Processing Of Emotional Information Research Articles

Uncinate fasciculus disruption relates to poor recognition of negative facial emotions in Alzheimer's disease: a cross-sectional diffusion tensor imaging study.

Recognising facial emotions involves visual and emotional information processing. Patients with dementia, including dementia of Alzheimer's type (DAT), are known to poorly recognise facial emotions, especially negative facial emotions. In this study, we aimed to assess if DAT patients exhibit poor facial emotional recognition, and to identify a neural basis for how poor facial emotional recognition might occur. Magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) analysis were conducted in 20 DAT patients and 15 cognitive normal (CN) subjects. The uncinate fasciculus (UF), inferior longitudinal fasciculus, and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus were delineated by deterministic tractography. DTI parameters were calculated for each fibre. Facial emotion recognition was evaluated with the Facial Emotion Selection Test (FEST). The relationships between FEST scores and DTI parameters in each fibre were measured by partial correlation analyses with age, gender, and the Mini-Mental State Examination as covariates. Group-wise comparisons between DAT and CN subjects were performed for each DTI parameter in each fibre. DAT patients showed lower FEST negative emotion scores than CN subjects (P < 0.05). The score of negative emotion subscale was negatively correlated (r = -0.770, P < 0.001) to mean diffusivity of the left UF in DAT patients. There were no relationships between negative emotion subscale and the other fibre tracts. DAT patients showed no differences in the DTI parameters for each fibre compared to CN subjects. DAT-related prefrontal-limbic network dysfunction is associated with poor recognition of unpleasant emotions; consequently, worse facial recognition of negative emotion is observed in DAT patients.

Гендерные различия эмоциональной модуляции зрительных ответов мозга у пациентов с рекуррентной депрессией

Study Objective: To study gender-related characteristics of brain activity in patients with recurrent depression, while they perform a cognitive task with emotional stimulation. Study Design: This was a controlled non-randomized experimental study. Materials and Methods: Four groups were formed: two groups consisted of patients with recurrent depression (24 men and 24 women) and two groups were made up of healthy volunteers (25 men and 25 women). The patients were not taking any medications and did not differ in their Hamilton Depression Rating Scale or Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale scores. The subjects were asked to sort 160 photos of people or animals, of which 80 were neutral images and 80 showed angry/aggressive people or animals. Simple patterns (cues) were presented two seconds prior to the pictures, and their relationship with the photographs was not explained. A 128-channel electroencephalogram was recorded and cue-elicited brain responses analyzed. Differences between the neutral and emotional conditions (emotional modulation, EM) were statistically evaluated for each group. Study Results: Gender-related differences in EM were greater in the patients than in the control-group subjects. The male patients had no EM of the P100 component, while EM of the P200 component and slow-wave activity after 400 msec was partially absent. In the female patients EM was consistently observed in the right posterior cortex. There were minimal differences in topographic distribution of EM of the N170 and P380 components between men and women as well as between patients and healthy subjects. Conclusion: Gender-related differences in unconscious EM of certain components of evoked brain activity suggest that mechanisms involved in the processing of emotional information are somewhat different in men and women. This suggests a need for a differentiated approach to examination and treatment of patients. Keywords: emotional modulation, electroencephalogram, recurrent depression, implicit education, visual evoked potentials, facial expression, anger.

