The present experiments investigated the impact of working memory (WM) load on emotion regulation (ER) efficacy using reappraisal (Experiment 1, n = 30) and distraction (Experiment 2, n = 30). ...Considering that WM is necessary for storage, elaboration, and manipulation of information and that reappraisal acts by storing, elaborating, and manipulating the stimulus meaning, we hypothesized that high (versus low) WM-load would reduce reappraisal efficacy. By contrast, given that distraction acts by blocking elaborated processing of the stimulus meaning, we expected that high WM-load would enhance distraction efficacy. To test these predictions, we employed a dual-task paradigm in which a low- or high WM-load task was combined with an ER (reappraisal or distraction) task. We measured the Late Positive Potential (LPP)–an electrocortical marker of sustained motivated attention, and a well-established index of emotional arousal–in response to negative pictures. Results confirmed that although reappraisal successfully reduced the LPP amplitude in the down- compared to up-regulation condition in low WM-load trials, high WM-load eliminated this difference, suggesting the disrupting influence of high WM-load on ER for reappraisal (Experiment 1). By contrast, although distraction failed to modulate the LPP amplitude in low WM-load trials, the difference between down- and no-regulation conditions was significant when distraction was combined with high WM-load, suggesting the facilitatory influence of high WM-load on ER for distraction (Experiment 2). Our findings show that the effect of WM-load on ER is strategy-dependent, and that the availability of WM resources is an important situational moderator of ER efficacy in healthy young adults.
•Effects of high vs low WM-load on cognitive emotion regulation were investigated.•Significant attenuation of the LPP under low, but not high WM-load for reappraisal.•Significant attenuation of the LPP under high, but not low WM-load for distraction.•Effect of WM-load on emotion regulation efficacy is strategy-dependent.•Availability of WM resuroces is an important situational determinant of emotion regulation success.
The framing-effect is a bias that affects decision-making depending on whether the available options are presented with positive or negative connotations. Even when the outcome of two choices is ...equivalent, people have a strong tendency to avoid the negatively framed option. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is crucial for rational decision-making, and dysfunctions in this region have been linked to cognitive biases, impulsive behavior and gambling addiction. Using a financial decision-making task in combination with magnetoencephalographic neuroimaging, we show that excitatory compared to inhibitory non-invasive transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the vmPFC reduces framing-effects while improving the assessment of loss-probabilities, ultimately leading to increased overall gains. Behavioral and neural data consistently suggest that this improvement in rational decision-making is predominately due to an attenuation of biases towards negative affect (loss-aversion and risk-aversion). These findings recommend further research towards clinical applications of vmPFC-tDCS as in addictive disorders.
Humans are subject to a variety of cognitive biases, such as the framing-effect or the gambler's fallacy, that lead to decisions unfitting of a purely rational agent. Previous studies have shown that ...the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) plays a key role in making rational decisions and that stronger vmPFC activity is associated with attenuated cognitive biases. Accordingly, dysfunctions of the vmPFC are associated with impulsive decisions and pathological gambling. By applying a gambling paradigm in a between-subjects design with 33 healthy adults, we demonstrate that vmPFC excitation via transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) reduces the framing-effect and the gambler's fallacy compared to sham stimulation. Corresponding magnetoencephalographic data suggest improved inhibition of maladaptive options after excitatory vmPFC-tDCS. Our analyses suggest that the underlying mechanism might be improved reinforcement learning, as effects only emerge over time. These findings encourage further investigations of whether excitatory vmPFC-tDCS has clinical utility in treating pathological gambling or other behavioral addictions.
Ruminations are repetitive thoughts associated with symptoms, causes, and consequences of one’s negative feelings. The objective of this study was to explore the neuronal basis of depressive ...rumination in a non-clinical population within the context of emotional control. Participants scoring high or low on the tendency to ruminate scale took part in the EEG experiment. Their EEG data were collected during a state of induced depressive ruminations and compared with positive and neutral conditions. We hypothesized that both groups would differ according to the level of activation and effective connectivity among the structures involved in the emotional control circuit. Clustering of independent components, together with effective connectivity (Directed Transfer Function), was performed using the EEG signal. The main findings involved decreased activation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and increased activation of the left temporal lobe structures in the highly ruminating group. The latter result was most pronounced during the ruminative condition. Decreased information from the left DLPFC to the left temporal lobe structures was also found, leading to the conclusion that hypoactivation of the left DLPFC and its inability to modulate the activation of the left temporal lobe structures is crucial for the ruminative tendencies.
In this study we verified the causal role of the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in emotional regulation using a strategy of reappraisal, which involves intentionally changing the ...meaning of an affective event to reduce its emotional impact. Healthy participants (n = 26; mean age = 25.4) underwent three sessions of inhibitory continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) applied on three different days over the left or right DLPFC, or the vertex. After applying the stimulation protocol participants were presented with neutral and negative pictorial stimuli that had to be either passively watched or reappraised. The efficacy of emotional control was quantified using the Late Positive Potential (LPP), the neural marker of motivated attention and elaborated stimulus processing. The results showed that reappraisal was compromised after inhibitory stimulation of the right DLPFC compared to the vertex. This impairment of affective modulation was reflected in both early (350-750 ms) and late (750-1500 ms) time windows. As no session differences during the passive watching conditions were found, the decrease in reappraisal efficacy due to non-specific changes in basic perceptual processing was considered unlikely. Instead, we suggest that inhibition of the right DLPFC primarily affects the top-down mechanism of attentional deployment. This results in disturbances of attentional processes that are necessary to thoroughly elaborate the content of affective stimuli to enable their new, less negative interpretation.
