A negative emotional state impairs individuals' ability to filter distractors from working memory: an ERP study.

Capacity-limited visual working memory (VWM) requires that individuals have sufficient memory space and the ability to filter distractors. Negative emotional states are known to impact VWM storage, yet their influence on distractor filtering within VWM remains underexplored. We conducted direct neural measurement of participants (n = 56) who conducted a lateralized change detection task with distractors, while manipulating the emotional state by presenting neutral or negative images before each trial. We found a detrimental effect of distractors on memory accuracy under both neutral and negative emotional states. Using the event-related potential (ERP) component, contralateral delay activity (CDA; sensitive to VWM load), to observe the VWM load in each condition, we found that in the neutral state, the participants showed significantly higher late CDA amplitudes when remembering 4 targets compared with 2 targets and 2 targets with 2 distractors but no significant difference when remembering 2 targets compared with 2 targets with 2 distractors. In the negative state, no significant CDA amplitude differences were evident when remembering 4 targets and 2 targets, but CDA was significantly higher when remembering 2 targets with 2 distractors compared with 2 targets. These results suggest that the maximum number of items participants could store in VWM was lower under negative emotional states than under neutral emotional states. Importantly, the participants could filter out distractors when in a neutral emotional state but not in a negative emotional state, indicating that negative emotional states impair their ability to filter out distractors in VWM.

Alterations in working memory maintenance of fearful face distractors in depressed participants: An ERP study.

Task-irrelevant threatening faces (e.g., fearful) are difficult to filter from visual working memory (VWM), but the difficulty in filtering non-threatening negative faces (e.g., sad) is not known. Depressive symptoms could also potentially affect the ability to filter different emotional faces. We tested the filtering of task-irrelevant sad and fearful faces by depressed and control participants performing a color-change detection task. The VWM storage of distractors was indicated by contralateral delay activity, a specific event-related potential index for the number of objects stored in VWM during the maintenance phase. The control group did not store sad face distractors, but they automatically stored fearful face distractors, suggesting that threatening faces are specifically difficult to filter from VWM in non-depressed individuals. By contrast, depressed participants showed no additional consumption of VWM resources for either the distractor condition or the non-distractor condition, possibly suggesting that neither fearful nor sad face distractors were maintained in VWM. Our control group results confirm previous findings of a threat-related filtering difficulty in the normal population while also suggesting that task-irrelevant non-threatening negative faces do not automatically load into VWM. The novel finding of the lack of negative distractors within VWM storage in participants with depressive symptoms may reflect a decreased overall responsiveness to negative facial stimuli. Future studies should investigate the mechanisms underlying distractor filtering in depressed populations.

Sustained attention required for effective dimension-based retro-cue benefit in visual working memory.

In visual working memory (VWM) tasks, participants' performances can be improved through the use of dimension-based retro-cues, which direct internal attention to prioritize a particular dimension (e.g., color or orientation) of VWM representations even after the stimuli disappear. This phenomenon is known as the dimension-based retro-cue benefit (RCB). The present study investigates whether sustained attention is required for the dimension-based RCB by inserting interference or interruption between the retro-cue and the test array to distract attention. We tested the effects of perceptual interference or cognitive interruption on dimension-based RCB when the interference (Experiments 1 and 2 with masks) or interruption (Experiments 3 and 4 with an odd-even task) occurred concurrently with the stages for the maintenance of prioritized information (long cue-and-interference/interruption interstimulus interval, e.g., Experiments 1 and 3) or the deployment of attention (short cue-and-interference/interruption interstimulus interval, e.g., Experiments 2 and 4). Our results demonstrate that perceptual interference or cognitive interruption attenuates the dimension-based RCB. These findings suggest that sustained attention is necessary for the effective prioritization of a specific dimension of VWM representations.

Encoding specificity instead of online integration of real-world spatial regularities for objects in working memory.

Most objects show high degrees of spatial regularity (e.g. beach umbrellas appear above, not under, beach chairs). The spatial regularities of real-world objects benefit visual working memory (VWM), but the mechanisms behind this spatial regularity effect remain unclear. The "encoding specificity" hypothesis suggests that spatial regularity will enhance the visual encoding process but will not facilitate the integration of information online during VWM maintenance. The "perception-alike" hypothesis suggests that spatial regularity will function in both visual encoding and online integration during VWM maintenance. We investigated whether VWM integrates sequentially presented real-world objects by focusing on the existence of the spatial regularity effect. Throughout five experiments, we manipulated the presentation (simultaneous vs. sequential) and regularity (with vs. without regularity) of memory arrays among pairs of real-world objects. The spatial regularity of memory objects presented simultaneously, but not sequentially, improved VWM performance. We also examined whether memory load, verbal suppression and masking, and memory array duration hindered the spatial regularity effect in sequential presentation. We found a stable absence of the spatial regularity effect, suggesting that the participants were unable to integrate real-world objects based on spatial regularities online. Our results support the encoding specificity hypothesis, wherein the spatial regularity of real-world objects can enhance the efficiency of VWM encoding, but VWM cannot exploit spatial regularity to help organize sampled sequential information into meaningful integrations.

