Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Previous studies have shown that sad music could evoke the aesthetic pleasure or other psychological benefits while inducing sadness. Based on these existing evidence, two major psychological theories have been proposed: one is the " dissociation theory ", the other is the" neutralization theory ". Both theories have been used to elaborate how sad music becomes pleasurable. However, neither can provide a comprehensive and reasonable explanation. Therefore, further exploration of the specific reward processing of sad music is of great significance. Future research need to clarify the neural basis of the existing psychological theories from the neurobiological perspectives.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： A growing number of studies have recently focused on the functional significance of oxytocin (OT) in human social decision-making. With various experimental paradigms being developed, previous studies have shown that oxytocin (OT)plays an important regulatory role in interpersonal decision-making. In the OT research field, researchers have looked into many aspects of social decision-making, including cooperation and protection, morality, trust, generous behavior. Three possible hypotheses for oxytocin function were proposed to interpret current findings, however, no unified theory has yet been suggested to integrate all the observed phenomena. Future studies should focus on the physiological mechanisms of intranasal OT and receptor gene polymorphisms, take the gender differences into consideration, and establish a more appropriate and testable theoretical model.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Fear generalization is a phenomenon that conditioned fear responses extended to safe stimuli which shares perceptual similarity with threat stimuli. Moderate fear generalization is beneficial for human survival, but excessive fear generalization leads to maladaptation to environment. Rules that underlie fear generalization have been investigated by related researches based on perception, and been widely applied to studies in various domains. This paper reviews the study of the generalization of fear based on perception. Here, we begin with Pavlovian fear conditioning and the gradient of fear generalization, which lays the foundation for theoretical approaches used today. Then we review the research of fear generalization based on perception in multiple sensory channels (i.e., visual, auditory, context). Third, we summarize the neural circuits of fear generalization which involve hippocampus, amygdala, insula, and prefrontal cortex. Last but not least, we briefly clarify the difference between perception-based and concept-based fear generalization which receive increased interests. Further studies should extend this work in many ways, such as combining concepts-based fear generalization, using Just-Noticeable-Difference Threshold to ensure that the generalization stimuli can actually be discriminated, increasing the explicitness and divisity of stimuli, as well as applping hormonesand multi-modal data analysis methods.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： External feedback plays a vital role in ongoing outcome monitoring and future behavioral adjustments. Previous event-related potentials (ERPs) studies have consistently associated the feedback- related negativity (FRN) component with feedback processing after decision making. Until now, several theoretical interpretations of FRN were proposed and continuously updated in the last decade, including the classical reinforcement learning theory, affective-motivational hypothesis, reward positivity (RewP) theory, Predicted response-outcome model (PRO model) and Positive affective model. Whereas different models emphasized on different aspects, no unified theory has yet been proposed to integrate all of the existing experimental evidences. Based on these literature reviews, we argued that big-sample data, multiple and complementary technologies are highly necessary in future FRN studies. Moreover, we proposed that FRN should be considered as an electrophysiological index of reward system to investigate human behaviors in complex social interaction contexts.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The ability of recognizing ambiguous expressions is proposed to be a generally used social skill, which plays a crucial role in human social interaction. Emotion context information as a main factor which affects ambiguous expression recognition, including text description, emotional expression, color background, olfactory signal and personality factors, were reviewed in this paper. We aim to reveal the mechanisms underlying the process of ambiguous expression which was influenced by emotion context information. In the future research, the following topics should be considered: highlighting the dominant research status of ambiguous expression, defining emotional context information clearly, exploring new research paradigms and identifying brain regions that affect the transfer of valance, in order to broaden the research field of ambiguous expression recognition.