A New Experimental Paradigm to Manipulate Risk in Human-Automation Research.

OBJECTIVE: Two studies serve as a manipulation check of a new experimental multi-task paradigm that can be applied to human-automation research (Virtual Reality Testbed for Risk and Automation Studies; ViRTRAS), in which a subjectively experienceable risk can be manipulated as part of a virtual reality environment. BACKGROUND: Risk has been postulated as an important contextual factor affecting human-automation interaction. However, experimental evidence is scarce due to the difficulty operationalizing risk in an ethical way. In the new paradigm, risk is varied by the altitude at which participants carry out the task, including the possibility of virtually falling in case of a mistake. METHOD: Key components of the paradigm were used to investigate participants' risk perception in a low (0.5 m) and high altitude (70 m) using subjective self-reports and objective behavioral measures. RESULTS: In the high-altitude condition risk perception was significantly higher with medium to large effect sizes. In addition, results of the behavioral measures reveal that participants habituated with length of exposure. However, this habituation seems to occur similarly in both altitude conditions. CONCLUSION: The manipulation checks were successful. The new paradigm is a promising tool for automation research. It incorporates the contextual factor of risk and creates a situation which is more comparable to what real-life operators experience. Additionally, it meets the same requirements of other multi-task environments in human-automation research. APPLICATION: The new paradigm provides the basis to vary the contextual factor of risk in human-automation research, which has previously been either neglected or operationalized in an arguably inferior way.

Associations of emotional arousal, dissociation and symptom severity with operant conditioning in borderline personality disorder.

Those with borderline personality disorder (BPD) display altered evaluations regarding reward and punishment compared to others. The processing of rewards is basal for operant conditioning. However, studies addressing operant conditioning in BPD patients are rare. In the current study, an operant conditioning task combining learning acquisition and reversal was used. BPD patients and matched healthy controls (HCs) were exposed to aversive and neutral stimuli to assess the influence of emotion on learning. Picture content, dissociation, aversive tension and symptom severity were rated. Error rates were measured. Results showed no group interactions between aversive versus neutral scenes. The higher emotional arousal, dissociation and tension, the worse the acquisition, but not reversal, scores were for BPD patients. Scores from the Borderline Symptom List were associated with more errors in the reversal, but not the acquisition phase. The results are preliminary evidence for impaired acquisition learning due to increased emotional arousal, dissociation and tension in BPD patients. A failure to process punishment in the reversal phase was associated with symptom severity and may be related to neuropsychological dysfunctioning involving the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Conclusions are limited due to the correlational study design and the small sample size.

Down-regulation of amygdala activation with real-time fMRI neurofeedback in a healthy female sample.

Psychiatric conditions of emotion dysregulation are often characterized by difficulties in regulating the activity of limbic regions such as the amygdala. Real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rt-fMRI) allows to feedback brain activation and opens the possibility to establish a neurofeedback (NF) training of amygdala activation, e.g., for subjects suffering from emotion dysregulation. As a first step, we investigated whether feedback of the amygdala response to aversive scenes can improve down-regulation of amygdala activation. One group of healthy female participants received amygdala feedback (N = 16) and a control group was presented with feedback from a control region located in the basal ganglia [N(sum) = 32]. Subjects completed a one-session rt-fMRI-NF training where they viewed aversive pictures and received continuous visual feedback on brain activation (REGULATE condition). In a control condition, subjects were advised to respond naturally to aversive pictures (VIEW), and a neutral condition served as the non-affective control (NEUTRAL). In an adjacent run, subjects were presented with aversive pictures without feedback to test for transfer effects of learning. In a region of interest (ROI) analysis, the VIEW and the REGULATE conditions were contrasted to estimate brain regulation success. The ROI analysis was complemented by an exploratory analysis of activations at the whole-brain level. Both groups showed down-regulation of the amygdala response during training. Feedback from the amygdala but not from the control region was associated with down-regulation of the right amygdala in the transfer test. The whole-brain analysis did not detect significant group interactions. Results of the group whole-brain analyses are discussed. We present a proof-of-concept study using rt-fMRI-NF for amygdala down-regulation in the presence of aversive scenes. Results are in line with a potential benefit of NF training for amygdala regulation.