emotional tendencies showed no such trait. ERP data revealed individuals with depressive tendencies showed lower arousal levels toward emotional stimuli in the early stage of cognitive processing (N1 amplitude decreased) and with prolonged reaction time (N1 latency increased) than the control group. We found no significant difference between the manic group and the control group. Furthermore, the depression severity scores of the individuals with depressive tendencies were negatively correlated with the total fixation time toward positive stimuli, were negatively correlated with the fixation distribution index toward threatening stimuli, and were positively correlated with the mean N1 amplitudes while viewing dysphoric stimuli. Also, for the individuals with depressive tendencies, there was a positive correlation between the mean N1 amplitudes and the fixation time on the area of interest (AOI) while viewing dysphoric stimuli. For the individuals with manic tendencies, the manic severity scores of the individuals with manic tendencies were positively correlated with the total fixation time toward the positive stimuli. However, no significant correlations were found between the manic severity scores and N1 amplitudes, and between N1 amplitudes and eye-tracking output variables.ConclusionThis study proposes the application of eye-tracking and ERP to provide better biological evidence to alter the neural processing of emotional stimuli for adolescents with emotional issues.

Using Facial Micro-Expressions in Combination With EEG and Physiological Signals for Emotion Recognition.

Emotions are multimodal processes that play a crucial role in our everyday lives. Recognizing emotions is becoming more critical in a wide range of application domains such as healthcare, education, human-computer interaction, Virtual Reality, intelligent agents, entertainment, and more. Facial macro-expressions or intense facial expressions are the most common modalities in recognizing emotional states. However, since facial expressions can be voluntarily controlled, they may not accurately represent emotional states. Earlier studies have shown that facial micro-expressions are more reliable than facial macro-expressions for revealing emotions. They are subtle, involuntary movements responding to external stimuli that cannot be controlled. This paper proposes using facial micro-expressions combined with brain and physiological signals to more reliably detect underlying emotions. We describe our models for measuring arousal and valence levels from a combination of facial micro-expressions, Electroencephalography (EEG) signals, galvanic skin responses (GSR), and Photoplethysmography (PPG) signals. We then evaluate our model using the DEAP dataset and our own dataset based on a subject-independent approach. Lastly, we discuss our results, the limitations of our work, and how these limitations could be overcome. We also discuss future directions for using facial micro-expressions and physiological signals in emotion recognition.

Inhibitory control effectiveness can be improved: The role of arousal, subjective significance and origin of words in modified Emotional Stroop Test.

The interference control measured in the Emotional Stroop Task is the phenomenon that gives us an insight into mechanisms of emotion-cognition interactions. Especially the role of dimensions of affect can be easily studied with this paradigm. In the current study, we were interested in the role of the complexity of emotional stimuli (origin). We also aimed at searching for activation-like factors that impair (arousal) or improve (subjective significance) the effectiveness of cognitive control. We have used an orthogonal manipulation of all the above dimensions in words. We expected to find the contrastive effects of arousal and subjective significance on reaction times and Event Related Potential’s amplitudes. On a behavioural level, we observed the reduction of reaction times with increasing subjective significance of stimuli and reflective origin. We also found a correlation between subjective significance and reduction of amplitude polarisation in the N450 component associated with cognitive control execution effort. This experiment shows that subjective significance has an improving role for cognitive control effectiveness, even when valence, arousal and origin levels are controlled. This guides us to conclude that external stimuli may drive not only disruption of control but also its improvement.

Stability of symptoms of psychological distress: A 13-year study using Australian national data.

This study examined the stability of 10 symptoms of psychological distress measured by the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) in an Australian adult sample. Data were collected at seven time points, 2years apart, between 2007 and 2019. The average stability of the 10 symptoms was 49%. However, there were differences between items. The items can be categorised based on two characteristics: Degree of extremity and arousal. More extreme symptoms (i.e., those beginning with 'so', such as 'so sad that...') tended to change more over time, whereas milder symptoms (e.g., "nervous") tended to be more stable. Symptoms with low levels of arousal (e.g., 'hopeless') tended to reflect more situation-specific influences, whereas symptoms with high levels of arousal (e.g., 'restless or fidgety') tended to reflect more nonsystematic influences.

Self-Reported Depression Is Associated With Aberration in Emotional Reactivity and Emotional Concept Coding.

