Modulatory effects of transcranial direct current stimulation of right insula on compassion motivation

Background: Compassion motivation is associated with increased heart rate variability (HRV), reflecting a calm and self-soothing physiological state. Recent work, however, suggests that this association is dynamic for the specific components of compassion. Objectives: The present study adopted anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting the right insula to see whether this would modulate the sensitivity to suffering and the commitment to engage in helpful actions (i.e., the components of compassion motivation). Method: Ninety-seven healthy individuals underwent 15-min anodal or sham tDCS over the frontotemporal lobe, while watching a video inducing empathic sensitivity and performing a Redistribution Game. Tonic and phasic HRV, dispositional traits, and momentary affects were assessed. Results: Compared to sham condition, anodal stimulation favored significant i) HRV reductions during the video and HRV increases during the Redistribution Game; ii) decreases in self-reported levels of negative affect and increases in positive affect during task when the latter was preceded by the video, without influencing altruistic behavior. Conclusions: Anodal tDCS over the right insula may modulate the engagement phase of compassion by intensifying the psychophysiological sensitivity to signals of distress and protecting from being subjectively overwhelmed by it. (AU)

Mind matters: A narrative review on affective state-dependency in non-invasive brain stimulation

Variability in findings related to non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) have increasingly been described as a result of differences in neurophysiological state. Additionally, there is some evidence suggesting that individual differences in psychological states may correlate with the magnitude and directionality of effects of NIBS on the neural and behavioural level. In this narrative review, it is proposed that the assessment of baseline affective states can quantify non-reductive properties which are not readily accessible to neuroscientific methods. Particularly, affective-related states are theorized to correlate with physiological, behavioural and phenomenological effects of NIBS. While further systematic research is needed, baseline psychological states are suggested to provide a complementary cost-effective source of information for understanding variability in NIBS outcomes. Implementing measures of psychological state may potentially contribute to increasing the sensitivity and specificity of results in experimental and clinical NIBS studies. (AU)

Raw reveries, polaroid reveries: Some hypotheses about possible functions and technical uses of reveries in the session.

The author tries to show how the epiphany of a reverie during a session can become a source of unexpected intuitions about the essence and possible figurability of the emotional experience which is flowing in the here-and-now of the analytic life. Reverie becomes an important analytic source above all when an analyst is in contact with primordial states of the mind, characterized by turbulences of unrepresentable feelings and sensations. In this paper the author outlines a hypothetical kit of functions, technical uses and analytic effects of a reverie in an analytic process, working through the idea of analysis as the transformation in dreaming of the nightmares and terrors which beset and trouble the patient's mind. In particular the author describes: (a) the use of reverie as a criterion of analysability in first consultation meetings; (b) the specificity of two different types of reverie, which the author names reveries polaroid and raw reveries; and (c) the possible disclosure of a reverie in case of a specific kind of reverie that the author calls polaroid reverie. Sketches of analytic life become living portraits of the hypothesis proposed by the author about these different possible uses of a reverie in analytic work, as a probe and resource for beginning and developing a course of analysis that engages with archaic and presymbolic areas of psychic functioning.

Neurologists' lived experiences of communicating the diagnosis of a motor neurodegenerative condition: an interpretative phenomenological analysis.

BACKGROUND: Receiving the diagnosis of a motor neurodegenerative condition (MNDC) can be a life-changing experience. Although several studies of individuals' experiences have indicated dissatisfaction with aspects of how an MNDC diagnosis was communicated, few studies have addressed doctors' experiences of breaking bad news for these conditions, especially from a qualitative perspective. This study explored UK neurologists' lived experience of delivering an MNDC diagnosis. METHODS: Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used as the overarching method. Eight consultant neurologists working with patients with MNDCs took part in individual, semi-structured interviews. RESULTS: Two themes were constructed from the data: 'Meeting patients' emotional and information needs at diagnosis: a balancing act between disease, patient and organization-related factors', and 'Empathy makes the job harder: the emotional impact and uncovered vulnerabilities associated with breaking bad news'. Breaking the news of an MNDC diagnosis was challenging for participants, both in terms of achieving a patient-centred approach and in terms of dealing with their own emotions during the process. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the study's findings an attempt to explain sub-optimal diagnostic experiences documented in patient studies was made and how organizational changes can support neurologists with this demanding clinical task was discussed.

[Art therapy support for patients suffering from burn-out]. / L'accompagnement en art-thérapie de patients en situation de burn-out.

