Valence Indices Research Articles

Self-referential processing in anorexia nervosa.

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a serious psychiatric illness associated with significant medical and psychiatric comorbidity and impairment. Theoretical models of AN and self-report studies suggest that negative self-evaluation (i.e., low self-esteem) is related to the development and maintenance of AN. The goal of this study was to extend findings from self-report methodology using a neurocognitive task that probes self-evaluation implicitly and explicitly. We compared female adolescent and adult patients with AN (n = 35) and healthy controls (HC, n = 38) on explicit (i.e., endorsement of words as self-relevant), implicit (recall, recognition, reaction time), and composite (i.e., valence index, bias score, drift rates) indices of self-evaluation. We applied a drift-diffusion model to compute the drift rates, reflecting participants' decision-making process as to whether words were self-relevant. The association between self-evaluation indices and eating disorder severity was examined. There were significant Group × Condition interaction effects for all explicit and implicit measures (all p's ≤ .01), where the AN group endorsed, recalled, and recognized more negative relative to positive words than HC. The AN group had more negative valence index and bias scores, and slower drift rate away from negative words, reflecting more negative self-evaluation. The finding for recall was attenuated when individuals with depression were excluded. Measures of self-evaluation bias were not related to eating disorder severity. Using a neurocognitive approach that includes explicit and implicit indices of bias, results suggest that patients with AN have more negative self-evaluation. Due to the cross-sectional design, additional studies are needed to further evaluate directionality. Negative self-evaluation/low self-esteem is thought to contribute to eating disorder symptoms. Findings of this study using a neurocognitive task to probe self-evaluation suggested that individuals with anorexia nervosa have more negative self-evaluation, reflected by endorsing and remembering more negative (than positive) words compared to healthy controls, and doing so faster. Targeting the construct of negative self-evaluation in treatment of AN may be warranted.

Developing and Testing Tools for Measuring the Emotional Dimension of Volunteering

Volunteering is an essential part of society. It is considered to be a complex phenomenon which is potentially associated with emotional dilemmas. Emotions of volunteers are crucial for their activity. However, their scientific investigation is lacking, especially when it comes to the methodological aspect. This article presents the results of the methodological development of quantitative indicators of the emotional dimension of volunteering. Using the example of an online survey of 274 social, environmental, event, sports, animal welfare and public safety volunteers, the obtained indicators are tested by searching for a connection with the factors of volunteers’ emotions. As part of our methodology, we have developed new emotional indicators of volunteer activity. Based on the results of the study, we proposed such indicators as valence index, emotional burnout, emotional nature and emotional intelligence. The valence index considers two types (two valences) of volunteers’ emotions — positive and negative. Emotional burnout is expressed as a factor analysis model — the causes of burnout. Emotional intelligence is presented as a summary indicator of emotional processes — for instance, exchange, control, etc. The nature of emotions is represented by interval semantic differentials when building a cluster analysis model. By testing the obtained methods, it turns out that formal and informal volunteers have equally high emotional intelligence and are equally susceptible to burnout. The lowest values of the valence index are found among event volunteers, the highest — among public safety volunteers. With age, the chances of burning out decrease with the presence of constant joy and fun, increase due to excessive pity, and decrease due to compassion fatigue. Compared to men, women are more prone to experiencing emotions: both positive and negative, that is, they have a higher valence index and emotional intelligence.