Negative and Positive Bias for Emotional Faces: Evidence from the Attention and Working Memory Paradigms.

Visual attention and visual working memory (VWM) are two major cognitive functions in humans, and they have much in common. A growing body of research has investigated the effect of emotional information on visual attention and VWM. Interestingly, contradictory findings have supported both a negative bias and a positive bias toward emotional faces (e.g., angry faces or happy faces) in the attention and VWM fields. We found that the classical paradigms-that is, the visual search paradigm in attention and the change detection paradigm in VWM-are considerably similar. The settings of these paradigms could therefore be responsible for the contradictory results. In this paper, we compare previous controversial results from behavioral and neuroscience studies using these two paradigms. We suggest three possible contributing factors that have significant impacts on the contradictory conclusions regarding different emotional bias effects; these factors are stimulus choice, experimental setting, and cognitive process. We also propose new research directions and guidelines for future studies.

Discovering dynamic task-modulated functional networks with specific spectral modes using MEG.

Efficient neuronal communication between brain regions through oscillatory synchronization at certain frequencies is necessary for cognition. Such synchronized networks are transient and dynamic, established on the timescale of milliseconds in order to support ongoing cognitive operations. However, few studies characterizing dynamic electrophysiological brain networks have simultaneously accounted for temporal non-stationarity, spectral structure, and spatial properties. Here, we propose an analysis framework for characterizing the large-scale phase-coupling network dynamics during task performance using magnetoencephalography (MEG). We exploit the high spatiotemporal resolution of MEG to measure time-frequency dynamics of connectivity between parcellated brain regions, yielding data in tensor format. We then use a tensor component analysis (TCA)-based procedure to identify the spatio-temporal-spectral modes of covariation among separate regions in the human brain. We validate our pipeline using MEG data recorded during a hand movement task, extracting a transient motor network with beta-dominant spectral mode, which is significantly modulated by the movement task. Next, we apply the proposed pipeline to explore brain networks that support cognitive operations during a working memory task. The derived results demonstrate the temporal formation and dissolution of multiple phase-coupled networks with specific spectral modes, which are associated with face recognition, vision, and movement. The proposed pipeline can characterize the spectro-temporal dynamics of functional connectivity in the brain on the subsecond timescale, commensurate with that of cognitive performance.

Negative emotional state modulates visual working memory in the late consolidation phase.

Although a considerable literature has grown up around the interactions between emotional state and visual working memory (VWM) performance, the mechanism underlying the impact of the negative emotional state on VWM remains unclear. The present study aimed to test whether the influence of emotional state is related to the early phase or late phase of VWM consolidation process. Across three experiments, we found that the negative emotional state did not affect VWM performance when the presentation time of stimuli was short. However, when the presentation time was long, the negative emotional state increased the VWM precision and reduced the VWM number. According to the two-phase model proposed by Ye et al. (2017. A two-phase model of resource allocation in visual working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(10), 1557-1566. doi: 10.1037/xlm0000376), the results suggested that negative emotional state could affect the late phase of resource allocation in VWM consolidation process, but it has no impact on the early consolidation phase. The findings from this study make important contributions to the current literature regarding the emotional modulation of VWM.

[The underlying mechanism for the connection between visual long-term memory and visual working memory].

Visual memory, mainly composed of visual long-term memory (VLTM) and visual working memory (VWM), is an important mechanism of human information storage. Since Baddeley proposed the multicomponent working memory model, the idea that VWM is independent of the VLTM system has been widely accepted. However, the new theoretical evidence suggested a close connection between VLTM and VWM. For instance, the three embedded components model describes the VLTM and VWM in the same framework, which suggests that VWM is only a distinct state of VLTM. On the one hand, the operating function of VWM is supported by the persistence of VLTM. On the other hand, the evidence from neuroimaging studies shows that VWM and VLTM tasks activate some same brain areas. In addition, the whole visual memory system shows a trend of processing from early visual cortex to prefrontal cortex. The present article not only reviews the current studies about the relationship between VLTM and VWM but also gives some forecasts for future studies.