The persons suffering from burn-out is in a situation of physical and psychological exhaustion. They are cut off from their ability to mobilize their resources. The art therapist invites the patient to spontaneous and creative introspective work based on bodily and emotional feelings. This process leads the patient to the discovery of his or her sensitive identity. By gradually getting in touch with his inner resources, he asserts himself and regains confidence in his potential.

He Looks Like My Father.

Social media has kept us connected in many ways but for Black adults, it can be a harrowing reminder of the treatment of Black bodies. This poem was crafted from focus group data on a study of the effects of vicarious racism on the mental health of Black adults in the wake of George Floyd's death in 2020. This poem uses elements of found poetry and incorporates texts from the narrative (re)telling of Black adults' emotional impact of seeing racially and police-involved killings of Black men. Participants expressed feelings of anger, powerlessness, and sadness and how watching these videos has led to avoidance behavior for the sake of coping. In this poem titled "He Looks like My Father," the participant shares a memory of the last video that they watched on social media in 2014 and why they continue to avoid this type of content. It's traumatizing. It is important to fully reflect on these stories as Black Americans struggle with staying informed and preserving their mental health while being inundated by a continuous feedback loop of Black death. The elements of this poem incorporate repetition and the bolded words are verbatim text from the participant transcript. I acknowledge that my positionality being a Black American woman, with a Black father, and having shared the embodied experience of witnessing Black death via social media influenced the meaning of this poem. As we continue to see a focus on naming racism as a public health threat, this form of vicarious racism is salient and should be explored as health professionals dig deeper into understanding the many ways racism permeates the lives of Black, is a daily stressor, and is a social determinant of mental health equity. These are the narratives from muted lips to unveil your eyes. To view the original version of this poem, see the supplemental material section of this article online.

The Effects of Social Presence and Familiarity on Children-Robot Interactions.

In children-robot interactions, an impression of a robot's "social presence" (i.e., an interactive agent that feels like a person) links positively to an improved relationship with the robot. However, building relationships takes many exposures, and there is an intellectual gap in how social presence and familiarity collaborate in modulating children-robot relationships. We investigated whether social presence altered over time, how repeated exposure and social presence affected rapport, and how social presence would modulate children's attitudes toward the robot. Fourteen children (four female, age = 10.79 ± 1.12) interacted with a companion robot for four days in spontaneous interactions. The findings revealed that children who perceived the robot as having a higher social presence developed a stronger rapport than those who perceived a lower social presence. However, repeated encounters did not change the children's perceptions of the robot's social presence. Children rated higher rapport after repeated interactions regardless of social presence levels. This suggests that while a higher social presence initially elevated the positive relationship between children and the robot, it was the repeated interactions that continued solidifying the rapport. Additionally, children who perceived a higher social presence from the robot felt less relational uneasiness about their relationship with robots. These findings highlight the importance of robots' social presence and familiarity in promoting positive relationships in children-robot interaction.

A Real-Time Learning Analytics Dashboard for Automatic Detection of Online Learners' Affective States.

Students' affective states describe their engagement, concentration, attitude, motivation, happiness, sadness, frustration, off-task behavior, and confusion level in learning. In online learning, students' affective states are determinative of the learning quality. However, measuring various affective states and what influences them is exceedingly challenging for the lecturer without having real interaction with the students. Existing studies primarily use self-reported data to understand students' affective states, while this paper presents a novel learning analytics system called MOEMO (Motion and Emotion) that could measure online learners' affective states of engagement and concentration using emotion data. Therefore, the novelty of this research is to visualize online learners' affective states on lecturers' screens in real-time using an automated emotion detection process. In real-time and offline, the system extracts emotion data by analyzing facial features from the lecture videos captured by the typical built-in web camera of a laptop computer. The system determines online learners' five types of engagement ("strong engagement", "high engagement", "medium engagement", "low engagement", and "disengagement") and two types of concentration levels ("focused" and "distracted"). Furthermore, the dashboard is designed to provide insight into students' emotional states, the clusters of engaged and disengaged students', assistance with intervention, create an after-class summary report, and configure the automation parameters to adapt to the study environment.

Implicit IAT Measures and Neurophysiological fNIRS Markers in Response to High-Engagement Advertising.

