Assessing cognitive capacity by P3 during a complex manual control task.
We examined whether P3 can be reliably obtained under these conditions. Subjects had to perform a manually controlled docking task simultaneously with an acoustic monitory task. The P3 component was evoked by the acoustic stimuli of the secondary task. Twenty-six subjects participated in this study, situated in a space simulation on earth. After a familiarization session, they performed the docking tasks at three difficulty levels: low, medium, and difficult. In the secondary task, subjects had to discriminate between a low (750 Hz) and a high (1,000 Hz) tone, which differed in probability of 90% and 10%, respectively. The...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - April 9, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Concurrent electrodermal and eyeblink conditioning with masked and unmasked stimuli.
The aim of this study was to determine if contingency awareness between the conditioned (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US) is necessary for concurrent electrodermal and eyeblink conditioning to masked stimuli. An angry woman’s face (CS+) and a fearful face (CS−) were presented for 23 milliseconds (ms) and followed by a neutral face as a mask. A 98 dB noise burst (US) was administered 477 ms after CS+ offset to elicit both electrodermal and eyeblink responses. For the unmasking conditioning a 176 ms blank screen was inserted between the CS and the mask. Contingency awareness was assessed using trial-by-trial ratings o...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - April 9, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Associations between cardiorespiratory fitness and endocrine, autonomous, and psychological stress reactivity in male adolescents.
High stress burden during adolescence can have severe long-term health consequences. While some studies reported that adults with higher fitness levels show lower stress reactivity, research on adolescents is scarce. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to investigate the association between cardiorespiratory fitness and physiological and psychological stress reactivity in male adolescents. Forty-three healthy, male adolescents aged 16–20 years underwent the Physical Working Capacity 170 bicycle ergometer test to determine cardiorespiratory fitness. The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was used to trigger a stres...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - February 3, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A new technique to measure the level of interest using heartbeat-evoked brain potential.
Interest is a positive emotion related to attention. The event-related brain potential (ERP) probe technique is a useful method to evaluate the level of interest in dynamic stimuli. However, even in the irrelevant probe technique, the probe is presented as a physical stimulus and steals the observer’s attentional resources, although no overt response is required. Therefore, the probe might become a problematic distractor, preventing deep immersion of participants. Heartbeat-evoked brain potential (HEP) is a brain activity, time-locked to a cardiac event. No probe is required to obtain HEP data. Thus, we aimed to investig...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - February 3, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Temperament predictors of motor imagery control in BCI.
The aim of this study was to verify if selected temperament traits may be useful as predictors of motor imagery brain-computer interface (BCI) performance. In our experiment, 40 BCI-naive subjects were instructed to imagine the movement of clenching his/her right or left hand, in accordance with the visual cue. The activity of sensorimotor rhythms (SMR) (8–30 Hz) was measured by electroencephalography (EEG) and transformed into the information transfer rate (ITR) after feature selection and classification. All subjects also completed a self-assessment questionnaire for the determination of their temperament profile, comp...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - November 4, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The effect of parietal and cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation on bimanual coordinated adaptive motor learning.
In this study, the effects of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (atDCS) on the acquisition, retention, and transfer of bimanual adaptive motor tasks were investigated. To this end, 64 volunteers (Mage = 24.36 years; SD = 2.51; 16 females) participated in this double-blind study and were categorized randomly into 4 groups. During the pretest, posttest, 24-h and 48-h retention, and transfer tests, two forms of bimanual coordination (BC) of the Vienna test system were performed. Between the pretest and posttest, all participants were trained in a bimanual coordination adaptive task with concurrent brain stimulati...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - October 31, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Social feedback valence differentially modulates the reward positivity, P300, and late positive potential.
Abnormal social or reward processing is associated with several mental disorders. Although most studies examining reward processing have focused on monetary rewards, recent research also has tested neural reactivity to social rewards (e.g., positive social feedback). However, the majority of these studies only include two feedback valences (e.g., acceptance, rejection). Yet, social evaluation is rarely binary (positive vs. negative) and people often give “on the fence” or neutral evaluations of others. Processing of this type of social feedback may be ambiguous and impacted by factors such as psychopathology, self-este...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - October 31, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Emotional valence modulates low beta suppression and recognition of social interactions.
