Emotional sensitivity for motherhood: Late pregnancy is associated with enhanced accuracy to encode emotional faces

Previous research suggests that female sex hormones can increase the sensitivity of women's emotion processing systems. The largest rises in sex hormone levels in a woman's life are from early to late pregnancy. The current study, therefore, investigated whether changes in emotion processing are seen across pregnancy. Hypervigilant emotion processing has been implicated in the aetiology of anxiety. Therefore enhanced emotion processing across pregnancy has implications for women's vulnerability to anxiety. Ability to encode facial expressions of emotion was assessed in 101 women during early pregnancy and again in 76 of these women during late pregnancy. Symptoms of anxiety were measured using a clinical interview (The CIS-R). Consistent with previous research, the presence of anxiety symptoms was associated with greater accuracy to encode faces signalling threat (fearful and angry faces). We found that women had higher accuracy scores to encode emotional expressions signalling threat or harm (fearful, angry and disgusted faces) but also a more general negative emotion (sadness) during late, compared with early, pregnancy. Enhanced ability to encode emotional faces during late pregnancy may be an evolutionary adaption to prepare women for the protective and nurturing demands of motherhood by increasing their general emotional sensitivity and their vigilance towards emotional signals of threat, aggression and contagion. However, the results also suggest that, during late pregnancy, women's emotion processing style is similar to that seen in anxiety. The results have implications for our understanding of normal pregnant women's processing of emotional cues and their vulnerability to symptoms of anxiety.     

Heartache of the State,Enemy of the Self: Bipolar Disorder and Cultural Change in Urban China

Past works in anthropology and psychology have described the Chinese orientation toward life as situation-centered with an external locus of control. This model has also been applied to the understanding of affect disorders in China—depressive patients have been found to focus on outside circumstances surrounding dysphoric moods. However, dramatic economic, sociopolitical and cultural changes in post-Mao China may be affecting these cognitive orientations toward emotional distress. This paper focuses on the subjective experiences of individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder in China. The study is based on semistructured interviews with patients at a Western-style mental health institution in Shenzhen, the first successful Special Economic Zone in China. My data suggest that the location of agency has shifted across generations. Whereas those who grew up in the Maoist era are inclined to use external circumstances to explain the control over and responsibility for their illness, younger patients tend to emphasize self-blame and individual responsibility. I argue that these intergenerational differences in ethnopsychology relate to the multifaceted rise of individualism in post-Mao China. The paper ends with an examination of this observed shift vis-à-vis recent theories of neoliberal discipline in China and a discussion of potential psychological implications.

Putative human pheromone androstadienone attunes the mind specifically to emotional information

The putative human pheromone Δ4,16-androstadien-3-one (androstadienone), a non-androgenic steroid found in sweat and saliva, modulates psychological, physiological and hormonal responses without detection as an odor. To determine the specific psychological processes altered by androstadienone, four studies were completed by 50 men and women after solutions of 250 μM androstadienone or clove-odor control carrier, on separate days, were applied to their upper lip: (1) face pairs were subliminally presented, with one face neutral and the other happy or angry. Androstadienone accelerated speed to locate a subsequent dot probe appearing on the same side as emotional faces, without affecting overall reaction times, indicating that androstadienone specifically enhanced automatic attention to emotional information. (2) In two Stroop paradigms, emotional or mismatched color words interfered with ink color identification. Androstadienone slowed ink color identification of emotional words, demonstrating greater allocation of attentional resources towards emotional information, with no effect on the cognitive Stroop. (3) To test effects on social cognition, participants performed two working memory tasks with distinct stimuli, neutral faces or shapes. Androstadienone did not alter attention to either the social or nonsocial images. (4) The ameliorative effects of androstadienone on self-reported attentiveness were replicated, consistent with increased attention to emotional visual stimuli. Moreover, androstadienone did not alter positive or negative mood, as participants were alone during testing, which removed emotional stimuli from social interactions with a tester. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that subliminal androstadienone guides psychological resources to specifically engage stimuli with emotional significance and does not alter attention to social or general cognitive information.     

