scholarly journals Event-related Potential and Behavioural Differences in Affective Self-Referential Processing in Long-term Meditators versus Controls

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sucharit Katyal ◽  
Greg Hajcak ◽  
Tamara Flora ◽  
Austin Bartlett ◽  
philippe goldin
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
The Self ◽  
Positive Potential ◽  
Contemplative Practices ◽  
Referential Processing ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
The Relationship

Contemplative practices are thought to modify one’s experience of self and fundamentally change self-referential processing. However, few studies have examined the effect of long-term meditation training on brain correlates of self-referential processing. Here we used the self-referential encoding task (SRET) to examine event-related potentials (ERP) during assessment of positive and negative self-views in long-term meditators versus demographically-matched meditation-naïve control participants. Compared to controls, meditators endorsed significantly more positive and less negative words as self-referential. We also found a between-group difference in the early component of the late-positive-potential (LPP) of the ERP characterised by a higher response to negative versus positive words in controls and no difference in meditators. These findings suggest that long-term meditation training alters self-referential processing towards a more adaptive view of self and neural equivalence towards positive and negative self-views. Such changes may be one aspect of how meditation modifies the relationship to self.

scholarly journals Eliciting and Recording Event Related Potentials (ERPs) in Behaviourally Unresponsive Populations: A Retrospective Commentary on Critical Factors

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 835
Author(s):  
Alexander Rokos ◽  
Richard Mah ◽  
Rober Boshra ◽  
Amabilis Harrison ◽  
Tsee Leng Choy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Stimulus Presentation ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Critical Factors ◽  
Healthy Elderly ◽  
States Of Consciousness ◽  
Long Latency ◽  
Eeg Data ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
The Relationship

A consistent limitation when designing event-related potential paradigms and interpreting results is a lack of consideration of the multivariate factors that affect their elicitation and detection in behaviorally unresponsive individuals. This paper provides a retrospective commentary on three factors that influence the presence and morphology of long-latency event-related potentials—the P3b and N400. We analyze event-related potentials derived from electroencephalographic (EEG) data collected from small groups of healthy youth and healthy elderly to illustrate the effect of paradigm strength and subject age; we analyze ERPs collected from an individual with severe traumatic brain injury to illustrate the effect of stimulus presentation speed. Based on these critical factors, we support that: (1) the strongest paradigms should be used to elicit event-related potentials in unresponsive populations; (2) interpretation of event-related potential results should account for participant age; and (3) speed of stimulus presentation should be slower in unresponsive individuals. The application of these practices when eliciting and recording event-related potentials in unresponsive individuals will help to minimize result interpretation ambiguity, increase confidence in conclusions, and advance the understanding of the relationship between long-latency event-related potentials and states of consciousness.

Directed and Motivated Attention during Processing of Natural Scenes

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (10) ◽  
pp. 1753-1761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Ferrari ◽  
Maurizio Codispoti ◽  
Rossella Cardinale ◽  
Margaret M. Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Neural Circuits ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Natural Scenes ◽  
Directed Attention ◽  
Positive Potential ◽  
New Information ◽  
Motivated Attention ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Emotional Pictures ◽  
The Relationship

Visual attention can be voluntarily oriented to detect target stimuli in order to facilitate goal-directed behaviors. Other visual stimuli capture attention because of motivational significance. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between directed and motivated attention using event-related potentials. Affectively engaging pictures were presented either as target stimuli or as nontargets in a categorization task. Results indicated that both task relevance and emotional significance modulated the late positive potential (LPP) over centro-parietal sensors. Effects of directed and motivated attention on the LPP were additive, with the largest centro-parietal positivity found for emotional pictures that were targets of directed attention, and the least for neutral pictures that were nontargets. Taken together, the data provide new information regarding the relationship between motivated and directed attention, and suggest that the LPP reflects the operation of attentional neural circuits that are utilized by both top-down and bottom-up processes.

scholarly journals The Relationship Between Childhood Emotional Abuse and Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions in Healthy Young Men: Event-Related Potential and Behavioral Evidence

