Beyond single paradigms, pipelines, and outcomes: Embracing multiverse analyses in psychophysiology.

Psychophysiological research is an inherently complex undertaking due to the nature of the data, and its analysis is characterized by many decision points that shape the final dataset and a study's findings. These decisions create a "multiverse" of possible outcomes, and each decision from study conceptualization to statistical analysis can lead to different results and interpretations. This review describes the concept of multiverse analyses, a methodological approach designed to understand the impact of different decisions on the robustness of a study's findings and interpretation. The emphasis is on transparently showcasing different reasonable approaches for constructing a final dataset and on highlighting the influence of various decision points, from experimental design to data processing and outcome selection. For example, the choice of an experimental task can significantly impact event-related brain potential (ERP) scores or skin conductance responses (SCRs), and different tasks might elicit unique variances in each measure. This review underscores the importance of transparently embracing the flexibility inherent in psychophysiological research and the potential consequences of not understanding the fragility or robustness of experimental findings. By navigating the intricate terrain of the psychophysiological multiverse, this review serves as an introduction, helping researchers to make informed decisions, improve the collective understanding of psychophysiological findings, and push the boundaries of the field.

Facial functional networks during resting state revealed by thermal infrared imaging.

In recent decades, an increasing number of studies on psychophysiology and, in general, on clinical medicine has employed the technique of facial thermal infrared imaging (IRI), which allows to obtain information about the emotional and physical states of the subjects in a completely non-invasive and contactless fashion. Several regions of interest (ROIs) have been reported in literature as salient areas for the psychophysiological characterization of a subject (i.e. nose tip and glabella ROIs). There is however a lack of studies focusing on the functional correlation among these ROIs and about the physiological basis of the relation existing between thermal IRI and vital signals, such as the electrodermal activity, i.e. the galvanic skin response (GSR). The present study offers a new methodology able to assess the functional connection between salient seed ROIs of thermal IRI and all the pixel of the face. The same approach was also applied considering as seed signal the GSR and its phasic and tonic components. Seed correlation analysis on 63 healthy volunteers demonstrated the presence of a common pathway regulating the facial thermal functionality and the electrodermal activity. The procedure was also tested on a pathological case study, finding a completely different pattern compared to the healthy cases. The method represents a promising tool in neurology, physiology and applied neurosciences.

Two theories of action - Edelman's Neuronal group Selection and the Poetics of Paul Valéry.

Motivated by two imperatives as they are framed in Code Biology - mechanism and actualization - we have turned to other attempts of modeling life at work. Here, we present two theories devoted to minds in action - one explains neuronal function, and the other dissects poetic crafting. Neuronal networks activation and poetic composition, respectively, are seen as the selection of specific connective patterns of either neurons or words, in action. Gerald Edelman, as a scientist, has generalized the Darwinian ideas of variation and selection to the cellular level in his "Sciences of Recognition", a broader theoretical framework that includes the "Theory of Neuronal Group Selection" (TGNS) analyzed here. Paul Valéry, as a poet, has reconciled inspiration and technique in what he has called "works of the mind", the creative processes mediated by sensing and making sense, in the "Poetic Theory" we present here he advances the mechanisms of artistic composition. We have identified the main ideas conveyed in these two theories, i.e., variation and selection, integration and differentiation, ambiguity and degeneracy, binding and blending, stasis and semiosis, by pairing and comparing textual fragments from the authors. We show that TGNS and the Theory of Poetic Action reconcile Sciences and Arts by recognizing that Natural Selection is a mechanism implied by formative acts in both scenarios and discuss to which extent Natural Convention - the main contribution of Code Biology - is integrated by the two thinkers.

The effect of colour on reading performance in children, measured by a sensor hub: From the perspective of gender.

