Subjects: Other Disciplines >> Synthetic discipline submitted time 2023-10-09 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： There is a large body of evidence from previous research that non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) can be used to improve negative emotions through emotional regulation. A summary of the effects and applicability of NIBS in emotional regulation is important for enriching emotional regulation theory and promoting translational research. Literature reviews have shown that NIBS can effectively influence the activity of relevant brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex, and intervene in explicit and implicit emotional regulation processes. By improving emotional regulation, NIBS has the potential to improve symptoms of mental disorders. However, there are still several issues that need to be addressed in this field. Firstly, there is too much heterogeneity between studies, leading to inconsistent results. Secondly, the brain neural circuit mechanisms of emotional regulation intervention are still unclear, and the measurement indicators of emotional regulation are too singular. In addition, previous NIBS schemes have problems with low localization accuracy, weak effects in a single time period, inability to meet new needs, and some side effects. Therefore, we propose the following suggestions and outlooks: (1) adopting meta-analysis to comprehensively and quantitatively summarize the effectiveness and universality of NIBS in emotion regulation; (2) integrating brain monitoring techniques to investigate the neural circuit mechanisms underlying NIBS intervention in emotion regulation. For example, using multi-target NIBS for precise control of brain regions corresponding to emotion regulation, and combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalogram (EEG), and other brain monitoring techniques to observe changes in the neural mechanisms under the joint action of multi-target NIBS, in order to clarify the causal relationships among various brain regions in the process of emotion regulation (an example is using dual-coil TMS technology to explore the working sequence of different brain regions in explicit emotion regulation); (3) taking individual differences into account as much as possible to optimize NIBS intervention plans. For example, targeting the target area in the patient's PFC accurately through MRI can optimize the stimulation site and frequency for individuals who are unresponsive to TMS/tDCS treatment (no responders); (4) using a combination of multi-brain NIBS and hyperscanning techniques to explore the inter-brain synchronization in interpersonal emotion regulation is a potential research direction; (5) verifying the occurrence and intervention effects of emotion regulation by combining subjective experiences, physiological indicators, and neural characteristics; (6) Neurofeedback technology can compensate for the “side effects” of NIBS. Neurofeedback training, combined with techniques such as fMRI and functional near-infrared spectroscopy, can also be used to enhance the emotion regulation ability of mental disorders with emotion regulation disorders as the main symptoms. We believe that these measures can better address the above issues and improve the effectiveness and applicability of NIBS in emotion regulation intervention.
Subjects: Other Disciplines >> Synthetic discipline submitted time 2023-10-09 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Language is the primary means of human communication. Understanding how it develops and which brain regions control it is a significant concern for psychologists and linguists. In early life, especially during the neonatal stage, infants possess strong perceptual abilities for speech sounds. Newborns can distinguish vowels and consonants from different languages. However, this sensitivity narrows as they are exposed to their native language, making it challenging to perceive non-native phonemes. Studying newborns' perception, discrimination, and learning of speech sounds provides insights into early cognitive mechanisms of language development and aids in understanding neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.Early studies on newborns and infants often use the “habituation-dishabituation paradigm” with “nipple sucking rate” as an indicator. Newborns exhibit perceptual preferences for speech sounds, their native language, and their mother's voice. Brain observation techniques like electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) are used to study speech perception in infants. EEG focuses on the mismatch response (MMR), while fNIRS reveals specific cortical regions involved in speech processing. Both techniques show left-hemisphere dominance in newborns' language processing, with left temporal and frontal lobes being more activated during language tasks. This leftward bias is evident in both functional and structural aspects of the brain. Understanding early language perception is crucial for developmental psychology and related clinical research.Newborns possess strong phoneme discrimination abilities, distinguishing vowels and consonants from different languages. They can also recognize syllables and syllable sequences. Studies using the habituation-dishabituation paradigm and brain observation techniques like EEG and fNIRS demonstrate newborns' unique language capabilities. They exhibit perceptual preferences for their native language and can differentiate it from other languages. Behaviorally, newborns can distinguish sentences and perceive accent patterns. EEG and fNIRS studies show newborns' ability to discriminate vowels, consonants, and syllables, with left hemisphere involvement. They also display sensitivity to syllable sequences, showing enhanced brain responses to certain sequence structures. These findings contribute to understanding language processing and statistical learning in early development.To date, research on newborns' speech perception and phoneme discrimination has