Affective Implications of Human-Animal Relationship on Pig Welfare: Integrating Non-Linear Heart Rate Variability Measures.

The human-animal relationship is crucial for animal welfare. Gentle handling enhances pigs' comfort while rough handling causes fear and stress. This study examined how different human-animal relationship qualities affect the behavior and heart rate variability (linear and non-linear parameters) of 36 nursery pigs. Over six weeks, pigs experienced positive (n = 12), minimal (n = 12), or negative (n = 12) human handling. Their responses to handlers were then assessed in an experimental arena with four phases: habituation, exposure to the handler standing and sitting, and forced interaction. Pigs subjected to negative handling exhibited increased fear-related behaviors, spending less time in contact with the handler. They also exhibited heightened stress responses, with greater LF/HF ratio and Lmean values compared with positively handled pigs. Conversely, gently handled pigs displayed affiliative behaviors, accepting more strokes, and higher parasympathetic activation, indicated by greater RMSSD/SDNN and SampEn values, suggesting a more positive affective state. Minimally handled pigs exhibited some behavioral similarities to gently handled pigs, although physiological data indicated that the interaction was likely more rewarding for the gently handled pigs. These results emphasize the impact of human-animal relationships on pig welfare and highlight the value of incorporating non-linear heart rate variability parameters in such evaluations.

Being friendly: paced mating for the study of physiological, behavioral, and neuroplastic changes induced by sexual behavior in females.

Paced mating in rats is an experimental condition that allows the evaluation of sexual behavior in a way that closely resembles what occurs in seminatural and natural conditions enabling the female to control the rate of the sexual interaction. In conventional non-paced mating tests, females cannot escape from male approaches, which may lead to an unrewarding overstimulation. Paced mating is an alternative laboratory procedure that improves animal welfare and has a higher ethological relevance. The use of this procedure contributed to the identification of physiological and behavioral factors that favor reproduction. Paced mating includes motivational and behavioral components differentiating quantitative and qualitative characteristics that are critical for the induction of the rewarding properties of mating. These positive consequences ensure that the behavior will be repeated, favoring the species' survival. Sexual reward is an immediate consequence of paced mating, mediated mainly by the endogenous opioid system. Paced mating also induces long-lasting neuroplastic changes, including gene expression, synthesis of proteins, and neurogenesis in sex-relevant brain areas. The interest in paced mating is growing since the complexity of its elements and consequences at different levels in a laboratory setting resembles what occurs in natural conditions. In this review, we analyze the classic studies and recent publications demonstrating the advantages of using paced mating to evaluate different aspects of sexual behavior in females.

Distractibility, anxiety, irritability, and agitation symptoms are associated with the severity of depressive and manic symptoms in mixed depression.

OBJECTIVE: To explore whether there is an association between distractibility, anxiety, irritability, and agitation (DAIA) symptoms and the severity of depressive and manic symptoms. METHODS: Patients with unipolar and bipolar disorder (I and II) and mixed depression were evaluated. DAIA symptoms were assessed using previously described definitions. RESULTS: The full analysis set comprised 100 patients. The severity of depressive symptoms in mixed depression, assessed by Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), was significantly associated with the presence of two or more DAIA symptoms in the bipolar sample, influenced mainly by anxiety. The severity of manic symptoms in mixed depression, assessed by Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS), was significantly associated with the presence of two or more DAIA symptoms in the bipolar sample and three or four DAIA symptoms in the unipolar sample. CONCLUSION: DAIA symptoms were associated with greater severity of manic symptoms in mixed depression. DAIA symptoms must be evaluated in all patients with mixed features and are associated with the severity of depressive and manic symptoms in mixed depression.

Distractibility, anxiety, irritability, and agitation symptoms are associated with the severity of depressive and manic symptoms in mixed depression

Objective: To explore whether there is an association between distractibility, anxiety, irritability, and agitation (DAIA) symptoms and the severity of depressive and manic symptoms. Methods: Patients with unipolar and bipolar disorder (I and II) and mixed depression were evaluated. DAIA symptoms were assessed using previously described definitions. Results: The full analysis set comprised 100 patients. The severity of depressive symptoms in mixed depression, assessed by Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), was significantly associated with the presence of two or more DAIA symptoms in the bipolar sample, influenced mainly by anxiety. The severity of manic symptoms in mixed depression, assessed by Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS), was significantly associated with the presence of two or more DAIA symptoms in the bipolar sample and three or four DAIA symptoms in the unipolar sample. Conclusion: DAIA symptoms were associated with greater severity of manic symptoms in mixed depression. DAIA symptoms must be evaluated in all patients with mixed features and are associated with the severity of depressive and manic symptoms in mixed depression. Clinical trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04123301).

