Some examples of psychophysiology and the unconscious

Different sources of the unconscious are discussed and illustrated, namely, failure to have learned an appropriate perception, repression motivated by an aversive emotion and reinforced by the reduction produced in it when the person stops the thoughts or other cue-producing responses eliciting that emotion, an interference with thoughts or perceptions by a distraction or stimulus overload, and failure to perceive a correct cause-and-effect relationship. The ways in which each of these forms of unconsciousness can reduce the adaptiveness of behavior are described and illustrated as well as how psychophysiological recording can facilitate therapy to improve consciousness and thus voluntary control and behavior that is more intelligent and adaptive.     

An introduction to the psychophysiology of breathing

Breathing can be viewed as an independent variable which affects emotion, cognition, and behavior as well as a dependent variable which reflects changes in emotion, cognition, and behavior. This bidirectional interaction is basic to an appreciation of the significance of breathing in terms of its relevance in research and application. The underlying premise of the present article is that since breathing is a behavior that is under voluntary as well as reflexive control, it can be modified according to the principles of both instrumental training (operant conditioning) and Pavlovian (classical) conditioning. The implications of this premise are relevant to theory, diagnosis, and treatment of stress and anxiety-related disorders (e.g., panic disorder, phobias, test anxiety, occupational strain, and related psychosomatic disorders), and to basic and applied research in the psychophysiology of breathing.     

The Collective Benefits of Feeling Good and Letting Go: Positive Emotion and (dis)Inhibition Interact to Predict Cooperative Behavior

Cooperation is central to human existence, forming the bedrock of everyday social relationships and larger societal structures. Thus, understanding the psychological underpinnings of cooperation is of both scientific and practical importance. Recent work using a dual-process framework suggests that intuitive processing can promote cooperation while deliberative processing can undermine it. Here we add to this line of research by more specifically identifying deliberative and intuitive processes that affect cooperation. To do so, we applied automated text analysis using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software to investigate the association between behavior in one-shot anonymous economic cooperation games and the presence inhibition (a deliberative process) and positive emotion (an intuitive process) in free-response narratives written after (Study 1, N = 4,218) or during (Study 2, N = 236) the decision-making process. Consistent with previous results, across both studies inhibition predicted reduced cooperation while positive emotion predicted increased cooperation (even when controlling for negative emotion). Importantly, there was a significant interaction between positive emotion and inhibition, such that the most cooperative individuals had high positive emotion and low inhibition. This suggests that inhibition (i.e., reflective or deliberative processing) may undermine cooperative behavior by suppressing the prosocial effects of positive emotion.     

Do Sex Differences in the Brain Explain Sex Differences in the Hormonal Induction of Reproductive Behavior? What 25 Years of Research on the Japanese Quail Tells Us

Early workers interested in the mechanisms mediating sex differences in morphology and behavior assumed that differences in behavior that are commonly observed between males and females result from the sex specificity of androgens and estrogens. Androgens were thought to facilitate male-typical traits, and estrogens were thought to facilitate female-typical traits. By the mid-20th century, however, it was apparent that administering androgens to females or estrogens to males was not always effective in sex-reversing behavior and that in some cases a “female” hormone such as an estrogen could produce male-typical behavior and an androgen could induce female-typical behavior. These conceptual difficulties were resolved to a large extent by the seminal paper of C. H. Phoenix, R. W. Goy, A. A. Gerall, and W. C. Young in (1959,Endocrinology65, 369–382) that illustrated that several aspects of sexual behavior are different between males and females because the sexes have been exposed during their perinatal life to a different endocrine milieu that has irreversibly modified their response to steroids in adulthood. Phoenixet al.(1959) therefore formalized a clear dichotomy between the organizational and activational effects of sex steroid hormones. Since this paper, a substantial amount of research has been carried out in an attempt to identify the aspects of brain morphology or neurochemistry that differentiate under the embryonic/neonatal effects of steroids and are responsible for the different behavioral response of males and females to the activation by steroids in adulthood. During the past 25 years, research in behavioral neuroendocrinology has identified many sex differences in brain morphology or neurochemistry; however many of these sex differences disappear when male and female subjects are placed in similar endocrine conditions (e.g., are gonadectomized and treated with the same amount of steroids) so that these differences appear to be of an activational nature and cannot therefore explain sex differences in behavior that are still present in gonadectomized steroid-treated adults. This research has also revealed many aspects of brain morphology and chemistry that are markedly affected by steroids in adulthood and are thought to mediate the activation of behavior at the central level. It has been explicitly, or in some cases, implicitly assumed that the sexual differentiation of brain and behavior driven by early exposure to steroids concerns primarily those neuroanatomical/neurochemical characteristics that are altered by steroids in adulthood and presumably mediate the activation of behavior. Extensive efforts to identify these sexually differentiated brain characteristics over the past 20 years has only met with limited success, however. As regards reproductive behavior, in all model species that have been studied it is still impossible to identify satisfactorily brain characteristics that differentiate under early steroid action and explain the sex differences in behavioral activating effects of steroids. This problem is illustrated by research conducted on Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica), an avian model system that displays prominent sex differences in the sexual behavioral response to testosterone, and in which the endocrine mechanisms that control sexual differentiation of behavior have been clearly identified so that subjects with a fully sex-reversed behavioral phenotype can be easily produced. In this species, studies of sex differences in the neural substrate mediating the action of steroids in the brain, including the activity of the enzymes that metabolize steroids such as aromatase and the distribution of steroid hormone receptors as well as related neurotransmitter systems, did not result in a satisfactory explanation of sex differences in the behavioral effectiveness of testosterone. Possible explanations for the relative failure to identify the organized brain characteristics responsible for behavioral sex differences in the responsiveness to steroids are presented. It is argued that novel research strategies may have to be employed to successfully attack the fundamental question of the hormonal mechanisms regulating sex differences in behavior.     