primarily employed passive observation of language exposure in utero (e.g., Moon et al., 2013) or single-time-point assessments (excluding Moon's study). Only one study (Partanen et al., 2013) has examined fetal language learning by exposing fetuses to speech sounds prenatally. Few studies have directly observed changes in brain activity before and after speech learning in newborns. Studies using EEG and fNIRS found enhanced neural responses to learned vowels, demonstrating brain plasticity due to learning. Additionally, a study using fNIRS showed that sleep influenced the brain's response to learned vowels. However, the debate remains about whether newborns can differentiate vowels or if their sensitivity is related to prosody rather than phoneme discrimination. Future research should explore the effects of sleep on newborns' language learning and the broader range of phoneme learning in newborns.Autism is a major neurodevelopmental disorder in early childhood, characterized by social communication difficulties, language impairments, and repetitive behaviors, significantly impacting lifelong social functioning (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The global prevalence is 1-2% (Hirota & King, 2023; World Health Organization, 2023; Zeidan et al., 2022). Language issues are a primary concern, with affected children showing reduced language abilities and abnormal brain networks (Belteki et al., 2022; Tryfon et al., 2018). Early diagnosis and intervention can improve outcomes, but the link between newborn language development and autism needs further research. This review focuses on infant studies, particularly longitudinal research predicting autism in high-risk infants with genetic and brain risk factors (Hirota & King, 2023). Longitudinal studies suggest language behavioral indicators predict autism after one year, while brain indicators show predictive value as early as three months (Ayoub et al., 2022; Clairmont et al., 2022; Molnar-Szakacs et al., 2021). Three longitudinal studies indicate language brain indicators predict autism in high-risk infants. Language lateralization in the brain also has predictive implications for autism (Lindell, 2020; Herringshaw et al., 2016). Five longitudinal studies on high-risk infants show language lateralization indicators predict autism during infancy. Research on high-risk infants provides valuable insights into the predictive value of early language development in autism. Capturing language processing brain indicators in newborns may offer valuable personalized warning parameters for early autism diagnosis, taking advantage of the brain's greater plasticity at younger ages.In summary, current research on newborns' speech perception, discrimination, and learning indicates the following: 1) Newborns exhibit speech perception preferences, showing a preference for speech, their native language, and their mother's voice, with a leftward brain lateralization. 2) Newborns possess unique phoneme discrimination abilities, differentiating vowels, consonants of various languages, and complex syllables and sequences. 3) Early language learning in newborns leads to plasticity changes in the brain's language networks. Moreover, several studies suggest that early language development brain indicators have significant predictive value for autism. However, there are three critical issues in the foundational and translational research of newborn language processing. Firstly, the rhythmic features of speech materials have been overlooked, potentially interfering with newborns' phoneme discrimination. Secondly, the cognitive neural mechanisms of newborn speech learning remain unclear, particularly regarding consonant learning and the role of sleep in language learning. Lastly, there is a lack of clinical translational research on newborn language development, necessitating the exploration of early language-related brain markers to predict and warn against neurodevelopmental disorders like autism. Future research should address these gaps by rigorously controlling rhythmic factors in speech materials, investigating the neural mechanisms of consonant learning using EEG and fNIRS techniques, and exploring the role of sleep in memory consolidation during language learning. Additionally, longitudinal studies focusing on high-risk newborns can potentially establish a comprehensive risk assessment system for neurodevelopmental disorders based on multiple brain modalities and clinical evaluations. Addressing these challenges may pave the way for early intervention and prevention of language-related developmental disorders in infancy.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Suicide is the primary cause of adolescent death, and suicide seriously endangers the life security and mental health of human being. Suicidal behavior includes suicidal ideation, suicidal attempt and suicide. Suicidal ideation refers to serious suicidal thoughts of preparing for a fatal, self-directed, and potentially injurious behavior, or refers to the intension to die without specific plans. Suicidal attempt refers to the intension to commit suicide, including the plans for suicide and even committed suicide; they might attempt to attract attention through bodily harm, but not necessarily causing actual harm. However, suicide is self-directed harm or death. According to suicidal theories which were based on the ideation-to-action framework, self-disgust is a key factor for the formation of suicidal ideation. This article reviews theoretical basis, correlation factor and neurophysiological mechanism of disgust induced suicidal behavior, and predicts future research direction. Many recent studies suggested that many psychological problems, including suicide, are caused by patients' disgust to the surroundings and the environment. Disgust is a basic emotion, which is a response to disgustful things, and it is a defensive mechanism to keep people away from spoiled foods or from pollutants to prevent potential diseases, viruses and pollution. However, under heavy burdens and pressures, people would feel depressed and self-disgust, and ultimately lead to despair (extreme self-disgust), resulting in suicidal ideation. Under the condition of having suicidal ability, suicidal ideation would turn to be suicidal attempts, and thus suicide. It is also suggested that early life trauma might be the root for disgust inducing suicidal ideation. And life stress and mental illness might aggravate the induction of disgust to suicide. High-intensity self-disgust has been proved to be the most relevant predictor of suicidal risks in mental illness. Psychoanalysis shows that when people are disgusted by themselves, the aggression behavior induced by disgust would also be directed to themselves, so self-disgust might induce suicide. The neural mechanism of self-disgust inducing suicide may be related to monoamine (including serotonin) and oxytocin. Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis are related to the stress response system that plays a very important role in disgust-induced suicidal ideation. Besides, self-disgust may be affected by traumatic stresses in early life, current psychological problems and mental diseases, which might lead to the mal-development of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) system, that determines the pattern of stress response in adulthood, including suicide. However, there are still some limitations in current suicide studies. First of all, most studies are still limited to cross-sectional design and cannot compare time factors. Therefore, future studies should adopt vertical design and prospective research. Secondly, since most studies are limited to questionnaire studies, future studies could apply neuroscience technologies, such as neuroimaging and electrophysiology, in investigating the neural mechanisms of suicidal behavior, as well as the psychological and neural mechanisms of suicidal behavior affected by disgust.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Aberrant responses have been repeatedly reported in psychological and educational measurement. If traditional measurement models or methods (e.g., item response theory, IRT) are applied to data sets contaminated by aberrant responses, parameter estimates may be biased. Therefore, it is necessary to identify aberrant responses and to reduce their detrimental effects. In the literature, there are two traditional response time (RT)-based methods to detect aberrant responses: RT threshold method and RT residual method. The focus of these methods is to find a threshold of RT or RT residual. If a RT or RT residual is remarkably less than the threshold, this response should be regarded as an aberrant response with extremely short RT (e.g., speededness, rapid-guessing), and consequently does not provide information about the test taker’s latent trait. Afterwards, down-weighting strategy, which tries to limit the influence of aberrant responses on parameter estimation by reducing their weight in the sample, can be applied. The mixture model method (MMM), is a new method proposed to handle data contaminated by aberrant responses. This method applies the accommodating strategy, which is to extend a model in order to account for the contaminations directly. MMM shows more advantages in terms of: (1) detecting aberrant responses and obtaining parameter estimates simultaneously, instead of two steps (detecting and down-weighting); (2) precisely recovering the severity of aberrant responding. There are two categories of MMM. The first category of methods assumes that the classification (i.e., whether the item is answered normally or aberrantly) can be predicted by RT. While the second category is a natural extension of van der Linden’s (2007) hierarchical model, which models responses and RTs jointly. In this method, the observed RT, as well as the correct response probability of each item-by-person encounter can be decomposed to RT (or probability) caused by normal response and that caused by aberrant response according to the most important difference between the two distinct behaviors. This method leads to more precisely estimated item and person parameters, as well as excellent classification of aberrant/normal behavior. First, this article compares the basic logic of the two traditional RT-based methods and MMM. Aberrant responses are regarded as outliers in both RT threshold method and RT residual method. Therefore, they rely heavily on the severity of aberrance. If data set is contaminated by aberrant responses seriously, the observed RT (or RT residual) distribution will be different from the expected distribution, which in turn leads to low power and sometimes high false detection rate. On the other hand, MMM, which assumes that both observed RT and correct response probability follow a mixture distribution, treats aberrant and normal responses equally. In that way, it has little reliance on the severity of aberrance. In addition to that, MMM can apply to the situation when all the respondents actually respond regularly in theoretic. In that situation, all the responses are assumed to be classified into one category. Second, this article summarizes the disadvantages of the three methods. MMM has three primary limitations: (1) it usually relies heavily on strong assumptions, which means that it may not perform well if these assumptions are violated; (2) low proportion of aberrant response may lead to convergence problem and model identification problem; (3) it is quite complex and time-consuming. In all, practitioners should choose a proper method according to the characteristics of tests and categories of aberrant responses (e.g., rapid-guessing, item with preknowledge, cheating). In the end, this article suggests future researches may investigate the performance of MMM when its assumptions are violated or data consists of more types of aberrant response patterns. Fixing item parameter estimates, proposing some index to help choosing suitable methods, are encouraged to improve the efficiency of MMM.
