Subjects: Other Disciplines >> Synthetic discipline submitted time 2023-10-09 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are typically characterized by impaired social interactions that are thought to be related to deficits in empathy. While cognitive empathy deficit in ASD is widely recognized, it remains controversial whether individuals with ASD have a deficiency in emotional empathy. According to the shared representation theory, psychological and neuronal mechanisms involved in the personal experience of an emotional or somatosensory state are also engaged while empathizing with other individuals in those states. It suggests that the deficits of empathy seen in the ASD population could arise from the atypical experience of first-hand pain. Mild, subclinical forms of the characteristics associated with ASD are referred to as autistic traits. Individuals with high autistic traits exhibit sensory, emotional, and social behaviors similar to those with ASD. Given the relationship between pain empathy and first-hand pain as well as the similarity between autistic traits and ASD, the present study tested the hypothesis that autistic traits in the general population would influence pain empathic responses, which could be contributed by first-hand pain-related profiles.In Experiment 1, we adopted an ecological pain empathy paradigm and compared behavioral and neural activity between individuals with high scores on the Autism-Spectrum Quotient Test (HAQ, with high autistic traits) and those with low scores (LAQ, with low autistic traits). During the pain empathy paradigm, the participants either perceived the painful electrical stimuli themselves or witnessed the delivery of painful electrical stimuli to their partners in certain and uncertain contexts. When perceiving pain themselves, behavioral and brain responses were comparable between HAQ and LAQ groups. When witnessing others in pain, participants in the HAQ group had greater amplitudes of the P2 component on the event-related potentials and reported higher ratings of unpleasantness than those in the LAQ group. The between-group differences in the behavioral and neural responses related to pain empathy were not moderated by certainty of the context (certain or uncertain). Mediation analysis further revealed that the between-group differences in the unpleasantness elicited by witnessing others' pain could be contributed by the greater fear of pain while anticipating the upcoming painful stimuli.In Experiment 2, the relationship among autistic traits, pain-related profiles, and trait empathy was assessed in randomly recruited participants. We found that autistic trait levels were negatively correlated with scores on the perspective-taking subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and positively correlated with the personal distress subscale. Importantly, pain-related fear and pain catastrophizing mediated the link between autistic traits and personal distress. Data from Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that autistic traits heighten emotional empathy, which can be explained by the negative emotion and cognition toward pain. Given the similarities between individuals with high autistic traits and ASD, this finding may help to expand the biological mechanisms underlying ASD, such as explaining empathy deficits or other social difficulties seen in the ASD from the perspective of atypical pain-related profiles. Future studies should combine multiple modalities of painful stimulations and multidimensional pain assessments to comprehensively characterize pain-related profiles among individuals with high autistic traits or ASD, and establish linkage between pain-related profiles and empathy or social deficits. This understanding has the potential to provide targets for clinical interventions and treatments of ASD.
Subjects: Other Disciplines >> Synthetic discipline submitted time 2023-10-09 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： An increasing number of people treat pets as their family members. Although there is no specific indication, that people first think of traditional pets such as dogs or cats when referring to pets. In this study, traditional pets are defined as widely popular pets that are accompanied by human beings; Non-traditional pets are defined as unique and novel pets that are different from traditional cognition. The factors that lead to the difference in perception of pet moral standing are not only pet properties but also pet ownership status. Recently, psychologists have sought to explore the relationship between people and pets. Such research dilemmas are focused on traditional pet owners and their traditional pets, and few studies pay attention to the relationship between non-traditional pet owners and their non-traditional pets. Here, we aim to investigate whether pet properties, pet ownership status, and pet type can affect the perception of pet moral standing and