Emotion regulation: a study of electroencephalographic correlates

Effective emotion regulation is associated with improved subjective well-being, mental health, and social goal attainment. Poor psychosocial well-being, depression, and psychiatric disorders are often associated with the inability to regulate emotions. Cognitive reappraisal, which focuses on events, and expressive suppression, which is reaction-oriented, have both garnered significant attention in psychophysiological studies as effective strategies for emotion regulation. Cognitive reappraisal focuses on changing the meaning of a situation, while suppression occurs later in the emotional experience, when efforts are made to suppress the behavioral and physiological responses associated with ongoing emotions [1]. Suppression regulates emotions for a shorter period, while reappraisal has a long-term effect on emotion regulation. While somatovegetative markers of emotion regulation have been thoroughly investigated [2, 3], further research is needed to explore the brain correlates of this process. Our aim was to examine the electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates of emotion regulation. For this study, we computed correlations between subjects or inter-subject correlation (ISC; an indicator of attention, engagement, and tension [4]) and EEG valence and arousal indices [5] (64 leads in total). Sixty participants (average age=26.0) either suppressed their emotional responses, employed reappraisal, or viewed neutral 1-minute videos with negative content (36 trials in total). Both suppression and reappraisal elicited higher levels of ISC compared to viewing negative or neutral videos (F(3, 168)=25.23, p 0.001, η²=0.10). The pairwise comparisons revealed that viewing neutral videos resulted in lower ISC than viewing negative videos (t(56)=4.26, p 0.001, d=0.47), suppression (t(56)=9.04, p 0.001, d=0.78), and reappraisal (t(56)=11.0, p 0.0001, d=0.77). Both suppression and reappraisal resulted in higher ISC compared to watching negative videos (t(56)=3.38, p=0.002, d=0.40 and t(56)=2.96, p=0.005, d=0.39, 1-β=0.83, respectively). It suggests a need for task engagement and feedback processing to manage emotion. Additionally, the arousal index was greater in all negative conditions, suggesting that regulation necessitated a specific level of arousal (χ2(3)=12.8, p=0.005, W=0.075). Wilcoxon’s tests revealed a significant decrease in arousal index when viewing neutral videos compared to negative ones (V=465, p=0.012, r=0.053). Conversely, suppressing (V=499, p=0.019, r=0.057) and reappraisal (V=395, p=0.004, r=0.096) elicited higher levels of arousal. Thirdly, the EEG valence index exhibited elevated levels in both emotions regulation states compared to the neutral state (χ2(3)=10.5, p=0.015, W=0.061). Furthermore, the Wilcoxon tests revealed that the valence index was reduced when watching neutral videos in comparison to suppression (V=525, p=0.048, r=0.136) and reappraisal (V=500, p=0.048, r=0.165). This suggests an upsurge in the positive emotional aspect when regulating emotions. Overall, various EEG measurements reflect distinct aspects of emotion regulation, although both suppression and cognitive reassessment induced greater brain resource allocation than passive viewing.

A Point-Process Approach for Tracking Valence using a Respiration Belt.

Emotional valence is difficult to be inferred since it is related to several psychological factors and is affected by inter- and intra-subject variability. Changes in emotional valence have been found to cause a physiological response in respiration signals. In this study, we propose a state-space model and decode the valence by analyzing a person's respiration pattern. Particularly, we generate a binary point process based on features that are indicative of changes in respiration pattern as a result of an emotional valence response. High valence is typically associated with faster and deeper breathing. As a result, (i)depth of breath, (ii)rate of respiration, and (iii) breathing cycle time are indicators of high valence and used to generate the binary point process representing underlying neural stimuli associated with changes in valence. We utilize an expectation-maximization (EM) framework to decode a hidden valence state and the associated valence index. This predicted valence state is compared to self-reported valence ratings to optimize the parameters and determine the accuracy of the model. The accuracy of the model in predicting high and low valence events is found to be 77% and 73%, respectively. Our study can be applied towards the long term analysis of valence. Additionally, it has applications in a closed-loop system procedures and wearable design paradigm to track and regulate the emotional valence.

Automated measurement of infant and mother Duchenne facial expressions in the Face-to-Face/Still-Face.

Although still-face effects are well-studied, little is known about the degree to which the Face-to-Face/Still-Face (FFSF) is associated with the production of intense affective displays. Duchenne smiling expresses more intense positive affect than non-Duchenne smiling, while Duchenne cry-faces express more intense negative affect than non-Duchenne cry-faces. Forty 4-month-old infants and their mothers completed the FFSF, and key affect-indexing facial Action Units (AUs) were coded by expert Facial Action Coding System coders for the first 30s of each FFSF episode. Computer vision software, automated facial affect recognition (AFAR), identified AUs for the entire 2-min episodes. Expert coding and AFAR produced similar infant and mother Duchenne and non-Duchenne FFSF effects, highlighting the convergent validity of automated measurement. Substantive AFAR analyses indicated that both infant Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiling declined from the FF to the SF, but only Duchenne smiling increased from the SF to the RE. In similar fashion, the magnitude of mother Duchenne smiling changes over the FFSF were 2-4 times greater than non-Duchenne smiling changes. Duchenne expressions appear to be a sensitive index of intense infant and mother affective valence that are accessible to automated measurement and may be a target for future FFSF research.