Self-report measures partially explain consumers' purchasing choices, which are inextricably linked to cognitive, affective processes and implicit drives. These aspects, which occur outside of awareness and tacitly affect the way consumers make decisions, could be explored by exploiting neuroscientific technology. The study investigates implicit behavioural and neurovascular responses to emotionally arousing and high-engagement advertisements (COVID-19 content). High-engagement advertisements and control stimuli were shown in two experimental sessions that were counterbalanced across participants. During each session, hemodynamic variations were recorded with functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), a neurophysiological marker for emotional processing. The implicit association task (IAT) was administered to investigate the implicit attitude. An increase in the concentration of oxygenated haemoglobin (O2Hb) was found for the high-engagement advertising when this category of stimuli was seen first. Specular results were found for deoxygenated haemoglobin (HHb) data. The IAT reported higher values for highly engaging stimuli. Increased activity within the PFC suggests that highly engaging content may be effective in generating emotional arousal and increasing attention when presented before other stimuli, which is consistent with the higher IAT scores, indicating more favourable implicit attitudes. This evidence suggests that the effectiveness of highly engaging advertising-related messages may be constrained by the order of advertisement administration.

A Hybrid Multimodal Emotion Recognition Framework for UX Evaluation Using Generalized Mixture Functions.

Multimodal emotion recognition has gained much traction in the field of affective computing, human-computer interaction (HCI), artificial intelligence (AI), and user experience (UX). There is growing demand to automate analysis of user emotion towards HCI, AI, and UX evaluation applications for providing affective services. Emotions are increasingly being used, obtained through the videos, audio, text or physiological signals. This has led to process emotions from multiple modalities, usually combined through ensemble-based systems with static weights. Due to numerous limitations like missing modality data, inter-class variations, and intra-class similarities, an effective weighting scheme is thus required to improve the aforementioned discrimination between modalities. This article takes into account the importance of difference between multiple modalities and assigns dynamic weights to them by adapting a more efficient combination process with the application of generalized mixture (GM) functions. Therefore, we present a hybrid multimodal emotion recognition (H-MMER) framework using multi-view learning approach for unimodal emotion recognition and introducing multimodal feature fusion level, and decision level fusion using GM functions. In an experimental study, we evaluated the ability of our proposed framework to model a set of four different emotional states (Happiness, Neutral, Sadness, and Anger) and found that most of them can be modeled well with significantly high accuracy using GM functions. The experiment shows that the proposed framework can model emotional states with an average accuracy of 98.19% and indicates significant gain in terms of performance in contrast to traditional approaches. The overall evaluation results indicate that we can identify emotional states with high accuracy and increase the robustness of an emotion classification system required for UX measurement.

Effective Emoticon Suggestion Technique Based on Active Emotional Input Using Facial Expressions and Heart Rate Signals.

The evolution of mobile communication technology has brought about significant changes in the way people communicate. However, the lack of nonverbal cues in computer-mediated communication can make the accurate interpretation of emotions difficult. This study proposes a novel approach for using emotions as active input in mobile systems. This approach combines psychological and neuroscientific principles to accurately and comprehensively assess an individual's emotions for use as input in mobile systems. The proposed technique combines facial and heart rate information to recognize users' five prime emotions, which can be implemented on mobile devices using a front camera and a heart rate sensor. A user evaluation was conducted to verify the efficacy and feasibility of the proposed technique, and the results showed that users could express emotions faster and more accurately, with average recognition accuracies of 90% and 82% for induced and intended emotional expression, respectively. The proposed technique has the potential to enhance the user experience and provide more personalized and dynamic interaction with mobile systems.

Inferential Emotion Tracking reveals impaired context-based emotion processing in individuals with high Autism Quotient scores.

Emotion perception is essential for successful social interactions and maintaining long-term relationships with friends and family. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience social communication deficits and have reported difficulties in facial expression recognition. However, emotion recognition depends on more than just processing face expression; context is critically important to correctly infer the emotions of others. Whether context-based emotion processing is impacted in those with Autism remains unclear. Here, we used a recently developed context-based emotion perception task, called Inferential Emotion Tracking (IET), and investigated whether individuals who scored high on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) had deficits in context-based emotion perception. Using 34 videos (including Hollywood movies, home videos, and documentaries), we tested 102 participants as they continuously tracked the affect (valence and arousal) of a blurred-out, invisible character. We found that individual differences in Autism Quotient scores were more strongly correlated with IET task accuracy than they are with traditional face emotion perception tasks. This correlation remained significant even when controlling for potential covarying factors, general intelligence, and performance on traditional face perception tasks. These findings suggest that individuals with ASD may have impaired perception of contextual information, it reveals the importance of developing ecologically relevant emotion perception tasks in order to better assess and treat ASD, and it provides a new direction for further research on context-based emotion perception deficits in ASD.

Language considerations for children of parents with substance use disorders.

