Processing Of Emotional Material Research Articles

Trust violations affect the emotional working memory updating: An event-related brain potential study

Previous studies found that trust violations impaired the ability of working memory (WM) updating, however, these studies did not consider the emotional context in the WM updating. Individuals who experience trust violations have the characteristics of negative bias and enhanced negative emotion. Thus it is necessary to explore how emotional contexts moderate the relationship between trust violations and WM updating. In this study, the trust game was used to manipulate trust violations. Fifty-three participants performed the emotional two-back task while event-related potentials were recorded. Results showed that compared to the control group, the violation group had smaller P2 and P3 amplitudes both in emotional and nonemotional contexts and larger N2 amplitudes in the emotional contexts. There were no significant differences between the two groups on the behavioral data. These results suggest that trust violations result in the inefficient allocation of attention in the early attention (P2) and updating maintenance stages (P3) regardless of the emotional type of the material. Trust violations also improve the abilities of response inhibition, conflict monitoring, or sequential match (N2) when processing emotional material, which may play a compensatory role to maintain a level of behavioral performance comparable to the control group. Together, trust violations affect the sub-processes underlying emotional WM updating differently, and these influences are not valence specific.

Neurocognitive, emotional and neuroendocrine correlates of exposure to sexual assault in women.

Survivors of sexual assault are vulnerable to long-term negative psychological and physical health outcomes, but few studies have investigated changes in cognition, emotional processing and brain function in the early stages after sexual assault. We used a multimodal approach to identify the cognitive and emotional correlates associated with sexual assault in women. Twenty-seven female survivors of sexual assault were included within 4 weeks of the traumatic event, and they were compared with 20 age-matched controls. Participants underwent functional MRI while performing cognitive/emotional tasks (n-back, emotional go/no-go, mental imagery). We also measured diurnal salivary cortisol and conducted neuropsychological assessments of attention and memory abilities. Relative to the control group, the survivors group had lower levels of morning cortisol and showed attentional deficits. We observed no between-group differences in brain activation during the n-back or mental imagery tasks. During the emotional go/no-go task, however, the survivors group showed a lack of deactivation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex when processing emotional material, relative to neutral material. Exploratory analyses in the survivors group indicated that symptom severity was negatively associated with cerebellar activation when positive emotional (happy) content interfered with response inhibition, and positively associated with cerebellar activation when thinking of positive (happy) memories. The small sample size was the main limitation of this study. Dysfunctions in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the cerebellum may represent early functional brain modifications that alter higher cognitive processes when emotional material is involved.

Internal shifting impairments in response to emotional information in dysphoric adolescents

Background and ObjectivesPrevious studies have suggested that internal cognitive control impairments may play an important role in the development of depression. Despite a growing body of research in adults, the ability to shift internal attention between mental representations in working memory has received little attention in younger populations. This study investigated internal shifting capacity between emotional and non-emotional information in dysphoric and non-dysphoric adolescents. MethodsTwenty dysphoric and 34 non-dysphoric adolescents (10–17 years) completed an Internal Shifting Task, with pictures of angry and neutral faces, to measure the ability to shift attention between information held in working memory. ResultsDysphoric adolescents showed specific shifting impairments when processing emotional material relative to non-dysphoric adolescents. Valence-specific analyses revealed that shifting was particularly impaired when shifting from negative to neutral information. By comparison, relative to non-dysphoric adolescents, dysphoric adolescents did not show shifting impairments when non-emotional features of the pictures had to be processed. LimitationsThe study is limited by the absence of a structured clinical interview as dysphoria was determined dimensionally. Furthermore, a comparison of the effects of different negative stimuli on shifting could not be made since sad stimuli were not included in the stimulus set. ConclusionsThe results confirm the link between depressive symptoms and emotion-specific shifting impairments in adolescents and indicate that targeting shifting ability in response to emotional stimuli may be a promising avenue for prevention programs. Longitudinal research is needed to replicate results and to explore the role of internal shifting impairments in the etiology and maintenance of depression.

Attentional processing of emotional material in types of anxiety and depression

ABSTRACTThe present study was designed to address the hypothesis that differences and similarities in patterns of attentional processing in recently proposed types of anxiety and depression are connected with the dominant (reactive, regulative) function they play in stimulation processing and their structural components. Participants (N = 1247) filled out the Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire, which assesses types of anxiety and depression, and completed the Emotional Faces Attentional Test one week later. The obtained results confirmed our prediction and suggested that the proposed typology of anxiety and depression is valid in the adaptive meanings of both phenomena.

