Development and validation of the Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS) stimuli set.

Climate change is widely recognised as an urgent issue, and the number of people concerned about it is increasing. While emotions are among the strongest predictors of behaviour change in the face of climate change, researchers have only recently begun to investigate this topic experimentally. This may be due to the lack of standardised, validated stimuli that would make studying such a topic in experimental settings possible. Here, we introduce a novel Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS) stimuli set. ECCS consists of 180 realistic short stories about climate change, designed to evoke five distinct emotions-anger, anxiety, compassion, guilt and hope-in addition to neutral stories. The stories were created based on qualitative data collected in two independent studies: one conducted among individuals highly concerned about climate change, and another one conducted in the general population. The stories were rated on the scales of valence, arousal, anger, anxiety, compassion, guilt and hope in the course of three independent studies. First, we explored the underlying structure of ratings (Study 1; n = 601). Then we investigated the replicability (Study 2; n = 307) and cross-cultural validity (Study 3; n = 346) of ECCS. The collected ratings were highly consistent across the studies. Furthermore, we found that the level of climate change concern explained the intensity of elicited emotions. The ECCS dataset is available in Polish, Norwegian and English and can be employed for experimental research on climate communication, environmental attitudes, climate action-taking, or mental health and wellbeing.

Emotional responses to climate change in Norway and Ireland: a validation of the Inventory of Climate Emotions (ICE) in two European countries and an inspection of its nomological span.

There is an increasing research interest in emotional responses to climate change and their role in climate action and psycho-social impacts of climate change. At the same time, emotional experience of climate change is multidimensional and influenced by a variety of factors, including the local cultural context. Here, we contribute to the scientific debate about this topic with original quality-controlled data from the general populations in Norway (N = 491) and Ireland (N = 485). We investigate the cross-cultural validity and the nomological span of eight distinct emotional responses to climate change - climate anger, climate contempt, climate enthusiasm, climate powerlessness, climate guilt, climate isolation, climate anxiety, and climate sorrow - measured using the recently introduced Inventory of Climate Emotions. We first validate the 8-factor structure of the Norwegian and English language versions of the ICE. Subsequently, we demonstrate a high degree of cross-cultural measurement invariance for these eight climate emotions. Finally, we explore the relationships between these emotional responses and a range of theoretically relevant variables. In this final step, we show that climate emotions are differentially linked to climate change perceptions, support for mitigation policies, socio-demographic factors, feelings of loneliness and alienation, environmental activism, and the willingness to prioritize the natural environment over one's immediate self-interests. Some of these links are also differentiated by the cultural context. This research presents further evidence for the structural, cross-cultural, and concurrent validity of climate emotions as postulated in the ICE framework. Moreover, it provides tools in the form of validated Norwegian and English language versions of the ICE, the complete R code for the validation analysis, as well as an informed basis for cross-cultural research on emotional responses to climate change.

Functional Connectivity in Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder - Systematic Review of Literature and Study on Heterosexual Males.

BACKGROUND: Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder (CSBD) was recently included in ICD-11 as a new impulse control disorder. While this certainly improved the diagnosis of CSBD, the underlying brain mechanisms of the disorder are still poorly understood. Better description of brain functional deficits is required. AIM: Here we investigate patterns of resting-state brain functional connectivity (fc) in a group of CSBD patients compared to a group of healthy controls (HC). METHODS: A MATLAB toolbox named CONN functional connectivity toolbox was employed to study patterns of brain connectivity. Also correlation between fc and severity of CSBD symptoms and other psychological characteristics, assessed with questionnaires, were examined. OUTCOMES: We collected resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 81 heterosexual males: 52 CSBD patients and 29 HC. RESULTS: We found increased fc between left inferior frontal gyrus and right planum temporale and polare, right and left insula, right Supplementary Motor Cortex (SMA), right parietal operculum, and also between left supramarginal gyrus and right planum polare, and between left orbitofrontal cortex and left insula when compared CSBD and HC. The decreased fc was observed between left middle temporal gyrus and bilateral insula and right parietal operculum. No significant correlations between psychological questionnaires assessing CSBD symptoms and resting-state functional connectivity were observed. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Results from our study extend the knowledge of brain mechanisms differentiating CSBD from HC. STRENGTHS & LIMITATIONS: The study was the first large sample study showing 5 distinct functional brain networks differentiating CSBD patients and HC. However, the sample was limited only to heterosexual men, in the future a greater diversity in studied sample and longitudinal studies are needed. Also, the present study examined functional connectivity at the level of regions of interest (ROIs). Future studies could verify these results by examining functional connectivity at the voxel level. CONCLUSION: The identified functional brain networks differentiate CSBD from HC and provide some support for incentive sensitization as mechanism underlying CSBD symptoms. The correlation between psychological assessment (ie, severity of CSBD, depression and anxiety symptoms, level of impulsivity and compulsivity) and resting-state functional connectivity need further examination. Draps M, Adamus S, Wierzba M, et al. Functional Connectivity in Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder - Systematic Review of Literature and Study on Heterosexual Males. J Sex Med 2022;19:1463-1471.

