Processing Of Positive Information Research Articles

Association between genes, stressful childhood events and processing bias in depression vulnerable individuals

The brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) genes are relevant candidates for depression. Variation in these genes is associated with stress sensitivity and depressotypic cognitive biases. The interaction between genes and stressful events is considered as an important mechanism in the development of depression. This study examined the effects of the BDNF and COMT genes on biased processing and the interaction with childhood stress in vulnerable individuals. A total of 198 remitted depressed individuals performed an n-back task with emotional facial stimuli (happy and sad). Childhood events were measured with a questionnaire. Genotype by childhood events interactions were analyzed for happy and sad expressions for BDNF (Val66Met; rs6265) and COMT (Val158Met; rs4680), individually and combined. BDNF and COMT both interacted significantly (P = 0.006 and P = 0.014, respectively) with childhood trauma on reaction time for happy faces. For both genes, Met-carriers with childhood trauma showed less positive bias for happy faces than those without childhood trauma. Val-carriers did not show a differential bias. Individuals with childhood trauma and 3 or 4 risk alleles (BDNF and COMT combined) showed less positive bias than those without childhood trauma (P = 0.011). The BDNF × COMT × childhood trauma interaction yielded a P = 0.055, but had limited power. A potential weakness is the measurement method of the childhood events, as negative bias might have affected participants' recall. Our findings endorse the association of BDNF and COMT with stress and depression and provide a possible intermediate, i.e. biased processing of positive information. Tailoring treatment to specific risk profiles based on genetic susceptibility and childhood stress could be promising.

Effect of Antidepressant Medication Use on Emotional Information Processing in Major Depression

Acute administration of antidepressant medication increases emotional information processing for positive information in both depressed and healthy persons. This effect is likely relevant to the therapeutic actions of these medications, but it has not been studied in patients with major depressive disorder taking antidepressants as typically prescribed in the community. The authors used eye tracking to examine the effects of antidepressant medication on selective attention for emotional stimuli in a sample of 47 patients with major depressive disorder (21 medicated and 26 unmedicated) and 47 matched comparison subjects without depression. Participants completed a passive-viewing eye-tracking task assessing selective attention for positive, dysphoric, threatening, and neutral stimuli in addition to providing medication information and self-report measures of depression and anxiety severity. Depressed participants currently taking antidepressants and nondepressed comparison subjects demonstrated greater total gaze duration and more fixations for positive stimuli compared with unmedicated depressed participants. Depressed participants on medication also had fewer fixations for dysphoric stimuli compared with depressed participants not on medication. Antidepressants, as prescribed in the community to patients with depression, appear to modify emotional information processing in the absence of differences in depression severity. These results are consistent with previous work and indicate a robust effect for antidepressants on positive information processing. They also provide further evidence for modification of information processing as a potential mechanism of action for antidepressant medication.

Gaze-fixation to happy faces predicts mood repair after a negative mood induction.

The present study tested the interplay between mood and attentional deployment by examining attention to positive (i.e., happy faces) and negative (i.e., angry and sad faces) stimuli in response to experimental inductions of sad and happy mood. Participants underwent a negative, neutral, or positive mood induction procedure (MIP) which was followed by an assessment of their attentional deployment to emotional faces using eye-tracking technology. Faces were selected from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF) database (Lundqvist, Flykt, & Öhman, 1998). In the positive MIP condition, analyses revealed a mood-congruent relation between positive mood and greater attentional deployment to happy faces. In the negative MIP condition, however, analyses revealed a mood-incongruent relation between increased negative mood and greater attentional deployment to happy faces. Furthermore, attentional deployment to happy faces after the negative MIP predicted participants' mood recovery at the end of the experimental session. These results suggest that attentional processing of positive information may play a role in mood repair, which may have important clinical implications.

