Subjective Valence Research Articles

The immediate and lasting effects of imagery rescripting and their associations with imagery tendency in young adults with childhood maltreatment history: An ERP study.

The effectiveness of imagery rescripting (IR) in reducing psychological symptoms associated with aversive memories has been confirmed across various disorders. To better understand the neural mechanisms underlying IR, we assessed the immediate and lasting effects and their associations with imagery tendency by using unpleasant pictures depicting child maltreatment within a population with childhood maltreatment (CM) history. Participants (n = 68) were instructed to engage in two experimental phases while electroencephalogram was recorded. In the rescripting phase, participants viewed neutral or unpleasant pictures and then either imagined the same pictures or rescripted unpleasant ones to assess immediate effect. In the re-exposure phase, participants passively viewed all pictures without instruction to assess lasting effect. Participants rated their subjective valence and imagery vividness in the rescripting phase or intensity of negative feelings in the re-exposure phase. IR led to an attenuation of the late positive potential (LPP) amplitude in the late time window (2000-6000 ms at parietal-occipital electrodes) and a decrease in self-reported unpleasantness during the rescripting phase. After 5-min interval, unpleasant pictures with rescripted history elicited smaller LPP (400-1500 ms at centro-parietal electrodes) and negative feelings than those with imagery history in the re-exposure phase. The higher habitual use of imagery was associated with a greater reduction in late LPP during the rescripting phase and full-time range LPP during the re-exposure phase. The current findings suggest that IR has an immediate effect and a lasting effect on subjective and neural response in the CM population. Individuals with higher imagery tendency are likely to profit more from IR.

The human olfactory bulb communicates perceived odor valence to the piriform cortex in the gamma band and receives a refined representation back in the beta band.

A core function of the olfactory system is to determine the valence of odors. In humans, central processing of odor valence perception has been shown to take form already within the olfactory bulb (OB), but the neural mechanisms by which this important information is communicated to, and from, the olfactory cortex (piriform cortex, PC) in humans are not known. To assess communication between the 2 nodes, we simultaneously measured odor-dependent neural activity in the OB and PC from human participants while obtaining trial-by-trial valence ratings. By doing so, we could determine when subjective valence information was communicated, what kind of information was transferred, and how the information was transferred (i.e., in which frequency band). Support vector machine (SVM) learning was used on the coherence spectrum and frequency-resolved Granger causality to identify valence-dependent differences in functional and effective connectivity between the OB and PC. We found that the OB communicates subjective odor valence to the PC in the gamma band shortly after odor onset, while the PC subsequently feeds valence-related information back to the OB in the beta band. Decoding accuracy was better for negative than positive valence, suggesting a focus on negative valence. Critically, we replicated these findings in an independent data set using additional odors across a larger perceived valence range. Combined, these results demonstrate that the OB and PC communicate levels of subjective odor pleasantness across multiple frequencies, at specific time points, in a direction-dependent pattern in accordance with a two-stage model of odor processing.

Sensing emotional valence and arousal dynamics through automated facial action unit analysis

Information about the concordance between dynamic emotional experiences and objective signals is practically useful. Previous studies have shown that valence dynamics can be estimated by recording electrical activity from the muscles in the brows and cheeks. However, whether facial actions based on video data and analyzed without electrodes can be used for sensing emotion dynamics remains unknown. We investigated this issue by recording video of participants’ faces and obtaining dynamic valence and arousal ratings while they observed emotional films. Action units (AUs) 04 (i.e., brow lowering) and 12 (i.e., lip-corner pulling), detected through an automated analysis of the video data, were negatively and positively correlated with dynamic ratings of subjective valence, respectively. Several other AUs were also correlated with dynamic valence or arousal ratings. Random forest regression modeling, interpreted using the SHapley Additive exPlanation tool, revealed non-linear associations between the AUs and dynamic ratings of valence or arousal. These results suggest that an automated analysis of facial expression video data can be used to estimate dynamic emotional states, which could be applied in various fields including mental health diagnosis, security monitoring, and education.

Electrophysiological correlates of why humans deviate from rational decision-making: A registered replication study.