The relationship between emotional valence, anxiety, and attentional bias

Emotional expressions are an evolutionarily conserved means of social communication. It is well-established that emotional stimuli capture attention more easily than neutral stimuli, a phenomenon often referred to as “emotional attention”. However, contradictory findings of the “threat superiority effect” and the “happy face advantage” provoke questions about how emotional valence biases attentional capture. In addition, an enduring attentional bias toward threat is commonly observed in highly anxious individuals, but the exact type of anxiety—state or trait—that modulates the attentional bias for threat has not been agreed upon. To understand how the valence of emotional faces affects attentional capture and how the type of anxiety modulates emotional attention, we preregistered and conducted an online visual search experiment via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Participants (n=154) searched for a unique emotional face (happy or angry) among three or seven distractor faces that were closely cropped and balanced for low-level image statistics. Consistent with the “happy face advantage”, we found an attentional bias for positive over negative valence in visual search, robust at both set sizes, in accuracy, response time, and inverse efficiency score. We also found that the anxiety ratings from the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)—both state and trait anxiety—correlated positively with search accuracy for angry targets, but negatively with search accuracy for happy targets. Given these opposing patterns of correlation, we further computed a valence index of emotional attention as a difference in search accuracy between angry and happy targets. This valence index correlated strongly with anxiety, suggesting that participants with higher anxiety showed more threat-related attentional bias and less attentional bias to stimuli with positive valence. Together, our findings reveal the role of emotional valence in attentional capture and unveil a distinct impact of anxiety on attention to positive and threatening stimuli.

Chemical bonding in representative astrophysically relevant neutral, cation, and anion HC n H chains

Most existing studies assign a polyynic and cumulenic character of chemical bonding in carbon-based chains relying on values of the bond lengths. Building on our recent work, in this paper we add further evidence on the limitations of such an analysis and demonstrate the significant insight gained via natural bond analysis. Presently reported results include atomic charges, natural bond order and valence indices obtained from ab initio computations for representative members of the astrophysically relevant neutral and charged HC2k/2k + 1H chain family. They unravel a series of counter-intuitive aspects and/or help naive intuition in properly understanding microscopic processes, e.g., electron removal from or electron attachment to a neutral chain. Demonstrating that the Wiberg indices adequately quantify the chemical bonding structure of the HC2k/2k + 1H chains — while the often heavily advertised Mayer indices do not — represents an important message conveyed by the present study.

Measuring national mood with music: using machine learning to construct a measure of national valence from audio data

We propose a new measure of national valence based on the emotional content of a country’s most popular songs. We first trained a machine learning model using 191 different audio features embedded within music and use this model to construct a long-run valence index for the UK. This index correlates strongly and significantly with survey-based life satisfaction and outperforms an equivalent text-based measure. Our methods have the potential to be applied widely and to provide a solution to the severe lack of historical time-series data on psychological well-being.

Prediction on chemoselectivity for selected organocatalytic reactions by the DFT version of the Hückel-defined free valence index

The DFT version of the Hückel-defined free valence (HFV) index has been suggested and successfully used for predicting the origin of chemoselectivity in the selected organocatalytic reactions.

