TY - JOUR A1 - Citron, Francesca M. M. A1 - Abugaber, David A1 - Herbert, Cornelia T1 - Approach and Withdrawal Tendencies during Written Word Processing: Effects of Task, Emotional Valence, and Emotional Arousal JF - frontiers in Psychology N2 - The affective dimensions of emotional valence and emotional arousal affect processing of verbal and pictorial stimuli. Traditional emotional theories assume a linear relationship between these dimensions, with valence determining the direction of a behavior (approach vs. withdrawal) and arousal its intensity or strength. In contrast, according to the valence-arousal conflict theory, both dimensions are interactively related: positive valence and low arousal (PL) are associated with an implicit tendency to approach a stimulus, whereas negative valence and high arousal (NH) are associated with withdrawal. Hence, positive, high-arousal (PH) and negative, low-arousal (NL) stimuli elicit conflicting action tendencies. By extending previous research that used several tasks and methods, the present study investigated whether and how emotional valence and arousal affect subjective approach vs. withdrawal tendencies toward emotional words during two novel tasks. In Study 1, participants had to decide whether they would approach or withdraw from concepts expressed by written words. In Studies 2 and 3 participants had to respond to each word by pressing one of two keys labeled with an arrow pointing upward or downward. Across experiments, positive and negative words, high or low in arousal, were presented. In Study 1 (explicit task), in line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, PH and NL words were responded to more slowly than PL and NH words. In addition, participants decided to approach positive words more often than negative words. In Studies 2 and 3, participants responded faster to positive than negative words, irrespective of their level of arousal. Furthermore, positive words were significantly more often associated with “up” responses than negative words, thus supporting the existence of implicit associations between stimulus valence and response coding (positive is up and negative is down). Hence, in contexts in which participants' spontaneous responses are based on implicit associations between stimulus valence and response, there is no influence of arousal. In line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, arousal seems to affect participants' approach-withdrawal tendencies only when such tendencies are made explicit by the task, and a minimal degree of processing depth is required. KW - approach KW - withdrawal KW - valence KW - arousal KW - emotion KW - words KW - polarity effects Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-165318 VL - 6 IS - 1935 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lugo, Zulay R. A1 - Quitadamo, Lucia R. A1 - Bianchi, Luigi A1 - Pellas, Fréderic A1 - Veser, Sandra A1 - Lesenfants, Damien A1 - Real, Ruben G. L. A1 - Herbert, Cornelia A1 - Guger, Christoph A1 - Kotchoubey, Boris A1 - Mattia, Donatella A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Laureys, Steven A1 - Noirhomme, Quentin T1 - Cognitive Processing in Non-Communicative Patients: What Can Event-Related Potentials Tell Us? JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Event-related potentials (ERP) have been proposed to improve the differential diagnosis of non-responsive patients. We investigated the potential of the P300 as a reliable marker of conscious processing in patients with locked-in syndrome (LIS). Eleven chronic LIS patients and 10 healthy subjects (HS) listened to a complex-tone auditory oddball paradigm, first in a passive condition (listen to the sounds) and then in an active condition (counting the deviant tones). Seven out of nine HS displayed a P300 waveform in the passive condition and all in the active condition. HS showed statistically significant changes in peak and area amplitude between conditions. Three out of seven LIS patients showed the P3 waveform in the passive condition and five of seven in the active condition. No changes in peak amplitude and only a significant difference at one electrode in area amplitude were observed in this group between conditions. We conclude that, in spite of keeping full consciousness and intact or nearly intact cortical functions, compared to HS, LIS patients present less reliable results when testing with ERP, specifically in the passive condition. We thus strongly recommend applying ERP paradigms in an active condition when evaluating consciousness in non-responsive patients. KW - P300 KW - event-related potentials KW - locked-in syndrome KW - vegetative state KW - unresponsive wakefulness syndrome KW - minimally conscious state Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-165165 VL - 10 IS - 569 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zhou, Sijie A1 - Allison, Brendan Z. A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Cichocki, Andrzej A1 - Wang, Xingyu A1 - Jin, Jing T1 - Effects of Background Music on Objective and Subjective Performance Measures in an Auditory BCI JF - Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience N2 - Several studies have explored brain computer interface (BCI) systems based on auditory stimuli, which could help patients with visual impairments. Usability and user satisfaction are important considerations in any BCI. Although background music can influence emotion and performance in other task environments, and many users may wish to listen to music while using a BCI, auditory, and other BCIs are typically studied without background music. Some work has explored the possibility of using polyphonic music in auditory BCI systems. However, this approach requires users with good musical skills, and has not been explored in online experiments. Our hypothesis was that an auditory BCI with background music would be preferred by subjects over a similar BCI without background music, without any difference in BCI performance. We introduce a simple paradigm (which does not require musical skill) using percussion instrument sound stimuli and background music, and evaluated it in both offline and online experiments. The result showed that subjects preferred the auditory BCI with background music. Different performance measures did not reveal any significant performance effect when comparing background music vs. no background. Since the addition of background music does not impair BCI performance but is preferred by users, auditory (and perhaps other) BCIs should consider including it. Our study also indicates that auditory BCIs can be effective even if the auditory channel is simultaneously otherwise engaged. KW - brain computer interface KW - event-related potentials KW - auditory KW - music background KW - audio stimulus Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-165101 VL - 10 IS - 105 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Riepl, Korbinian A1 - Mussel, Patrick A1 - Osinsky, Roman A1 - Hewig, Johannes T1 - Influences of State and Trait Affect on Behavior, Feedback-Related Negativity, and P3b in the Ultimatum Game JF - PLoS One N2 - The present study investigates how different emotions can alter social bargaining behavior. An important paradigm to study social bargaining is the Ultimatum Game. There, a proposer gets a pot of money and has to offer part of it to a responder. If the responder accepts, both players get the money as proposed by the proposer. If he rejects, none of the players gets anything. Rational choice models would predict that responders accept all offers above 0. However, evidence shows that responders typically reject a large proportion of all unfair offers. We analyzed participants’ behavior when they played the Ultimatum Game as responders and simultaneously collected electroencephalogram data in order to quantify the feedback-related negativity and P3b components. We induced state affect (momentarily emotions unrelated to the task) via short movie clips and measured trait affect (longer-lasting emotional dispositions) via questionnaires. State happiness led to increased acceptance rates of very unfair offers. Regarding neurophysiology, we found that unfair offers elicited larger feedback-related negativity amplitudes than fair offers. Additionally, an interaction of state and trait affect occurred: high trait negative affect (subsuming a variety of aversive mood states) led to increased feedback-related negativity amplitudes when participants were in an angry mood, but not if they currently experienced fear or happiness. We discuss that increased rumination might be responsible for this result, which might not occur, however, when people experience happiness or fear. Apart from that, we found that fair offers elicited larger P3b components than unfair offers, which might reflect increased pleasure in response to fair offers. Moreover, high trait negative affect was associated with decreased P3b amplitudes, potentially reflecting decreased motivation to engage in activities. We discuss implications of our results in the light of theories and research on depression and anxiety. KW - emotions KW - ultimatum game KW - fear KW - happiness KW - behavior KW - decision making KW - electroencephalography KW - event-related potentials Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-147386 VL - 7 IS - 11 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mussel, Patrick A1 - Ulrich, Nathalie A1 - Allen, John J. B. A1 - Osinsky, Roman A1 - Hewig, Johannes T1 - Patterns of theta oscillation reflect the neural basis of individual differences in epistemic motivation JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Theta oscillations in the EEG have been shown to reflect ongoing cognitive processes related to mental effort. Here, we show that the pattern of theta oscillation in response to varying cognitive demands reflects stable individual differences in the personality trait epistemic motivation: Individuals with high levels of epistemic motivation recruit relatively more cognitive resources in response to situations possessing high, compared to low, cognitive demand; individuals with low levels do not show such a specific response. Our results provide direct evidence for the theory of the construct need for cognition and add to our understanding of the neural processes underlying theta oscillations. More generally, we provide an explanation how individual differences in personality traits might be represented on a neural level. KW - Motivation KW - Personality Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-146957 VL - 6 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Boll, Sabine A1 - Bartholomaeus, Marie A1 - Peter, Ulrike A1 - Lupke, Ulrike A1 - Gamer, Matthias T1 - Attentional mechanisms of social perception are biased in social phobia JF - Journal of Anxiety Disorders N2 - Previous studies of social phobia have reported an increased vigilance to social threat cues but also an avoidance of socially relevant stimuli such as eye gaze. The primary aim of this study was to examine attentional mechanisms relevant for perceiving social cues by means of abnormalities in scanning of facial features in patients with social phobia. In two novel experimental paradigms, patients with social phobia and healthy controls matched on age, gender and education were compared regarding their gazing behavior towards facial cues. The first experiment was an emotion classification paradigm which allowed for differentiating reflexive attentional shifts from sustained attention towards diagnostically relevant facial features. In the second experiment, attentional orienting by gaze direction was assessed in a gaze-cueing paradigm in which non-predictive gaze cues shifted attention towards or away from subsequently presented targets. We found that patients as compared to controls reflexively oriented their attention more frequently towards the eyes of emotional faces in the emotion classification paradigm. This initial hypervigilance for the eye region was observed at very early attentional stages when faces were presented for 150 ms, and persisted when facial stimuli were shown for 3 s. Moreover, a delayed attentional orienting into the direction of eye gaze was observed in individuals with social phobia suggesting a differential time course of eye gaze processing in patients and controls. Our findings suggest that basic mechanisms of early attentional exploration of social cues are biased in social phobia and might contribute to the development and maintenance of the disorder. KW - Social anxiety KW - Eye gaze KW - Vigilance KW - Amygdala KW - Emotional expression KW - Gaze perception Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-189046 VL - 40 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. A1 - Reicherts, Philipp A1 - Juravle, Georgiana A1 - von Leupoldt, Andreas T1 - Attention mechanisms during predictable and unpredictable threat - a steady-state visual evoked potential approach JF - NeuroImage N2 - 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. KW - Event-related potential KW - Contextual fear KW - Conditioning evidence KW - Sustained attention KW - Selective attention KW - Aversive events KW - Time-course KW - Virtual-reality KW - Anxiety KW - Humans Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-187365 VL - 139 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meule, Adrian A1 - Platte, Petra T1 - Attentional bias toward high-calorie food-cues and trait motor impulsivity interactively predict weight gain JF - Health Psychology Open N2 - Strong bottom-up impulses and weak top-down control may interactively lead to overeating and, consequently, weight gain. In the present study, female university freshmen were tested at the start of the first semester and again at the start of the second semester. Attentional bias toward high- or low-calorie food-cues was assessed using a dot-probe paradigm and participants completed the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale. Attentional bias and motor impulsivity interactively predicted change in body mass index: motor impulsivity positively predicted weight gain only when participants showed an attentional bias toward high-calorie food-cues. Attentional and non-planning impulsivity were unrelated to weight change. Results support findings showing that weight gain is prospectively predicted by a combination of weak top-down control (i.e. high impulsivity) and strong bottom-up impulses (i.e. high automatic motivational drive toward high-calorie food stimuli). They also highlight the fact that only specific aspects of impulsivity are relevant in eating and weight regulation. KW - attentional bias KW - Barratt Impulsiveness Scale KW - body mass index KW - calorie content KW - dot probe KW - energy density KW - food-cues KW - impulsivity KW - prospective study KW - weight gain Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-168504 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Huestegge, Lynn A1 - Böckler, Anne T1 - Out of the corner of the driver's eye: Peripheral processing of hazards in static traffic scenes JF - Journal of Vision N2 - Effective gaze control in traffic, based on peripheral visual information, is important to avoid hazards. Whereas previous hazard perception research mainly focused on skill-component development (e.g., orientation and hazard processing), little is known about the role and dynamics of peripheral vision in hazard perception. We analyzed eye movement data from a study in which participants scanned static traffic scenes including medium-level versus dangerous hazards and focused on characteristics of fixations prior to entering the hazard region. We found that initial saccade amplitudes into the hazard region were substantially longer for dangerous (vs. medium-level) hazards, irrespective of participants' driving expertise. An analysis of the temporal dynamics of this hazard-level dependent saccade targeting distance effect revealed that peripheral hazard-level processing occurred around 200–400 ms during the course of the fixation prior to entering the hazard region. An additional psychophysical hazard detection experiment, in which hazard eccentricity was manipulated, revealed better detection for dangerous (vs. medium-level) hazards in both central and peripheral vision. Furthermore, we observed a significant perceptual decline from center to periphery for medium (but not for highly) dangerous hazards. Overall, the results suggest that hazard processing is remarkably effective in peripheral vision and utilized to guide the eyes toward potential hazards. KW - traffic KW - hazard perception KW - visual orientation KW - eye movements KW - peripheral vision Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-147726 VL - 16 IS - 11 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kleih, Sonja C. A1 - Gottschalt, Lea A1 - Teichlein, Eva A1 - Weilbach, Franz X. T1 - Toward a P300 Based Brain-Computer Interface for Aphasia Rehabilitation after Stroke: Presentation of Theoretical Considerations and a Pilot Feasibility Study JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - People with post-stroke motor aphasia know what they would like to say but cannot express it through motor pathways due to disruption of cortical circuits. We present a theoretical background for our hypothesized connection between attention and aphasia rehabilitation and suggest why in this context, Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) use might be beneficial for patients diagnosed with aphasia. Not only could BCI technology provide a communication tool, it might support neuronal plasticity by activating language circuits and thereby boost aphasia recovery. However, stroke may lead to heterogeneous symptoms that might hinder BCI use, which is why the feasibility of this approach needs to be investigated first. In this pilot study, we included five participants diagnosed with post-stroke aphasia. Four participants were initially unable to use the visual P300 speller paradigm. By adjusting the paradigm to their needs, participants could successfully learn to use the speller for communication with accuracies up to 100%. We describe necessary adjustments to the paradigm and present future steps to investigate further this approach. KW - brain-computer interface (BCI) KW - aphasia KW - stroke rehabilitation KW - P300 speller KW - user-centered design KW - Broca KW - training Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-147929 VL - 10 IS - 547 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kirsch, Wladimir A1 - Ullrich, Benjamin A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Are Effects of Action on Perception Real? Evidence from Transformed Movements JF - PLoS ONE N2 - It has been argued that several reported non-visual influences on perception cannot be truly perceptual. If they were, they should affect the perception of target objects and reference objects used to express perceptual judgments, and thus cancel each other out. This reasoning presumes that non-visual manipulations impact target objects and comparison objects equally. In the present study we show that equalizing a body-related manipulation between target objects and reference objects essentially abolishes the impact of that manipulation so as it should do when that manipulation actually altered perception. Moreover, the manipulation has an impact on judgements when applied to only the target object but not to the reference object, and that impact reverses when only applied to the reference object but not to the target object. A perceptual explanation predicts this reversal, whereas explanations in terms of post-perceptual response biases or demand effects do not. Altogether these results suggest that body-related influences on perception cannot as a whole be attributed to extra-perceptual factors. KW - vision KW - preprocessing KW - analysis of variance KW - sensory perception KW - hands KW - fingers KW - experimental design KW - perception Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-178574 VL - 11 IS - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Walz, Nora A1 - Mühlberger, Andreas A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - A human open field test reveals thigmotaxis related to agoraphobic fear JF - Biological Psychiatry N2 - BACKGROUND: Thigmotaxis refers to a specific behavior of animals (i.e., to stay close to walls when exploring an open space). Such behavior can be assessed with the open field test (OFT), which is a well-established indicator of animal fear. The detection of similar open field behavior in humans may verify the translational validity of this paradigm. Enhanced thigmotaxis related to anxiety may suggest the relevance of such behavior for anxiety disorders, especially agoraphobia. METHODS: A global positioning system was used to analyze the behavior of 16 patients with agoraphobia and 18 healthy individuals with a risk for agoraphobia (i.e., high anxiety sensitivity) during a human OFT and compare it with appropriate control groups (n = 16 and n = 19). We also tracked 17 patients with agoraphobia and 17 control participants during a city walk that involved walking through an open market square. RESULTS: Our human OFT triggered thigmotaxis in participants; patients with agoraphobia and participants with high anxiety sensitivity exhibited enhanced thigmotaxis. This behavior was evident in increased movement lengths along the wall of the natural open field and fewer entries into the center of the field despite normal movement speed and length. Furthermore, participants avoided passing through the market square during the city walk, indicating again that thigmotaxis is related to agoraphobia. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first to our knowledge to verify the translational validity of the OFT and to reveal that thigmotaxis, an evolutionarily adaptive behavior shown by most species, is related to agoraphobia, a pathologic fear of open spaces, and anxiety sensitivity, a risk factor for agoraphobia. KW - Agoraphobia KW - Animal models KW - Anxiety sensitivity KW - Avoidance behavior KW - Openfield test KW - Thigmotaxis Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-187607 VL - 80 IS - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ziegler, C. A1 - Richter, J. A1 - Mahr, M. A1 - Gajewska, A. A1 - Schiele, M.A. A1 - Gehrmann, A. A1 - Schmidt, B. A1 - Lesch, K.-P. A1 - Lang, T. A1 - Helbig-Lang, S. A1 - Pauli, P. A1 - Kircher, T. A1 - Reif, A. A1 - Rief, W. A1 - Vossbeck-Elsebusch, A.N. A1 - Arolt, V. A1 - Wittchen, H.