The perceived controllability of negatively-valenced episodic future thinking modulates delay discounting.

Intertemporal decision-making is important for both economy and physical health. Nevertheless, in daily life, individuals tend to prefer immediate and smaller rewards to delayed and larger rewards, which is known as delay discounting (DD). Episodic future thinking (EFT) has been proven to influence DD. However, there is still no inconsistent conclusion on the effect of negative EFT on DD. Considering the perceived controllability of negative EFT may address the issue (Controllability refers to the extent to which progress and result of an event could be controlled by ourselves). In the current study, we manipulated EFT conditions (baseline, neutral EFT, negative-controllable EFT and negative-uncontrollable EFT), delayed time (i.e. 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 3 years) and reward magnitude (small, large). We mainly found that when experiencing negative-uncontrollable EFT compared to negative-controllable EFT in the delayed time of 6 months with large rewards, individuals chose more delayed rewards, suggesting that negative-uncontrollable EFT effectively reduced DD under conditions of both large-magnitude reward and longer delayed time. The current study provides new insight for healthy groups on optimising EFT. In that case, individuals are able to gain long-term benefits in financial management and healthcare.

Is processing superiority a universal trait for all threats? Divergent impacts of fearful, angry, and disgusted faces on attentional capture.

Fearful, angry, and disgusted facial expressions are evolutionarily salient and convey different types of threat signals. However, it remains unclear whether these three expressions impact sensory perception and attention in the same way. The present ERP study investigated the temporal dynamics underlying the processing of different types of threatening faces and the impact of attentional resources employed during a perceptual load task. Participants were asked to judge the length of bars superimposed over faces presented in the center of the screen. A mass univariate statistical approach was used to analyze the EEG data. Behaviorally, task accuracy was significantly reduced following exposure to fearful faces relative to neutral distractors, independent of perceptual load. The ERP results revealed that the P1 amplitude over the right hemisphere was found to be enhanced for fearful relative to disgusted faces, reflecting the rapid and coarse detection of fearful cues. The N170 responses elicited by fearful, angry, and disgusted faces were larger than those elicited by neutral faces, suggesting the largely automatic and preferential processing of threats. Furthermore, the early posterior negativity (EPN) component yielded increased responses to fearful and angry faces, indicating prioritized attention to stimuli representing acute threats. Additionally, perceptual load exerted a pronounced influence on the EPN and late positive potential (LPP), with larger responses observed in the low perceptual load condition, indicating goal-directed cognitive processing. Overall, the early sensory processing of fearful, angry, and disgusted faces is characterized by differential sensitivity in capturing attention automatically, despite the importance of these facial signals for survival. Fearful faces produce a strong interference effect and are processed with higher priority than angry and disgusted ones.

Association among abnormal glycolipids, reproductive hormones, and cognitive dysfunction in female patients with bipolar disorder.

BACKGROUND: Patients with bipolar disorder (BD) show abnormalities in glucolipid metabolism and reproductive hormone levels, which are of concern in women with BD. This study was dedicated to investigating the glucolipid and reproductive hormone levels of female patients, and to preliminarily investigating their relationships with cognition. METHODS: A total of 58 unmedicated female BD patients, 61 stable-medicated female BD patients, and 63 healthy controls (HC) were recruited in this study. Serum glycolipid indexes and reproductive hormones were measured. Cognitive function was assessed using the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) and the Stroop Color-Word Test (Stroop test). RESULTS: Patients with BD showed significant cognitive impairment (p < 0.05), which was not affected by medication. Triglycerides (TG), luteinizing hormone (LH), and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c) were altered in stable-medicated BD patients. In addition, regression analysis showed that progesterone (PRGE) and prolactin (PRL) were negatively associated with cognitive performance in stable-medicated BD patients. CONCLUSIONS: Female BD patients may have cognitive deficits and abnormal levels of glycolipids and reproductive hormones. And abnormal levels of glycolipids and reproductive hormones may be associated with cognitive dysfunction in female BD patients.