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Moral cognition focuses on the processing of information underlying the moral behavior. Recently, researchers have begun to apply computational modelling to moral cognition as to explore how moral cognition is represented in the brain. However, the research on the computational modeling of moral cognition is still at its infancy. The application of computational modelling (the Drift Diffusion Models, Utility Models, Reinforcement Learning Models and Hierarchical Gaussian Filter) in the behavioral and physiological studies of moral cognition quantified the cognitive processes and neural mechanisms underlying moral decision-making, moral judgment, and moral inference. In addition, this new approach could help to understand antisocial behavior and mental disorders. Finally, the computational modeling needs to be improved and future research need to pay attention to the potential limitations.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Testosterone is an androgen synthesized and secreted by the Leydig cells of the testes in men, the thecal cells of the ovaries and placenta of women. It can mediate various physiological, morphological, and behavioral processes, and is vital to human survival and reproduction. A large number of studies have shown that there is a bidirectional relationship between testosterone and social behavior. Testosterone can regulate various social behaviors, which in turn feedback and affect the testosterone level. Early research showed that individuals with high testosterone level are more aggressive. According to the challenge hypothesis and the biosocial status model, recent studies have revealed that testosterone is highly responsive to competitive interactions. In addition, by reviewing these studies, we suggest that changes in testosterone can affect aggressive behavior by enhancing the reactivity of the amygdala or reducing PFC-amygdala functional coupling. Future research could consider the potential role of other hormones (such as cortisol) and personality traits in regulating the relationship between testosterone and human aggressive behavior, as well as related biological mechanisms.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Sleep problems may induce fear-related mood disorders such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and phobias, among others. Studying the cognitive cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in the relationship between sleep problems and fear learning can help enhance the prediction, diagnosis, and treatment of fear-related mood disorders. Previous studies have shown that sleep deprivation affects fear acquisition mainly by inhibiting the activity of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and blocking its functional connections with the amygdala, resulting in impaired safe learning that fails to inhibit fear of threatening stimuli, thus enhancing fear acquisition. In contrast, sleep deprivation during the fear memory consolidation phase impairs the activity of the amygdala and hippocampus, thereby impairing fear memory. On the other hand, sleep deprivation during the extinction learning phase results in delayed activation of brain regions associated with extinction learning, which in turn impairs fear extinction memory. Further studies have reported that different stages of sleep have distinct effects on brain regions associated with fear learning; in particular, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep deprivation (insufficient) and complete sleep deprivation have similar effects on the cognitive and neural mechanisms of fear learning. Deprivation of REM sleep suppresses vmPFC activity, enhances amygdala activation, and thus enhances fear acquisition. In addition, reduced functional connectivity in the limbic cortex disrupts fear memory consolidation. Deprivation of REM sleep after extinction learning phase increases amygdala, insula, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activity and diminishes mPFC, thereby impairing extinction memory. Therefore, after clinical treatment, quality of sleep, particularly REM sleep, should be ensured at night. In addition to reinforcing recently acquired memories, REM sleep is involved in integrating new information into existing knowledge structures, reorganizing these structures, and generalizing recently acquired memories; therefore, improving REM sleep can promote fading retention and generalization. In contrast, the slow-wave sleep (SWS) stage facilitates fear extinction learning through target memory reactivation, which allows the hippocampus to re-code threatening stimuli and accelerate the consolidation of new safety information in the amygdala. During the SWS stage, participants are not conscious and therefore do not have to directly face the threatening stimulus, thus avoiding some of the drawbacks of traditional extinction therapy applied during wakefulness for patients with fear-related mood disorders, such as anxiety disorders and (PTSD). Clinically relevant studies have found that individuals with insomnia also exhibit delayed activation of the fear extinction brain regions, with related activation occurring only during extinction recall. At the same time, individuals with insomnia have stronger learned fear which causes their insomnia and can easily develop into pathological anxiety or PTSD. Furthermore, sleep immediately following exposure therapy can optimize the therapeutic effect and may even promote extinction generalization; therefore, sleep should be used in combination with traditional exposure therapy. Future research should be conducted to further the study of the neural mechanisms by which sleep affects fear generalization and the effect of circadian rhythm disruption on fear extinction, as well as clarifying the problems in the translation of animal sleep studies to human sleep studies.