-U. A1 - Hamm, A.O. A1 - Deckert, J. A1 - Domschke, K. T1 - MAOA gene hypomethylation in panic disorder-reversibility of an epigenetic risk pattern by psychotherapy JF - Translational Psychiatry N2 - Epigenetic signatures such as methylation of the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene have been found to be altered in panic disorder (PD). Hypothesizing temporal plasticity of epigenetic processes as a mechanism of successful fear extinction, the present psychotherapy-epigenetic study for we believe the first time investigated MAOA methylation changes during the course of exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in PD. MAOA methylation was compared between N=28 female Caucasian PD patients (discovery sample) and N=28 age- and sex-matched healthy controls via direct sequencing of sodium bisulfite-treated DNA extracted from blood cells. MAOA methylation was furthermore analyzed at baseline (T0) and after a 6-week CBT (T1) in the discovery sample parallelized by a waiting time in healthy controls, as well as in an independent sample of female PD patients (N=20). Patients exhibited lower MAOA methylation than healthy controls (P<0.001), and baseline PD severity correlated negatively with MAOA methylation (P=0.01). In the discovery sample, MAOA methylation increased up to the level of healthy controls along with CBT response (number of panic attacks; T0-T1: +3.37±2.17%), while non-responders further decreased in methylation (-2.00±1.28%; P=0.001). In the replication sample, increases in MAOA methylation correlated with agoraphobic symptom reduction after CBT (P=0.02-0.03). The present results support previous evidence for MAOA hypomethylation as a PD risk marker and suggest reversibility of MAOA hypomethylation as a potential epigenetic correlate of response to CBT. The emerging notion of epigenetic signatures as a mechanism of action of psychotherapeutic interventions may promote epigenetic patterns as biomarkers of lasting extinction effects. KW - Adult KW - Case-Control Studies KW - Cognitive Therapy KW - DNA Methylation KW - Epigenesis KW - Genetic KW - Female KW - Humans KW - Monoamine Oxidase/genetics KW - Panic Disorder/genetics KW - Panic Disorder/therapy KW - Sequence Analysis KW - DNA Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-164422 IS - 6 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reicherts, Philipp A1 - Gerdes, Antje B. M. A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. T1 - Psychological placebo and nocebo effects on pain rely on expectation and previous experience JF - Journal of Pain N2 - Expectation and previous experience are both well established key mediators of placebo and nocebo effects. However, the investigation of their respective contribution to placebo and nocebo responses is rather difficult because most placebo and nocebo manipulations are contaminated by pre-existing treatment expectancies resulting from a learning history of previous medical interventions. To circumvent any resemblance to classical treatments, a purely psychological placebonocebo manipulation was established, namely, the "visual stripe pattern induced modulation of pain." To this end, experience and expectation regarding the effects of different visual cues (stripe patterns) on pain were varied across 3 different groups, with either only placebo instruction (expectation), placebo conditioning (experience), or both (expectation + experience) applied. Only the combined manipulation (expectation + experience) revealed significant behavioral and physiological placebo nocebo effects on pain. Two subsequent experiments, which, in addition to placebo and nocebo cues, included a neutral control condition further showed that especially nocebo responses were more easily induced by this psychological placebo and nocebo manipulation. The results emphasize the great effect of psychological processes on placebo and nocebo effects. Particularly, nocebo effects should be addressed more thoroughly and carefully considered in clinical practice to prevent the accidental induction of side effects. KW - psychological placebo intervention KW - placebo hypoalgesia KW - nocebo hyperalgesia KW - experience KW - expectation Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-190962 VL - 17 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Halder, Sebastian A1 - Takano, Kouji A1 - Ora, Hiroki A1 - Onishi, Akinari A1 - Utsumi, Kota A1 - Kansaku, Kenji T1 - An Evaluation of Training with an Auditory P300 Brain-Computer Interface for the Japanese Hiragana Syllabary JF - Frontiers in Neuroscience N2 - Gaze-independent brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are a possible communication channel for persons with paralysis. We investigated if it is possible to use auditory stimuli to create a BCI for the Japanese Hiragana syllabary, which has 46 Hiragana characters. Additionally, we investigated if training has an effect on accuracy despite the high amount of different stimuli involved. Able-bodied participants (N = 6) were asked to select 25 syllables (out of fifty possible choices) using a two step procedure: First the consonant (ten choices) and then the vowel (five choices). This was repeated on 3 separate days. Additionally, a person with spinal cord injury (SCI) participated in the experiment. Four out of six healthy participants reached Hiragana syllable accuracies above 70% and the information transfer rate increased from 1.7 bits/min in the first session to 3.2 bits/min in the third session. The accuracy of the participant with SCI increased from 12% (0.2 bits/min) to 56% (2 bits/min) in session three. Reliable selections from a 10 × 5 matrix using auditory stimuli were possible and performance is increased by training. We were able to show that auditory P300 BCIs can be used for communication with up to fifty symbols. This enables the use of the technology of auditory P300 BCIs with a variety of applications. KW - gaze independence KW - assistive technology KW - electroencephalography KW - event-related potentials KW - P300 KW - auditory stimulation KW - brain-computer interface Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-165465 VL - 10 IS - 446 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schiele, Miriam A. A1 - Reinhard, Julia A1 - Reif, Andreas A1 - Domschke, Katharina A1 - Romanos, Marcel A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Developmental aspects of fear: Comparing the acquisition and generalization of conditioned fear in children and adults JF - Developmental Psychobiology N2 - Most research on human fear conditioning and its generalization has focused on adults whereas only little is known about these processes in children. Direct comparisons between child and adult populations are needed to determine developmental risk markers of fear and anxiety. We compared 267 children and 285 adults in a differential fear conditioning paradigm and generalization test. Skin conductance responses (SCR) and ratings of valence and arousal were obtained to indicate fear learning. Both groups displayed robust and similar differential conditioning on subjective and physiological levels. However, children showed heightened fear generalization compared to adults as indexed by higher arousal ratings and SCR to the generalization stimuli. Results indicate overgeneralization of conditioned fear as a developmental correlate of fear learning. The developmental change from a shallow to a steeper generalization gradient is likely related to the maturation of brain structures that modulate efficient discrimination between danger and (ambiguous) safety cues. KW - fear conditioning KW - fear generalization KW - development KW - skin conductance KW - maturation Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-189488 VL - 58 IS - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Holtfrerich, Sarah K. C. A1 - Schwarz, Katharina A. A1 - Sprenger, Christian A1 - Reimers, Luise A1 - Diekhof, Esther K. T1 - Endogenous Testosterone and Exogenous Oxytocin Modulate Attentional Processing of Infant Faces JF - PLoS ONE N2 - Evidence indicates that hormones modulate the intensity of maternal care. Oxytocin is known for its positive influence on maternal behavior and its important role for childbirth. In contrast, testosterone promotes egocentric choices and reduces empathy. Further, testosterone decreases during parenthood which could be an adaptation to increased parental investment. The present study investigated the interaction between testosterone and oxytocin in attentional control and their influence on attention to baby schema in women. Higher endogenous testosterone was expected to decrease selective attention to child portraits in a face-in-the-crowd-paradigm, while oxytocin was expected to counteract this effect. As predicted, women with higher salivary testosterone were slower in orienting attention to infant targets in the context of adult distractors. Interestingly, reaction times to infant and adult stimuli decreased after oxytocin administration, but only in women with high endogenous testosterone. These results suggest that oxytocin may counteract the adverse effects of testosterone on a central aspect of social behavior and maternal caretaking. KW - maternal behavior KW - oxytocin KW - testosterone KW - attention KW - infant faces Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-166783 VL - 11 IS - 11 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kuhn, Manuel A1 - Scharfenort, Robert A1 - Schümann, Dirk A1 - Schiele, Miriam A. A1 - Münsterkötter, Anna L. A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Domschke, Katharina A1 - Haaker, Jan A1 - Kalisch, Raffael A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Reif, Andreas A1 - Romanos, Marcel A1 - Zwanzger, Peter A1 - Lonsdorf, Tina B. T1 - Mismatch or allostatic load? Timing of life adversity differentially shapes gray matter volume and anxious temperament JF - Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience N2 - Traditionally, adversity was defined as the accumulation of environmental events (allostatic load). Recently however, a mismatch between the early and the later (adult) environment (mismatch) has been hypothesized to be critical for disease development, a hypothesis that has not yet been tested explicitly in humans. We explored the impact of timing of life adversity (childhood and past year) on anxiety and depression levels (N = 833) and brain morphology (N = 129). Both remote (childhood) and proximal (recent) adversities were differentially mirrored in morphometric changes in areas critically involved in emotional processing (i.e. amygdala/hippocampus, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, respectively). The effect of adversity on affect acted in an additive way with no evidence for interactions (mismatch). Structural equation modeling demonstrated a direct effect of adversity on morphometric estimates and anxiety/depression without evidence of brain morphology functioning as a mediator. Our results highlight that adversity manifests as pronounced changes in brain morphometric and affective temperament even though these seem to represent distinct mechanistic pathways. A major goal of future studies should be to define critical time periods for the impact of adversity and strategies for intervening to prevent or reverse the effects of adverse childhood life experiences. KW - VBM KW - childhood maltreatment KW - adversity KW - stressful life events KW - mismatch KW - allostatic load Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-189645 VL - 11 IS - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Acqualagna, Laura A1 - Botrel, Loic A1 - Vidaurre, Carmen A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Blankertz, Benjamin T1 - Large-Scale Assessment of a Fully Automatic Co-Adaptive Motor Imagery-Based Brain Computer Interface JF - PLoS ONE N2 - In the last years Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology has benefited from the development of sophisticated machine leaning methods that let the user operate the BCI after a few trials of calibration. One remarkable example is the recent development of co-adaptive techniques that proved to extend the use of BCIs also to people not able to achieve successful control with the standard BCI procedure. Especially for BCIs based on the modulation of the Sensorimotor Rhythm (SMR) these improvements are essential, since a not negligible percentage of users is unable to operate SMR-BCIs efficiently. In this study we evaluated for the first time a fully automatic co-adaptive BCI system on a large scale. A pool of 168 participants naive to BCIs operated the co-adaptive SMR-BCI in one single session. Different psychological interventions were performed prior the BCI session in order to investigate how motor coordination training and relaxation could influence BCI performance. A neurophysiological indicator based on the Power Spectral Density (PSD) was extracted by the recording of few minutes of resting state brain activity and tested as predictor of BCI performances. Results show that high accuracies in operating the BCI could be reached by the majority of the participants before the end of the session. BCI performances could be significantly predicted by the neurophysiological indicator, consolidating the validity of the model previously developed. Anyway, we still found about 22% of users with performance significantly lower than the threshold of efficient BCI control at the end of the session. Being the inter-subject variability still the major problem of BCI technology, we pointed out crucial issues for those who did not achieve sufficient control. Finally, we propose valid developments to move a step forward to the applicability of the promising co-adaptive methods. KW - large-scale assessment KW - Brain Computer Interface KW - machine leaning KW - fully automatic KW - co-adaptive Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-167230 VL - 11 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hommers, Wilfried A1 - Görs, Marijke T1 - Information integration of Kohlbergian thoughts about consensual sex JF - Universitas Psychologica N2 - The unification of two major approaches to moral judgment is the purpose of the present approach. Kohlberg's well-known stage theory assumes a sequence of discrete stages that underlie all moral judgment. Stage theory recognizes the problem of integrating considerations but gives no way to solve such integration, even with information from any one stage. And, of course, the stage concept denies any significant integration from different stages. Thus, research on moral judgment needs to study the integration problem which can be tested within Anderson's theory of information integration. The main purpose of the present study was to extend this unificationist approach to the issue of sexual morality. A novel task presents information from two very different stages. The results showed that in contrast to discreteness the stage informers were positively correlated in punishment judgments of both genders about consensual sex of juveniles. Furthermore, the subjects integrated considerations from those very different stages also in contrast to the hypothesis that only a single stage was operative at any time. KW - Information Integration Theory KW - Kohlberg KW - moral judgment KW - cognition development Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-168487 VL - 15 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stoeckel, M. Cornelia A1 - Esser, Roland W. A1 - Gamer, Matthias A1 - Büchel, Christian A1 - von Leupoldt, Andreas T1 - Brain Responses during the Anticipation of Dyspnea JF - Neural Plasticity N2 - Dyspnea is common in many cardiorespiratory diseases. Already the anticipation of this aversive symptom elicits fear in many patients resulting in unfavorable health behaviors such as activity avoidance and sedentary lifestyle. This study investigated brain mechanisms underlying these anticipatory processes. We induced dyspnea using resistive-load breathing in healthy subjects during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Blocks of severe and mild dyspnea alternated, each preceded by anticipation periods. Severe dyspnea activated a network of sensorimotor, cerebellar, and limbic areas. The left insular, parietal opercular, and cerebellar cortices showed increased activation already during dyspnea anticipation. Left insular and parietal opercular cortex showed increased connectivity with right insular and anterior cingulate cortex when severe dyspnea was anticipated, while the cerebellum showed increased connectivity with the amygdala. Notably, insular activation during dyspnea perception was positively correlated with midbrain activation during anticipation. Moreover, anticipatory fear was positively correlated with anticipatory activation in right insular and anterior cingulate cortex. The results demonstrate that dyspnea anticipation activates brain areas involved in dyspnea perception. The involvement of emotion-related areas such as insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and amygdala during dyspnea anticipation most likely reflects anticipatory fear and might underlie the development of unfavorable health behaviors in patients suffering from dyspnea. KW - brain response KW - dyspnea KW - cardiorespiratory disease KW - anticipation Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-166238 VL - 2016 IS - 6434987 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mavratzakis, Aimee A1 - Herbert, Cornelia A1 - Walla, Peter T1 - Emotional facial expressions evoke faster orienting responses, but weaker emotional responses at neural and behavioural levels compared to scenes: a simultaneous EEG and facial EMG study JF - NeuroImage N2 - In the current study, electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded simultaneously with facial electromyography (fEMG) to determine whether emotional faces and emotional scenes are processed differently at the neural level. In addition, it was investigated whether these differences can be observed at the behavioural level via spontaneous facial muscle activity. Emotional content of the stimuli did not affect early P1 activity. Emotional faces elicited enhanced amplitudes of the face-sensitive N170 component, while its counterpart, the scene-related N100, was not sensitive to emotional content of scenes. At 220-280 ms, the early posterior negativity (EPN) was enhanced only slightly for fearful as compared to neutral or happy faces. However, its amplitudes were significantly enhanced during processing of scenes with positive content, particularly over the right hemisphere. Scenes of positive content also elicited enhanced spontaneous zygomatic activity from 500-750 ms onwards, while happy faces elicited no such changes. Contrastingly, both fearful faces and negative scenes elicited enhanced spontaneous corrugator activity at 500-750 ms after stimulus onset. However, relative to baseline EMG changes occurred earlier for faces (250 ms) than for scenes (500 ms) whereas for scenes activity changes were more pronounced over the whole viewing period. Taking into account all effects, the data suggests that emotional facial expressions evoke faster attentional orienting, but weaker affective neural activity and emotional behavioural responses compared to emotional scenes. KW - Emotion KW - Affective processing KW - Faces and scenes KW - Electroencephalography KW - Spontaneous facial EMG KW - N170 KW - N100 KW - Early posterior negativity Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-191535 VL - 124 IS - Part A ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Miralles, Felip A1 - Vargiu, Eloisa A1 - Dauwalder, Stefan A1 - Solà, Marc A1 - Müller-Putz, Gernot A1 - Wriessnegger, Selina C. A1 - Pinegger, Andreas A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Halder, Sebastian A1 - Käthner, Ivo A1 - Martin, Suzanne A1 - Daly, Jean A1 - Armstrong, Elaine A1 - Guger, Christoph A1 - Hintermüller, Christoph A1 - Lowish, Hannah T1 - Brain computer interface on track to home. JF - The Scientific World Journal N2 - The novel BackHome system offers individuals with disabilities a range of useful services available via brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), to help restore their independence. This is the time such technology is ready to be deployed in the real world, that is, at the target end users’ home. This has been achieved by the development of practical electrodes, easy to use software, and delivering telemonitoring and home support capabilities which have been conceived, implemented, and tested within a user-centred design approach. The final BackHome system is the result of a 3-year long process involving extensive user engagement to maximize effectiveness, reliability, robustness, and ease of use of a home based BCI system. The system is comprised of ergonomic and hassle-free BCI equipment; one-click software services for Smart Home control, cognitive stimulation, and web browsing; and remote telemonitoring and home support tools to enable independent home use for nonexpert caregivers and users. BackHome aims to successfully bring BCIs to the home of people with limited mobility to restore their independence and ultimately improve their quality of life. KW - brain computer interface KW - disability KW - limited mobility KW - independence Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-149575 VL - 2015 IS - 623896 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Seibt, Beate A1 - Mühlberger, Andreas A1 - Likowski, Katja U. A1 - Weyers, Peter T1 - Facial mimicry in its social setting JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - In interpersonal encounters, individuals often exhibit changes in their own facial expressions in response to emotional expressions of another person. Such changes are often called facial mimicry. While this tendency first appeared to be an automatic tendency of the perceiver to show the same emotional expression as the sender, evidence is now accumulating that situation, person, and relationship jointly determine whether and for which emotions such congruent facial behavior is shown. We review the evidence regarding the moderating influence of such factors on facial mimicry with a focus on understanding the meaning of facial responses to emotional expressions in a particular constellation. From this, we derive recommendations for a research agenda with a stronger focus on the most common forms of encounters, actual interactions with known others, and on assessing potential mediators of facial mimicry. We conclude that facial mimicry is modulated by many factors: attention deployment and sensitivity, detection of valence, emotional feelings, and social motivations. We posit that these are the more proximal causes of changes in facial mimicry due to changes in its social setting. KW - cultural differences KW - political leaders KW - mimicry KW - cooperation KW - self-focused attention KW - emotional empathy KW - nonconscious mimicry KW - expressive displays KW - gender differences KW - speech anxiety KW - behavior KW - responses KW - facial expression KW - EMG KW - competition KW - mood Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-151415 VL - 6 IS - 1122 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Käthner, Ivo A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Halder, Sebastian T1 - Comparison of eye tracking, electrooculography and an auditory brain-computer interface for binary communication: a case study with a participant in the locked-in state JF - Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation N2 - Background In this study, we evaluated electrooculography (EOG), an eye tracker and an auditory brain-computer interface (BCI) as access methods to augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). The participant of the study has been in the locked-in state (LIS) for 