Emotional intelligence and psychopathy: A comparison of trait and ability measures.

A dysfunction in the processing of emotional material has been suggested to underpin the concept of psychopathy, hence we hypothesized that individuals high in psychopathic traits should have low scores on measure of emotional intelligence (EI). We measured EI by using both an ability-based measure (Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test) and a self-report measure (Trait Meta-Mood Scale) in a sample of offenders. Psychopathy was measured by using both a clinical checklist (Psychopathy Checklist-Revised) and a self-report scale (Psychopathy Personality Inventory-Revised). We also took a measure of intellectual ability (Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence) to assess any unique contribution from EI over that of IQ. We found that the concepts of EI (both ability-based and self-report) were related to IQ. We also found that there was a negative relationship between self-report EI and ability EI. In relation to psychopathy, the results did not support the hypotheses of a general deficit in EI. While the results relating different facets of psychopathy to different aspects of EI were complex, there was some evidence that some aspects of psychopathy were positively related to the unique variance related to EI once IQ was partialled out. We suggest that there is not a general deficit in EI in psychopathy, and that future research needs carefully to carefully consider just what aspects of psychopathy and of EI are being measured, and the influence of intellectual ability, before drawing conclusions on this matter.

Flexibility is not always adaptive: Affective flexibility and inflexibility predict rumination use in everyday life

The present study examined whether cognitive flexibility in the processing of emotional material (i.e., affective flexibility) predicts the use of rumination in response to negative events in daily life. One hundred fifty-seven undergraduate participants completed daily diaries for six consecutive days. Affective flexibility was measured with a novel task-switching paradigm using emotional pictures. Results show that affective inflexibility when switching away from processing the emotional meaning of negative material was associated with increased use of rumination in daily life. In contrast, affective inflexibility when switching away from processing the emotional meaning of positive material was related to decreased use of rumination. Importantly, affective flexibility predicted use of rumination beyond non-affective measures of executive functioning. This is the first study to show that inflexibility is not uniformly associated with increased rumination but that inflexibility in the processing of positive material can predict lower levels of rumination.

Cognitive control moderates the association between stress and rumination

Background and Objectives A prospective design was used to examine whether inter-individual differences in cognitive control ability, for non-emotional and emotional material, play a moderating role in the association between the occurrence of a stressful event and the tendency to ruminate. Methods At baseline, the Internal Switch Task (IST) was administered in an undergraduate sample to measure the ability to switch attention between items held in working memory. Six weeks after baseline, self-report questionnaires were administered at 4 fixed moments during their first examination period at university, measuring stressors, rumination and depressive symptoms. Results Results revealed that impaired cognitive control, reflected in larger switch costs, moderated the association between stress and increased rumination. Interestingly, a larger switch cost when processing emotional material was specifically associated with increased depressive brooding in response to stress. No effects with reflective pondering were observed. Conclusions Implications for understanding the underlying mechanisms of rumination are discussed.

Attention and Memory Biases in Social Anxiety Disorder: The Role of Comorbid Depression

Cognitive biases play an important role in the onset and maintenance of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). Few studies, however, have examined the role of comorbid Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) in the processing of emotional material. In addition, little is known about the relation among different cognitive biases. In the current study, 73 participants (54.79% female) completed an emotion face dot-probe task followed by a recognition memory test. Compared to participants with SAD, participants with comorbid SAD and MDD oriented away from supraliminally presented angry faces. Subsequently, SAD participants with and without comorbidity recognized fewer angry faces than non-disordered controls. Furthermore, attention biases for subliminally presented stimuli predicted recognition accuracy only for comorbid participants. These results suggest that the presence of comorbid MDD affects attentional orienting in SAD participants. In addition, it highlights the interconnectedness of attention and memory biases for comorbid participants.

Decreased recognition of negative affect after selective serotonin reuptake inhibition is dependent on genotype

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are known to influence the information processing of emotional material in depressed patients and healthy controls. The functional polymorphism in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) has been shown to interact with the effectiveness of serotonin reuptake inhibitors. It is not known whether 5-HTTLPR has an influence on emotional processing in healthy controls. We report first data with long-term SSRI administration after genetic characterization of 5-HTTLPR in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design. In 30 healthy controls, 15 homozygous for the long and 15 for the short allele of 5-HTTLPR, emotionally valent images were used to elicit positive or negative emotions. We found a diminished perception of sad and fearful information under SSRI which was significant in the long allele group. These findings emphasize the importance of genetic variance in emotion processing research.