Brain Stimulation of Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortices Influences Impulsivity in Delay Discounting Choices.

Intertemporal decision-making is pivotal for human interests and health. Recently, studies instructed participants to make intertemporal choices for both themselves and others, but the specific mechanisms are still debated. To address the issue, in the current study, the cost-unneeded conditions (i.e., "Self Immediately - Self Delay" and "Other Immediately - Other Delay" conditions) and the cost-needed conditions (i.e., "Self Immediately - Other Delay" and "Self delay - Other immediately" conditions) were set with the identity of OTHER being a stranger. We manipulated the magnitude of reward (Experiment 1) and disrupted the activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS; Experiment 2). We found that both the behavioral and rTMS manipulations increased smaller but sooner choice probability via reducing self-control function. The reduced self-control function elicited by rTMS affected both self- and other-related intertemporal choices via increasing the choice preference for SS options, which may help people deeply understand the relationship between self- and other-related intertemporal choices in processing mechanism, especially when the "OTHER" condition is set as a stranger.

Implicit induction of expressive suppression in regulation of happy crowd emotions.

Implicit emotion regulation provides an effective means of controlling emotions triggered by a single face without conscious awareness and effort. Crowd emotion has been proposed to be perceived as more intense than it actually is, but it is still unclear how to regulate it implicitly. In this study, participants viewed sets of faces of varying emotionality (e.g. happy to angry) and estimated the mean emotion of each set after being primed with an expressive suppression goal, a cognitive reappraisal goal, or a neutral goal. Faster discrimination for happy than angry crowds was observed. After induction of the expressive suppression goal instead of the cognitive reappraisal goal, augmented N170 and early posterior negativity (EPN) amplitudes, as well as attenuated late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes, were observed in response to happy crowds compared to the neutral goal. Differential processing of angry crowds was not observed after the induction of both regulatory goals compared to the neutral goal. Our findings thus reveal the happy-superiority effect and that implicit induction of expressive suppression improves happy crowd emotion recognition, promotes selective coding, and successfully downregulates the neural response to happy crowds.

Synthesis of Two-Dimensional Zeolite Nanosheets Applied to the Catalytic Cracking of a Waste Cooking Oil Model Compound to Produce Light Olefins.

Hierarchical zeolites can provide multidimensional spatial networks and, therefore, have significant potential as catalysts for the cracking of biomass to generate light olefins. The present work synthesized the diquaternary ammonium-type surfactant [C18H37-N+(CH3)2-(CH2)6-N+(CH3)2-C6H13]Br2, incorporating hydrophobic 18-carbon alkyl groups for usage as a structure-directing agent. This compound was subsequently used to prepare nanosheets of a hierarchical ZSM-5 two-dimensional zeolite (HNZSM-5) through a one-pot hydrothermal method. The crystal phase, morphology, and hierarchical structure of the HNZSM-5 were analyzed using various techniques, including X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, and N2 adsorption/desorption. When applied to the catalytic cracking of a waste cooking oil model compound, the HNZSM-5 exhibited superior activity and stability compared with a conventional ZSM-5. This performance was attributed to the more accessible acid sites and unique lamellar structure of the former material. The HNZSM-5 also outlasted the conventional zeolite, showing deactivation after 45 h of reaction compared with 20 h, indicating exceptional stability and excellent resistance to coking.

Spatial representation of multidimensional information in emotional faces revealed by fMRI.