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： One significant challenge that currently limits the development of educational neuroscience is the way to neurophysiologically characterize interpersonal interactions and dynamics of pedagogical activities. Addressing this challenge in the literature, we aim to provide a perspective on the research emerging in the nexus between the fields of interpersonal neuroscience (i.e., the measurement of two or more individuals’ brain activity and the analysis of their inter-dependency), teaching and learning. Our review will highlight important recent developments and target outstanding questions that have so far not been addressed, and offer a novel synthesized framework for a better understanding of both the transmission of information between individual brains, and how such interactions shape memories and behavior. The interpersonal neuroscience focuses on the associations among two or more people when they perform the same cognitive activity. There are two different types of scanning in interpersonal neuroscience research: sequential scanning and hyperscanning. In a sequential scanning protocol, a stimulus is first shown to a subject A (e.g., a teacher), whose responses are recorded and later presented to another subject B (e.g., a student). The responses from subject B are also recorded and compared with those of subject A. Research using sequential scanning examines the group's processing mode of information and the transmission of such information between people. The concurrent scanning (also known as “hyperscanning”) captures the brain activity of interacting individuals simultaneously. In hyperscanning studies, a student acquires information by interacting with another individual (another student or a teacher). Related studies focus on the interaction patterns of multiple individuals in naturalistic situations. Compared with sequential scanning, hyperscanning is thought to have higher ecological validity and can be applied in real-time one-to-one and one-to-many teaching scenarios. Recent years have witnessed fruitful applications of interpersonal neuroscience in the field of education. It has been demonstrated that teaching activities can induce the synchronization of brain activity (i.e., interpersonal brain synchronization, IBS) between interacting individuals (such as teacher-student dyads and student-student dyads) with different task scenarios and materials. IBS may reflect the quantity and quality of teacher-student/student-student interaction. The characteristics of IBS in the teaching process are closely associated with the dynamic nature of the teaching process and the teacher-student relationship. Also, the inter-student correlation of brain activity can reflect their cognitive states (such as engagement and attention, etc.) during the learning process. Therefore, the interpersonal neuroscience perspective can help researchers better understand the teaching process. Interpersonal neuroscience can provide valuable insights for monitoring the teaching process, predicting the teaching effect, and capturing the factors that may affect the teaching activities. The research findings of interpersonal neuroscience in the field of education have important implications for teaching activities and research. The related neural indices can help teachers select teaching materials, establish and maintain a good teacher-student relationship, and attach importance to the role of interaction in teaching activities. According to the current findings of the application of interpersonal neuroscience in education, the correlation or synchronization between brain activity can be used as a predictor of attention engagement and learning outcomes. Future research is needed to improve the quality of online courses by applying the methods of interpersonal neuroscience to monitor the interactive learning characteristics of students with different learning ability levels, improve the quality of teaching activities of skills, track the dynamic changes of students' engagement in online course learning and evaluate the quality of online courses. We believe that our perspective will have a broad impact in fields, such as psychology, pedagogics, and neuroscience, in particular those targeting social behavior and teaching/learning settings. Our perspective will also be of interest to researchers working across species and in the clinic.