Psychophysics of emotion: the QUEST for emotional attention

To investigate the mechanisms involved in automatic processing of facial expressions, we used the QUEST procedure to measure the display durations needed to make a gender decision on emotional faces portraying fearful, happy, or neutral facial expressions. In line with predictions of appraisal theories of emotion, our results showed greater processing priority of emotional stimuli regardless of their valence. Whereas all experimental conditions led to an averaged threshold of about 50 ms, fearful and happy facial expressions led to significantly less variability in the responses than neutral faces. Results suggest that attention may have been automatically drawn by the emotion portrayed by face targets, yielding more informative perceptions and less variable responses. The temporal resolution of the perceptual system (expressed by the thresholds) and the processing priority of the stimuli (expressed by the variability in the responses) may influence subjective and objective measures of awareness, respectively.

Temporal dynamics of emotional responding: amygdala recovery predicts emotional traits

An individual’s affective style is influenced by many things, including the manner in which an individual responds to an emotional challenge. Emotional response is composed of a number of factors, two of which are the initial reactivity to an emotional stimulus and the subsequent recovery once the stimulus terminates or ceases to be relevant. However, most neuroimaging studies examining emotional processing in humans focus on the magnitude of initial reactivity to a stimulus rather than the prolonged response. In this study, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the time course of amygdala activity in healthy adults in response to presentation of negative images. We split the amygdala time course into an initial reactivity period and a recovery period beginning after the offset of the stimulus. We find that initial reactivity in the amygdala does not predict trait measures of affective style. Conversely, amygdala recovery shows predictive power such that slower amygdala recovery from negative images predicts greater trait neuroticism, in addition to lower levels of likability of a set of social stimuli (neutral faces). These data underscore the importance of taking into account temporal dynamics when studying affective processing using neuroimaging.

A police state? The Nyasaland emergency and colonial intelligence.

The Nyasaland Emergency in 1959 proved a decisive turning point in the history of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which from 1953 to 1963 brought together the territories of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) under a settler-dominated federal government. The British and Nyasaland governments defended the emergency by claiming to have gathered intelligence which showed that the Nyasaland African Congress was preparing a campaign of sabotage and murder. The Devlin Commission, appointed to investigate the emergency, dismissed the evidence of a ‘murder plot’, criticised the Nyasaland government's handling of the Emergency and, notoriously, described Nyasaland as a ‘police state’. This article has two principal aims. First, using the recently declassified papers of the Intelligence and Security Department (ISD) of the Colonial Office, it seeks to provide the first detailed account of what the British government knew of the intelligence relating to the ‘murder plot’ and how they assessed it, prior to the outbreak of the emergency. It demonstrates that officials in the ISD and members of the Security Service adopted a far more cautious attitude towards the intelligence than did Conservative ministers, and had greater qualms about allowing it into the public domain to justify government policy. Second, the article examines the implications of Devlin's use of the phrase ‘police state’ for Nyasaland and for the late colonial state in general. It contrasts Devlin's use of the term with that of security experts in the ISD, who routinely applied it to policing systems that diverged from their own preferred model. Hence, whereas Devlin compared policing in Nyasaland unfavourably with that in Southern Rhodesia, implying, ironically, that Nyasaland was ‘under-policed’ (because there were fewer police per head of population in Nyasaland than in Southern Rhodesia), the ISD regarded the intensive system of policing operated by the British South Africa Police in Southern Rhodesia as characteristic of a ‘police state’. The article suggests that the frequent use of the term ‘police state’ was indicative of broader anxieties about what Britain's legacy would be for the post-independence African state.

Whole-brain functional connectivity during emotional word classification in medication-free Major Depressive Disorder: abnormal salience circuitry and relations to positive emotionality

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) has been associated with biased processing and abnormal regulation of negative and positive information, which may result from compromised coordinated activity of prefrontal and subcortical brain regions involved in evaluating emotional information. We tested whether patients with MDD show distributed changes in functional connectivity with a set of independently derived brain networks that have shown high correspondence with different task demands, including stimulus salience and emotional processing. We further explored if connectivity during emotional word processing related to the tendency to engage in positive or negative emotional states. In this study, 25 medication-free MDD patients without current or past comorbidity and matched controls (n=25) performed an emotional word-evaluation task during functional MRI. Using a dual regression approach, individual spatial connectivity maps representing each subject’s connectivity with each standard network were used to evaluate between-group differences and effects of positive and negative emotionality (extraversion and neuroticism, respectively, as measured with the NEO-FFI). Results showed decreased functional connectivity of the medial prefrontal cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and ventral striatum with the fronto-opercular salience network in MDD patients compared to controls. In patients, abnormal connectivity was related to extraversion, but not neuroticism. These results confirm the hypothesis of a relative (para)limbic-cortical decoupling that may explain dysregulated affect in MDD. As connectivity of these regions with the salience network was related to extraversion, but not to general depression severity or negative emotionality, dysfunction of this network may be responsible for the failure to sustain engagement in rewarding behavior.