6 years due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He was able to communicate with slow residual eye movements, but had no means of partner independent communication. We discuss the usability of all tested access methods and the prospects of using BCIs as an assistive technology. Methods Within four days, we tested whether EOG, eye tracking and a BCI would allow the participant in LIS to make simple selections. We optimized the parameters in an iterative procedure for all systems. Results The participant was able to gain control over all three systems. Nonetheless, due to the level of proficiency previously achieved with his low-tech AAC method, he did not consider using any of the tested systems as an additional communication channel. However, he would consider using the BCI once control over his eye muscles would no longer be possible. He rated the ease of use of the BCI as the highest among the tested systems, because no precise eye movements were required; but also as the most tiring, due to the high level of attention needed to operate the BCI. Conclusions In this case study, the partner based communication was possible due to the good care provided and the proficiency achieved by the interlocutors. To ease the transition from a low-tech AAC method to a BCI once control over all muscles is lost, it must be simple to operate. For persons, who rely on AAC and are affected by a progressive neuromuscular disease, we argue that a complementary approach, combining BCIs and standard assistive technology, can prove valuable to achieve partner independent communication and ease the transition to a purely BCI based approach. Finally, we provide further evidence for the importance of a user-centered approach in the design of new assistive devices. KW - eye tracking KW - electrooculography KW - auditory brain-computer interface Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-145305 VL - 12 IS - 76 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Simon, Nadine A1 - Käthner, Ivo A1 - Ruf, Carolin A. A1 - Pasqualotto, Emanuele A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Halder, Sebastian T1 - An auditory multiclass brain-computer interface with natural stimuli: Usability evaluation with healthy participants and a motor impaired end user JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can serve as muscle independent communication aids. Persons, who are unable to control their eye muscles (e.g., in the completely locked-in state) or have severe visual impairments for other reasons, need BCI systems that do not rely on the visual modality. For this reason, BCIs that employ auditory stimuli were suggested. In this study, a multiclass BCI spelling system was implemented that uses animal voices with directional cues to code rows and columns of a letter matrix. To reveal possible training effects with the system, 11 healthy participants performed spelling tasks on 2 consecutive days. In a second step, the system was tested by a participant with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in two sessions. In the first session, healthy participants spelled with an average accuracy of 76% (3.29 bits/min) that increased to 90% (4.23 bits/min) on the second day. Spelling accuracy by the participant with ALS was 20% in the first and 47% in the second session. The results indicate a strong training effect for both the healthy participants and the participant with ALS. While healthy participants reached high accuracies in the first session and second session, accuracies for the participant with ALS were not sufficient for satisfactory communication in both sessions. More training sessions might be needed to improve spelling accuracies. The study demonstrated the feasibility of the auditory BCI with healthy users and stresses the importance of training with auditory multiclass BCIs, especially for potential end-users of BCI with disease. KW - P300 KW - EEG KW - auditory BCI KW - brain-computer interface KW - communication KW - ALS Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-126450 VL - 8 IS - 1039 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kleih, Sonja C. A1 - Herweg, Andreas A1 - Kaufmann, Tobias A1 - Staiger-Sälzer, Pit A1 - Gerstner, Natascha A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - The WIN-speller: a new intuitive auditory brain-computer interface spelling application JF - Frontiers in Neuroscience N2 - The objective of this study was to test the usability of a new auditory Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) application for communication. We introduce a word based, intuitive auditory spelling paradigm the WIN-speller. In the WIN-speller letters are grouped by words, such as the word KLANG representing the letters A, G, K, L, and N. Thereby, the decoding step between perceiving a code and translating it to the stimuli it represents becomes superfluous. We tested 11 healthy volunteers and four end-users with motor impairment in the copy spelling mode. Spelling was successful with an average accuracy of 84% in the healthy sample. Three of the end-users communicated with average accuracies of 80% or higher while one user was not able to communicate reliably. Even though further evaluation is required, the WIN-speller represents a potential alternative for BCI based communication in end-users. KW - Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) KW - communication KW - P300 KW - motor-impaired end-user KW - auditory Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-125972 VL - 9 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Eder, Andreas B. A1 - Deutsch, Roland T1 - Watch the target! Effects in the affective misattribution procedure become weaker (but not eliminated) when participants are motivated to provide accurate responses to the target JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Previous research showed that priming effects in the affective misattribution procedure (AMP) are unaffected by direct warnings to avoid an influence of the primes. The present research examined whether a priming influence is diminished by task procedures that encourage accurate judgments of the targets. Participants were motivated to categorize the affective meaning of nonsense targets accurately by being made to believe that a true word was presented in each trial and by providing feedback on (allegedly) incorrect responses. This condition produced robust priming effects. Priming was however reduced and less reliable relative to more typical AMP conditions in which participants guessed the meaning of openly presented nonsense targets. Affective judgments of nonsense targets were not affected by advance knowledge of the response mapping during the priming phase, which argues against a response-priming explanation of AMP effects. These findings show that affective primes influence evaluative judgments even in conditions in which the motivation to provide accurate responses is high and a priming of motor responses is not possible. Priming effects were however weaker with high accuracy motivation, suggesting that a focus on accurate judgments is an effective strategy to control for an unwanted priming influence in the AMP. KW - implicit attitude measurement KW - accuracy motivation KW - affect misattribution procedure KW - response priming Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-125982 VL - 6 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sollfrank, Teresa A1 - Hart, Daniel A1 - Goodsell, Rachel A1 - Foster, Jonathan A1 - Tan, Tele T1 - 3D visualization of movements can amplify motor cortex activation during subsequent motor imagery JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - A repetitive movement practice by motor imagery (MI) can influence motor cortical excitability in the electroencephalogram (EEG). This study investigated if a realistic visualization in 3D of upper and lower limb movements can amplify motor related potentials during subsequent MI. We hypothesized that a richer sensory visualization might be more effective during instrumental conditioning, resulting in a more pronounced event related desynchronization (ERD) of the upper alpha band (10–12 Hz) over the sensorimotor cortices thereby potentially improving MI based brain-computer interface (BCI) protocols for motor rehabilitation. The results show a strong increase of the characteristic patterns of ERD of the upper alpha band components for left and right limb MI present over the sensorimotor areas in both visualization conditions. Overall, significant differences were observed as a function of visualization modality (VM; 2D vs. 3D). The largest upper alpha band power decrease was obtained during MI after a 3-dimensional visualization. In total in 12 out of 20 tasks the end-user of the 3D visualization group showed an enhanced upper alpha ERD relative to 2D VM group, with statistical significance in nine tasks.With a realistic visualization of the limb movements, we tried to increase motor cortex activation during subsequent MI. The feedback and the feedback environment should be inherently motivating and relevant for the learner and should have an appeal of novelty, real-world relevance or aesthetic value (Ryan and Deci, 2000; Merrill, 2007). Realistic visual feedback, consistent with the participant’s MI, might be helpful for accomplishing successful MI and the use of such feedback may assist in making BCI a more natural interface for MI based BCI rehabilitation. KW - 3-dimensional visualization KW - motor cortex activation KW - EEG KW - brain-computer interfaces Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-126058 VL - 9 IS - 463 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. A1 - Moscovitch, David A. T1 - The effect of affective context on visuocortical processing of neutral faces in social anxiety - An ERP study JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - 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. KW - context effects KW - face processing KW - social anxiety KW - ERPs (Event-Related Potentials) KW - EEG/ERP Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-125148 VL - 6 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reuss, Heiko A1 - Pohl, Carsten A1 - Kiesel, Andrea A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Instructed illiteracy reveals expertise-effects on unconscious processing JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - We used a new methodological approach to investigate whether top-down influences like expertise determine the extent of unconscious processing. This approach does not rely on preexisting differences between experts and novices, but instructs essentially the same task in a way that either addresses a domain of expertise or not. Participants either were instructed to perform a lexical decision task (expert task) or to respond to a combination of single features of word and non-word stimuli (novel task). The stimuli and importantly also the mapping of responses to those stimuli, however, were exactly the same in both groups. We analyzed congruency effects of masked primes depending on the instructed task. Participants performing the expert task responded faster and less error prone when the prime was response congruent rather than incongruent. This effect was significantly reduced in the novel task, and even reversed when excluding identical prime-target pairs. This indicates that the primes in the novel task had an effect on a perceptual level, but were not able to impact on response activation. Overall, these results demonstrate an expertise-based top-down modulation of unconscious processing that cannot be explained by confounds that are otherwise inherent in comparisons between novices and experts. KW - top-down control KW - expertise KW - masked priming KW - unconscious processing KW - lexical decision task Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-125332 VL - 6 IS - 239 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Körner, Anita A1 - Topolinski, Sascha A1 - Strack, Fritz T1 - Routes to Embodiment JF - Frontiers of Psychology N2 - Research on embodiment is rich in impressive demonstrations but somewhat poor in comprehensive explanations. Although some moderators and driving mechanisms have been identified, a comprehensive conceptual account of how bodily states or dynamics influence behavior is still missing. Here, we attempt to integrate current knowledge by describing three basic psychological mechanisms: direct state induction, which influences how humans feel or process information, unmediated by any other cognitive mechanism; modal priming, which changes the accessibility of concepts associated with a bodily state; sensorimotor simulation, which affects the ease with which congruent and incongruent actions are performed. We argue that the joint impact of these mechanisms can account for most existing embodiment effects. Additionally, we summarize empirical tests for distinguishing these mechanisms and suggest a guideline for future research about the mechanisms underlying embodiment effects. KW - priming KW - simulation KW - grounded cognition KW - embodied cognition KW - metaphors Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-125960 VL - 9 IS - 940 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Diemer, Julia A1 - Alpers, Georg W. A1 - Peperkorn, Henrik M. A1 - Shiban, Youssef A1 - Mühlberger, Andreas T1 - The impact of perception and presence on emotional reactions: a review of research in virtual reality JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Virtual reality (VR) has made its way into mainstream psychological research in the last two decades. This technology, with its unique ability to simulate complex, real situations and contexts, offers researchers unprecedented opportunities to investigate human behavior in well controlled designs in the laboratory. One important application of VR is the investigation of pathological processes in mental disorders, especially anxiety disorders. Research on the processes underlying threat perception, fear, and exposure therapy has shed light on more general aspects of the relation between perception and emotion. Being by its nature virtual, i.e., simulation of reality, VR strongly relies on the adequate selection of specific perceptual cues to activate emotions. Emotional experiences in turn are related to presence, another important concept in VR, which describes the user's sense of being in a VR environment. This paper summarizes current research into perception of fear cues, emotion, and presence, aiming at the identification of the most relevant aspects of emotional experience in VR and their mutual relations. A special focus lies on a series of recent experiments designed to test the relative contribution of perception and conceptual information on fear in VR. This strand of research capitalizes on the dissociation between perception (bottom up input) and conceptual information (top-down input) that is possible in VR. Further, we review the factors that have so far been recognized to influence presence, with emotions (e.g., fear) being the most relevant in the context of clinical psychology. Recent research has highlighted the mutual influence of presence and fear in VR, but has also traced the limits of our current understanding of this relationship. In this paper, the crucial role of perception on eliciting emotional reactions is highlighted, and the role of arousal as a basic dimension of emotional experience is discussed. An interoceptive attribution model of presence is suggested as a first step toward an integrative framework for emotion research in VR. Gaps in the current literature and future directions are outlined. KW - exposure therapy KW - flight phobics KW - environments KW - virtual reality KW - anxiety KW - presence KW - emotion KW - fear KW - perception KW - anxiety disorders KW - presence questionnaire KW - public speaking KW - spider phobia KW - social phobia KW - immersion Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-144200 VL - 6 IS - 26 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Käthner, Ivo A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Halder, Sebastian T1 - Rapid P300 brain-computer interface communication with a head-mounted display JF - Frontiers in Neuroscience N2 - Visual ERP (P300) based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) allow for fast and reliable spelling and are intended as a muscle-independent communication channel for people with severe paralysis. However, they require the presentation of visual stimuli in the field of view of the user. A head-mounted display could allow convenient presentation of visual stimuli in situations, where mounting a conventional monitor might be difficult or not feasible (e.g., at a patient's bedside). To explore if similar accuracies can be achieved with a virtual reality (VR) headset compared to a conventional flat screen monitor, we conducted an experiment with 18 healthy participants. We also evaluated it with a person in the locked-in state (LIS) to verify that usage of the headset is possible for a severely paralyzed person. Healthy participants performed online spelling with three different display methods. In one condition a 5 x 5 letter matrix was presented on a conventional 22 inch TFT monitor. Two configurations of the VR headset were tested. In the first (glasses A), the same 5 x 5 matrix filled the field of view of the user. In the second (glasses B), single letters of the matrix filled the field of view of the user. The participant in the LIS tested the VR headset on three different occasions (glasses A condition only). For healthy participants, average online spelling accuracies were 94% (15.5 bits/min) using three flash sequences for spelling with the monitor and glasses A and 96% (16.2 bits/min) with glasses B. In one session, the participant in the LIS reached an online spelling accuracy of 100% (10 bits/min) using the glasses A condition. We also demonstrated that spelling with one flash sequence is possible with the VR headset for healthy users (mean: 32.1 bits/min, maximum reached by one user: 71.89 bits/min at 100% accuracy). We conclude that the VR headset allows for rapid P300 BCI communication in healthy users and may be a suitable display option for severely paralyzed persons. KW - speller performance KW - face perception KW - stimulus KW - rapid BCI KW - locked-in state KW - P300 KW - head-mounted display KW - brain-computer interface Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-148520 VL - 9 IS - 207 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wu, Lingdan A1 - Winkler, Markus H. A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - Li, Yonghui A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Emotion regulation in heavy smokers: experiential, expressive and physiological consequences of cognitive reappraisal JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - 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. KW - negative affect KW - regulation strategies KW - positive emotions KW - craving KW - late positive potential KW - nicotine addiction KW - smoking KW - emotion regulation KW - reappraisal KW - facial electromyography KW - brain reactivity KW - down regulation KW - unpleasant pictures KW - anxiety sensitivity KW - facial expressions KW - cigarette smokers KW - smoking motives Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-145225 VL - 6 IS - 1555 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schroeder, Philipp A. A1 - Pfister, Roland T1 - Arbitrary numbers counter fair decisions: trails of markedness in card distribution JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Converging evidence from controlled experiments suggests that the mere processing of a number and its attributes such as value or parity might affect free choice decisions between different actions. For example the spatial numerical associations of response codes (SNARC) effect indicates the magnitude of a digit to be associated with a spatial representation and might therefore affect spatial response choices (i.e., decisions between a "left" and a "right" option). At the same time, other (linguistic) features of a number such as parity are embedded into space and might likewise prime left or right responses through feature words [odd or even, respectively; markedness association of response codes (MARC) effect]. In this experiment we aimed at documenting such influences in a natural setting. We therefore assessed number space and parity space association effects by exposing participants to a fair distribution task in a card playing scenario. Participants drew cards, read out loud their number values, and announced their response choice, i.e., dealing it to a left vs. right player, indicated by Playmobil characters. Not only did participants prefer to deal more cards to the right player, the card's digits also affected response choices and led to a slightly but systematically unfair distribution, supported by a regular SNARC effect and counteracted by a reversed MARC effect. The experiment demonstrates the impact of SNARC- and MARC-like biases in free choice behavior through verbal and visual numerical information processing even in a setting with high external validity. KW - SNARC KW - right-oriented bias KW - space KW - habits KW - and justice for all KW - magnitude KW - line KW - SNARC effect KW - MARC effect KW - spatial numerical associations KW - mental representation KW - classification KW - asymmetry KW - embodied cognition KW - numerical cognition KW - linguistic markedness KW - free choice Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-143481 VL - 6 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Topolinski, Sascha A1 - Strack, Fritz T1 - Corrugator activity confirms immediate negative affect in surprise JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - The emotion of surprise entails a complex of immediate responses, such as cognitive interruption, attention allocation to, and more systematic processing of the surprising stimulus. All these processes serve the ultimate function to increase processing depth and thus cognitively master the surprising stimulus. The present account introduces phasic negative affect as the underlying mechanism responsible for this switch in operating mode. Surprising stimuli are schema discrepant and thus entail cognitive disfluency, which elicits immediate negative affect. This affect in turn works like a phasic cognitive tuning switching the current processing mode from more automatic and heuristic to more systematic and reflective processing. Directly testing the initial elicitation of negative affect by surprising events, the present experiment presented high and low surprising neutral trivia statements to N = 28 participants while assessing their spontaneous facial expressions via facial electromyography. High compared to low surprising trivia elicited higher corrugator activity, indicative of negative affect and mental effort, while leaving zygomaticus (positive affect) and frontalis (cultural surprise expression) activity unaffected. Future research shall investigate the mediating role of negative affect in eliciting surprise-related outcomes. KW - phasic affective modulation KW - processing fluency