In contrast to rational choice theory predicting humans to optimize expected utilities of choices, humans deviate from rational behavior in decision-making paradigms. Hewig etal. (2011) explored affective correlates of decision-making in the ultimatum game (UG) and the dictator game (DG). They found that feedback-related negativity (FRN), subjective valence ratings, and autonomic nervous system activity predicted rejection of monetary offers. This registered replication aimed to validate and extend these findings. Although behavioral patterns and results of subjective ratings closely matched the original study, not all psychophysiological effects were successfully replicated. Firstly, we could not replicate the reported effects of autonomic nervous system activity. Secondly, a quadratic instead of the originally proposed linear relation between the offer and the FRN emerged, possibly driven by the offer evaluation in economic games and the rewarding anticipation of successful punishment for low offers. Thirdly, P3 amplitudes mirrored the quadratic offer response pattern, generally peaking for the lowest offer. In contrast to the original study, P3 responses were larger in the UG compared with the DG. Finally, our findings indicate that participant-related higher midfrontal theta activation predicted lower acceptance behavior in the UG, with a systematic dampening effect for fairer offers. This highlights cognitive control as a crucial mechanism in economic decision-making to overcome behavioral defaults. Overall, our results conceptually support the original conclusion that decision-making in economic games is non-rational and dependent on the objective situation as well as emotional and neural markers, though not precisely as suggested by Hewig etal. (2011).

Development and Validation of the Inventory of Meditation Experiences (IME)

ObjectivesMeditation is increasingly popular, and yet studies of meditation-related adverse effects, or experiences of unusual psychological states, have mostly focused on those of extremely unpleasant or pleasant nature, respectively, despite the wide range of possible experiences. We aimed to create an instrument to capture meditation-related experiences of varied intensity and subjective valence.MethodWe collected detailed data from 886 US meditators after screening over 3000 individuals to generate a sample representative of major types of meditation practices and experience levels. Participants answered questions about meditation history, mental health, and 103 meditation-related experiences identified for the development of the Inventory of Meditation Experiences (IME).ResultsParallel analysis guided the eventual determination of factors; exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis yielded good model-to-data fit on a 30-item, 3-factor version of the scale. The total scale and subscales showed expected correlations with measures of adverse effects, meditation characteristics, and mental health symptoms. Analysis indicated utility in examining experience intensity and valence as potentially distinct or combined features of experiences.ConclusionsThe IME is a psychometrically valid tool that may prove useful to assess a variety of meditation-related experiences that account for both the intensity and subjective valence of those experiences.PreregistrationWhile several hypotheses were preregistered (https://osf.io/r8beh/), the present study pertains only to the development and validation of the instrument.

Sympathetic arousal among depressed college students: Examining the interplay between psychopathology and social activity.

Depressed individuals exhibit altered sensitivity to both positive and negative social contact, and may not reap the same psychological and emotional benefits to socializing as non-depressed individuals. Although depressive symptoms and loneliness predict social withdrawal and decreased pleasure, little is currently understood about immediate affective arousal dynamics during real-time socializing. Using a novel ambulatory protocol that tracked both objective features of affective arousal (electrodermal activity) and subjective valence (self-reported) during college students' social interactions, we evaluated the moderating role of depression and loneliness symptoms on the associations between socializing with others (specifically, with a romantic partner, a close friend, or a group of friends) and the arousal and valence dimensions of affect. Among a racially and ethnically diverse sample of 118 college students (64% African American/Black/Continental African, 20% Latinx, 8% Asian, and 8% White) recruited from a large, predominantly White Midwestern university, those lower in depression and loneliness symptomatology evinced decreased average arousal (Β = -0.10, SE = 0.04, p < .01) when in relaxed and intimate socializing contexts (e.g., with a romantic partner and a close friend), consistent with the idea that these contexts facilitate important opportunities for psychological rest and recovery. Those lower in depression and loneliness symptoms also showed higher average arousal when socializing in the energizing context of being with a group of friends. Overall, the results suggest psychopathology is reflected in patterns of sympathetic arousal when socializing, with more depressed and lonely individuals generally feeling worse while receiving fewer psychophysiological rewards in multiple socializing contexts.

Electroencephalography as an objective method for assessing subjective emotions during the application of cream.