TPH2 gene variation and conflict processing in a cognitive and an emotional Stroop task

Evidence suggests that a promoter polymorphism of the tryptophan-hydroxylase 2 gene (TPH2 −703 G/T) is associated with executive control functions. The current study aimed to clarify whether this relation is restricted to a purely cognitive domain or whether such an effect can also be observed in the processing of emotional material. In a sample of 89 student subjects, a ‘cognitive’ and an ‘emotional’ Stroop paradigm were applied to measure processing of cognitive and affective conflicts. Our results suggest an impact of the TPH2 −703 G/T polymorphism on executive control in both, the cognitive as well as the emotional task. In detail, homozygous carriers of the T allele showed decelerated responses in low-conflict conditions, pointing to a rather abnormal functioning of higher-order control mechanisms. Thus, the present investigation is consistent with previous behavioural studies and adds further evidence for the impact of serotonin at the interface of cognition and emotion.

The cerebellum and emotional experience

While the role of the cerebellum in motor coordination is widely accepted, the notion that it is involved in emotion has only recently gained popularity. To date, functional neuroimaging has not been used in combination with lesion studies to elucidate the role of the cerebellum in the processing of emotional material. We examined six participants with cerebellar stroke and nine age and education matched healthy volunteers. In addition to a complete neuropsychological, neurologic, and psychiatric examination, participants underwent [ 15O]water positron emission tomography (PET) while responding to emotion-evoking visual stimuli. Cerebellar lesions were associated with reduced pleasant experience in response to happiness-evoking stimuli. Stroke patients reported an unpleasant experience to frightening stimuli similar to healthy controls, yet showed significantly lower activity in the right ventral lateral and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, amygdala, thalamus, and retrosplenial cingulate gyrus. Frightening stimuli led to increased activity in the ventral medial prefrontal, anterior cingulate, pulvinar, and insular cortex. This suggests that alternate neural circuitry became responsible for maintaining the evolutionarily critical fear response after cerebellar damage.

Tryptophan supplementation induces a positive bias in the processing of emotional material in healthy female volunteers

The serotonin precursor L-tryptophan (TRP) is available as a nutritional supplement and is licensed as an antidepressant in a number of countries. However, evidence of its efficacy as the primary treatment for depression is limited, and the direct action of TRP on the symptoms of depression and anxiety has not been well-characterised. The present study assessed whether TRP induces cognitive changes opposite to the negative biases found in depression and characteristic of those induced by serotonergic antidepressants in healthy volunteers. Thirty eight healthy volunteers were randomised to receive 14 days double-blind intervention with TRP (1 g 3x a day) or placebo. On the final day, emotional processing was assessed using four tasks: facial expression recognition, emotion-potentiated startle, attentional probe and emotional categorisation and memory. TRP increased the recognition of happy facial expressions and decreased the recognition of disgusted facial expressions in female, but not male, volunteers. TRP also reduced attentional vigilance towards negative words and decreased baseline startle responsivity in the females. These findings provide evidence that TRP supplementation in women induces a positive bias in the processing of emotional material that is reminiscent of the actions of serotonergic antidepressants. This highlights a key role for serotonin in emotional processing and lends support to the use of TRP as a nutritional supplement in people with mild depression or for prevention in those at risk. Future studies are needed to clarify the effect of tryptophan on these measures in men.

Deficient inhibition of emotional information in depression

BackgroundThere are numerous indications that impaired inhibition of negative affective material could be an important cognitive component of depression. To study whether impaired inhibition of negative affect is a cognitive vulnerability factor explaining (recurrent) depression, inhibition of positive and negative affective stimuli was examined in hospitalized depressed patients, formerly depressed individuals and never-depressed controls. MethodsTo investigate inhibitory dysfunctions in the processing of emotional material, we used an affective modification of the negative priming task with pictures of sad and happy facial expressions. ResultsCompared to never-depressed controls, depressed patients showed a specific failure to inhibit negative information, whereas inhibition function for positive material was unaffected. Surprisingly, formerly depressed individuals demonstrated impaired inhibition of negative and positive information. LimitationsBecause of the significant correlations between depression and anxiety self-report scores, the observed reduced inhibitory effect toward negative material in the depression group cannot strictly be attributed as depression-specific. ConclusionsIn accordance with our hypothesis, strongly impaired inhibition of negative affect was found in depressed patients. Based on the present findings, we argue that impaired inhibition of negative affect could be an important construct in cognitive theories on depression linking cognitive biases to neuropsychological impairments in depression. The data in the formerly depressed individuals are less conclusive and several hypotheses are detailed that could explain how the absence of inhibition of affective information could relate to recurrent depression.