ВПЛИВ КОГНІТИВНОГО НАВАНТАЖЕННЯ НА ПРОЯВ ЕМОЦІЙНОГО ЕФЕКТУ СТРУПА

The Emotional Stroop Effect (ESE) is the result of a greater delay in naming colors of written emotional words than colors of written neutral words, because of shifting attention to emotionally meaningful information. ESE is mainly used in psychopathology surveys, but its application is also promising for solving applied psychophysiological problems, from professional screening and neuromarketing to detecting lies and detecting threats from emotionally unstable individuals. Because the ESE is sensitive to testing conditions, various modifications to the Emotional Stroop Test (EST) have been investigated. Within the subtests, neutral and emotional (negatively coloured) words were presented. The inclusion of distractors in subtests (target words, names of plants and animals that were not required to be answered by keystrokes) complicates the task, which manifests itself in a considerable extension of the reaction time. When performing a task with significant cognitive load, the left hand responds to emotional stimuli longer than the right. The results obtained may indicate the formation of a special system for processing emotional information in the right hemisphere, while the left hemisphere focuses on the cognitive task. It is likely that in the case of increased cognitive load, the subsystems for processing emotional and cognitive information operate relatively autonomously, inter-hemispheric interaction is enhanced, and functional asymmetry is reduced. As cognitive pressure decreases, functional asymmetry is likely to increase inter-hemispheric interaction, and ESE is not detected. The obtained values of latent periods of reaction to emotionally significant and neutral stimuli can be used to develop scales and criteria for evaluating a person's emotional reactions when it is needed.

Do SSRI antidepressant drugs work by altering emotional information processing and social behaviour?

Do SSRI antidepressant drugs work by altering emotional information processing and social behaviour?

Attachment security and attention to facial emotional expressions in preschoolers: An eye-tracking study.

According to attachment theory, internal working models of attachment affect the way in which social and emotional information is processed. The current study examined this theoretical claim by investigating the association between attachment security and attention to facial emotional expressions in 5-year-old children. Attachment security was assessed on a representational level using an Attachment Story Completion Task. Children's attention to facial emotional expressions was measured during an eye-tracking task. Gaze data (fixation duration) were collected during the presentation of pictures displaying five different facial emotional expressions (neutral, angry, fearful, sad, and happy) of unfamiliar persons. Moreover, the Emotionality-Activity-Sociability Temperament Inventory was used to control for children's temperament and was filled out by children's mothers. Regression analyses revealed that attachment security was a significant predictor of children's attention to neutral and sad expressions while controlling for age, gender, and temperament. Moreover, a t-test revealed that securely attached children looked longer at the fearful expression than insecurely attached children. These findings provide direct evidence that even on a basic perceptional level attachment security is a predictor of children's emotional information processing. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Attachment representations substantially affect the way in which emotional information is processed. Insecure attachment representations are negatively related to children's attention to emotional stimuli. What does this study add? Eye-tracking technology was used to measure children's visual attention to facial emotional expressions. Secure attachment was related to prolonged visual attention to neutral and negative facial emotional expressions. Attachment security influences children's emotional information processing even on a basic perceptual level.

Attention Dynamics During Emotion Recognition by Deaf and Hearing Individuals.

The enhancement hypothesis suggests that deaf individuals are more vigilant to visual emotional cues than hearing individuals. The present eye-tracking study examined ambient-focal visual attention when encoding affect from dynamically changing emotional facial expressions. Deaf (n = 17) and hearing (n = 17) individuals watched emotional facial expressions that in 10-s animations morphed from a neutral expression to one of happiness, sadness, or anger. The task was to recognize emotion as quickly as possible. Deaf participants tended to be faster than hearing participants in affect recognition, but the groups did not differ in accuracy. In general, happy faces were more accurately and more quickly recognized than faces expressing anger or sadness. Both groups demonstrated longer average fixation duration when recognizing happiness in comparison to anger and sadness. Deaf individuals directed their first fixations less often to the mouth region than the hearing group. During the last stages of emotion recognition, deaf participants exhibited more focal viewing of happy faces than negative faces. This pattern was not observed among hearing individuals. The analysis of visual gaze dynamics, switching between ambient and focal attention, was useful in studying the depth of cognitive processing of emotional information among deaf and hearing individuals.

Impaired Recognition of Facial Emotion in Patients With Parkinson Disease Under Dopamine Therapy.