OPTIMAL ACCURACY PERFORMANCE IN MUSIC-BASED EEG SIGNAL USING MATTHEW CORRELATION COEFFICIENT ADVANCED (MCCA)

The connection between music and human are very synonyms because music could reduce stress. The state of stress could be measured using EEG signal, an electroencephalogram (EEG) measurement which contains an arousal and valence index value. In previous studies, it is found that the Matthew Correlation Coefficient (MCC) performance accuracy is of 85±5%. The arousal indicates strong emotion, and valence indicates positive and negative degree of emotion. Arousal and valence values could be used to measure the accuracy performance. This research focuses on the enhance MCC parameter equation based on arousal and valence values to perform the maximum accuracy percentage in the frequency domain and time-frequency domain analysis. Twenty-one features were used to improve the significance of feature extraction results and the investigated arousal and valence value. The substantial feature extraction involved alpha, beta, delta and theta frequency bands in measuring the arousal and valence index formula. Based on the results, the arousal and valance index is accepted to be applied as parameters in the MCC equations. However, in certain cases, the improvement of the MCC parameter is required to achieve a high accuracy percentage and this research proposed Matthew correlation coefficient advanced (MCCA) in order to improve the performance result by using a six sigma method. In conclusion, the MCCA equation is established to enhance the existing MCC parameter to improve the accuracy percentage up to 99.9% for the arousal and valence index.

USING QUANTUM-CHEMICAL PARAMETERS FOR PREDICTING ANTIRADICAL (HO•) ACTIVITY OF RELATED STRUCTURES CONTAINING A CINNAMOIL FRAGMENT. IV. STRUCTURE-ACTIVITY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN UNSATURATION INDICES AND FLAVONE DERIVATIVES WITH FLOROGLUCIN RING “A”

The quantum-chemical parameters of 52 derivatives related to flavanones, flavanonoles, flavones and flavonoles with a phloroglucinic type of the A ring and containing electron-donating substituents in the B ring were studied.The aim is the analysis of the dynamics of changes in the electron density, bond numbers, free valence indices and unsaturation indices on carbon atoms C-7 → C-8 of the vinyl group of the main conjugation chain in relation to the position and number of substituents in the “B” ring and the type of the pharmacological activity.Materials and methods. The quantum-chemical parameters of the 4 analyzed groups of the compounds, have been calculated by the semi-empirical method PM7 (WinMopac 2016 program) on the workstation with an Intel Xeon E5-1620 3.5 GHz processor, 20 GB of RAM.Results and discussion. When comparing the quantum chemical parameters of the analyzed compounds, it was established that when the C-7 → C-8 multiple bond is formed, the free valency and unsaturation indices increase on both carbon atoms of the vinylene group in flavones and flavonols compared to the corresponding flavanones and flavanonols. This is explained by the fact that the value of the bond numbers Nµ on these atoms, on the contrary, decreases (Fµ = 4.732-Nµ). The transition from flavanone to flavone is accompanied by the formation of a vinyl group C-7 → C-8, and therefore both atoms from the sp3-hybridized state go into the sp2-state. The consequence of this transformation is a change in the electronegativity value and an increase in the unsaturation index of C-7 and C-8 atoms: C sp3 = 2.5; Csp2 = 2.8. At the same time, the transition from flavanone to flavone leads to the formation of a conjugated system with the participation of π-electrons of the aromatic system “B”, C-7, C-8 atoms and the carbonyl group, which is commonly called the “main conjugation chain”. These structural changes, namely, the transition from a less oxidized flavanone to a more oxidized flavone, contribute to a decrease in the electron density on C-7 and C-8 atoms, and an increase in the total unsaturation of the molecules in general. Mulliken charges on C-7 of all groups of compounds are characterized by a positive value. As for the carbon atoms of the B fragment, the following features are revealed here: in the presence of one substituent -OH or -OCH3 on the carbon atom to which the substituent is bounded, the Mulliken charge is positive; if there are two substituents in the B ring -OH or -OCH3, as well as two -OCH3 groups, then the carbon atoms bonded to the indicated substituents also have a positive Mulliken charge; in the case of trihydroxy substituted in the C-2, C-3 and C-4 B ring, all three carbon atoms are characterized by a positive Mulliken charge; if there are methoxy groups in positions C-2, C-3 and C-4, then the positive Mulliken charge is concentrated only on C-2 and C-4 atoms, and on C-3 atom this charge has a negative value.Conclusion. The above data on the quantum-chemical parameters of the main conjugation chain indicate that the transition of C-7 and C-8 atoms to the sp2-hybrid state, leads to a decrease in the electron density and a decrease in the bond numbers, with a simultaneous increase in the indices of unsaturation and free valence on these atoms. Thus, the trigger mechanism of the anti-radical activity, primarily with respect to the HO • radical, is determined by the fact that this particle, electrophilic in its properties, will attach in the C-8 atom during an initial attack.