Cognitive impairment, alterations in mood, emotion dysregulation are just a few of the consequences of depression. Despite depression being reported as the most common mental disorder worldwide, examining depression or risks of depression is still challenging. Emotional reactivity has been observed to predict the risk of depression, but the results have been mixed for negative emotional reactivity (NER). To better understand the emotional response conflict, we asked our participants to describe their feeling in meaningful sentences alongside reporting their reactions to the emotionally evocative words. We presented a word on the screen and asked participants to perform two tasks, rate their feeling after reading the word using the self-assessment manikin (SAM) scale, and describe their feeling using the property generation task. The emotional content was analyzed using a novel machine-learning algorithm approach. We performed these two tasks in blocks and randomized their order across participants. Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was used to categorize participants into self-reported non-depressed (ND) and depressed (D) groups. Compared to the ND, the D group reported reduced positive emotional reactivity when presented with extremely pleasant words regardless of their arousal levels. However, no significant difference was observed between the D and ND groups for negative emotional reactivity. In contrast, we observed increased sadness and inclination toward low negative context from descriptive content by the D compared to the ND group. The positive content analyses showed mixed results. The contrasting results between the emotional reactivity and emotional content analyses demand further examination between cohorts of self-reported depressive symptoms, no-symptoms, and MDD patients to better examine the risks of depression and help design early interventions.

Emotionally subjective reactivity to cervical cytology pictures is modulated by expertise.

Our aims were to create a catalog of cytological pictures and to evaluate the valence (level of pleasantness/unpleasantness) and arousal (level of calm/excitement) of these pictures in individuals with different occupations. The sample consisted of medical and law college students and cytopathologists. Valence and arousal score for general pictures were not modulated by expertise in cytology. However, students judged the cytological pictures to be lower in valence and in arousal than the cytopathologists. The cytopathologists classified cytological pictures with lesions as lower in valence and higher in arousal than cytological pictures without lesions.

The Avatar's Gist: How to Transfer Affective Components From Dynamic Walking to Static Body Postures.

Dynamic virtual representations of the human being can communicate a broad range of affective states through body movements, thus effectively studying emotion perception. However, the possibility of modeling static body postures preserving affective information is still fundamental in a broad spectrum of experimental settings exploring time-locked cognitive processes. We propose a novel automatic method for creating virtual affective body postures starting from kinematics data. Exploiting body features related to postural cues and movement velocity, we transferred the affective components from dynamic walking to static body postures of male and female virtual avatars. Results of two online experiments showed that participants coherently judged different valence and arousal levels in the avatar’s body posture, highlighting the reliability of the proposed methodology. In addition, esthetic and postural cues made women more emotionally expressive than men. Overall, we provided a valid methodology to create affective body postures of virtual avatars, which can be used within different virtual scenarios to understand better the way we perceive the affective state of others.

Relationship between anxiety and monotonous task performance in response to local cooling: an experimental study in healthy young men

There are limited studies on monotonous task performance and its relationship with anxiety and stress traits. This study aimed to determine if local cooling exerts physiological effects and positively affects task performance. Ten male participants performed monotonous work for 24 min under control and local cooling conditions. We measured physiological arousal and anxiety using electroencephalography and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, respectively. The participants rated their drowsiness, the thermal sensation of the seat and whole-body thermal sensation. Despite the lack of significant differences in physiological arousal, the state anxiety score, which reflects the current stressful situation, was significantly lower in the local cooling condition. Therefore, cooling might help relieve stress during monotonous tasks, without impairing task performance. In addition, individuals with higher state anxiety scores tended to experience a faster increase in their arousal level. Thus, individual anxiety traits may modulate attentional resources during monotonous task performance. Practitioner summary: The study on topic related to monotonous task performance and its relationship with anxiety and stress traits is novel. Minimising negative emotions is key to monotonous task execution under stress. Individual anxiety might modulate resource allocation for monotonous task execution.

An Investigation of Secondary Traumatic Stress and Trauma-informed Care Utilization in School Personnel.