Face perception is a complex process that involves highly specialized procedures and mechanisms. Investigating into face perception can help us better understand how the brain processes fine-grained, multidimensional information. This research aimed to delve deeply into how different dimensions of facial information are represented in specific brain regions or through inter-regional connections via an implicit face recognition task. To capture the representation of various facial information in the brain, we employed support vector machine decoding, functional connectivity, and model-based representational similarity analysis on fMRI data, resulting in the identification of three crucial findings. Firstly, despite the implicit nature of the task, emotions were still represented in the brain, contrasting with all other facial information. Secondly, the connection between the medial amygdala and the parahippocampal gyrus was found to be essential for the representation of facial emotion in implicit tasks. Thirdly, in implicit tasks, arousal representation occurred in the parahippocampal gyrus, while valence depended on the connection between the primary visual cortex and the parahippocampal gyrus. In conclusion, these findings dissociate the neural mechanisms of emotional valence and arousal, revealing the precise spatial patterns of multidimensional information processing in faces.

Applications of TMS in individuals with methamphetamine use disorder: A review.

Methamphetamine abuse results in a host of social and medical issues. Methamphetamine use disorder (MUD) can hinder the brain and impair cognitive functions and mental health. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive approach in the treatment of MUD. Recent studies have demonstrated encouraging and positive effects of TMS on the craving, affective symptoms, sleep quality, and cognitive functions in individuals with MUD. The regulation of specific brain activities through TMS has also been found to be a contributing factor to these positive outcomes. It is essential to employ more techniques, participants, and stimulation parameters and targets in the future.

Neural specialization with generalizable representations underlies children's cognitive development of attention.

From childhood to adulthood, the human brain develops highly specialized yet interacting neural modules that give rise to nuanced attention and other cognitive functions. Each module can specialize over development to support specific functions, yet also coexist in multiple neurobiological modes to support distinct processes. Advances in cognitive neuroscience have conceptualized human attention as a set of cognitive processes anchored in highly specialized yet interacting neural systems. The underlying mechanisms of how these systems interplay to support children's cognitive development of multiple attention processes remain unknown. Leveraging developmental functional magnetic resonance imaging with attention network test paradigm, we demonstrate differential neurocognitive development of three core attentional processes from childhood to adulthood, with alerting reaching adult-like level earlier, followed by orienting and executive attention with more protracted development throughout middle and late childhood. Relative to adults, young children exhibit immature specialization with less pronounced dissociation of neural systems specific to each attentional process. Children manifest adult-like distributed representations in the ventral attention and cingulo-opercular networks, but less stable and weaker generalizable representations across multiple processes in the dorsal attention network. Our findings provide insights into the functional specialization and generalization of neural representations scaffolding cognitive development of core attentional processes from childhood to adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Analysis of Epidemiological and Issues Encountered in Case Reports on Echinococcosis - China, 2022.

What is already known about this topic?: Echinococcosis is classified as a Class C infectious disease in China. It is endemic in 370 counties located in the agricultural and pastoral regions of western China. What is added by this report?: This report provides a comprehensive overview of the cases of echinococcosis reported in China in 2022. Following a thorough evaluation conducted by provincial CDCs, it was identified that 105 new cases were not reported through the National Notifiable Disease Reporting System. Furthermore, there were 1,051 cases that were reported among patients who had been previously diagnosed with echinococcosis. What are the implications for public health practice?: The reported cases of echinococcosis in non-endemic counties of provincial-level administrative divisions where the disease is endemic need to be given more attention, as there is a potential risk of it spreading within the non-endemic areas. Inadequate reporting practices by clinical medical institutions are hindering the subsequent investigations carried out by CDCs. It is important to implement enhanced health promotion efforts that focus on high-risk populations to address unhealthy lifestyles.

Mathematical problem solving is modulated by word priming.

This study aimed to explore the influence of word priming on mathematical problem solving. In two experiments, participants were required to finish multiplication estimation tasks with a specified estimation strategy under different word priming conditions (Experiment 1: concrete words vs. Experiment 2: abstract words). The results showed that: (1) under the concrete word priming condition, in comparison to neutral, positive word priming improved accuracies (ACCs) when using a down-up strategy (e.g., doing 40 × 80 = 3200 for 43 × 78), while both positive and negative word priming reduced reaction time (RT); (2) under the abstract word priming condition, both positive and negative (vs. neutral) abstract word priming reduced RTs, while individuals' ACCs of completing the estimation task were not influenced by valence. The present study showed that whether concrete words or abstract words were adopted as experimental stimuli, participants' performance of completing mathematical problems was modulated by the valence of the priming word, which led us to develop a better understanding of how arithmetic performance is influenced by word processing.