Emotion schema effects on associative memory differ across emotion categories at the behavioural, physiological and neural level: Emotion schema effects on associative memory differs for disgust and fear.

Previous behavioural and neuroimaging studies have consistently reported that memory is enhanced for associations congruent or incongruent with the structure of prior knowledge, termed as schemas. However, it remains unclear if similar effects arise with emotion-related associations, and whether they depend on the type of emotions. Here, we addressed this question using a novel face-word pair association paradigm combined with fMRI and eye-tracking techniques. In two independent studies, we demonstrated and replicated that both congruency with emotion schemas and emotion category interact to affect associative memory. Overall, memory retrieval was higher for faces from pairs congruent vs. incongruent with emotion schemas, paralleled by a greater recruitment of left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) during successful encoding. However, emotion schema effects differed across two negative emotion categories. Disgust was remembered better than fear, and only disgust activated left IFG stronger during encoding of congruent vs. incongruent pairs, suggestive of deeper semantic processing for the associations. On the contrary, encoding of congruent fear vs. disgust-related pairs was accompanied with greater activity in right fusiform gyrus (FG), suggesting a stronger sensory processing of faces. In addition, successful memory formation for congruent disgust pairs was associated with a higher pupil dilation index related to sympathetic activation, longer gaze time on words compared to faces, and more gaze switches between paired words and faces. This was reversed for fear-related congruent pairs where the faces attracted longer gaze time (compared to words). Overall, our results provide converging evidence from behavioural, physiological, and neural measures to suggest that congruency with available emotion schemas influence memory associations in a similar manner to semantic schemas. However, these effects vary across distinct emotion categories, pointing to a differential role of semantic processing and visual attention processes in the modulation of memory by disgust and fear, respectively.

FAIRly big: A framework for computationally reproducible processing of large-scale data.

Large-scale datasets present unique opportunities to perform scientific investigations with unprecedented breadth. However, they also pose considerable challenges for the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability (FAIR) of research outcomes due to infrastructure limitations, data usage constraints, or software license restrictions. Here we introduce a DataLad-based, domain-agnostic framework suitable for reproducible data processing in compliance with open science mandates. The framework attempts to minimize platform idiosyncrasies and performance-related complexities. It affords the capture of machine-actionable computational provenance records that can be used to retrace and verify the origins of research outcomes, as well as be re-executed independent of the original computing infrastructure. We demonstrate the framework's performance using two showcases: one highlighting data sharing and transparency (using the studyforrest.org dataset) and another highlighting scalability (using the largest public brain imaging dataset available: the UK Biobank dataset).

Distinct medial-tempora lobe mechanisms of encoding and amygdala-mediated memory reinstatement for disgust and fear.

Current models of episodic memory posit that retrieval involves the reenactment of encoding processes. Recent evidence has shown that this reinstatement process - indexed by subsequent encoding-retrieval similarity of brain activity patterns - is related to the activity in the hippocampus during encoding. However, we tend to re-experience emotional events in memory more richly than dull events. The role of amygdala - a critical hub of emotion processing - in reinstatement of emotional events was poorly understood. To investigate it, we leveraged a previously overlooked divergence in the role of amygdala in memory modulation by distinct emotions - disgust and fear. Here we used a novel paradigm in which participants encoded complex events (word pairs) and their memory was tested after 3 weeks, both phases during fMRI scanning. Using representational similarity analysis and univariate analyses, we show that the strength of amygdala activation during encoding was correlated with memory reinstatement of individual event representations in emotion-specific regions. Critically, amygdala modulated reinstatement more for disgust than fear. This was in line with other differences observed at the level of memory performance and neural mechanisms of encoding. Specifically, amygdala and perirhinal cortex were more involved during encoding of disgust-related events, whereas hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus during encoding of fear-related events. Together, these findings shed a new light on the role of the amygdala and medial temporal lobe regions in encoding and reinstatement of specific emotional memories.

