A neurofunctional signature of subjective disgust generalizes to oral distaste and socio-moral contexts.

While disgust originates in the hard-wired mammalian distaste response, the conscious experience of disgust in humans strongly depends on subjective appraisal and may even extend to socio-moral contexts. Here, in a series of studies, we combined functional magnetic resonance imaging with machine-learning-based predictive modelling to establish a comprehensive neurobiological model of subjective disgust. The developed neurofunctional signature accurately predicted momentary self-reported subjective disgust across discovery (n = 78) and pre-registered validation (n = 30) cohorts and generalized across core disgust (n = 34 and n = 26), gustatory distaste (n = 30) and socio-moral (unfair offers; n = 43) contexts. Disgust experience was encoded in distributed cortical and subcortical systems, and exhibited distinct and shared neural representations with subjective fear or negative affect in interoceptive-emotional awareness and conscious appraisal systems, while the signatures most accurately predicted the respective target experience. We provide an accurate functional magnetic resonance imaging signature for disgust with a high potential to resolve ongoing evolutionary debates.

Interoceptive awareness mediated the effects of a 15-minute diaphragmatic breathing on empathy for pain: A randomized controlled trial.

Although empathy for pain plays an important role in positive interpersonal relationships and encourages engagement in prosocial behavior, it remains largely unknown whether empathy for pain could be effectively altered by psychophysiological techniques. This study aimed to investigate the impact of a single session of diaphragmatic breathing practice on empathy for pain and examine the potential mechanism involving interoceptive awareness. A total of 66 healthy participants were randomly assigned to the intervention group or the control group. The intervention group received a 15-minute diaphragmatic breathing (DB) practice with real-time biofeedback, while the control group was to gaze at a black screen at rest and not engaged in any other activities. Before and after the invention, all participants were instructed to evaluate the intensity and unpleasantness of empathy for pain while watching different pictures with pain or non-pain conditions. The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) was then administered to measure interoceptive awareness. The results indicated a significant interaction between group and time with regard to empathy for pain and MAIA. The DB group showed a statistically significant decrease in both pain intensity and unpleasantness during the pain picture condition, as well as a noteworthy increase in MAIA scores. The control group did not demonstrate any substantial changes. More importantly, the regulation of attention, a dimension of MAIA, had a significant mediating effect on the impact of diaphragmatic breathing on reported unpleasantness. Diaphragmatic breathing could serve as a simple, convenient, and practical strategy to optimize human empathy for pain that warrants further investigation, which has important implications not only for individuals with impaired empathy for pain but also for the improvement of interoceptive awareness.

Boosting interpersonal emotion regulation through facial imitation: functional neuroimaging foundations.

Empathic function, which is primarily manifested by facial imitation, is believed to play a pivotal role in interpersonal emotion regulation for mood reinstatement. To explore this association and its neural substrates, we performed a questionnaire survey (study l) to identify the relationship between empathy and interpersonal emotion regulation; and a task-mode fMRI study (study 2) to explore how facial imitation, as a fundamental component of empathic processes, promotes the interpersonal emotion regulation effect. Study 1 showed that affective empathy was positively correlated with interpersonal emotion regulation. Study 2 showed smaller negative emotions in facial imitation interpersonal emotion regulation (subjects imitated experimenter's smile while followed the interpersonal emotion regulation guidance) than in normal interpersonal emotion regulation (subjects followed the interpersonal emotion regulation guidance) and Watch conditions. Mirror neural system (e.g. inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal lobe) and empathy network exhibited greater activations in facial imitation interpersonal emotion regulation compared with normal interpersonal emotion regulation condition. Moreover, facial imitation interpersonal emotion regulation compared with normal interpersonal emotion regulation exhibited increased functional coupling from mirror neural system to empathic and affective networks during interpersonal emotion regulation. Furthermore, the connectivity of the right orbital inferior frontal gyrus-rolandic operculum lobe mediated the association between the accuracy of facial imitation and the interpersonal emotion regulation effect. These results show that the interpersonal emotion regulation effect can be enhanced by the target's facial imitation through increased functional coupling from mirror neural system to empathic and affective neural networks.