Parents with substance use disorders are highly stigmatized by multiple systems (e.g., healthcare, education, legal, social). As a result, they are more likely to experience discrimination and health inequities [1, 2]. Children of parents with substance use disorders often do not fare any better, as they frequently experience stigma and poorer outcomes by association [3, 4]. Calls to action for person-centered language for alcohol and other drug problems have led to improved terminology [5-8]. Despite a long history of stigmatizing, offensive labels such as "children of alcoholics" and "crack babies," children have been left out of person-centered language initiatives. Children of parents with substance use disorders can feel invisible, shameful, isolated, and forgotten-particularly in treatment settings when programming is centered on the parent [9, 10]. Person-centered language is shown to improve treatment outcomes and reduce stigma [11, 12]. Therefore, we need to adhere to consistent, non-stigmatizing terminology when referencing children of parents with substance use disorders. Most importantly, we must center the voices and preferences of those with lived experience to enact meaningful change and effective resource allocation.

Reliability and validity of the brief version of the difficulties in emotion regulation scale in a sample of Turkish adolescents.

BACKGROUND: Difficulty in regulating emotions increases during adolescence and can be associated with psychopathology. It is thus crucial to develop tools to identify adolescents at risk of having emotional difficulties. This study aimed to investigate the reliability and validity of a brief questionnaire in a sample of Turkish adolescents. METHODS: A total of 256 participants (mean age = 15.51 ± 0.85) were recruited. They completed the original form of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS-36), a brief version of DERS (DERS-16), the Barrett Impulsivity Scale (BIS-11), and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS). Psychometric properties of DERS-16 were investigated by confirmatory factor analysis, Cronbach's alpha, and Pearson correlational analysis. RESULTS: A five-factor model and second-order bifactor model of DERS-16 were confirmed. Cronbach's alpha values for the subscales varied between 0.69 and 0.88, while the reliability of the factors Difficulties in Emotional Processing and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation were 0.75 and 0.90, respectively. DERS-16 subscales were positively correlated with the BIS-11 and TAS. In addition, there were only minimal differences between the DERS-16 and DERS-36. CONCLUSION: The DERS-16 is a valid and reliable scale for Turkish adolescents. The fact that it has fewer items than DERS-36, but has similar reliability and validity and can be used as two factors, provides significant advantages in terms of applicability.

Goals and goal perceptions in patients with advanced stage lung cancer: a mixed methods study.

PURPOSE: Goals provide insight into what is important to an individual. We describe the development and application of a mixed methods approach to elicit goals and perceptions about goals in patients with advanced cancer. METHODS: Patients receiving first-line treatment for advanced lung cancer participated in semi-structured interviews about their goals. Participants self-generated goals, then selected and ranked their three most important goals and provided Likert scale ratings of goal-related perceptions (e.g., attainability, locus of control). Independent raters coded goals into content domains. One month later, participants reported perceived progress toward goals and facilitators of and barriers to progress. RESULTS: Participants (N = 75, Mage = 64.5 years, 59% female) identified goals across eight domains: social/role/relationship, everyday/practical, leisure/pleasure, psychological/existential/spiritual, major life changes or achievements, cancer treatment response/disease outcomes, palliative outcomes, and behavioral health improvement. Of all goals identified (N = 352), 72% of patients had at least one social/role/relationship goal, 68% had a leisure/pleasure goal, and 29% had a cancer treatment response goal. On average, participants considered their goals to be attainable, perceived a high degree of control over reaching goals, anticipated making "some" progress in the short term, and perceived a high likelihood of reaching goals in the future. Facilitators of progress included mental fortitude, feeling physically well, and social support. Barriers included cancer-related side effects, practical challenges, and COVID-19. CONCLUSIONS: A majority of participant goals focused on meaningful engagement and living well. Goals were largely viewed as attainable and under participants' control. Cancer clinicians may consider how to support patients in working toward valued goals in conjunction with oncology care.

Neurocomputational mechanisms underlying fear-biased adaptation learning in changing environments.

Humans are able to adapt to the fast-changing world by estimating statistical regularities of the environment. Although fear can profoundly impact adaptive behaviors, the computational and neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon remain elusive. Here, we conducted a behavioral experiment (n = 21) and a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment (n = 37) with a novel cue-biased adaptation learning task, during which we simultaneously manipulated emotional valence (fearful/neutral expressions of the cue) and environmental volatility (frequent/infrequent reversals of reward probabilities). Across 2 experiments, computational modeling consistently revealed a higher learning rate for the environment with frequent versus infrequent reversals following neutral cues. In contrast, this flexible adjustment was absent in the environment with fearful cues, suggesting a suppressive role of fear in adaptation to environmental volatility. This suppressive effect was underpinned by activity of the ventral striatum, hippocampus, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) as well as increased functional connectivity between the dACC and temporal-parietal junction (TPJ) for fear with environmental volatility. Dynamic causal modeling identified that the driving effect was located in the TPJ and was associated with dACC activation, suggesting that the suppression of fear on adaptive behaviors occurs at the early stage of bottom-up processing. These findings provide a neuro-computational account of how fear interferes with adaptation to volatility during dynamic environments.