Unpleasant visual stimuli increase the excitability of spinal motor neurons

Abstract

Purpose: In physical therapy for post-stroke patients, we often experience cases in which unpleasant emotions cause abnormal muscle tonus. Previously, we suggested that the magnitude of spinal motor neuron excitability was correlated with the grade of muscle tonus. Therefore, spinal motor neuron excitability was considered to be a useful index to evaluate the influence of unpleasant emotions on muscle tonus. In this study, we investigated whether unpleasant emotions evoked by visual stimuli affected the excitability of spinal motor neurons.

Materials and Methods: The F-waves, an indicator of spinal motor neuron excitability, were measured in 19 healthy adult volunteers. Firstly, for the rest trial, F-waves were measured during relaxation to determine the baseline of spinal motor neuron excitability. Following the rest trial, the unpleasant trial was conducted in which F-waves were measured while the subjects viewed an unpleasant picture for 1?min. After the unpleasant trial, F-waves were measured during relaxation. For the control condition, F-waves were measured while the subjects viewed a neutral picture instead of the unpleasant picture. The recorded F-wave data were analysed for persistence and the F/M amplitude ratio.

Results: Persistence and the F/M amplitude ratio were significantly greater during the unpleasant trial than during the rest trial. In the control condition, there was no significant difference in persistence and the F/M amplitude ratio compared with the three trials.

Conclusions: Our findings indicate that unpleasant emotions may affect spinal motor neuron excitability. Therefore, learning how to control emotions should be important aspect of physical therapy.     

No emotional fever in toads

Four Bufo marinus toads and one Bombina bombina toad were placed individually along a temperature gradient where they could regulate their body temperature through behavioral means. When injected intraperitoneally with killed Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria, the toads sought heat and raised their body core temperature. Gentle handling by the experimenter, however, was not followed by heat-seeking behavior and rising core temperature. These findings confirm the existence of behavioral fever, but not emotional fever, in the species studied.     

Emotional face recognition, empathic trait (BEES), and cortical contribution in response to positive and negative cues. The effect of rTMS on dorsal medial prefrontal cortex

The present study investigated the relationship between three different measures related to the affective empathy: facial expression detection in response to different emotional patterns (positive vs. negative), personal response to empathic scale [Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES)], and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dMPFC) contribution to mediate the facial detection task. Nineteen subjects took part in the study and they were required to recognize facial expression of emotions, after having empathized with these emotional cues. Repeated Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) method was used in the present research in order to produce a temporary virtual disruption of dMPFC activity. dMPFC disruption induced a worse performance, especially in response to negative expressions (i.e. anger and fear). High-BEES subjects paid a higher cost after frontal brain perturbation: they showed to be unable to correctly detect facial expressions more than low-BEES. Moreover, a “negative valence effect” was observed only for high-BEES, and it was probably related with their higher impairment to recognize negative more than positive expressions. dMPFC was found to support emotional facial expression recognition in an empathic condition, with a specific increased responsiveness for negative-valenced faces. The contribution of this research was discussed to explain the mechanisms underlying affective empathy based on rTMS application.     

Measurement of Fronto-limbic Activity Using an Emotional Oddball Task in Children with Familial High Risk for Schizophrenia

Adolescence is a critical developmental period where the early symptoms of schizophrenia frequently emerge. First-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia who are at familial high risk (FHR) may show similar cognitive and emotional changes. However, the neurological changes underlying the emergence of these symptoms remain unclear. This study sought to identify differences in frontal, striatal, and limbic regions in children and adolescents with FHR using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Groups of 21 children and adolescents at FHR and 21 healthy controls completed an emotional oddball task that relied on selective attention and the suppression of task-irrelevant emotional information. The standard oddball task was modified to include aversive and neutral distractors in order to examine potential group differences in both emotional and executive processing. This task was designed specifically to allow for children and adolescents to complete by keeping the difficulty and emotional image content age-appropriate. Furthermore, we demonstrate a technique for suitable fMRI registration for children and adolescent participants. This paradigm may also be applied in future studies to measure changes in neural activity in other populations with hypothesized developmental changes in executive and emotional processing.     

