More than Tunes in Your Head: Dynamic Aspects of Auditory Imagery for Music

Auditory imagery is more than just mental “replaying” of tunes in one’s head. I will review several studies that capture characteristics of complex and active imagery tasks, using both behavioral and neuroscience approaches. I use behavioral methods to capture people’s ability to make emotion judgments about both heard and imagined music in real time. My neuroimaging studies look at the neural correlates of encoding an imagined melody, anticipating an upcoming tune, and also imagining tunes backwards. Several studies show voxel-by-voxel correlates of neural activity with self-report of imagery vividness. These studies speak to the ways in which musical imagery allows us not just to remember music, but also how we use those memories to judge temporally changing aspects of the musical experience.

Maladaptive Emotion Regulation is Related to Distressed Personalities in Cardiac Patients

Cardiac patients with Type D ('distressed') personality perceive more stress. It is unclear to what extent Type D personality might represent deficits in emotion regulation that are known to play an important role in the development of mental disorders. This study evaluated the relationship between emotion regulation and Type D personality and assessed the influence of mood and stress on Type D.

The Effects of Emotions and Distraction on Attention During a Perceptual Task

According to the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, positive emotions broaden while negative emotions narrow thought-action repertoires. These processes reflect changes in attentional scope, which is the focus of this research. The present study tested the hypothesis that participants in negative mood would be better able to focus on a target figure and separate it from its context in a perceptual task, and would also be better able to focus on the task amid a distracting environment than participants in a positive mood. An undergraduate sample of 77 participants watched video clips selected to induce either fear or amusement, and completed an Embedded Figures Test either in a quiet setting or in a noisy setting. A higher-order ANOVA revealed that Mood had a marginally significant effect on task performance, F(1, 73) = 3.94, p = .051, and that Distraction, F(1, 72) = 4.61, p = .035 and the Mood x Distraction interaction, F(1, 73) = 9.12, p = .003 did significantly affect task performance. However, contrary to the hypothesis, the effect of the distraction manipulation was greater for participants in a negative mood than it was for participants in a positive mood. The author suggests future directions to clarify the relationship between emotions, attentional scope, and susceptibility to environmental distraction.

Neurophysiological correlates of delinquent behaviour in adult subjects with ADHD

The attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) shows an increased prevalence in arrested offenders compared to the normal population. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether ADHD symptoms are a major risk factor for criminal behaviour, or whether further deficits, mainly abnormalities in emotion-processing, have to be considered as important additional factors that promote delinquency in the presence of ADHD symptomatology. Event related potentials (ERPs) of 13 non-delinquent and 13 delinquent subjects with ADHD and 13 controls were compared using a modified visual Go/Nogo continuous performance task (VCPT) and a newly developed version of the visual CPT that additionally requires emotional evaluation (ECPT). ERPs were analyzed regarding their topographies and Global Field Power (GFP). Offenders with ADHD differed from non-delinquent subjects with ADHD in the ERPs representing higher-order visual processing of objects and faces (N170) and facial affect (P200), and in late monitoring and evaluative functions (LPC) of behavioural response inhibition. Concerning neural activity thought to reflect the allocation of neural resources and cognitive processing capability (P300 Go), response inhibition (P300 Nogo), and attention/expectancy (CNV), deviances were observable in both ADHD groups and may thus be attributed to ADHD rather than to delinquency. In conclusion, ADHD symptomatology may be a risk factor for delinquency, since some neural information processing deficits found in ADHD seemed to be even more pronounced in offenders with ADHD. However, our results suggest additional risk factors consisting of deviant higher-order visual processing, especially of facial affect, as well as abnormalities in monitoring and evaluative functions of response inhibition.

The Effect Of Conformity On Economic Decision Making

Inspired by research in the field of behavioral economics as well as social psychology, this study aimed to explore if conformity plays a role in the occurrence of herd behavior in the financial market. Participants received one of nine different versions of a survey either online or on paper. They answered questions related to riskiness when making decisions, dependency on others when making decisions, and investment preferences among other questions. In experimental conditions, participants were told the majority of investors, either sixty percent or eighty percent, invested in a certain stock or won a game. It was predicted that individuals would conform to the group behavior in both experimental conditions with the highest level of conformity in the high pressure to conform condition. Results of experiments revealed that when the overwhelming majority of other investors behaved a certain way (80%), participants were more likely to behave that same way. Results of the third experiment supported previous research stating that emotion affects economic decision-making and facilitates herd behavior.