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yutong Liu ◽  
Huini Peng ◽  
Jianhui Wu ◽  
Hongxia Duan
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Childhood Maltreatment ◽  
Emotional Abuse ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Emotional Facial Expressions ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Childhood Emotional Abuse ◽  
The Relationship

Background: Individuals exposed to childhood maltreatment present with a deficiency in emotional processing in later life. Most studies have focused mainly on childhood physical or sexual abuse; however, childhood emotional abuse, a core issue underlying different forms of childhood maltreatment, has received relatively little attention. The current study explored whether childhood emotional abuse is related to the impaired processing of emotional facial expressions in healthy young men.Methods: The emotional facial processing was investigated in a classical gender discrimination task while the event-related potentials (ERPs) data were collected. Childhood emotional abuse was assessed by a Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) among 60 healthy young men. The relationship between the score of emotional abuse and the behavioral and the ERP index of emotional facial expression (angry, disgust, and happy) were explored.Results: Participants with a higher score of childhood emotional abuse responded faster on the behavioral level and had a smaller P2 amplitude on the neural level when processing disgust faces compared to neutral faces.Discussion: Individuals with a higher level of childhood emotional abuse may quickly identify negative faces with less cognitive resources consumed, suggesting altered processing of emotional facial expressions in young men with a higher level of childhood emotional abuse.

scholarly journals Posttraining Sleep Enhances Automaticity in Perceptual Discrimination

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mercedes Atienza ◽  
Jose L. Cantero ◽  
Robert Stickgold
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Perceptual Discrimination ◽  
Voluntary Attention ◽  
Auditory Learning ◽  
Cortical Dynamics ◽  
Slow Development ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Related Potentials

Perceptual learning can develop over extended periods, with slow, at times sleep-dependent, improvement seen several days after training. As a result, performance can become more automatic, that is, less dependent on voluntary attention. This study investigates whether the brain correlates of this enhancement of automaticity are sleep-dependent. Event-related potentials produced in response to complex auditory stimuli were recorded while subjects' attention was focused elsewhere. We report here that following training on an auditory discrimination task, performance continued to improve, without significant further training, for 72 hr. At the same time, several event-related potential components became evident 48–72 hr after training. Posttraining sleep deprivation prevented neither the continued performance improvement nor the slow development of cortical dynamics related to an enhanced familiarity with the task. However, those brain responses associated with the automatic shift of attention to unexpected stimuli failed to develop. Thus, in this auditory learning paradigm, posttraining sleep appears to reduce the voluntary attentional effort required for successful perceptual discrimination by facilitating the intrusion of a potentially meaningful stimulus into one's focus of attention for further evaluation.

scholarly journals Changes in face and face pareidolia processing in patients with migraine: an ERP study

2020 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 876-884 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gülsüm Akdeniz ◽  
Sadiye Gumusyayla ◽  
Gonul Vural ◽  
Hesna Bektas ◽  
Orhan Deniz
Keyword(s):  
Migraine With Aura ◽  
Migraine Without Aura ◽  
Cortical Excitability ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Positive Potential ◽  
Cortical Hyperexcitability ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Related Potentials

Migraine is a multifactorial brain disorder characterized by recurrent disabling headache attacks. One of the possible mechanisms in the pathogenesis of migraine may be a decrease in inhibitory cortical stimuli in the primary visual cortex attributable to cortical hyperexcitability. The aim of this study was to investigate the neural correlates underlying face and face pareidolia processing in terms of the event-related potential (ERP) components, N170, vertex positive potential (VPP), and N250, in patients with migraine. In total, 40 patients with migraine without aura, 23 patients with migraine and aura, and 30 healthy controls were enrolled. We recorded ERPs during the presentation of face and face pareidolia images. N170, VPP, and N250 mean amplitudes and latencies were examined. N170 was significantly greater in patients with migraine with aura than in healthy controls. VPP amplitude was significantly greater in patients with migraine without aura than in healthy controls. The face stimuli evoked significantly earlier VPP responses to faces (168.7 ms, SE = 1.46) than pareidolias (173.4 ms, SE = 1.41) in patients with migraine with aura. We did not find a significant difference between N250 amplitude for face and face pareidolia processing. A significant difference was observed between the groups for pareidolia in terms of N170 [F(2,86) = 14,75, P < 0.001] and VPP [F(2,86) = 16.43, P < 0.001] amplitudes. Early ERPs are a valuable tool to study the neural processing of face processing in patients with migraine to demonstrate visual cortical hyperexcitability. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Event-related potentials (ERPs) are important for understanding face and face pareidolia processing in patients with migraine. N170, vertex positive potential (VPP), and N250 ERPs were investigated. N170 was revealed as a potential component of cortical excitability for face and face pareidolia processing in patients with migraine.