The association between social media use and well-being during quarantine period: testing a moderated mediation model.

Objectives: Social media use (SMU) increased dramatically during COVID-19 due to policies such as long-term quarantine. Given that SMU has complex effects on individuals' well-being, this study aimed to explore the relationship between SMU and subjective well-being and the influencing factors in the context of the pandemic in China. Methods: A total of 895 adults (413 males) in different risk areas across China participated in this study. They provided self-reported data on subjective well-being, social media use, adaptive humor, and other demographic variables. Results: It revealed that SMU was positively associated with individual well-being, an effect partially mediated by the score of adaptive humor. Furthermore, the effect of SMU on adaptive humor was moderated by trait optimism, with the effect more robust in high (vs. low) optimistic individuals. Conclusion: This study explored the positive effects of SMU on individuals' well-being, suggesting that individuals may better cope with negative experiences and maintain well-being under quarantine by showing more adaptive humor on social media.

Unconscious and conscious acceptance downregulate aggressive behavior: Mediating role of anger regulation.

Social exclusion can induce negative emotions and aggression. While previous studies have investigated the effect of trait acceptance on emotional experience and aggression during social exclusion, it is still unclear how different forms of acceptance strategy can downregulate negative emotions and whether this potential reduction of negative emotions should mediate the effect of acceptance on aggression. To address these questions, 100 participants were recruited and randomly divided into three groups: control group (CG, N = 33), conscious acceptance group (CAG, N = 33) and unconscious acceptance group (UAG, N = 34). Negative emotions were induced by the cyberball game and measured by the modified PANAS. Aggressive behavior was assessed by the hot sauce allocation task. Results showed that anger, rather than other negative emotions, mediated the effect of acceptance on aggressive behavior. Conscious and unconscious acceptance both effectively regulated anger, hurt feelings and aggressive behavior during social exclusion. Compared to conscious acceptance, unconscious acceptance was associated with less reduction of positive emotion and had a better effect on reducing sadness. These findings highlight the advantage of applying unconscious acceptance strategy to regulating social exclusion-induced emotions for the purpose of reducing aggressive behavior.

Distinct astrocytic modulatory roles in sensory transmission during sleep, wakefulness, and arousal states in freely moving mice.

Despite extensive research on astrocytic Ca2+ in synaptic transmission, its contribution to the modulation of sensory transmission during different brain states remains largely unknown. Here, by using two-photon microscopy and whole-cell recordings, we show two distinct astrocytic Ca2+ signals in the murine barrel cortex: a small, long-lasting Ca2+ increase during sleep and a large, widespread but short-lasting Ca2+ spike when aroused. The large Ca2+ wave in aroused mice was inositol trisphosphate (IP3)-dependent, evoked by the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system, and enhanced sensory input, contributing to reliable sensory transmission. However, the small Ca2+ transient was IP3-independent and contributed to decreased extracellular K+, hyperpolarization of the neurons, and suppression of sensory transmission. These events respond to different pharmacological inputs and contribute to distinct sleep and arousal functions by modulating the efficacy of sensory transmission. Together, our data demonstrate an important function for astrocytes in sleep and arousal states via astrocytic Ca2+ waves.

Implicit, But Not Explicit, Emotion Regulation Relieves Unpleasant Neural Responses Evoked by High-Intensity Negative Images.

Evidence suggests that explicit reappraisal has limited regulatory effects on high-intensity emotions, mainly due to the depletion of cognitive resources occupied by the high-intensity emotional stimulus itself. The implicit form of reappraisal has proved to be resource-saving and therefore might be an ideal strategy to achieve the desired regulatory effect in high-intensity situations. In this study, we explored the regulatory effect of explicit and implicit reappraisal when participants encountered low- and high-intensity negative images. The subjective emotional rating indicated that both explicit and implicit reappraisal down-regulated negative experiences, irrespective of intensity. However, the amplitude of the parietal late positive potential (LPP; a neural index of experienced emotional intensity) showed that only implicit reappraisal had significant regulatory effects in the high-intensity context, though both explicit and implicit reappraisal successfully reduced the emotional neural responses elicited by low-intensity negative images. Meanwhile, implicit reappraisal led to a smaller frontal LPP amplitude (an index of cognitive cost) compared to explicit reappraisal, indicating that the implementation of implicit reappraisal consumes limited cognitive control resources. Furthermore, we found a prolonged effect of implicit emotion regulation introduced by training procedures. Taken together, these findings not only reveal that implicit reappraisal is suitable to relieve high-intensity negative experiences as well as neural responses, but also highlight the potential benefit of trained implicit regulation in clinical populations whose frontal control resources are limited.