KW - intuition KW - surprise KW - EMG KW - elevator EMG activity KW - facial expressions KW - semantic coherence KW - emotion KW - judgments KW - attention KW - memory KW - affect KW - expectancy Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-144068 VL - 6 IS - 134 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Appetitive vs. aversive conditioning in humans JF - Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience N2 - In classical conditioning, an initially neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) becomes associated with a biologically salient event (unconditioned stimulus, US), which might be pain (aversive conditioning) or food (appetitive conditioning). After a few associations, the CS is able to initiate either defensive or consummatory responses, respectively. Contrary to aversive conditioning, appetitive conditioning is rarely investigated in humans, although its importance for normal and pathological behaviors (e.g., obesity, addiction) is undeniable. The present study intents to translate animal findings on appetitive conditioning to humans using food as an US. Thirty-three participants were investigated between 8 and 10 am without breakfast in order to assure that they felt hungry. During two acquisition phases, one geometrical shape (avCS+) predicted an aversive US (painful electric shock), another shape (appCS+) predicted an appetitive US (chocolate or salty pretzel according to the participants' preference), and a third shape (CS) predicted neither US. In a extinction phase, these three shapes plus a novel shape (NEW) were presented again without US delivery. Valence and arousal ratings as well as startle and skin conductance (SCR) responses were collected as learning indices. We found successful aversive and appetitive conditioning. On the one hand, the avCS+ was rated as more negative and more arousing than the CS and induced startle potentiation and enhanced SCR. On the other hand, the appCS+ was rated more positive than the CS and induced startle attenuation and larger SCR. In summary, we successfully confirmed animal findings in (hungry) humans by demonstrating appetitive learning and normal aversive learning. KW - extinction KW - attention KW - classical conditioning KW - skin conductance response KW - punishment KW - startle reflex KW - reward KW - fear KW - startle KW - model Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-148614 VL - 9 IS - 128 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kozlik, Julia A1 - Neumann, Roland A1 - Lozo, Ljubica T1 - Contrasting motivational orientation and evaluative coding accounts: on the need to differentiate the effectors of approach/avoidance responses JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Several emotion theorists suggest that valenced stimuli automatically trigger motivational orientations and thereby facilitate corresponding behavior. Positive stimuli were thought to activate approach motivational circuits which in turn primed approach-related behavioral tendencies whereas negative stimuli were supposed to activate avoidance motivational circuits so that avoidance-related behavioral tendencies were primed (motivational orientation account). However, recent research suggests that typically observed affective stimulus response compatibility phenomena might be entirely explained in terms of theories accounting for mechanisms of general action control instead of assuming motivational orientations to mediate the effects (evaluative coding account). In what follows, we explore to what extent this notion is applicable. We present literature suggesting that evaluative coding mechanisms indeed influence a wide variety of affective stimulus response compatibility phenomena. However, the evaluative coding account does not seem to be sufficient to explain affective S-R compatibility effects. Instead, several studies provide clear evidence in favor of the motivational orientation account that seems to operate independently of evaluative coding mechanisms. Implications for theoretical developments and future research designs are discussed. KW - emotional facial expressions KW - cerebral asymmetry KW - compatibility KW - perception KW - affective S-R compatibility KW - approach-avoidance behavior KW - automatic evaluation KW - arm flexion KW - stimuli KW - determinants KW - information KW - emotional responses KW - approach and avoidance KW - facial muscle contractions KW - theory of event coding Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-143192 VL - 6 IS - 563 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Scherer, Reinhold A1 - Faller, Josef A1 - Friedrich, Elisabeth V. C. A1 - Opisso, Eloy A1 - Costa, Ursula A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Müller-Putz, Gernot R. T1 - Individually Adapted Imagery Improves Brain-Computer Interface Performance in End-Users with Disability JF - PLoS ONE N2 - Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) translate oscillatory electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns into action. Different mental activities modulate spontaneous EEG rhythms in various ways. Non-stationarity and inherent variability of EEG signals, however, make reliable recognition of modulated EEG patterns challenging. Able-bodied individuals who use a BCI for the first time achieve - on average - binary classification performance of about 75%. Performance in users with central nervous system (CNS) tissue damage is typically lower. User training generally enhances reliability of EEG pattern generation and thus also robustness of pattern recognition. In this study, we investigated the impact of mental tasks on binary classification performance in BCI users with central nervous system (CNS) tissue damage such as persons with stroke or spinal cord injury (SCI). Motor imagery (MI), that is the kinesthetic imagination of movement (e.g. squeezing a rubber ball with the right hand), is the "gold standard" and mainly used to modulate EEG patterns. Based on our recent results in able-bodied users, we hypothesized that pair- wise combination of "brain-teaser" (e.g. mental subtraction and mental word association) and "dynamic imagery" (e. g. hand and feet MI) tasks significantly increases classification performance of induced EEG patterns in the selected end-user group. Within- day (How stable is the classification within a day?) and between-day (How well does a model trained on day one perform on unseen data of day two?) analysis of variability of mental task pair classification in nine individuals confirmed the hypothesis. We found that the use of the classical MI task pair hand vs. feed leads to significantly lower classification accuracy - in average up to 15% less - in most users with stroke or SCI. User-specific selection of task pairs was again essential to enhance performance. We expect that the gained evidence will significantly contribute to make imagery-based BCI technology become accessible to a larger population of users including individuals with special needs due to CNS damage. KW - single-trial EEG classification KW - motor imagery technology KW - spatial filters movement KW - communication systems KW - BCI Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-143021 VL - 10 IS - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Topolinski, Sascha A1 - Zürn, Michael A1 - Schneider, Iris K. T1 - What's in and what's out in branding? A novel articulation effect for brand names JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - The present approach exploits the biomechanical connection between articulation and ingestion-related mouth movements to introduce a novel psychological principle of brand name design. We constructed brand names for diverse products with consonantal stricture spots either from the front to the rear of the mouth, thus inwards (e.g., BODIKA), or from the rear to the front, thus outwards (e.g., KODIBA). These muscle dynamics resemble the oral kinematics during either ingestion (inwards), which feels positive, or expectoration (outwards), which feels negative. In 7 experiments (total N = 1261), participants liked products with inward names more than products with outward names (Experiment 1), reported higher purchase intentions (Experiment 2), and higher willingness-to-pay (Experiments 3a-3c, 4, 5), with the price gain amounting to 4-13% of the average estimated product value. These effects occurred across English and German language, under silent reading, for both edible and non-edible products, and even in the presence of a much stronger price determinant, namely fair-trade production (Experiment 5). KW - phonetic symbolism KW - moderating role KW - judgements KW - behavior KW - phonation KW - branding KW - articulation KW - sound symbolism KW - embodiment KW - phasic affective modulation KW - processing fluency KW - semantic coherence KW - affective consequences KW - consumers KW - intuition Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-143036 VL - 6 IS - 585 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cheetham, Marcus A1 - Wu, Lingdan A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Jancke, Lutz T1 - Arousal, valence, and the uncanny valley: psychophysiological and self-report findings JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - The main prediction of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis (UVH) is that observation of humanlike characters that are difficult to distinguish from the human counterpart will evoke a state of negative affect. Well-established electrophysiological [late positive potential (LPP) and facial electromyography (EMG)] and self-report [Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM)] indices of valence and arousal, i.e., the primary orthogonal dimensions of affective experience, were used to test this prediction by examining affective experience in response to categorically ambiguous compared with unambiguous avatar and human faces (N = 30). LPP and EMG provided direct psychophysiological indices of affective state during passive observation and the SAM provided self-reported indices of affective state during explicit cognitive evaluation of static facial stimuli. The faces were drawn from well-controlled morph continua representing the UVH' dimension of human likeness (DHL). The results provide no support for the notion that category ambiguity along the DHL is specifically associated with enhanced experience of negative affect. On the contrary, the LPP and SAM-based measures of arousal and valence indicated a general increase in negative affective state (i.e., enhanced arousal and negative valence) with greater morph distance from the human end of the DHL. A second sample (N = 30) produced the same finding, using an ad hoc self-rating scale of feelings of familiarity, i.e., an oft-used measure of affective experience along the UVH' familiarity dimension. In conclusion, this multi-method approach using well-validated psychophysiological and self-rating indices of arousal and valence rejects for passive observation and for explicit affective evaluation of static faces the main prediction of the UVH. KW - emotional facial expressions KW - event-related potentials KW - electromyographic activity KW - startle reflex KW - arousal KW - unpleasant pictures KW - brain potentials KW - mere exposure KW - circumplex model KW - face recognition KW - neural response KW - valence KW - uncanny valley hypothesis KW - familiarity KW - EMG KW - EEG KW - LPP Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-151519 VL - 6 IS - 981 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meule, Adrian T1 - Are certain foods addictive? JF - Frontiers in Psychiatry N2 - A commentary on Lifestyle medicine: the importance of firmgrounding on evidence by Rippe JM. Am J Lifestyle Med (2014) doi:10.1177/ 1559827613520527 Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-120257 SN - 1664-0640 VL - 5 IS - 38 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. A1 - Gerdes, Antje B. M. A1 - Reicherts, Philipp A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Mutual influences of pain and emotional face processing JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - 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. KW - emotion KW - facial expression KW - ERPs KW - perception-action KW - pain Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-118446 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meule, Adrian A1 - Gearhard, Ashley N. T1 - Food Addiction in the Light of DSM-5 JF - Nutrients N2 - The idea that specific kind of foods may have an addiction potential and that some forms of overeating may represent an addicted behavior has been discussed for decades. In recent years, the interest in food addiction is growing and research on this topic lead to more precise definitions and assessment methods. For example, the Yale Food Addiction Scale has been developed for the measurement of addiction-like eating behavior based on the diagnostic criteria for substance dependence of the fourth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). In 2013, diagnostic criteria for substance abuse and-dependence were merged, thereby increasing the number of symptoms for substance use disorders (SUDs) in the DSM-5. Moreover, gambling disorder is now included along SUDs as a behavioral addiction. Although a plethora of review articles exist that discuss the applicability of the DSM-IV substance dependence criteria to eating behavior, the transferability of the newly added criteria to eating is unknown. Thus, the current article discusses if and how these new criteria may be translated to overeating. Furthermore, it is examined if the new SUD criteria will impact future research on food addiction, for example, if "diagnosing" food addiction should also be adapted by considering all of the new symptoms. Given the critical response to the revisions in DSM-5, we also discuss if the recent approach of Research Domain Criteria can be helpful in evaluating the concept of food addiction. KW - food addiction KW - obesity KW - binge eating KW - RDoC KW - DSM-IV KW - DSM-5 KW - substance dependence KW - substance use disorder KW - gambling KW - craving Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-119279 SN - 2072-6643 VL - 6 IS - 9 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Höhne, Johannes A1 - Holz, Elisa A1 - Staiger-Sälzer, Pit A1 - Müller, Klaus-Robert A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Tangermann, Michael T1 - Motor Imagery for Severely Motor-Impaired Patients: Evidence for Brain-Computer Interfacing as Superior Control Solution JF - PLoS ONE N2 - Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) strive to decode brain signals into control commands for severely handicapped people with no means of muscular control. These potential users of noninvasive BCIs display a large range of physical and mental conditions. Prior studies have shown the general applicability of BCI with patients, with the conflict of either using many training sessions or studying only moderately restricted patients. We present a BCI system designed to establish external control for severely motor-impaired patients within a very short time. Within only six experimental sessions, three out of four patients were able to gain significant control over the BCI, which was based on motor imagery or attempted execution. For the most affected patient, we found evidence that the BCI could outperform the best assistive technology (AT) of the patient in terms of control accuracy, reaction time and information transfer rate. We credit this success to the applied user-centered design approach and to a highly flexible technical setup. State-of-the art machine learning methods allowed the exploitation and combination of multiple relevant features contained in the EEG, which rapidly enabled the patients to gain substantial BCI control. Thus, we could show the feasibility of a flexible and tailorable BCI application in severely disabled users. This can be considered a significant success for two reasons: Firstly, the results were obtained within a short period of time, matching the tight clinical requirements. Secondly, the participating patients showed, compared to most other studies, very severe communication deficits. They were dependent on everyday use of AT and two patients were in a locked-in state. For the most affected patient a reliable communication was rarely possible with existing AT. KW - eyes KW - signal filtering KW - social communication KW - hands KW - machine learning KW - man-computer interface KW - games KW - electroencephalography Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-119331 VL - 9 IS - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meule, Adrian A1 - Lutz, Annika P. C. A1 - Krawietz, Vera A1 - Stützer, Judith A1 - Vögele, Claus A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - Food-cue affected motor response inhibition and self-reported dieting success: a pictorial affective shifting task JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Behavioral inhibition is one of the basic facets of executive functioning and is closely related to self-regulation. Impulsive reactions, that is, low inhibitory control, have been associated with higher body mass index (BMI), binge eating, and other problem behaviors (e.g., substance abuse, pathological gambling, etc.). Nevertheless, studies which investigated the direct influence of food-cues on behavioral inhibition have been fairly inconsistent. In the current studies, we investigated food-cue affected behavioral inhibition in young women. For this purpose, we used a go/no-go task with pictorial food and neutral stimuli in which stimulus-response mapping is reversed after every other block (affective shifting task). In study 1, hungry participants showed faster reaction times to and omitted fewer food than neutral targets. Low dieting success and higher BMI were associated with behavioral disinhibition in food relative to neutral blocks. In study 2, both hungry and satiated individuals were investigated. Satiation did not influence overall task performance, but modulated associations of task performance with dieting success and self-reported impulsivity. When satiated, increased food craving during the task was associated with low dieting success, possibly indicating a preload-disinhibition effect following food intake. Food-cues elicited automatic action and approach tendencies regardless of dieting success, self-reported impulsivity, or current hunger levels. Yet, associations between dieting success, impulsivity, and behavioral food-cue responses were modulated by hunger and satiation. Future research investigating clinical samples and including other salient non-food stimuli as control category is warranted. KW - impulsivity KW - inhibitory control KW - response inhibition KW - go/no-go task KW - food-cues KW - dieting success KW - body mass index Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-119840 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wölk, Julian A1 - Sütterlin, Stefan A1 - Koch, Stefan A1 - Vögele, Claus A1 - Schulz, Stefan M. T1 - Enhanced cardiac perception predicts impaired performance in the Iowa Gambling Task in patients with panic disorder JF - Brain and Behavior N2 - OBJECTIVE: Somatic marker theory predicts that somatic cues serve intuitive decision making; however, cardiovascular symptoms are threat cues for patients with panic disorder (PD). Therefore, enhanced cardiac perception may aid intuitive decision making only in healthy individuals, but impair intuitive decision making in PD patients. METHODS: PD patients and age-and sex-matched volunteers without a psychiatric diagnosis (n=17, respectively) completed the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) as a measure of intuitive decision making. Interindividual differences in cardiac perception were assessed with a common mental-tracking task. RESULTS: In line with our hypothesis, we found a pattern of opposing associations (Fisher's Z=1.78, P=0.04) of high cardiac perception with improved IGT-performance in matched control-participants (r=0.36, n=14) but impaired IGT-performance in PD patients (r=-0.38, n=13). CONCLUSION: Interoceptive skills, typically assumed to aid intuitive decision making, can have the opposite effect in PD patients who experience interoceptive cues as threatening, and tend to avoid them. This may explain why PD patients frequently have problems with decision making in everyday life. Screening of cardiac perception may help identifying patients who benefit from specifically tailored interventions. KW - panic disorder KW - somatic marker hypothesis KW - cardiac perception KW - Iowa Gambling Task KW - decision making KW - interoception Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-119865 SN - 2162-3279 VL - 4 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ewald, Heike A1 - Glotzbach-Schoon, Evelyn A1 - Gerdes, Antje B. M. A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - Müller, Mathias A1 - Mühlberger, Andreas A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Delay and trace fear conditioning in a complex virtual learning environment - neural substrates of extinction JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Extinction is an important mechanism to inhibit initially acquired fear responses. There is growing evidence that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) inhibits the amygdala and therefore plays an important role in the extinction of delay fear conditioning. To our knowledge, there is no evidence on the role of the prefrontal cortex in the extinction of trace conditioning up to now. Thus, we compared brain structures involved in the extinction of human delay and trace fear conditioning in a between-subjects-design in an fMRI study. Participants were passively guided through a virtual environment during learning and extinction of conditioned fear. Two different lights served as conditioned stimuli (CS); as unconditioned stimulus (US) a mildly painful electric stimulus was delivered. In the delay conditioning group (DCG) the US was administered with offset of one light (CS+), whereas in the trace conditioning group (TCG) the US was presented 4s after CS+ offset. Both groups showed insular and striatal activation during early extinction, but differed in their prefrontal activation. The vmPFC was mainly activated in the DCG, whereas the TCG showed activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) during extinction. These results point to different extinction processes in delay and trace conditioning. VmPFC activation during extinction of delay conditioning might reflect the inhibition of the fear response. In contrast, dlPFC activation during extinction of trace conditioning may reflect modulation of working memory processes which are involved in bridging the trace interval and hold information in short term memory. KW - prefrontal cortex KW - delay conditioning KW - trace conditioning KW - extinction KW - virtual reality KW - fMRI KW - medial prefrontal cortex KW - event-related FMRI KW - orbifrontal cortex KW - contextual fear Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-116230 SN - 1662-5161 VL - 8 IS - 323 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Huestegge, Lynn