Negative and positive interpretations of emotionally neutral situations modulate the desire to eat personally craved foods.

Emotions play an important role in modulating food craving. Previous studies demonstrated that exposure to negative or positive stimuli can subsequently influence the desire to eat. However, in many daily situations, individuals self-generate their emotions, for example, by interpreting emotionally-neutral situations as positive or negative. So far, no studies have examined if and how positive and negative interpretations of emotionally-neutral situations modulate food craving. In this study, 65 healthy participants were asked to interpret emotionally-neutral images negatively or positively or observe the images naturally. Subsequently, participants rated their state negative/positive affect and their desire to eat their personally craved foods. The results demonstrate a lower desire to eat craved foods after negative interpretations and a higher desire to eat after positive interpretations, compared to an observe-naturally condition. Additionally, the impact of emotional interpretations on the desire to eat was mediated by participants' state negative/positive affect. These findings suggest that self-generated emotion as a result of negative/positive interpretations plays a significant role in modulating food craving. The results highlight the potential of modifying affective interpretations for the treatment of disorders that are characterized by both dysregulated food craving and emotion.

The influence of inhibitory control on reappraisal and the experience of negative emotions.

Inhibitory control (IC) enables goal-directed behaviour by reducing the interference of irrelevant information. Studies have shown that IC can downregulate performance-based behavioural and physiological measures of emotional reactivity. This study examined whether transient recruitment of IC can modulate self-reported negative feelings after exposure to negative or neutral content. Furthermore, it was tested if triggering IC can improve the ability to reduce the negativity of unpleasant content by reinterpreting its meaning (cognitive reappraisal). For this purpose, a combined flanker and cognitive reappraisal task was performed by 49 participants. The flanker task was used to prime IC before participants reappraised or observed negative and neutral content. Priming IC before negative images reduced self-reported negative feelings compared to when IC was not primed. In contrast, priming IC before neutral images increased negative feelings. Priming IC had no influence on the ability to reappraise negative emotional content. Finally, trait rumination was associated with higher emotional reactivity only when IC was not primed. These results illustrate the importance of IC in decreasing emotional reactivity after being exposed to negative content. IC is revealed as a mechanism that can dynamically modulate subjective emotional reactivity as a function of emotional context.

Reappraising negative emotions reduces distress during the COVID-19 outbreak.

In two studies, we examined the utility of intrinsic (i.e., self) versus extrinsic (i.e., other) reappraisal training for distress reduction during two consecutive COVID-19 lockdowns in Israel. In both Study 1 (n = 104) and Study 2 (n = 181), participants practiced the use of reappraisal for eight sessions across three weeks. Participants were trained to reappraise either a personal event (self-reappraisal group) or an incident presumably written by another participant (other-reappraisal group). Study 2 also included an untrained control group. Outcome measures were daily negative mood and psychological distress immediately at post-training and at a two-month follow-up. The results demonstrate a benefit for training compared to no training in lowering immediate post-training distress and daily negative emotions. However, this advantage disappeared at the two-month follow-up. In both studies, intrinsic reappraisal was associated with lower post-training distress than extrinsic reappraisal. Findings suggest reappraising negative experiences may lower distress at times of major contextual stress. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-03642-6.

Prestimulus Activity in the Cingulo-Opercular Network Predicts Memory for Naturalistic Episodic Experience.

Human memory is strongly influenced by brain states occurring before an event, yet we know little about the underlying mechanisms. We found that activity in the cingulo-opercular network (including bilateral anterior insula [aI] and anterior prefrontal cortex [aPFC]) seconds before an event begins can predict whether this event will subsequently be remembered. We then tested how activity in the cingulo-opercular network shapes memory performance. Our findings indicate that prestimulus cingulo-opercular activity affects memory performance by opposingly modulating subsequent activity in two sets of regions previously linked to encoding and retrieval of episodic information. Specifically, higher prestimulus cingulo-opercular activity was associated with a subsequent increase in activity in temporal regions previously linked to encoding and with a subsequent reduction in activity within a set of regions thought to play a role in retrieval and self-referential processing. Together, these findings suggest that prestimulus attentional states modulate memory for real-life events by enhancing encoding and possibly by dampening interference from competing memory substrates.

CHAP: Open-source software for processing and analyzing pupillometry data.

Pupil dilation is an effective indicator of cognitive and affective processes. Although several eyetracker systems on the market can provide effective solutions for pupil dilation measurement, there is a lack of tools for processing and analyzing the data provided by these systems. For this reason, we developed CHAP: open-source software written in MATLAB. This software provides a user-friendly graphical user interface for processing and analyzing pupillometry data. Our software creates uniform conventions for the preprocessing and analysis of pupillometry data and provides a quick and easy-to-use tool for researchers interested in pupillometry. To download CHAP or join our mailing list, please visit CHAP's website: http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/Labs/CNL/chap .

A novel blink detection method based on pupillometry noise.