Emotional valence may have evolutionary adaptive purposes as negative stimuli can be related to survival against threat and positive stimuli to facilitating relationships. This can be seen in the different impact positive and negative stimuli have on human health and well-being, and in the valence-specific cortical activity and neurophysiological patterns reported; for example, negative stimuli are processed more rapidly than positive. Valence-specific patterns are affected by individual differences and personality traits such as empathy, where levels of empathy relate to different reactivity patterns to valence. Here we i...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - September 9, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Timing-dependent priming effects of anodal tDCS on two-hand coordination.
The aim of study was to investigate the interaction of time of applying anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) with motor learning using a two-hand coordination (THC) task. Sixty-four healthy participants were tested under four stimulation conditions: anodal tDCS a head of the motor task, anodal tDCS during the motor task, anodal tDCS following the motor task, and sham tDCS. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) stimulation was applied on cerebellum by using a weak direct current (15 min) of 1.5 mA generated by a battery and regulated by the drive stimulator. The results show that on-line learning i...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - September 5, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Distinguishing TBI malingering and fatigue using event-related potentials.
Poorer-than-expected performance on cognitive-behavioral tasks may indicate malingering, or it could be an outcome of fatigue, resulting in false positives when suboptimal task performance is used to flag individuals feigning or exaggerating symptoms of traumatic brain injury (TBI). The primary goal of this study was to examine the P3 event-related potentials (ERP) and behavioral outcomes associated with TBI malingering and fatigue, in order to distinguish between them. A secondary goal was to determine if history of TBI (hTBI) is associated with differences in fatigue, ERPs, or performance on a short-term memory task. Par...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - September 5, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Inducing unconscious stress: Subliminal anger and relax primes show similar cardiovascular activity patterns.
In this study, we aimed to corroborate previous studies that demonstrated BP effects of subliminally presented stress-related stimuli. This would add evidence to the hypothesis that unconscious manifestations of stress can affect somatic health. Additionally, we suggest that these findings may be extended by measuring affective changes relating to these physiological changes, using measures for self-reported and implicit positive and negative affectivity. Using a repeated measures between-subject design, we presented either the prime word “angry” (n = 26) or “relax” (n = 28) subliminally (17 ms) for 100 trials to a...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - September 5, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The consistency effects of the clean metaphor of moral concept and dirty metaphor of immoral concept: An event-related potentials study.
Morality is clean, while immorality is dirty, and these metaphors use concrete clean and dirty experiences to express moral and immoral concepts; specifically, they are the clean metaphor of moral concept and dirty metaphor of immoral concept. The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the consistency effects of the clean metaphor of moral concept and dirty metaphor of immoral concept, the experiment recorded the reaction times (RTs) and ERP waves in a metaphor consistency condition and a metaphor inconsistency condition. The behavioral results showed that the RTs in the metaphor consistency conditio...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - September 2, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Evaluating the association of high trait anxiety with a bias in familiarity-based recognition of emotional stimuli.
In the past decades the role of cognitive biases as maintaining factors of anxiety has been widely researched. This theoretical framework assumes that vulnerability self-referential thoughts promote a hyper-vigilant mode of processing environmental stimuli. In this mode, threatening information increases attentional capture and therefore encoding and retrieval of such stimuli is enhanced. Although this attentional bias has been confirmed, the evidence concerning the memory bias is contradictory. Our hypothesis is that the bias in memory is expressed through the pattern of recognition. Particularly, the aim of this study wa...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - July 11, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The influence of background auditory noise on P50 and N100 suppression elicited by the Paired-Click Paradigm.
Auditory sensory gating is commonly assessed using the Paired-Click Paradigm (PCP), an electroencephalography (EEG) task in which two identical sounds are presented sequentially and the brain’s inhibitory response to the second sound is measured. Many clinical populations demonstrate reduced P50 and/or N100 suppression. Testing sensory gating in children may help to identify individuals at risk for neurodevelopmental disorders earlier, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which could lead to more optimal outcomes. Minimal research has been done with children becaus...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - July 11, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Mindfulness meditation intervention alters neurophysiological symptoms of anxiety and depression in preadolescents.
Mindfulness meditation interventions (MMIs) are formal training programs which utilize mindfulness techniques to improve attentional control and reduce stress and anxiety. Past investigations have shown that mindfulness-based interventions are effective in improving symptoms of anxiety and depression in both adolescents and adults, making this a promising natural approach to treating mood disorders. The current study sought to examine the neurophysiological effects of a 10-week MMI, in a relatively unexplored age-range (7–10 years). The non-clinical participants demonstrated increases in interhemispheric alpha coherence,...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - July 11, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