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： 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： Basic emotion theory is the most representative theory in the field of emotion science, which holds that human emotions are composed of a limited number of basic emotions, such as fear, anger, joy, sadness and so on. Basic emotions are evolved for fundamental life tasks, and each basic emotion has its own unique neural structure and physiological basis. Although basic emotion theories are widely accepted, there is little agreement on specific basic emotions. In recent decades, many fMRI studies have attempted to determine the unique neural structural underpinnings of each of the basic emotions, and made many important findings, such as disgust is related to the insula, sadness is related to the anterior cingulate gyrus, and the amygdala is an important limbic structure related to fear. However, recent meta-analysis studies have found that many basic emotions share many brain regions. Therefore, the theory of specific brain regions of basic emotions has been questioned and even denied. Through the discussion of the basic emotions and neural basis, as well as the latest functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of basic emotion theory analysis found that a lot of brain imaging data have reported certain basic emotion that is associated with a particular brain regions, different stimulation induced a kind of basic emotion is stable to activate the same brain regions. But these studies also raise questions. As Barrett notes, the amygdala is involved in almost all negative emotions, like fear, anger, and surprise. Therefore, it is likely that the amygdala was just involved in regulating arousal. Instead, we believe that the reason for the inconsistencies in these studies is that humans may have only three basic emotions: joy, fear (anger), and sadness. Many of the so-called different basic emotions are actually the same basic emotion. Fear and anger may be the same basic emotions, while surprise may be the cognitive component that induces fear and anger. They share a common neural basis: the amygdala. Recently, researchers have tried to interpret the facial expressions of laboratory rats by using machine-vision technology to process their facial features. Similarly, machine vision can be used to decode human facial expressions, emotion recognition and classification. Future research can focus on multiple forms of common and unique features and connections between features (such as functional brain connections), such as behavioral, physiological, visual cortex, eye movement, facial expression, fMRI imaging, EEG topography and other data features. At the same time, we can try to prototype emotions from many angles. Thus, it is expected to form multi-angle and multi-form emotion prototype, providing new ideas and new evidence for the research of basic emotion theory.
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 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Abstract: Conflict adaptation refers to the dynamic modulation of conflict processing across successive trials, which depends on top-down cognitive control. Since negative affect is a critical factor which modulates cognitive control, how it influences conflict adaptation is of great interest to researchers. According to the types of negative affect, that is to say either incidental or integral, this research question can be further discussed from the separated and the integrated relationship of cognition with emotion. From the separated perspective, conflicting information is typically acted as the source to activate cognitive control, and moreover, it is also the distracting information that needs to be controlled and inhibited. In this context, the manipulation of incidental negative affect (negative stimuli vs. negative mood) is independent of conflict processing. Accordingly, the manner that negative stimuli influence conflict adaptation is by interacting with cognitive control; while the influence exerted by negative mood on adaptation is achieved by individuals’ arousal and (or) motivational levels. Another thing that needs to be noted is that whether or not negative affect is manipulated at the phasic (i.e., negative stimuli) or at the tonic (i.e., negative mood) level, their influences on conflict adaptation are indirect, which to some extent reflects the separation of negative affect with cognitive control and conflict processing more specifically. Despite of this point, it does not necessarily mean that negative affect is completely unrelated to conflict, but instead, the mismatch between individuals’ habitual response tendency and the task goal during conflict processing would induce negative affect associated with goal confusion and/or error commission. In line with this viewpoint, recent evidence obtained from behavioral, physiological, and neuroimaging studies have indicated that conflict processing automatically elicits negative affect that termed as integral negative affect. These findings suggest the inherent relationship between conflict and negative affect. Namely, that not only “cold” cognitive system involves conflict processing, “hot” affective system also engages this process. In this sense, integral negative affect can be deemed as another source to generate conflict adaptation, being acted as both “output” and “input” of conflict processing. From the integrated perspective, integral negative affect is highly integrated with conflict processing and can influence conflict adaptation in turn, which can promote conflict adaptation. The underlying mechanism is that in order to better control or inhibit conflict and concomitant negative affect, integral negative affect elicited from conflict processing inherently promote goal-related performance and effectively trigger cognitive control, ultimately contributing to the evident adaptation effect. Therefore, discussing the influence of negative affect on conflict adaptation from the insight into the relationship of cognition (conflict) with negative affect deepens our understanding regarding how negative affect exerts its impact on conflict adaptation, which also provides a new insight into how cognition integrates with emotion. On this basis, future studies can further reveal the neural mechanisms underlying the beneficial influence of conflict adaptation by integral negative affect, as well as clarify the integrated relationships between emotion regulation and cognitive control inherently.
