Conducting event-related potential (ERP) research with young children: A review of components, special considerations, and recommendations for research on cognition and emotion.
There has been an unprecedented increase in the number of research studies employing event-related potential (ERP) techniques to examine dynamic and rapidly occurring neural processes with children during the preschool and early childhood years. Despite this, there has been relatively little discussion of the methodological and procedural differences that exist for studies of young children versus older children and adults. That is, reviewers, editors, and consumers of this work often expect developmental studies to simply apply adult techniques and procedures to younger samples. Procedurally, this creates unrealistic expe...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - July 11, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
“Daytime acute non-visual alerting response in brain activity occurs as a result of short- and long-wavelengths of light”: Correction to Laszewska et al., 2017.
Reports an error in "Daytime Acute Non-Visual Alerting Response in Brain Activity Occurs as a Result of Short- and Long-Wavelengths of Light" by Kamila Łaszewska, Agnieszka Goroncy, Piotr Weber, Tadeusz Pracki, Małgorzata Tafil-Klawe, Daria Pracka and Piotr Złomańczuk (Journal of Psychophysiology, Advanced Online Publication, Jul 13, 2017, np). The article contained an error on p. 1. The author’s affiliation of Agnieszka Goroncy should read correctly: "²Department of Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland" The authors reg...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - November 12, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
“From individual output to pooled data: A post-processing macro for Kubios HRV 2.2”: Correction to van der Ploeg et al., 2017.
Reports an error in "From Individual Output to Pooled Data: A Post-Processing Macro for Kubios HRV 2.2" by Melanie M. van der Ploeg, Julian Koenig, Mika P. Tarvainen and Julian F. Thayer (Journal of Psychophysiology, Advanced Online Publication, Mar 24, 2017, np). The article contained an error on p. 3. The Acknowledgments section should read correctly: "The Excel macro on which the updated version is based on, was originally developed by Toby Reel and LaBarron K. Hill in 2007 at The Ohio State University, as indicated in the source code. The Java-based applet [9] was developed by Andreas Johnsen Lind (Bergen University, B...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - November 12, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Negative mental states and their association to the cognitive function of nurses.
Nurses’ inherently stressful occupation leaves them at a higher risk of developing negative mental states (stress, anxiety, and depression). However, research examining the effect of negative mental states on these health professionals’ cognitive performance is sparse. Thus, the present study aimed to assess the link between negative mental states and cognitive performance in nurses (n = 53). Negative mental state data was obtained using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, brain activity was measured using electroencephalography, and finally, cognitive performance was assessed using the Cognistat and the Mini-Mental S...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - June 28, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The contribution of coping-related variables and cardiac vagal activity on prone rifle shooting performance under pressure.
The aims of this study were to assess the predictive role of coping-related variables (CRV) on cardiac vagal activity (derived from heart rate variability), and to investigate the influence of CRV (and cardiac vagal activity) on prone rifle shooting performance under low pressure (LP) and high pressure (HP) conditions. Participants (n = 38) competed in a shooting task under LP and HP. Cardiac vagal activity measurements were taken at baseline, task, and recovery for 5 min, alongside ratings of stress via a visual analogue scale. Upon task conclusion, self-report measures of motivation, stress appraisal, attention, perceive...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - May 14, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Resting heart rate variability predicts inhibitory control above and beyond impulsivity.
Heart rate variability (HRV) has been linked to effective functioning of prefrontal-subcortical inhibitory circuits. Despite the recognized role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in executive functions linked to inhibitory capacity, studies linking HRV to executive functions are inconsistent, likely due to potential confounders. The present study sought to examine this relation in a sample of 50 healthy participants (31 females; Mage = 24.2 years) who underwent assessment of resting HRV and two executive tasks assessing inhibitory control, namely the Rule Shift Cards and the Hayling Sentence Completion Test. Hierarchical mult...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - May 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Psychophysiological responses to stress related to anxiety in healthy aging: A near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) study.
The aim of the study was to explore the effects of situational stress and anxiety in a group of healthy elderly, both in terms of psychophysiological correlates and cognitive performance. Eighteen participants (Mage = 70 ± 6.3; range 60–85) were assessed for anxiety and were instructed to perform a computerized math task, under both a stressful and a control condition, while near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) signal and electrocardiography (ECG) were recorded. NIRS results evidenced an increased activation of right PFC during the entire procedure, even if effect sizes between left and right channels were larger during th...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - May 7, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Lexical processing as revealed by lateralized event-related brain potentials.