Sounding and imagining sounds improve visual time perception: Application of the modality effect of time perception.

This study examines whether the modality effect can be used to improve visual time perception. In Experiment 1, we used a time-reproduction task to explore the accuracy (i.e., deviation of reproduced time from veridical time) and precision (i.e., variability of reproduced time) of time perception under auditory, visual, or audiovisual conditions. Results confirmed the existence of a modality effect. Experiments 2a and 2b and Experiment 3 examined whether adding auditory stimuli improves visual time perception. In Experiments 2a and 2b, participants were required to sound when the visual stimuli appeared. Results showed that the addition of sound to visual stimuli perception is associated with higher time perception accuracy than viewing visual stimuli alone. Given that sounding is not always applicable, we conducted Experiment 3, with participants asked to imagine sounds instead of sounding. Results showed that imaginary sounds improved accuracy. However, in Experiments 2a, 2b, and 3, neither sounding nor imagining sounds changed the precision of time perception. The findings of this study indicate that adding auditory stimuli reliably improves the accuracy of visual-time perception, irrespective of whether the sound is real or imagined.

The Emotion-Regulation Benefits of Implicit Reappraisal in Clinical Depression: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by emotion dysregulation. Whether implicit emotion regulation can compensate for this deficit remains unknown. In this study, we recruited 159 subjects who were healthy controls, had subclinical depression, or had MDD, and examined them under baseline, implicit, and explicit reappraisal conditions. Explicit reappraisal led to the most negative feelings and the largest parietal late positive potential (parietal LPP, an index of emotion intensity) in the MDD group compared to the other two groups; the group difference was absent under the other two conditions. MDD patients showed larger regulatory effects in the LPP during implicit than explicit reappraisal, whereas healthy controls showed a reversed pattern. Furthermore, the frontal P3, an index of voluntary cognitive control, showed larger amplitudes in explicit reappraisal compared to baseline in the healthy and subclinical groups, but not in the MDD group, while implicit reappraisal did not increase P3 across groups. These findings suggest that implicit reappraisal is beneficial for clinical depression.

Temporal dynamic patterns of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex underlie the association between rumination and depression.

As a major contributor to the development of depression, rumination has proven linked with aberrant default-mode network (DMN) activity. However, it remains unclear how the spontaneous spatial and temporal activity of DMN underlie the association between rumination and depression. To illustrate this issue, behavioral measures and resting-state functional magnetic resonance images were connected in 2 independent samples (NSample1 = 100, NSample2 = 95). Fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) and regional homogeneity (ReHo) were used to assess spatial characteristic patterns, while voxel-wise functional concordance (across time windows) (VC) and Hurst exponent (HE) were used to assess temporal dynamic patterns of brain activity. Results from both samples consistently show that temporal dynamics but not spatial patterns of DMN are associated with rumination. Specifically, rumination is positively correlated with HE and VC (but not fALFF and ReHo) values, reflecting more consistent and regular temporal dynamic patterns in DMN. Moreover, subregion analyses indicate that temporal dynamics of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) reliably predict rumination scores. Furthermore, mediation analyses show that HE and VC of VMPFC mediate the association between rumination and depression. These findings shed light on neural mechanisms of individual differences in rumination and corresponding risk for depression.

Neural substrates of behavioral inhibitory control during the two-choice oddball task: functional neuroimaging evidence.