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Pain and reward are two basic motivational factors that regulate human perception and behavior, and can provide individuals with different behavioral motivations and subjective value experiences. Both pain avoidance sand reward seeking are essential for survival. Pain can be categorized into acute and chronic pain, and reward can be differentiated into a motivational component in the anticipatory phase and a hedonic component in the experiential phase. Acute pain increases the motivational component of reward and increases or decreases the hedonic component of reward, whereas chronic pain decreases the motivational component of reward and, and generally, decreases the hedonic component of reward.The neural mechanisms by which pain affects reward are mainly related to changes in the dopamine and opioid systems and neural activity in the medial prefrontal cortex(mPFC). Acute pain affects reward processing through neural mechanisms related to increased dopamine release, functional changes in the opioid system, and modulation of the mPFC. On the other hand, chronic pain leads to abnormal changes in the dopamine system, opioid system, and functional connectivity of the mPFC -voxel nucleus in the reward circuit, and reduces activation of brain regions associated with reward processing. These changes in neural mechanisms suggest that adaptive changes in reward circuits based on pain experience can predict the chronicity of pain. Further analysis revealed that the different effects of acute and chronic pain on reward processing are due to the following four factors: First, different symptom expressions in acute and chronic pain; second, different activities of the dopamine and opioid systems in acute and chronic pain; third, different mechanisms of neural activity in the neural in acute and chronic pain; and fourth, different mechanisms of reward processing in acute and chronic pain caused. In acute pain conditions, activation of brain regions that overlap with reward circuits is enhanced, thereby enhancing the motivational and hedonic components of reward processing; in chronic pain conditions, activation of these brain regions is abnormal, reducing the motivational and hedonic components of reward processing. Owing to the inconsistencies between current findings and previous studies, many issues should be addressed and resolved in the future: First, the issue of reproducibility of studies and comparability of results must/should be addressed by standardizing the relevant experimental operations and using uniform experimental paradigms and measures. Second, the immediate neural activity changes in the neural corresponding with the effects of acute pain and chronic pain on reward processing can be further explored. Next, the differences between acute pain and chronic pain can be examined, and based on these differences, the question of whether different types of chronic pain have different effects on reward processing and different changes in reward processing circuits can be investigated, the effects of different types of chronic pain on reward processing neural circuits can be measured separately, and the transition from acute pain to chronic pain can be prevented. Finally, the effects of different types of chronic pain on reward processing can be explored based on the co-morbidity of chronic pain and mood disorders, and further, the effects of different types of chronic pain on reward processing can be explored. Based on this, the relationship between different degrees of deficits, different types of chronic pain, and mood disorders should be clarified.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Arousal is an activator for the body's resources, reflecting the strengthened preparation for external stimulus input. As it is introduced into the emotional dimension, arousal is regarded as one of the core characteristics of emotions, which is a measurement of body's wakefulness, and its level changes on the continuum from sleep to provocation. Arousal can be subjectively experienced by individuals, and has a unique physiological mechanism and neural circuit. Its concept contains both psychological arousal and physical arousal. However, as arousal is closely related to emotions, many investigators neglect the original meaning of arousal, taking arousal as a substitute for emotional intensity. The reason for this confusion may be that valence is regarded as the direction of emotions. In fact, valence is only a feature of emotions. It also has different intensities, which affect the emotional intensity. Therefore, arousal cannot be simply equaled with emotional intensity. Instead, emotional intensity should be the vector addition of arousal and valence. In this paper, we analyze the concept of arousal and its relationship with emotions. Then, inspired by Lazarus' argument that stimuli define emotions, we hold that it may be possible to further understand the connotation and psychological mechanism of arousal from the perspective of anticipation. Specifically, a variety of emotions can be summed up to an objective material or stimulus. In other words, it is stimuli that define emotions; when stimuli appear more unexpectedly, it indicates that the level of previous preparedness is lower, so more resources are needed for the individual to mobilize, and the level of arousal rises in response. Anticipation and its related mechanisms (uncertainty, habitation, etc.) are the major cognitive mechanisms of arousal. As for other factors (stimulus attributes, individual differences, etc.), as the number of resources that the individual needs to process the stimulus changes, the one of the resources required to be mobilized after the stimulus appears(arousal level) changes accordingly. Besides, the degree of individual expectations can be affected. As a result, these factors also affect the level of arousal. The neural mechanism of arousal mainly involves a “bottom-up” pathway that originates from the brainstem and projects to the thalamus, hypothalamus, and cerebral cortex. The arousal signals in the brainstem and the tail of the hypothalamus mainly come from the areas rich in monoamine neurons and cholinergic