Affective States and Virtual Reality to Improve Gait Rehabilitation: A Preliminary Study.

Over seven million people suffer from an impairment in Mexico; 64.1% are gait-related, and 36.2% are children aged 0 to 14 years. Furthermore, many suffer from neurological disorders, which limits their verbal skills to provide accurate feedback. Robot-assisted gait therapy has shown significant benefits, but the users must make an active effort to accomplish muscular memory, which usually is only around 30% of the time. Moreover, during therapy, the patients' affective state is mostly unsatisfied, wide-awake, and powerless. This paper proposes a method for increasing the efficiency by combining affective data from an Emotiv Insight, an Oculus Go headset displaying an immersive interaction, and a feedback system. Our preliminary study had eight patients during therapy and eight students analyzing the footage using the self-assessment Manikin. It showed that it is possible to use an EEG headset and identify the affective state with a weighted average precision of 97.5%, recall of 87.9%, and F1-score of 92.3% in general. Furthermore, using a VR device could boost efficiency by 16% more. In conclusion, this method allows providing feedback to the therapist in real-time even if the patient is non-verbal and has a limited amount of facial and body expressions.

Analysis of different affective state multimodal recognition approaches with missing data-oriented to virtual learning environments.

In this work, the affective state of users in virtual learning environments is assessed/recognized in terms of continuous arousal and valence dimensions, making use of multimodal information (audio, text and video), whenever any of these modalities are available. In general, virtual learning environments where these three modalities are all the time, are not common; at some moments only the video modality is available, while in others only text or/and video and/or audio. Different approaches using feature-level fusion and decision-level fusion are proposed for multimodal recognition with missing data. Recognizing according to available modalities is studied following the ideas of dropout from neural networks and of variable input length from recurrent neural networks. This proposal is innovative because it represents emotions in the continuous space, which is not common in virtual education; and makes use of the available modalities in a virtual environment in a given moment, which is very common in virtual learning environments because the people are not speaking or writing all the time.

Cancer blues? A promising judgment bias task indicates pessimism in nude mice with tumors.

In humans, affective states can bias responses to ambiguous information: a phenomenon termed judgment bias (JB). Judgment biases have great potential for assessing affective states in animals, in both animal welfare and biomedical research. New animal JB tasks require construct validation, but for laboratory mice (Mus musculus), the most common research vertebrate, a valid JB task has proved elusive. Here (Experiment 1), we demonstrate construct validity for a novel mouse JB test: an olfactory Go/Go task in which subjects dig for high- or low-value food rewards. In C57BL/6 and Balb/c mice faced with ambiguous cues, latencies to dig were sensitive to high/low welfare housing: environmentally-enriched animals responded with relative 'optimism' through shorter latencies. Illustrating the versatility of this validated JB task across different fields of research, it further allowed us to test hypotheses about the mood-altering effects of cancer in male and female nude mice (Experiment 2). Males, although not females, treated ambiguous cues as intermediate; and males bearing subcutaneous lung adenocarcinomas also responded more pessimistically to these than did healthy controls. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence of a valid mouse JB task, and the first demonstration of pessimism in tumor-bearing animals. This task still needs to be refined to improve its sensitivity. However, it has great potential for investigating mouse welfare, the links between affective state and disease, depression-like states in animals, and hypotheses regarding the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie affect-mediated biases in judgment.

Eliciting Negative Affects Using Film Clips and Real-Life Methods.

Although audio-visual stimuli are among the most frequently used methods to elicit emotional reactions in experimental conditions, real-life manipulations have increasingly been used in different countries. However, the applicability of such protocols has not yet been tested in Brazilian Portuguese speakers. Thus, we conducted two experiments to investigate the effectiveness of both methods. In the first experiment, we used film clips to induce negative emotions (i.e., anger, fear, or sadness) or an emotionally neutral condition in 321 undergraduate students. After watching one of the online videos, volunteers completed an emotional assessment. As expected, there were significant differences in all groups. Our results corroborate the relatively discrete patterns in emotion elicitation using films. In the second experiment, anger was elicited in 18 male undergraduates through a hostile social interaction with a confederate and measured by the corrugator muscle activity and cortisol responses. Indeed, there was an increase in corrugator activity in the group exposed to anger induction, even after a few minutes from the end of the experimental manipulation. Implications for experiments on the negative emotions are discussed.