A1 - Rohrßen, Julia A1 - van Ermingen-Marbach, Muna A1 - Pape-Neumann, Julia A1 - Heim, Stefan T1 - Devil in the details ? Developmental dyslexia and visual long-term memory for details JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Cognitive theories on causes of developmental dyslexia can be divided into language-specific and general accounts. While the former assume that words are special in that associated processing problems are rooted in language-related cognition (e.g., phonology) deficits, the latter propose that dyslexia is rather rooted in a general impairment of cognitive (e.g., visual and/or auditory) processing streams. In the present study, we examined to what extent dyslexia (typically characterized by poor orthographic representations) may be associated with a general deficit in visual long-term memory (LTM) for details. We compared object- and detail-related visual LTM performance (and phonological skills) between dyslexic primary school children and IQ-, age-, and gender-matched controls. The results revealed that while the overall amount of LTM errors was comparable between groups, dyslexic children exhibited a greater portion of detail-related errors. The results suggest that not only phonological, but also general visual resolution deficits in LTM may play an important role in developmental dyslexia. KW - anguage and word processing KW - picture processing KW - memory errors KW - orthographic representations KW - visual resolution deficit KW - phonology and reading KW - word form area KW - reading disability KW - spatial attention KW - ventral stream Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-115887 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 5 IS - 686 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Erlbeck, Helena A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Kotchoubey, Boris A1 - Veser, Sandra T1 - Task instructions modulate the attentional mode affecting the auditory MMN and the semantic N400 JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been proven to be a useful tool to complement clinical assessment and to detect residual cognitive functions in patients with disorders of consciousness. These ERPs are of ten recorded using passive or unspecific instructions. Patient data obtained this way are then compared to data from healthy participants, which are usually recorded using active instructions. The present study investigates the effect of attentive modulations and particularly the effect of activevs. passive instruction on the ERP components mismatch negativity (MMN) and N400. A sample of 18 healthy participants listened to three auditory paradigms: anoddball, aword priming, and a sentence paradigm. Each paradigm was presented three times with different instructions: ignoring auditory stimuli, passive listening, and focused attention on the auditory stimuli. After each task, the participants indicated their subjective effort. The N400 decreased from the focused task to the passive task, and was extinct in the ignore task. The MMN exhibited higher amplitudes in the focused and passive task compared to the ignore task. The data indicate an effect of attention on the supratemporal component of the MMN. Subjective effort was equally high in the passive and focused tasks but reduced in the ignore task. We conclude that passive listening during EEG recording is stressful and attenuates ERPs, which renders the interpretation of the results obtained in such conditions difficult. KW - ERP KW - priming KW - selective attention KW - event-related potentials KW - vigilance decrement KW - brain potentials KW - vegetative state KW - consciousness KW - component KW - predicts recovery KW - mismatch negativity KW - attention KW - instruction KW - N400 KW - MMN Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-115553 VL - 8 IS - 654 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Blechert, Jens A1 - Meule, Adrian A1 - Busch, Niko A. A1 - Ohla, Kathrin T1 - Food-pics: an image database for experimental research on eating and appetite JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Our current environment is characterized by the omnipresence of food cues. The sight and smell of real foods, but also graphically depictions of appetizing foods, can guide our eating behavior, for example, by eliciting food craving and influencing food choice. The relevance of visual food cues on human information processing has been demonstrated by a growing body of studies employing food images across the disciplines of psychology, medicine, and neuroscience. However, currently used food image sets vary considerably across laboratories and image characteristics (contrast, brightness, etc.) and food composition (calories, macronutrients, etc.) are often unspecified. These factors might have contributed to some of the inconsistencies of this research. To remedy this, we developed food-pics, a picture database comprising 568 food images and 315 non-food images along with detailed meta-data. A total of N = 1988 individuals with large variance in age and weight from German speaking countries and North America provided normative ratings of valence, arousal, palatability, desire to eat, recognizability and visual complexity. Furthermore, data on macronutrients (g), energy density (kcal), and physical image characteristics (color composition, contrast, brightness, size, complexity) are provided. The food-pics image database is freely available under the creative commons license with the hope that the set will facilitate standardization and comparability across studies and advance experimental research on the determinants of eating behavior. Read F KW - food-cues KW - standardized food images KW - ERP KW - image properties KW - anorexia nervosa KW - restrained eaters KW - high calorie KW - brain KW - weight loss KW - visual-attention KW - responses KW - cues KW - reward KW - hunger KW - fMRI KW - eating behavior KW - obesity KW - food pictures Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-115987 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Petrasek, Tomas A1 - Prokopova, Iva A1 - Sladek, Martin A1 - Weissova, Kamila A1 - Vojtechova, Iveta A1 - Bahnik, Stepan A1 - Zemanova, Anna A1 - Schönig, Kai A1 - Berger, Stefan A1 - Tews, Bjoern A1 - Bartsch, Dusan A1 - Schwab, Martin E. A1 - Sumova, Alena A1 - Stuchlik, Ales T1 - Nogo-A-deficient transgenic rats show deficits in higher cognitive functions, decreased anxiety, and altered circadian activity patterns JF - Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience N2 - Decreased levels of Nogo-A-dependent signaling have been shown to affect behavior and cognitive functions. In Nogo-A knockout and knockdown laboratory rodents, behavioral alterations were observed, possibly corresponding with human neuropsychiatric diseases of neurodevelopmental origin, particularly schizophrenia. This study offers further insight into behavioral manifestations of Nogo-A knockdown in laboratory rats, focusing on spatial and non-spatial cognition, anxiety levels, circadian rhythmicity, and activity patterns. Demonstrated is an impairment of cognitive functions and behavioral flexibility in a spatial active avoidance task, while non-spatial memory in a step-through avoidance task was spared. No signs of anhedonia, typical for schizophrenic patients, were observed in the animals. Some measures indicated lower anxiety levels in the Nogo-A-deficient group. Circadian rhythmicity in locomotor activity was preserved in the Nogo-A knockout rats and their circadian period (tau) did not differ from controls. However, daily activity patterns were slightly altered in the knockdown animals. We conclude that a reduction of Nogo-A levels induces changes in CNS development, manifested as subtle alterations in cognitive functions, emotionality, and activity patterns. KW - AAPA KW - circadian rhythmicity KW - passive avoidance KW - Nogo-A KW - anhedonia KW - neophobia KW - morris water maze KW - place avoidance task KW - neurite outgrowth inhibitor KW - axon regeneration KW - synaptic plasticity KW - down regulation KW - traumatic brain injury KW - carousel maze KW - messenger RNA KW - genetic deletion Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-117073 VL - 8 IS - 90 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gerdes, Antje B. M. A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. A1 - Alpers, Georg W. T1 - Emotional pictures and sounds: a review of multimodal interactions of emotion cues in multiple domains JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - In everyday life, multiple sensory channels jointly trigger emotional experiences and one channel may alter processing in another channel. For example, seeing an emotional facial expression and hearing the voice's emotional tone will jointly create the emotional experience. This example, where auditory and visual input is related to social communication, has gained considerable attention by researchers. However, interactions of visual and auditory emotional information are not limited to social communication but can extend to much broader contexts including human, animal, and environmental cues. In this article, we review current research on audiovisual emotion processing beyond face-voice stimuli to develop a broader perspective on multimodal interactions in emotion processing. We argue that current concepts of multimodality should be extended in considering an ecologically valid variety of stimuli in audiovisual emotion processing. Therefore, we provide an overview of studies in which emotional sounds and interactions with complex pictures of scenes were investigated. In addition to behavioral studies, we focus on neuroimaging, electro- and peripher-physiological findings. Furthermore, we integrate these findings and identify similarities or differences. We conclude with suggestions for future research. KW - emotional sounds KW - auditory stimuli KW - facial expressions KW - human brain KW - multisensory integration KW - multimodal emotion processing KW - emotional pictures KW - audiovisual interactions KW - emotional scene stimuli KW - visual stimuli KW - social anxiety KW - human amygdala KW - attention capture KW - relevance detection KW - audiovisual integration Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-114548 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Martens, Suzanne A1 - Bensch, Michael A1 - Halder, Sebastian A1 - Hill, Jeremy A1 - Nijboer, Femke A1 - Ramos-Murguialday, Ander A1 - Schoelkopf, Bernhard A1 - Birbaumer, Niels A1 - Gharabaghi, Alireza T1 - Epidural electrocorticography for monitoring of arousal in locked-in state JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Electroencephalography (EEG) often fails to assess both the level (i.e., arousal) and the content (i.e., awareness) of pathologically altered consciousness in patients without motor responsiveness. This might be related to a decline of awareness, to episodes of low arousal and disturbed sleep patterns, and/or to distorting and attenuating effects of the skull and intermediate tissue on the recorded brain signals. Novel approaches are required to overcome these limitations. We introduced epidural electrocorticography (ECoG) for monitoring of cortical physiology in a late-stage amytrophic lateral sclerosis patient in completely locked-in state (CLIS) Despite long-term application for a period of six months, no implant related complications occurred. Recordings from the left frontal cortex were sufficient to identify three arousal states. Spectral analysis of the intrinsic oscillatory activity enabled us to extract state-dependent dominant frequencies at <4, similar to 7 and similar to 20 Hz, representing sleep-like periods, and phases of low and elevated arousal, respectively. In the absence of other biomarkers, ECoG proved to be a reliable tool for monitoring circadian rhythmicity, i.e., avoiding interference with the patient when he was sleeping and exploiting time windows of responsiveness. Moreover, the effects of interventions addressing the patient's arousal, e.g., amantadine medication, could be evaluated objectively on the basis of physiological markers, even in the absence of behavioral parameters. Epidural ECoG constitutes a feasible trade-off between surgical risk and quality of recorded brain signals to gain information on the patient's present level of arousal. This approach enables us to optimize the timing of interactions and medical interventions, all of which should take place when the patient is in a phase of high arousal. Furthermore, avoiding low responsiveness periods will facilitate measures to implement alternative communication pathways involving brain-computer interfaces (BCI). KW - temporal-lobe epilepsy KW - neuroprosthetic devices KW - brain computer interface KW - event-related potentials KW - intraoperative electrocoicography KW - electrocorticography KW - epidural recording KW - locked-in state KW - coma KW - consciousness KW - paralyzed patients KW - EEG KW - sleep KW - communication KW - frequencies KW - amyotrophic-lateral-sclerosis Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-114863 VL - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Real, Ruben G. L. A1 - Kotchoubey, Boris A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - Studentized continuous wavelet transform (t-CWT) in the analysis of individual ERPs: real and simulated EEG data N2 - This study aimed at evaluating the performance of the Studentized Continuous Wavelet Transform (t-CWT) as a method for the extraction and assessment of event-related brain potentials (ERP) in data from a single subject. Sensitivity, specificity, positive (PPV) and negative predictive values (NPV) of the t-CWT were assessed and compared to a variety of competing procedures using simulated EEG data at six low signal-to-noise ratios. Results show that the t-CWT combines high sensitivity and specificity with favorable PPV and NPV. Applying the t-CWT to authentic EEG data obtained from 14 healthy participants confirmed its high sensitivity. The t-CWT may thus be well suited for the assessment of weak ERPs in single-subject settings. KW - electroencephalogram KW - wavelet KW - EEG KW - t-CWT KW - significance KW - detection KW - ERP Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-113581 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kirsch, Wladimir A1 - Königstein, Elisabeth A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Action feedback affects the perception of action-related objects beyond actual action success N2 - Successful object-oriented action typically increases the perceived size of aimed target objects. This phenomenon has been assumed to reflect an impact of an actor's current action ability on visual perception. The actual action ability and the explicit knowledge of action outcome, however, were confounded in previous studies. The present experiments aimed at disentangling these two factors. Participants repeatedly tried to hit a circular target varying in size with a stylus movement under restricted feedback conditions. After each movement they were explicitly informed about the success in hitting the target and were then asked to judge target size. The explicit feedback regarding movement success was manipulated orthogonally to actual movement success. The results of three experiments indicated the participants' bias to judge relatively small targets as larger and relatively large targets as smaller after explicit feedback of failure than after explicit feedback of success. This pattern was independent of the actual motor performance, suggesting that the actors' evaluations of motor actions may bias perception of target objects in itself. KW - Action feedback KW - visual perception KW - action KW - knowledge of results KW - action access KW - action ability KW - perception-action coupling Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-112670 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pohl, Carsten A1 - Kunde, Wilfried A1 - Ganz, Thomas A1 - Conzelmann, Annette A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Kiesel, Andrea T1 - Gaming to see: action video gaming is associated with enhanced processing of masked stimuli N2 - Recent research revealed that action video game players outperform non-players in a wide range of attentional, perceptual and cognitive tasks. Here we tested if expertise in action video games is related to differences regarding the potential of shortly presented stimuli to bias behavior. In a response priming paradigm, participants classified four animal pictures functioning as targets as being smaller or larger than a reference frame. Before each target, one of the same four animal pictures was presented as a masked prime to influence participants' responses in a congruent or incongruent way. Masked primes induced congruence effects, that is, faster responses for congruent compared to incongruent conditions, indicating processing of hardly visible primes. Results also suggested that action video game players showed a larger congruence effect than non-players for 20 ms primes, whereas there was no group difference for 60 ms primes. In addition, there was a tendency for action video game players to detect masked primes for some prime durations better than non-players. Thus, action video game expertise may be accompanied by faster and more efficient processing of shortly presented visual stimuli. KW - video gaming masked stimuli KW - masked priming KW - action videogaming KW - unconscious processing KW - prime visibility KW - expertise Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-112681 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meule, Adrian A1 - Hermann, Tina A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - A short version of the Food Cravings Questionnaire—Trait: the FCQ-T-reduced N2 - One of the most often used instruments for the assessment of food cravings is the Food Cravings Questionnaire (FCQ), which consists of a trait (FCQ-T; 39 items) and state (FCQ-S; 15 items) version. Scores on the FCQ-T have been found to be positively associated with eating pathology, body mass index (BMI), low dieting success and increases in state food craving during cognitive tasks involving appealing food stimuli. The current studies evaluated reliability and validity of a reduced version of the FCQ-T consisting of 15 items only (FCQ-T-r). Study 1 was a questionnaire study conducted online among students (N = 323). In study 2, female students (N = 70) performed a working memory task involving food and neutral pictures. Study 1 indicated a one-factorial structure and high internal consistency (α = 0.94) of the FCQ-T-r. Scores of the FCQ-T-r were positively correlated with BMI and negatively correlated with dieting success. In study 2, participants reported higher state food craving after the task compared to before. This increase was positively correlated with the FCQ-T-r. Hours since the last meal positively predicted food craving before the task when controlling for FCQ-T-r scores and the interaction of both variables. Contrarily, FCQ-T-r scores positively predicted food craving after the task when controlling for food deprivation and the interaction term. Thus, trait food craving was specifically associated with state food craving triggered by palatable food-cues, but not with state food craving related to plain hunger. Results indicate high reliability of the FCQ-T-r. Replicating studies that used the long version, small-to-medium correlations with BMI and dieting success could be found. Finally, scores on the FCQ-T-r predicted cue-elicited food craving, providing further support of its validity. The FCQ-T-r constitutes a succinct, valid and reliable self-report measure to efficiently assess experiences of food craving as a trait. KW - food carving KW - Food Carvings Questionnaire KW - psychometric properties KW - validity KW - reliability KW - body mass index KW - dieting success KW - food-cues Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-112748 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pieczykolan, Aleksandra A1 - Huestegge, Lynn T1 - Oculomotor dominance in multitasking: Mechanisms of conflict resolution in cross-modal action N2 - In daily life, eye movement control usually occurs in the context of concurrent action demands in other effector domains. However, little research has focused on understanding how such cross-modal action demands are coordinated, especially when conflicting information needs to be processed conjunctly in different action modalities. In two experiments, we address this issue by studying vocal responses in the context of spatially conflicting eye movements (Experiment 1) and in the context of spatially conflicting manual actions (Experiment 2, under controlled eye fixation conditions). Crucially, a comparison across experiments allows us to assess resource scheduling priorities among the three effector systems by comparing the same (vocal) response demands in the context of eye movements in contrast to manual responses. The results indicate that in situations involving response conflict, eye movements are prioritized over concurrent action demands in another effector system. This oculomotor dominance effect corroborates previous observations in the context of multiple action demands without spatial response conflict. Furthermore, and in line with recent theoretical accounts of parallel multiple action control, resource scheduling patterns appear to be flexibly adjustable based on the temporal proximity of the two actions that need to be performed. KW - saccades KW - oculomotor dominance KW - dual-task control KW - divided attention KW - resource scheduling KW - crosstalk Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-111024 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Holz, Elisa M. A1 - Riccio, Angela A1 - Zickler, Claudia A1 - Kaufmann, Tobias A1 - Kleih, Sonja C. A1 - Staiger-Sälzer, Pit A1 - Desideri, Lorenzo A1 - Hoogerwerf, Evert-Jan A1 - Mattia, Donatella T1 - The User-Centered Design as Novel Perspective for Evaluating the Usability of BCI-Controlled Applications N2 - Albeit research on brain-computer interfaces (BCI) for controlling applications has expanded tremendously, we still face a translational gap when bringing BCI to end-users. To bridge this gap, we adapted the user-centered design (UCD) to BCI research and development which implies a shift from focusing on single aspects, such as accuracy and information transfer rate (ITR), to a more holistic user experience. The UCD implements an iterative process between end-users and developers based on a valid evaluation procedure. Within the UCD framework usability of a device can be defined with regard to its effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. We operationalized these aspects to evaluate BCI-controlled applications. Effectiveness was regarded equivalent to accuracy of selections and efficiency to the amount of information transferred per time unit and the effort invested (workload). Satisfaction was assessed with questionnaires and visual-analogue scales. These metrics have been successfully applied to several BCI-controlled applications for communication and entertainment, which were