In recent decades reported findings regarding gender differences in reading achievement, cognitive abilities and maturation process in boys and girls are conflicting. As reading is one of the most important processes in the maturation of an individual, the aim of the study was to better understand gender differences between primary school students. The study evaluates differences in Heart Rate Variability (HRV), Electroencephalography (EEG), Electrodermal Activities (EDA) and eye movement of participants during the reading task. Taking into account that colour may affect reading skills, in that it affects the emotional and physiological state of the body, the research attempts to provide a better understanding of gender differences in reading through examining the effect of colour, as applied to reading content. The physiological responses of 50 children (25 boys and 25 girls) to 12 different background and overlay colours of reading content were measured and summarised during the reading process. Our findings show that boys have shorter reading duration scores and a longer Saccade Count, Saccade Duration Total, and Saccade Duration Average when reading on a coloured background, especially purple, which could be caused by their motivation and by the type of reading task. Also, the boys had higher values for the Delta band and the Whole Range of EEG measurements in comparison to the girls when reading on coloured backgrounds, which could reflect the faster maturation of the girls. Regarding EDA measurements we did not find systematic differences between groups either on white or on coloured/overlay background. We found the most significant differences arose in the HRV parameters, namely (SDNN (ms), STD HR (beats/min), RMSSD (ms), NN50 (beats), pNN50 (%), CVRR) when children read the text on coloured/overlay backgrounds, where the girls showed systematically higher values on HRV measurements in comparison to the boys, mostly with yellow, red, and orange overlay colours.

Anxiety, not regulation tendency, predicts how individuals regulate in the laboratory: An exploratory comparison of self-report and psychophysiology.

Anxiety influences how individuals experience and regulate emotions in a variety of ways. For example, individuals with lower anxiety tend to cognitively reframe (reappraise) negative emotion and those with higher anxiety tend to suppress negative emotion. Research has also investigated these individual differences with psychophysiology. These lines of research assume coherence between how individuals regulate outside the laboratory, typically measured with self-report, and how they regulate during an experiment. Indeed, performance during experiments is interpreted as an indication of future behavior outside the laboratory, yet this relationship is seldom directly explored. To address this gap, we computed psychophysiological profiles of uninstructed (natural) regulation in the laboratory and explored the coherence between these profiles and a) self-reported anxiety and b) self-reported regulation tendency. Participants viewed negative images and were instructed to reappraise, suppress or naturally engage. Electrodermal and facial electromyography signals were recorded to compute a multivariate psychophysiological profile of regulation. Participants with lower anxiety exhibited similar profiles when naturally regulating and following instructions to reappraise, suggesting they naturally reappraised more. Participants with higher anxiety exhibited similar profiles when naturally regulating and following instructions to suppress, suggesting they naturally suppressed more. However, there was no association between self-reported reappraisal or suppression tendency and psychophysiology. These exploratory results indicate that anxiety, but not regulation tendency, predicts how individuals regulate emotion in the laboratory. These findings suggest that how individuals report regulating in the real world does not map on to how they regulate in the laboratory. Taken together, this underscores the importance of developing emotion-regulation interventions and paradigms that more closely align to and predict real-world outcomes.

The respiratory occlusion discrimination task: A new paradigm to measure respiratory interoceptive accuracy.

Interoception, or the sense of the internal state of the body, is hypothesized to be essential for a wide range of psychobiological processes and the development and perpetuation of several (mental) health problems. However, the study of interoceptive accuracy, the objectively measured capacity to detect or discriminate conscious bodily signals, has been hampered by the use of tasks with questionable construct validity and is often limited to studying interoception solely in the cardiac domain. We developed a novel task to measure interoceptive accuracy in the respiratory domain, the respiratory occlusion discrimination (ROD) task. In this task, interoceptive accuracy is defined as an individual's ability to detect small differences in lengths of short respiratory occlusions, assessed by means of an adaptive staircase procedure. This article describes a validation study (N = 97) aimed at investigating the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and discriminant validity of the ROD task. The average just noticeable difference of lengths of respiratory occlusion was 74.22 ms, with large inter-individual variability (SD = 37.1 ms). The results of the validation study indicate acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.70), 1-week test-retest reliability (r = 0.53), and discriminant validity, as indicated by a lack of correlation between the ROD task and an auditory discrimination task with identical design (r = 0.18), and a weak correlation with breathing behavior (r = -0.27). The ROD task is a promising novel paradigm to study interoceptive accuracy and its role in various psychobiological processes and disorders.