Trauma-informed practices in schools are designed to address the impacts of trauma on students and increase supports for school personnel who are delivering this care The impact of a trauma-informed school-based intervention. Journal of Adolescence, 43, 142-147, Mendelsonet al., 2015. Research has established that professionals trained to implement the approach may have secondary traumatic stress (STS) reactions that could interfere with successful implementation (Stevens al., 2020). In this study it was hypothesized that increased use of trauma-informed care strategies would be associated with decreases in total STS scores, as well as all STS subscale scores at the end of a system's transformation initiative, controlling for sex, age, education, years worked in schools, and exposure to student trauma awareness at baseline. The Trauma Sensitive Schools Checklist (TSSC) and the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale (STSS) were used to measure study outcomes in a sample of 205 school personnel at baseline and follow up. Statistically significant improvement in STSS scores and TSSC score were noted from Time 1 to Time 2. As hypothesized, improvements in TSSC scores were associated with decreased levels of STS over time, controlling for the covariates. However, the symptom domains of intrusion and arousal impacted this relationship in a differential manner than avoidance and alterations in cognitions and mood. This study provides evidence that increased use of trauma-informed care practices can positively impact the STS levels of school personnel, though special attention should be paid to those with high levels of intrusion or arousal.

Listening to White Noise Improved Verbal Working Memory in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Pilot Study.

Existing research demonstrates that children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) underperform in cognitive tasks involving working memory (WM) due to hypo-arousal, which has led to the development of arousal regulation models to determine proper levels of arousal and optimal cognitive outcomes. The present study focuses on investigating the effects of external auditory stimuli on verbal WM in children with ADHD. Thirteen children with ADHD (aged 6–10 years old) and thirteen age- and gender-matched children with typical development (TD) completed the verbal WM task when listening to no sound, white noise, or pleasant music. A two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to compare the verbal WM performance between groups in the three auditory conditions. Children with ADHD showed the best verbal WM performance when listening to white noise and the worst performance when listening to no sound. Yet, children with TD performed the best in the no-sound condition and the worst in the white noise condition. Our findings suggest auditory white noise is beneficial for ideal arousal regulation and cognitive performance involving verbal WM for children with ADHD and support the moderate brain arousal model. Providing external white noise is a non-invasive and cost-effective approach to improving verbal WM in children with ADHD in real-world contexts.

What Young People Think About Music, Rhythm and Trauma: An Action Research Study.

A number of popular theories about trauma have suggested rhythm has potential as a mechanism for regulating arousal levels. However, there is very little literature examining this proposal from the perspective of the young people who might benefit. This action research project addresses this gap by collaborating with four groups of children in the out-of-home-care system to discover what they wanted from music therapists who brought a strong focus on rhythm-based activities. The four music therapy groups took place over a 12 month period and each cycle of action and reflection led to adjustments in what activities were offered, as well as exploring different levels of structure and ways of building relationships in the groups. The initial group incorporated a strong emphasis on highly structured rhythm-based activities, but young people found the format difficult to engage with. The second cycle included more opportunities for creativity and self-direction within semi-structured activities which children reported enjoying, but too much freedom also became overwhelming at times. The two groups in the third cycle seemed to balance structure and responsiveness successfully but were also influenced by the introduction of individual sessions prior to group commencement, which was designed to contribute to safety and trust building. Final reflections on the role of rhythm in supporting young people who have had adverse experiences were centred around the ideas of co-regulation. This was qualitatively different to our expectations that practicing rhythm-based activities would lead to an expanded window of tolerance that resulted in less time being spent in either hypo-arousal or hyper-arousal. Instead of entraining to an external rhythm, young people felt safe when their rhythms were matched, even if they were irregular, out of time and unpredictable. The small moments of co-regulation resulted in pleasure, comfort, satisfaction and peace and these moments were highly valued by the young people, who described just wanting to be relaxed and happy. Although not as rhythm-specific as the literature might suggest, music making with trusted adults helped the young people in this study feel more content.

Audience effect on domestic dogs’ behavioural displays and facial expressions

In the present study we investigated the influence of positive and negative arousal situations and the presence of an audience on dogs’ behavioural displays and facial expressions. We exposed dogs to positive anticipation, non-social frustration and social frustration evoking test sessions and measured pre and post-test salivary cortisol concentrations. Cortisol concentration did not increase during the tests and there was no difference in pre or post-test concentrations in the different test conditions, excluding a different level of arousal. Displacement behaviours of “looking away” and “sniffing the environment” occurred more in the frustration-evoking situations compared to the positive anticipation and were correlated with cortisol concentrations. “Ears forward” occurred more in the positive anticipation condition compared to the frustration-evoking conditions, was positively influenced by the presence of an audience, and negatively correlated to the pre-test cortisol concentrations, suggesting it may be a good indicator of dogs’ level of attention. “Ears flattener”, “blink”, “nose lick”, “tail wagging” and “whining” were associated with the presence of an audience but were not correlated to cortisol concentrations, suggesting a communicative component of these visual displays. These findings are a first step to systematically test which subtle cues could be considered communicative signals in domestic dogs.