its mechanism.To define the traditional pets and non-traditional pets in our study, we first conducted a pre-study (N = 29). For three studies, we used the snowball sampling technique to recruit participants voluntarily online via Qualtrics in Baidu Post Bar through a questionnaire. Study 1 explored the impact of pet ownership status, pet type, and pet properties on the perception of pet moral standing, N = 146 (traditional pet owners: 41, non-traditional pet owners: 53; women: 77). In Study 2, based on controlling the basic moral orientation, the influence of pet ownership status and pet type on the perception of pet moral standing was reverified, N = 148 (traditional pet owners: 72; women: 74). Study 3 further explored the mechanism of this effect, the purpose is to investigate the empathy for animals in the relationship between pet attachment and the perception of traditional pet moral standing, N = 202 (women: 108).The results showed that: (1) The perception of traditional pet moral standing is higher than that of non-traditional pets, agency, experience and harmfulness played a mediating role; (2) Compared to non-pet owners, pet owners perceived a higher pet moral standing; Compared to non-traditional pet owners, traditional pet owners perceived a higher traditional pet moral standing; There was no significant difference in the perception of non-traditional pets moral standing; (3) The empathy for animals played a mediating role between the traditional pet owners pet attachment and the perception of traditional pet moral standing.Pet speciesism also exists in pets, traditional pets are higher in the hierarchy than non-traditional pets. Pet owners regard pets as psychological-kin and in-group members. The positive attitude towards pets in communication and interaction can be extended to all pets. When further subdividing the pet owners, this positive attitude is more obvious in the traditional pet owners. This may be because traditional pet owners are more idealistic, and the two-way emotional attachment between traditional pet owners and pets leads to stronger empathy for animals, which ultimately manifests as a more positive moral attitude towards traditional pets. There is no preference for non-traditional pets in non-traditional pet owners, it may be to gain social approval or a strong attachment with pets isn't formed.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-05-04
Abstract： An increasing number of people treat pets as their family members. Although there is no specific indication, that people first think of traditional pets such as dogs or cats when referring to pets. In this study, traditional pets are defined as widely popular pets that are accompanied by human beings; Non-traditional pets are defined as unique and novel pets that are different from traditional cognition. The factors that lead to the difference in perception of pet moral standing are not only pet properties but also pet ownership status. Recently, psychologists have sought to explore the relationship between people and pets. Such research dilemmas are focused on traditional pet owners and their traditional pets, and few studies pay attention to the relationship between non-traditional pet owners and their non-traditional pets. Here, we aim to investigate whether pet properties, pet ownership status, and pet type can affect the perception of pet moral standing and its mechanism.
To define the traditional pets and non-traditional pets in our study, we first conducted a pre-study (N = 29). For three studies, we used the snowball sampling technique to recruit participants voluntarily online via Qualtrics in Baidu Post Bar through a questionnaire. Study 1 explored the impact of pet ownership status, pet type, and pet properties on the perception of pet moral standing, N = 146 (traditional pet owners: 41, non-traditional pet owners: 53; women: 77). In Study 2, based on controlling the basic moral orientation, the influence of pet ownership status and pet type on the perception of pet moral standing was reverified, N = 148 (traditional pet owners: 72; women: 74). Study 3 further explored the mechanism of this effect, the purpose is to investigate the empathy for animals in the relationship between pet attachment and the perception of traditional pet moral standing, N = 202 (women: 108).
The results showed that: (1) The perception of traditional pet moral standing is higher than that of non-traditional pets, agency, experience and harmfulness played a mediating role; (2) Compared to non-pet owners, pet owners perceived a higher pet moral standing; Compared to non-traditional pet owners, traditional pet owners perceived a higher traditional pet moral standing; There was no significant difference in the perception of non-traditional pets moral standing; (3) The empathy for animals played a mediating role between the traditional pet owners pet attachment and the perception of traditional pet moral standing.