To compare emotional responses elicited by four cosmetic products on different sensory modalities (smell, visual, and touch), and analyze the link between objective instrumental analysis results and subjective evaluation of participants occurring within dimensional valence-arousal model of emotions. In this study, four cream products exhibiting variations in olfactory perception, visual appearance and perception usability were selected. Electroencephalography (EEG) and a subjective emotion scale were used to assess participants' emotional responses during the sensory experience of utilizing the creams. The study revealed that the objective emotional valence and arousal of different cream products exhibited certain variations at distinct stages of usage. The trend of valence differences induced by different products measured by EEG at the same stage was almost as same as measured by subjective evaluation. The correspondence between the valence measured by EEG closely approximated that obtained through subjective evaluation across various products at distinct stages of usage. These findings demonstrate a significant correlation between EEG-based valence and subjective valence, however, no such relationship was observed for arousal. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using EEG as a method to assess emotions elicited by various stages of cosmetics application, including smelling, looking, rubbing, and afterfeel. This technique serves as a valuable supplement to traditional methods for examining emotional responses by providing more objective evidence.

EEG channel selection using Gramian Angular Fields and spectrograms for energy data visualization

Electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have a wide range of applications in affect recognition. The usage of irrelevant information channels when decoding brain activity from different regions can negatively impact the task at hand. Therefore, further research is needed to determine the ideal channels for detecting superior performances. In this study, deep learning models and 2-D image representations are used to assess the efficacy of EEG channels for subjective valence responses to energy data visualizations. The EEG signals are converted into spectrograms and Gramian Angular Field (GAF) images. A hybrid Convolution Neural Network (CNN)-Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) model and LSTM network are used to extract feature sets from the converted images. These feature sets, after reducing their dimensionality using a principal component analysis (PCA) method, are fed into a boosting classifier (AdaBoost). The performance metrics of both models and 2-D representations are compared. The LSTM and CNN-LSTM models with GAFs and spectrograms achieve state-of-the-art accuracies. The CNN-LSTM model achieves the highest performance when using spectrograms for the F8 channel, while the GAF method performs relatively lower for the F3 channel. The CNN-LSTM model with the spectrogram method produces reliable results, and hence, this method is used for further analysis of the remaining channel pairs. This study suggests that using a single EEG channel is more effective than using multiple channels for recognizing emotions in energy data visualizations. The proposed methodology is an efficient way to select channels for this purpose.

Machine Learning-Based Interpretable Modeling for Subjective Emotional Dynamics Sensing Using Facial EMG.

Understanding the association between subjective emotional experiences and physiological signals is of practical and theoretical significance. Previous psychophysiological studies have shown a linear relationship between dynamic emotional valence experiences and facial electromyography (EMG) activities. However, whether and how subjective emotional valence dynamics relate to facial EMG changes nonlinearly remains unknown. To investigate this issue, we re-analyzed the data of two previous studies that measured dynamic valence ratings and facial EMG of the corrugator supercilii and zygomatic major muscles from 50 participants who viewed emotional film clips. We employed multilinear regression analyses and two nonlinear machine learning (ML) models: random forest and long short-term memory. In cross-validation, these ML models outperformed linear regression in terms of the mean squared error and correlation coefficient. Interpretation of the random forest model using the SHapley Additive exPlanation tool revealed nonlinear and interactive associations between several EMG features and subjective valence dynamics. These findings suggest that nonlinear ML models can better fit the relationship between subjective emotional valence dynamics and facial EMG than conventional linear models and highlight a nonlinear and complex relationship. The findings encourage emotion sensing using facial EMG and offer insight into the subjective-physiological association.

Uncovering potential distinctive acoustic features of healing music

BackgroundMusic therapy is a promising complementary intervention for addressing various mental health conditions. Despite evidence of the beneficial effects of music, the acoustic features that make music effective in therapeutic...

