@article{WuWinklerWieseretal.2015, author = {Wu, Lingdan and Winkler, Markus H. and Wieser, Matthias J. and Andreatta, Marta and Li, Yonghui and Pauli, Paul}, title = {Emotion regulation in heavy smokers: experiential, expressive and physiological consequences of cognitive reappraisal}, series = {Frontiers in Psychology}, volume = {6}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, number = {1555}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01555}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-145225}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Emotion regulation dysfunctions are assumed to contribute to the development of tobacco addiction and relapses among smokers attempting to quit. To further examine this hypothesis, the present study compared heavy smokers with non-smokers (NS) in a reappraisal task. Specifically, we investigated whether non-deprived smokers (NDS) and deprived smokers (DS) differ from non-smokers in cognitive emotion regulation and whether there is an association between the outcome of emotion regulation and the cigarette craving. Sixty-five participants (23 non-smokers, 22 NDS, and 20 DS) were instructed to down-regulate emotions by reappraising negative or positive pictorial scenarios. Self-ratings of valence, arousal, and cigarette craving as well as facial electromyography and electroencephalograph activities were measured. Ratings, facial electromyography, and electroencephalograph data indicated that both NDS and DS performed comparably to nonsmokers in regulating emotional responses via reappraisal, irrespective of the valence of pictorial stimuli. Interestingly, changes in cigarette craving were positively associated with regulation of emotional arousal irrespective of emotional valence. These results suggest that heavy smokers are capable to regulate emotion via deliberate reappraisal and smokers' cigarette craving is associated with emotional arousal rather than emotional valence. This study provides preliminary support for the therapeutic use of reappraisal to replace maladaptive emotion-regulation strategies in nicotine addicts.}, language = {en} } @article{WieserReichertsJuravleetal.2016, author = {Wieser, Matthias J. and Reicherts, Philipp and Juravle, Georgiana and von Leupoldt, Andreas}, title = {Attention mechanisms during predictable and unpredictable threat - a steady-state visual evoked potential approach}, series = {NeuroImage}, volume = {139}, journal = {NeuroImage}, doi = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.06.026}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-187365}, pages = {167-175}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Fear is elicited by imminent threat and leads to phasic fear responses with selective attention, whereas anxiety is characterized by a sustained state of heightened vigilance due to uncertain danger. In the present study, we investigated attention mechanisms in fear and anxiety by adapting the NPU-threat test to measure steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs). We investigated ssVEPs across no aversive events (N), predictable aversive events (P), and unpredictable aversive events (U), signaled by four-object arrays (30 s). In addition, central cues were presented during all conditions but predictably signaled imminent threat only during the P condition. Importantly, cues and context events were flickered at different frequencies (15 Hz vs. 20 Hz) in order to disentangle respective electrocortical responses. The onset of the context elicited larger electrocortical responses for U compared to P context. Conversely, P cues elicited larger electrocortical responses compared to N cues. Interestingly, during the presence of the P cue, visuocortical processing of the concurrent context was also enhanced. The results support the notion of enhanced initial hypervigilance to unpredictable compared to predictable threat contexts, while predictable cues show electrocortical enhancement of the cues themselves but additionally a boost of context processing.}, language = {en} } @article{WieserMoscovitch2015, author = {Wieser, Matthias J. and Moscovitch, David A.}, title = {The effect of affective context on visuocortical processing of neutral faces in social anxiety - An ERP study}, series = {Frontiers in Psychology}, volume = {6}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01824}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-125148}, pages = {1824}, year = {2015}, abstract = {It has been demonstrated that verbal context information alters the neural processing of ambiguous faces such as faces with no apparent facial expression. In social anxiety, neutral faces may be implicitly threatening for socially anxious individuals due to their ambiguous nature, but even more so if these neutral faces are put in self-referential negative contexts. Therefore, we measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to neutral faces which were preceded by affective verbal information (negative, neutral, positive). Participants with low social anxiety (LSA; n = 23) and high social anxiety (HSA; n = 21) were asked to watch and rate valence and arousal of the respective faces while continuous EEG was recorded. ERP analysis revealed that HSA showed elevated P100 amplitudes in response to faces, but reduced structural encoding of faces as indexed by reduced N170 amplitudes. In general, affective context