Pet speciesism also exists in pets, traditional pets are higher in the hierarchy than non-traditional pets. Pet owners regard pets as psychological-kin and in-group members. The positive attitude towards pets in communication and interaction can be extended to all pets. When further subdividing the pet owners, this positive attitude is more obvious in the traditional pet owners. This may be because traditional pet owners are more idealistic, and the two-way emotional attachment between traditional pet owners and pets leads to stronger empathy for animals, which ultimately manifests as a more positive moral attitude towards traditional pets. There is no preference for non-traditional pets in non-traditional pet owners, it may be to gain social approval or a strong attachment with pets isn’t formed.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Speech processing is the core function of language cognition, and the brain mechanism of speech processing are an important topic in linguistics and cognitive psychology. However, it is unclear that how the newborn's brain perceives speech. The purpose of this review is to investigate the brain mechanism of speech perception in newborns. We found that human beings have a relatively well-developed speech processing mechanism during the neonatal period. While the left frontal lobe (especially the inferior frontal gyrus) plays an important role in detecting speech structure, the bilateral temporal lobes are responsible for detecting speech deviation. In addition, the left hemisphere has an advantage in mother tongue perception.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Decoy effect refers to a phenomenon that individuals tend to shift their preferences between two options when a third option is added to the choice set. The similar decoy, compromise decoy, attraction decoy and phantom decoy were applied to achieve the goal of selecting the option of target. Cognitive mechanisms of the decoy effect have been explored by many previous studies, some of which were conducted based on the perspective of heuristic or analytical processing, others were carried out from the perspective of the comparison process with either the attribute-based rule or the alternative-based rule. The cognitive processing of the decoy effect was affected by varied factors, such as age, the emotion of regret, the form of decision-making, the time pressure, and so on. In the future, related researches may focus on four aspects: (1) constructing a general cognitive processing model of all kinds of decoy effect; (2) exploring the role of perception in the cognitive mechanism of the decoy effect; (3) investigating the influence of decision-making styles on the decoy effect; and (4) exploring the ways to apply the decoy effect to nudge positive social development.
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： Developmental dyslexia (hereafter referred as "dyslexia") will not only affect the lifelong development of individuals but also impose an additional financial burden on society. Digging into the relevant neural mechanisms contributes to the early prediction and intervention of dyslexia. Established models of the neural bases of dyslexia primarily focused on the cerebrum. In recent years, extensive studies have shown that dyslexia is also associated with cerebellar abnormalities. However, it remains unclear about the relationships between the two. By summarizing recent findings, we found that the cerebellum could play multiple roles in reading. First, it could influence reading in different ways. Cerebellar dysfunctions could impair reading by affecting motor or motor-related skills (such as oculomotor control, automatization, or articulation), or by disturbing linguistic-related processes (such as phonological or semantic processing). Second, different subtypes of dyslexia are associated with abnormalities in distinct cerebellar regions. For example, dyslexic readers with automatization deficits showed abnormal neural activities in the anterior parts of the cerebellum, which were responsible for motor processing, whereas dyslexic readers suffering from visual and phonological deficits were associated with the abnormalities in the gray matter volume of the posterolateral areas of the cerebellum, which were mainly responsible for high-level cognitive processing. These results indicate that the relationship between dyslexia and the cerebellum is not unitary. There may exist multiple cerebellar areas being targeted by dyslexia, which also contribute differently to reading. The causal relationships between cerebellar abnormalities and dyslexia might be bi-directional. Previous literature found that structural deficits in the posterolateral parts of the cerebellum were only associated with dyslexia compared to other development disorders (i.e., ADHD, autism) that may coexist with dyslexia. This result suggests that neural abnormalities in these areas were due to deficits in reading abilities rather than other comorbidities. Additionally, these regions vary in their causal relationships with dyslexia. For example, activation in the anterior parts of the right lobule VI, responsible for motor processing, showed greater activation or functional connectivity with the cerebrum in dyslexic readers compared to normal readers. These increased neural activities may be the compensatory mechanisms of dyslexia and a by-product of reading difficulties. In contrast, neural activities of the cerebellar areas responsible for linguistic processing (i.e., the right lobule VII) could predict future reading abilities, indicating that the functional state of the cerebellum in early developmental stages may influence reading development. Moreover, functional deactivations in the cerebellar linguistic areas have been observed in preschool readers with a high risk of dyslexia, suggesting that cerebellar abnormalities have occurred before formal reading instruction. These