Lateralized asymmetry of facial motor evoked potentials

There is considerable evidence that emotions are expressed more intensely on the left side of the face. This asymmetry could reflect a right hemisphere advantage in processing emotional material or an asymmetry in corticobulbar motor systems. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to test for lateralized asymmetry in the cortical control of muscles of facial expression in the lower face. We administered TMS to the motor cortex of 50 subjects during contraction of bilateral orbicularis oris muscles. We analyzed motor evoked potentials (MEPs) with a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) using hemisphere stimulated and orbicularis oris side recorded as within subject factors. TMS elicited contralateral MEPs in 42 of 50 subjects. Forty of these 42 subjects showed bilateral MEPs. The ANOVA showed a significant main effect of face side, such that MEPs elicited in left face were larger than in right face (p < 0.0001). The analysis also showed a significant interaction between the hemisphere stimulated and face side, such that the difference between contralateral and ipsilateral MEPs with right brain TMS was greater than with left brain TMS (p < 0.0001). The results provide evidence of lateralized asymmetry of corticobulbar projections to muscles of facial expression in the lower face.

Blood glucose changes and memory: Effects of manipulating emotionality and mental effort

Increasing the emotionality of target material often facilitates memory performance which may be linked to the liberation of glucose. Conversely, increasing mental effort leads to reduced performance and measurable falls in blood glucose. A 2 × 2, parallel groups experiment examined these two phenomena directly by assessing blood glucose levels and memory for neutral and emotional word lists, both with and without a secondary task. Co-performing the secondary task significantly reduced blood glucose in the neutral word condition only and resulted in a global reduction of memory performance in both neutral and emotional word conditions. Processing emotional material resulted in significantly raised blood glucose levels, however, there was no advantage for memory of emotional words. A follow-up study confirmed that the emotionality manipulation was effective. We conclude that there exists a clear relationship between reduced blood glucose and impaired memory performance during periods of mental effort. However, the relationship between physiological and cognitive processes associated with processing emotional material are more complex.

Attentional bias in dysphoria: The role of inhibitory processes

This study investigates inhibitory dysfunctions in the processing of emotional material and their relation to depressive symptomatology and vulnerability. In a series of three experiments, a negative priming task with positive and negative distractor and target words was presented. The negative priming task makes it possible to assess the degree of inhibition of activated but nongoal‐relevant stimulus representations. Results indicate that participants with elevated depression scores fail to show negative priming in affective evaluation and self‐reference tasks. Moreover, participants reporting a history of major depressive episodes fail to show negative priming when asked to respond to the valence or self‐descriptiveness of emotional stimuli. The obtained results are in line with the hypothesis that depression is associated with an inhibitory deficit for negative information. Implications of these results for research on selective attention in depression are discussed.

RECALL OF SCHEMATIC AND NON-SCHEMATIC MATERIAL RELATED TO THREAT IN SOCIALLY ANXIOUS AND NONANXIOUS INDIVIDUALS

The present study examined the recall of material representative and non representative of schemata for social and evaluative situations. Socially anxious (n = 24) and nonanxious (n = 25) individuals were presented with three positively valenced and three negatively valenced prose passages describing common social and evaluative scenarios. Eight of the sentences in each passage described events representative of the schema content of most individuals, whereas three of the sentences in each passage described events that are not representative of typical schema content. Participants completed a free recall task in both immediate (i.e. 2 minutes) and delayed (i.e. one week) recall conditions. Although there were no group differences as a function of type of content (i.e. schematic, non-schematic), socially anxious individuals were less likely than nonanxious individuals to accurately recall the gist of passages containing negative information in the immediate recall condition. In all, this study provided little evidence for the influence of maladaptive schema content on memory for threatening material in anxious individuals, but it added to an increasingly large literature suggesting that some types of anxiety are associated with an avoidance of processing emotional material.