Impaired emotional memory enhancement on recognition of pictorial stimuli in Alzheimer's disease: No influence of the nature of encoding

ObjectivesThere is some discrepancy in the results regarding emotional enhancement of memory (EEM) in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Some studies report better retrieval of emotional information, especially positive, than neutral information. This observation is similar to the positivity effect reported in healthy older adults. It was suggested that this effect is due to privileged, deeper and more controlled processing of positive information. One way of testing this is to control both the intention to encode the information and the cognitive resources involved during encoding. Studies investigating EEM in AD patients did not systematically control the nature of encoding. Consequently, the purpose of our study was to examine EEM in AD while manipulating the nature of encoding. MethodsTwo experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1 the intention to encode stimuli was manipulated by giving or not giving instructions to participants about the subsequent retrieval. In Experiment 2 cognitive resources involved during encoding were varied (low vs high). In both experiments participants performed immediate recognition task of negative, positive and neutral pictures. 41 mild AD patients and 44 older healthy adults participated in Exp. 1, and 17 mild AD patients and 20 older healthy adults participated in Exp. 2. ResultsAD patients did not present EEM. Positivity effect, better performance for positive than neutral and negative pictures was observed with older healthy adults. ConclusionThe data suggest that EEM is disturbed in mild AD patients, with respect to both negative and positive stimuli, at least concerning laboratory, not real-life material. They also suggest there is a positivity effect in healthy older adults and lend support to the idea that this effect is due to preferential cognitive processing of positive information in this population.

Age-related changes in processing positive and negative feedback: Is there a positivity effect for older adults?

Older people sometimes show a bias toward the processing of positive information. In this study, we used an event-related potential approach to examine whether such a positivity bias is also present during feedback processing in older adults. Our results suggest that a fast initial monitoring process, as reflected in the feedback-related negativity (FRN), is sensitive to the expectancy of events irrespective of their valence for older (aged 70–77 years) as well as younger (aged 20–27 years) adults. In contrast, in a later evaluation process, associated with memory updating and indexed by the P300, both age groups preferably processed unexpected positive feedback. However, younger adults additionally differentiated between unexpected negative and expected feedback while older adults did not, probably due to a lower working memory capacity.

Judgment of emotional information expressed by prosody and semantics in patients with unipolar depression

It was the aim of this study to investigate the impact of major depressive disorder (MDD) on judgment of emotions expressed at the verbal (semantic content) and non-verbal (prosody) level and to assess whether evaluation of verbal content correlate with self-ratings of depression-related symptoms as assessed by Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). We presented positive, neutral, and negative words spoken in happy, neutral, and angry prosody to 23 MDD patients and 22 healthy controls (HC) matched for age, sex, and education. Participants rated the valence of semantic content or prosody on a 9-point scale. MDD patients attributed significantly less intense ratings to positive words and happy prosody than HC. For judgment of words, this difference correlated significantly with BDI scores. No such correlation was found for prosody perception. MDD patients exhibited attenuated processing of positive information which generalized across verbal and non-verbal channels. These findings indicate that MDD is characterized by impairments of positive rather than negative emotional processing, a finding which could influence future psychotherapeutic strategies as well as provide straightforward hypotheses for neuroimaging studies investigating the neurobiological correlates of impaired emotional perception in MDD.

Biased Attentional Processing of Positive Stimuli in Social Anxiety Disorder: An Eye Movement Study

Despite the established relationship between social anxiety and attentional bias towards threat, a growing base of evidence suggests that social anxiety is additionally maintained by a deficit in the attentional processing of positive information. However, it remains unclear which component of attention is implicated in this deficit. Using eye movement-based measures and a novel attentional cuing methodology, the present study sought to investigate the presence of anxiety-linked bias in attentional engagement with, attentional disengagement from, and total fixation time to, socially relevant emotional stimuli in individuals diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, relative to non-socially anxious controls. Socially anxious individuals were found to exhibit faster attentional disengagement from positive stimuli, and reduced total fixation time to all emotional stimuli, relative to controls. Additionally for socially anxious individuals, lower total fixation times to positive stimuli were associated with higher levels of state anxiety. No differential pattern of engagement was evident between groups. We conclude that social anxiety is maintained in part by the aberrant processing of positive social stimuli.