Evaluating the internal consistency of subtraction-based and residualized difference scores: Considerations for psychometric reliability analyses of event-related potentials.

In studies of event-related brain potentials (ERPs), difference scores between conditions in a task are frequently used to isolate neural activity for use as a dependent or independent variable. Adequate score reliability is a prerequisite for studies examining relationships between ERPs and external correlates, but there is no extensive treatment on the suitability of the various available approaches to estimating difference score reliability that focus on ERP research. In the present study, we provide formulas from classical test theory and generalizability theory for estimating the internal consistency of subtraction-based and residualized difference scores. These formulas are then applied to error-related negativity (ERN) and reward positivity (RewP) difference scores from the same sample of 117 participants. Analyses demonstrate that ERN difference scores can be reliable, which supports their use in studies of individual differences. However, RewP difference scores yielded poor reliability due to the high correlation between the constituent reward and non-reward ERPs. Findings emphasize that difference score reliability largely depends on the internal consistency of constituent scores and the correlation between those scores. Furthermore, generalizability theory yields more suitable estimates of internal consistency for subtraction-based difference scores than classical test theory. We conclude that ERP difference scores can show adequate reliability and be useful for isolating neural activity in studies of individual differences.

Investigating fear of childbirth in pregnant women and its relationship between anxiety sensitivity and somatosensory amplification.

The causes of fear of childbirth and the factors that affect it are not fully explained. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between fear of childbirth in pregnant women and anxiety sensitivity and somatosensory amplification. The study included 100 healthy pregnant women who were admitted to the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department of a tertiary hospital in Turkey at 28-40 weeks of gestation. Sociodemographic Data Form, Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), Somatosensory Amplification Scale (SSAS), Spielberger State and Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), Wijma Expectancy/Experience Scale (W-DEQ) were applied to all cases. The mean age of the pregnant women included in the study was 29.20 ± 6.17 years, and 82% of them had high fear of childbirth. It was determined that factors such as age, education status, occupation, prior pregnancy experience, the number of pregnancies, miscarriage history, and abortion experience had no significant effect on the fear of childbirth. It was observed that there was a weak positive correlation between the fear of childbirth and the anxiety sensitivity and the amplification of somatosensory symptoms. According to the findings of our study, as the fear of childbirth increases, anxiety sensitivity, and somatosensory amplification increase. For this reason, it is crucial to carefully monitor prenatal anxiety, somatosensory amplification and the fear of childbirth of pregnant women with state-related concerns.IMPACT STATEMENTWhat is already known on this subject? Fear of childbirth or what is historically referred to as tokophobia is generally defined as a fear of severe birth and fear of pathological birth. The causes of fear of childbirth are stated as biological reasons, psychological reasons and lack of social support. However, it is not possible to explain the causes of the fear of childbirth in pregnant women and the risk factors affecting them. Similarly, fear of childbirth in individuals with anxiety sensitivity and amplification of somatosensory symptoms has not been adequately investigated.What do the results of this study add? In this study, we aimed to contribute to the related literature by examining the relationship between fear of childbirth in pregnant women and anxiety sensitivity and amplification of somatosensory symptoms. It was observed that there was a weak positive correlation between the fear of childbirth and the sensitivity of anxiety and the amplification of somatosensory symptoms. According to the findings of our study, as the fear of childbirth increases, anxiety sensitivity, and somatosensory amplification increase.What are the implications of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? For this reason, it is crucial to carefully monitor the pregnants who have prenatal anxiety sensitivity, somatosensory amplification, and state-continuous anxiety. Due to insufficient number of studies related to the subject, extensive sample studies on the subject are needed.

Real-Time Psychophysiological and Writing Correlates of Expressive Writing.