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： Implicit emotion regulation has become a hotspot of emotion regulation research recently. However, currently there is no standardized emotion regulation word system for researchers in the field of implicit emotion regulation. The purpose of this study is to establish a Chinese Emotion Regulation Word System (CERWS) by multi-dimensional ratings and analysis of emotional regulation words, and then to verify the effectiveness of the system by experiments.In Study 1, two hundred and twenty-six emotion regulation words (N = 226) were selected as preliminary materials by group discussion. Among them, 176 were judged as emotion regulation words that corresponded to five commonly used strategies (acceptance, distraction, venting, suppression and reappraisal) and 50 as neutral words. One hundred and twenty-eight participants (N = 128) rated the representativeness of words on five emotion regulation strategies. To ensure that the selected words are not mixed in strategic meanings, the words that exclusively represent one regulatory strategy or neutral meanings were selected into CERWS as emotion regulation words or neutral words, respectively. The words of CERWS were further rated by participants on the dimensions of valence, arousal, dominance, motivational tendency, familiarity and spelling complexity (N = 128). Thirty participants were randomly selected and retested one month later (N = 30). In Study 2, the emotion regulation effect of words in CERWS was further investigated. The regulatory effect of 5 strategies of CERWS on negative emotion was tested using a typical implicit emotion regulation paradigm (sentence unscrambling task). One hundred and ninety-six participants (N = 196) were involved in Study 2, who were divided into six groups (five implicit emotion regulation groups and one control group). Before viewing neutral and disgust pictures, the participants in implicit emotion regulation groups were required to complete the sentence unscrambling tasks to prime the emotion regulation strategy, while the participants in the control group were required to complete the sentence unscrambling task that was unrelated to emotion regulation. The CERWS was established in Study 1. One hundred and forty-nine emotion regulation words (N = 149) were selected into 6 groups (acceptance, distraction, venting, suppression, reappraisal and neutral) of CERWS. Comparing the attributes of emotion regulation words with those of neutral words, we found that five emotion regulation strategies had different affective connotation. For example, acceptance strategy was characterized by high pleasure, high dominance, high approach tendency and low arousal. In terms of gender differences, males were more pleasant with the words of distraction strategy, while females were more familiar with the words of acceptance strategy. The test-retest reliability was more than 0.7 after one month. The Cronbach’s α coefficients and Kendall’s coefficients of concordance of CERWS fit with relevant criteria. Moreover, results of Study 2 showed that implicit reappraisal and implicit suppression strategies decreased the emotional valence and arousal ratings significantly, and implicit distraction strategy decreased the emotional arousal ratings significantly.In conclusion, this study has established a standardized emotion regulation words system with good reliability. Moreover, this study has verified the regulatory effect of implicit reappraisal, suppression and distraction strategies on negative emotions, which provides a reference for the future use of the system.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Self-compassion is the tendency to care for and understand oneself, and cultivating this behavior is considered a promising cognitive treatment for anxiety disorders. However, the underlying mechanism of how self-compassion reduces anxiety remains unknown. Given the central role of fear extinction-based exposure therapy for the treatment of anxiety, studying how self-compassion affects fear extinction may help elucidate the underlying mechanisms. Previous studies have found that writing can be an effective way to promote self-compassion and emotional regulation. Thus, this study aimed to test the impact of self-compassion writing on fear extinction. This study contained 56 healthy effective participants, who were randomly assigned into self-compassion and control writing groups. The experimental process included five phases: pre-conditioning, negative event writing, fear conditioning, self-compassion writing, and fear extinction. All the participants completed the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS), the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS), and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) before and after the experiment. The PANAS was also assessed immediately after the negative event writing phase to assess the effectiveness of manipulation. Participants were asked to write about an adverse event that made them feel bad about themselves during the negative writing phase. The self-compassion group was guided to respond to three prompts that focus on self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. The control group was asked to write about their daily routines in a factual and unemotional manner. The shock expectancy ratings and skin conductance response (SCR) were recorded as the index of extinction learning. Three-way repeated measure ANOVA