Modeling for High-Frequency Spurious Responses in Incredible High-Performance Surface Acoustic Wave Devices.

To ensure that surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters fulfill the requirements of Carrier Aggregation (CA) applications, the development of modeling tools that can forecast and simulate high-frequency spurious responses has been necessary. This paper presents an advanced methodology for extending the coupling-of-modes (COM) model to obtain precise modeling of the high-frequency spurious responses of incredible high-performance surface acoustic wave (I.H.P. SAW) devices. The extended COM (ECOM) model is derived by modifying the conventional COM model and extending it accordingly. The parameters used in this model are determined through numerical fitting. For validation, firstly, the ECOM model is applied to a one-port synchronous I.H.P. SAW resonator, and the simulation and measurement results match. Then, the structural parameters of the ECOM model are varied, and the accuracy of the model after the structural parameters are varied is verified. It is demonstrated that this model can be applied to the design work of SAW filters. Finally, the ECOM model is applied to the design of the I.H.P. SAW filter based on a 42°YX-LiTaO3 (LT)/SiO2/AlN/Si structure. By using this method, the I.H.P. SAW filter's high-frequency spurious response can be predicted more accurately.

Automatic Positive and Negative Emotion Regulation in Adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder.

INTRODUCTION: Adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD) exhibit hypoactivity to positive stimuli and hyperactivity to negative stimuli in terms of neural responses. Automatic emotion regulation (AER) activates triple networks (i.e., the central control network, default mode network, and salience network). Based on previous studies, we hypothesized that adolescents with MDD exhibit dissociable spatiotemporal deficits during positive and negative AER. METHODS: We first collected EEG data from 32 adolescents with MDD and 35 healthy adolescents while they performed an implicit emotional Go/NoGo task. Then, we characterized the spatiotemporal dynamics of cortical activity during AER. RESULTS: In Go trials, MDD adolescents exhibited reduced N2 amplitudes, enhanced theta power for positive pictures, and stronger bottom-up information flow from the left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) to the right superior frontal gyrus compared to top-down information flow than the controls. In contrast, in NoGo trials, MDD adolescents exhibited elevated P3 amplitudes, enhanced theta power, and stronger top-down information flows from the right middle frontal gyrus to the right OFC and the left insula than the controls. CONCLUSION: Overall, adolescents with MDD exhibited impaired automatic attention to positive emotions and impaired automatic response inhibition. These findings have potential implications for the clinical treatment of adolescents with MDD.

An Infrared Near-Sensor Reservoir Computing System Based on Large-Dynamic-Space Memristor with Tens of Thousands of States for Dynamic Gesture Perception.

To efficiently process the massive amount of sensor data, it is demanding to develop a new paradigm. Inspired by neurobiological systems, an infrared near-senor reservoir computing (RC) system, consisting of infrared sensors and memristors based on single-crystalline LiTaO3 and LiNbO3 (LN) thin film respectively, is demonstrated. The analog memristor is used as a reservoir in the RC system to process sensor signals with spatiotemporal characteristics. LN crystal structure stacked with oxygen octahedra provides favorable conditions for reliable Mott variable-range hopping conduction, which provides the memristor with tens of thousands of reservoir states within a large dynamic range. With the characteristics, the analog sensor signals with high data fidelity can be directly fed to the memristive reservoir, and the spatiotemporal features can be separated and mapped. The system demonstrated a dynamic gesture perception task, achieving an accuracy of 99.6%, which highlights the great application potential of the memristor in signal sensor processing and will advance the application of artificial intelligence in sensor systems. Crystal ion slicing techniques are used to fabricate a single-crystalline thin film for both the memristor and sensor, which opens up the possibility of realizing monolithic integration of a memristor-based near-sensor computing system.