Concealing memories and emotions associated with a traumatic event seems to have negative effects on health. Re-enacting those events through writing is an opportunity to disclose such memories and emotions, and especially for emotion regulation. To study this, 57 university students were randomly assigned to one of two groups. They either completed an expressive writing or a neutral writing task. Real-time writing and psychophysiological data were recorded throughout the experiment to examine writing dynamics associated with emotion regulation and its psychophysiological correlates (electrodermal activity and electrocardiography measures). The results showed that the expressive group (EG) paused for longer than the control group (CG) denoting a positive and medium effect size ( η p 2 = .10 ) . Furthermore, during and after writing, the EG showed a higher low frequency/high frequency ratio than the CG, evidencing a positive and large effect size ( η p 2 = .22 ) . These real-time findings are interpreted as signs of emotion regulation happening during writing.

Inconsistent analytic strategies reduce robustness in fear extinction via skin conductance response.

Robustness of fear conditioning and extinction paradigms has become increasingly important for many researchers interested in improving the study of anxiety and trauma disorders. We recently illustrated the wide variability in data analysis techniques in this paradigm, which we argued may result in a lack of robustness. In the current study, we resampled data from six of our own fear acquisition and extinction data sets, with skin conductance as the outcome. In the resampled and original data sets, we found that effect sizes that were calculated using discrepant statistical strategies, sourced from a non-exhaustive search of high-impact articles, were often poorly correlated. The main contributors to poor correlations were the selection of trials from different stages of each experimental phase and the use of average compared to trial-by-trial analysis. These findings reinforce the importance of focusing on robustness in the psychophysiological measurement of fear acquisition and extinction in the laboratory and may guide prospective researchers in which decisions may most impact the robustness of their results.

Comparing apples and oranges or different types of citrus fruits? Using wearable versus stationary devices to analyze psychophysiological data.

Wearable devices capable of capturing psychophysiological signals are popular. However, such devices have, yet, to be established in experimental and clinical research. This study, therefore, compared psychophysiological data (skin conductance level (SCL), heart rate (HR), and heart rate variability (HRV)) captured with a wearable device (Microsoft band 2) to those of a stationary device (Biopac MP150), in an experimental pain induction paradigm. Additionally, the present study aimed to compare two analytical techniques of HRV psychophysiological data: traditional (i.e., peaks are detected and manually checked) versus automated analysis using Python programs. Forty-three university students (86% female; Mage = 21.37 years) participated in the cold pressor pain induction task. Results showed that the majority of the correlations between the two devices for the mean HR were significant and strong (rs > .80) both during baseline and experimental phases. For the time-domain measure of mean RR (function of autonomic influences) of HRV, the correlations between the two devices at baseline were almost perfect (rs = .99), whereas at the experimental phase were significantly strong (rs > .74). However, no significant correlations were found for mean SCL (p> .05). Additionally, automated analysis led to similar features for HRV stationary data as the traditional analysis. Implications for data collection include the establishment of a methodology to compare stationary to mobile devices and a new, more cost efficient way of collecting psychophysiological data. Implications for data analysis include analyzing the data faster, with less effort and allowing for large amounts of data to be recorded.

Design and evaluation of a context-aware model based on psychophysiology.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Psychotherapy is one of the most common pathways to help individuals address any mental disorders. However, the traditional method of assessing mental health has a margin for improvement. The recent advances in digital technology (e.g., smartphones and wearables) and machine learning techniques can support psychotherapy through the addition of psychophysiology. This paper presents RevitalMe, a context-aware model for assisting a psychotherapeutic understanding of human behavior, providing psychophysiological insights from real-life. METHODS: Five volunteers used RevitalMe's prototype in natural environments for eight days each. Ecological Momentary Assessment was used to collect individuals' stressful states, and to label real-life data. The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test was performed to verify a significant difference between the labeled states. Then, RevitalMe classified psychological states based on physiological measurements through machine learning, associating them with the behavior of the individual. After that, visual insights were generated through contexts processing and presented to psychotherapists as evidence of an individual's daily behavior and psychological state. Twelve psychotherapists evaluated the clinical acceptability of RevitalMe, answering six quantitative statements and two qualitative questions. Furthermore, a t-Test was performed to investigate clinical acceptability given therapy field and clinical years. RESULTS: The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test succeeds in proving that labeled states were statistically significant, and RevitalMe achieved an F1-Score of 75% in the binary classification of stressed states in natural environments. The evaluation showed clinical acceptability of 90%, composed by partial agreement of 62% and a total agreement of 28%. In this regard, the t-Test provided that the level of interest from cognitive-behavior therapists in psychophysiological insight was higher than that from psychodynamic therapists. CONCLUSIONS: The psychophysiological insights approximate cognitive-behavior psychotherapy to individual's behavior and daily events, focusing on assistance in mental healthcare.