Parkinson disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor and nonmotor symptoms. The impaired ability to recognize facial emotion expressions represents an important nonmotor symptom. The aim of this study is to investigate the ability in recognizing facial emotion expressions in patients with PD under dopamine replacement therapy. Thirty medicated patients with PD and 15 healthy controls (HC) were enrolled. All participants performed the Ekman 60-Faces test for emotional recognition. All patients underwent a neuropsychological evaluation for global cognitive functioning, depression, and anxiety. Patients with PD were impaired in recognizing emotions. Significant differences between PD and HC were found in Ekman 60-Faces test scores (P < .001), and in Ekman 60-Faces test subscales, in particular, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise (P < .001). The nigrostriatal dopaminergic depletion seems to determine emotional information processing dysfunction. This relevant nonmotor symptom could have consequences in daily living reducing interactions and social behavioral competence.

Covariation bias in depression - a predictor of treatment response?

Covariation bias, defined as an overestimation of the relationship between fear-relevant stimuli and aversive consequences, is a well-investigated cognitive bias in anxiety disorders. As patients with affective disorders also show biased information processing, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether depressed patients also display a covariation bias between negative stimuli and aversive consequences. Covariation estimates of 62 inpatients with a current severe depressive episode were assessed at admission (n = 31) or after 6weeks of treatment (n = 31) and were compared in a between-group design with 31 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. All participants showed a covariation bias for the relationship between negative stimuli and aversive consequences. Moreover, covariation bias at admission was significantly associated with various clinician- and self-reported dimensional measures of treatment response assessed 6weeks later (Global Assessment of Functioning, Clinical Global Impression Scale, and Beck Depression Inventory), i.e., patients with a stronger bias showed greater impairment after 6weeks of treatment. Categorical analyses revealed that overall, treatment non-responders-but not responders-were characterized by a covariation bias. The naturalistic study design without standardized pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments is a central limitation. We conclude that the covariation bias may constitute a possible marker in the field of emotional information processing in the search for effective predictors of therapy outcome.

Relationships between depressive symptoms and brain responses during emotional movie viewing emerge in adolescence

Affective disorders such as major depression are common but serious illnesses characterized by altered processing of emotional information. Although the frequency and severity of depressive symptoms increase dramatically over the course of childhood and adolescence, much of our understanding of their neurobiological bases comes from work characterizing adults’ responses to static emotional information. As a consequence, relationships between depressive brain phenotypes and naturalistic emotional processing, as well as the manner in which these associations emerge over the lifespan, remain poorly understood. Here, we apply static and dynamic inter-subject correlation analyses to examine how brain function is associated with clinical and non-clinical depressive symptom severity in 112 children and adolescents (7–21 years old) who viewed an emotionally evocative clip from the film Despicable Me during functional MRI. Our results reveal that adolescents with greater depressive symptom severity exhibit atypical fMRI responses during movie viewing, and that this effect is stronger during less emotional moments of the movie. Furthermore, adolescents with more similar item-level depressive symptom profiles showed more similar brain responses during movie viewing. In contrast, children’s depressive symptom severity and profiles were unrelated to their brain response typicality or similarity. Together, these results indicate a developmental change in the relationships between brain function and depressive symptoms from childhood through adolescence. Our findings suggest that depressive symptoms may shape how the brain responds to complex emotional information in a dynamic manner sensitive to both developmental stage and affective context.

Attentional scope, rumination, and processing of emotional information: An eye-tracking study.

Rumination is considered as a relatively maladaptive form of repetitive thinking that has a marked impact on mood. Individual differences in attentional scope have been proposed as an important mechanism rendering some individuals more prone to ruminate than others. The attentional scope model of rumination posits that rumination is related to a narrowed attentional scope, which may affect processing of neutral and emotional information. This study (n = 56) aimed to extend research on the relation between rumination and attentional scope while processing neutral, positive, and negative information. To assess attentional scope, a moving window task was applied which involved reading both neutral and emotional sentences. The result of reading rate indicated that individuals with higher levels of trait rumination showed a narrower attentional scope in general. In addition, the total reading time of individuals with higher levels of trait rumination was shorter when processing neutral and positive sentences through a constrained window frame, but this was not the case when processing negative sentences. These findings suggest that even though high trait ruminators use an overall constrained manner of processing, they may still process negative information differently compared to other types of information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Altered Brain Entropy as a predictor of antidepressant response in major depressive disorder