neurons. The GABAergic neurons in the preoptic area of ??the hypothalamus, the lateral hypothalamus, and the sub-substantia nigra reticular region play a role in inhibiting arousal. Some key cortical nodes in the default mode network and the salience network and their interconnections also participate in the processing of arousal levels. It is worth noting that the arousal system almost overlaps with the brain area that encodes unexpected signals. Based on this, the anticipatory mechanism is presumably the key factor that induces arousal changes. This paper suggests that future researchers may further promote the basic and applied research for arousal from the following aspects: FMRI, eye movement, skin conductance and other technical methods may be used to explore the effect of physical arousal on psychological arousal, which is helpful to further clarify the physiological basis of arousal and related processing mechanisms; a model of integrating multimodal data may be used to optimize the measurement of arousal; the arousal characteristics of human mental diseases (especially comorbid problems) may be further evaluated; and it would be better if the discussion of the relationship between arousal and emotional intensity be more in-depth.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Researches on deficits in emotion regulation of depression have mainly focused on the selection and application of emotion-regulation strategies; however, it remains unclear whether it is also related to emotion-regulation goals, i.e., the direction of emotion regulation. Situation selection is an antecedent-focused regulation strategy that is worked before the emotional reactions occur and it can be used as an index of emotional-regulation goals.In our current study, the event-related potential (ERP) technique was used to investigate the emotion-regulation goals of young adults with depression inclination. Participants were asked to freely select the emotion-inducing scenes in which they want to put themselves and to report their emotional preferences。ERP results revealed that the amplitudes of Late Positive Potential (LPP) were significantly decreased when viewing the sadness scene in young adults with depression inclination, and they selected to view sadness scene more frequently than healthy young adults. In addition, the ratings of sadness preferences were significantly higher among subjects with depression inclination, while the happiness preferences were lower.The current results suggest that, compared to the control group, the individuals with depression inclination are more willing to use situation selection to maintain or enhance their sadness rather than weaken it or enhance their happiness. These findings further indicate that emotion regulation goals of depressive subjects may be related to their motivations for selecting emotional stimulus, and provide a new perspective for exploring the causes and mechanisms of emotion regulation deficits in depressive disorders.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Previous studies found attention bias towards an infant’s face among parents and non-parents. Ethologist Konrad Lorenz proposed the concept of “baby schema,” indicating that the rapid reaction towards an infant’s information is an innate releasing mechanism. The follow-up research found that the attention bias effect was affected by individual differences, such as gender, characteristics, hormones, etc. However, little is known about an infant’s facial features and the impact of those features on the attention bias. This study investigates the influence of cuteness and familiarity on the attention bias effect towards an infant’s face. A 2 (cuteness：high cuteness, low cuteness) × 2 (familiarity: high familiarity, low familiarity) within subject design was used in this study. Before the formal experiment, according to 31 participants’ rating of cuteness after pictures of infants’ face with high and low cuteness were shown. The familiarity of faces was manipulated by infant face learning. There were 35 participants in our formal experiment and each participant completed 3 parts: infant facial images learning and recognition task, dot probe task, and rating task. This study used eye-movement tracking and subjective ratings to investigate the influence of cuteness and familiarity of infant’s faces on the preference/ attention bias effect towards an infant’s face by comparing the attention bias indexes under four conditions in the dot probe task. The dot-probe task indicated that compared to adult’s faces, participants reacted quicker when the target was presented at the same location with an infant’s face. The reaction time bias under the high-cuteness infant face condition was stronger than the low-cuteness infant face condition. The eye-movement tracking results showed that participants preferred looking at the high-cuteness infant faces, indicating first fixation duration bias and the total gaze duration bias. However, there was no significant difference in the direction of eye movement and first fixation latency bias. These results implied an attention maintenance pattern for high- cuteness infant faces. Furthermore, this pattern only existed under the low-familiarity condition. The attention bias effect between high and low-cuteness infant faces was not significantly different under the high-familiarity condition. For the rating of cuteness, infant faces with high-familiarity were rated as cuter than the low-familiarity infant faces, regardless of their cuteness. In conclusion, our experiment identified that the cuteness of infants’ face influences the effect of attention bias towards an infant’s face under the low-familiarity condition. Regarding the preferences, there may be a dissociative situation between subjective rating and gazing behavior.