Development and Validation of the Emotion Laden Sentences Toolbox for Emotion Recognition (ELSTER).

Introduction: Emotion recognition plays a crucial role in our social interactions and overall well-being. The present cross-sectional study aimed to develop and validate Emotion Laden Sentences Toolbox for Emotion Recognition (ELSTER), that utilizes emotion-laden sentences as stimuli to assess individuals' ability to perceive and identify emotions conveyed through written language. Methods: In Phase I, a comprehensive set of emotion-laden sentences in English language were validated by 25 (eight males and 17 females) qualified mental health professionals (MHPs). In Phase II, the sentences that received high interrater agreement in Phase I were selected and then a Hindi version of the same sentences was also developed. The English and Hindi database was then validated among 50 healthy individuals (30 males and 20 females). Results: The percentage hit rate for all the emotions after exclusion of contempt was 84.3% with a mean kappa for emotional expression being 0.67 among MHPs. The percentage hit rate of all emotion-laden sentences across the database was 81.43% among healthy lay individuals. The mean hit rate percentage for English sentences was similar to Hindi sentences with a mean kappa for emotional expression being 0.63 for the combined English and Hindi sentences. Conclusion: The ELSTER database would be useful in the Indian context for researching textual emotion recognition. It has been validated among a group of experts as well as healthy lay individuals and was found to have high inter-rater reliability.

Development and Validation of the AIIMS Facial Toolbox for Emotion Recognition.

Background: Emotional facial expression database, used in emotion regulation studies, is a special set of pictures with high social and biological relevance. We present the AIIMS Facial Toolbox for Emotion Recognition (AFTER) database. It consists of pictures of 15 adult professional artists displaying seven facial expressions-neutral, happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, fear, and surprise. Methods: This cross-sectional study enrolled 15 volunteer students from a professional drama college in India (six males and nine females; mean age = 26.2 ± 1.93 years). They were instructed to pose with different emotional expressions in high and low intensity. A total of 240 pictures were captured in a brightly lit room against a common, light background. Each picture was validated independently by 19 mental health professionals and two professional teachers of dramatic art. Apart from recognition of emotional quality, ratings were done for each emotion on a 5-point Likert scale with respect to three dimensions-intensity, clarity, and genuineness. Results are discussed in terms of mean scores on all four parameters. Results: The percentage hit rate for all the emotions, after exclusion of contempt, was 84.3%, with the mean kappa for emotional expression being 0.68. Mean scores on intensity, clarity, and genuineness of the emotions depicted in the pictures were high. Conclusions: The database would be useful in the Indian context for researching facial emotion recognition. It has been validated among a group of experts and was found to have high inter-rater reliability.

Neural correlates of sex-related differences in attachment dimensions.

The purpose of this study was to investigate sex-related differences in the electrophysiological response to socioemotional stimuli (positive, negative, and ambiguous) depicting couple interactions. The associations between anxiety and avoidance attachment dimensions (measured with the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised questionnaire) and the strength of cortico-limbic circuit intensity was explored, recorded using a 256-Hydrocel Geodesic Sensor-Net. Event-related potentials (ERPs) and standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) data were analyzed for a total sample of 74 participants. Regression analyses showed that the women presented increased brain intensity compared with that in men, and the avoidance score was positively associated with brain intensity, particularly in response to negative socioemotional stimuli. The interaction sex per avoidance was a significant predictor of intensity in many brain areas, with women displaying significantly more pronounced positive associations between avoidance and brain intensity than men. In conclusion, the findings of the present study showed that women appeared to be more emotionally involved during the socioemotional task. Avoidance was positively associated with intensity of the cingulate and prefrontal regions, and these associations were more pronounced in women than in men. These findings suggested that avoidance seems to represent two different socioemotional strategies, in which women appear to activate an avoidant strategy to modulate increased emotional involvement in relationships, whereas men appear to adopt avoidance with a more intense emotional suppression.

Neurophysiological correlate of emotional regulation in cognitive and motor deficits in Tourette's syndrome.

Objectives: The present study investigated the role of different emotions in the expression of cognitive and motor control abilities of children having Tourette's syndrome (TS) compared to healthy controls.Methods: The electroencephalography activity of 33 children (mean age in final sample: TS (n = 10) = 10.5 ± 2.3; control (n = 10) = 10.1 ± 2.9) was recorded during a visual task consisting of four emotional face cues (anger, happiness, neutral and sadness) followed by a target in congruent or incongruent position with emotional cue. The participants were asked to indicate the target location.Results: The TS patients showed a shorter latency of the P1 and N170 only for anger cues compared to controls. In addition, sLORETA results showed an increased activation in the left occipital area and a decreased activation in the left amygdala, temporal and cingulate for anger cues in TS patients. Coherently, TS patients showed a lower accuracy of response only with anger cue and severity of tics resulted correlated with the event-related potentials data and behavioural responses linked to anger cue.Conclusions: These results suggest that children with TS process emotions (in particular the anger) differently from the controls, and that its regulation seems to have an important role in the cognitive and motor deficits in TS.

Neural Correlates of Outcome of the Psychotherapy Compared to Antidepressant Therapy in Anxiety and Depression Disorders: A Meta-Analysis.

The most prevalent mental disorders, anxiety and depression, are commonly associated with structural and functional changes in the fronto-limbic brain areas. The clinical trials investigating patients with affective disorders showed different outcome to different treatments such as psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy. It is, however, still unexplored how these interventions approach affect the functional brain. This meta-analysis aims to compare the effects of psychotherapy compared to antidepressant therapy on functional brain activity in anxiety and depression disorders. Twenty-one samples with psychotherapy and seventeen samples with antidepressant therapy were included. The main finding showed an inverse effect of the two treatments on the right paracingulate activity. The patients undergoing psychotherapy showed an increase in the right paracingulate activity while pharmacological treatment led to a decrease of activation of this area. This finding seems to support the recent studies that hypothesize how psychotherapy, through the self-knowledge and the meaning processing, involves a top-down emotional regulation.

Are Motor Skills and Motor Inhibitions Impaired in Tourette Syndrome? A Review.

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neurodevelopmental motor disorder described as an inability to inhibit unwanted motor movements. This article reviews research on the execution and inhibition of voluntary motor movements in TS. Over last two decades, a number of studies have addressed the structural and functional deficits associated with this syndrome. Only a limited number of studies have assessed the motor skills in these patients but have failed to reach any conclusive outcome. In the domain of response inhibition also, studies have reported arguable impairments in these patients. It is suggested that these conflicting results can be attributed to co-occurring comorbid conditions, the constraints posed by variable age groups, lack of control measures, and lack of specificity of domains addressed. This review will describe a way in which future research can be directed to increase our knowledge of this otherwise complex spectrum of disorders.