Value computation in humans

Things afford positive, neutral, or negative long-run effects on the replicative probability of the focal individual's genes. At the most general level, values are internal estimates of those effects. Value information steers physiology and behavior in the right direction: approach apple, avoid lion. Thus, value computation is of paramount biological importance. Task analysis suggests there are many prerequisites for valuing things aptly. Here, I focus on two: the need to compute value accurately, and the need to properly feed and integrate value information into the various systems that use value information (e.g., emotion systems). For example, the subjective food value imputed to an apple needs to reflect the nutrient content of the apple (accuracy); the intensity of gratitude aroused if someone gave you an apple needs to reflect the food value imputed to the apple (integration). Here, I evaluate these hypotheses with two preregistered studies. Consistent with the integration hypothesis, there are close correspondences between (i) the food values that participants impute to each of 40 food items (Study 1; goods) and (ii) the social values and the social emotions (including: gratitude, anger, shame, and pride) that result when those food items occur as constituents of broader social events. Similar correspondences are observed when participants evaluate each of 28 diseases and injuries (Study 2; bads). Consistent with the accuracy hypothesis, exploratory analyses indicate that the food values, the social values, and the social emotions elicited by the food items all track the nutrient content of those food items. Valuation is inherently a computational process. For this reason, a computational–functionalist perspective is distinctively suited to spur progress in our understanding of human values.     

Modularity,and the psychoevolutionary theory of emotion

It is unreasonable to assume that our pre-scientific emotion vocabulary embodies all and only those distinctions required for a scientific psychology of emotion. The psychoevolutionary approach to emotion yields an alternative classification of certain emotion phenomena. The new categories are based on a set of evolved adaptive responses, or affect-programs, which are found in all cultures. The triggering of these responses involves a modular system of stimulus appraisal, whose evoluations may conflict with those of higher-level cognitive processes. Whilst the structure of the adaptive responses is innate, the contents of the system which triggers them are largely learnt. The circuits subserving the adaptive responses are probably located in the limbic system. This theory of emotion is directly applicable only to a small sub-domain of the traditional realm of emotion. It can be used, however, to explain the grouping of various other phenomena under the heading of emotion, and to explain various characteristic failings of the pre-scientific conception of emotion.     

Phoenixin is negatively associated with anxiety in obese men

Phoenixin was recently identified in the rat hypothalamus and initially implicated in reproductive functions. A subsequent study described an anxiolytic effect of the peptide. The aim of the study was to investigate a possible association of circulating phoenixin with anxiety in humans. We therefore enrolled 68 inpatients with a broad spectrum of psychometrically measured anxiety (GAD-7). We investigated men since a menstrual cycle dependency of phoenixin has been assumed. Obese subjects were enrolled since they often report psychological comorbidities. In addition, we also assessed depressiveness (PHQ-9) and perceived stress (PSQ-20). Plasma phoenixin levels were measured using a commercial ELISA. First, we validated the ELISA kit performing a spike-and-recovery experiment showing a variance of 6.7 ± 8.8% compared to the expected concentrations over the whole range of concentrations assessed, while a lower variation of 1.6 ± 0.8% was observed in the linear range of the assay (0.07–2.1 ng/ml). We detected phoenixin in the circulation of obese men at levels of 0.68 ± 0.50 ng/ml. These levels showed a negative association with anxiety scores (r = −0.259, p = 0.043), while no additional associations with other psychometric parameters were observed. In summary, phoenixin is present in the human circulation and negatively associated with anxiety in obese men, a population often to report comorbid anxiety.