Emotional Objectivity: Neural Representations of Emotions and Their Interaction with Cognition.

Recent advances in our understanding of information states in the human brain have opened a new window into the brain's representation of emotion. While emotion was once thought to constitute a separate domain from cognition, current evidence suggests that all events are filtered through the lens of whether they are good or bad for us. Focusing on new methods of decoding information states from brain activation, we review growing evidence that emotion is represented at multiple levels of our sensory systems and infuses perception, attention, learning, and memory. We provide evidence that the primary function of emotional representations is to produce unified emotion, perception, and thought (e.g., "That is a good thing") rather than discrete and isolated psychological events (e.g., "That is a thing. I feel good"). The emergent view suggests ways in which emotion operates as a fundamental feature of cognition, by design ensuring that emotional outcomes are the central object of perception, thought, and action.

Episodic autobiographical memory is associated with variation in the size of hippocampal subregions.

Striking individual differences exist in the human capacity to recollect past events, yet, little is known about the neural correlates of such individual differences. Studies investigating hippocampal volume in relation to individual differences in laboratory measures of episodic memory in young adults suggest that whole hippocampal volume is unrelated (or even negatively associated) with episodic memory. However, anatomical and functional specialization across hippocampal subregions suggests that individual differences in episodic memory may be linked to particular hippocampal subregions, as opposed to whole hippocampal volume. Given that the DG/CA2/3 circuitry is thought to be especially critical for supporting episodic memory in humans, we predicted that the volume of this region would be associated with individual variability in episodic memory. This prediction was supported using high-resolution MRI of the hippocampal subfields and measures of real-world (autobiographical) episodic memory. In addition to the association with DG/CA2/3 , we further observed a relationship between episodic autobiographical memory and subiculum volume, whereas no association was observed with CA1 or with whole hippocampal volume. These findings provide insight into the possible neural substrates that mediate individual differences in real-world episodic remembering in humans.

SOAP Opera: Self as Object and Agent in Prioritizing Attention.

A growing body of evidence has demonstrated that multiple sources of salience tune attentional sets toward aspects of the environment, including affectively and motivationally significant categories of stimuli such as angry faces and reward-associated target locations. Recent evidence further indicates that objects that have gained personal significance through ownership can elicit similar attentional prioritization. Here we discuss current research on sources of attentional prioritization that shape our awareness of the visual world from moment to moment and the underlying neural systems and contextualize what is known about attentional prioritization of our possessions within that research. We review behavioral and neuroimaging research on the influence of self-relevance and ownership on cognition and discuss challenges to this literature stemming from different modes of conceptualizing and operationalizing the self. We argue that ownership taps into both "self-as-object," which characterizes the self as an object with a constellation of traits and attributes, and "self-as-subject," which characterizes the self as an agentic perceiver and knower. Despite an abundance of research probing neural and behavioral indices of self-as-object and its effects on attention, there exists a paucity of research on the influence of self-relevance of attention when self is operationalized from the perspective of a first-person subject. To begin to address this gap, we propose the Self as Ownership in Attentional Prioritization (SOAP) framework to explain how ownership increases salience through attention to external representations of self-identity (i.e., self as object) and attention to contextually mediated permission to act (i.e., self as subject).

The Blur of Pleasure: Appetitively Appealing Stimuli Decrease Subjective Temporal Perceptual Acuity.

Anecdotal reports that time "flies by" or "slows down" during emotional events are supported by evidence that the motivational relevance of stimuli influences subsequent duration judgments. Yet it is unknown whether the subjective quality of events as they unfold is altered by motivational relevance. In a novel paradigm, we measured the subjective experience of moment-to-moment visual perception. Participants judged the temporal smoothness of high-approach positive images (desserts), negative images (e.g., of bodily mutilation), and neutral images (commonplace scenes) as they faded to black. Results revealed approach-motivated blurring, such that positive stimuli were judged as smoother and negative stimuli as choppier relative to neutral stimuli. Participants' ratings of approach motivation predicted perceived fade smoothness after we controlled for low-level stimulus features. Electrophysiological data indicated that approach-motivated blurring modulated relatively rapid perceptual activation. These results indicate that stimulus value influences subjective temporal perceptual acuity; approach-motivating stimuli elicit perception of a "blurred" frame rate characteristic of speeded motion.