results jointly support that cerebellar abnormalities may be the cause of dyslexia. The results mentioned above illustrate that the cerebellum is more than a reading-related hub. There could be multiple cerebellar regions that are engaged in reading, with different regions supporting different cognitive processes and having distinct causal relationships with dyslexia. Accordingly, we introduced the "cerebro-cerebellar mapping hypothesis of word reading", which proposed that reading-related regions in the cerebellum map to their functional correspondence areas in the cerebrum. Regions with the same functions across the cerebrum and cerebellum synchronized in neural activities and collaborated during reading. Dysfunctions of this collaboration may lead to dyslexia. This new framework aims to reveal the relationship between reading, the cerebellum, and the cerebrum from a new perspective, and offers important insights into the neural mechanism of dyslexia and the role of the cerebellum in high-level cognitive processing.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Cooperation is a prosocial behavior that develops along with human social development. Cooperation involves brain activation of the reward system and enables people to form cooperative relationships so to pursuit social rewards and self-affirmation. Previous studies have shown that depressed patients have severe social dysfunctions, e.g., they have reduced willingness to cooperate and exhibited increased negative emotions during cooperation. This study employed the prisoner's dilemma game (PDG) to investigate the effect of depression on social cooperation using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning technique. A total of 156 participants were screened using Beck Depression Inventory Second Edition and allocated into three paired groups, i.e., low - low depressive tendency pairs (n = 26), low - high depressive tendency pairs (n = 26), and high - high depressive tendency pairs (n = 26). The fNIRS optrodes were placed at frontal and right temporoparietal junction of two participants, with 29 channels in each participant. Behavioral and self-reported emotion ratings showed that compared to participants with low depressive tendency, the high depressive tendency group were less cooperative and less satisfied with their partner during the prisoner's dilemma task. The brain imaging results showed that, first, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) was activated most significantly in the reciprocal cooperation condition, followed by the condition with self defection but opponent cooperation. Furthermore, the significantly increased neural activation in these two conditions could only be observed in the low depressive tendency group. This finding suggests that people with high depressive tendency have deficits in reward processing, especially for social reward processing. Second, the neural activation of bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) in participants with high depressive tendency was significantly weaker than that in participants with low depressive tendency. Depressive tendency had a significant modulation effect on inter-brain synchronization of the right dlPFC, i.e., the enhanced inter-brain synchronization induced by reciprocal cooperation could not be observed in participants with high depressive tendency. Third, the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) inter-brain synchronization in the low-low depressive tendency group was higher than that in the high-high and high-low depressive tendency groups. Furthermore, this effect was significant only if both participants in the PDG made the same choice (both cooperation or both defection). The result of this study suggests that depressive population have dysfunctions in the brain regions involved in social reward processing (reflected by the OFC), conflict control (the dlPFC) and theory of mind (the right TPJ). Our findings provide experimental evidence to help understand the brain mechanism of decreased cooperation in depressed individuals, which further lays a foundation to improve social functions in depressed patients in clinical practice.
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： Emotional expressions of others embedded in speech prosodies are important for social interactions. Affective prosody refers to a way to express and convey emotions through the dynamic changes of various acoustic cues such as pitch, intensity, stress, and intonation in speech, without relying on vocabulary and grammatical structure. Previous studies have shown that STC, IFG, OFC, and other cerebral cortex and subcortical structures are involved in emotional prosody processing, and gradually formed a hierarchical model. However, existing studies on the neural mechanism of emotional prosody processing mostly focus on the difference between non-neutral emotional prosody and neutral prosody, while the comparison between various non-neutral emotional prosody is less investigated. Besides, the differences involved in brain regions of emotional prosody processing under explicit and implicit tasks are still not clear. Furthermore, it is necessary to further accumulate experimental evidence based on noise-free brain imaging technology, such as the noise-free features of fNIRS are especially suitable for speech processing research.This study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate how speech prosodies of different emotional categories are processed in the cortex under different task conditions. A group of 25 college students participated in this study with a 3 (emotion: anger vs. fearful vs. happy) by 2 (task focus: explicit vs. implicit) within-participant factorial design. We manipulated task focus by adopting two different tasks, with emotional discrimination task as explicit condition and sex discrimination task as implicit condition. Ten phonological materials for each of