ObjectiveTo explore the alterations and value of brain entropy (BEN) in major depressive disorder (MDD). Methods85 MDD patients and 45 matched normal controls were recruited. MDD was diagnosed based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed (DSM-IV). Symptoms of depression were assessed using the Hamilton depression scale-24 (HAMD-24) at baseline and follow-up (after 8-week treatment). All subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans at baseline, and 30 MDD patients completed scans at 8th week. Whole brain BEN maps at each session was calculated using the BEN mapping toolbox. ResultsThe 8-week antidepressant treatment improved symptoms for all MDD patients. As compared to normal controls, MDD showed reduced BEN in medial orbitofrontal cortex (MOFC)/subgenual cingulate cortex (sgACC), but increased BEN in motor cortex (MC). In MDD patients, higher baseline BEN in MOFC/sgACC and lower baseline BEN in temporal cortex (TC) were associated with higher baseline HAMD scores; higher baseline BEN in MOFC/sgACC and hippocampus were associated with greater reduction of HAMD scores after 8-week medication; greater reduction of HAMD scores after 8-week medication was correlated with greater BEN reduction in MOFC/sgACC but were correlated with less BEN reduction in MC, TC, fusiform gyrus (FG) and visual cortex (VC). ConclusionThe results highlighted MOFC/sgACC BEN as a potential marker for the prediction of MDD diagnosis and treatment effect. MDD might have increased MOFC/sgACC BEN but reduced BEN in visual and sensory-motor circuits corresponding to the imbalanced emotional and sensory-motor information processing. Reversing this unbalanced BEN would improve disease conditions in MDD.

Hippocampal connectivity in the aftermath of acute social stress

The hippocampus is a core brain region that responds to stress. Previous studies have found a dysconnectivity between hippocampus and other brain regions under acute and chronic stress. However, whether and how acute social stress influences the directed connectivity patterns from and to the hippocampus remains unclear. In this study, using a within-subject design and Granger causal analysis (GCA), we investigated the alterations of resting state effective connectivity from and to hippocampal subregions after an acute social stressor (the Trier Social Stress Test). Participants were engaged in stress and control conditions spaced approximately one month apart. Our findings showed that stress altered the information flows in the thalamus-hippocampus-insula/midbrain circuit. The changes in this circuit could also predict with high accuracy the stress and control conditions at the subject level. These hippocampus-related brain networks have been documented to be involved in emotional information processing and storage, as well as habitual responses. We speculate that alterations of the effective connectivity between these brain regions may be associated with the registering and encoding of threatening stimuli under stress. Our investigation of hippocampal functional connectivity at a subregional level may help elucidate the functional neurobiology of stress-related psychiatric disorders.

Burnout is associated with a depressive interpretation style.

The aim of this 188-participant study (65% female; mean age = 40.31) was to examine whether burnout and depression are associated with similar interpretation biases in the processing of emotional information. Burnout symptoms were assessed with the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey and depressive symptoms with the 9-item depression module of the Patient Health Questionnaire. Interpretation bias toward emotional information was examined using an amended version of the Word-Sentence Association Paradigm (WSAP). In the WSAP, participants are asked to decide whether emotionally-valenced words are related to ambiguous sentences. Burnout and depression were each associated with a higher endorsement of negative interpretations and a higher ratio of negative interpretations to positive interpretations. Negative word endorsement and positive word endorsement interacted in such a way that negative word endorsement was predictive of burnout and depression only when positive word endorsement levels were relatively low. Our findings suggest that burnout and depression are associated with similar alterations in the interpretation of ambiguous information. This study supports the view that burned out individuals perceive the world with "depressive glasses." Cognitive bias modification techniques employed in the treatment of depressive conditions may constitute relevant therapeutic options for "burned out" individuals.

Emotion information processing in communication situation in old age

Emotion information processing in communication situation in old age

Anatomical connections underlying personally-familiar face processing.

