Brief training in mindfulness may normalize a blunted error-related negativity in chronically depressed patients Maria Fissler and Emilia Winnebeck also are affiliated at Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Berlin, Germany

Correction to: Striatal-frontal network activation during voluntary task selection under conditions of monetary reward Conflict of interest statement: Although co-author Marie T. Banich is the Editor-in-Chief of Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, Stan Floresco served as the action editor for this manuscript

Explore or reset? Pupil diameter transiently increases in self-chosen switches between cognitive labor and leisure in either direction Abstract When people invest effort in cognitive work, they often keep an eye open for rewarding alternative activities. Previous research suggests that the norepinephrine (NE) system regulates such trade-offs between exploitation of the current task and exploration of alternative possibilities. We examined the possibility that the NE system is involved in another trade-off, i.e., the trade-off between cognitive labor and leisure. We conducted two pre-registered studies (total N = 62) in which participants freely chose to perform either a paid 2-back task (labor) versus a non-paid task (leisure), while we tracked their pupil diameter—which is an indicator of the state of the NE system. In both studies, consistent with prior work, we found (a) increases in pupil baseline and (b) decreases in pupil dilation when participants switched from labor to leisure. Unexpectedly, we found the same pattern when participants switched from leisure back to labor. Both increases in pupil baseline and decreases in pupil dilation were short-lived. Collectively, these results are more consistent with a role of norepinephrine in reorienting attention and task switching, as suggested by network reset theory, than with a role in motivation, as suggested by adaptive gain theory.

Now you feel it, now you don't: Motivated attention to emotional content is modulated by age and task demands Abstract Several studies with younger adults have examined the degree to which emotion captures attention using the event-related potentials (ERP) technique, but it is unknown whether there are age-related differences on this issue. We examined ERP correlates of age-related differences in processing of task-relevant and task-irrelevant emotional material. Participants viewed emotional or neutral images, presented at fixation, flanked by two bars of either differing or matching orientation. In one set of trials, participants decided whether the pictures were presented in black-and-white or color; in another set of trials, they made a match/judgment on the flanking bars. Before the experiment proper, we determined each individual’s threshold for line orientation (in the presence of neutral pictures at fixation); mismatch bar stimuli were constructed using this threshold, thus equating baseline performance on the bar tasks across individuals. When attention was focused on the images, ERPs provided evidence for emotion-based processing in the younger group, regardless of valence; older adults showed more differentiated valence-based processing as reflected by a positivity effect (in line with socioemotional selectivity theory). When the images were task-irrelevant, older adults showed no evidence of emotional processing whatsoever; younger adults showed a pattern of suppression in the form of reduced processing of emotional material relative to neutral images. These findings suggest that, once performance on a neutral baseline task is equated, older adults do not exhibit a specific age-related deficit in inhibiting emotional material; they also suggest qualitative differences in processing of to-be-ignored emotional material in younger and older adults.

How the depth of processing modulates emotional interference – evidence from EEG and pupil diameter data Abstract The ability to process emotionally conflicting information is an important requirement for emotional self-control. While it seems obvious that the impact of interfering emotional information critically depends on how deeply this interfering information is processed, it is still unknown what cognitive subprocesses are most affected by manipulating the depth of processing of emotionally interfering information. We examine these aspects integrating neurophysiological (EEG) and source localization data with pupil diameter data as an indirect index of the norepinephrine (NE) system activity. We show that when processing depth of interfering emotional stimulus dimensions is increased, emotional Stroop effects become stronger. The EEG data show that this was associated with modulations of decision-making processes, as reflected by the P3 event-related potential. Notably, the integration with pupil diameter data suggests that these decision processes were modulated by the NE system, especially when the depth of processing of interfering emotional stimulus dimensions was increased. This likely reflects gain modulation processes to facilitate processing of complex interfering, emotional information. The source localization results suggest that regions in the parietal (BA7) and insular cortex (BA13) are associated with these modulatory effects. The results suggest that overcoming more complex emotional interference triggers engagement of the norepinephrine system (indexed by pupil diameter) to facilitate action control mechanisms in a time-specific manner when deeper processing of emotional stimulus dimensions is required.

Negative affect moderates the effect of social rejection on frontal and anterior cingulate cortex activation in borderline personality disorder Abstract Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have a heightened sensitivity to social exclusion. Experimental manipulations have produced inconsistent findings and suggested that baseline negative affect (NA) might influence the experience of exclusion. We administered a standardized social exclusion protocol (Cyberball paradigm) in BPD (n = 39) and age-matched and sex-matched healthy controls (n = 29) to investigate the association of NA on social exclusion and activation in brain regions previously implicated in this paradigm. Compared with controls, patients with BPD showed higher activation during social exclusion in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and in the right precuneus. Prescan NA ratings were associated with higher brain activation in the ACC and mPFC over all conditions, and post hoc t tests revealed that differences between the groups were only significant when controlling for NA. Brain activation during exclusion was correlated with NA separately for each group. Only BPD patients showed a significant association of NA and exclusion related precuneus activation (r = .52 p = .001). Additionally, BPD patients experienced less feelings of belonging compared with a healthy control (HC) group during inclusion and exclusion, although they estimated their ball possessions significantly higher than did the HC. These findings suggest that baseline NA has a crucial impact on Cyberball-related brain activation. The results underscore the importance of considering levels of NA in social exclusion protocols for participants high in this trait.