evaluated by end-users with severe motor impairment. Results of four studies, involving a total of N = 19 end-users revealed: effectiveness was moderate to high; efficiency in terms of ITR was low to high and workload low to medium; depending on the match between user and technology, and type of application satisfaction was moderate to high. The here suggested evaluation metrics within the framework of the UCD proved to be an applicable and informative approach to evaluate BCI controlled applications, and end-users with severe impairment and in the locked-in state were able to participate in this process. KW - computer software KW - event related potentials KW - games KW - head KW - head injury KW - man-computer interface KW - prototypes KW - speech Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-111051 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pfister, Roland A1 - Obhi, Sukhvinder S. A1 - Rieger, Martina A1 - Wenke, Dorit T1 - Action and perception in social contexts: intentional binding for social action effects N2 - The subjective experience of controlling events in the environment alters the perception of these events. For instance, the interval between one's own actions and their consequences is subjectively compressed—a phenomenon known as intentional binding. In two experiments, we studied intentional binding in a social setting in which actions of one agent prompted a second agent to perform another action. Participants worked in pairs and were assigned to a “leader” and a “follower” role, respectively. The leader's key presses triggered (after a variable interval) a tone and this tone served as go signal for the follower to perform a keypress as well. Leaders and followers estimated the interval between the leader's keypress and the following tone, or the interval between the tone and the follower's keypress. The leader showed reliable intentional binding for both intervals relative to the follower's estimates. These results indicate that human agents experience a pre-reflective sense of agency for genuinely social consequences of their actions. KW - intentional binding KW - action effects KW - social actions KW - action and perception KW - sense of agency Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-112828 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Guhn, Anne A1 - Dresler, Thomas A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - Müller, Laura D. A1 - Hahn, Tim A1 - Tupak, Sara V. A1 - Polak, Thomas A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Herrmann, Martin J. T1 - Medial prefrontal cortex stimulation modulates the processing of conditioned fear N2 - The extinction of conditioned fear depends on an efficient interplay between the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). In rats, high-frequency electrical mPFC stimulation has been shown to improve extinction by means of a reduction of amygdala activity. However, so far it is unclear whether stimulation of homologues regions in humans might have similar beneficial effects. Healthy volunteers received one session of either active or sham repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) covering the mPFC while undergoing a 2-day fear conditioning and extinction paradigm. Repetitive TMS was applied offline after fear acquisition in which one of two faces (CS+ but not CS−) was associated with an aversive scream (UCS). Immediate extinction learning (day 1) and extinction recall (day 2) were conducted without UCS delivery. Conditioned responses (CR) were assessed in a multimodal approach using fear-potentiated startle (FPS), skin conductance responses (SCR), functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and self-report scales. Consistent with the hypothesis of a modulated processing of conditioned fear after high-frequency rTMS, the active group showed a reduced CS+/CS− discrimination during extinction learning as evident in FPS as well as in SCR and arousal ratings. FPS responses to CS+ further showed a linear decrement throughout both extinction sessions. This study describes the first experimental approach of influencing conditioned fear by using rTMS and can thus be a basis for future studies investigating a complementation of mPFC stimulation to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). KW - fear conditioning KW - memory consolidation and extinction KW - learning KW - transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) KW - medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-111309 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Hautzinger, Martin A1 - Ludolph, Albert A1 - Dickhaus, Thorsten A1 - Real, Ruben G. L. T1 - Well-being in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: a pilot experience sampling study N2 - Objective: The aim of this longitudinal study was to identify predictors of instantaneous well-being in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Based on flow theory well-being was expected to be highest when perceived demands and perceived control were in balance, and that thinking about the past would be a risk factor for rumination which would in turn reduce well-being. Methods: Using the experience sampling method, data on current activities, associated aspects of perceived demands, control, and well-being were collected from 10 patients with ALS three times a day for two weeks. Results: Results show that perceived control was uniformly and positively associated with well-being, but that demands were only positively associated with well-being when they were perceived as controllable. Mediation analysis confirmed thinking about the past, but not thinking about the future, to be a risk factor for rumination and reduced well-being. Discussion: Findings extend our knowledge of factors contributing to well-being in ALS as not only perceived control but also perceived demands can contribute to well-being. They further show that a focus on present experiences might contribute to increased well-being. KW - amyotrophic lateral sclerosis KW - ALS KW - coping KW - well-being KW - experience sampling KW - ESM KW - reminiscence KW - rumination Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-113057 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. A1 - Flaisch, Tobias A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Raised Middle-Finger: Electrocortical Correlates of Social Conditioning with Nonverbal Affective Gestures N2 - 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. KW - analysis of variance KW - face KW - behavioral conditioning KW - conditioned response KW - semiotics KW - non-verbal communication KW - amygdala KW - human learning Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-113061 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Blankertz, Benjamin A1 - Kleih, Sonja C. A1 - Kaufmann, Tobias A1 - Hammer, Eva M. T1 - Visuo-motor coordination ability predicts performance with brain-computer interfaces controlled by modulation of sensorimotor rhythms (SMR) N2 - Modulation of sensorimotor rhythms (SMR) was suggested as a control signal for brain-computer interfaces (BCI). Yet, there is a population of users estimated between 10 to 50% not able to achieve reliable control and only about 20% of users achieve high (80–100%) performance. Predicting performance prior to BCI use would facilitate selection of the most feasible system for an individual, thus constitute a practical benefit for the user, and increase our knowledge about the correlates of BCI control. In a recent study, we predicted SMR-BCI performance from psychological variables that were assessed prior to the BCI sessions and BCI control was supported with machine-learning techniques. We described two significant psychological predictors, namely the visuo-motor coordination ability and the ability to concentrate on the task. The purpose of the current study was to replicate these results thereby validating these predictors within a neurofeedback based SMR-BCI that involved no machine learning.Thirty-three healthy BCI novices participated in a calibration session and three further neurofeedback training sessions. Two variables were related with mean SMR-BCI performance: (1) a measure for the accuracy of fine motor skills, i.e., a trade for a person’s visuo-motor control ability; and (2) subject’s “attentional impulsivity”. In a linear regression they accounted for almost 20% in variance of SMR-BCI performance, but predictor (1) failed significance. Nevertheless, on the basis of our prior regression model for sensorimotor control ability we could predict current SMR-BCI performance with an average prediction error of M = 12.07%. In more than 50% of the participants, the prediction error was smaller than 10%. Hence, psychological variables played a moderate role in predicting SMR-BCI performance in a neurofeedback approach that involved no machine learning. Future studies are needed to further consolidate (or reject) the present predictors. KW - brain-computer interfaces KW - sensorimotor rhythms KW - predictors KW - visuo-motor coordination abilities KW - attentional impulsivity Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-113084 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kaufmann, Tobias A1 - Herweg, Andreas A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - Toward brain-computer interface based wheelchair control utilizing tactually-evoked event-related potentials N2 - Background People with severe disabilities, e.g. due to neurodegenerative disease, depend on technology that allows for accurate wheelchair control. For those who cannot operate a wheelchair with a joystick, brain-computer interfaces (BCI) may offer a valuable option. Technology depending on visual or auditory input may not be feasible as these modalities are dedicated to processing of environmental stimuli (e.g. recognition of obstacles, ambient noise). Herein we thus validated the feasibility of a BCI based on tactually-evoked event-related potentials (ERP) for wheelchair control. Furthermore, we investigated use of a dynamic stopping method to improve speed of the tactile BCI system. Methods Positions of four tactile stimulators represented navigation directions (left thigh: move left; right thigh: move right; abdomen: move forward; lower neck: move backward) and N = 15 participants delivered navigation commands by focusing their attention on the desired tactile stimulus in an oddball-paradigm. Results Participants navigated a virtual wheelchair through a building and eleven participants successfully completed the task of reaching 4 checkpoints in the building. The virtual wheelchair was equipped with simulated shared-control sensors (collision avoidance), yet these sensors were rarely needed. Conclusion We conclude that most participants achieved tactile ERP-BCI control sufficient to reliably operate a wheelchair and dynamic stopping was of high value for tactile ERP classification. Finally, this paper discusses feasibility of tactile ERPs for BCI based wheelchair control. KW - Brain-computer interface KW - Event-related potentials KW - P300 KW - Tactile KW - Wheelchair KW - Dynamic stopping Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-110042 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meule, Adrian A1 - Beck Teran, Carina A1 - Berker, Jasmin A1 - Gründel, Tilman A1 - Mayerhofer, Martina A1 - Platte, Petra T1 - "On the differentiation between trait and state food craving: Half-year retest-reliability of the Food Cravings Questionnaire-Trait-reduced (FCQ-T-r) and the Food Cravings Questionnaire-State (FCQ-S)" N2 - Background: Food craving refers to an intense desire to consume a specific food. The Food Cravings Questionnaires (FCQs) assess food cravings on a trait and a state level. Method: The current study examined half-year retest-reliability of the Food Cravings Questionnaire-Trait-reduced (FCQ-T-r) and the Food Cravings Questionnaire-State (FCQ-S) and reports associations with current food deprivation in female students. Results: The FCQ-T-r had higher retest-reliability (rtt = .74) than the FCQ-S (rtt = .39). Although trait food craving was correlated with state food craving, it was unaffected by current food deprivation. Conclusions: Although state and trait food craving are interdependent, the FCQs are able to differentiate between the two. As scores of the FCQ-T-r represent a stable trait, but are also sensitive to changes in eating behavior, they may be useful for the investigation of the course of eating disorders and obesity. KW - Food craving KW - Food Cravings Questionnaires KW - Retest-reliability KW - University students Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-110585 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pfister, Roland A1 - Schwarz, Katharina A. A1 - Janczyk, Markus A1 - Dale, Rick A1 - Freeman, Jonathan B. T1 - Good things peak in pairs: a note on the bimodality coefficient JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - A commentary on Assessing bimodality to detect the presence of a dual cognitive process by Freeman, J. B., and Dale, R. (2013). Behav. Res. Methods 45, 83–97. doi: 10.3758/s13428-012-0225-x KW - distribution analysis KW - bimodality Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-190413 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Foerster, Anna A1 - Pfister, Roland A1 - Schmidts, Constantin A1 - Dignath, David A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Honesty saves time (and justifications) JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - A commentary on Honesty requires time (and lack of justifications) by Shalvi, S., Eldar, O., and Bereby-Meyer, Y. (2012). Psychol. Sci. 23, 1264–1270. doi: 10.1177/0956797612443835 KW - honesty Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-190451 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meule, Adrian A1 - Vögele, Claus T1 - The psychology of eating JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - No abstract available. Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-190460 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meule, Adrian T1 - Impulsivity and overeating: a closer look at the subscales of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - No abstract available. KW - Impulsivity KW - Overeating Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-190497 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meule, Adrian A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Blechert, Jens T1 - Time course of electrocortical food-cue responses during cognitive regulation of craving JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - In our current obesogenic environment, exposure to visual food-cues can easily lead to craving and overeating because short-term, pleasurable effects of food intake dominate over the anticipated long-term adverse effects such as weight gain and associated health problems. Here we contrasted these two conditions during food-cue presentation while acquiring event-related potentials (ERPs) and subjective craving ratings. Female participants (n = 25) were presented with either high-calorie (HC) or low-calorie (LC) food images under instructions to imagine either immediate (NOW) or long-term effects (LATER) of consumption. On subjective ratings for HC foods, the LATER perspective reduced cravings as compared to the NOW perspective. For LC foods, by contrast, craving increased under the LATER perspective. Early ERPs (occipital N1, 150-200 ms) were sensitive to food type but not to perspective. Late ERPs (late positive potential, LPP, 350-550 ms) were larger in the HC-LATER condition than in all other conditions, possibly indicating that a cognitive focus on negative long-term consequences induced negative arousal. This enhancement for HC-LATER attenuated to the level of the LC conditions during the later slow wave (550-3000 ms), but amplitude in the HC-NOW condition was larger than in all other conditions, possibly due to a delayed appetitive response. Across all conditions, LPP amplitudes were positively correlated with self-reported emotional eating. In sum, results reveal that regulation effects are secondary to an early attentional analysis of food type and dynamically evolve over time. Adopting a long-term perspective on eating might promote a healthier food choice across a range of food types. KW - EEG KW - disorder examination questionnaire KW - eating disorder KW - emotion regulation KW - future directions KW - attention KW - brain KW - high-calorie KW - german version KW - bulimia nervosa KW - chocolate images KW - event-related potentials KW - eating KW - calorie content KW - food-cues KW - food craving KW - LPP KW - slow wave Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-122566 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 4 IS - 669 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fischer, Rico A1 - Plessow, Franziska A1 - Kiesel, Andrea T1 - The effects of alerting signals in masked priming JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Alerting signals often serve to reduce temporal uncertainty by predicting the time of stimulus onset. The resulting response time benefits have often been explained by facilitated translation of stimulus codes into response codes on the basis of established stimulus-response (S-R) links. In paradigms of masked S-R priming alerting signals also modulate response activation processes triggered by subliminally presented prime stimuli. In the present study we tested whether facilitation of visuo-motor translation processes due to alerting signals critically depends on established S-R links. Alerting signals resulted in significantly enhanced masked priming effects for masked prime stimuli that included and that did not include established S-R links fi.e., target vs. novel primes). Yet, the alerting-priming interaction was more pronounced for target than for novel primes. These results suggest that effects of alerting signals on masked priming are especially evident when S-R links between prime and target exist. At the same time, an alerting-priming interaction also for novel primes suggests that alerting signals also facilitate stimulus-response translation processes when masked prime stimuli provide action-trigger conditions in terms of programmed S-R links. KW - response selection KW - visual cortex KW - temporal predictability KW - stimuli KW - primes KW - target primes KW - simon task KW - automaticity KW - performance KW - perception KW - mechanism KW - novel primes KW - action-trigger KW - masked priming KW - accessory KW - alerting signal Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-122581 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 4 IS - 448 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ehrenfeld, Stephan A1 - Herbort, Oliver A1 - Butz, Martin V. T1 - Modular neuron-based body estimation: maintaining consistency over different limbs, modalities, and frames of reference JF - Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience N2 - This paper addresses the question of how the brain maintains a probabilistic body state estimate over time from a modeling perspective. The neural Modular Modality Frame (nMMF) model simulates such a body state estimation process by continuously integrating redundant, multimodal body state information sources. The body state estimate itself is distributed over separate, but bidirectionally interacting modules. nMMF compares the incoming sensory and present body state information across the interacting modules and fuses the information sources accordingly. At the same time, nMMF enforces body state estimation consistency across the modules. nMMF is able to detect conflicting sensory information and to consequently decrease the influence of implausible sensor sources on the fly. In contrast to the previously published Modular Modality Frame (MMF) model, nMMF offers a biologically plausible neural implementation based on distributed, probabilistic population codes. Besides its neural plausibility, the neural encoding has the advantage of enabling (a) additional probabilistic information flow across the separate body state estimation modules and (b) the representation of arbitrary probability distributions of a body state. The results show that the neural estimates can detect and decrease the impact of false sensory information, can propagate conflicting information across modules, and can improve overall estimation accuracy due to additional module interactions. Even bodily illusions, such as the rubber hand illusion, can be simulated with nMMF. We conclude with an outlook on the potential of modeling human data and of invoking goal-directed behavioral control. KW - information KW - posterior parietal cortex KW - hand KW - population code KW - conflicting information KW - multimodal interaction KW - probabilistic inference KW - modular body schema KW - sensor fusion KW - multisensory perception KW - fusion KW - representation KW - multisensory processing KW - see KW - implementation KW - perspective KW - multisensory integration KW - population codes Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-122253 VL - 7 IS - 148 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schwarz, Katharina A. A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. A1 - Gerdes, Antje B. M. A1 - Mühlberger, Andreas A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Why are you looking like that? How the context influences evaluation and processing of human faces JF - Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience N2 - 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. KW - social anxiety KW - facial expression KW - context KW - self-reference Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-132126 VL - 8 IS - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Halder, Sebastian A1 - Hammer, Eva Maria A1 - Kleih, Sonja Claudia A1 - Bogdan, Martin A1 - Rosenstiel, Wolfgang A1 - Birbaumer, Niels A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - Prediction of Auditory and Visual P300 Brain-Computer Interface Aptitude JF - PLoS ONE N2 - Objective Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) provide a non-muscular communication channel for patients with late-stage motoneuron disease (e.g., amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)) or otherwise motor impaired people and are also used for motor rehabilitation in chronic stroke. Differences in the ability to use a BCI vary from person to person and from session to session. A reliable predictor of aptitude would allow for the selection of suitable BCI paradigms. For this reason, we investigated whether P300 BCI aptitude could be predicted from a short experiment with a standard auditory oddball. Methods Forty healthy participants performed an electroencephalography (EEG) based visual and auditory P300-BCI spelling task in a single session. In addition, prior to each session an auditory oddball was presented. Features extracted from the auditory oddball were analyzed with respect to predictive power for BCI aptitude. Results Correlation between auditory oddball response and P300 BCI accuracy revealed a strong relationship between accuracy and N2 amplitude and the amplitude of a late ERP component between 400 and 600 ms. Interestingly, the P3 amplitude of the