Assistive Technology and Internet of Things for people with ADHD

This article focuses on how people with disabilities can benefit from new technologies and in particular assistive technology and Internet of Things Applications. Assistive Technology is now an integral part of modern education and even more in the field of special education, as it can prove to be a powerful tool to support educational integration. Through smart devices and artificial intelligence, an attempt is made to recognize emotions and the level of arousal, through sensors, restoring it to a normal basis, and giving continuous emotional feedback. This paper refers to parents, caregivers, and people with ADHD and it gives solutions that improve their daily lives with the help of applications created for smart devices.

Arousal impacts distributed hubs modulating the integration of brain functional connectivity

Even when subjects are at rest, it is thought that brain activity is organized into distinct brain states during which reproducible patterns are observable. Yet, it is unclear how to define or distinguish different brain states. A potential source of brain state variation is arousal, which may play a role in modulating functional interactions between brain regions. Here, we use simultaneous resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and pupillometry to study the impact of arousal levels indexed by pupil area on the integration of large-scale brain networks. We employ a novel sparse dictionary learning-based method to identify hub regions participating in between-network integration stratified by arousal, by measuring k-hubness, the number (k) of functionally overlapping networks in each brain region. We show evidence of a brain-wide decrease in between-network integration and inter-subject variability at low relative to high arousal, with differences emerging across regions of the frontoparietal, default mode, motor, limbic, and cerebellum networks. State-dependent changes in k-hubness relate to the actual patterns of network integration within these hubs, suggesting a brain state transition from high to low arousal characterized by global synchronization and reduced network overlaps. We demonstrate that arousal is not limited to specific brain areas known to be directly associated with arousal regulation, but instead has a brain-wide impact that involves high-level between-network communications. Lastly, we show a systematic change in pairwise fMRI signal correlation structures in the arousal state-stratified data, and demonstrate that the choice of global signal regression could result in different conclusions in conventional graph theoretical analysis and in the analysis of k-hubness when studying arousal modulations. Together, our results suggest the presence of global and local effects of pupil-linked arousal modulations on resting state brain functional connectivity.

Feedback frequency of graphical countdown timers affects pedestrian estimated waiting time at red lights

Graphical countdown timers (similar to a progress bar) have the potential to shorten pedestrians’ perceived waiting time at the red light. Based on the findings from human-computer interaction (HCI) and time estimation theories, the potential may be affected by feedback frequency. This study tested how the feedback frequency of countdown progress bar in traffic light influenced time estimation in a field experiment, and further explored its mechanism in a laboratory experiment. In both experiments, participants estimated various durations (30 s, 45 s, 60 s) under three levels of feedback frequency: low (0.5 Hz), medium (1 Hz), and high (2 Hz). The results showed that although waiting time was underestimated in all conditions, lower feedback frequency led to shorter estimated duration, with slight changes in different contexts. In the traffic context, the effect of feedback frequency was comparable across different countdown duration, but it became stronger at longer countdown duration in the non-traffic context. Overall, the effect of feedback frequency was accompanied by changes in neither arousal level (measured by the subjective scale and physiological indices) nor internal clock speed, which are two critical determinants of time perception. The findings have practical implications on the display design of red light and theoretical implications on time estimation processes.

Variations in Pupil Size Related to Memory for Recently Presented Words and Event Related Potentials.

Pupillometry has been found to be correlated with activity of cholinergic and noradrenergic neuromodulator systems. These systems regulate the level of cortical arousal and therefore perception, attention, and memory. Here, we tested how different types of pupil size variance (prestimulus baseline and prestimulus hippus power) may correlate with behavioral and event-related potentials (ERPs). We recorded pupil size and ERPs while participants were presented with a series of words and then asked whether the words had been in the initial list when they were later presented intermixed with unpresented words. We found that a smaller prestimulus baseline pupil size during the study phase was associated with better memory performance. Study items also evoked a larger P3 response at presentation and a greater old/new memory ERP effect at test when prestimulus pupil size was small rather than large. Prestimulus hippus power was found to be a between-subjects factor affecting the robustness of memory encoding with less power being associated with a greater old/new memory ERP effect. These results provide evidence relating memory and ERPs to variables defined on pupil size that are thought to reflect varying states of parasympathetic and sympathetic arousal.