[Attentional bias processing mechanism of emotional faces: anger and happiness superiority effects].

Emotional information is critical for our social life, in which attentional bias is now a focus in the study on attention. However, the attentional bias processing mechanism of emotional faces still arouses huge controversy. Using similar experimental paradigms and stimuli, the published studies have yielded contradictory results. Some studies suggest that angry faces could automatically stimulate attention, that is, there is an anger superiority effect. On the contrary, lines of growing evidence support the existence of a happiness superiority effect, suggesting that the superiority effect is shown in happy faces rather than angry faces. In the present paper, the behavioral and neuroscience studies of anger and happiness superiority effects are combined. It is found that there are three major reasons for the debate over the two types of effects, which include the choice of stimulus materials, the difference of paradigm setting, and the different stages of emotional processing. By comparatively integrating the previous published results, we highlight that the future studies should further control the experimental materials and procedures, and investigate the processing mechanism of anger and happiness superiority effects by combining cognitive neurobiology means to resolve the disputes.

Influence of presentation duration on filtering of irrelevant stimuli in visual working memory.

In environments teeming with distractions, the ability to selectively focus on relevant information is crucial for advanced cognitive processing. Existing research using event-related potential (ERP) technology has shown active suppression of irrelevant stimuli during the consolidation phase of visual working memory (VWM). In previous studies, participants have always been given sufficient time to consolidate VWM, while suppressing distracting information. However, it remains unclear whether the suppression of irrelevant distractors requires continuous effort throughout their presence or whether this suppression is only necessary after the consolidation of task-relevant information. To address this question, our study examines whether distractor suppression is necessary in scenarios where consolidation time is limited. This research investigates the effect of varying presentation durations on the filtering of distractors in VWM. We tasked participants with memorizing two color stimuli and ignoring four distractors, presented for either 50 ms or 200 ms. Using ERP technology, we discovered that the distractor-induced distractor positivity (PD) amplitude is larger during longer presentation durations compared to shorter ones. These findings underscore the significant impact of presentation duration on the efficacy of distractor suppression in VWM, as prolonged exposure results in a stronger suppression effect on distractors. This study sheds light on the temporal dynamics of attention and memory, emphasizing the critical role of stimulus timing in cognitive tasks. These findings provide valuable insights into the mechanisms underlying VWM and have significant implications for models of attention and memory.

The impact of sleep quality on visual working memory varied with the duration of maintenance.

Objective: Sleep quality can affect the performance of visual working memory. However, the effect of sleep quality on the maintenance stage, which is the key to maintain the quality and efficiency of visual working memory representation, remains unclear. This study is the first to explore the effect of sleep quality on the maintenance of visual working memory information. Method: 60 healthy college students completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and color recall task of visual working memory. A mixed experimental design of sleep quality (high or low) and delay duration (1, 4, or 6 s) was used to assess the effect of sleep quality on the maintenance phase of visual working memory. Results: The main effects of sleep quality were significant on visual working memory quantity, precision and offset indexes. Among the quantity index, the interaction between sleep quality and delay duration was also significant. This suggests that prolonging the delay time in the maintenance phase leads to difficulty in maintaining attention to the task for those with lower sleep quality, which results in poorer working memory quantitative representations. Conclusion: Increases in the delay duration of the maintenance phase in visual working memory intensify the impact of sleep quality on task performance. Our study provides evidence to reveal the relationship between sleep quality and visual working memory and offers recommendations for improving sleep quality and cognitive functioning in individuals.

Perceptual encoding benefit of visual memorability on visual memory formation.

Human observers often exhibit remarkable consistency in remembering specific visual details, such as certain face images. This phenomenon is commonly attributed to visual memorability, a collection of stimulus attributes that enhance the long-term retention of visual information. However, the exact contributions of visual memorability to visual memory formation remain elusive as these effects could emerge anywhere from early perceptual encoding to post-perceptual memory consolidation processes. To clarify this, we tested three key predictions from the hypothesis that visual memorability facilitates early perceptual encoding that supports the formation of visual short-term memory (VSTM) and the retention of visual long-term memory (VLTM). First, we examined whether memorability benefits in VSTM encoding manifest early, even within the constraints of a brief stimulus presentation (100-200 ms; Experiment 1). We achieved this by manipulating stimulus presentation duration in a VSTM change detection task using face images with high- or low-memorability while ensuring they were equally familiar to the participants. Second, we assessed whether this early memorability benefit increases the likelihood of VSTM retention, even with post-stimulus masking designed to interrupt post-perceptual VSTM consolidation processes (Experiment 2). Last, we investigated the durability of memorability benefits by manipulating memory retention intervals from seconds to 24 h (Experiment 3). Across experiments, our data suggest that visual memorability has an early impact on VSTM formation, persisting across variable retention intervals and predicting subsequent VLTM overnight. Combined, these findings highlight that visual memorability enhances visual memory within 100-200 ms following stimulus onset, resulting in robust memory traces resistant to post-perceptual interruption and long-term forgetting.