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Emotion regulation is crucial to mental health and social life. Traditional view conceived emotion regulation as a deliberative process. However, there is growing evidence that emotion regulation can implement at an implicit level without or with limited involvement of the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) that is responsible for cognitive control. Unlike explicit emotion regulation, we have few knowledge on the neural mechanisms underlying implicit emotion regulation. Here, we investigated the effect of excitatory the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to provide causal evidence for the key role of the vmPFC in implicit emotion regulation. This study had a mixed design, with group (anodal vs. sham) as the between-subject factor and priming type (reappraisal vs. baseline) as the within-subject factor. A total of 80 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to the anodal group and the sham tDCS group. The task was divided into two blocks, i.e., the implicit reappraisal block and the baseline block. The order of the two blocks was counterbalanced within the participants in each group. At the beginning of each block, participants were required to complete a tDCS session (1.5 mA; 10 min for the active group and 1 min for the sham group). The anodal electrode was placed in the middle of Fz and Fpz and the ground electrode was placed under the chin). Then, participants completed six sessions of sentence unscramble task (10 trials per session) to prime the emotion regulation goal. Each session of the sentence unscramble task was followed by a picture viewing task (5 trials) to evoke negative emotions. The self-reported emotion rating and EEG signals were recorded during the picture viewing task. Half an hour after the end of the picture viewing task, participants were asked to rate the valence (1 = very unpleasant; 9 = very pleasant) of all viewed images in the picture viewing task. The results showed that the experimental group (n = 40) reported lower negative emotional experience and showed lower LPP amplitudes (measured as the average amplitude of Pz P3, P4, CP1, CP2) when the vmPFC was activated in the cognitive reappraisal block compared to the control group (n = 40), indicating that excitatory vmPFC could effectively facilitate the ability of implicit emotion regulation. Furthermore, we also found that excitatory vmPFC can reduce the P1 amplitude (measured as the average amplitude of O1, O2) under both baseline and reappraisal conditions. The above results indicated that activating the vmPFC could not only facilitate implicit emotion regulation but also reduce early attention distribution to negative stimuli. This study is the first attempt to use the tDCS technique to investigate priming-induced implicit emotion regulation. The results directly reveal the causal relationship between the vmPFC and implicit cognitive reappraisal, suggesting this brain region as a potential target of neural modulation to enhance the ability of implicit emotion regulation in clinical populations.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Under the influence of the novel coronavirus epidemic, some negative social events, such as separation of family or friends and home isolation have increased. These events can cause negative emotion experiences similar to physical pain, thus they are called social pain. Placebo effect refers to the positive response to the inert treatment with no specific therapeutic properties, which has been shown to be one of the effective ways to alleviate social pain. Studies have shown that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) plays a key role in placebo effect. Therefore, this study aimed to explore whether activating DLPFC by using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) could improve the ability of placebo effects to regulate social pain. Besides, we also combined neuroimaging and neuromodulation techniques to provide bidirectional evidence for the role of the DLPFC on placebo effects. We recruited a total of 100 participants to finish the task of negative emotional rating of the social exclusion images. Among them, 50 participants were stimulated by TMS at the right DLPFC (rDLPFC), while the others were assigned to the sham group. This study contained two independent variables. The between- subject variable was TMS group (rDLPFC-activated group or sham group) and the within-subject variable was placebo type (no-placebo and placebo). All participants received nasal spray in two blocks. In the no-placebo condition, participants were instructed that they would receive a saline nasal spray which helped to improve physiological readings; in placebo block, participants were told to administrate an intranasal fluoxetine spray (saline nasal spray in fact) that could reduce unpleasantness within 10 minutes. To strengthen the expectation of intranasal fluoxetine, participants viewed a professional introduction to fluoxetine’s clinical and