scholarly journals Modulation of Face-sensitive Event-related Potentials by Canonical and Distorted Human Faces: The Role of Vertical Symmetry and Up-Down Featural Arrangement

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (8) ◽  
pp. 1343-1358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viola Macchi Cassia ◽  
Dana Kuefner ◽  
Alissa Westerlund ◽  
Charles A. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Linear Increase ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Behavioral Measures ◽  
Positive Potential ◽  
Orientation Judgment ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Human Faces

This study examined the sensitivity of early face-sensitive event-related potential (ERP) components to the disruption of two structural properties embedded in faces, namely, “updown featural arrangement” and “vertical symmetry.” Behavioral measures and ERPs were recorded as adults made an orientation judgment for canonical faces and distorted faces that had been manipulated for either or both of the mentioned properties. The P1, the N170, and the vertex positive potential (VPP) exhibited a similar gradient in sensitivity to the two investigated properties, in that they all showed a linear increase in amplitude or latency as the properties were selectively disrupted in the order of (1) up-down featural arrangement, (2) vertical symmetry, and (3) both up-down featural arrangement and vertical symmetry. Exceptions to this finding were seen for the amplitudes of the N170 and VPP, which were largest for the stimulus in which solely vertical symmetry was disrupted. Interestingly, the enhanced amplitudes of the N170 and VPP are consistent with a drop in behavioral performance on the orientation judgment for this stimulus.

scholarly journals Oxytocin weakens self-other distinction in males during empathic responses to sadness: an event-related potentials study

PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e10384
Author(s):  
Tong Yue ◽  
Ying Xu ◽  
Liming Xue ◽  
Xiting Huang
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
The Self ◽  
Facial Stimulus ◽  
Double Blind ◽  
Subject Design ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Male Subjects

By making use of event-related potential (ERP) technology, a randomized, double-blind, between-subject design study was performed in order to investigate whether OXT can weaken men’s self-other distinction during empathic responses to sad expressions. In the two experimental tasks, 39 male subjects were asked to either evaluate the emotional state shown in a facial stimulus (other-task) or to evaluate their own emotional responses (self-task). The results revealed that OXT reduced the differences in P2 (150–200 ms) amplitudes between sad and neutral expressions in the self-task but enhanced P2 to sad expressions in the other-task, indicating OXT’s role in integrating the self with others instead of separating them. In addition, OXT also reduced the LPC (400–600 ms) amplitudes between sad-neutral expressions in the self-task, implying that OXT’s weakening effects on the self-other distinction could occur at both the early and late cognitive control stages of the empathic response.

scholarly journals Propofol and Midazolam Inhibit Conscious Memory Processes Very Soon after Encoding: An Event-related Potential Study of Familiarity and Recollection in Volunteers

2009 ◽  
Vol 110 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Veselis ◽  
Kane O. Pryor ◽  
Ruth A. Reinsel ◽  
Yuelin Li ◽  
Meghana Mehta ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Memory Function ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Memory Retention ◽  
Drug Infusion ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Related Potentials