was conducted to examine the between-group differences in ratings and SCR across time extinction learning, with writing condition as the between-subject variable (self-compassion, control), and stimuli type (conditioned danger stimuli [CS+], conditioned safe stimuli [CS−]) and extinction phase (early, late) as within-subject variables. The results showed that the writing of negative events successfully reduced the positive affect (PA) of participants. There was no group difference during the fear conditioning phase and all participants successfully acquired fear. After writing intervention, the negative affect (NA) was significantly reduced in both groups. However, compared to the control group, the self-compassion group showed lower shock expectancy ratings in response to danger (CS+) and safety (CS−) cues during both early and late extinction. The SCR results showed that early extinction induced lower response than late extinction in the self-compassion group. Overall, the results demonstrate that self-compassion may promote fear extinction by regulating the response to both danger and safety cues. To our knowledge, this is the first study that uses the fear extinction model to test how self-compassion intervention can influence fear processing. Our results expand our understanding into the psychological and physiological mechanism of how self-compassion can reduce anxiety-related symptoms. These findings have several implications. First, self-compassion writing intervention is independent of control writing as a method to cope with threats. Second, compared to PANAS, shock expectancy ratings might be a sensitive indicator to characterize the effect of self-compassion intervention on anxiety-related symptoms. Finally, self-compassion might could be a reasonable strategy to counter enhanced response to danger cues and inhibited fear response to safety cues.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Assessment datasets contaminated by non-effortful responses may lead to serious consequences if not handled appropriately. Previous research has proposed two different strategies: down-weighting and accommodating. Down-weighting tries to limit the influence of aberrant responses on parameter estimation by reducing their weight. The extreme form of down-weighting is the detection and removal of irregular responses and response times (RTs). The standard residual-based methods, including the recently developed residual method using an iterative purification process, can be used to detect non-effortful responses in the framework of down-weighting. In accommodating, on the other hand, one tries to extend a model in order to account for the contaminations directly. This boils down to a mixture hierarchical model (MHM) for responses and RTs. However, to the authors’ knowledge, few studies have compared standard residual methods and MHM under different simulation conditions. It is unknown which method should be applied in different situations. Meanwhile, MHM has strong assumptions for different types of responses. It would be valuable to examine the performance of the method when the assumptions are violated. The purpose of this study is to compare standard residual methods and MHM under a fully crossed simulation design. In addition, specific recommendations for their applications are provided. The simulation study included two scenarios. In simulation scenario I, data were generated under the assumptions of MHM. In simulation scenario II, the assumptions of MHM concerning non-effortful responses and RTs were both violated. Simulation scenario I had three manipulated factors. (1) Non-effort prevalence (ππ\pi ), which was the proportion of individuals with non-effortful responses. It had three levels: 0%, 20% and 40%. (2) Non-effort severity (πnoniπinon\pi _{i}^{non}), which was the proportion of non-effortful responses for each non-effortful individual. It varied between two levels: low and high. When πnoniπinon\pi _{i}^{non} was low, πnoniπinon\pi _{i}^{non} was generated from U (0, 0.25); while when πnoniπinon\pi _{i}^{non} was high, πnoniπinon\pi _{i}^{non} was generated from U (0.5, 0.75), where “U” denoted a uniform distribution. (3) Difference between RTs of non-effortful and effortful responses (dRTdRT{{d}_{RT}}). The difference between RTs from two groups, dRTdRT{{d}_{RT}}, had two levels, small and large. The logarithm of RTs of non-effortful responses were generated from normal distribution N (μμ\mu ,0.50.50.52), where μ =−1 μ =−1\text{ }\!\!\mu\!\!\text{ }=-1 when dRTdRT{{d}_{RT}} was small, μ =−2 μ =−2\text{ }\!\!\mu\!\!\text{ }=-2 when dRTdRT{{d}_{RT}} was large. For generating the non-effortful responses, we followed Wang, Xu and Shang (2018), with the probability of a correct response gjgj{{g}_{j}} setting at 0.25 for all non-effortful responses. In simulation scenario II, only the first two factors were considered. Non-effortful RTs were generated from a uniform distribution with a lower bound of exp(−5)exp(−5)\text{exp}\left( -5 \right) and upper bound being the 5th percentile of RT on item j with τ=0τ=0\tau =0. The probability of a correct response for non-effortful responses was dependent on the ability level of each examinee. In all the conditions, sample size was fixed at I = 2,000 and test length was fixed at J = 30. For each condition, 30 replications were generated. For effortful responses, Responses and RTs were simulated from van der Linden’s (2007) hierarchical model. Item parameters were