Time-locked acute alpha-frequency stimulation of subthalamic nuclei during the evaluation of emotional stimuli and its effect on power modulation.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) studies in Parkinson's Disease (PD) targeting the subthalamic nucleus (STN) have characterized its spectral properties across cognitive processes. In emotional evaluation tasks, specific alpha frequency (8-12 Hz) event-related de-synchronization (ERD) (reduced power) has been demonstrated. The time-locked stimulation of STN relative to stimuli onset has shown subjective positive valence shifts with 10 Hz but not with 130 Hz. However, neurophysiological effects of stimulation on power modulation have not been investigated. We aim to investigate effects of acute stimulation of the right STN on concurrent power modulation in the contralateral STN and frontal scalp EEG. From our previous study, we had a strong a priori hypothesis that negative imagery without stimulation would be associated with alpha ERD; negative imagery with 130 Hz stimulation would be also associated with alpha ERD given the lack of its effect on subjective valence ratings; negative imagery with 10 Hz stimulation was to be associated with enhanced alpha power given the shift in behavioral valence ratings. Twenty-four subjects with STN DBS underwent emotional picture-viewing tasks comprising neutral and negative pictures. In a subset of these subjects, the negative images were associated with time-locked acute stimulation at either 10 or 130 Hz. Power of signals was estimated relative to the baseline and subjected to non-parametric statistical testing. As hypothesized, in 130 Hz stimulation condition, we show a decrease in alpha power to negative vs. neutral images irrespective of stimulation. In contrast, this alpha power decrease was no longer evident in the negative 10 Hz stimulation condition consistent with a predicted increase in alpha power. Greater beta power in the 10 Hz stimulation condition along with correlations between beta power across the 10 Hz stimulation and unstimulated conditions suggest physiological and cognitive generalization effects. Acute alpha-specific frequency stimulation presumably was associated with a loss of this expected decrease or desynchronization in alpha power to negative images suggesting the capacity to facilitate the synchronization of alpha and enhance power. Acute time-locked stimulation has the potential to provide causal insights into the spectral frequencies and temporal dynamics of emotional processing.

Effect of Taste-Induced Mood on ERP and Emotional Assessment of Images.

Tastes affect the body and our emotions. We used tasteless, sweet, and bitter stimuli to induce participants' moods, and we examined the effect of mood on an emotional evaluation of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant images using event-related potentials, N2, N400, and late positive potential (LPP), which reflect emotional evaluation in the brain. The results indicated that mood valence was most positive for sweetness and most negative for bitterness. Moreover, there was no significant mood effect on subjective valence ratings of emotional images. Furthermore, the N2 amplitude, which is related to the early semantic processing of preceding stimuli, was unaffected by the taste induced mood. In contrast, we found that the N400 amplitude, which is related to the mismatch of emotional valence between stimuli, increased significantly for unpleasant images when participants were in a positive rather than negative mood state. Also, the LPP amplitude, which is related to the emotional valence of images, showed only the main effect of the images' emotional valence. The N2's results suggest that the early semantic processing of taste stimuli might have had a negligible impact on emotional evaluation because taste stimuli minimize semantic processing that accompanies mood induction. In contrast, the N400 reflected the effects of the induced mood, and the LPP reflected the impact of the valence of emotional images. The use of taste stimuli to induce mood revealed different brain processing of taste-induced mood effects on emotional evaluation, including N2's involvement in semantic processing, N400's involvement in matching emotions between mood and stimuli, and LPP's involvement in subjective evaluations of stimuli.

Behavioral and neural underpinnings of empathic characteristics in a Humanitude-care expert.

Humanitude approaches have shown positive effects in elderly care. However, the behavioral and neural underpinnings of empathic characteristics in Humanitude-care experts remain unknown. We investigated the empathic characteristics of a Humanitude-care expert (YG) and those of age-, sex-, and race-matched controls (n = 13). In a behavioral study, we measured subjective valence and arousal ratings and facial electromyography (EMG) of the corrugator supercilii and zygomatic major muscles while participants passively observed dynamic facial expressions associated with anger and happiness and their randomized mosaic patterns. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study, we measured brain activity while participants passively observed the same dynamic facial expressions and mosaics. In a structural MRI study, we acquired structural MRI data and analyzed gray matter volume. Our behavioral data showed that YG experienced higher subjective arousal and showed stronger facial EMG activity congruent with stimulus facial expressions compared with controls. The functional MRI data demonstrated that YG showed stronger activity in the ventral premotor cortex (PMv; covering the precentral gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus) and posterior middle temporal gyrus in the right hemisphere in response to dynamic facial expressions versus dynamic mosaics compared with controls. The structural MRI data revealed higher regional gray matter volume in the right PMv in YG than in controls. These results suggest that Humanitude-care experts have behavioral and neural characteristics associated with empathic social interactions.