An Integrative Theory-Driven Positive Emotion Regulation Intervention

Over the past fifteen years, positive psychology research has validated a set of happiness enhancing techniques. These techniques are relatively simple exercises that allow happiness seekers to mimic thoughts and behavior of naturally happy people, in order to increase their level of well-being. Because research has shown that the joint use of these exercises increases their effects, practitioners who want to help happiness seekers need validated interventions that combine several of these techniques. To meet this need, we have developed and tested an integrative intervention (Positive Emotion Regulation program – PER program) incorporating a number of validated techniques structured around a theoretical model: the Process Model of Positive Emotion Regulation. To test the effectiveness of this program and to identify its added value relative to existing interventions, 113 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to a 6-week positive emotion regulation pilot program, a loving-kindness meditation training program, or a wait-list control group. Results indicate that fewer participants dropped out from the PER program than from the Loving-Kindness Meditation training. Furthermore, subjects in the PER group showed a significant increase in subjective well-being and life satisfaction and a significant decrease in depression and physical symptoms when compared to controls. Our results suggest that the Process Model of Positive Emotion Regulation can be an effective option to organize and deliver positive integrative interventions.     

Bird calls: just emotional displays or something more?

Two widely held assumptions about the sounds of birds and other animals are (1) they are impulsive and involuntary, and cannot be controlled, and (2) they are based only on emotion, apparently because the stimuli eliciting them are thought to be very generalized. The validity of these assumptions has been tested in studies of the alarm calling and food calling behavior of domestic chickens. Videotapes of aerial and ground predators–a hawk overhead and a raccoon on the ground–were effective in eliciting the two major classes of alarm calls. The frequency of aerial alarm calling was strongly affected by presence or absence of a companion, while other aspects of antipredator behavior were unchanged. This so-called "audience effect" on calling is not found with the ground predator call, apparently because this call is addressed to the predator as well as companions. The rules for audience effects are different again with food calling. Evidently calling is not completely impulsive, but can be controlled. By varying the attributes of digitized video images of predators we have shown that stimuli eliciting the aerial predator alarm call are quite specific, encoding different information than the ground predator call. Playback experiments demonstrate that another chicken can decode this information, and react adaptively. Although emotion is undoubtedly involved in bird calling, we conclude that simple emotion-based models of bird calls are inadequate as the sole basis for explaining the vocal behavior of birds.     

Bird calls: just emotional displays or something more?

Two widely held assumptions about the sounds of birds and other animals are (1) they are impulsive and involuntary, and cannot be controlled, and (2) they are based only on emotion, apparently because the stimuli eliciting them are thought to be very generalized. The validity of these assumptions has been tested in studies of the alarm calling and food calling behavior of domestic chickens. Videotapes of aerial and ground predators–a hawk overhead and a raccoon on the ground–were effective in eliciting the two major classes of alarm calls. The frequency of aerial alarm calling was strongly affected by presence or absence of a companion, while other aspects of antipredator behavior were unchanged. This so-called "audience effect" on calling is not found with the ground predator call, apparently because this call is addressed to the predator as well as companions. The rules for audience effects are different again with food calling. Evidently calling is not completely impulsive, but can be controlled. By varying the attributes of digitized video images of predators we have shown that stimuli eliciting the aerial predator alarm call are quite specific, encoding different information than the ground predator call. Playback experiments demonstrate that another chicken can decode this information, and react adaptively. Although emotion is undoubtedly involved in bird calling, we conclude that simple emotion-based models of bird calls are inadequate as the sole basis for explaining the vocal behavior of birds.     