The differential impact of face distractors on visual working memory across encoding and delay stages.

External distractions often occur when information must be retained in visual working memory (VWM)-a crucial element in cognitive processing and everyday activities. However, the distraction effects can differ if they occur during the encoding rather than the delay stages. Previous research on these effects used simple stimuli (e.g., color and orientation) rather than considering distractions caused by real-world stimuli on VWM. In the present study, participants performed a facial VWM task under different distraction conditions across the encoding and delay stages to elucidate the mechanisms of distraction resistance in the context of complex real-world stimuli. VWM performance was significantly impaired by delay-stage but not encoding-stage distractors (Experiment 1). In addition, the delay distraction effect arose primarily due to the absence of distractor process at the encoding stage rather than the presence of a distractor during the delay stage (Experiment 2). Finally, the impairment in the delay-distraction condition was not due to the abrupt appearance of distractors (Experiment 3). Taken together, these findings indicate that the processing mechanisms previously established for resisting distractions in VWM using simple stimuli can be extended to more complex real-world stimuli, such as faces.

Graph Laplace Regularization-based pressure sensor placement strategy for leak localization in the water distribution networks under joint hydraulic and topological feature spaces.

Urban water distribution networks (WDNs) have wide range and intricate topology, which include leakage, pipe burst and other abnormal states during production and operation. With the continuous development of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology in recent years, the means of monitoring the WDNs by using wireless sensor network technology has gradually received attention and extensive research. Most of the existing researches select the deployment location of sensors according to the hydraulic state of the WDNs, but the connectivity and topology between the nodes of the WDNs are not fully considered and analyzed. In this study, a new method that can integrate the topological features and hydraulic model information of the WDN is proposed to solve the problem of optimal sensor placement. First, the method preprocesses the covariance matrix of the pressure sensitivity matrix of the water distribution network by a diffusion kernel-based data prefiltering method and obtains the new network topology weights and its Laplacian matrix under the constraints of the network topology through a data-based graphical Laplacian learning method. Then, the sensor placement problem is transformed into a matrix minimum eigenvalue constraint problem by the Graph Laplace Regularization (GLR)-based method, and finally the selection of sensor nodes is accomplished by the method based on Gershgorin Disc Alignment (GDA). The proposed strategy is tested on a passive Hanoi network, an active Net 3 network, and a larger network, PA2, and is compared with some existing methods. The results show that the proposed solution achieves good performance in three different leak localization methods.

Negative emotion reduces visual working memory recall variability: A meta-analytical review.

Negative emotion is often hypothesized to trigger a more deliberate processing mode. This effect can manifest as increased precision of information maintained in working memory (WM) captured by reduced WM recall variability under an induced negative emotional state. However, some recent evidence shows that WM representations are immune to any emotional influences. Here, we meta-analyze existing evidence based on data from 13 experiments across 491 participants who performed a delay-estimation WM task under negative and neutral emotional states. We find that induced negative emotional state modestly reduces WM recall variability and increases recall failures relative to the neutral condition. These effects are moderated by participants' self-report negative experiences during emotion induction. Collectively, these data suggest that negative emotion influences how much and how well one can remember in WM. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Pain modulates early sensory brain responses to task-irrelevant emotional faces.

BACKGROUND: Pain can have a significant impact on an individual's life, as it has both cognitive and affective consequences. However, our understanding of how pain affects social cognition is limited. Previous studies have shown that pain, as an alarm stimulus, can disrupt cognitive processing when focal attention is required, but whether pain also affects task-irrelevant perceptual processing remains unclear. METHODS: We examined the effect of laboratory-induced pain on event-related potentials (ERPs) to neutral, sad and happy faces before, during and after a cold pressor pain. ERPs reflecting different stages of visual processing (P1, N170 and P2) were analysed. RESULTS: Pain decreased the P1 amplitude for happy faces and increased the N170 amplitude for happy and sad faces compared to the pre-pain phase. The effect of pain on N170 was also observed in the post-pain phase. The P2 component was not affected by pain. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that pain alters both featural (P1) and structural face-sensitive (N170) visual encoding of emotional faces, even when the faces are irrelevant to the task. While the effect of pain on initial feature encoding seemed to be disruptive and specific to happy faces, later processing stages showed long-lasting and increased activity for both sad and happy emotional faces. SIGNIFICANCE: The observed alterations in face perception due to pain may have consequences for real-life interactions, as fast and automatic encoding of facial emotions is important for social interactions.