anger, fearful, and happy prosody were selected from the Chinese Speech Emotion Database and consisted of the corresponding emotional prosodies and neutral prosodies. The emotional explicit task was to count the emotional and neutral sentences contained in each 10-second speech, and the emotional implicit task was to count the sentences played by two women in each 10-second speech. A multi-channel fNIRS system was used to record brain activity in a continuous waveform. According to existing literature, the brain regions observed in this study are the bilateral frontal and temporal lobes. Therefore, we used 13 emitters and 15 detectors to form 37 effective observation channels.We first adopted NirSpark-2442 software to preprocess the data, and then conducted general linear model analyses to calculate the cortical activation related to the task. The results showed that the brain activation was significantly higher when anger was contrasted to fearful and happy prosody in left frontal pole / orbitofrontal cortex, and when happy was contrasted to fearful and anger prosody in left inferior frontal gyrus, and when fearful was contrasted to anger and happy prosody in right supramarginal gyrus. Importantly, there was an interaction between emotion and task. In the explicit task, cortex activity in the right supramarginal gyrus was more sensitive to fearful than to anger and happy prosodies. But no similar results were found under anger and happy prosody. In addition, the brain activation in temporopolar, superior temporal gyrus, and middle temporal gyrus with the explicit task was greater than that in the implicit task.The present study demonstrated the specific brain regions for processing angry, fearful and happy prosody were left frontal pole/orbitofrontal cortex, right supramarginal gyrus, and left inferior frontal gyrus respectively, and the important role of right superior temporal gyrus and right supramarginal gyrus in emotional explicit task. These findings partially support the hierarchical model of emotional prosody and question the third level of the model.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Increasing evidence shows that the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) plays an important role in emotion regulation, especially for social-relevant negative emotions. Negative interpersonal experiences and social events contribute largely to the occurrence of depression. Meanwhile, patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder are characterized by impaired social functions. Previous studies have revealed that depressed patients frequently show impaired emotional regulation for social pain. Recently, the work of our lab found that using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to activate the rVLPFC significantly reduced the subjects’ negative emotional feelings and improved their emotional regulation ability for down-regulating social pain. In order to improve the emotional regulation ability in depressed patients when they are in front of negative social events, this study examined the changed emotional regulation ability in depression following the activation of the rVLPFC using the TMS.A total of 127 patients who were diagnosed with major depressive disorder were recruited in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to experimental (n= 64) or control group (n = 63) while their age, gender, depressive level, social anxious level, rejection sensitivity and empathy ability were counterbalanced between the two groups. During the experiment, the participants were required to view pictures containing social exclusion events or reinterpret the situation using reappraisal strategy, followed by rating their negative emotional feeling on a 9-point scale. The experiment had two conditions, i.e., a passive viewing block and a cognitive reappraisal block.The results showed that the main effect of the task was significant: the negative emotional intensity reported by participants was lower during cognitive reappraisal when compared to that during passive viewing, indicating a successful manipulation of explicit emotional regulation. Meanwhile, the main effect of the group was significant: the negative emotional intensity reported by the experimental group was significantly reduced compared to that reported by the control group, suggesting the critical role of rVLPFC in emotional regulation. More importantly, the interaction between task and group was significant: while the two groups reported comparable distressful feelings during the passive view block, the experimental group reported decreased negative feelings compared to the control group during the cognitive reappraisal block. This result indicated that enhanced activation of the rVLPFC could effectively improve the ability of explicit down-regulating social pain using the cognitive reappraisal strategy in depressed patients.The current findings provide strong evidence for the causal relationship between the VLPFC and explicit emotional regulation using the cognitive reappraisal strategy. Also this study provides a potential neural target for clinical treatments of emotional regulation impairment in patients with social dysfunctions including individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder, social anxiety disorder, and autism spectrum disorder. Future studies are suggested to use other paradigms (e.g., Cyberball, Chat Rooms, Online Ostracism, and Island Getaway) to induce a “first-hand” social pain and exclude the potential influence of empathy. Furthermore, optimized multi-session TMS protocols are required to enhance and prolong the TMS effects observed in this study. Also, the TMS-based treatment effects in depression should be compared between the left and the right part of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortices, and across different emotional regulation strategies including cognitive reappraisal, distraction, distancing, etc.