Emotion norms for 6000 Polish word meanings with a direct mapping to the Polish wordnet.

Emotion lexicons are useful in research across various disciplines, but the availability of such resources remains limited for most languages. While existing emotion lexicons typically comprise words, it is a particular meaning of a word (rather than the word itself) that conveys emotion. To mitigate this issue, we present the Emotion Meanings dataset, a novel dataset of 6000 Polish word meanings. The word meanings are derived from the Polish wordnet (plWordNet), a large semantic network interlinking words by means of lexical and conceptual relations. The word meanings were manually rated for valence and arousal, along with a variety of basic emotion categories (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, anticipation, happiness, surprise, and trust). The annotations were found to be highly reliable, as demonstrated by the similarity between data collected in two independent samples: unsupervised (n = 21,317) and supervised (n = 561). Although we found the annotations to be relatively stable for female, male, younger, and older participants, we share both summary data and individual data to enable emotion research on different demographically specific subgroups. The word meanings are further accompanied by the relevant metadata, derived from open-source linguistic resources. Direct mapping to Princeton WordNet makes the dataset suitable for research on multiple languages. Altogether, this dataset provides a versatile resource that can be employed for emotion research in psychology, cognitive science, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, and natural language processing.

Effects of attention training technique on brain function in high- and low-cognitive-attentional syndrome individuals: Regional dynamics before, during, and after a single session of ATT.

OBJECTIVE: Attention Training Technique (ATT) is a key therapeutic tool in metacognitive therapy. There are numerous studies on the behavioral effects of ATT, however the neural mechanisms at work in the training are yet to be uncovered. To date there have been no controlled fMRI studies of ATT. METHOD: We conducted a randomized double-blind controlled study of two groups with varying levels of cognitive-attentional syndrome (CAS). Groups with high (n = 43) and low (n = 46) levels of CAS underwent a single session of ATT or a control condition (CON) in an MRI scanner. Participants underwent resting state functional MRI (rsfMRI) sessions and rumination induction sessions both pre- and post-intervention Functional connectivity analyses and inter-subject correlations analyses were computed. We also collected data on emotion and attention functioning pre- and post-intervention. RESULTS: We did not observe any behavioral effects of ATT. However, direct comparison between ATT and CON sessions revealed greater inter-subject correlations in almost all hubs belonging to the studied functional networks. Moreover, subjects who received ATT showed diminished connectivity in the fronto-parietal network during ruminations and diminished connectivity of the precuneus with lateral occipital cortices and the intraparietal sulcus in abstract thinking and rsfMRI, respectively. Furthermore, some of the observed effects in functional connectivity and inter-subject correlations were specific to different levels of CAS. CONCLUSIONS: Our results may support a proposed neural mechanism for ATT: disengagement of attention from CAS-type processing in either low- or high-CAS individuals. It is also possible that some neural effects of ATT are specific to individuals with different levels of CAS.

Effect of emotion on memory for words and their context.

Emotion influences various cognitive processes, such as memory. This beneficial or detrimental effect can be studied with verbal material, yet in this case a broad term of context has to be taken into account. The present work reviews recent literature and proposes that traditional differentiation between semantic and environmental context should be replaced with a novel conceptualization of hippocampus-dependent relational memory and item memory (related to the activations of cuneus and left amygdala). Additionally, instead of list-learning paradigms, words should be memorized in the context of sentences or stories for better control over their meaning. The recent evidence suggests that of particular importance for ecological validity in research paradigms is the presence of communicative and social context of verbal material related to such processes as theory of mind and brain activations in temporoparietal junction, posterior cingulate cortex, and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex. We propose that studying memory of verbal material within context gives a better understanding of enhancing and impairing effects of emotion as well as of the underlying brain mechanisms.

Characterization of the Nencki Affective Picture System by discrete emotional categories (NAPS BE).

The Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS; Marchewka, Zurawski, Jednoróg, & Grabowska, Behavior Research Methods, 2014) is a standardized set of 1,356 realistic, high-quality photographs divided into five categories (people, faces, animals, objects, and landscapes). NAPS has been primarily standardized along the affective dimensions of valence, arousal, and approach-avoidance, yet the characteristics of discrete emotions expressed by the images have not been investigated thus far. The aim of the present study was to collect normative ratings according to categorical models of emotions. A subset of 510 images from the original NAPS set was selected in order to proportionally cover the whole dimensional affective space. Among these, using three available classification methods, we identified images eliciting distinguishable discrete emotions. We introduce the basic-emotion normative ratings for the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS BE), which will allow researchers to control and manipulate stimulus properties specifically for their experimental questions of interest. The NAPS BE system is freely accessible to the scientific community for noncommercial use as supplementary materials to this article.

Erotic subset for the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS ERO): cross-sexual comparison study.

Research on the processing of sexual stimuli has proved that such material has high priority in human cognition. Yet, although sex differences in response to sexual stimuli were extensively discussed in the literature, sexual orientation was given relatively little consideration, and material suitable for relevant research is difficult to come by. With this in mind, we present a collection of 200 erotic images, accompanied by their self-report ratings of emotional valence and arousal by homo- and heterosexual males and females (n = 80, divided into four equal-sized subsamples). The collection complements the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS) and is intended to be used as stimulus material in experimental research. The erotic images are divided into five categories, depending on their content: opposite-sex couple (50), male couple (50), female couple (50), male (25) and female (25). Additional 100 control images from the NAPS depicting people in a non-erotic context were also used in the study. We showed that recipient sex and sexual orientation strongly influenced the evaluation of erotic content. Thus, comparisons of valence and arousal ratings in different subject groups will help researchers select stimuli set for the purpose of various experimental designs. To facilitate the use of the dataset, we provide an on-line tool, which allows the user to browse the images interactively and select proper stimuli on the basis of several parameters. The NAPS ERO image collection together with the data are available to the scientific community for non-commercial use at http://naps.nencki.gov.pl.

Basic Emotions in the Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL BE): New Method of Classifying Emotional Stimuli.

The Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL) has recently been introduced as a standardized database of Polish words suitable for studying various aspects of language and emotions. Though the NAWL was originally based on the most commonly used dimensional approach, it is not the only way of studying emotions. Another framework is based on discrete emotional categories. Since the two perspectives are recognized as complementary, the aim of the present study was to supplement the NAWL database by the addition of categories corresponding to basic emotions. Thus, 2902 Polish words from the NAWL were presented to 265 subjects, who were instructed to rate them according to the intensity of each of the five basic emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, fear and disgust. The general characteristics of the present word database, as well as the relationships between the studied variables are shown to be consistent with typical patterns found in previous studies using similar databases for different languages. Here we present the Basic Emotions in the Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL BE) as a database of verbal material suitable for highly controlled experimental research. To make the NAWL more convenient to use, we introduce a comprehensive method of classifying stimuli to basic emotion categories. We discuss the advantages of our method in comparison to other methods of classification. Additionally, we provide an interactive online tool (http://exp.lobi.nencki.gov.pl/nawl-analysis) to help researchers browse and interactively generate classes of stimuli to meet their specific requirements.

Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL): the cultural adaptation of the Berlin Affective Word List-Reloaded (BAWL-R) for Polish.

In the present article, we introduce the Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL), created in order to provide researchers with a database of 2,902 Polish words, including nouns, verbs, and adjectives, with ratings of emotional valence, arousal, and imageability. Measures of several objective psycholinguistic features of the words (frequency, grammatical class, and number of letters) are also controlled. The database is a Polish adaptation of the Berlin Affective Word List-Reloaded (BAWL-R; Võ et al., Behavior Research Methods 41:534-538, 2009), commonly used to investigate the affective properties of German words. Affective normative ratings were collected from 266 Polish participants (136 women and 130 men). The emotional ratings and psycholinguistic indexes provided by NAWL can be used by researchers to better control the verbal materials they apply and to adjust them to specific experimental questions or issues of interest. The NAWL is freely accessible to the scientific community for noncommercial use as supplementary material to this article.