Background Intravenous drugs active via gamma-aminobutyric acid receptors to produce memory impairment during conscious sedation. Memory function was assessed using event-related potentials (ERPs) while drug was present. Methods The continuous recognition task measured recognition of photographs from working (6 s) and long-term (27 s) memory while ERPs were recorded from Cz (familiarity recognition) and Pz electrodes (recollection recognition). Volunteer participants received sequential doses of one of placebo (n = 11), 0.45 and 0.9 microg/ml propofol (n = 10), 20 and 40 ng/ml midazolam (n = 12), 1.5 and 3 microg/ml thiopental (n = 11), or 0.25 and 0.4 ng/ml dexmedetomidine (n = 11). End-of-day yes/no recognition 225 min after the end of drug infusion tested memory retention of pictures encoded on the continuous recognition tasks. Results Active drugs increased reaction times and impaired memory on the continuous recognition task equally, except for a greater effect of midazolam (P &lt; 0.04). Forgetting from continuous recognition tasks to end of day was similar for all drugs (P = 0.40), greater than placebo (P &lt; 0.001). Propofol and midazolam decreased the area between first presentation (new) and recognized (old, 27 s later) ERP waveforms from long-term memory for familiarity (P = 0.03) and possibly for recollection processes (P = 0.12). Propofol shifted ERP amplitudes to smaller voltages (P &lt; 0.002). Dexmedetomidine may have impaired familiarity more than recollection processes (P = 0.10). Thiopental had no effect on ERPs. Conclusion Propofol and midazolam impaired recognition ERPs from long-term memory but not working memory. ERP measures of memory revealed different pathways to end-of-day memory loss as early as 27 s after encoding.

scholarly journals Temporal features of individual and collective self-referential processing: an event-related potential study

PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e8917
Author(s):  
Cuihong Liu ◽  
Wenjie Li ◽  
Rong Wang ◽  
Yaohan Cai ◽  
Jie Chen
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Essential Difference ◽  
Famous Person ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Referential Processing ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Self Reference

Background Individual and collective self are two fundamental self-representations and are important to human experience. The present study aimed to investigate whether individual and collective self have essential difference in neural mechanism. Methods Event-related potentials were recorded to explore the electrophysiological correlates of individual and collective self in a self-referential task in which participants were asked to evaluate whether trait adjectives were suitable to describe themselves (individual self-referential processing), a famous person (individual non-self-referential processing), Chinese (collective self-referential processing) or American (collective non-self-referential processing). Results At the early stages, results showed that larger P2 and smaller N2 amplitudes were elicited by individual self-referential than by individual non-self-referential processing whereas no significant differences were observed between collective self-referential and collective non-self-referential processing at these stages. In addition, at the late P3 stage (350–600 ms), larger P3 amplitudes were also elicited by individual self-referential than by individual non-self-referential processing during 350–600 ms interval. However, the collective self-reference effect, indicated by the differences between collective self-referential and collective non-self-referential processing, did not appear until 450 ms and extended to 600 ms. Moreover, individual self-reference effect was more pronounced than collective self-reference effect in the 350–500 ms interval, whereas individual and collective self-reference effect had no significant difference in the 500–600 ms interval. These findings indicated that the time courses of neural activities were different in processing individual and collective self.

scholarly journals Self-face and emotional faces—are they alike?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Żochowska ◽  
Maria M Nowicka ◽  
Michał J Wójcik ◽  
Anna Nowicka
Keyword(s):  
Time Windows ◽  
Permutation Tests ◽  
Detection Task ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
The Self ◽  
Positive Potential ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Fearful Faces ◽  
Referential Processing ◽  
Simple Detection

Abstract The image of one’s own face is a particularly distinctive feature of the self. The self-face differs from other faces not only in respect of its familiarity but also in respect of its subjective emotional significance and saliency. The current study aimed at elucidating similarities/dissimilarities between processing of one’s own face and emotional faces: happy faces (based on the self-positive bias) and fearful faces (because of their high perceptual saliency, a feature shared with self-face). Electroencephalogram data were collected in the group of 30 participants who performed a simple detection task. Event-related potential analyses indicated significantly increased P3 and late positive potential amplitudes to the self-face in comparison to all other faces: fearful, happy and neutral. Permutation tests confirmed the differences between the self-face and all three types of other faces for numerous electrode sites and in broad time windows. Representational similarity analysis, in turn, revealed distinct processing of the self-face and did not provide any evidence in favour of similarities between the self-face and emotional (either negative or positive) faces. These findings strongly suggest that the self-face processing do not resemble those of emotional faces, thus implying that prioritized self-referential processing is driven by the subjective relevance of one’s own face.

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