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： Social interaction is ubiquitous. It is widely accepted that social interaction, such as social decision-making, can promote individual’s ability and performance (the so-called “interaction benefit”). For example, it was reported that individuals gained more when making a joint decision with conspecifics. Little is known, however, whether and how this interaction benefit during decision making can be biased by shared responsibility (i.e., sharing the results of joint decision-making) between the interacting agents. To address this question, the present study used the dot location estimation task (i.e., an adapted paradigm for social decision-making) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning (i.e., the measurement of two or more brains simultaneously) technique to investigate the impact of shared responsibility on social decision making. A total number of 70 participants were recruited, forming 35 same-gender dyads. Each dyad included one “expert” and one “novice” (differentiated based on their performance during an initial estimation of dot locations). The fNIRS optodes were placed over prefrontal and right temporo-parietal regions, with 23 channels for each participant. Our results showed that, on the behavioral level, only the novice in a dyad benefited from interaction; also, compared to the non-shared-responsibility condition, novices obtained a higher level of interaction benefit in the shared-responsibility condition. The dyad tended to adopt a “equality strategy” (i.e., decision-making is based on both one’s own thought and the partner’s suggestion) when sharing responsibility. On the brain imaging level, interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) within expert-novice dyads in the prefrontal and right temporo- parietal regions were detected during social decision-making. More importantly, novices showed stronger IBS in the frontal pole for the shared-responsibility condition (vs. non-shared-responsibility condition). The enhancement of frontal pole IBS positively predicted interaction benefit during social decision-making. Finally, both interaction benefit and frontal pole IBS were selectively correlated with differential performance between novices and experts during the initial estimation of dot locations. These results suggest that sharing the results of joint decision-making can promote the benefit of interactive decision-making in novices. Interpersonal synchronization of frontal poles might serve as a potential brain mechanism. These findings have implications for decision-making, social-cognitive processes, and clinical practice.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Math, the basic tool for technology and engineering, is fundamental to professionals in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. Math anxiety is a negative emotional response that is characterized by avoidance and feelings of stress and anxiety in situations involving mathematical reasoning. Math anxiety in students has been suggested to dampening learning and mastering of mathematics. Among various math skills, the ability to do conceptual knowledge of math has been confirmed to be significantly and negatively correlated with math anxiety. As an essential type of knowledge in mathematics, conceptual understanding is defined as an implicit or explicit understanding of the principles that govern a domain and of the relationships between units of knowledge in a domain. Neuroimaging studies have shown that the regions of the brain needed for processing mathematical conceptual knowledge might differ from those needed for other types of math such as calculation or basic numerical processing. Doing conceptual knowledge of math reportedly activated brain regions that are related to numerical processing, such as the bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS), as well as brain regions associated with general conceptual knowledge processing, such as the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left middle temporal gyrus (MTG). Although the correlation between conceptual math skill and math anxiety has been confirmed at the behavioral level, the neural mechanism remains unknown. Previous studies found that in people with high math anxiety, brain regions related to negative emotions were found to be more active during the numerical tasks, while regions related to emotion regulation and the processing of numbers and calculations were less active. In addition to hyper-activation of the emotional network, brain regions that govern mathematical tasks, showed reduced activation in people with high math anxiety. To address the neural mechanism that allows math anxiety to impede the processing of conceptual math, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine how brain activity is related to the effects that math anxiety has on the performance of problems that test conceptual math knowledge. (1) we selected four regions of interest (ROIs) that were considered as important neural substrates for processing arithmetic principles in a previous fMRI study. We performed correlation analysis between the seed-based FC maps and the performance of math conceptual knowledge to construct neural pathways that process math conceptual knowledge. (2) we utilized mediation analysis to investigate the relationships between math anxiety, the performance of math conceptual knowledge, and the possible neural pathways. To avoid numerical formats that would likely induce confounding math anxiety, we used a verbalized arithmetic principles task. After excluding trait anxiety and state anxiety abnormalities, as well as participants who exceed the criterion of head motion during scanning, 92 healthy adult university students (43 females), aged 18-23 years (M = 20.91, SD = 2.33) were left for the data analysis. After controlling for the extraneous factors such as language and intelligence, the partial correlation results showed a significant negative correlation between mathematical anxiety and performance on conceptual knowledge of mathematics (r = -0.26, p = 0.008), which replicated the findings of previous studies and confirmed that mathematical anxiety did inhibit individuals' learning and acquisition of conceptual knowledge of mathematics. The functional connectivity in the resting brain of individuals was correlated with different levels of mathematical anxiety in the functional connectivity between the horizontal segment of the right intraparietal sulcus and the right insula. Furthermore, this functional connectivity fully mediated the correlation between the level of mathematical anxiety and the performance of mathematical conceptual knowledge. These results suggest that the interaction between mathematical/computation-related brain regions (e.g. the horizontal segment of the intraparietal sulcus) and anxiety circuits (e.g. the insula) may be the neural basis for the negative effect of mathematical anxiety on the performance of mathematical conceptual knowledge.