Community violence concerns and adolescent sleep: Physiological regulation and race as moderators.

Prior work has demonstrated that greater community violence concerns are associated with poor sleep quality among adolescents. However, these effects may not be uniform across all youth. The present study examined the role of individual difference variables, physiological regulation and race, as moderators of risk in the relation between adolescents' community violence concerns and their sleep. Adolescents (N = 219; 55.3% female; 69.9% White/European American, 30.1% Black/African American) participated in the study when they were 18 years old (M = 17.7 years, SD = 1.0). Physiological regulation was assessed via respiratory sinus arrhythmia, a measure of parasympathetic regulation, at rest and in response to a stressor. Adolescents wore actigraphs for 7 nights to assess their sleep duration and quality, and reported on their community violence concerns via a well-validated questionnaire. Results demonstrated a consistent pattern of interactions, such that African American adolescents who showed less adaptive patterns of regulating physiological arousal experienced shorter sleep duration and poorer sleep quality in the context of greater community violence concerns. Community violence concerns were not associated with sleep for White adolescents. The findings may suggest that race-related stressors exacerbate risk for poor sleep among African American adolescents who experience more community violence concerns and have more difficulty regulating physiological arousal. Coping strategies for managing stress and arousal may be helpful for improving sleep for some youth.

Under the Mind's Hood: What We Have Learned by Watching the Brain at Work.

Imagine you were asked to investigate the workings of an engine, but to do so without ever opening the hood. Now imagine the engine fueled the human mind. This is the challenge faced by cognitive neuroscientists worldwide aiming to understand the neural bases of our psychological functions. Luckily, human ingenuity comes to the rescue. Around the same time as the Society for Neuroscience was being established in the 1960s, the first tools for measuring the human brain at work were becoming available. Noninvasive human brain imaging and neurophysiology have continued developing at a relentless pace ever since. In this 50 year anniversary, we reflect on how these methods have been changing our understanding of how brain supports mind.

Interest in inducements: A psychophysiological study on sports betting advertising.

Recent research has shown an association between the viewing of wagering advertising, which often presents inducements to gamble, and maladaptive sports-betting behaviours; however, the mechanism/s underlying the development of the intention to gamble remains relatively understudied. Eye-tracking and tonic electrodermal activity was recorded from 59 participants (including 49 regular gamblers and 10 non-gamblers), while they watched a series of advertisements. Following each advertisement, participants were asked to rate how likely they would be to take up the offer presented, therein. The number of fixations placed on each offer differed according to the type of inducement shown (p < .001), with reduced risk and cash back inducements being looked at more often than better odds and bonus bet inducements by all groups. Increased electrodermal activity while viewing the advertisements was associated with greater severity of gambling-related harm (p < .001), as well as greater ratings of desire for most advertisements. Rating of desire was, likewise, positively associated with gambling-related harm (p < .001). These results may suggest that, while the offers in gambling advertisements may be looked at by most viewers, unless there an attendant increase in arousal, it is quite unlikely that these inducements will elicit a desire to gamble. For individuals already at risk of gambling problems, exposure to these advertisements, especially those offering what is perceived to be safer betting options that minimise financial losses, may exacerbate existing harms. Such information may prove useful in guiding industry practice, government regulations, therapeutic interventions, and future research on this topic.