The effect of one left-sided dorsolateral prefrontal sham-controlled HF-rTMS session on approach and withdrawal related emotional neuronal processes

Objective Although repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) is frequently used to examine emotional changes in healthy volunteers, it remains largely unknown how rTMS is able to influence emotion. Methods In this sham-controlled, single-blind crossover study using fMRI, we examined in 20 right-handed healthy females whether a single high frequency (HF)-rTMS session applied to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex could influence emotional processing while focussing on blocks of positively and negatively valenced baby faces. Results While positive information was being processed, we observed after one active HF-rTMS session enhanced neuronal activity in the left superior frontal cortex and right inferior parietal cortex. After sham HF-rTMS, we found significant decreases in neuronal activity in the left superior frontal cortex, the left inferior prefrontal cortex, as well as in the right posterior cingulate gyrus. When negative information was processed, one active stimulation attenuated neuronal activity in the right insula only. Conclusions Our findings suggest that during the processing of positive information one active session enhanced the ability to empathize with the depicted emotional stimuli, while during the processing of negative information it resulted in decreased psychophysiological reactions. Significance These results provide new information on the working mechanism of left-sided HF-rTMS.

Anterior Cingulate Activation Is Related to a Positivity Bias and Emotional Stability in Successful Aging

Behavioral studies consistently reported an increased preference for positive experiences in older adults. The socio-emotional selectivity theory explains this positivity effect with a motivated goal shift in emotion regulation, which probably depends on available cognitive resources. The present study investigates the neurobiological mechanism underlying this hypothesis. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired in 21 older and 22 young subjects while performing a spatial-cueing paradigm that manipulates attentional load on emotional face distracters. We focused our analyses on the anterior cingulate cortex as a key structure of cognitive control of emotion. Elderly subjects showed a specifically increased distractibility by happy faces when more attentional resources were available for face processing. This effect was paralleled by an increased engagement of the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, and this frontal engagement was significantly correlated with emotional stability. The current study highlights how the brain might mediate the tendency to preferentially engage in positive information processing in healthy aging. The finding of a resource-dependency of this positivity effect suggests demanding self-regulating processes that are related to emotional well-being. These findings are of particular relevance regarding implications for the understanding, treatment, and prevention of nonsuccessful aging like highly prevalent late-life depression.

Good Things Come Easy: Subjective Exposure Frequency and the Faster Processing of Positive Information

Processing of evaluative information is a central theme in social cognition research. Most studies focus on processing advantages associated with negative information. Here, we demonstrate and explain the faster processing of positive information. Building on the hypothesis (Unkelbach et al., 2008), we predicted that this advantage is explained by higher subjective exposure to positive information, and not valence per se. We argue that subjective exposure is a phenomenological proxy for informational density in memory. Three studies confirmed this prediction. Study 1 found that people were faster to identify positive than negative words. Using path analysis, Study 2 demonstrated that subjective exposure accounted for this valence effect. Study 3 replicated these findings when objective frequency was controlled across positive and negative valence. The implications for theories of how evaluative information is detected, processed, and retrieved are discussed.

Social Information Processing in Children: Specific Relations to Anxiety, Depression, and Affect

Two studies examined shared and unique relations of social information processing (SIP) to youth's anxious and depressive symptoms. Whether SIP added unique variance over and above trait affect in predicting internalizing symptoms was also examined. In Study 1, 215 youth (ages 8–13) completed symptom measures of anxiety and depression and a vignette-based interview measure of SIP. Anxiety and depression were each related to a more negative information-processing style. Only depression was uniquely related to a less positive information processing style. In Study 2, 127 youth (ages 10–13) completed measures of anxiety, depression, SIP, and trait affect. SIP's relations to internalizing symptoms were replicated. Over and above negative affect, negative SIP predicted both anxiety and depression. Low positive SIP added variance over and above positive affect in predicting only depression. Finally, SIP functioning partially mediated the relations of affect to internalizing symptoms.