auditory oddball response was not correlated with accuracy. Conclusions Event-related potentials recorded during a standard auditory oddball session moderately predict aptitude in an audiory and highly in a visual P300 BCI. The predictor will allow for faster paradigm selection. Significance Our method will reduce strain on patients because unsuccessful training may be avoided, provided the results can be generalized to the patient population. KW - experimental design KW - acoustic signals KW - amyotrophic lateral sclerosis KW - man-computer interface KW - electroencephalography KW - event-related potentials KW - physical properties KW - vision Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-130327 VL - 8 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kleih, Sonja C. A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - Empathy, motivation, and P300-BCI performance JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Motivation moderately influences brain–computer interface (BCI) performance in healthy subjects when monetary reward is used to manipulate extrinsic motivation. However, the motivation of severely paralyzed patients, who are potentially in need for BCI, could mainly be internal and thus, an intrinsic motivator may be more powerful. Also healthy subjects who participate in BCI studies could be internally motivated as they may wish to contribute to research and thus extrinsic motivation by monetary reward would be less important than the content of the study. In this respect, motivation could be defined as “motivation-to-help.” The aim of this study was to investigate, whether subjects with high motivation for helping and who are highly empathic would perform better with a BCI controlled by event-related potentials (P300-BCI). We included N = 20 healthy young participants naïve to BCI and grouped them according to their motivation for participating in a BCI study in a low and highly motivated group. Motivation was further manipulated with interesting or boring presentations about BCI and the possibility to help patients. Motivation for helping did neither influence BCI performance nor the P300 amplitude. Post hoc, subjects were re-grouped according to their ability for perspective taking. We found significantly higher P300 amplitudes on parietal electrodes in participants with a low ability for perspective taking and therefore, lower empathy, as compared to participants with higher empathy. The lack of an effect of motivation on BCI performance contradicts previous findings and thus, requires further investigation. We speculate that subjects with higher empathy who are good perspective takers with regards to patients in potential need of BCI, may be more emotionally involved and therefore, less able to allocate attention on the BCI task at hand. KW - psychological variables KW - empathy KW - motivation KW - brain–computer interface KW - ERP KW - P300 Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-130559 VL - 7 IS - 642 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mussel, Patrick A1 - Göritz, Anja S. A1 - Hewig, Johannes T1 - The value of a smile: Facial expression affects ultimatum-game responses JF - Judgment and Decision Making N2 - In social interaction, the facial expression of an opponent contains information that may influence the interaction. We asked whether facial expression affects decision-making in the ultimatum game. In this two-person game, the proposer divides a sum of money into two parts, one for each player, and then the responder decides whether to accept the offer or reject it. Rejection means that neither player gets any money. Results of a large-sample study support our hypothesis that offers from proposers with a smiling facial expression are more often accepted, compared to a neutral facial expression. Moreover, we found lower acceptance rates for offers from proposers with an angry facial expression. KW - ultimatum game KW - emotions KW - decision-making KW - facial expressions Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-129639 VL - 8 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Eder, Andreas B. A1 - Rothermund, Klaus A1 - De Houwer, Jan T1 - Affective Compatibility between Stimuli and Response Goals: A Primer for a New Implicit Measure of Attitudes JF - PLoS ONE N2 - We examined whether a voluntary response becomes associated with the (affective) meaning of intended response effects. Four experiments revealed that coupling a keypress with positive or negative consequences produces affective compatibility effects when the keypress has to be executed in response to positively or negatively evaluated stimulus categories. In Experiment 1, positive words were evaluated faster with a keypress that turned the words ON (versus OFF), whereas negative words were evaluated faster with a keypress that turned the words OFF (versus ON). Experiment 2 showed that this compatibility effect is reversed if an aversive tone is turned ON and OFF with keypresses. Experiment 3 revealed that keypresses acquire an affective meaning even when the association between the responses and their effects is variable and intentionally reconfigured before each trial. Experiment 4 used affective response effects to assess implicit ingroup favoritism, showing that the measure is sensitive to the valence of categories and not to the valence of exemplars. Results support the hypothesis that behavioral reactions become associated with the affective meaning of the intended response goal, which has important implications for the understanding and construction of implicit attitude measures. KW - German people KW - reaction time KW - non-verbal communication KW - social psychology KW - cognitive psychology KW - hands KW - priming (psychology) KW - social research Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-129872 VL - 8 IS - 11 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - Mühlberger, Andreas A1 - Glotzbach-Schoon, Evelyn A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Pain predictability reverses valence ratings of a relief-associated stimulus JF - Front in Systems Neuroscience N2 - Relief from pain is positively valenced and entails reward-like properties. Notably, stimuli that became associated with pain relief elicit reward-like implicit responses too, but are explicitly evaluated by humans as aversive. Since the unpredictability of pain makes pain more aversive, this study examined the hypotheses that the predictability of pain also modulates the valence of relief-associated stimuli. In two studies, we presented one conditioned stimulus \((_{FORWARD}CS+)\) before a painful unconditioned stimulus (US), another stimulus \((_{BACKWARD}CS+)\) after the painful US, and a third stimulus (CS−) was never associated with the US. In Study 1, \(_{FORWARD}CS+\) predicted half of the USs while the other half was delivered unwarned and followed by \(_{BACKWARD}CS+\). In Study 2, all USs were predicted by \(_{FORWARD}CS+\) and followed by \(_{BACKWARD}CS+\). In Study 1 both \(_{FORWARD}CS+\) and \(_{BACKWARD}CS+\) were rated as negatively valenced and high arousing after conditioning, while \(_{BACKWARD}CS+\) in Study 2 acquired positive valence and low arousal. Startle amplitude was significantly attenuated to \(_{BACKWARD}CS+\) compared to \(_{FORWARD}CS+\) in Study 2, but did not differ among CSs in Study 1. In summary, predictability of aversive events reverses the explicit valence of a relief-associated stimulus. KW - threat unpredictability KW - implicit and explicit responses KW - forward conditioning KW - backward conditioning KW - pain relief Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-129275 VL - 7 IS - 53 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kopf, Juliane A1 - Dresler, Thomas A1 - Reicherts, Philipp A1 - Herrmann, Martin J. A1 - Reif, Andreas T1 - The Effect of Emotional Content on Brain Activation and the Late Positive Potential in a Word n-back Task JF - PLoS ONE N2 - Introduction There is mounting evidence for the influence of emotional content on working memory performance. This is particularly important in light of the emotion processing that needs to take place when emotional content interferes with executive functions. In this study, we used emotional words of different valence but with similar arousal levels in an n-back task. Methods We examined the effects on activation in the prefrontal cortex by means of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and on the late positive potential (LPP). FNIRS and LPP data were examined in 30 healthy subjects. Results Behavioral results show an influence of valence on the error rate depending on the difficulty of the task: more errors were made when the valence was negative and the task difficult. Brain activation was dependent both on the difficulty of the task and on the valence: negative valence of a word diminished the increase in activation, whereas positive valence did not influence the increase in activation, while difficulty levels increased. The LPP also differentiated between the different valences, and in addition was influenced by the task difficulty, the more difficult the task, the less differentiation could be observed. Conclusions Summarized, this study shows the influence of valence on a verbal working memory task. When a word contained a negative valence, the emotional content seemed to take precedence in contrast to words containing a positive valence. Working memory and emotion processing sites seemed to overlap and compete for resources even when words are carriers of the emotional content. KW - analysis of variance KW - electrode recording KW - electroencephalography KW - emotions KW - eyes KW - near-infrared spectroscopy KW - reaction time KW - working memory Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-96687 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Platte, Petra A1 - Herbert, Cornelia A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Breslin, Paul A. S. T1 - Oral Perceptions of Fat and Taste Stimuli Are Modulated by Affect and Mood Induction JF - PLoS ONE N2 - This study examined the impact of three clinical psychological variables (non-pathological levels of depression and anxiety, as well as experimentally manipulated mood) on fat and taste perception in healthy subjects. After a baseline orosensory evaluation, ‘sad’, ‘happy’ and ‘neutral’ video clips were presented to induce corresponding moods in eighty participants. Following mood manipulation, subjects rated five different oral stimuli, appearing sweet, umami, sour, bitter, fatty, which were delivered at five different concentrations each. Depression levels were assessed with Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI) and anxiety levels were assessed via the Spielberger’s STAI-trait and state questionnaire. Overall, subjects were able to track the concentrations of the stimuli correctly, yet depression level affected taste ratings. First, depression scores were positively correlated with sucrose ratings. Second, subjects with depression scores above the sample median rated sucrose and quinine as more intense after mood induction (positive, negative and neutral). Third and most important, the group with enhanced depression scores did not rate low and high fat stimuli differently after positive or negative mood induction, whereas, during baseline or during the non-emotional neutral condition they rated the fat intensity as increasing with concentration. Consistent with others’ prior observations we also found that sweet and bitter stimuli at baseline were rated as more intense by participants with higher anxiety scores and that after positive and negative mood induction, citric acid was rated as stronger tasting compared to baseline. The observation that subjects with mild subclinical depression rated low and high fat stimuli similarly when in positive or negative mood is novel and likely has potential implications for unhealthy eating patterns. This deficit may foster unconscious eating of fatty foods in sub-clinical mildly depressed populations. KW - analysis of variance KW - anxiety KW - citric acid KW - depression KW - glutamate KW - quinine KW - sensory perception KW - sucrose Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-96421 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Glotzbach-Schoon, Evelyn A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - Reif, Andreas A1 - Ewald, Heike A1 - Tröger, Christian A1 - Baumann, Christian A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Mühlberger, Andreas T1 - Contextual fear conditioning in virtual reality is affected by 5HTTLPR and NPSR1 polymorphisms: effects on fear-potentiated startle JF - Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience N2 - The serotonin (5-HT) and neuropeptide S (NPS) systems are discussed as important genetic modulators of fear and sustained anxiety contributing to the etiology of anxiety disorders. Sustained anxiety is a crucial characteristic of most anxiety disorders which likely develops through contextual fear conditioning. This study investigated if and how genetic alterations of the 5-HT and the NPS systems as well as their interaction modulate contextual fear conditioning; specifically, function polymorphic variants in the genes coding for the 5-HT transporter (5HTT) and the NPS receptor (NPSR1) were studied. A large group of healthy volunteers was therefore stratified for 5HTTLPR (S+ vs. LL carriers) and NPSR1 rs324981 (T+ vs. AA carriers) polymorphisms resulting in four genotype groups (S+/T+, S+/AA, LL/T+, LL/AA) of 20 participants each. All participants underwent contextual fear conditioning and extinction using a virtual reality (VR) paradigm. During acquisition, one virtual office room (anxiety context, CXT+) was paired with an unpredictable electric stimulus (unconditioned stimulus, US), whereas another virtual office room was not paired with any US (safety context, CXT−). During extinction no US was administered. Anxiety responses were quantified by fear-potentiated startle and ratings. Most importantly, we found a gene × gene interaction on fear-potentiated startle. Only carriers of both risk alleles (S+/T+) exhibited higher startle responses in CXT+ compared to CXT−. In contrast, anxiety ratings were only influenced by the NPSR1 polymorphism with AA carriers showing higher anxiety ratings in CXT+ as compared to CXT−. Our results speak in favor of a two level account of fear conditioning with diverging effects on implicit vs. explicit fear responses. Enhanced contextual fear conditioning as reflected in potentiated startle responses may be an endophenotype for anxiety disorders. KW - 5HTTLPR KW - NPSR1 KW - gene × gene interaction KW - contextual fear conditioning KW - fear-potentiated startle Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-96516 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Herbert, Cornelia A1 - Sfärlea, Anca A1 - Blumenthal, Terry T1 - Your emotion or mine: labeling feelings alters emotional face perception—an ERP study on automatic and intentional affect labeling JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Empirical evidence suggests that words are powerful regulators of emotion processing. Although a number of studies have used words as contextual cues for emotion processing, the role of what is being labeled by the words (i.e., one's own emotion as compared to the emotion expressed by the sender) is poorly understood. The present study reports results from two experiments which used ERP methodology to evaluate the impact of emotional faces and self- vs. sender-related emotional pronoun-noun pairs (e.g., my fear vs. his fear) as cues for emotional face processing. The influence of self- and sender-related cues on the processing of fearful, angry and happy faces was investigated in two contexts: an automatic (experiment 1) and intentional affect labeling task (experiment 2), along with control conditions of passive face processing. ERP patterns varied as a function of the label's reference (self vs. sender) and the intentionality of the labeling task (experiment 1 vs. experiment 2). In experiment 1, self-related labels increased the motivational relevance of the emotional faces in the time-window of the EPN component. Processing of sender-related labels improved emotion recognition specifically for fearful faces in the N170 time-window. Spontaneous processing of affective labels modulated later stages of face processing as well. Amplitudes of the late positive potential (LPP) were reduced for fearful, happy, and angry faces relative to the control condition of passive viewing. During intentional regulation (experiment 2) amplitudes of the LPP were enhanced for emotional faces when subjects used the self-related emotion labels to label their own emotion during face processing, and they rated the faces as higher in arousal than the emotional faces that had been presented in the “label sender's emotion” condition or the passive viewing condition. The present results argue in favor of a differentiated view of language-as-context for emotion processing. KW - emotion regulation KW - language-as-context KW - affect labeling KW - face processing KW - event-related brain potentials KW - social context KW - social cognition KW - perspective taking Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-97065 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kaufmann, Tobias A1 - Holz, Elisa M. A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - Comparison of tactile, auditory, and visual modality for brain-computer interface use: a case study with a patient in the locked-in state JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - This paper describes a case study with a patient in the classic locked-in state, who currently has no means of independent communication. Following a user-centered approach, we investigated event-related potentials (ERP) elicited in different modalities for use in brain-computer interface (BCI) systems. Such systems could provide her with an alternative communication channel. To investigate the most viable modality for achieving BCI based communication, classic oddball paradigms (1 rare and 1 frequent stimulus, ratio 1:5) in the visual, auditory and tactile modality were conducted (2 runs per modality). Classifiers were built on one run and tested offline on another run (and vice versa). In these paradigms, the tactile modality was clearly superior to other modalities, displaying high offline accuracy even when classification was performed on single trials only. Consequently, we tested the tactile paradigm online and the patient successfully selected targets without any error. Furthermore, we investigated use of the visual or tactile modality for different BCI systems with more than two selection options. In the visual modality, several BCI paradigms were tested offline. Neither matrix-based nor so-called gaze-independent paradigms constituted a means of control. These results may thus question the gaze-independence of current gaze-independent approaches to BCI. A tactile four-choice BCI resulted in high offline classification accuracies. Yet, online use raised various issues. Although performance was clearly above chance, practical daily life use appeared unlikely when compared to other communication approaches (e.g., partner scanning). Our results emphasize the need for user-centered design in BCI development including identification of the best stimulus modality for a particular user. Finally, the paper discusses feasibility of EEG-based BCI systems for patients in classic locked-in state and compares BCI to other AT solutions that we also tested during the study. KW - brain-computer interface KW - tactile auditory and visual modality KW - locked-in syndrome KW - user-centered design KW - end-user testing KW - assistive technology Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-97079 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Halder, Sebastian A1 - Ruf, Carolin Anne A1 - Furdea, Adrian A1 - Pasqualotto, Emanuele A1 - De Massari, Daniele A1 - van der Heiden, Linda A1 - Bogdan, Martin A1 - Rosenstiel, Wolfgang A1 - Birbaumer, Niels A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Matuz, Tamara T1 - Prediction of P300 BCI Aptitude in Severe Motor Impairment JF - PLoS ONE N2 - Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) provide a non-muscular communication channel for persons with severe motor impairments. Previous studies have shown that the aptitude with which a BCI can be controlled varies from person to person. A reliable predictor of performance could facilitate selection of a suitable BCI paradigm. Eleven severely motor impaired participants performed three sessions of a P300 BCI web browsing task. Before each session auditory oddball data were collected to predict the BCI aptitude of the participants exhibited in the current session. We found a strong relationship of early positive and negative potentials around 200 ms (elicited with the auditory oddball task) with performance. The amplitude of the P2 (r = −0.77) and of the N2 (r = −0.86) had the strongest correlations. Aptitude prediction using an auditory oddball was successful. The finding that the N2 amplitude is a stronger predictor of performance than P3 amplitude was reproduced after initially showing this effect with a healthy sample of BCI users. This will reduce strain on the end-users by minimizing the time needed to find suitable paradigms and inspire new approaches to improve performance. KW - amyothropic lateral sclerosis KW - electrode potentials KW - electroencephalography KW - event-related potentials KW - functional magnetic imaging KW - human performance KW - man-computer interface KW - topography Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-97268 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Biehl, Stefanie C. A1 - Ehlis, Ann-Christine A1 - Müller, Laura D. A1 - Niklaus, Andrea A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Herrmann, Martin J. T1 - The impact of task relevance and degree of distraction on stimulus processing JF - BMC Neuroscience N2 - Background The impact of task relevance on event-related potential amplitudes of early visual processing was previously demonstrated. Study designs, however, differ greatly, not allowing simultaneous investigation of how both degree of distraction and task relevance influence processing variations. In our study, we combined different features of previous tasks. We used a modified 1-back task in which task relevant and task irrelevant stimuli were alternately presented. The task irrelevant stimuli could be from the same or from a different category as the task relevant stimuli, thereby producing high and low distracting task irrelevant stimuli. In addition, the paradigm comprised a passive viewing condition. Thus, our paradigm enabled us to compare the processing of task relevant stimuli, task irrelevant stimuli with differing degrees of distraction, and passively viewed stimuli. EEG data from twenty participants was collected and mean P100 and N170 amplitudes were analyzed. Furthermore, a potential connection of stimulus processing and symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was investigated. Results Our results show a modulation of peak N170 amplitudes