USE OF QUANTUM-CHEMICAL PARAMETERS FOR FORECASTING ANTIRADICAL (HO·) ACTIVITY OF RELATED STRUCTURES CONTAINING A CINNAMIC MOLD FRAGMENT. III. CHALCONES, FLAVANONES AND FLAVONES WITH PHLOROGLUCINIC TYPE OF RING “A”

42 derivatives of chalcone, flavanone and flavone having a phloroglucinic type of ring “A” and containing the same electron-donating substituents on ring “B”, have been studied. Flavonoids with the phloroglucinic type of ring “A” are the most common in nature, which is due to the peculiarities of biogenetic formation with the participation of malonyl and acetyl fragments.The aimof the article isto determine the effect of the hydroxy group in position 6' of chalcones and in position 5 of flavanones and flavones on bond numbers (Nµ), free valence indices (Fµ), Mulliken charges (a.e), electron density, unsaturation indices (IUA) of the carbon atoms C-1 → C-6 → C-7 → C-8.Materials and methods. The calculations of the listed above parameters with the use of the semi-empirical method PM7 (WinMopac 2016 program) have been carried out on a workstation with an Intel Xeon E5-1620 3.5 GHz processor, 20 GB of RAM.Results.The quantum-chemical characteristics of the considered derivatives having a phloroglucinic type of the “A” ring, indicate that the OH group in position 6' of chalcones (in the corresponding flavanones and flavones in position 5) has different effects: a slight increase occurs in chalcones negative charge (a.e.) and electron density, the bond numbers take different values, which depends on the position and number of substituents on the ring "B". In flavanones, Nµ practically remains at the same level of 3.822-3.829. For flavones, the binding numbers Nµ for C-8 are in the range of 3.700-3.706, and the Mulliken charges are in the range from -0.4120 to -0.4356. For position-substituted C-3 (6anone and 7anone), the charges are -0.4436 and -0.4479, respectively. The charge on C-7 of chalcones is negative for compounds 4x, 5x, 10x and 13x from -0.0204 to -0.0470. The remaining derivatives of the chalcone, as well as the corresponding flavanones and flavones, are characterized by a positive value of a.e. on C-7. Based on the bond numbers (Nµ), free valency indices (Fµ) have been found for the carbon atoms of the cinnamoyl fragment C-1 → C-6 → C-7 → C-8. When comparing the obtained data, it was found out that for chalcones on C-1 → C-8 atoms, the values of the free valence indices are in the range of 0.900-0.980 for compounds 12x, 13x, where Fµ> 1. For flavanones on C-1, C-3, and C-5 atoms (compounds 12anone and 13anone), the free valence indices are in the range of 0.984-1.024, and for the remaining atoms the value of Fµ is approximately the same as that of chalcones. On the C-8 atoms of all the derivatives, as well as on C-1, C-3 and C-5 (compounds 12one, 13one), Fµ ≥ 1.0. It can be assumed that at values of Fµ = 0.850-0.955 for all the analyzed compounds, coupling reactions on the double bond are possible, and if Fµ ≥1, the coupling will take place according to the free radical mechanism. The data obtained indicate that the OH group in position 6’ for the chalcone and 5 for the flavanones, does not significantly effect the Mulliken charge (a.e) and the electron density on C-8 atoms.Conclusion.It has been established that the OH group in position 6' of the "A" ring of chalcones (in position 5 of the "A" ring in flavones and flavanones) has a conflicting effect on the bond numbers: when passing from chalcone to flavanone, Nµ increases, and then, in flavone, sharply decreases. For C-8 of all flavone derivatives, Fµ ≥1. The following conclusion has been confirmed: at the initial stage of the reaction the electrophilic hydroxyl radical is attached at the C-8 position of the cinnamoyl fragment