Afecto positivo y negativo: ¿Una dimensión bipolar o dos dimensiones unipolares independientes? / Positive and negative affect: One bipolar dimension or two independent unipolar dimensions?

Desde los trabajos pioneros de Bradburn (1969) el afecto positivo y el afecto negativo han sido concebidos como dos dimensiones unipolares independientes, aunque todavía se mantiene hoy en día la controversia teórica entre defensores de un modelo unidimensional bipolar y los de un modelo bidimensional unipolar. El objetivo de este artículo es revisar la problemática que rodea esta controversia tomando en consideración por un lado, los dos estados afectivos (el humor o tono afectivo y las emociones) y por otro lado, revisando los estudios y modelos teóricos provenientes de distintas áreas tales como Psicometría, Psicología Básica, neurociencia, Psicología Clínica y Psicología de la Salud. Finalmente, se ofrece una posible explicación a los datos contradictorios obtenidos en los distintos estudios. Se sugiere la conveniencia de hacer estudios claramente diferenciados sobre el humor y las emociones. Sobre el humor existen pocos trabajos, pero éstos ofrecen mayor apoyo a un modelo unidimensional bipolar. Sin embargo, sobre las emociones hay mayor cantidad de estudios que ofrecen mayor apoyo a un modelo bidimensional unipolar.

Since the seminal contribution of Bradburn (1969), positive and negative affect have been conceived as two independent unipolar dimensions. However, the controversy between these ideas and the supporters of a single bipolar dimension is nowadays still alive. In this review we identify two problems. The first one is of a conceptual nature, because, as Russell and Carroll (1999) pointed out, the term affection is not unambiguously defined and rarely researchers in this field make an explicit definition. According to Rosenberg (1988), there are at least two types of affective states, which are widely acknowledged: emotions and mood, or affective tone. Emotions are characterized for, and differ from mood in, appearing in response to an event, being intense, short-lived and specific. They are also characterized by provoking important physiological reactions in the individuals, as well as recognizable patterns of facial expression, and by determining individuals to behave congruently in relation to the emotion they are experiencing. Combining these two very different components of affect hinders the comparison of the work of different authors, and also the development of theoretical models combining the different aspects included within this concept. The second problem is related to the measurements used in the research assessing affect, where the possible existence of events or circumstances causing the affective state is not normally considered. Likewise, measurement regarding the duration of the affect are rarely performed, and objective measurements such as physiological correlates or facial expressions are not frequently collected. Consequently, instruments do not normally distinguish between mood and emotion. The aim of this paper is to review the most relevant questions regarding this debate taking into account, on the one hand, the two affective states included in the concept of affectivity (i.e., mood and emotion) and, on the other hand, the empirical and theoretical contributions provided by a wide range of disciplines such as Psychometry, Basic Psychology, neuroscience, and Clinical and Health Psychology. From Basic Psychology and Psychometry we reviewed the three fundamental argumentations advocating for an independence of positive and negative affect, as identified by Diener and Emmons (1984) and Russell and Carroll (1999): (1) that the correlation between items that evaluate the positive affect and negative affect is low, (2) that the correlation of items within the categories of positive affect and negative affect is high, and (3) that the two dimensions of affect correlate differently with other variables. A fourth argument is discussed referring to the variations of both affect types observed throughout a lifetime (Bushman & Crowley, 2010; Windsor & Anstey, 2010). From the neuro-scientific perspective we reviewed studies providing data on brain structures and neurotransmitters involved in both affect types, noting that all these studies have been carried out by inducing intense moods, which indeed might be classified as emotions rather than humor. From Psychopathology and Clinical Psychology we reviewed those disorders in which states of positive and negative mood can be experienced in a very intensive manner (positive and negative emotions), in very short periods of time and even at the same time. We also reviewed research studying the independent presence of positive and negative affect in several disorders, as well as some theoretical models on depression that indicate the possibility and desirability of adopting a 'dual' perspective in the assessment and the intervention strategies of both types of emotions in the depressive disorder and other disorders. A proposal about the reason of such contradictory findings is presented, and we suggest that research about this topic should be better conducted setting apart mood from emotions using tools that allow measuring those elements capable of distinguishing between affect types. Although the few existing studies about affective traits and mood seem to support the bipolar one-dimensional model, the conclusions drawn from the numerous investigations about emotions favor the two independent unipolar dimensions model.

