Attentional load effects on emotional content in face working memory.

This study investigated the role of attentional resources in processing emotional faces in working memory (WM). Participants memorised two face arrays with the same emotion but different identities and were required to judge whether the test face had the same identity as one of the previous faces. Concurrently during encoding and maintenance, a sequence of high- or low-pitched tones (high load) or white noise bursts (low load) was presented, and participants were required to count how many low-tones were heard. Experiments 1 and 2 used an emotional and neutral test face, respectively. The results revealed a significant WM impairment for sad and angry faces in the high-load versus low-load condition but not for happy faces. In Experiment 1, participants remembered happy faces better than other emotional faces. In contrast, Experiment 2 showed that performance was poorer for happy than sad faces but not for angry faces. This evidence suggests that depleting attentional resources has less impact on WM for happy faces than other emotional faces, but also that differential effects on WM for emotional faces depend on the presence or absence of emotion in the probe face at retrieval.

Blood lactate as a biomarker of depression: a comparative study between runners and sedentary people

Abstract Aim: The main objective of this work is to investigate whether recreational running, considered an aerobic exercise, would stimulate blood lactate production, reducing the risk of symptoms of depression. Methods: To accomplish this, we compared the depressive symptoms with the Beck Depression Inventory-II, the intensity of physical activity with the International Physical Activity Questionnaire, and blood samples of the D-lactate assay in two groups of participants who practiced and did not practice street running. Results: The results showed a negative correlation between blood lactate levels and the severity of symptoms of depression. In addition, running volunteers had significant blood lactate levels and low depression scores compared to non-running volunteers. Conclusion: This evidence suggests that street running may reduce symptoms of depression by stimulating blood lactate levels.

Neutral and negative mood induction in executive tasks of working memory.

The mood induction paradigm has been an important tool for investigating the effects of negative emotional states on working memory (WM) executive functions. Though some evidence showed that negative mood has a differential effect on verbal and visuospatial WM, other findings did not report a similar effect. To explore this issue, we examined the negative mood's impact on verbal and visuospatial WM executive tasks based on grammatical reasoning and visuospatial rotation. Participants with no anxiety or depression disorders performed the tasks before and after negative (n = 14) or neutral (n = 13) mood induction. Participants' mood at the beginning and the end of the session was assessed by the Present Mood States List (LEAP) and word valence rating. The analyses showed changes in the emotional state of the negative group (ps < .03) but not of the neutral group (ps > .83) in the LEAP instrument. No significant differences between groups were observed in the WM tasks (ps > .33). Performance in the visuospatial WM task improved after mood induction for both groups (p < .05), possibly due to a practice effect. In sum, our findings challenge the view that negative mood modulates WM executive functions; thus, they were discussed considering the similarities and differences between studies that found negative mood effects on WM and those that did not find. Different WM tasks tap distinct processes and components, which may underlie behavioral effects of negative mood on WM tasks.