Familiar face processing involves face specific regions (the core face system) as well as other non-specific areas related to processing of person-related information (the extended face system). The connections between core and extended face system areas must be critical for face recognition. Some studies have explored the connectivity pattern of unfamiliar face responding area, but none have explored those areas related to face familiarity processing in the extended system. To study these connections, diffusion weighted imaging with probabilistic tractography was used to estimate the white-matter pathways between core and extended system regions, which were defined from functional magnetic resonance imaging responses to personally-familiar faces. Strong white matter connections were found between occipitotemporal face areas (OFA/FFA) with superior temporal sulcus and insula suggesting the possible existence of direct anatomical connections from face-specific areas to frontal nodes that could underlay the processing of emotional information associated to familiar faces.

Preserved rapid conceptual processing of emotional expressions despite reduced neuropsychological performance following traumatic brain injury.

Emotional empathy is critical to successful social interactions and is often compromised after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Using the Emostroop task, we investigated whether adults with moderate to severe TBI (N = 26) have problems with rapid conceptual processing of emotional stimuli compared with controls (N = 30). Further, we investigated whether rapid conceptual processing of emotions relates to emotion recognition and emotional empathy. In the Emostroop task, participants categorize emotional words (e.g., joyous, furious, and woeful) into three emotion categories: happy, sad, and angry. Each word is superimposed onto an image of a face, which expresses an emotion that is congruent to the word (congruent condition), incongruent to the word (incongruent condition), or is neutral (neutral condition). Slowed responding in the incongruent condition (interference) and speeded responding in the congruent condition (facilitation) indicates rapid conceptual processing of the faces. Participants also completed an emotion perception task, an empathy questionnaire (the BEES) and neuropsychological tests measuring processing speed, working memory, and executive function. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found that rapid conceptual processing of emotional faces was preserved in people with TBI, despite diminished neuropsychological performance, emotion recognition, emotional empathy, and slowed responding. Further, the Emostroop effect was not correlated with self-reported emotional empathy or with emotion recognition. We conclude that in people with TBI, reduced empathy may be explained by processes downstream of the initial rapid conceptual processing of emotional information, such as flexibly attending and responding to this information in a goal-directed manner in complex environments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Words matter: age-related positivity in episodic memory for abstract but not concrete words

ABSTRACTResearch continues to assess potential boundary conditions for the age-related positivity effect in emotional information processing. Beyond the valence and arousal characteristics of a stimulus, other features may play a role in the manifestation of positivity effects. Differences between abstract and concrete words (i.e., the level of imageability, presence of affective content) may lead to differences in downstream processing outcomes. The present study examined whether additional features of word stimuli, beyond valence and arousal, could influence the emergence of age-related positivity in episodic memory. Fifty-two younger adults and 51 older adults completed a categorization task where they separated a series of positive, negative, and neutral words into “abstract” or “concrete” categories. A surprise recognition task followed after a short delay. Results revealed a three-way Age × Valence × Word Type interaction. No age differences in overall recognition was observed for concrete words, regardless of emotion; however, for abstract words, an Age × Valence interaction emerged whereby older adults recognized more positive than negative words, while valence differences were less pronounced among younger adults. Concrete words were remembered better than abstract words by both age groups, regardless of valence. Conversely, preferential processing appeared to occur for positive abstract words, especially for older adults. We contend that these results provide further evidence of the top-down and controlled nature of age-related positivity effects in episodic memory.

Effects of physical exercise on negative emotional susceptibility in young adult females: An event-related potential study

The present study investigated whether habitual physical exercise can regulate susceptibility to negative emotions in young adult female participants. Female participants with and without long-term physical exercise habits were recruited and assigned to exercise and non-exercise groups, respectively. All participants performed a standard/deviant distinction task in which the emotional valence of the deviants could be highly negative (HN), moderately negative (MN), or neutral. Event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by deviants were recorded and compared between the two groups. Regardless of the emotional valence of the deviants, the exercise group exhibited shorter reaction times (RTs) and greater parietal P3 responses to all deviants, compared to the non-exercise group, consistent with a superiority in detecting and responding to deviants. Importantly, whereas the non-exercise group showed greater frontal-central N2 responses to MN deviant stimuli than to neutral deviant stimuli, such a difference was not observed in the exercise group, indicating that the participants who exercised regularly had decreased attentional capture and allocation to MN deviants, and thus an apparent decreased negative emotional susceptibility selectively to moderately negative emotional stimuli. These results may indicate an effect of physical exercise on the processing of negative emotional information and support the promotion of physical exercise in the maintenance of mental health in females.