Background: Behavioral inhibitory control (BIC) depicts a cognitive function of inhibiting inappropriate dominant responses to meet the context requirement. Despite abundant research into neural substrates of BIC during the go/no-go and stop signal tasks, these tasks were consistently shown hard to isolate neural processes of response inhibition, which is of primary interest, from those of response generation. Therefore, it is necessary to explore neural substrates of BIC using the two-choice oddball (TCO) task, whose design of dual responses is thought to produce an inhibition effect free of the confounds of response generation. Objective: The current study aims at depicting neural substrates of performing behavioral inhibitory control in the two-choice oddball task, which designs dual responses to balance response generation. Also, neural substrates of performing BIC during this task are compared with those in the go/no-go task, which designs a motor response in a single condition. Methods: The present study integrated go/no-go (GNG) and TCO tasks into a new Three-Choice BIC paradigm, which consists of standard (75%), deviant (12.5%), and no-go (12.5%) conditions simultaneously. Forty-eight college students participated in this experiment, which required them to respond to standard (frequent) and deviant stimuli by pressing different keys, while inhibiting motor response to no-go stimuli. Conjunction analysis and ROI (region of interest) analysis were adopted to identify the unique neural mechanisms that subserve the processes of BIC. Results: Both tasks are effective in assessing BIC function, reflected by the significantly lower accuracy of no-go compared to standard condition in GNG, and the significantly lower accuracy and longer reaction time of deviant compared to standard condition in TCO. However, there were no significant differences between deviant and no-go conditions in accuracy. Moreover, functional neuroimaging has demonstrated that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activation was observed for no-go vs. standard contrast in the GNG task, but not in deviant vs. standard contrast in the TCO task, suggesting that ACC involvement is not a necessary component of BIC. Second, ROI analysis of areas that were co-activated in TCO and GNG showed co-activations in the right inferior frontal cortex (triangle and orbital), with the signals in the TCO task significantly higher than those in the GNG task. Conclusions: These findings show that the designed responses to both standard and deviant stimuli in the TCO task, compared to the GNG task, produced a more prominent prefrontal inhibitory processing and extinguished an unnecessary component of ACC activation during BIC. This implies that prefrontal involvement, but not that of ACC, is mandatory for the successful performance of inhibiting prepotent behaviors.

Awe weakens the AIDS-related stigma: The mediation effects of connectedness and empathy.

Stigma toward people with HIV or AIDS produces significant harms to their life and also hinders the prevention of AIDS. In the present study, we tested whether awe can weaken AIDS-related stigma and the mediating role of connectedness and empathy between them through a cross-sectional study (Study 1, N = 372) and two experimental studies (Study 2a and 2b, N = 110 and N = 180, respectively). Results showed that awe reduced AIDS-related stigma (Study 2a and 2b), via the serial mediation of connectedness and empathy (Study 1 and 2b). These findings suggest that the experience of awe increases one's connectedness to the world, which then enhances empathy and decreases AIDS-related stigma. This study expands our understanding of the relationship between awe and stigma, providing empirical basis for decreasing social prejudice to others.

Trait Acceptance Buffers Aggressive Tendency by the Regulation of Anger during Social Exclusion.

Social exclusion has led to increased negative emotions and aggressive behaviors, two outcomes that are correlated with each other. Thus, the down-regulation of negative emotions appears to play a crucial role in reducing the tendency for aggressive behavior. However, this assumption has not yet been tested. To this end, a total of 397 undergraduates reported their aggressive tendencies, state emotions and trait acceptance by completing corresponding questionnaires, and a recall paradigm was used to induce experiences of social exclusion. The results showed that in the context of social exclusion, (1) trait acceptance was negatively correlated with negative emotions and aggressive tendency but was positively correlated with positive emotions; (2) negative emotions, rather than positive emotions, were positively correlated with aggressive tendency; (3) increased trait acceptance buffered the experience of anger, which is, in turn, related to reduced aggressive tendency; (4) trait acceptance also downregulated the feeling of sadness, which is, however, related to increased aggression; (5) the mediator of sadness was smaller in effect size than that of anger. Taken together, these results suggest that negative emotions are associated with aggression in the context of social exclusion, and the habitual use of an acceptance strategy was conductive to decreasing aggressive tendencies by decreasing anger.

Shared surname enhances our preference to famous people: multimodal EEG evidence.