Perception and production of facial and prosodic emotions by chronic CVA patients

Variable etiology, limited testing of emotions and inclusion of patients in acute and chronic phases have made it difficult to specify the extent of right hemisphere involvement in the processing of emotional material. In addition, there is an absence of data concerning CVA patients’ long-term abilities to process emotional information. Two groups of subjects with unilateral brain damage (15 RBD, 17 LBD), matched for chronicity (minimum 12 months post-CVA), etiology (ischemic CVA), duration of hospitalization and other variables, and an appropriate control group participated in two experiments to address these concerns. In the first experiment, subjects were given a series of tasks (discrimination, identification, imitation, production on request) to assess their processing of facial expressions of the six universal emotions [P. Ekman, W. Friesen, Unmasking the face, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1975]. The results showed that three emotions (surprise, happiness, fear) discriminate between RBD and LBD patients and controls, with RBD subjects performing worse than the other groups on the identification task only. Using tasks of the same nature, the second experiment investigated the processing of emotional prosody. The results showed that three emotions (fear, sadness, anger) discriminate between RBD and LBD patients and controls, with RBD subjects again performing worse than the others on the discrimination, imitation and production on request tasks. LBD subjects performed as well as normal controls on almost all tasks. The RBD subjects were the only ones who showed relatively consistent impairment in the processing of both facial and prosodic emotional information. Taken together, these data strongly suggest that the right hemisphere is preferentially involved in processing emotional information in the chronic phase of brain damage.

Emotional processing, three modes of mind and the prevention of relapse in depression

Rachman's (1980) analysis [Rachman, S. (1980). Emotional processing. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 18, 51-60] of emotional processing is extended and applied to the prevention of relapse and recurrence in depression. It is proposed that effective emotional processing leads to changes in the ability of triggering cues to reactivate depressogenic processing cycles at times of potential relapse. Available evidence supports the usefulness of the probe methodology of the emotional processing framework as a way to investigate processes mediating relapse prevention by cognitive therapy. It is proposed that effective emotional processing involves creation of modified affect-related schematic mental models and that this occurs most effectively only within certain processing configurations or modes of mind. Within the Interacting Cognitive Subsystems (ICS) framework, three modes of processing emotional material can be distinguished: 'mindless emoting'; 'conceptualising/doing' and 'mindful experiencing/being'. Only the last of these facilitates emotional processing; the second may prevent effective emotional processing and perpetuate depression by ruminative, conceptually dominated processing. This analysis suggests a further strategy to prevent relapse, in addition to modifying depressogenic schematic models, by teaching recovered depressed patients skills to switch processing modes by intentional redeployment of attention. Results of a recent trial of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy support the effectiveness of this novel alternative strategy.

195 Mediating effects of hypnosis on perception during painful cutaneous stimulation

The purpose of the present research was to find physiological and cognitive correlates of hypnosis, imaginative suggestibility and emotional experiences. After the administration of a standard hypnotic induction, the EEG and heart rate (HR) were recorded during self-generated happy and sad emotions using a relaxation condition as a control. Physiological recordings were also obtained during three eyes-open and eyes-closed baseline periods: (1) waking rest; (2) early-rest in hypnosis (just after the hypnotic induction); (3) late-rest hypnosis (at the end of hypnotic condition). EEG was recorded at frontal (F3, F4), central (C3, C4), and posterior sites (middle of O1-P3-T5 and O2-P4-T6 triangles). Using log transform of mean spectral amplitude, eight EEG frequency bands (4–44 Hz) were evaluated. High hypnotizable subjects, as compared to the lows, produced a higher theta1 amplitude (4–6 Hz) across both left- and right-frontal and right-posterior areas. These subjects also produced smaller alpha1 amplitude (8.25–10 Hz) over both left and right frontal recording sites. High suggestible subjects, during resting conditions, disclosed higher theta2 (6.25–8 Hz) and alpha1 amplitudes in eyes-closed as compared to an eyes-open condition than did low suggestible subjects. High suggestible subjects also showed, in hypnosis-rest condition, higher 40-Hz amplitudes (36–44 Hz) and HR activity than did low suggestible subjects. Hypnotizability and not suggestibility was found to moderate emotional processing: high hypnotizable individuals self-reported greater levels of emotional experiences than did low hypnotizables especially in terms of negative emotion. High hypnotizables, during processing of emotional material, also disclosed opposite 40-Hz hemispheric asymmetries over anterior and posterior regions of the scalp. These subjects during happiness showed an increased production of 40-Hz activity in the left frontal and central regions of the scalp, while during sadness they showed an increased activity in the right central and posterior regions. The hemispheric asymmetries for relaxation condition were similar, but less marked, to those obtained for happiness. No significant interactions involving both hypnotizability and imaginative suggestibility were found for physiological variables considered in this study. This demonstrates that hypnotizability and suggestibility reflect different underlying psychophysiological activities.