by task relevance. N170 amplitudes to task relevant stimuli were significantly higher than to high distracting task irrelevant or passively viewed stimuli. In addition, amplitudes to low distracting task irrelevant stimuli were significantly higher than to high distracting stimuli. N170 amplitudes to passively viewed stimuli were not significantly different from either kind of task irrelevant stimuli. Participants with more symptoms of hyperactivity and impulsivity showed decreased N170 amplitudes across all task conditions. On a behavioral level, lower N170 enhancement efficiency was significantly correlated with false alarm responses. Conclusions Our results point to a processing enhancement of task relevant stimuli. Unlike P100 amplitudes, N170 amplitudes were strongly influenced by enhancement and enhancement efficiency seemed to have direct behavioral consequences. These findings have potential implications for models of clinical disorders affecting selective attention, especially ADHD. KW - Selective attention KW - Working memory KW - Cognitive control KW - P100 KW - N170 KW - ADHD Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-97271 UR - http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/14/107 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Halder, Sebastian A1 - Varkuti, Balint A1 - Bogdan, Martin A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Rosenstiel, Wolfgang A1 - Sitaram, Ranganatha A1 - Birbaumer, Niels T1 - Prediction of brain-computer interface aptitude from individual brain structure JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Objective: Brain-computer interface (BCI) provide a non-muscular communication channel for patients with impairments of the motor system. A significant number of BCI users is unable to obtain voluntary control of a BCI-system in proper time. This makes methods that can be used to determine the aptitude of a user necessary. Methods: We hypothesized that integrity and connectivity of involved white matter connections may serve as a predictor of individual BCI-performance. Therefore, we analyzed structural data from anatomical scans and DTI of motor imagery BCI-users differentiated into high and low BCI-aptitude groups based on their overall performance. Results: Using a machine learning classification method we identified discriminating structural brain trait features and correlated the best features with a continuous measure of individual BCI-performance. Prediction of the aptitude group of each participant was possible with near perfect accuracy (one error). Conclusions: Tissue volumetric analysis yielded only poor classification results. In contrast, the structural integrity and myelination quality of deep white matter structures such as the Corpus Callosum, Cingulum, and Superior Fronto-Occipital Fascicle were positively correlated with individual BCI-performance. Significance: This confirms that structural brain traits contribute to individual performance in BCI use. KW - BCI KW - motor imagery KW - aptitude KW - DTI KW - fractional anisotropy Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-96558 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Halder, Sebastian A1 - Hammer, Eva Maria A1 - Kleih, Sonja Claudia A1 - Bogdan, Martin A1 - Rosenstiel, Wolfgang A1 - Birbaumer, Nils A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - Prediction of Auditory and Visual P300 Brain-Computer Interface Aptitude N2 - Objective: Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) provide a non-muscular communication channel for patients with late-stage motoneuron disease (e.g., amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)) or otherwise motor impaired people and are also used for motor rehabilitation in chronic stroke. Differences in the ability to use a BCI vary from person to person and from session to session. A reliable predictor of aptitude would allow for the selection of suitable BCI paradigms. For this reason, we investigated whether P300 BCI aptitude could be predicted from a short experiment with a standard auditory oddball. Methods: Forty healthy participants performed an electroencephalography (EEG) based visual and auditory P300-BCI spelling task in a single session. In addition, prior to each session an auditory oddball was presented. Features extracted from the auditory oddball were analyzed with respect to predictive power for BCI aptitude. Results: Correlation between auditory oddball response and P300 BCI accuracy revealed a strong relationship between accuracy and N2 amplitude and the amplitude of a late ERP component between 400 and 600 ms. Interestingly, the P3 amplitude of the auditory oddball response was not correlated with accuracy. Conclusions: Event-related potentials recorded during a standard auditory oddball session moderately predict aptitude in an audiory and highly in a visual P300 BCI. The predictor will allow for faster paradigm selection. Significance: Our method will reduce strain on patients because unsuccessful training may be avoided, provided the results can be generalized to the patient population. KW - Psychologie Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-77992 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Herbert, Cornelia A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Vögele, Klaus T1 - Risk for Eating Disorders Modulates Startle-Responses to Body Words N2 - Body image disturbances are core symptoms of eating disorders (EDs). Recent evidence suggests that changes in body image may occur prior to ED onset and are not restricted to in-vivo exposure (e.g. mirror image), but also evident during presentation of abstract cues such as body shape and weight-related words. In the present study startle modulation, heart rate and subjective evaluations were examined during reading of body words and neutral words in 41 student female volunteers screened for risk of EDs. The aim was to determine if responses to body words are attributable to a general negativity bias regardless of ED risk or if activated, ED relevant negative body schemas facilitate priming of defensive responses. Heart rate and word ratings differed between body words and neutral words in the whole female sample, supporting a general processing bias for body weight and shape-related concepts in young women regardless of ED risk. Startle modulation was specifically related to eating disorder symptoms, as was indicated by significant positive correlations with self-reported body dissatisfaction. These results emphasize the relevance of examining body schema representations as a function of ED risk across different levels of responding. Peripheral-physiological measures such as the startle reflex could possibly be used as predictors of females’ risk for developing EDs in the future. KW - Psychologie Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-78140 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meule, Adrian A1 - Fath, Katharina A1 - Real, Ruben G. L. A1 - Sütterlin, Stefan A1 - Vögele, Claus A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - Quality of life, emotion regulation, and heart rate variability in individuals with intellectual disabilities and concomitant impaired vision JF - Psychology of Well-Being: Theory, Research and Practice N2 - Background Positive associations have been found between quality of life, emotion regulation strategies, and heart rate variability (HRV) in people without intellectual disabilities. However, emotion regulation and HRV have rarely been investigated in people with intellectual disabilities. Assessment of subjectively reported quality of life and emotion regulation strategies in this population is even more difficult when participants are also visually impaired. Methods Subjective and objective quality of life, emotion regulation strategies, and HRV at rest were measured in a sample of people with intellectual disabilities and concomitant impaired vision (N = 35). Heart rate was recorded during a 10 min resting period. For the assessment of quality of life and emotion regulation, custom made tactile versions of questionnaire-based instruments were used that enabled participants to grasp response categories. Results The combined use of reappraisal and suppression as emotion regulation strategies was associated with higher HRV and quality of life. HRV was associated with objective quality of life only. Emotion regulation strategies partially mediated the relationship between HRV and quality of life. Conclusions Results replicate findings about associations between quality of life, emotion regulation, and HRV and extend them to individuals with intellectual disabilities. Furthermore, this study demonstrated that quality of life and emotion regulation could be assessed in such populations even with concomitant impaired vision with modified tactile versions of established questionnaires. HRV may be used as a physiological index to evaluate physical and affective conditions in this population. KW - Quality of life KW - Emotion regulation KW - Heart rate variability KW - Cardiac autonomic regulation KW - Intellectual disability KW - Impaired vision Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-96247 UR - http://www.psywb.com/content/3/1/1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kirsch, Wladimir A1 - Herbort, Oliver A1 - Butz, Martin V. A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Influence of Motor Planning on Distance Perception within the Peripersonal Space N2 - We examined whether movement costs as defined by movement magnitude have an impact on distance perception in near space. In Experiment 1, participants were given a numerical cue regarding the amplitude of a hand movement to be carried out. Before the movement execution, the length of a visual distance had to be judged. These visual distances were judged to be larger, the larger the amplitude of the concurrently prepared hand movement was. In Experiment 2, in which numerical cues were merely memorized without concurrent movement planning, this general increase of distance with cue size was not observed. The results of these experiments indicate that visual perception of near space is specifically affected by the costs of planned hand movements. KW - Psychologie Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-75332 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Conzelmann, Annette A1 - Reif, Andreas A1 - Jacob, Christian A1 - Weyers, Peter A1 - Lesch, Klaus-Peter A1 - Lutz, Beat A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - A polymorphism in the gene of the endocannabinoid-degrading enzyme FAAH (FAAH C385A) is associated with emotional-motivational reactivity JF - Psychopharmacology N2 - RATIONALE: The endocannabinoid (eCB) system is implicated in several psychiatric disorders. Investigating emotional-motivational dysfunctions as underlying mechanisms, a study in humans revealed that in the C385A polymorphism of the fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH), the degrading enzyme of the eCB anandamide (AEA), A carriers, who are characterized by increased signaling of AEA as compared to C/C carriers, exhibited reduced brain reactivity towards unpleasant faces and enhanced reactivity towards reward. However, the association of eCB system with emotional-motivational reactivity is complex and bidirectional due to upcoming compensatory processes. OBJECTIVES: Therefore, we further investigated the relationship of the FAAH polymorphism and emotional-motivational reactivity in humans. METHODS: We assessed the affect-modulated startle, and ratings of valence and arousal in response to higher arousing pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures in 67 FAAH C385A C/C carriers and 45 A carriers. RESULTS: Contrarily to the previous functional MRI study, A carriers compared to C/C carriers exhibited an increased startle potentiation and therefore emotional responsiveness towards unpleasant picture stimuli and reduced startle inhibition indicating reduced emotional reactivity in response to pleasant pictures, while both groups did not differ in ratings of arousal and valence. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings emphasize the bidirectionality and thorough examination of the eCB system's impact on emotional reactivity as a central endophenotype underlying various psychiatric disorders. KW - startle reflex KW - endocannabinoid KW - FAAH KW - genetics KW - emotion Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-126845 VL - 224 IS - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reuss, Heiko A1 - Kiesel, Andrea A1 - Kunde, Wilfried A1 - Wühr, Peter T1 - A cue from the unconscious - masked symbols prompt spatial anticipation JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Anticipating where an event will occur enables us to instantaneously respond to events that occur at the expected location. Here we investigated if such spatial anticipations can be triggered by symbolic information that participants cannot consciously see. In two experiments involving a Posner cueing task and a visual search task, a central cue informed participants about the likely location of the next target stimulus. In half of the trials, this cue was rendered invisible by pattern masking. In both experiments, visible cues led to cueing effects, that is, faster responses after valid compared to invalid cues. Importantly, even masked cues caused cueing effects, though to a lesser extent. Additionally, we analyzed effects on attention that persist from one trial to the subsequent trial. We found that spatial anticipations are able to interfere with newly formed spatial anticipations and influence orienting of attention in the subsequent trial. When the preceding cue was visible, the corresponding spatial anticipation persisted to an extent that prevented a noticeable effect of masked cues. The effects of visible cues were likewise modulated by previous spatial anticipations, but were strong enough to also exert an impact on attention themselves. Altogether, the results suggest that spatial anticipations can be formed on the basis of unconscious stimuli, but that interfering influences like still active spatial anticipations can suppress this effect. KW - masked priming KW - unconscious processing KW - anticipation KW - endogenous shifts of attention KW - spatial cueing Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-123971 VL - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meule, Adrian A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - The translation of substance dependence criteria to food-related behaviors: different views and interpretations. JF - Frontiers in psychiatry N2 - No abstract available. Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-123092 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sütterlin, Stefan A1 - Paap, Muirne C. S. A1 - Babic, Stana A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Vögele, Claus T1 - Rumination and Age: Some Things Get Better JF - Journal of Aging Research N2 - Rumination has been defined as a mode of responding to distress that involves passively focusing one's attention on symptoms of distress without taking action. This dysfunctional response style intensifies depressed mood, impairs interpersonal problem solving, and leads to more pessimistic future perspectives and less social support. As most of these results were obtained from younger people, it remains unclear how age affects ruminative thinking. Three hundred members of the general public ranging in age from 15 to 87 years were asked about their ruminative styles using the Response Styles Questionnaire (RSQ), depression and satisfaction with life. A Mokken Scale analysis confirmed the two-factor structure of the RSQ with brooding and reflective pondering as subcomponents of rumination. Older participants (63 years and older) reported less ruminative thinking than other age groups. Life satisfaction was associated with brooding and highest for the earlier and latest life stages investigated in this study. Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-124356 VL - 2012 IS - 267327 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stippekohl, Bastian A1 - Winkler, Markus H. A1 - Walter, Bertram A1 - Kagerer, Sabine A1 - Mucha, Ronald F. A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Vaitl, Dieter A1 - Stark, Rudolf T1 - Neural Responses to Smoking Stimuli Are Influenced by Smokers' Attitudes towards Their Own Smoking Behaviour JF - PLoS One N2 - An important feature of addiction is the high drug craving that may promote the continuation of consumption. Environmental stimuli classically conditioned to drug-intake have a strong motivational power for addicts and can elicit craving. However, addicts differ in the attitudes towards their own consumption behavior: some are content with drug taking (consonant users) whereas others are discontent (dissonant users). Such differences may be important for clinical practice because the experience of dissonance might enhance the likelihood to consider treatment. This fMRI study investigated in smokers whether these different attitudes influence subjective and neural responses to smoking stimuli. Based on self-characterization, smokers were divided into consonant and dissonant smokers. These two groups were presented smoking stimuli and neutral stimuli. Former studies have suggested differences in the impact of smoking stimuli depending on the temporal stage of the smoking ritual they are associated with. Therefore, we used stimuli associated with the beginning (BEGIN-smoking-stimuli) and stimuli associated with the terminal stage (END-smoking-stimuli) of the smoking ritual as distinct stimulus categories. Stimulus ratings did not differ between both groups. Brain data showed that BEGIN-smoking-stimuli led to enhanced mesolimbic responses (amygdala, hippocampus, insula) in dissonant compared to consonant smokers. In response to END-smoking-stimuli, dissonant smokers showed reduced mesocortical responses (orbitofrontal cortex, subcallosal cortex) compared to consonant smokers. These results suggest that smoking stimuli with a high incentive value (BEGIN-smoking-stimuli) are more appetitive for dissonant than consonant smokers at least on the neural level. To the contrary, smoking stimuli with low incentive value (END-smoking-stimuli) seem to be less appetitive for dissonant smokers than consonant smokers. These differences might be one reason why dissonant smokers experience difficulties in translating their attitudes into an actual behavior change. KW - smoking habits KW - addiction KW - amygdala KW - behavioral addiction KW - addicts KW - nicotine addiction KW - drug research and development KW - drug addiction Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-124393 VL - 7 IS - 11 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ritz, Thomas A1 - Enlow, Michelle Bosquet A1 - Schulz, Stefan M. A1 - Kitts, Robert A1 - Staudenmayer, John A1 - Wright, Rosalind J. T1 - Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia as an Index of Vagal Activity during Stress in Infants: Respiratory Influences and Their Control JF - PLoS One N2 - Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is related to cardiac vagal outflow and the respiratory pattern. Prior infant studies have not systematically examined respiration rate and tidal volume influences on infant RSA or the extent to which infants' breathing is too fast to extract a valid RSA. We therefore monitored cardiac activity, respiration, and physical activity in 23 six-month old infants during a standardized laboratory stressor protocol. On average, 12.6% (range 0-58.2%) of analyzed breaths were too short for RSA extraction. Higher respiration rate was associated with lower RSA amplitude in most infants, and lower tidal volume was associated with lower RSA amplitude in some infants. RSA amplitude corrected for respiration rate and tidal volume influences showed theoretically expected strong reductions during stress, whereas performance of uncorrected RSA was less consistent. We conclude that stress-induced changes of peak-valley RSA and effects of variations in breathing patterns on RSA can be determined for a representative percentage of infant breaths. As expected, breathing substantially affects infant RSA and needs to be considered in studies of infant psychophysiology. KW - responses KW - heart-rate-variability KW - pulmonary gas-exchange KW - still-face KW - baroreflex mechanism KW - period variability KW - preterm infants KW - waking states KW - reactivity KW - attention Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-135396 VL - 7 IS - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jin, Jing A1 - Allison, Brendan Z. A1 - Kaufmann, Tobias A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Zhang, Yu A1 - Wang, Xingyu A1 - Cichocki, Andrzej T1 - The Changing Face of P300 BCIs: A Comparison of Stimulus Changes in a P300 BCI Involving Faces, Emotion, and Movement JF - PLoS One N2 - Background: One of the most common types of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) is called a P300 BCI, since it relies on the P300 and other event-related potentials (ERPs). In the canonical P300 BCI approach, items on a monitor flash briefly to elicit the necessary ERPs. Very recent work has shown that this approach may yield lower performance than alternate paradigms in which the items do not flash but instead change in other ways, such as moving, changing colour or changing to characters overlaid with faces. Methodology/Principal Findings: The present study sought to extend this research direction by parametrically comparing different ways to change items in a P300 BCI. Healthy subjects used a P300 BCI across six different conditions. Three conditions were similar to our prior work, providing the first direct comparison of characters flashing, moving, and changing to faces. Three new conditions also explored facial motion and emotional expression. The six conditions were compared across objective measures such as classification accuracy and bit rate as well as subjective measures such as perceived difficulty. In line with recent studies, our results indicated that the character flash condition resulted in the lowest accuracy and bit rate. All four face conditions (mean accuracy >91%) yielded significantly better performance than the flash condition (mean accuracy = 75%). Conclusions/Significance: Objective results reaffirmed that the face paradigm is superior to the canonical flash approach that has dominated P300 BCIs for over 20 years. The subjective reports indicated that the conditions that yielded better performance were not considered especially burdensome. Therefore, although further work is needed to identify which face paradigm is best, it is clear that the canonical flash approach should be replaced with a face paradigm when aiming at increasing bit rate. However, the face paradigm has to be further explored with practical applications particularly with locked-in patients. KW - ERPS KW - communication KW - TO-target interval KW - visual-evoked potentials KW - brain-computer-interface KW - recognition KW - amplitude KW - paradigm KW - systems Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-134173 VL - 7 IS - 11 ER -