Genesis and Maintenance of Attentional Biases: The Role of the Locus Coeruleus-Noradrenaline System.

Emotionally arousing events are typically better remembered than mundane ones, in part because emotionally relevant aspects of our environment are prioritized in attention. Such biased attentional tuning is itself the result of associative processes through which we learn affective and motivational relevance of cues. We propose that the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline (LC-NA) system plays an important role in the genesis of attentional biases through associative learning processes as well as their maintenance. We further propose that individual differences in and disruptions of the LC-NA system underlie the development of maladaptive biases linked to psychopathology. We provide support for the proposed role of the LC-NA system by first reviewing work on attentional biases in development and its link to psychopathology in relation to alterations and individual differences in NA availability. We focus on pharmacological manipulations to demonstrate the effect of a disrupted system as well as the ADRA2b polymorphism as a tool to investigate naturally occurring differences in NA availability. We next review associative learning processes that-modulated by the LC-NA system-result in such implicit attentional biases. Further, we demonstrate how NA may influence aversive and appetitive conditioning linked to anxiety disorders as well as addiction and depression.

Neurogenetic variations in norepinephrine availability enhance perceptual vividness.

Emotionally salient aspects of the world are experienced with greater perceptual vividness than mundane ones; however, such emotionally enhanced vividness (EEV) may be experienced to different degrees for different people. We examined whether BOLD activity associated with a deletion variant of the ADRA2b gene coding for the α2b adrenoceptor modulates EEV in humans. Relative to noncarriers, ADRA2b deletion carriers showed higher levels of perceptual vividness, with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) showing greater modulation by EEV. Deletion carriers were also more sensitive to the featural salience of the images, suggesting a more pervasive role of norepinephrine in perceptual encoding. Path analysis revealed that, whereas a simple model by which the amygdala modulated the lateral occipital complex best characterized EEV-related activity in noncarriers, contributions of an additional VMPFC pathway best characterized deletion carriers. Thus, common norepinephrine-related neurogenetic differences enhance the subjective vividness of perceptual experience and its emotional enhancement.

Dynamics of neural recruitment surrounding the spontaneous arising of thoughts in experienced mindfulness practitioners.

Thoughts arise spontaneously in our minds with remarkable frequency, but tracking the brain systems associated with the early inception of a thought has proved challenging. Here we addressed this issue by taking advantage of the heightened introspective ability of experienced mindfulness practitioners to observe the onset of their spontaneously arising thoughts. We found subtle differences in timing among the many regions typically recruited by spontaneous thought. In some of these regions, fMRI signal peaked prior to the spontaneous arising of a thought - most notably in the medial temporal lobe and inferior parietal lobule. In contrast, activation in the medial prefrontal, temporopolar, mid-insular, lateral prefrontal, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices peaked together with or immediately following the arising of spontaneous thought. We propose that brain regions that show antecedent recruitment may be preferentially involved in the initial inception of spontaneous thoughts, while those that show later recruitment may be preferentially involved in the subsequent elaboration and metacognitive processing of spontaneous thoughts. Our findings highlight the temporal dynamics of neural recruitment surrounding the emergence of spontaneous thoughts and may help account for some of spontaneous thought's peculiar qualities, including its wild diversity of content and its links to memory and attention.

What BANE can offer GANE: Individual differences in function of hotspot mechanisms.

In this commentary we focus on individual differences in proposed mechanisms underlying arousal-based enhancement of prioritized stimuli. We discuss the potential of genotyping studies for examining effects of noradrenergic processes on stimulus prioritization in humans and stress the importance of potential individual differences in the activity of specific receptor subtypes in hotspot processes proposed by the GANE model.

KIBRA polymorphism is associated with individual differences in hippocampal subregions: evidence from anatomical segmentation using high-resolution MRI.