Investigating István Mayer's “improved” definitions of bond orders and free valence for correlated singlet‐state wave functions

AbstractChosen from István Mayer's very impressive canon of important work on bond orders and related quantities, we explore a paper from 2012 which introduced a “pseudo spin density matrix” for correlated singlet‐state wave functions, leading to “improved” definitions of bond orders and free valence. Examining such “improved” bond orders for the singlet ground states of H2, N2 and CH+ we find that all of them exhibit sensible geometry dependences. Mayer's free valence index works well for H2 and N2; the asymptotic behavior for CH+ turns out to be slightly more complicated but can easily be explained. Using B2H6 to examine three‐center bonding, a simple generalization of Mayer's approach produces numerical results close to those based on the “pseudo spin density matrix.” As expected, the various “correction” terms remain small, albeit some of them are larger for the multicenter indices of ground and excited singlet states of benzene, S2N2 and square (D4h) cyclobutadiene.

A Valence-Bond-Based Multiconfigurational Density Functional Theory: The λ-DFVB Method Revisited.

A recently developed valence-bond-based multireference density functional theory, named λ-DFVB, is revisited in this paper. λ-DFVB remedies the double-counting error of electron correlation by decomposing the electron–electron interactions into the wave function term and density functional term with a variable parameter λ. The λ value is defined as a function of the free valence index in our previous scheme, denoted as λ-DFVB(K) in this paper. Here we revisit the λ-DFVB method and present a new scheme based on natural orbital occupation numbers (NOONs) for parameter λ, named λ-DFVB(IS), to simplify the process of λ-DFVB calculation. In λ-DFVB(IS), the parameter λ is defined as a function of NOONs, which are straightforwardly determined from the many-electron wave function of the molecule. Furthermore, λ-DFVB(IS) does not involve further self-consistent field calculation after performing the valence bond self-consistent field (VBSCF) calculation, and thus, the computational effort in λ-DFVB(IS) is approximately the same as the VBSCF method, greatly reduced from λ-DFVB(K). The performance of λ-DFVB(IS) was investigated on a broader range of molecular properties, including equilibrium bond lengths and dissociation energies, atomization energies, atomic excitation energies, and chemical reaction barriers. The computational results show that λ-DFVB(IS) is more robust without losing accuracy and comparable in accuracy to high-level multireference wave function methods, such as CASPT2.

Measuring National Life Satisfaction with Music

National life satisfaction is an important way to measure societal well-being and since 2011 has been used to judge the effectiveness of government policy across the world. However, there is a paucity of historical data making limiting long-run comparisons with other data. We construct a new measure based on the emotional content of music. We first trained a machine learning model using 191 different audio features embedded within music and use this model to construct a long-run Music Valence Index derived from chart-topping songs. This index correlates strongly and significantly with survey-based life satisfaction and outperforms an equivalent text-based measure. Our results have implications for the role of music in society, and validate a new use of music as a long-run measure of public sentiment.

Ciliates as bioindicators of water quality: A case study in the neotropical region and evidence of phylogenetic signals (18S-rDNA).

The aim of our study was to evaluate the water quality of an urban stream in southeastern Brazil by analyzing epibenthic ciliates, and to investigate the existence of phylogenetic signal for saprobity in ciliates. However, before conducting this type of phylogenetic study, it is necessary to evaluate if the saprobic classification used frequently in the northern Hemisphere is suitable for neotropical ecosystems. Sediment samples were collected from five sampling stations: two in rural areas and three in urban areas. During the one-year study, with monthly collections, 39 ciliates species were found, of which 32 are included in the saprobic system. Physical, chemical and biological parameters of water confirm the spatial heterogeneity of the sampling stations, with a clear influence of organic pollution on the composition and structure of ciliates taxocenosis. The saprobic index and the saprobic valence index were used to evaluate the water quality of the sampling stations and demonstrated clear heterogeneity between the stations and high degree of pollution of the urban area. These sampling stations were dominated by ciliates indicators of polysaprobric environments. Since we were able to successfully use the saprobic index in a limnic ecosystem in Brazil, we applied the phylogenetic signal validation as a tool for saprobity prediction of the limnic ciliate species not yet analyzed. A phylogenetic tree containing only 18S-rDNA nominal sequences of freshwater ciliates was estimated and used to explore the existence of the phylogenetic signal, which showed that the sensitivity/tolerance of ciliates to organic pollution reflected evolutionary divergence. The results confirm the existence of phylogenetic signal for the saprobrity in Ciliophora. Also, our results suggest that evolutionary analysis is a potential method to predict lineages of ciliates not yet classified for saprobity.