generated with aj ~U(1,2.5)aj ~U(1,2.5){{a}_{j}}\tilde{\ }U\left( 1,2.5 \right), bj ~N(0,1)bj ~N(0,1){{b}_{j}}\tilde{\ }N\left( 0,1 \right), αj ~U(1.5,2.5),βj ~U(−0.2,0.2) αj ~U(1.5,2.5),βj ~U(−0.2,0.2)~{{\alpha }_{j}}\tilde{\ }U\left( 1.5,2.5 \right),{{\beta }_{j}}\tilde{\ }U\left( -0.2,0.2 \right). For simulees, the person parameters (θi,τi)(θi,τi)\left( {{\theta }_{i}},{{\tau }_{i}} \right) were generated from a bivariate normal distribution with the mean vector of μ=(0,0)′μ=(0,0)′\mathbf{\mu }=\left( 0,0 \right)'and the covariance matrix of Σ=[10.250.250.25]Σ=[10.250.250.25]\mathbf{\Sigma }=\left[ \begin{matrix} 1 & 0.25 \\ 0.25 & 0.25 \\ \end{matrix} \right]. Four methods were compared under each condition: the original standard residual method (OSR), conditional estimate standard residual (CSR), conditional estimate with fixed item parameters standard residual method using iterative purifying procedure (CSRI), and MHM. These methods were implemented in R and JAGS using a Bayesian MCMC sampling method for parameter calibration. Finally, these methods were evaluated in terms of convergence rate, detection accuracy and parameter recovery. The results are presented as following. First of all, MHM suffered from convergence issues, especially for the latent variable indicating non-effortful responses. On the contrary, all the standard residual methods achieved convergence successfully. The convergence issues were more serious in simulation scenario II. Secondly, when all the items were assumed to have effortful responses, the false positive rate (FPR) of MHM was 0. Although the standard residual methods had FPR around 5% (the nominal level), the accuracy of parameter estimates was similar for all these methods. Third, when data were contaminated by non-effortful responses, CSRI had higher true positive rate (TPR) almost in all the conditions. MHM showed lower TPR but lower false discovery rate (FDR), exhibiting even lower TPR in simulation scenario II. When πnoniπinon\pi _{i}^{non} was high, CSRI and MHM showed more advantages over the other methods in terms of parameter recovery. However, when πnoniπinon\pi _{i}^{non} was high and dRTdRT{{d}_{RT}} was small, MHM generally had higher RMSE than CSRI. Compared to simulation scenario I, MHM performed worse in simulation scenario II. The only problem CSRI needed to deal with was its overestimation of time discrimination parameter across all the conditions except for when ππ\pi =40% and dRTdRT{{d}_{RT}} was large. In a real data example, all the methods were applied to a dataset collected for program assessment and accountability purposes from undergraduates at a mid-sized southeastern university in USA. Evidences from convergence validity showed that CSRI and MHM might detect non-effortful responses more accurately and obtain more precise parameter estimates for this data. In conclusion, CSRI generally performed better than the other methods across all the conditions. It is highly recommended to use this method in practice because: (1) It showed acceptable FPR and fairly accurate parameter estimates even when all responses were effortful; (2) It was free of strong assumptions, which meant that it would be robust under various situations; (3) It showed most advantages when πnoniπinon\pi _{i}^{non} was high in terms of the detection of non-effortful responses and the improvement of the parameter estimation. In order to improve the estimation of time discrimination parameter in CSRI, the robust estimation methods that down-weight flagged response patterns can be used as an alternative to directly removing non-effortful responses (i.e., the method in the current study). MHM can perform well when all its assumptions are met and πnoniπinon\pi _{i}^{non} is high, dRTdRT{{d}_{RT}} is large. However, some parameters have difficulty in convergence under MHM, which will limit its application in practice.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Contextual cueing refers to the global properties of a context or scene used to search for specific objects and regions. Chun and Jiang (1998) found that in a visual search, the reaction time to repeated configurations was shorter than the reaction time to newly generated configurations. The benefit of repeated context-target association is widely known as the contextual-cueing effect, which indicates that the subject has learned the contextual association by which attention is guided to facilitate the searching. However, the learning of contextual cueing lacks adaptability. When the subject has learned a set of contexts, it is difficult to update a new target into existing contexts (re-learning) or to learn a new set of contexts (new-learning). Previous studies have shown that restarted learning processes can facilitate the learning of new context-target associations, while updating old contexts is associated with the scope of attention. Notably, positive emotions could broaden the scope of attention and break the cognitive fixation on old processes; therefore, it is possible to improve the adaptability of contextual-cueing learning via positive emotions. This study aimed to explore whether positive emotions could enhance the adaptability of contextual learning. To this end, we recruited a sample of 18 young adults with positive and neutral affective priming as experimental conditions and control conditions, respectively, which allowed us to explore the contextual-cueing effect under the conditions of re-learning and new-learning. It