Twitter sentiment analysis about economic recession in indonesia

As one of the most popular social media platforms, Twitter enables users to express their opinions on diverse concepts, products, and services. Large quantities of data shared as tweets can be mined for user feedback and used to improve the quality of products and services. Using Twitter data and social media sentiment analysis, tracking how people feel about the recession in real time is possible. As a consequence, relevant organizations or governments can take preventative measures against the disinformation and unlawful conduct caused by the effects of the recession. This study aims to determine if there is a correlation between how people on Twitter feel about the recession. This study's data acquisition utilized "Recession"-tagged Twitter remarks from 2023. This study analyses filtered tweets for sentiment, emotion, word usage, and trends. According to the findings, 94% of tweets had benign sentiments, 4% had positive sentiments, and 2% had negative sentiments. Tweets with moderate subjective valence cluster in the middle of the polarity scale (between 1 and +1), while tweets with strong subjective valence are dispersed throughout the scale

Empathy development from adolescence to adulthood and its consistency across targets.

This research was conducted with two main goals—to contribute to knowledge on the development of empathy from early adolescence to adulthood, including its contribution to decoding emotion expression, and to improve the understanding of the nature of empathy by simultaneously assessing empathy toward two different targets—humans and animals. It unfolded into two cross-sectional studies: One (S1) obtaining measures of empathy toward humans and animals as targets across five age groups (from pre-adolescents to adults); and another (S2) where a subset of the adolescents who participated in S1 were assessed in emotion expression decoding and subjective and physiological responses to emotional video clips. The results of S1 showed that empathy toward animals and most dimensions of empathy toward humans increase toward adulthood, with important gender differences in empathy to animals and humans, and empathy levels in girls starting off in the age trajectory at higher levels, A moderate correlation between empathy toward human and toward animal targets was also found. S2 showed that the expression of positive emotion is better recognized than that of negative emotion, surprise, or neutral expression, and that the measure of human-directed empathy predicts successful decoding of negative emotion, whereas skin conductance responses (SCRs) and subjective valence ratings predicted successful identification of positive emotion. Gender differences emerged but not across all age groups nor all subscales. Results yield keys to the developmental “pace” and trajectory of the various dimensions of empathy and to how empathy relates to emotion decoding.

Facial EMG sensing for monitoring affect using a wearable device

Using a novel wearable surface electromyography (sEMG), we investigated induced affective states by measuring the activation of facial muscles traditionally associated with positive (left/right orbicularis and left/right zygomaticus) and negative expressions (the corrugator muscle). In a sample of 38 participants that watched 25 affective videos in a virtual reality environment, we found that each of the three variables examined—subjective valence, subjective arousal, and objective valence measured via the validated video types (positive, neutral, and negative)—sEMG amplitude varied significantly depending on video content. sEMG aptitude from “positive muscles” increased when participants were exposed to positively valenced stimuli compared with stimuli that was negatively valenced. In contrast, activation of “negative muscles” was elevated following exposure to negatively valenced stimuli compared with positively valenced stimuli. High arousal videos increased muscle activations compared to low arousal videos in all the measured muscles except the corrugator muscle. In line with previous research, the relationship between sEMG amplitude as a function of subjective valence was V-shaped.

Enhanced mirror neuron network activity and effective connectivity during live interaction among female subjects

Facial expressions are indispensable in daily human communication. Previous neuroimaging studies investigating facial expression processing have presented pre-recorded stimuli and lacked live face-to-face interaction. Our paradigm alternated between presentations of real-time model performance and pre-recorded videos of dynamic facial expressions to participants. Simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and facial electromyography activity recordings, as well as post-scan valence and arousal ratings were acquired from 44 female participants. Live facial expressions enhanced the subjective valence and arousal ratings as well as facial muscular responses. Live performances showed greater engagement of the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), right amygdala and right fusiform gyrus, and modulated the effective connectivity within the right mirror neuron system (IFG, pSTS, and right inferior parietal lobule). A support vector machine algorithm could classify multivoxel activation patterns in brain regions involved in dynamic facial expression processing in the mentalizing networks (anterior and posterior cingulate cortex). These results indicate that live social interaction modulates the activity and connectivity of the right mirror neuron system and enhances spontaneous mimicry, further facilitating emotional contagion.