The KIBRA gene has been associated with episodic memory in several recent reports; carriers of the T-allele show enhanced episodic memory performance relative to noncarriers. Gene expression studies in human and rodent species show high levels of KIBRA in the hippocampus, particularly in the subfields. The goal of the present study was to determine whether the KIBRA C→T polymorphism is also associated with volume differences in the human hippocampus and whether specific subfields are differentially affected by KIBRA genotype. High-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (T2-weighted, voxel size=0.4×0.4 mm, in-plane) was used to manually segment hippocampal cornu ammonis (CA) subfields, dentate gyrus (DG), and the subiculum as well as adjacent medial temporal lobe cortices in healthy carriers and noncarriers of the KIBRA T-allele (rs17070145). Overall, we found that T-carriers had a larger hippocampal volume relative to noncarriers. The structural differences observed were specific to the CA fields and DG regions of the hippocampus, suggesting a potential neural mechanism for the effects of KIBRA on episodic memory performance reported previously.

Short-Term Memory Capacity Predicts Willingness to Expend Cognitive Effort for Reward.

We must often decide whether the effort required for a task is worth the reward. Past rodent work suggests that willingness to deploy cognitive effort can be driven by individual differences in perceived reward value, depression, or chronic stress. However, many factors driving cognitive effort deployment-such as short-term memory ability-cannot easily be captured in rodents. Furthermore, we do not fully understand how individual differences in short-term memory ability, depression, chronic stress, and reward anticipation impact cognitive effort deployment for reward. Here, we examined whether these factors predict cognitive effort deployment for higher reward in an online visual short-term memory task. Undergraduate participants were grouped into high and low effort groups (n HighEffort = 348, n LowEffort = 81; n Female = 332, n Male = 92, M Age = 20.37, Range Age = 16-42) based on decisions in this task. After completing a monetary incentive task to measure reward anticipation, participants completed short-term memory task trials where they could choose to encode either fewer (low effort/reward) or more (high effort/reward) squares before reporting whether or not the color of a target square matched the square previously in that location. We found that only greater short-term memory ability predicted whether participants chose a much higher proportion of high versus low effort trials. Drift diffusion modeling showed that high effort group participants were more biased than low effort group participants toward selecting high effort trials. Our findings highlight the role of individual differences in cognitive effort ability in explaining cognitive effort deployment choices.

Psychophysical and neural evidence for emotion-enhanced perceptual vividness.

Highly emotional events are associated with vivid "flashbulb" memories. Here we examine whether the flashbulb metaphor characterizes a previously unknown emotion-enhanced vividness (EEV) during initial perceptual experience. Using a magnitude estimation procedure, human observers estimated the relative magnitude of visual noise overlaid on scenes. After controlling for computational metrics of objective visual salience, emotional salience was associated with decreased noise, or heightened perceptual vividness, demonstrating EEV, which predicted later memory vividness. Event-related potentials revealed a posterior P2 component at ∼200 ms that was associated with both increased emotional salience and decreased objective noise levels, consistent with EEV. Blood oxygenation level-dependent response in the lateral occipital complex (LOC), insula, and amygdala predicted online EEV. The LOC and insula represented complimentary influences on EEV, with the amygdala statistically mediating both. These findings indicate that the metaphorical vivid light surrounding emotional memories is embodied directly in perceptual cortices during initial experience, supported by cortico-limbic interactions.

Genes for emotion-enhanced remembering are linked to enhanced perceiving.

Emotionally enhanced memory and susceptibility to intrusive memories after trauma have been linked to a deletion variant (i.e., a form of a gene in which certain amino acids are missing) of ADRA2B, the gene encoding subtype B of the α2-adrenergic receptor, which influences norepinephrine activity. We examined in 207 participants whether variations in this gene are responsible for individual differences in affective influences on initial encoding that alter perceptual awareness. We examined the attentional blink, an attentional impairment during rapid serial visual presentation, for negatively arousing, positively arousing, and neutral target words. Overall, the attentional blink was reduced for emotional targets for ADRA2B-deletion carriers and noncarriers alike, which reveals emotional sparing (i.e., reduction of the attentional impairment for words that are emotionally significant). However, deletion carriers demonstrated a further, more pronounced emotional sparing for negative targets. This finding demonstrates a contribution of genetics to individual differences in the emotional subjectivity of perception, which in turn may be linked to biases in later memory.