Still feeling it: the time course of emotional recovery from an attentional perspective

Emotional reactivity and the time taken to recover, particularly from negative, stressful, events, are inextricably linked, and both are crucial for maintaining well-being. It is unclear, however, to what extent emotional reactivity during stimulus onset predicts the time course of recovery after stimulus offset. To address this question, 25 participants viewed arousing (negative and positive) and neutral pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) followed by task-relevant face targets, which were to be gender categorized. Faces were presented early (400–1500 ms) or late (2400–3500 ms) after picture offset to capture the time course of recovery from emotional stimuli. Measures of reaction time (RT), as well as face-locked N170 and P3 components were taken as indicators of the impact of lingering emotion on attentional facilitation or interference. Electrophysiological effects revealed negative and positive images to facilitate face-target processing on the P3 component, regardless of temporal interval. At the individual level, increased reactivity to: (1) negative pictures, quantified as the IAPS picture-locked Late Positive Potential (LPP), predicted larger attentional interference on the face-locked P3 component to faces presented in the late time window after picture offset. (2) Positive pictures, denoted by the LPP, predicted larger facilitation on the face-locked P3 component to faces presented in the earlier time window after picture offset. These results suggest that subsequent processing is still impacted up to 3500 ms after the offset of negative pictures and 1500 ms after the offset of positive pictures for individuals reacting more strongly to these pictures, respectively. Such findings emphasize the importance of individual differences in reactivity when predicting the temporality of emotional recovery. The current experimental model provides a novel basis for future research aiming to identify profiles of adaptive and maladaptive recovery.

Updating existing emotional memories involves the frontopolar/orbitofrontal cortex in ways that acquiring new emotional memories does not

In life, we must often learn new associations to people, places, or things we already know. The current fMRI study investigated the neural mechanisms underlying emotional memory updating. Nineteen participants first viewed negative and neutral pictures and learned associations between those pictures and other neutral stimuli, such as neutral objects and encoding tasks. This initial learning phase was followed by a memory updating phase, during which participants learned picture-location associations for old pictures (i.e., pictures previously associated with other neutral stimuli) and new pictures (i.e., pictures not seen in the first phase). There was greater frontopolar/orbito-frontal (OFC) activity when people learned picture–location associations for old negative pictures than for new negative pictures, but frontopolar OFC activity did not significantly differ during learning locations of old versus new neutral pictures. In addition, frontopolar activity was more negatively correlated with the amygdala when participants learned picture–location associations for old negative pictures than for new negative or old neutral pictures. Past studies revealed that the frontopolar OFC allows for updating the affective values of stimuli in reversal learning or extinction of conditioning [e.g., Izquierdo, A., & Murray, E. A. Opposing effects of amygdala and orbital PFC lesions on the extinction of instrumental responding in macaque monkeys. European Journal of Neuroscience, 22, 2341–2346, 2005]; our findings suggest that it plays a more general role in updating associations to emotional stimuli.

Beyond arousal and valence: the importance of the biological versus social relevance of emotional stimuli

The present study addressed the hypothesis that emotional stimuli relevant to survival or reproduction (biologically emotional stimuli) automatically affect cognitive processing (e.g., attention, memory), while those relevant to social life (socially emotional stimuli) require elaborative processing to modulate attention and memory. Results of our behavioral studies showed that (1) biologically emotional images hold attention more strongly than do socially emotional images, (2) memory for biologically emotional images was enhanced even with limited cognitive resources, but (3) memory for socially emotional images was enhanced only when people had sufficient cognitive resources at encoding. Neither images’ subjective arousal nor their valence modulated these patterns. A subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging study revealed that biologically emotional images induced stronger activity in the visual cortex and greater functional connectivity between the amygdala and visual cortex than did socially emotional images. These results suggest that the interconnection between the amygdala and visual cortex supports enhanced attention allocation to biological stimuli. In contrast, socially emotional images evoked greater activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and yielded stronger functional connectivity between the amygdala and MPFC than did biological images. Thus, it appears that emotional processing of social stimuli involves elaborative processing requiring frontal lobe activity.

Allocation of spatial attention to emotional stimuli depends upon arousal and not valence

Attentional allocation to emotional stimuli is often proposed to be driven by valence and in particular by negativity. However, many negative stimuli are also arousing leaving the question whether valence or arousal accounts for this effect. The authors examined whether the valence or the arousal level of emotional stimuli influences the allocation of spatial attention using a modified spatial cueing task. Participants responded to targets that were preceded by cues consisting of emotional pictures varying on arousal and valence. Response latencies showed that disengagement of spatial attention was slower for stimuli high in arousal than for stimuli low in arousal. The effect was independent of the valence of the pictures and not gender-specific. The findings support the idea that arousal affects the allocation of attention.