When the timing is right: The link between temporal coupling in dyadic interactions and emotion recognition

Affective states can be understood as dynamic interpersonal processes developing over time and space. When we observe emotional interactions performed by other individuals, our visual system anticipates how the action will unfold. Thus, it has been proposed that the process of emotion perception is not only a simulative but also a predictive process - a phenomenon described as interpersonal predictive coding. The present study investigated whether the recognition of emotions from dyadic interactions depends on a fixed spatiotemporal coupling of the agents. We used an emotion recognition task to manipulate the actions of two interacting point-light figures by implementing different temporal offsets that delayed the onset of one of the agent's actions (+0 ms, +500 ms, +1000 ms or + 2000 ms). Participants had to determine both the subjective valence and the emotion category (happiness, anger, sadness, affection) of the interaction. Results showed that temporal decoupling had a critical effect on both emotion recognition and the subjective impression of valence intensity: Both measures decreased with increasing temporal offset. However, these effects were dependent on which emotion was displayed. Whereas affection and anger sequences were impacted by the temporal manipulation, happiness and sadness were not. To further investigate these effects, we conducted post-hoc exploratory analyses of interpersonal movement parameters. Our findings complement and extend previous evidence by showing that the complex, noncoincidental coordination of actions within dyadic interactions results in a meaningful movement pattern and might serve as a fundamental factor in both detecting and understanding complex actions during human interaction.

Human body odors of happiness and fear modulate the late positive potential component during neutral face processing: a preliminary ERP study on healthy subjects.

Human body odors (HBOs) are powerful stimuli that can affect emotional, cognitive and behavioral processes. However, the characterization of the physiological response to HBOs is still to be fully investigated. Here, we analyzed the self-assessed emotion perception and the EEG event-related potentials (ERP) on 17 healthy young women during a simultaneous visual-olfactory stimulation. Particularly, we evaluated the effect of happiness and fear HBO on the amplitude of ERP waveforms elicited by neutral face processing. In addition, we evaluated the subjective valence and arousal perception of the presented neutral faces by means of the self-assessment-manikin test. We observed a significant increase in the amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP) for central left sites (i.e., C3) during the administration of HBOs with respect to clean air. On the other hand, we did not observe any significant change in the subjective valence and arousal scores as well as for the early components of the ERP (i.e., P100, N170, Vertex-Positive-Potential). Our preliminary results suggest that fear and happiness HBO can induce a protracted increase in the LPP, and possibly reflect an automatic and sustained engagement with emotionally significant content.

How 'who someone is' and 'what they did' influences gossiping about them.

To understand, predict, and help correct each other’s actions we need to maintain accurate, up-to-date knowledge of people, and communication is a critical means by which we gather and disseminate this information. Yet the conditions under which we communication social information remain unclear. Testing hypotheses generated from our theoretical framework, we examined when and why social information is disseminated about an absent third party: i.e., gossiped. Gossip scenarios presented to participants (e.g., “Person-X cheated on their exam”) were based on three key factors: (1) target (ingroup, outgroup, or celebrity), (2) valence (positive or negative), and (3) content. We then asked them (a) whether they would spread the information, and (b) to rate it according to subjective valence, ordinariness, interest level, and emotion. For ratings, the scenarios participants chose to gossip were considered to have higher valence (whether positive or negative), to be rarer, more interesting, and more emotionally evocative; thus showing that the paradigm was meaningful to subjects. Indeed, for target, valence, and content, a repeated-measures ANOVA found significant effects for each factor independently, as well as their interactions. The results supported our hypotheses: e.g., for target, more gossiping about celebrities and ingroup members (over strangers); for valence, more about negative events overall, and yet for ingroup members, more positive gossiping; for content, more about moral topics, with yet all domains of social content communicated depending on the situation—context matters, influencing needs. The findings suggest that social knowledge sharing (i.e., gossip) involves sophisticated calculations that require our highest sociocognitive abilities, and provide specific hypotheses for future examination of neural mechanisms.