Afecto positivo y negativo: ¿Una dimensión bipolar o dos dimensiones unipolares independientes? / Positive and negative affect: One bipolar dimension or two independent unipolar dimensions?

Desde los trabajos pioneros de Bradburn (1969) el afecto positivo y el afecto negativo han sido concebidos como dos dimensiones unipolares independientes, aunque todavía se mantiene hoy en día la controversia teórica entre defensores de un modelo unidimensional bipolar y los de un modelo bidimensional unipolar. El objetivo de este artículo es revisar la problemática que rodea esta controversia tomando en consideración por un lado, los dos estados afectivos (el humor o tono afectivo y las emociones) y por otro lado, revisando los estudios y modelos teóricos provenientes de distintas áreas tales como Psicometría, Psicología Básica, neurociencia, Psicología Clínica y Psicología de la Salud. Finalmente, se ofrece una posible explicación a los datos contradictorios obtenidos en los distintos estudios. Se sugiere la conveniencia de hacer estudios claramente diferenciados sobre el humor y las emociones. Sobre el humor existen pocos trabajos, pero éstos ofrecen mayor apoyo a un modelo unidimensional bipolar. Sin embargo, sobre las emociones hay mayor cantidad de estudios que ofrecen mayor apoyo a un modelo bidimensional unipolar.(AU)

Since the seminal contribution of Bradburn (1969), positive and negative affect have been conceived as two independent unipolar dimensions. However, the controversy between these ideas and the supporters of a single bipolar dimension is nowadays still alive. In this review we identify two problems. The first one is of a conceptual nature, because, as Russell and Carroll (1999) pointed out, the term affection is not unambiguously defined and rarely researchers in this field make an explicit definition. According to Rosenberg (1988), there are at least two types of affective states, which are widely acknowledged: emotions and mood, or affective tone. Emotions are characterized for, and differ from mood in, appearing in response to an event, being intense, short-lived and specific. They are also characterized by provoking important physiological reactions in the individuals, as well as recognizable patterns of facial expression, and by determining individuals to behave congruently in relation to the emotion they are experiencing. Combining these two very different components of affect hinders the comparison of the work of different authors, and also the development of theoretical models combining the different aspects included within this concept. The second problem is related to the measurements used in the research assessing affect, where the possible existence of events or circumstances causing the affective state is not normally considered. Likewise, measurement regarding the duration of the affect are rarely performed, and objective measurements such as physiological correlates or facial expressions are not frequently collected. Consequently, instruments do not normally distinguish between mood and emotion. The aim of this paper is to review the most relevant questions regarding this debate taking into account, on the one hand, the two affective states included in the concept of affectivity (i.e., mood and emotion) and, on the other hand, the empirical and theoretical contributions provided by a wide range of disciplines such as Psychometry, Basic Psychology, neuroscience, and Clinical and Health Psychology. From Basic Psychology and Psychometry we reviewed the three fundamental argumentations advocating for an independence of positive and negative affect, as identified by Diener and Emmons (1984) and Russell and Carroll (1999): (1) that the correlation between items that evaluate the positive affect and negative affect is low, (2) that the correlation of items within the categories of positive affect and negative affect is high, and (3) that the two dimensions of affect correlate differently with other variables. A fourth argument is discussed referring to the variations of both affect types observed throughout a lifetime (Bushman & Crowley, 2010; Windsor & Anstey, 2010). From the neuro-scientific perspective we reviewed studies providing data on brain structures and neurotransmitters involved in both affect types, noting that all these studies have been carried out by inducing intense moods, which indeed might be classified as emotions rather than humor. From Psychopathology and Clinical Psychology we reviewed those disorders in which states of positive and negative mood can be experienced in a very intensive manner (positive and negative emotions), in very short periods of time and even at the same time. We also reviewed research studying the independent presence of positive and negative affect in several disorders, as well as some theoretical models on depression that indicate the possibility and desirability of adopting a dual perspective in the assessment and the intervention strategies of both types of emotions in the depressive disorder and other disorders. A proposal about the reason of such contradictory findings is presented, and we suggest that research about this topic should be better conducted setting apart mood from emotions using tools that allow measuring those elements capable of distinguishing between affect types. Although the few existing studies about affective traits and mood seem to support the bipolar one-dimensional model, the conclusions drawn from the numerous investigations about emotions favor the two independent unipolar dimensions model.(AU)