The impact of retro-cue validity on working memory representation: Evidence from electroencephalograms.

Visual working memory (VWM) performance can be improved by retrospectively cueing an item. The validity of retro-cues has an impact on the mechanisms underlying the retro-cue effect, but how non-cued representations are handled under different retro-cue validity conditions is not yet clear. Here, we used electroencephalograms to investigate whether retro-cue validity can affect the fate of non-cued representations in VWM. The participants were required to perform a change-detection task using a retro-cue with 80% or 20% validity. Contralateral delay activity and the lateralized alpha power were used to assess memory storage and selective attention, respectively. The retro-cue could redirect selective attention to the cued item under both validity conditions; however, the participants maintained the non-cued representations under the low-validity condition but dropped them from VWM under the high-validity condition. These results suggest that the maintenance of non-cued representations in VWM is affected by the expectation of cue validity and may be partially strategically driven.

The passive state: A protective mechanism for information in working memory tasks.

Memory representations can be stored in a passive state in a visual working memory (VWM) task. However, it remains unclear whether the representations stored in the passive state are prone to interference and decay. To explore this issue, we asked participants to successively remember two sets of memory items (M1 and M2) in three test manners: a combined test (both M1 and M2 are probed simultaneously), a backward test (probe M2 first and M1 second), or a forward test (probe M1 first and M2 second). We found that the contralateral delay activity (CDA) amplitude after the onset of M2 only tracked M2 independently of M1 in the two separate tests (Experiments 1-3), and the accuracy of M1 was well above chance. These results implied that the M1 representations had been transferred from the online state into the passive state after the onset of M2. Furthermore, the accuracy of M1 (two representations were transferred from the online state into the passive state and retrieved later) in the backward test was worse than M2 (2 representations in the online state throughout) in the backward test (Experiments 1-2), but was comparable to M1 (two representations were transferred from the online state into the passive state and retrieved first) in the forward test (Experiment 2). These results demonstrated that the memory representations were impaired during state switching. Importantly, once the representations had been stored in the passive state, they were robust with little memory loss during latent retention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Decreased intersubject synchrony in dynamic valence ratings of sad movie contents in dysphoric individuals.

Emotional reactions to movies are typically similar between people. However, depressive symptoms decrease synchrony in brain responses. Less is known about the effect of depressive symptoms on intersubject synchrony in conscious stimulus-related processing. In this study, we presented amusing, sad and fearful movie clips to dysphoric individuals (those with elevated depressive symptoms) and control participants to dynamically rate the clips' valences (positive vs. negative). We analysed both the valence ratings' mean values and intersubject correlation (ISC). We used electrodermal activity (EDA) to complement the measurement in a separate session. There were no group differences in either the EDA or mean valence rating values for each movie type. As expected, the valence ratings' ISC was lower in the dysphoric than the control group, specifically for the sad movie clips. In addition, there was a negative relationship between the valence ratings' ISC and depressive symptoms for sad movie clips in the full sample. The results are discussed in the context of the negative attentional bias in depression. The findings extend previous brain activity results of ISC by showing that depressive symptoms also increase variance in conscious ratings of valence of stimuli in a mood-congruent manner.

Individual differences in working memory capacity are unrelated to the magnitudes of retrocue benefits.

Previous studies have associated visual working memory (VWM) capacity with the use of internal attention. Retrocues, which direct internal attention to a particular object or feature dimension, can improve VWM performance (i.e., retrocue benefit, RCB). However, so far, no study has investigated the relationship between VWM capacity and the magnitudes of RCBs obtained from object-based and dimension-based retrocues. The present study explored individual differences in the magnitudes of object- and dimension-based RCBs and their relationships with VWM capacity. Participants completed a VWM capacity measurement, an object-based cue task, and a dimension-based cue task. We confirmed that both object- and dimension-based retrocues could improve VWM performance. We also found a significant positive correlation between the magnitudes of object- and dimension-based RCB indexes, suggesting a partly overlapping mechanism between the use of object- and dimension-based retrocues. However, our results provided no evidence for a correlation between VWM capacity and the magnitudes of the object- or dimension-based RCBs. Although inadequate attention control is usually assumed to be associated with VWM capacity, the results suggest that the internal attention mechanism for using retrocues in VWM retention is independent of VWM capacity.