Prefrontal involvement in the regulation of emotion: convergence of rat and human studies

Emotion regulation is a process by which we control when and where emotions are expressed. Paradigms used to study the regulation of emotion in humans examine controlled responses to emotional stimuli and/or the inhibition of emotional influences on subsequent behavior. These processes of regulation of emotion trigger activation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and inhibition of the amygdala. A similar pattern of activation is seen in rodents during recall of fear extinction, an example of emotional regulation. The overlap in circuitry is consistent with a common mechanism, and points toward future experiments designed to bridge human and rodent models of emotion regulation.     

Emotion Regulation as the Foundation of Political Attitudes: Does Reappraisal Decrease Support for Conservative Policies?

Cognitive scientists, behavior geneticists, and political scientists have identified several ways in which emotions influence political attitudes, and psychologists have shown that emotion regulation can have an important causal effect on physiology, cognition, and subjective experience. However, no work to date explores the possibility that emotion regulation may shape political ideology and attitudes toward policies. Here, we conduct four studies that investigate the role of a particular emotion regulation strategy – reappraisal in particular. Two observational studies show that individual differences in emotion regulation styles predict variation in political orientations and support for conservative policies. In the third study, we experimentally induce disgust as the target emotion to be regulated and show that use of reappraisal reduces the experience of disgust, thereby decreasing moral concerns associated with conservatism. In the final experimental study, we show that use of reappraisal successfully attenuates the relationship between trait-level disgust sensitivity and support for conservative policies. Our findings provide the first evidence of a critical link between emotion regulation and political attitudes.     

Nonlinear Dynamics of Emotion-Cognition Interaction: When Emotion Does not Destroy Cognition?

Emotion (i.e., spontaneous motivation and subsequent implementation of a behavior) and cognition (i.e., problem solving by information processing) are essential to how we, as humans, respond to changes in our environment. Recent studies in cognitive science suggest that emotion and cognition are subserved by different, although heavily integrated, neural systems. Understanding the time-varying relationship of emotion and cognition is a challenging goal with important implications for neuroscience. We formulate here the dynamical model of emotion-cognition interaction that is based on the following principles: (1) the temporal evolution of cognitive and emotion modes are captured by the incoming stimuli and competition within and among themselves (competition principle); (2) metastable states exist in the unified emotion-cognition phase space; and (3) the brain processes information with robust and reproducible transients through the sequence of metastable states. Such a model can take advantage of the often ignored temporal structure of the emotion-cognition interaction to provide a robust and generalizable method for understanding the relationship between brain activation and complex human behavior. The mathematical image of the robust and reproducible transient dynamics is a Stable Heteroclinic Sequence (SHS), and the Stable Heteroclinic Channels (SHCs). These have been hypothesized to be possible mechanisms that lead to the sequential transient behavior observed in networks. We investigate the modularity of SHCs, i.e., given a SHS and a SHC that is supported in one part of a network, we study conditions under which the SHC pertaining to the cognition will continue to function in the presence of interfering activity with other parts of the network, i.e., emotion.     

Emotional expressivity as a signal of cooperation

Previous research has suggested that the spontaneous display of positive emotion may be a reliable signal of cooperative tendency in humans. Consistent with this proposition, several studies have found that self-reported cooperators indeed display higher levels of positive emotions than non-cooperators. In this study, we defined cooperators and non-cooperators in terms of their behavior as the proposer in an ultimatum game, and video-taped their facial expressions as they faced unfair offers as a responder. A detailed analysis of the facial expressions displayed by participants revealed that cooperators displayed greater amounts of emotional expressions, not limited to positive emotional expression, when responding to unfair offers in the ultimatum game. These results suggest that cooperators may be more emotionally expressive than non-cooperators. We speculate that emotional expressivity can be a more reliable signal of cooperativeness than the display of positive emotion alone.     