should be noted that contextual cueing was defined in operation as the reaction time to the newly generated configuration minus that to the repeated configuration. The experiment was divided into two phases: the learning phase and the switch phase. In the learning phase, the subjects learned a set of contextual cues. In the switch phase, with the contextual-cueing effect as the dependent variable, a repeated measures ANOVA was conducted with the emotional valence (positive versus neutral), the new contextual-cueing learning type (re-learning versus new-learning), and the time phase (early phase versus late phase). The results indicated that neutral emotions did not facilitate contextual-cueing learning irrespective of the new contextual-cueing learning type. However, positive emotion improved learning in the new-learning condition, in which the contextual-cueing effect was higher in positive emotions than in neutral emotions both in the late phase and the early phase, whereas the re-learning condition did not show any sign of a contextual- cueing effect above zero. This study indicates that positive emotions can improve the adaptability of contextual-cueing learning and that the underlying mechanism restarts learning processing, which fails to prevent an automatic retrieval of the old presentations caused by similarity. Therefore, it facilitates the learning of new contextual cueing but does not update learned contextual cueing.
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.
submitted time 2023-03-25 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.
submitted time 2023-03-16 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.
submitted time 2023-03-16 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Self-compassion is the tendency to care for and understand oneself, and cultivating this behavior is considered a promising cognitive treatment for anxiety disorders. However, the underlying mechanism of how self-compassion reduces anxiety remains unknown. Given the central role of fear extinction-based exposure therapy for the treatment of anxiety, studying how self-compassion affects fear extinction may help elucidate the underlying mechanisms. Previous studies have found that writing can be an effective way to promote self-compassion and emotional regulation. Thus, this study aimed to test the impact of self-compassion writing on fear extinction. This study contained 56 healthy effective participants, who were randomly assigned into self-compassion and control writing groups. The experimental process included five phases: pre-conditioning, negative event writing, fear conditioning, self-compassion writing, and fear extinction. All the participants completed the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS), the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS), and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) before and after the experiment. The PANAS was also assessed immediately after the negative event writing phase to assess the effectiveness of manipulation. Participants were asked to write about an adverse event that made them feel bad about themselves during the negative writing phase. The self-compassion group was guided to respond to three prompts that focus on self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. The control group was asked to write about their daily routines in a factual and unemotional manner. The shock expectancy ratings and skin conductance response (SCR) were recorded as the index of extinction learning. Three-way repeated measure ANOVA was conducted to examine the between-group differences in ratings and SCR across time extinction learning, with writing condition as the between-subject variable (self-compassion, control), and stimuli type (conditioned danger stimuli [CS+], conditioned safe stimuli [CS−]) and extinction phase (early, late) as within-subject variables. The results showed that the writing of negative events successfully reduced the positive affect (PA) of participants. There was no group difference during the fear conditioning phase and all participants successfully acquired fear. After writing intervention, the negative affect (NA) was significantly reduced in both groups. However, compared to the control group, the self-compassion group showed lower shock expectancy ratings in response to danger (CS+) and safety (CS−) cues during both early and late extinction. The SCR results showed that early extinction induced lower response than late extinction in the self-compassion group. Overall, the results demonstrate that self-compassion may promote fear extinction by regulating the response to both danger and safety cues. To our knowledge, this is the first study that uses the fear extinction model to test how self-compassion intervention can influence fear processing. Our results expand our understanding into the psychological and physiological mechanism of how self-compassion can reduce anxiety-related symptoms. These findings have several implications. First, self-compassion writing intervention is independent of control writing as a method to cope with threats. Second, compared to PANAS, shock expectancy ratings might be a sensitive indicator to characterize the effect of self-compassion intervention on anxiety-related symptoms. Finally, self-compassion might could be a reasonable strategy to counter enhanced response to danger cues and inhibited fear response to safety cues.
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