Feelings toward lying flatism and attitudes toward singlehood: the mediating role of happiness belief.

BACKGROUND: Lying flatism, a new emerging lifestyle by refusing to participate in consumerist lifestyles, is anticipated to be related to singlehood. Based on the Theory of Reasoned Action, we proposed a mediation model to examine the indirect relationship between feelings towards lying flatism and attitudes toward singlehood via individuals' belief in that happiness can be achieved without romantic relationships (happiness belief). METHODS: Using purposive and snowball sampling methods, 232 single Malaysian young adults participated in an online experiment consisting of a writing task (to manipulate feelings toward lying flatism), single-item measures of manipulation checking and happiness belief, Attitudes toward Singlehood Scale, Negative Stereotyping of Single Persons Scale (a measure of singlism) and Fear of Being Single Scale. RESULTS: T-Test results support the writing task that successfully induced positive feelings toward lying flatism. Mediation analysis showed that the feelings toward lying flatism measured before the writing task, but not the manipulation of lying flatism, has an indirect relationship with attitudes toward singlehood via happiness belief, after controlling for gender, singlism, and fear of being single. CONCLUSIONS: The findings offer preliminary support to the hypothetical relationships among feelings towards lying flatism, happiness belief, and attitudes toward singlehood. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Age similarities in the anchoring effect in emotion intensity judgment.

BACKGROUND: The anchoring effect refers to the tendency that an individual's numerical judgment would assimilate to an anchor (a numerical value) that appears before that judgment. This study investigated whether the anchoring effect exists in the emotion judgment of younger and older adults and observed the age-related characteristics. This could not only broaden the explanation of the anchoring effect but also link this classic judgment bias with daily emotion judgment to refresh our understanding of older adults' ability in emotional perspective taking. METHOD: Participants (older adults: n = 64, age range: 60-74, 27 males; younger adults: n = 68, age range: 18-34, 34 males) read a brief emotional story and compared the protagonist's emotion intensity to a given numerical anchor (lower or higher than the anchor) and then estimated the protagonist's possible emotion intensity in that story. The task was divided into two cases according to anchor relevance (anchors are relevant or irrelevant relative to the judgment target). RESULTS: The results showed that the estimates were higher under high-anchor than low-anchor conditions, suggesting the robust anchoring effect. Further, the anchoring effect was greater for anchor-relevant than anchor-irrelevant tasks and for negative rather than positive emotions. No age differences were found. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: The results indicated that the anchoring effect is robust and stable for younger and older adults, even though the anchor information seemed irrelevant. Finally, perceiving others' negative emotions is a crucial but rather difficult aspect of empathy, which could be a challenge and requires more caution for accurate interpretation.

Changes in the Circadian Rhythm of High-Frequency Heart Rate Variability Associated With Depression.

BACKGROUND: Heart rate variability (HRV) extracted from electrocardiogram measured for a short period during a resting state is clinically used as a bio-signal reflecting the emotional state. However, as interest in wearable devices increases, greater attention is being paid to HRV extracted from long-term electrocardiogram, which may contain additional clinical information. The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of HRV parameters extracted through long-term electrocardiogram and explore the differences between participants with and without depression and anxiety symptoms. METHODS: Long-term electrocardiogram was acquired from 354 adults with no psychiatric history who underwent Holter monitoring. Evening and nighttime HRV and the ratio of nighttime-to-evening HRV were compared between 127 participants with depressive symptoms and 227 participants without depressive symptoms. Comparisons were also made between participants with and without anxiety symptoms. RESULTS: Absolute values of HRV parameters did not differ between groups based on the presence of depressive or anxiety symptoms. Overall, HRV parameters increased at nighttime compared to evening. Participants with depressive symptoms showed a significantly higher nighttime-to-evening ratio of high-frequency HRV than participants without depressive symptoms. The nighttime-to-evening ratio of HRV parameters did not show a significant difference depending on the presence of anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSION: HRV extracted through long-term electrocardiogram showed circadian rhythm. Depression may be associated with changes in the circadian rhythm of parasympathetic tone.