The effect of threatening facial expressions on inhibition-induced forgetting depends on their task-relevance

ABSTRACTInhibition-induced forgetting refers to impaired memory for the stimuli to which responses were inhibited. The present study aimed to examine if it would be modulated by the processing of threatening facial expressions. Angry and neutral faces were presented in a go/no-go task and subsequent memory for faces was measured in a surprise recognition task. In Experiment 1, task-irrelevant angry and neutral faces appeared randomly, and participants responded to the gender of the faces during the go/no-go task. Results showed that the perception of neutral faces was possibly biased by angry faces. So, in Experiment 2, angry and neutral faces were given in separate blocks while participants still responded to the gender. Inhibition-induced forgetting was not modulated by facial expressions, as it was observed for both angry and neutral faces. Finally, in Experiment 3, where participants were assigned to respond to either angry or neutral faces, so that facial expressions were relevant, inhibition-induced forgetting was negated only in the group in whom responses to angry faces were inhibited. The findings suggest that task-relevance plays a key role in the way the processing of emotional information influences the interaction between cognitive control and memory encoding.

PSYCHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

The article examines the psychological characteristics of emotional intelligence, analyses the concepts and models of emotional intelligence in foreign and national psychology, in particular its content and structure, and studies intra- and interpersonal aspects of emotional intelligence. Today, a number of works studying emotional intelligence and performed by foreign and national scientists is growing; various psychological features of emotional intelligence manifestations are investigated in them. J. Mayer and P. Salovey understand emotional intelligence as a group of mental abilities that contribute to awareness and understanding of an individual’s own emotions and emotions of other people. The following models of emotional intelligence are presented in scientific works: the model of abilities, presenting the idea of ​​cross-relations between emotions and thinking is (J. Mayer, P. Salovey); the mixed model as a combination of an individual’s intellectual, emotional and personal properties (R. Bar-On and D. Goleman). A different opinion holds researchers K.V.&nbsp;Petrides and E. Furnham; they consider emotional intelligence as a personal trait and as the ability to process emotional information based on the construct of “emotional self-efficacy”. I.N. Andreeva proposes the integrative model of emotional intelligence and considers integral emotional intelligence as a cognitive-personal formation, as a set of mental abilities to understand and manage emotions and competencies associated with emotional information processing and transformation, as well as a set of communicative, emotional, intellectual and regulatory personal traits contributing to individual’s adaptation.In the study of E.L. Nosenko and N.V. Kovriga, emotional intelligence is considered as an aspect of an individual’s inner world that reflects the individual’s rational attitude to the world, to others and to him/herself as an agent of own life. It is characterized by internal (dispositional) and external (manifested by the signs revealing the course of an emotional process) components that determine stress-protective and adaptive functions of this integral personal characteristic. The researchers have proposed a hierarchical structure of the formed emotional intelligence.The intra- and interpersonal aspects of emotional intelligence are distinguished by both foreign and national researchers, among them G. Gardner, J. Mayer, P. Salovey, D.V.&nbsp;Liusin, E. L. Nosenko, N.V. Kovriga, M. A Manoilova, I. N. Andreeva, etc. According to G. Gardner, intrapersonal emotional intelligence is a person’s ability to understand their own emotions and feelings, their sources and to regulate their own behaviour on this basis, and interpersonal emotional intelligence is a person’s ability to interact with other people. So, emotional intelligence is an integral personal characteristic that contributes to human harmonious development and improvement of interpersonal interactions.