Pupillometry (or the measurement of pupil size) is commonly used as an index of cognitive load and arousal. Pupil size data are recorded using eyetracking devices that provide an output containing pupil size at various points in time. During blinks the eyetracking device loses track of the pupil, resulting in missing values in the output file. The missing-sample time window is preceded and followed by a sharp change in the recorded pupil size, due to the opening and closing of the eyelids. This eyelid signal can create artificial effects if it is not removed from the data. Thus, accurate detection of the onset and the offset of blinks is necessary for pupil size analysis. Although there are several approaches to detecting and removing blinks from the data, most of these approaches do not remove the eyelid signal or can result in a relatively large amount of data loss. The present work suggests a novel blink detection algorithm based on the fluctuations that characterize pupil data. These fluctuations ("noise") result from measurement error produced by the eyetracker device. Our algorithm finds the onset and offset of the blinks on the basis of this fluctuation pattern and its distinctiveness from the eyelid signal. By comparing our algorithm to three other common blink detection methods and to results from two independent human raters, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm in detecting blink onset and offset. The algorithm's code and example files for processing multiple eye blinks are freely available for download ( https://osf.io/jyz43 ).

Explicit vs. implicit emotional processing: The interaction between processing type and executive control.

The current study examined whether the interaction between emotion and executive control (EC) is modulated by the processing type of the emotional information. Namely, whether the emotional information is explicitly processed, implicitly processed or passively viewed. In each trial, a negative or neutral picture preceded an arrow-flanker stimulus that was congruent or incongruent. Incongruent stimuli are known to recruit EC. Explicit processing of the pictures (Experiment 1a), which required responding to their emotional content, resulted in emotional interference for congruent but not for incongruent stimuli. Similar effects were shown for the passive viewing condition (Experiment 2). In contrast, implicit processing (Experiment 1b), which required responding to non-emotional content, resulted in emotional interference for both congruent and incongruent stimuli. Thus, our findings indicate that implicit emotional processing affects performance independently of EC recruitment. In contrast, explicit emotional processing and passive viewing of emotional pictures lead to reduced emotional interference when EC is recruited.

Acute pain trajectories and the persistence of post-surgical pain: a longitudinal study after total hip arthroplasty.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to explore acute movement-evoked postoperative pain intensity trajectories over the first 5 days after total hip arthroplasty (THA) and to examine how these pain trajectories are associated with pain-related outcomes 6 weeks and 6 months later. METHODS: A total of 150 adult patients [72 women (48.0 %); mean age 60.0 ± 9.2 (standard deviation) years] completed pain questionnaires preoperatively, several times daily postoperatively until hospital discharge, and 6 weeks and 6 months after surgery. RESULTS: Results showed that the best model had four different acute postoperative pain trajectories and a significant quadratic term. The trajectories varied in terms of initial pain intensity levels and rates of decline/increase in pain over the first 4 postoperative days. Significant predictors of pain trajectory membership were preoperative pain disability and anxiety as well as cumulative morphine consumption 24 h following surgery. Pain trajectories were significantly associated with levels of pain intensity and anxiety at 6 weeks but not at 6 months postoperatively. CONCLUSION: This study showed that during the postoperative period patients differed in terms of pain intensity profiles and that these differences were associated with outcomes for up to 6 weeks following surgery. Pain trajectories were not predictive of persistent postoperative pain status at 6 months. Nonetheless, these results highlight the importance of patient heterogeneity in acute postoperative pain and pain-related outcomes months after THA.

Emotion regulation as a main mechanism of change in psychotherapy.

A model that suggests reconsolidation of traumatic memories as a mechanism of change in therapy is important, but problematic to generalize to disorders other than post-traumatic and acute-stress disorder. We suggest that a more plausible mechanism of change in psychotherapy is acquisition of adaptive emotion regulation strategies.

Maternal distress during the COVID-19 outbreak: A socio-ecological perspective.

INTRODUCTION: Mothers faced an increased risk of adverse mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to other populations. However, there is little data on the factors that placed mothers at increased risk of distress. AIMS: The present study explored a range of individual, familial, and environmental factors associated with psychological distress in mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD: This repeated cross-sectional study was composed of a convenience sample of mothers who completed an online survey that included a demographic questionnaire, an emotion regulation questionnaire, and the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress scale. The survey was administered during the second and third lockdowns in Israel in 2020-2021. RESULTS: The study included 575 mothers (M age = 39). The findings of a hierarchical regression indicated that individual-level factors, composed of age and emotion regulation tendencies predicted psychological distress. The family-level factors of household income and number of children in the family also predicted distress. In terms of environmental-level factors, COVID-19-related media consumption and school status (open or closed) were also significant predictors of psychological distress. Importantly, the results showed that the most important predictors of psychological distress in mothers during the COVID-19 outbreak were school closures, household income, and the use of adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. CONCLUSIONS: The findings highlight the intersection of individual, familial, and environmental factors in mothers' mental health during crises.