Emotional adjectives can be grouped into two main categories: denoting and connoting stable (personality) traits and denoting and connoting transient (mood) states. They relate closely to the concept ...of affectivity, which is a pervasive tendency to experience moods of positive or negative valence. They constitute a rich study material for personality and affect psychology and neuroscience. Thus, this study was designed to establish a normed list of emotional adjectives with ratings encompassing four dimensions: emotional valence (positive or negative), emotional arousal (low-arousing or high-arousing), category (state, trait, and hybrid), and social judgment (competence, morality, and mixed). The adjectives were preselected based on previous broad Polish norming studies, personality and mood questionnaires, and a dictionary study. The results of the study were drawn from 195 participants who rated 400 adjectives that were chosen based on similar linguistic variables, such as frequency and word length. The dataset measures were proven to be stable and reliable. Correlations between the emotional valence and state-trait, valence and competence-morality, and emotional arousal and competence-morality dimensions were found. The study was successful in preparing a dataset of well-categorized (state, trait, and hybrid) positive and negative adjectives of moderate to high arousal ratings. Since the words were matched on linguistic variables, the set provided useful material that can be readily used for research into the effects of the category and emotional dimensions on language processing and as a basis for new personality questionnaires and mood checklists. The dataset could also be seen as a supplement for broader sets of published normed materials in Polish that link emotion and language.
Figurative language processing (e.g. metaphors) is commonly impaired in schizophrenia. In the present study, we investigated the neural activity and propagation of information within neural circuits ...related to the figurative speech, as a neural substrate of impaired conventional metaphor processing in schizophrenia. The study included 30 schizophrenia outpatients and 30 healthy controls, all of whom were assessed with a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) punchline-based metaphor comprehension task including literal (neutral), figurative (metaphorical) and nonsense (absurd) endings. The blood oxygenation level-dependent signal was recorded with 3T MRI scanner and direction and strength of cortical information flow in the time course of task processing was estimated with a 64-channel EEG input for directed transfer function. The presented results revealed that the behavioral manifestation of impaired figurative language in schizophrenia is related to the hypofunction in the bilateral fronto-temporo-parietal brain regions (fMRI) and various differences in effective connectivity in the fronto-temporo-parietal circuit (EEG). Schizophrenia outpatients showed an abnormal pattern of connectivity during metaphor processing which was related to bilateral (but more pronounced at the left hemisphere) hypoactivation of the brain. Moreover, we found reversed lateralization patterns, i.e. a rightward-shifted pattern during metaphor processing in schizophrenia compared to the control group. In conclusion, the presented findings revealed that the impairment of the conventional metaphor processing in schizophrenia is related to the bilateral brain hypofunction, which supports the evidence on reversed lateralization of the language neural network and the existence of compensatory recruitment of alternative neural circuits in schizophrenia.
The study focuses on the relationship between religious fundamentalism and brain activity, investigating whether religious beliefs, especially in a fundamentalist form, act as a bulwark against ...uncertainty that mitigates feelings of threat and worthlessness. We hypothesize that this muted response to uncertainty would manifest neurophysiologically, such that under uncertainty (vs. certainty), religious fundamentalism is associated with reduced activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and evinced in the N2 component. Religious fundamentalism was measured on a scale and electroencephalographic neural reactivity in the ACC was recorded as participants completed a Stroop task. We found that greater religious fundamentalism is associated with lower conflict-related anterior cingulate activity (N2 component), suggesting lower sensitivity to cues that might alter a habitual response pattern. This study provides evidence that religious fundamentalism, by providing a sense of coherency and control, may offer relief from distress and uncertainty.
•Religious fundamentalism is associated with reduced neural response to uncertainty.•High (vs. low) religious fundamentalism is linked with enhanced N2 effect of stimulus-response congruency.•High religious fundamentalism in individuals efficiently regulates uncertainty.
Introduction
Studies suggest an involvement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in reward prediction and processing, with reward-based learning relying on neural activity in response to ...unpredicted rewards or non-rewards (reward prediction error, RPE). Here, we investigated the causal role of the vmPFC in reward prediction, processing, and RPE signaling by transiently modulating vmPFC excitability using transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS).
Methods
Participants received excitatory or inhibitory tDCS of the vmPFC before completing a gambling task, in which cues signaled varying reward probabilities and symbols provided feedback on monetary gain or loss. We collected self-reported and evaluative data on reward prediction and processing. In addition, cue-locked and feedback-locked neural activity via magnetoencephalography (MEG) and pupil diameter using eye-tracking were recorded.
Results
Regarding reward prediction (cue-locked analysis), vmPFC excitation (versus inhibition) resulted in increased prefrontal activation preceding loss predictions, increased pupil dilations, and tentatively more optimistic reward predictions. Regarding reward processing (feedback-locked analysis), vmPFC excitation (versus inhibition) resulted in increased pleasantness, increased vmPFC activation, especially for unpredicted gains (i.e., gain RPEs), decreased perseveration in choice behavior after negative feedback, and increased pupil dilations.
Discussion
Our results support the pivotal role of the vmPFC in reward prediction and processing. Furthermore, they suggest that transient vmPFC excitation via tDCS induces a positive bias into the reward system that leads to enhanced anticipation and appraisal of positive outcomes and improves reward-based learning, as indicated by greater behavioral flexibility after losses and unpredicted outcomes, which can be seen as an improved reaction to the received feedback.
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