Stress and cognition: A user's guide to designing and interpreting studies.

Fueling the rapid growth in our understanding of how stress influences cognition, the number of studies examining the effects of stress on various cognitive processes has grown substantially over the last two decades. Despite this growth, few published guidelines exist for designing these studies, and divergent paradigm designs can diminish typical effects of stress or even reverse them. The goal of this review, therefore, is to survey necessary considerations (e.g., validating a stress induction), important considerations (e.g., specifying the timing of the stressor and cognitive task), and best practices (e.g., using Bayesian analyses) when designing a study that aims at least in part to examine the effects of acute stress on some cognitive process or function. These guidelines will also serve to help readers of these studies interpret what may otherwise be very confusing, anomalous results. Designing and interpreting studies with these considerations and practices in mind will help to move the field of stress and cognition forward by clarifying how, exactly, stress influences performance on a given cognitive task in a population of interest.

A systematic and methodological review of attentional biases in eating disorders: Food, body, and perfectionism.

OBJECTIVE: The current systematic and methodological review aimed to critically review existing literature utilizing implicit processing, or automatic approach- and/or avoidance-related attentional biases between eating disorder (ED) and nonclinical samples, which (a) highlights how psychophysiological methods advance knowledge of ED implicit bias; (b) explains how findings fit into transdiagnostic versus disorder-specific ED frameworks; and (c) suggests how research can address perfectionism-related ED biases. METHOD: Three databases were systematically searched to identify studies: PubMed, Scopus, and PsychInfo electronic databases. Peer-reviewed studies of 18- to 39-year-olds with both clinical ED and healthy samples assessing visual attentional biases using pictorial and/or linguistic stimuli related to food, body, and/or perfectionism were included. RESULTS: Forty-six studies were included. While behavioral results were often similar across ED diagnoses, studies incorporating psychophysiological measures often revealed disease-specific attentional biases. Specifically, women with bulimia nervosa (BN) tend to approach food and other body types, whereas women with anorexia nervosa (AN) tend to avoid food as well as overweight bodies. CONCLUSIONS: Further integration of psychophysiological and behavioral methods may identify subtle processing variations in ED, which may guide prevention strategies and interventions, and provide important clinical implications. Few implicit bias studies include male participants, investigate binge-eating disorder, or evaluate perfectionism-relevant stimuli, despite the fact that perfectionism is implicated in models of ED.

Reliability of Physiological Responses Induced by Basic Emotions: A Pilot Study.

BACKGROUND: Although emotion-specific autonomic responses based on the discrete theory of emotion have been widely studied, studies on the reliability of physiological responses to emotional stimuli are limited. In this study, we aimed to assess the reliability of physiological changes induced by the six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise) that were measured during 10 weekly repeated experiments. METHODS: Twelve college students participated, and in each experiment, physiological signals were collected before and while participants were watching emotion-provoking film clips. Additionally, the participants self-evaluated the emotions that they experienced during the film presentation at the end of each emotional stimulus. To avoid adaptation of participants to identical stimuli during repeated measurements, we used 10 different film clips for each emotion, and thus a total of 60 film clips over 10 weeks were used. Physiological features, such as skin conductance level (SCL), fingertip temperature (FT), heart rate (HR), and blood volume pulse (BVP), were extracted from the physiological signals. Two reliability indices, Cronbach's alpha and intraclass correlation coefficient, were calculated from the physiological features to assess internal consistency and interrater reliability, respectively. RESULTS: We found that SCL, HR, and BVP measured during the emotion-provoking phase over the 10 weekly sessions were more reliable than those assessed at baseline. Furthermore, SCL, HR, and BVP from the emotion-provoking phase exhibited excellent internal consistency and interrater reliability. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that these features can be used as reliable physiological indices in emotion studies. The results also support the significance of physiological signals as meaningful indicators for emotion recognition in HCI (human computer interface) area.