Accelerated failure time modeling via nonparametric mixtures

An accelerated failure time (AFT) model assuming a log-linear relationship between failure time and a set of covariates can be either parametric or semiparametric, depending on the distributional assumption for the error term. Both classes of AFT models have been popular in the analysis of censored failure time data. The semiparametric AFT model is more flexible and robust to departures from the distributional assumption than its parametric counterpart. However, the semiparametric AFT model is subject to producing biased results for estimating any quantities involving an intercept. Estimating an intercept requires a separate procedure. Moreover, a consistent estimation of the intercept requires stringent conditions. Thus, essential quantities such as mean failure times might not be reliably estimated using semiparametric AFT models, which can be naturally done in the framework of parametric AFT models. Meanwhile, parametric AFT models can be severely impaired by misspecifications. To overcome this, we propose a new type of the AFT model using a nonparametric Gaussian-scale mixture distribution. We also provide feasible algorithms to estimate the parameters and mixing distribution. The finite sample properties of the proposed estimators are investigated via an extensive stimulation study. The proposed estimators are illustrated using a real dataset.     

Ostracism as a social and biological phenomenon: An introduction

Ostracism refers to the general process of rejection and exclusion, observed in human groups and in many other species. It occurs as “shunning” in small homogenous groups like the Amish or as rejection among children. Ostracism in various forms is also deeply embedded in our own legal tradition, and is used in the formal and informal legal procedures of other cultures, used to maintain order, to punish deviance, and to increase social cohesion. Hence, it is plausible to hypothesize that human ostracism may have physiological substrates or biological functions in addition to cultural, moral, and legal dimensions. Biological research shows that human emotions (anger, fear, reassurance, self-confidence) involve responses of the limbic system as well as ideas or thoughts in the cerebral cortex and that human behavior continually integrates biological and cultural factors. The legal system expresses and channels human behavior. For this reason laws should be more effective if their functions complement (rather than ignore) the function of the behavior being regulated. To look at law as it affects human behavior in the light of the life sciences does not imply the intention of finding a universally valid “natural law,” akin to theological or ideological doctrine. On the contrary, we find that humans can form radically different social systems due to the plasticity of their behavior. However, an interdisciplinary analysis of ostracism as a common area of behavior, combining biology, law, and the social sciences can produce insights that none of these fields alone can provide. Such an approach should increase our understanding of human nature and the functions of law.     

The Cytological Mechanism of Low Fertility in the Naked Seed Rice

The low fertility of naked seed rice (NSR) was investigated by the following observations: somatic chromosome constitute, behavior of pollen mother cells (PMCs), the germination of mature pollen grains, the development of male and female gametes and the structure of the anther opening. The results indicated that somatic chromosomal number was 2n = 24, behavior of PMCs were normal and most of pollen grains could regularly develop further to mature male gametophytes in NSR. And dehiscence chamber and thickened endothecium cell (TEC) in numerous anthers of the NSR were developed abnormally after dicaryotic phase, result in few anthers complete opening and most partly opening or failure to opening, therefore much fewer of pollen grains attach on the stigma as compared with normal variety. Furthermore most of embryo sacs possessed abnormal structure and were sterile. All of above illustrated that the failure of the anther opening and the abortion of female gametophyte were main factors controlling the low seed-setting rate of the NSR.     

哺乳类早期亲本缺失对子代行为及神经内分泌的影响

亲本投资作为一种早期社会环境对个体发育产生显著的影响。而某些原因会导致哺乳类亲本缺失,造成亲本投资改变。最近有关亲本缺失对子代的影响有较多的研究,本文主要综述了早期母本剥夺、父本剥夺和早期隔离分别对子代成年后情绪、认知及攻击行为、育幼行为和配偶关系的建立等多种社会行为的影响,并总结了这些早期发育的社会环境对神经内分泌的效应,并指出本领域需要解决的问题,希望有助于正确认识哺乳类不同亲本投资对后代行为的影响及相关神经内分泌机制。以上研究可为哺乳类异常行为的发生机制的理解提供重要线索,也为野生动物和实验动物的科学管理提供重要启示。     

On the relationship of emotional abilities and prosocial behavior

The ability to perceive and infer the meaning of facial expressions has been considered a critical component of emotional intelligence being essential for successful social functioning: Longitudinal findings suggest that the ability to recognize emotion cues is related to positive social interactions. Moreover, pronounced recognition abilities for at least some emotions facilitate prosocial behavior in everyday situations. Integrating paradigms from behavioral economics and psychometrics, we used an interdisciplinary approach to study the relationship between prosociality as trait cooperativeness and the ability to recognize emotions in others. We measured emotion recognition accuracy (ERA) using a multivariate test battery. We captured prosocial behavior in standard socio-economic games, along with spontaneous emotion expressions. Structural equation modeling revealed no significant relationship between overall ERA and prosocial behavior. However, modeling emotion-specific factors suggested that more prosocial individuals are better in recognizing fear and tend to express more spontaneous emotions during the prisoner's dilemma. In all, cooperative individuals seem to be more sensitive to the distress of others and more expressive, possibly fostering reciprocal interactions with like-minded others.     