Neural state and trait bases of mood-incongruent memory formation and retrieval in first-episode major depression

Mood-congruent cognitive biases constitute critical factors for the vulnerability to depression and its maintenance. One important aspect is impaired memory for positive information during depression and after recovery. To elucidate its state (during depression only) and trait (during depression and recovery) related neural bases, we investigated medication free depressed, recovered, and healthy individuals with functional MRI while they memorized and recognized happy and neutral face stimuli. The imaging results revealed group differences in mood-incongruent successful memory encoding and retrieval activity already in the absence of significant memory performance differences. State effects were observed in the amygdala and posterior cingulate cortex. Whereas the amygdala was generally involved in memory formation, its activity predicted subsequent forgetting of neutral faces in depressed patients. Furthermore, the amygdala and posterior cingulate cortex were involved in memory retrieval of happy faces in depressed patients only. Trait effects were observed in the fusiform gyrus and prefrontal cortex. The fusiform gyrus was involved in memory formation and retrieval of happy faces in both patient groups, whereas it was involved in memory formation and retrieval of neutral faces in healthy individuals. Similar trait effects were observed during memory retrieval in the orbitofrontal cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus. Thus, while memory processing of positive information in the amygdala and posterior cingulate cortex is biased during depression only, memory processing in the fusiform gyrus and prefrontal cortex is biased also after recovery. These distinct neural mechanisms may respectively constitute symptom maintenance and cognitive vulnerability factors for depression.

Do Personality Traits Modulate the Effect of Emotional Visual Stimuli on Auditory Information Processing?

Several lines of evidence attest robust relationships between personality dimensions and emotions, including cognitive aspect of emotion. More particularly, many studies reported strong relationships between extraversion, the behavioral activation system (BAS), and the cognitive processing of positive information, on the one hand, and between neuroticism, the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), and the processing of negative information, on the other hand. Recently, DePascalis, Awari, Matteucci, and Mazzocco (2005 ) reported that personality traits modulated the effect of the emotional visual stimuli on the mismatch negativity (MMN). The aim of the present study was to replicate these data and extend them to other personality dimensions. Auditory MMN was recorded in normal subjects simultaneously to the presentation of emotional pictures selected as neutral, positive, or negative from the International Affective Picture System, and presented in randomized order. The results support the recent finding that personality (namely, BIS and harm avoidance) modulates the influence of emotional (negative) context on auditory information processing. The present findings suggest that the modulation by personality of change detection in the unattended environment as a function of context valence is limited to unpleasant context.

Why positive information is processed faster: The density hypothesis.

The authors postulate and show a speed advantage in the processing of positive information and hypothesize that this advantage is caused by the higher density of positive information in memory: Positive information is more similar to other positive information, in comparison with the similarity of negative information to other negative information. This "density" hypothesis is supported by multidimensional scaling of evaluative stimuli and response latency experiments. The relevance and explanatory power of the hypothesis is demonstrated by secondary data analyses of prior research in the evaluative priming paradigm. The final discussion is concerned with further theoretical implications of the density hypothesis, its generality and limitations, and its relation to other theoretical conceptions and applications.

Emotional valence influences the neural correlates associated with remembering and knowing

In the present study, we examined whether emotional valence modulates the neural processes that are engaged during the encoding of information that is later vividly remembered versus that which is only known to be familiar. Participants underwent an fMRI scan while viewing positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. Later, recognized items were labeled as either remembered or known. Negative items that were later vividly remembered recruited temporo-occipital regions associated with sensory processing more than did positive or neutral items that were vividly remembered. The encoding of positive information later known recruited the cingulate gyrus and bilateral frontal and parietal areas--regions associated with episodic and semantic retrieval and self-referential processing--more than did the encoding of negative or neutral items that were later known. These results suggest that memories for negative items may be vividly recollected due to increased sensory processing during encoding, whereas enhanced gist-based processing of positive information may lead to increased feelings of familiarity.

Looking at the Sunny Side of Life

Studies of the negativity bias have demonstrated that negative information has a stronger influence than positive information in a wide range of cognitive domains. At odds with this literature is extensive work now documenting emotional and motivational shifts that result in a positivity effect in older adults. It remains unclear, however, whether this age-related positivity effect results from increases in processing of positive information or from decreases in processing of negative information. Also unknown is the specific time course of development from a negative bias to an apparently positive one. The present study was designed to investigate the negativity bias across the life span using an event-related potential measure of responding to emotionally valenced images. The results suggest that neural reactivity to negative images declines linearly with age, but responding to positive images is surprisingly age invariant across most of the adult life span.