Characterizing affiliative touch in humans and its role in advancing haptic design.

An emerging view in cognitive neuroscience holds that the extraction of emotional relevance from sensory experience extends beyond the centralized appraisal of sensation in associative brain regions, including frontal and medial-temporal cortices. This view holds that sensory information can be emotionally valenced from the point of contact with the world. This view is supported by recent research characterizing the human affiliative touch system, which carries signals of soft, stroking touch to the central nervous system and is mediated by dedicated C-tactile afferent receptors. This basic scientific research on the human affiliative touch system is informed by, and informs, technology design for communicating and regulating emotion through touch. Here, we review recent research on the basic biology and cognitive neuroscience of affiliative touch, its regulatory effects across the lifespan, and the factors that modulate it. We further review recent work on the design of haptic technologies, devices that stimulate the affiliative touch system, such as wearable technologies that apply the sensation of soft stroking or other skin-to-skin contact, to promote physiological regulation. We then point to future directions in interdisciplinary research aimed at both furthering scientific understanding and application of haptic technology for health and wellbeing.

Factors perpetuating functional cognitive symptoms after mild traumatic brain injury.

INTRODUCTION: Self-reported memory difficulties (forgetting familiar names, misplacing objects) often persist long after a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), despite normal neuropsychological test performance. This clinical presentation may be a manifestation of a functional cognitive disorder (FCD). Several mechanisms underlying FCD have been proposed, including metacognitive impairment, memory perfectionism, and misdirected attention, as well as depression or anxiety-related explanations. This study aims to explore these candidate perpetuating factors in mTBI, to advance our understanding of why memory symptoms frequently persist following mTBI. METHODS: A cross-sectional study of 67 adults (n = 39 with mTBI mean = 25 months ago and n = 28 healthy controls). Participants completed standardized questionnaires (including the Functional Memory Disorder Inventory), a metacognitive task (to quantify discrepancies between their trial-by-trial accuracy and confidence), and a brief neuropsychological test battery. We assessed candidate mechanisms in two ways: (1) between-groups, comparing participants with mTBI to healthy controls, and (2) within-group, examining their associations with functional memory symptom severity (FMDI) in the mTBI group. RESULTS: Participants with mTBI performed similarly to controls on objective measures of memory ability but reported experiencing much more frequent memory lapses in daily life. Contrary to expectations, metacognitive efficiency did not differentiate the mTBI and control groups and was not associated with functional memory symptoms. Memory perfectionism was strongly associated with greater functional memory symptoms among participants with mTBI but did not differ between groups when accounting for age. Depression and checking behaviors produced consistent results across between-groups and within-group analyses: these factors were greater in the mTBI group compared to the control group and were associated with greater functional memory symptoms within the mTBI group. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights promising (e.g., depression, checking behaviors) and unlikely (e.g., metacognitive impairment) mechanisms underlying functional memory symptoms after mTBI, to guide future research and treatment.

Decomposing Neural Representational Patterns of Discriminatory and Hedonic Information during Somatosensory Stimulation.

The ability to interrogate specific representations in the brain, determining how, and where, difference sources of information are instantiated can provide invaluable insight into neural functioning. Pattern component modeling (PCM) is a recent analytic technique for human neuroimaging that allows the decomposition of representational patterns in brain into contributing subcomponents. In the current study, we present a novel PCM variant that tracks the contribution of prespecified representational patterns to brain representation across areas, thus allowing hypothesis-guided employment of the technique. We apply this technique to investigate the contributions of hedonic and nonhedonic information to the neural representation of tactile experience. We applied aversive pressure (AP) and appetitive brush (AB) to stimulate distinct peripheral nerve pathways for tactile information (C-/CT-fibers, respectively) while patients underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. We performed representational similarity analyses (RSAs) with pattern component modeling to dissociate how discriminatory versus hedonic tactile information contributes to population code representations in the human brain. Results demonstrated that information about appetitive and aversive tactile sensation is represented separately from nonhedonic tactile information across cortical structures. This also demonstrates the potential of new hypothesis-guided PCM variants to help delineate how information is instantiated in the brain.