academic usage including downregulating negative emotion, such as fear, anxiety, and disgust. Participants who received the placebo block first would be reminded that fluoxetine’s effect was over before the next block to reduce the carry-over for the following block. Self-reported negative emotional and electroencephalogram data were recorded. There was a significant two-way interaction of TMS group and placebo type. Results showed that compared with the sham group, participants in the rDLPFC-activated group reported less negative emotional feeling and had a lower amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP) in placebo condition, a component that reflects the emotional intensity, suggesting that activating rDLPFC can improve the ability of placebo effect to regulate social pain. The above finding suggested that activating DLPFC can improve the placebo effect of regulating negative emotion. Moreover, this study is the first attempt to investigate the enhancement of placebo effects by using TMS on emotion regulation. The findings not only support the critical role of DLPFC on placebo effect using neuroimaging and neuromodulation techniques, but also provide a potential brain target for treating emotional regulation deficits in patients with psychiatric disorders.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2023-02-14
Abstract：
Under the influence of the novel coronavirus epidemic, some negative social events, such as separation of family or friends and home isolation have increased. These events can cause negative emotion experiences similar to physical pain, thus they are called social pain. Placebo effect refers to the positive response to the inert treatment with no specific therapeutic properties, which has been shown to be one of the effective ways to alleviate social pain. Studies have shown that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) plays a key role in placebo effect. Therefore, this study aimed to explore whether activating DLPFC by using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) could improve the ability of placebo effects to regulate social pain. Besides, we also combined neuroimaging and neuromodulation techniques to provide bidirectional evidence for the role of the DLPFC on placebo effects. We recruited a total of 100 participants to finish the task of negative emotional rating of the social exclusion images. Among them, 50 participants were stimulated by TMS at the right DLPFC (rDLPFC), while the others were assigned to the sham group. This study contained two independent variables. The between-subject variable was TMS group (rDLPFC-activated group or sham group) and the within-subject variable was placebo type (no-placebo and placebo). All participants received nasal spray in two blocks. In the no-placebo condition, participants were instructed that they would receive a saline nasal spray which helped to improve physiological readings; in placebo block, participants were told to administrate an intranasal fluoxetine spray (saline nasal spray in fact) that could reduce unpleasantness within 10 minutes. To strengthen the expectation of intranasal fluoxetine, participants viewed a professional introduction to fluoxetine’s clinical and academic usage including downregulating negative emotion, such as fear, anxiety, and disgust. Participants who received the placebo block first would be reminded that fluoxetine’s effect was over before the next block to reduce the carry-over for the following block. Self-reported negative emotional and electroencephalogram data were recorded. There was a significant two-way interaction of TMS group and placebo type. Results showed that compared with the sham group, participants in the rDLPFC-activated group reported less negative emotional feeling and had a lower amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP) in placebo condition, a component that reflects the emotional intensity, suggesting that activating rDLPFC can improve the ability of placebo effect to regulate social pain. The above finding suggested that activating DLPFC can improve the placebo effect of regulating negative emotion. Moreover, this study is the first attempt to investigate the enhancement of placebo effects by using TMS on emotion regulation. The findings not only support the critical role of DLPFC on placebo effect using neuroimaging and neuromodulation techniques, but also provide a potential brain target for treating emotional regulation deficits in patients with psychiatric disorders.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2022-08-02
Abstract： Emotion regulation is crucial to mental health and social life. Traditional view conceived emotion regulation as a deliberative process. However, there is growing evidence that emotion regulation can implement at an implicit level without or with limited involvement of the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) that is responsible for cognitive control. Unlike explicit emotion regulation, we have few knowledge on the neural mechanisms underlying implicit emotion regulation. Here, we investigated the effect of excitatory the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to provide causal evidence for the key role of the vmPFC in implicit emotion regulation. This study had a mixed design, with group (anodal vs. sham) as the between-subject factor and priming type (reappraisal vs. baseline) as the within-subject