Positive correlation between medial prefrontal activity and trait anhedonia severity during the processing of positive information in non-clinical subjects

Positive correlation between medial prefrontal activity and trait anhedonia severity during the processing of positive information in non-clinical subjects

Aging, self-referencing, and medial prefrontal cortex

The lateral prefrontal cortex undergoes both structural and functional changes with healthy aging. In contrast, there is little structural change in the medial prefrontal cortex, but relatively little is known about the functional changes to this region with age. Using an event-related fMRI design, we investigated the response of medial prefrontal cortex during self-referencing in order to compare age groups on a task that young and elderly perform similarly and that is known to actively engage the region in young adults. Nineteen young (M age = 23) and seventeen elderly (M age = 72) judged whether adjectives described themselves, another person, or were presented in upper case. We assessed the overlap in activations between young and elderly for the self-reference effect (self vs. other person), and found that both groups engage medial prefrontal cortex and mid-cingulate during self-referencing. The only cerebral differences between the groups in self versus other personality assessment were found in somatosensory and motor-related areas. In contrast, age-related modulations were found in the cerebral network recruited for emotional valence processing. Elderly (but not young) showed increased activity in the dorsal prefrontal cortex for positive relative to negative items, which could reflect an increase in controlled processing of positive information for elderly adults.

Individual differences in trait anhedonia: a structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging study in non-clinical subjects

Anhedonia, the reduced capacity to gain pleasure from pleasurable experiences, is a key symptom of major depression and schizophrenia. Reduced hedonic capacity can also be measured as an enduring trait in non-clinical subjects. Such altered hedonic capacity is likely the result of a basic neuropsychophysiological dysfunction and a vulnerability marker that potentially precedes and contributes to the liability of developing psychiatric disorders. The characterization of the structural and functional neural correlates of trait anhedonia in non-clinical individuals may provide new insights for the early detection of such psychiatric diseases. Twenty-nine non-clinical subjects were scanned at the Montreal Neurological Institute. Trait anhedonia was measured using the Chapman Revised Physical Anhedonia Scale. Semi-automated and automated structural MRI segmentation techniques were used to explore structural correlates of trait anhedonia. Seventeen of the 29 subjects also underwent a functional imaging task where responses to the viewing of affective stimuli were examined to identify the functional correlates of trait anhedonia. Trait anhedonia was inversely related to anterior caudate volume, but positively related to ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity during the processing of positive information. These findings may reflect a specific kind of vulnerability for the development of psychiatric affective disorders and suggest that trait anhedonia may be linked to a volumetric reduction in the basal ganglia and to a prefrontal functional abnormality during hedonic processing.

Highly neurotic never-depressed students have negative biases in information processing

Cognitive theories associate depression with negative biases in information processing. Although negatively biased cognitions are well documented in depressed patients and to some extent in recovered patients, it remains unclear whether these abnormalities are present before the first depressive episode. High neuroticism (N) is a well-recognized risk factor for depression. The current study therefore compared different aspects of emotional processing in 33 high-N never-depressed and 32 low-N matched volunteers. Awakening salivary cortisol, which is often elevated in severely depressed patients, was measured to explore the neurobiological substrate of neuroticism. High-N volunteers showed increased processing of negative and/or decreased processing of positive information in emotional categorization and memory, facial expression recognition and emotion-potentiated startle (EPS), in the absence of global memory or executive deficits. By contrast, there was no evidence for effects of neuroticism on attentional bias (as measured with the dot-probe task), over-general autobiographical memory, or awakening cortisol levels. These results suggest that certain negative processing biases precede depression rather than arising as a result of depressive experience per se and as such could in part mediate the vulnerability of high-N subjects to depression. Longitudinal studies are required to confirm that such cognitive vulnerabilities predict subsequent depression in individual subjects.