Cognitive-affective processes and suicidality in response to repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for treatment resistant depression.

BACKGROUND: Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) can elicit 45-55 % response rates and may alleviate suicidality symptoms in treatment resistant depression (TRD). Blunted anticipatory reward sensitivity and negatively biased self-referential processing may predict trajectories of depressive and suicidality symptoms in rTMS for TRD and be modulated during treatment. METHODS: Fifty-five individuals with TRD received four weeks of low-frequency rTMS applied to the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (LFR-rTMS) and were followed until 17 weeks post-baseline. Participants completed behavioral measures of anticipatory reward sensitivity and self-referential processing at baseline and five weeks post-baseline (approximately one-week post-treatment). We examined whether baseline anticipatory reward sensitivity and self-referential processing predicted trajectories of depressive and suicidality symptoms from baseline to follow-up and whether these cognitive-affective variables showed change from baseline to week five. RESULTS: Anticipatory reward sensitivity and negative self-referential encoding at baseline were associated with higher overall depressive symptoms and suicidality from baseline to 17 weeks post-baseline. At week five, participants self-attributed a higher number of positive traits and a lower number of negative traits and had a lesser tendency to remember negative relative to positive traits they had self-attributed, compared to baseline. LIMITATIONS: The specificity of these results to LFR-rTMS is unknown in the absence of a comparison group, and our relatively small sample size precluded the interpretation of null results. CONCLUSIONS: Baseline blunted anticipatory reward sensitivity and negative biases in self-referential processing may be risk factors for higher depressive symptoms and suicidality during and after LFR-rTMS, and LFR-rTMS may modulate self-referential processing.

Gender Impacts the Relationship between Mood Disorder Symptoms and Effortful Avoidance Performance.

We must often decide how much effort to exert or withhold to avoid undesirable outcomes or obtain rewards. In depression and anxiety, levels of avoidance can be excessive and reward-seeking may be reduced. Yet outstanding questions remain about the links between motivated action/inhibition and anxiety and depression levels, and whether they differ between men and women. Here, we examined the relationship between anxiety and depression scores, and performance on effortful active and inhibitory avoidance (Study 1) and reward seeking (Study 2) in humans. Undergraduates and paid online workers ([Formula: see text] = 545, [Formula: see text] = 310; [Formula: see text] = 368, [Formula: see text] = 450, [Formula: see text] = 22.58, [Formula: see text] = 17-62) were assessed on the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI) and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and performed an instructed online avoidance or reward-seeking task. Participants had to make multiple presses on active trials and withhold presses on inhibitory trials to avoid an unpleasant sound (Study 1) or obtain points toward a monetary reward (Study 2). Overall, men deployed more effort than women in both avoidance and reward-seeking, and anxiety scores were negatively associated with active reward-seeking performance based on sensitivity scores. Gender interacted with anxiety scores and inhibitory avoidance performance, such that women with higher anxiety showed worse avoidance performance. Our results illuminate effects of gender in the relationship between anxiety and depression levels and the motivation to actively and effortfully respond to obtain positive and avoid negative outcomes.

In the hands of the beholder: Wearing a COVID-19 mask is associated with its attractiveness.

Protective facial masks reduce the spread of COVID-19 infection and save lives. Yet a substantial number of people have been resistant to wearing them. Considerable effort has been invested in convincing people to put on a mask, if not for their own sake than for those more vulnerable. Social and cognitive psychologists know that use and liking go both ways: people use what they like, and they like what they use. Here we asked whether positive attitudes towards facial masks were higher in those who had been wearing them longer. We asked participants in a diverse sample (N = 498 from five countries and more than 30 US states) to rate how attractive and emotionally arousing masks and other objects associated with COVID-19 were in comparison to neutral objects, as well as reporting on their mask-wearing habits. To confirm reliability of findings, the experiment was repeated in a subset of participants 8-10 weeks later. The findings show that regular use of protective masks was linked to their positive appraisal, with a higher frequency and a longer history of wearing a mask predicting increased mask attractiveness. These results extended to other COVID-related objects relative to controls. They also provide critical ecological validity for the idea that emotional appraisal of everyday objects is associated with our experience of using them. Practically, they imply that societal measures to encourage mask wearing may have contributed to positive emotional appraisals in those who put them on, whether due to personal choice or societal pressure.