Emotional geographies of enthusiasm: belonging to the Telecommunications Heritage Group

Enthusiasm has long been associated with notions of impassioned mood, intensity of feeling and passionate dedication. Despite this burgeoning field of ‘enthusiastic geographies’, the conceptualisation of enthusiasm has until now remained largely untouched by geographers. This article develops recent work on emotional geographies in order to shed light on the emergence, experience and spatial implications of enthusiasm in group settings. It draws upon interview material with members of the UK’s Telecommunications Heritage Group in order to examine enthusiasm as an emotional affiliation. It is argued in this article that enthusiasm influences passions, performances and actions in space, revealing the mutual ‘closeness’, exclusivity of knowledgeability and sociability among participants.

Motivational, emotional, and behavioral correlates of fear of missing out

Social media utilities have made it easier than ever to know about the range of online or offline social activities one could be engaging. On the upside, these social resources provide a multitude of opportunities for interaction; on the downside, they often broadcast more options than can be pursued, given practical restrictions and limited time. This dual nature of social media has driven popular interest in the concept of Fear of Missing Out – popularly referred to as FoMO. Defined as a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent, FoMO is characterized by the desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing. The present research presents three studies conducted to advance an empirically based understanding of the fear of missing out phenomenon. The first study collected a diverse international sample of participants in order to create a robust individual differences measure of FoMO, the Fear of Missing Out scale (FoMOs); this study is the first to operationalize the construct. Study 2 recruited a nationally representative cohort to investigate how demographic, motivational and well-being factors relate to FoMO. Study 3 examined the behavioral and emotional correlates of fear of missing out in a sample of young adults. Implications of the FoMOs measure and for the future study of FoMO are discussed.

Purpose in life predicts better emotional recovery from negative stimuli

Purpose in life predicts both health and longevity suggesting that the ability to find meaning from life’s experiences, especially when confronting life’s challenges, may be a mechanism underlying resilience. Having purpose in life may motivate reframing stressful situations to deal with them more productively, thereby facilitating recovery from stress and trauma. In turn, enhanced ability to recover from negative events may allow a person to achieve or maintain a feeling of greater purpose in life over time. In a large sample of adults (aged 36-84 years) from the MIDUS study (Midlife in the U.S., http://www.midus.wisc.edu/), we tested whether purpose in life was associated with better emotional recovery following exposure to negative picture stimuli indexed by the magnitude of the eyeblink startle reflex (EBR), a measure sensitive to emotional state. We differentiated between initial emotional reactivity (during stimulus presentation) and emotional recovery (occurring after stimulus offset). Greater purpose in life, assessed over two years prior, predicted better recovery from negative stimuli indexed by a smaller eyeblink after negative pictures offset, even after controlling for initial reactivity to the stimuli during the picture presentation, gender, age, trait affect, and other well-being dimensions. These data suggest a proximal mechanism by which purpose in life may afford protection from negative events and confer resilience is through enhanced automatic emotion regulation after negative emotional provocation.

Emotional reasoning and anxiety sensitivity: associations with social anxiety disorder in childhood

Background Two specific cognitive constructs that have been implicated in the development and maintenance of anxiety symptoms are anxiety sensitivity and emotional reasoning, both of which relate to the experience and meaning of physical symptoms of arousal or anxiety. The interpretation of physical symptoms has been particularly implicated in theories of social anxiety disorder, where internal physical symptoms are hypothesized to influence the individual's appraisals of the self as a social object. Method The current study compared 75 children on measures of anxiety sensitivity and emotional reasoning: 25 with social anxiety disorder, 25 with other anxiety disorders, and 25 nonanxious children (aged 7–12 years). Results Children with social anxiety disorder reported higher levels of anxiety sensitivity and were more likely than both other groups to view ambiguous situations as anxiety provoking, whether physical information was present or not. There were no group differences in the extent to which physical information altered children's interpretation of hypothetical scenarios. Limitations This study is the first to investigate emotional reasoning in clinically anxious children and therefore replication is needed. In addition, those in both anxious groups commonly had comorbid conditions and, consequently, specific conclusions about social anxiety disorder need to be treated with caution. Conclusion The findings highlight cognitive characteristics that may be particularly pertinent in the context of social anxiety disorder in childhood and which may be potential targets for treatment. Furthermore, the findings suggest that strategies to modify these particular cognitive constructs may not be necessary in treatments of some other childhood anxiety disorders.