Multimodal Electroencephalography techniques were used to determine whether the name of famous people undergoes self-relevant processing due to a shared surname with participants. During a three-stimulus oddball task, brain activity was recorded when participants suddenly saw their own names (self-name [SN]), a famous name with the same surname (FNS), or a famous name with a different surname (FND). While familiarity ratings were kept similar across the three kinds of name, behavioral analysis showed a higher rating on self-relevance for SN than for FNS, which, in turn, received a higher rating than FND. P2 amplitudes demonstrated a similar enhancement in response to SN and FNS compared to FND while P3 amplitudes and power of theta band (3.5-6 Hz) oscillation were more pronounced in response to SN than to FNS, which in turn elicited larger P3 and theta activities than FND. These findings, excluding the influence of familiarity, revealed that famous people sharing same surname with us could elicit a reliable self-relevant effect, despite lack of real social connection. This self-relevant processing may be embodied by the P3 amplitude and theta band neural oscillation in EEG.

The Counterproductive Effect of Right Anodal/Left Cathodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Over the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex on Impulsivity in Methamphetamine Addicts.

The current study aimed to evaluate the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on behavioral impulsivity in methamphetamine addicts. Forty-five methamphetamine addicts were recruited and randomly divided into active tDCS and sham tDCS groups to receive a daily tDCS intervention for 5 days, with the intensity set to 2 mA for the active group and 0 mA for the sham group. Anodal and cathodal electrodes were, respectively, placed over the right and left DLPFC. Behavioral impulsivity in methamphetamine addicts was examined by the 2-choice oddball task at 3-time points: before tDCS intervention (baseline), after the first intervention (day 1), and after 5 repeated interventions (day 5). Besides, twenty-four healthy male participants were recruited as the healthy controls who completed a 2-choice oddball task. Analysis of accuracy for the 2-choice oddball task showed that behavioral impulsivity was counterproductively increased in the active group, which was shown by the decreased accuracy for the deviant stimulus. The results suggested that the present protocol may not be optimal and other protocols should be considered for the intervention of methamphetamine addicts in the future.

Differential Effects of Optimism and Pessimism on Adolescents' Subjective Well-Being: Mediating Roles of Reappraisal and Acceptance.

Prior research has found the differential strength of optimism and pessimism in predicting physical health. However, whether similar findings would be obtained in predicting subjective well-being and the possible underlying mechanisms are still unclear. This study examined the relative strength of optimism and pessimism in predicting adolescent life satisfaction and depression, and further explored the possible mediating mechanisms from the perspective of emotion regulation. A sample of 2672 adolescents (Mage = 13.54 years, SD = 1.04; 55.60% boys) completed a survey assessing optimism and pessimism, the habitual use of reappraisal and acceptance strategies, life satisfaction, and depression. The results from dominance analysis revealed that the presence of optimism was more powerful than the absence of pessimism in predicting adolescent life satisfaction, while the absence of pessimism was more powerful than the presence of optimism in predicting adolescent depression. Moreover, mediation models showed that reappraisal and acceptance mediated both the link between optimism and life satisfaction and the link between pessimism and depression. These findings suggest possible avenues for intervening in different aspects of adolescent subjective well-being.

Increased motivational intensity leads to preference for distraction over reappraisal during emotion regulation: Mediated by attentional breadth.

Motivation is considered important in the study of emotion regulation. However, it remains unknown whether and how varied motivation may influence people's emotion regulation choice. To address this question, 51 participants first performed a global-local task that measures attentional breadth. Then, they were required to choose emotion regulation strategies, reappraisal, or distraction, to regulate their emotion in emotional contexts that varied in motivational direction and intensity. We found that distraction was chosen more often over reappraisal in high-intensity-motivated emotion, while the reverse pattern was observed in low-intensity motivated emotion. Besides, withdrawal-motivated emotion was associated with more reappraisal choices than approach-motivated emotion, an effect that, however, vanished when valence was controlled. Furthermore, participants made fewer global choices, which is indicative of narrowed attentional breadth, during high- relative to low-intensity motivated emotional contexts, and attentional breadth partially mediated the effect of motivational intensity on emotion regulation choice. These findings suggest that increased motivation promotes one's choice of distraction over reappraisal during emotion regulation, by narrowing attentional breadth. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).