Automatic Positive and Negative Emotion Regulation in Adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder.

INTRODUCTION: Adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD) exhibit hypoactivity to positive stimuli and hyperactivity to negative stimuli in terms of neural responses. Automatic emotion regulation (AER) activates triple networks (i.e., the central control network, default mode network, and salience network). Based on previous studies, we hypothesized that adolescents with MDD exhibit dissociable spatiotemporal deficits during positive and negative AER. METHODS: We first collected EEG data from 32 adolescents with MDD and 35 healthy adolescents while they performed an implicit emotional Go/NoGo task. Then, we characterized the spatiotemporal dynamics of cortical activity during AER. RESULTS: In Go trials, MDD adolescents exhibited reduced N2 amplitudes, enhanced theta power for positive pictures, and stronger bottom-up information flow from the left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) to the right superior frontal gyrus compared to top-down information flow than the controls. In contrast, in NoGo trials, MDD adolescents exhibited elevated P3 amplitudes, enhanced theta power, and stronger top-down information flows from the right middle frontal gyrus to the right OFC and the left insula than the controls. CONCLUSION: Overall, adolescents with MDD exhibited impaired automatic attention to positive emotions and impaired automatic response inhibition. These findings have potential implications for the clinical treatment of adolescents with MDD.

Gender differences in cognitive and affective interpersonal emotion regulation in couples: an fNIRS hyperscanning.

Emotion regulation is vital in maintaining romantic relationships in couples. Although gender differences exist in cognitive and affective strategies during 'intrapersonal' emotion regulation, it is unclear how gender differences through affective bonds work in 'interpersonal' emotion regulation (IER) in couples. Thirty couple dyads and 30 stranger dyads underwent functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning recordings when targets complied with their partner's cognitive engagement (CE) and affective engagement (AE) strategies after viewing sad and neutral videos. Behaviorally, for males, CE was less effective than AE in both groups, but little difference occurred for females between AE and CE. For couples, Granger causality analysis showed that male targets had less neural activity than female targets in CH06, CH13 and CH17 during CE. For inflow and outflow activities on CH06 and CH13 (frontopolar cortex), respectively, male targets had less activity in the CE condition than in the AE condition, while for outflow activities on CH 17 (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), female targets had more activity in the CE condition than in the AE condition. However, these differences were not observed in strangers. These results suggest gender differences in CE but not in AE and dissociable flow patterns in male and female targets in couples during sadness regulation.

The relationship between autistic traits and empathy in adolescents: An ERP study.

Based on the mind-blindness hypothesis, a large number of studies have shown that individuals with autism-spectrum disorder (ASD) and autistic traits have empathy deficits. However, the recent double empathy theory contradicts the mind-blindness hypothesis and suggests that individuals with ASD and autistic traits do not necessarily lack empathy. Thus, the presence of empathy deficits in individuals with ASD and autistic traits is still controversial. We recruited 56 adolescents (28 high autistic traits, 28 low autistic traits, 14-17 years old) in this study to explore the relationship between empathy and autistic traits. The study participants were required to undertake the pain empathy task, during which the electroencephalograph (EEG) activities were recorded. Our results show that empathy was negatively associated with autistic traits at the questionnaire, behavioral, and EEG levels. Our results also suggested that empathy deficits in adolescents with autistic traits may be manifested mainly in the late stages of cognitive control processing.

Affective or cognitive interpersonal emotion regulation in couples: an fNIRS hyperscanning study.

Sadness regulation is crucial for maintaining the romantic relationships of couples. Interpersonal emotion regulation, including affective engagement (AE) and cognitive engagement (CE), activates social brain networks. However, it is unclear how AE and CE regulate sadness in couples through affective bonds. We recruited 30 heterosexual couple dyads and 30 heterosexual stranger dyads and collected functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning data while each dyad watched sad or neutral videos and while the regulator regulated the target's sadness. Then, we characterized interbrain synchronization (IBS) and Granger causality (GC). The results indicated that AE and CE were more effective for couples than for strangers and that sadness evaluation of female targets was lower than that of male targets. CE-induced IBS at CH13 (BA10, right middle frontal gyrus) was lower for female targets than for male targets, while no gender difference in AE was detected. GC change at CH13 during CE was lower in the sad condition for male targets than for female targets, while no gender difference in AE was discovered. These observations suggest that AE and CE activate affective bonds but that CE was more effective for regulating sadness in female targets, revealing different neural patterns of cognitive and affective sadness regulation in couples.

Dynamic Reconfiguration of Functional Topology in Human Brain Networks: From Resting to Task States.

Task demands evoke an intrinsic functional network and flexibly engage multiple distributed networks. However, it is unclear how functional topologies dynamically reconfigure during task performance. Here, we selected the resting- and task-state (emotion and working-memory) functional connectivity data of 81 health subjects from the high-quality HCP data. We used the network-based statistic (NBS) toolbox and the Brain Connectivity Toolbox (BCT) to compute the topological features of functional networks for the resting and task states. Graph-theoretic analysis indicated that under high threshold, a small number of long-distance connections dominated functional networks of emotion and working memory that exhibit distinct long connectivity patterns. Correspondently, task-relevant functional nodes shifted their roles from within-module to between-module: the number of connector hubs (mainly in emotional networks) and kinless hubs (mainly in working-memory networks) increased while provincial hubs disappeared. Moreover, the global properties of assortativity, global efficiency, and transitivity decreased, suggesting that task demands break the intrinsic balance between local and global couplings among brain regions and cause functional networks which tend to be more separated than the resting state. These results characterize dynamic reconfiguration of large-scale distributed networks from resting state to task state and provide evidence for the understanding of the organization principle behind the functional architecture of task-state networks.