The contexts of scratching behavior and postconflict behavior in squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus)

Self-directed behavior (SDB), such as scratching, is a reliable indicator of emotional arousal in non-human primates. In contrast, affiliative behavior, such as social grooming, has been shown to have a calming effect in primates and reduce arousal. In order to test whether the expression of SDB was related to arousal, the scratching behavior of eight captive squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) was compared across four social contexts (huddling, proximity to others, solitary and post-conflict). In addition,rates of scratching were examined before and after affiliative behavior during the postconflict context. I tested for this effect by using the post-conflict/matched control(PC/MC) method in which post-conflict (PC) behavior of an animal is compared to thebehavior of the same animal in a baseline, nonaggressive situation or a matched control(MC). Context and associated scratching data were obtained from a total of 98 hours of focal sample data. Scratching was significantly lower while animals were huddling thanthe other two contexts. Scratching rates while solitary were significantly higher than those occurring while animals were in proximity. Scratching was also higher in PC than MC. Following conflict, animals were significantly more likely to make contact withthird parties not involved in aggression. Most of these (79%) were a third party approaching a combatant. Further, scratching rates decreased following post-conflict third party contacts and the decrease was not due to a general decrease in scratching thatmight have been occurring after the aggressive interaction. Huddling behavior appears to reduce arousal in squirrel monkeys and may act as a tension-reduction mechanism. The elevated scratching in the solitary context may suggest that squirrel monkeys may be engaged in activities while solitary, such as vigilant behavior that may increase arousal. The third party post conflict affiliative contacts observed were the first such interactions observed in squirrel monkeys. The fact that these third contacts reduced scratching ratesin the combatants indicates that 'consolation' may have been demonstrated in this species. The overall pattern of results suggested that scratching was reliable behavioral indicator of anxiety in squirrel monkeys. These results indicate that overt behavior can be used to assess emotional states in this and other species, acting as a mediator to understanding how emotions regulate social behavior.

Change mechanisms of schema-centered group psychotherapy with personality disorder patients

Background This study addressed the temporal properties of personality disorders and their treatment by schema-centered group psychotherapy. It investigated the change mechanisms of psychotherapy using a novel method by which psychotherapy can be modeled explicitly in the temporal domain. Methodology and Findings 69 patients were assigned to a specific schema-centered behavioral group psychotherapy, 26 to social skills training as a control condition. The largest diagnostic subgroups were narcissistic and borderline personality disorder. Both treatments offered 30 group sessions of 100 min duration each, at a frequency of two sessions per week. Therapy process was described by components resulting from principal component analysis of patients' session-reports that were obtained after each session. These patient-assessed components were Clarification, Bond, Rejection, and Emotional Activation. The statistical approach focused on time-lagged associations of components using time-series panel analysis. This method provided a detailed quantitative representation of therapy process. It was found that Clarification played a core role in schema-centered psychotherapy, reducing rejection and regulating the emotion of patients. This was also a change mechanism linked to therapy outcome. Conclusions/Significance The introduced process-oriented methodology allowed to highlight the mechanisms by which psychotherapeutic treatment became effective. Additionally, process models depicted the actual patterns that differentiated specific diagnostic subgroups. Time-series analysis explores Granger causality, a non-experimental approximation of causality based on temporal sequences. This methodology, resting upon naturalistic data, can explicate mechanisms of action in psychotherapy research and illustrate the temporal patterns underlying personality disorders.

Functional neuroimaging of emotional learning and autonomic reactions

This article provides a selective overview of the functional neuroimaging literature with an emphasis on emotional activation processes. Emotions are fast and flexible response systems that provide basic tendencies for adaptive action. From the range of involved component functions, we first discuss selected automatic mechanisms that control basic adaptational changes. Second, we illustrate how neuroimaging work has contributed to the mapping of the network components associated with basic emotion families (fear, anger, disgust, happiness), and secondary dimensional concepts that organise the meaning space for subjective experience and verbal labels (emotional valence, activity/intensity, approach/withdrawal, etc.). Third, results and methodological difficulties are discussed in view of own neuroimaging experiments that investigated the component functions involved in emotional learning. The amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and striatum form a network of reciprocal connections that show topographically distinct patterns of activity as a correlate of up and down regulation processes during an emotional episode. Emotional modulations of other brain systems have attracted recent research interests. Emotional neuroimaging calls for more representative designs that highlight the modulatory influences of regulation strategies and socio-cultural factors responsible for inhibitory control and extinction. We conclude by emphasising the relevance of the temporal process dynamics of emotional activations that may provide improved prediction of individual differences in emotionality.