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Humans are a social species that are constantly involved in complex relationships, reacting to the actions of others, and intentionally or unintentionally changing our own behavior. Personality traits reflect the behavioral pattern of an individual's response to the environment, which also includes social behavior. In addition, the brain is also an important factor when discussing social networks. The brain provides biological mechanisms for human behavior, while social networks provide external triggers for these behaviors. Linking personality traits and brain activity to social networks can help us better understand the structure of group relationships, improve our understanding of individual human beings, and help us better predict individual social behaviors and find the rules of information transmission in interpersonal relationships. From the perspective of a network, we collected nine social networks from 94 undergraduate students in the same grade according to their different social needs. We used the graph theory and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the influence of personality traits on social networks based on individual popularity and closeness between individuals and the relationship between the similarity of brain resting-state functional connectivity and social distance between individuals. Specifically, regression analysis was carried out, with personality traits as the independent variables and the different degrees of social networks as the dependent variables. Then, a correlation analysis was performed for the social distance and similarity of personality traits. Finally, the correlation between the similarity of the brain networks and social distance was calculated. The results showed that (1) individuals with high conscientiousness were more popular in social networks requiring "trust" traits, while individuals with high agreeableness were more popular in social networks requiring "fun" traits. These findings showed that in the same group, there are different social networks according to social needs, and the popularity of individuals in different social networks is not similar as it will be affected by the corresponding personality traits; (2) In the social networks requiring "shared interests & values, " personality similarity and social distance between individuals were significantly negatively correlated. Personality similarity promotes interpersonal communication between individuals, which may be realized through interpersonal attraction induced by the similarity of values and interests; (3) In the same social network, there is a significantly negative correlation between similarities in functional connections (FCs) and social distance among individuals, and these FCs are mainly concentrated in the fronto-parietal task control network and the dorsal attention network. The similarity of resting brain FCs among individuals may promote interpersonal communication, possibly due to the similarity of individuals in cognitive control and environmental processing bias, which increases the interpersonal attraction and shortening the social distance between individuals. The results revealed the influence of personality traits on the structure of different social networks, the relationship between personality trait similarity among individuals, and the similarity between resting brain networks and social distance, which has important implications for understanding the structure of social networks, the formation rules, and the information transmission rules among them. In addition, this study discussed the relationship between the similarity of resting-state FC and social distance, providing new evidence for studies on brain synchronization in interpersonal communication and brain imaging evidence for the study of the relationship between the similarity of personality traits and social distance.#social networks, personality traits, resting-state functional connectivity
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Previous experimental results have shown that worked-example learning can promote the solution of near, but not far, transfer problems. However, according to Sweller, in order to promote the solution of the far transfer problem, it was necessary to learn a series of worked-examples of variant problems solutions. Furthermore, they must try to solve problems requiring variant rules. Thus, they will be assigned a large number of homework exercises. To avoid this, we developed a rule worked-example learning method to promote far transfer problem solving, in which students applied rules variant reasoning after prototype worked-example learning. We carried out four experiments to test the effectiveness of this method. In Experiment 1, 162 fourth-grade students were selected as participants. They were randomly divided into three groups. After learning the prototype worked-examples, the first group learned worked-examples of the four variant problem solutions. The second group applied rule variant reasoning to four problems presented to them. The third group solved four near transfer problems. Then, participants in all groups were evaluated by transfer tests. In Experiment 2, 54 mathematics high-performing students, 54 mathematics middle-performing students, and 54 mathematics low-performing students were selected as participants. After learning the prototype worked-examples, they all applied rule variant reasoning to four variant problems presented to them. Then, they all took transfer tests. In Experiment 3, 90 