Emotional Contexts Modulate Anticipatory Late Positive Component and Reward Feedback Negativity in Adolescents With Major Depressive Disorder.

BACKGROUND: Neuroimaging research has determined deficits in the dopaminergic circuit of major depressive disorder (MDD) during adolescence. This study investigated how emotional contexts modulate the temporal dynamics of reward anticipation and feedback in adolescents. METHODS: EEG data from 35 MDD and 37 healthy adolescents were recorded when they conducted a gambling task after being presented with emotional pictures. RESULTS: The results demonstrated that both MDD and healthy adolescents exhibited the largest late positive component (LPC) in positive contexts at the frontal sites and the largest LPC in negative contexts at the central sites; however, MDD adolescents exhibited anticipatory LPC hypoactivation than healthy adolescents. However, MDD adolescents exhibited smaller gain feedback negativity (FN) than healthy adolescents independent of emotional contexts, positively correlating with the trait anhedonia according to the consummatory aspect of the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale. In contrast, MDD adolescents exhibited greater FN loss in positive and neutral contexts than healthy adolescents while no difference in FN loss was found between the two groups in negative contexts. Moreover, the FN loss amplitudes negatively correlated with hedonic tone according to the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale over the past week. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that MDD adolescents exhibited dissociable deficits in reward anticipation and gain or loss feedback that are distinctly modulated by emotional contexts, and they deepen our understanding of the modulation of emotional contexts on the temporal dynamic reorganization of the reward circuit in MDD adolescents.

Adolescents Exhibit Late Maturation of Long-Range Beta Coherences in Affective Processing.

We investigated whether intra-/interhemispheric long-range beta coherences mirror developmental changes in affective functional integration during adolescence. Electroencephalogram data were gathered from 15 young adolescents, 16 old adolescents, and 16 young adults during viewing affective pictures. The results indicated that both positive and negative pictures induced greater intra- and interhemispheric long-distance beta coherences than neutral pictures. However, opposite results were observed between young and old adolescents in terms of negative phase differences. Old adolescents exhibited greater beta coherences for positive and negative pictures than both young adolescents and young adults, but there was no difference between the groups for neutral pictures. These observations suggest that long-range beta coherence might reflect the late maturation of affective functional integration in adolescents.

Negatively Linking Connector Networks in Cognitive Control of Affective Pictures.

Cognitive control of emotions depends on intermodular long-distance communications. However, negative connections between connector hubs are removed by traditional hard-thresholding approach in graph-theoretical research. Using soft-thresholding approach to reserve negative links, we explore time-varying features of connector hubs in intermodular communications during cognitive control of affective pictures. We develop a novel approach to sparse functional networks and construct negatively linking connector networks for positive, negative, and neutral pictures. We find that consisting of flexible hubs, the frontoparietal system dynamically top-down inhibits neural activities through negative connections from the salience subnetwork and visual processing area. Moreover, the shared connectors form functional backbones that dynamically reconfigure according to differently-valenced pictures in order to coordinate both stability and flexibility of cognitive connector networks. These results reveal the necessity of conserving negative links between intermodular communications in chronnectome research and deepen the understanding of how connector networks dynamically evolute during cognitive control of affective processing.

Breath-focused mindfulness alters early and late components during emotion regulation.

Breath-focused mindfulness (BFM), which induces changes in brain structure and function, is applied in the clinical treatment of mental disorders as a method to regulate one's emotions. However, whether BFM works through a top-down emotional regulation strategy to alter brain dynamics and its relationship with individual differences in trait mindfulness are unclear. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of 20 healthy BFM-naïve undergraduates were recorded when they conducted BFM/viewing tasks while viewing affective pictures. Participants completed the Attentional Control Scale (ACS) and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). The results indicated that under the viewing condition, positive and negative pictures elicited greater P1, N2, and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes than did neutral pictures. However, BFM attenuated P1, N2, and LPP amplitudes for positive and negative pictures but not for neutral pictures. P1 amplitudes for emotional minus neutral pictures correlated with individual differences in focus attention measured by the ACS, while N2 amplitudes for emotional minus neutral pictures correlated with individual differences in trait mindfulness measured by the MAAS. These observations suggest that, consistent with the dual-process model, BFM is an effective emotion regulation strategy and might activate the dorsal top-down prefrontal system to alter early and late neural dynamics of affective processing.

Memory impairment in chronic pain patients and the related neuropsychological mechanisms: a review.

OBJECTIVE: This study provides a comprehensive review of the literature on memory impairment and the potential effective factors in patients with chronic pain. METHODS: A literature search of databases PubMed, EMBASE, SpringerLink, and PsycINFO until September 2012 was conducted using the keywords 'memory' and 'chronic pain'. The study emphasises on publications over the past 20 years. RESULTS: Memory impairment in chronic pain patients is substantial, but the aspects of memory (e.g. working memory, long-term memory, and autobiographical memory) in chronic pain patients and the potentially related factors (e.g. age, level of education, pain conditions, emotion, neural network, and use of analgesics) are modest. Memory impairment is interpreted with the attention-narrowing hypothesis and the capacity-reduction hypothesis. CONCLUSIONS: The currently available data and theory have explained memory impairment in chronic pain patients, but many controversies remain. Future research should focus on the subclinical characteristics of chronic pain, enlarging the sample size, and emphasise on the experimental intervention method and the cognitive neuroscience method.