led to an enhanced early posterior negativity (EPN) for negative compared to neutral facial expressions. Moreover, HSA compared to LSA showed enhanced late positive potentials (LPP) to negatively contextualized faces, whereas in LSA this effect was found for faces in positive contexts. Also, HSA rated faces in negative contexts as more negative compared to LSA. These results point at enhanced vigilance for neutral faces regardless of context in HSA, while structural encoding seems to be diminished (avoidance). Interestingly, later components of sustained processing (LPP) indicate that LSA show enhanced visuocortical processing for faces in positive contexts (happy bias), whereas this seems to be the case for negatively contextualized faces in HSA (threat bias). Finally, our results add further new evidence that top-down information in interaction with individual anxiety levels can influence early-stage aspects of visual perception.}, language = {en} } @article{WieserGerdesReichertsetal.2014, author = {Wieser, Matthias J. and Gerdes, Antje B. M. and Reicherts, Philipp and Pauli, Paul}, title = {Mutual influences of pain and emotional face processing}, series = {Frontiers in Psychology}, volume = {5}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01160}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-118446}, pages = {1160}, year = {2014}, abstract = {The perception of unpleasant stimuli enhances whereas the perception of pleasant stimuli decreases pain perception. In contrast, the effects of pain on the processing of emotional stimuli are much less known. Especially given the recent interest in facial expressions of pain as a special category of emotional stimuli, a main topic in this research line is the mutual influence of pain and facial expression processing. Therefore, in this mini-review we selectively summarize research on the effects of emotional stimuli on pain, but more extensively turn to the opposite direction namely how pain influences concurrent processing of affective stimuli such as facial expressions. Based on the motivational priming theory one may hypothesize that the perception of pain enhances the processing of unpleasant stimuli and decreases the processing of pleasant stimuli. This review reveals that the literature is only partly consistent with this assumption: pain reduces the processing of pleasant pictures and happy facial expressions, but does not - or only partly - affect processing of unpleasant pictures. However, it was demonstrated that pain selectively enhances the processing of facial expressions if these are pain-related (i.e., facial expressions of pain). Extending a mere affective modulation theory, the latter results suggest pain-specific effects which may be explained by the perception-action model of empathy. Together, these results underscore the important mutual influence of pain and emotional face processing.}, language = {en} } @article{WieserFlaischPauli2014, author = {Wieser, Matthias J. and Flaisch, Tobias and Pauli, Paul}, title = {Raised Middle-Finger: Electrocortical Correlates of Social Conditioning with Nonverbal Affective Gestures}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0102937}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-113061}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Humans form impressions of others by associating persons (faces) with negative or positive social outcomes. This learning process has been referred to as social conditioning. In everyday life, affective nonverbal gestures may constitute important social signals cueing threat or safety, which therefore may support aforementioned learning processes. In conventional aversive conditioning, studies using electroencephalography to investigate visuocortical processing of visual stimuli paired with danger cues such as aversive noise have demonstrated facilitated processing and enhanced sensory gain in visual cortex. The present study aimed at extending this line of research to the field of social conditioning by pairing neutral face stimuli with affective nonverbal gestures. To this end, electro-cortical processing of faces serving as different conditioned stimuli was investigated in a differential social conditioning paradigm. Behavioral ratings and visually evoked steady-state potentials (ssVEP) were recorded in twenty healthy human participants, who underwent a differential conditioning procedure in which three neutral faces were paired with pictures of negative (raised middle finger), neutral (pointing), or positive (thumbs-up) gestures. As expected, faces associated with the aversive hand gesture (raised middle finger) elicited larger ssVEP amplitudes during conditioning. Moreover, theses faces were rated as to be more arousing and unpleasant. These results suggest that cortical engagement in response to faces aversively conditioned with nonverbal gestures is facilitated in order to establish persistent vigilance for social threat-related cues. This form of social conditioning allows to establish a predictive relationship between social stimuli and motivationally relevant outcomes.}, language = {en} } @article{StegmannAndreattaWieser2023, author = {Stegmann, Yannik and Andreatta, Marta and Wieser, Matthias J.