The impact of degraded vision on emotional perception of audiovisual stimuli: An event-related potential study.

Emotion recognition will be challenged for individuals when visual signals are degraded in real-life scenarios. Recently, researchers have conducted many studies on the distinct neural activity between clear and degraded audiovisual stimuli. These findings addressed the "how" question, but the precise stage of the distinct activity that occurred remains unknown. Therefore, it is crucial to use event-related potential (ERP) to explore the "when" question, just the time course of the neural activity of degraded audiovisual stimuli. In the present research, we established two conditions: clear auditory + degraded visual (AcVd) and clear auditory + clear visual (AcVc) multisensory conditions. We enlisted 31 participants to evaluate the emotional valence of audiovisual stimuli. The resulting data were analyzed using ERP in time domains and Microstate analysis. Current results suggest that degraded vision impairs the early-stage processing of audiovisual stimuli, with the superior parietal lobule (SPL) regulating audiovisual processing in a top-down fashion. Additionally, our findings indicate that negative and positive stimuli elicit greater EPN compared to neutral stimuli, pointing towards a subjective motivation-related attentional regulation. To sum up, in the early stage of emotional audiovisual processing, the degraded visual signal affected the perception of the physical attributes of audiovisual stimuli and had a further influence on emotion extraction processing, leading to the different regulation of top-down attention resources in the later stage.

Enhancing pain modulation: the efficacy of synchronous combination of virtual reality and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation.

Introduction: Virtual reality (VR) and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) have emerged as effective interventions for pain reduction. However, their standalone applications often yield limited analgesic effects, particularly in certain painful conditions. Aims: Our hypothesis was that the combination of VR with TENS in a synchronous manner could produce the best analgesic effect among the four experimental conditions. Methods: To address this challenge, we proposed a novel pain modulation strategy that synchronously combines VR and TENS, aiming to capitalise on both techniques' complementary pain modulation mechanisms. Thirty-two healthy subjects participated in the study and underwent three types of interventions: VR alone, a combination of VR with conventional TENS, and a combination of VR with synchronous TENS. Additionally, a control condition with no intervention was included. Perceived pain intensity, pain unpleasantness, positive and negative affect scores, and electroencephalographic (EEG) data were collected before and after the interventions. To delve into the potential moderating role of pain intensity on the analgesic efficacy of VR combined with synchronous TENS, we incorporated two distinct levels of painful stimuli: one representing mild to moderate pain (ie, low pain) and the other representing moderate to severe pain (ie, high pain). Results: Our findings revealed that both combination interventions exhibited superior analgesic effects compared with the VR-alone intervention when exposed to low and high pain stimuli. Notably, the combination of VR with synchronous TENS demonstrated greater analgesic efficacy than the combination of VR with conventional TENS. EEG data further supported these results, indicating that both combination interventions elicited a greater reduction in event-related potential magnitude compared with the VR-alone intervention during exposure to low and high pain stimuli. Moreover, the synchronous combination intervention induced a more significant reduction in N2 amplitude than the VR-alone intervention during exposure to low pain stimuli. No significant differences in EEG response changes were detected between the two combination interventions. Both combination interventions resulted in a greater reduction in negative affect compared with the VR-alone intervention. Conclusions: Altogether, our study highlights the effectiveness of the synchronous combination of VR and TENS in enhancing pain modulation. These findings offer valuable insights for developing innovative pain treatments, emphasising the importance of tailored and multifaceted therapeutic approaches for various painful conditions.

Prioritized Identification of Fearful Eyes during the Attentional Blink Is Not Automatic.