Historical analysis of national subjective wellbeing using millions of digitized books.

In addition to improving quality of life, higher subjective wellbeing leads to fewer health problems and higher productivity, making subjective wellbeing a focal issue among researchers and governments. However, it is difficult to estimate how happy people were during previous centuries. Here we show that a method based on the quantitative analysis of natural language published over the past 200 years captures reliable patterns in historical subjective wellbeing. Using sentiment analysis on the basis of psychological valence norms, we compute a national valence index for the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Italy, indicating relative happiness in response to national and international wars and in comparison to historical trends in longevity and gross domestic product. We validate our method using Eurobarometer survey data from the 1970s and demonstrate robustness using words with stable historical meanings, diverse corpora (newspapers, magazines and books) and additional word norms. By providing a window on quantitative historical psychology, this approach could inform policy and economic history.

Behavioural and neural limits in competitive decision making: The roles of outcome, opponency and observation

To understand the boundaries we set for ourselves in terms of environmental responsibility during competition, we examined a neural index of outcome valence (feedback-related negativity; FRN) in relation to an early index of visual attention (N1), a later index of motivational significance (P3), and, eventual behaviour. In Experiment 1 (n = 36), participants either were (play) or were not (observe) responsible for action selection. In Experiment 2 (n = 36), opponents additionally either could (exploitable) or could not (unexploitable) be beaten. Various failures in reinforcement learning expression were revealed including large-scale approximations of random behaviour. Against unexploitable opponents, N1 determined the extent to which negative and positive outcomes were perceived as distinct categories by FRN. Against exploitable opponents, FRN determined the extent to which P3 generated neural gain for future events. Differential activation of the N1 – FRN – P3 processing chain provides a framework for understanding the behavioural dynamism observed during competitive decision making.

Valence of an atom and bond indices in the relativistic theory of electronic structure of chemical compounds

Quantum chemical interatomic bond and atomic valence indices were extended to heavy atom compounds in terms of the relativistic quantum theory.

Arousal Rules: An Empirical Investigation into the Aesthetic Experience of Cross-Modal Perception with Emotional Visual Music.

Emotional visual music is a promising tool for the study of aesthetic perception in human psychology; however, the production of such stimuli and the mechanisms of auditory-visual emotion perception remain poorly understood. In Experiment 1, we suggested a literature-based, directive approach to emotional visual music design, and inspected the emotional meanings thereof using the self-rated psychometric and electroencephalographic (EEG) responses of the viewers. A two-dimensional (2D) approach to the assessment of emotion (the valence-arousal plane) with frontal alpha power asymmetry EEG (as a proposed index of valence) validated our visual music as an emotional stimulus. In Experiment 2, we used our synthetic stimuli to investigate possible underlying mechanisms of affective evaluation mechanisms in relation to audio and visual integration conditions between modalities (namely congruent, complementation, or incongruent combinations). In this experiment, we found that, when arousal information between auditory and visual modalities was contradictory [for example, active (+) on the audio channel but passive (−) on the video channel], the perceived emotion of cross-modal perception (visual music) followed the channel conveying the stronger arousal. Moreover, we found that an enhancement effect (heightened and compacted in subjects' emotional responses) in the aesthetic perception of visual music might occur when the two channels contained contradictory arousal information and positive congruency in valence and texture/control. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first to propose a literature-based directive production of emotional visual music prototypes and the validations thereof for the study of cross-modally evoked aesthetic experiences in human subjects.