}, title = {The effect of inherently threatening contexts on visuocortical engagement to conditioned threat}, series = {Psychophysiology}, volume = {60}, journal = {Psychophysiology}, number = {4}, doi = {10.1111/psyp.14208}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-312465}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Fear and anxiety are crucial for adaptive responding in life-threatening situations. Whereas fear is a phasic response to an acute threat accompanied by selective attention, anxiety is characterized by a sustained feeling of apprehension and hypervigilance during situations of potential threat. In the current literature, fear and anxiety are usually considered mutually exclusive, with partially separated neural underpinnings. However, there is accumulating evidence that challenges this distinction between fear and anxiety, and simultaneous activation of fear and anxiety networks has been reported. Therefore, the current study experimentally tested potential interactions between fear and anxiety. Fifty-two healthy participants completed a differential fear conditioning paradigm followed by a test phase in which the conditioned stimuli were presented in front of threatening or neutral contextual images. To capture defense system activation, we recorded subjective (threat, US-expectancy), physiological (skin conductance, heart rate) and visuocortical (steady-state visual evoked potentials) responses to the conditioned stimuli as a function of contextual threat. Results demonstrated successful fear conditioning in all measures. In addition, threat and US-expectancy ratings, cardiac deceleration, and visuocortical activity were enhanced for fear cues presented in threatening compared with neutral contexts. These results are in line with an additive or interactive rather than an exclusive model of fear and anxiety, indicating facilitated defensive behavior to imminent danger in situations of potential threat.}, language = {en} } @article{StegmannAndreattaPaulietal.2021, author = {Stegmann, Yannik and Andreatta, Marta and Pauli, Paul and Wieser, Matthias J.}, title = {Associative learning shapes visual discrimination in a web-based classical conditioning task}, series = {Scientific Reports}, volume = {11}, journal = {Scientific Reports}, number = {1}, doi = {10.1038/s41598-021-95200-6}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-260480}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Threat detection plays a vital role in adapting behavior to changing environments. A fundamental function to improve threat detection is learning to differentiate between stimuli predicting danger and safety. Accordingly, aversive learning should lead to enhanced sensory discrimination of danger and safety cues. However, studies investigating the psychophysics of visual and auditory perception after aversive learning show divergent findings, and both enhanced and impaired discrimination after aversive learning have been reported. Therefore, the aim of this web-based study is to examine the impact of aversive learning on a continuous measure of visual discrimination. To this end, 205 participants underwent a differential fear conditioning paradigm before and after completing a visual discrimination task using differently oriented grating stimuli. Participants saw either unpleasant or neutral pictures as unconditioned stimuli (US). Results demonstrated sharpened visual discrimination for the US-associated stimulus (CS+), but not for the unpaired conditioned stimuli (CS-). Importantly, this finding was irrespective of the US's valence. These findings suggest that associative learning results in increased stimulus salience, which facilitates perceptual discrimination in order to prioritize attentional deployment.}, language = {en} } @article{StegmannAndreattaPaulietal.2023, author = {Stegmann, Yannik and Andreatta, Marta and Pauli, Paul and Keil, Andreas and Wieser, Matthias J.}, title = {Investigating sustained attention in contextual threat using steady-state VEPs evoked by flickering video stimuli}, series = {Psychophysiology}, volume = {60}, journal = {Psychophysiology}, number = {5}, doi = {10.1111/psyp.14229}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-312430}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Anxiety is characterized by anxious anticipation and heightened vigilance to uncertain threat. However, if threat is not reliably indicated by a specific cue, the context in which threat was previously experienced becomes its best predictor, leading to anxiety. A suitable means to induce anxiety experimentally is context conditioning: In one context (CTX+), an unpredictable aversive stimulus (US) is repeatedly presented, in contrast to a second context (CTX-), in which no US is ever presented. In this EEG study, we investigated attentional mechanisms during acquisition and extinction learning in 38 participants, who underwent a context conditioning protocol. Flickering video stimuli (32 s clips depicting virtual offices representing CTX+/-) were used to evoke steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs) as an index of visuocortical engagement with the contexts. Analyses of the electrocortical responses suggest a successful induction of the ssVEP signal by video presentation in flicker mode. Furthermore, we found clear indices of context conditioning and extinction learning on a subjective level, while cortical processing of the CTX+ was unexpectedly reduced during video presentation. The differences between CTX+ and CTX- diminished during extinction learning. Together, these results indicate that the dynamic sensory input of the video presentation leads to disruptions in the ssVEP signal, which is greater for motivationally significant, threatening contexts.