The eye region conveys considerable information regarding an individual's emotions, motivations, and intentions during interpersonal communication. Evidence suggests that the eye regions of an individual expressing emotions can capture attention more rapidly than the eye regions of an individual in a neutral affective state. However, how attentional resources affect the processing of emotions conveyed by the eye regions remains unclear. Accordingly, the present study employed a dual-target rapid serial visual presentation task: happy, neutral, or fearful eye regions were presented as the second target, with a temporal lag between two targets of 232 or 696 ms. Participants completed two tasks successively: Task 1 was to identify which species the upright eye region they had seen belonged to, and Task 2 was to identify what emotion was conveyed in the upright eye region. The behavioral results showed that the accuracy for fearful eye regions was lower than that for neutral eye regions under the condition of limited attentional resources; however, accuracy differences across the three types of eye regions did not reach significance under the condition of adequate attentional resources. These findings indicate that preferential processing of fearful expressions is not automatic but is modulated by available attentional resources.

Designed Structures of Interdigital Electrodes for Thin Film SAW Devices.

This paper studied the impact of the microstructure of interdigital electrodes on the performance of surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators and proposed an innovative piston, dummy finger and tilt (PDT) structure, which was then applied to the GLONASS L3 band filters. Through the adoption of 3D finite element simulation (FEM), photolithography, and testing on an incredible high-performance surface acoustic wave (I.H.P. SAW) substrate, it is concluded that the total aperture length is 20T (T is period), resulting in a more optimal resonator performance; changing the width and length of the piston can suppress transverse modes spurious, but it does not enhance impedance ratio; to further improve the quality of the SAW resonator, the proposed PDT structure has been experimentally proven to not only effectively suppress transverse modes spurious but also possess a high impedance ratio. By utilizing a PDT structure within a "T + π" topology circuit, we successfully designed and manufactured a GLONASS L3 band filter with a bandwidth of 8 MHz and an insertion loss of 3.73 dB. The design of these resonators and filters can be applied to the construction of SAW filters in similar frequency bands such as BeiDou B2 band or GPS L2/L5 band.

Multi-view emotional expressions dataset using 2D pose estimation.

Human body expressions convey emotional shifts and intentions of action and, in some cases, are even more effective than other emotion models. Despite many datasets of body expressions incorporating motion capture available, there is a lack of more widely distributed datasets regarding naturalized body expressions based on the 2D video. In this paper, therefore, we report the multi-view emotional expressions dataset (MEED) using 2D pose estimation. Twenty-two actors presented six emotional (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) and neutral body movements from three viewpoints (left, front, right). A total of 4102 videos were captured. The MEED consists of the corresponding pose estimation results (i.e., 397,809 PNG files and 397,809 JSON files). The size of MEED exceeds 150 GB. We believe this dataset will benefit the research in various fields, including affective computing, human-computer interaction, social neuroscience, and psychiatry.

Deep Learning Modeling of Cardiac Arrhythmia Classification on Information Feature Fusion Image with Attention Mechanism.

The electrocardiogram (ECG) is a crucial tool for assessing cardiac health in humans. Aiming to enhance the accuracy of ECG signal classification, a novel approach is proposed based on relative position matrix and deep learning network information features for the classification task in this paper. The approach improves the feature extraction capability and classification accuracy via techniques of image conversion and attention mechanism. In terms of the recognition strategy, this paper presents an image conversion using relative position matrix information. This information is utilized to describe the relative spatial relationships between different waveforms, and the image identification is successfully applied to the Gam-Resnet18 deep learning network model with a transfer learning concept for classification. Ultimately, this model achieved a total accuracy of 99.30%, an average positive prediction rate of 98.76%, a sensitivity of 98.90%, and a specificity of 99.84% with the relative position matrix approach. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, different image conversion techniques are compared on the test set. The experimental results demonstrate that the relative position matrix information can better reflect the differences between various types of arrhythmias, thereby improving the accuracy and stability of classification.