Lateralization of autonomic output in response to limb-specific threat.

In times of stress or danger, the autonomic nervous system (ANS) signals the fight or flight response. A canonical function of ANS activity is to globally mobilize metabolic resources, preparing the organism to respond to threat. Yet a body of research has demonstrated that, rather than displaying a homogenous pattern across the body, autonomic responses to arousing events - as measured through changes in electrodermal activity (EDA) - can differ between right and left body locations. Surprisingly, an attempt to identify a function of ANS asymmetry consistent with its metabolic role has not been investigated. In the current study, we investigated whether asymmetric autonomic responses could be induced through limb-specific aversive stimulation. Participants were given mild electric stimulation to either the left or right arm while EDA was monitored bilaterally. In a group-level analyses, an ipsilateral EDA response bias was observed, with increased EDA response in the hand adjacent to the stimulation. This effect was observable in ∼50% of individual particpants. These results demonstrate that autonomic output is more complex than canonical interpretations suggest. We suggest that, in stressful situations, autonomic outputs can prepare either the whole-body fight or flight response, or a simply a limb-localized flick, which can effectively neutralize the threat while minimizing global resource consumption. These findings are consistent with recent theories proposing evolutionary leveraging of neural structures organized to mediate sensory responses for processing of cognitive emotional cues.Significance statementThe present study constitutes novel evidence for an autonomic nervous response specific to the side of the body exposed to direct threat. We identify a robust pattern of electrodermal response at the body location that directly receives aversive tactile stimulation. Thus, we demonstrate for the first time in contemporary research that the ANS is capable of location-specific outputs within single effector organs in response to small scale threat. This extends the canonical view of the role of ANS responses in stressful or dangerous stresses - that of provoking a 'fight or flight' response - suggesting a further role of this system: preparation of targeted limb-specific action, i.e., a flick.

Rate of perceived stability as a measure of balance exercise intensity in people post-stroke.

PURPOSE: This study investigates the reproducibility and concurrent validity of the Rate of Perceived Stability (RPS) Scale in people with stroke. METHODS: On two separate days (2-10 days apart), participants provided their RPS ratings during clinical measures: 1)16 tasks from Community Balance and Mobility Scale (CB&M), 2)6-minute walk test (6MWT), and 3)self-paced gait speed. Intraclass correlations (ICCs) assessed between day test-retest reliability of RPS ratings. Standard error of measurement (SEM) and smallest detectable change (SDC) addressed level of between day agreement. Spearman rank correlations (rs) quantified relationships between RPS, and general rating of perceived challenge, task-performance scores. RESULTS: Thirty participants with stroke (50% female) participated. ICC ranged from 0.46 to 0.93 across tasks with 12/19 tasks showing ICCs above 0.75 (good test-retest reliability). SEM was 1-point for each task and SDC ranged from 2 to 4 across tasks. Concurrent validity between RPS and ratings of perceived challenge was good-to-excellent (rs ranged 0.78-0.94, p < 0.01). Higher RPS (indicative of feeling less stable) was associated with lower balance performance scores on CB&M tasks, negative relationships ranged in strength from fair to good-to-excellent in 10/16 tasks (rs ranged -0.46 to -0.81, p ≤ 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: RPS shows promise as a measure of balance intensity in people with stroke.IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATIONThe RPS is a reliable and valid measure of balance intensity in ambulatory people with stroke.The RPS scale may be a useful clinical tool to address the gap in practice of measuring balance intensity during rehabilitation of walking balance post-stroke.