}, language = {en} } @article{SchwarzWieserGerdesetal.2013, author = {Schwarz, Katharina A. and Wieser, Matthias J. and Gerdes, Antje B. M. and M{\"u}hlberger, Andreas and Pauli, Paul}, title = {Why are you looking like that? How the context influences evaluation and processing of human faces}, series = {Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience}, volume = {8}, journal = {Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience}, number = {4}, doi = {10.1093/scan/nss013}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-132126}, pages = {438-445}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Perception and evaluation of facial expressions are known to be heavily modulated by emotional features of contextual information. Such contextual effects, however, might also be driven by non-emotional aspects of contextual information, an interaction of emotional and non-emotional factors, and by the observers' inherent traits. Therefore, we sought to assess whether contextual information about self-reference in addition to information about valence influences the evaluation and neural processing of neutral faces. Furthermore, we investigated whether social anxiety moderates these effects. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, participants viewed neutral facial expressions preceded by a contextual sentence conveying either positive or negative evaluations about the participant or about somebody else. Contextual influences were reflected in rating and fMRI measures, with strong effects of self-reference on brain activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and right fusiform gyrus. Additionally, social anxiety strongly affected the response to faces conveying negative, self-related evaluations as revealed by the participants' rating patterns and brain activity in cortical midline structures and regions of interest in the left and right middle frontal gyrus. These results suggest that face perception and processing are highly individual processes influenced by emotional and non-emotional aspects of contextual information and further modulated by individual personality traits.}, language = {en} } @article{ReichertsPauliMoesleretal.2019, author = {Reicherts, Philipp and Pauli, Paul and M{\"o}sler, Camilla and Wieser, Matthias J.}, title = {Placebo manipulations reverse pain potentiation by unpleasant affective stimuli}, series = {Frontiers in Psychiatry}, volume = {10}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychiatry}, number = {663}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00663}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-201200}, year = {2019}, abstract = {According to the motivational priming hypothesis, unpleasant stimuli activate the motivational defense system, which in turn promotes congruent affective states such as negative emotions and pain. The question arises to what degree this bottom-up impact of emotions on pain is susceptible to a manipulation of top-down-driven expectations. To this end, we investigated whether verbal instructions implying pain potentiation vs. reduction (placebo or nocebo expectations)—later on confirmed by corresponding experiences (placebo or nocebo conditioning)—might alter behavioral and neurophysiological correlates of pain modulation by unpleasant pictures. We compared two groups, which underwent three experimental phases: first, participants were either instructed that watching unpleasant affective pictures would increase pain (nocebo group) or that watching unpleasant pictures would decrease pain (placebo group) relative to neutral pictures. During the following placebo/nocebo-conditioning phase, pictures were presented together with electrical pain stimuli of different intensities, reinforcing the instructions. In the subsequent test phase, all pictures were presented again combined with identical pain stimuli. Electroencephalogram was recorded in order to analyze neurophysiological responses of pain (somatosensory evoked potential) and picture processing [visually evoked late positive potential (LPP)], in addition to pain ratings. In the test phase, ratings of pain stimuli administered while watching unpleasant relative to neutral pictures were significantly higher in the nocebo group, thus confirming the motivational priming effect for pain perception. In the placebo group, this effect was reversed such that unpleasant compared with neutral pictures led to significantly lower pain ratings. Similarly, somatosensory evoked potentials were decreased during unpleasant compared with neutral pictures, in the placebo group only. LPPs of the placebo group failed to discriminate between unpleasant and neutral pictures, while the LPPs of the nocebo group showed a clear differentiation. We conclude that the placebo manipulation already affected the processing of the emotional stimuli and, in consequence, the processing of the pain stimuli. In summary, the study revealed that the modulation of pain by emotions, albeit a reliable and well-established finding, is further tuned by reinforced expectations—known to induce placebo/nocebo effects—which should be addressed in future research and considered in clinical applications.}, language = {en} }