mathematics middle-performing students were randomly divided into three groups. Additionally, 90 mathematics low-performing students were randomly divided into three groups. After prototype worked-examples learning, two first groups made up the variant problems by self, and then they carried out rules variant reasoning for the variant problems; two second groups carried out rules variant reasoning for four variant problems presented to them; two third groups made four types division for eight variant problems presented to them, and then they carried out rules variant reasoning for the four kinds of the variant problems. Finally, they were all tested by transfer tests. In Experiment 4, 80 mathematics low-performing students were randomly divided into two groups. After learning prototype worked-examples, they all made four types division for eight variant problems presented to them. The first group carried out rules variant reasoning for the four kinds of the variant problems. The second group carried out rules variant reasoning using the variant problems of incomplete solving rules. Finally, they all took transfer tests. The results showed that (1) The far transfer scores of the first group were significantly better than those of the second and the third groups, and that the second group’s scores were significantly better than those of the third group; (2) Significant differences were found in the far transfer test scores among three math performance levels; (3) The far transfer test scores of the third group were significantly better than those of the first and second groups; (4) The far transfer test scores of the second group were significantly better than those of the first. It can be concluded that rule variant reasoning after learning prototype worked-example significantly promotes far transfer problem solving.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Depression is a common mental disorder characterized by persistent low mood and anhedonia. While healthy people can voluntarily forget unpleasant events, depressed patients cannot or have difficulty in forgetting negative stimuli. Studies focused on healthy population have found that memory suppression is not only associated with decreased neural activation in the hippocampus, but also significantly activates a wide network in the prefrontal cortex, especially the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Meanwhile, studies have demonstrated that depressed participants could not effectively recruit their frontal brain network responsible for inhibition control of negative materials. Thus, the key question of this study is to examine whether an enhancement of the neural activation in DLPFC using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) could improve the ability of voluntary forgetting of negative information in depressed patients. We recruited a total of 123 participants. Among them, 31 healthy participants were stimulated by TMS at the right DLPFC (right DLPFC-activated controls), 32 patients and 30 patients were stimulated by TMS at the left and right DLPFC respectively (left and right DLPFC-activated patients). The other 30 patients were assigned into a sham TMS group. This study contained three independent variables. The two within-subject variables were TMS (baseline or TMS condition) and directed forgetting instruction (remember or forget), and the between-subject variable was group (left or right DLPFC-activated patient, or right DLPFC-activated control). We focused on the memory suppression of social feedbacks in this study, since social feedback processing plays a vital role in everyday interpersonal activities. Previous studies have found that depressed patients cannot perceive and evaluate social feedbacks accurately and adaptively, which makes negative social experiences being an important inducing factor of depression. Meanwhile, evidence indicates that depressed patients have more deficits in processing social relative to nonsocial information. Results of the explicit memory test showed that the recall accuracy of social rejection was higher in patients than healthy controls in baseline condition, suggesting that patients had difficulty in voluntarily forgetting negative social feedback. After we used the TMS to activate the left or right DLPFC of participants, we found no significant difference in the recall accuracy of social rejection between the three groups. This result suggested that the ability of memory suppression for negative social feedback was improved by TMS in patients. Moreover, it was also found that patients rated the feedback senders as being more attractive after they had forgotten negative social feedback provided by these feedback senders. The main contribution of this study is that we first attempt to improve the ability of memory suppression of negative information in depressed patients using the TMS technique. Still now, there have been only two neuroscience studies focusing on the deficits of directed forgetting in depression ( Xie, Jiang, & Zhang, 2018; Yang et al., 2016). Beyond these two studies, we demonstrated a causal relationship between the DLPFC and memory suppression impairment in depressed patients by employing TMS to facilitate the function of DLPFC. Thus, we provide a potential neural target for the clinical treatment of depressed patients with voluntary forgetting deficits. In addition to depression, difficulties in voluntary forgetting is a common problem found in patients diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorder (including obsessive compulsive disorder), schizophrenia and many other mental disorders. Meanwhile, difficulties in forgetting the euphoria or enjoyment coming from drugs or high-calorie foods might be an important reason for the persistence and aggravation of drug addiction and bulimia. Our finding suggests that the right DLPFC may be a potential brain target for the treatment of memory suppression deficits in these disorders. Facilitating the cognitive control of this brain region using the TMS is expected to restore the inhibitory control function of patients and thus significantly improve their voluntary forgetting ability, helping them to relieve symptoms and recover from 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.
Hits
YES
Hits
Downloads
Comment