Behavioral differences between vasopressin-deficient (Brattleboro) and normal Long-Evans rats

Behavioral comparisons were made between rats of the Brattleboro strain with hereditary hypothalamic diabetes insipidus (DI) and normal Long-Evans rats. Measurements were made of activity behavior in a lighted open field and in a darkened activity chamber. Subtle measurement specific differences in the activity behavior of DI rats were found which suggested altered emotion, motivation and/or attention in the DI rats. In terms of learned behavior, DI and normal rats displayed a similar degree of habituation to all within-session activity measures in both the open field and darkened activity chamber. In a passive avoidance test, DI rats exhibited a degree of avoidance behavior equivalent to that of normal animals. Thus, these studies provide evidence that the vasopressin-deficient rat is not defective in learning and memory processes. The data can be interpreted as suggesting that vasopressin may influence memory tasks by extrinsic modulation of related states of emotionality, motivation and/or attention rather than by direct involvement in the retrieval and consolidation of information.     

Learning in spiking neural networks by reinforcement of stochastic synaptic transmission

It is well-known that chemical synaptic transmission is an unreliable process, but the function of such unreliability remains unclear. Here I consider the hypothesis that the randomness of synaptic transmission is harnessed by the brain for learning, in analogy to the way that genetic mutation is utilized by Darwinian evolution. This is possible if synapses are "hedonistic," responding to a global reward signal by increasing their probabilities of vesicle release or failure, depending on which action immediately preceded reward. Hedonistic synapses learn by computing a stochastic approximation to the gradient of the average reward. They are compatible with synaptic dynamics such as short-term facilitation and depression and with the intricacies of dendritic integration and action potential generation. A network of hedonistic synapses can be trained to perform a desired computation by administering reward appropriately, as illustrated here through numerical simulations of integrate-and-fire model neurons.     

Uncertainty as wealth

Emotional satisfaction cannot be increased above "normal"-the same normal as the caveman's-for any length of time, but the wealth and consumption style of modern civilization may systematically reduce some people's satisfaction below normal. Hyperbolic discounting of delayed, expected rewards suggests causes for this reduction in humans, and for how we often respond to it, while conventional exponential discounting does not. Hyperbolic discounting has been well demonstrated by four experimental routes; and there is moderate evidence that it motivates impulse control by an intertemporal bargaining technique, proposed as the mechanism of willpower.A theoretical model is described in which emotion is a reward-dependent behavior rather than a stimulus-bound respondent. Positive emotion is then limited by premature satiation of the appetite for it, a relentless process motivated by the impatience that is described by hyperbolic discount curves. This satiation can be restrained only by using adequately rare and unpredictable occasions as cues for the emotion. Willpower not only is helpless against the urge for premature satiation, but it exacerbates the satiation problem by making anticipation more thorough. The result is an asymmetrical contest between systematic attempts to vouchsafe satisfying events and impetuous attempts to put them at risk. Despite their adversarial relationship, both may to some extent be in the person's long range interest.     

Cardiac signatures of personality

Background

There are well-established relations between personality and the heart, as evidenced by associations between negative emotions on the one hand, and coronary heart disease or chronic heart failure on the other. However, there are substantial gaps in our knowledge about relations between the heart and personality in healthy individuals. Here, we investigated whether amplitude patterns of the electrocardiogram (ECG) correlate with neurotisicm, extraversion, agreeableness, warmth, positive emotion, and tender-mindedness as measured with the Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness (NEO) personality inventory. Specifically, we investigated (a) whether a cardiac amplitude measure that was previously reported to be related to flattened affectivity (referred to as values) would explain variance of NEO scores, and (b) whether correlations can be found between NEO scores and amplitudes of the ECG.

Methodology/Principal Findings

NEO scores and rest ECGs were obtained from 425 healthy individuals. Neuroticism and positive emotion significantly differed between individuals with high and low values. In addition, stepwise cross-validated regressions indicated correlations between ECG amplitudes and (a) agreeableness, as well as (b) positive emotion.

Conclusions/Significance

These results are the first to demonstrate that ECG amplitude patterns provide information about the personality of an individual as measured with NEO personality scales and facets. These findings open new perspectives for a more efficient personality assessment using cardiac measures, as well as for more efficient risk-stratification and pre-clinical diagnosis of individuals at risk for cardiac, affective and psychosomatic disorders.