Neurocognitive models of written-word processing from low-level perceptual up to semantic analysis include the notion of a strongly left-lateralized posterior-to-anterior stream of activation. Two left-lateralized components in the event-related brain potential (ERP), N170 and temporo-parietal PSA (posterior semantic asymmetry; peak at 300 ms), have been suggested to reflect sublexical analysis and semantic processing, respectively. However, for intermediate processing steps, such as lexical access, no posterior left-lateralized ERP signature has yet been observed under single-word reading conditions. In combination with a...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - May 7, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
High-resolution infrared body surface temperature and self-perceived warmth distribution in adolescent anorexia nervosa patients.
In this study, we assessed the body surface temperature distribution in adolescent AN patients using high-resolution infrared thermal imaging and through a patient questionnaire, and explored how this differed between intervention and control group and length of treatment. Adolescent AN patients admitted to a multimodal inpatient treatment programme based on an integrative perspective were assessed at three time-points: admission (t1), 6 weeks post-admission (t2), and 3 months after t2 (t3). Healthy control participants were assessed once at baseline. In both groups we assessed participants’ surface temperature and the p...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - May 7, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Self-resemblance modulates processing of socio-emotional pictures in a context-sensitive manner: Evidence from startle modification and heart rate deceleration.
Relevance of emotional information varies with self-involvement. The current study was undertaken to test whether subtle facial self-resemblance is sufficient to affect attentional and affective processing of complex socio-emotional pictures. Faces digitally manipulated to resemble the participants’ (final sample: N = 21) own versus unfamiliar control faces (form and color morphs) were presented in pictures of emotionally evocative social interactions, that is, threat versus sex scenes. At stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of either 300 ms or 3,000 ms after picture onset, startle responses were elicited by acoustic whit...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - May 7, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Interoception enhanced via the ears? A quasi-experimental study of the impact of noise-dampening ear-protectors on heartbeat perception.
Heartbeat perception tasks are used to measure interoceptive accuracy. This paper explores the effect of reducing external auditory stimuli on heartbeat perception. Three samples (121 participants in total) performed a heartbeat perception task. Samples 1 and 2 wore ear-protectors and sample 3 did not. There were no differences in interoceptive accuracy between samples 1 and 2 but samples 1 and 2 showed significantly higher interoceptive accuracy than sample 3. These results suggest ear-protectors could be used to manipulate heartbeat perception and that the auditory component of heartbeat perception might be given greater...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - May 3, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Effects of unilateral hand contraction on the persistence of hemispheric asymmetry of cortical activity.
Athletes who squeezed a ball with their left hand immediately prior to execution of sports activities did not show performance deterioration under severe pressure (Beckmann, Gröpel, & Ehrlenspiel, 2013). This result has been explained by priming of the dominant right hemisphere. However, it remains unclear what variables have the greatest effect on asymmetrical brain activity (e.g., duration and strength of ball squeezing). We hypothesized that squeezing a ball harder for a longer period might lead to stronger asymmetrical activity because motor-related areas would have increased activation due to the more forceful moveme...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - April 12, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Skipping breakfast affects the early steps of cognitive processing: An event-related brain potentials study.
It has been generally accepted that skipping breakfast adversely affects cognition, mainly disturbing the attentional processes. However, the effects of short-term fasting upon brain functioning are still unclear. We aimed to evaluate the effect of skipping breakfast on cognitive processing by studying the electrical brain activity of young healthy individuals while performing several working memory tasks. Accordingly, the behavioral results and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) of 20 healthy university students (10 males) were obtained and compared through analysis of variances (ANOVAs), during the performance of thre...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - March 15, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
An analysis of N2 event-related-potential correlates of sequential and response-facilitation effects in cognitive control.
This study is the first to identify N2 amplitude as a neural correlate of the CSE in a confound-minimized task. Accordingly, these results found N2 amplitude to be associated with adjustments in cognitive control as a function of sequential and response-facilitation effects while also validating the Stroop-trajectory task as a confound-minimized means of assessing neural correlates of CSEs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Journal of Psychophysiology)
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - March 15, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
ERPs reveal relationships between neural orthographic priming effects and reading skill.
Masked priming has long been used to demonstrate the impact of brief presentations of orthographically related stimuli on visual word recognition. The aim of the present study was to examine neural correlates of orthographic priming produced by pronounceable and unpronounceable anagram primes. Crucially, we examined relationships between these priming effects and individual differences on a battery of measures assessing orthographic processing ability, current reading ability, and verbal intelligence in university students. Our study demonstrated group-level priming effects on the N200 and N400, with both components being ...
Source: Journal of Psychophysiology - March 1, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