factor. A total of 80 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to the anodal group and the sham tDCS group. The task was divided into two blocks, i.e., the implicit reappraisal block and the baseline block. The order of the two blocks was counterbalanced within the participants in each group. At the beginning of each block, participants were required to complete a tDCS session (1.5 mA; 10 min for the active group and 1 min for the sham group). The anodal electrode was placed in the middle of Fz and Fpz and the ground electrode was placed under the chin). Then, participants completed six sessions of sentence unscramble task (10 trials per session) to prime the emotion regulation goal. Each session of the sentence unscramble task was followed by a picture viewing task (5 trials) to evoke negative emotions. The self-reported emotion rating and EEG signals were recorded during the picture viewing task. Half an hour after the end of the picture viewing task, participants were asked to rate the valence (1 = very unpleasant; 9 = very pleasant) of all viewed images in the picture viewing task. The results showed that the experimental group (n = 40) reported lower negative emotional experience and showed lower LPP amplitudes (measured as the average amplitude of Pz P3, P4, CP1, CP2) when the vmPFC was activated in the cognitive reappraisal block compared to the control group (n = 40), indicating that excitatory vmPFC could effectively facilitate the ability of implicit emotion regulation. Furthermore, we also found that excitatory vmPFC can reduce the P1 amplitude (measured as the average amplitude of O1, O2) under both baseline and reappraisal conditions. The above results indicated that activating the vmPFC could not only facilitate implicit emotion regulation but also reduce early attention distribution to negative stimuli. This study is the first attempt to use the tDCS technique to investigate priming-induced implicit emotion regulation. The results directly reveal the causal relationship between the vmPFC and implicit cognitive reappraisal, suggesting this brain region as a potential target of neural modulation to enhance the ability of implicit emotion regulation in clinical populations.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2021-12-05
Abstract： Shyness refers to an individual's inhibition in a social situation, which is an obstacle for an individual to participate in social interaction. Recent years, cognitive neuroscience research on shyness has increased. According to the metacognition model, social fitness model, lateralized brain-body emotion model, and differential susceptibility to environmental influences model, researchers have explored the effect of brain structure and function, as well as several ERP components related to sensory perception and attention on shyness. However, the theoretical and empirical research on cognitive and neural mechanisms of shyness is still in its infancy. Based on above, a psychological development model of shyness has been proposed. Future research on shyness should be studied from personality and emotion simultaneously, and continue to develop research paradigm so as to deeply explore the cognitive nervous mechanism.
Subjects: Psychology >> Other Disciplines of Psychology submitted time 2021-05-07
Abstract： One significant challenge that currently limits the development of educational neuroscience is the way to neurophysiologically characterize interpersonal interactions and dynamics of pedagogical activities. Our paper examined how “interpersonal neuroscience” (i.e., the measurement of two or more individuals’ brain activity and the analysis of their inter-dependency) might provide novel insights into the neural mechanisms of pedagogical interactions. To this end, we reviewed recent research focusing on the application of interpersonal neuroscientific approaches in the context of education. In particular, we discussed how the rapidly developing field of interpersonal neuroscience could contribute to the monitoring of pedagogical processes, prediction of pedagogical efficiency, and identification of influencing factors of teaching and learning. Finally, we discussed the methodological and translational challenges surrounding the application of interpersonal neuroscientific approaches in education, as well as prospects for future studies.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2020-02-12
Abstract： Moral cognition focuses on the processing of information underlying the moral behavior. Recently, researchers have begun to apply computational modelling to moral cognition as to explore how moral cognition is represented in the brain. However, the research on the computational modeling of moral cognition is still at its infancy. The application of computational modelling (the Drift Diffusion Models, Utility Models, Reinforcement Learning Models and Hierarchical Gaussian Filter) in the behavioral and physiological studies of moral cognition quantified the cognitive processes and neural mechanisms underlying moral decision-making, moral judgment, and moral inference. In addition, this new approach could help to understand antisocial behavior and mental disorders. Finally, the computational modeling needs to be improved and future research need to pay attention to the potential limitations. "
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
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