Sweating the small stuff: A meta-analysis of skin conductance on the Iowa gambling task Abstract To systematically examine the role of anticipatory skin conductance responses (aSCRs) in predicting Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) performance. Secondly, to assess the quality of aSCR evidence for the Somatic Marker Hypothesis (SMH) during the IGT. Finally, to evaluate the reliability of current psychophysiological measurements on the IGT. Electronic databases, journals and reference lists were examined for inclusion. Data were extracted by two reviewers and validated by another reviewer, using a standardised extraction sheet along with a quality assessment. Two meta-analyses of aSCR measures were conducted to test the relationship between overall aSCR and IGT performance, and differences in aSCR between advantageous and disadvantageous decks. Twenty studies were included in this review. Quality assessment revealed that five studies did not measure anticipatory responses, and few stated they followed standard IGT and/or psychophysiological procedures. The first meta-analysis of 15 studies revealed a significant, small-to-medium relationship between aSCR and IGT performance (r= .22). The second meta-analysis of eight studies revealed a significant, small difference in aSCR between the advantageous and disadvantageous decks (r= .10); however, publication bias is likely to be an issue. Meta-analyses revealed aSCR evidence supporting the SMH. However, inconsistencies in the IGT and psychophysiological methods, along with publication bias, cast doubt on these effects. It is recommended that future tests of the SMH use a range of psychophysiological measures, a standardised IGT protocol, and discriminate between advantageous and disadvantageous decks.

Converging electrophysiological evidence for a processing advantage of social over nonsocial feedback Abstract We recently demonstrated a processing advantage of social versus nonsocial feedback stimuli in a western sample by assessing phase-locked neural responses. The current study extended our previous findings to another cultural sample (Chinese) to further test whether non-phase-locked neural oscillations also exhibit the social feedback processing advantage. Fifty-three Chinese volunteers performed a time estimation task with social and nonsocial feedback stimuli (matched for complexity) while electroencephalogram was recorded. Almost entirely replicating our previous results, feedback ERPs showed a processing advantage for social compared with nonsocial stimuli. Importantly, non-phase-locked oscillations also revealed this pattern. Frontal midline theta (FMΘ) oscillations differentiated between negative and positive feedback to a larger extent in response to social compared with nonsocial feedback. The current findings imply a rather universal effect of social stimulus characteristics during feedback processing and further corroborate the notion of social content as a distinct stimulus category.

Neurophysiological correlates of visuospatial attention and the social dynamics of gaze processing Abstract The reflexive orienting response triggered by nonpredictive gaze cues is thought to be driven by a dedicated social neural network responsible for directing attention toward socially salient information. However, atypical processing of eye gaze using concomitant perceptual features has been proposed to underlie attentional orienting in groups with impairments in social cognition. Here, we examined the neurophysiological indices of visuospatial attention during a spatial cueing task, considering individual variability in social cognition in typically developing individuals, and the relative salience of social gaze and perceptual motion cues. We found enhanced neural activation to incongruent cues, wherein modulation of the N2b serves as a marker of the allocation of attention in the spatial domain. Our findings suggest the social gaze cue is less salient for those with greater autistic traits. An attentional bias toward perceptual motion cues correlated with greater social anxiety and alexithymia, and thus may reflect reduced sensitivity to social stimuli. These results provide evidence for likely neurophysiological mechanisms underlying gaze cueing and offer insight into the use of qualitatively different cognitive mechanisms used to access social information. Such paradigms provide potential insight into normative orienting responses reported in atypical groups and would benefit investigations of gaze following abilities in clinical populations.

Adaptation to Animacy Violations during Listening Comprehension Abstract The goal of this study was to examine adaptation to various types of animacy violations in cartoon-like stories. We measured the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by words at the beginning, middle, and end of four-sentence stories in order to examine adaptation over time to conflicts between stored word knowledge and context-derived meaning (specifically, to inanimate objects serving as main characters, as they might in a cartoon). The fourth and final sentence of each story contained a predicate that required either an animate or an inanimate subject. The results showed that listeners quickly adapted to stories in the Inanimate Noun conditions, consistent with previous research (Filik & Leuthold, 2008; Nieuwland & Van Berkum, 2006). They showed evidence of processing difficulty for animacy-requiring predicates in the Inanimate Noun conditions in Sentence 1, but the effect dissipated in Sentences 2 and 3. In Sentences 2 and 4, we measured ERPs at three critical points where it was possible to observe the influence of both context-based expectations and expectations from prior knowledge on processing. Overall, the pattern of results demonstrates how listeners flexibly adapt to unusual, conflict-ridden input, using previous context to generate expectations about upcoming input, but that current context is weighted appropriately in combination with expectations from background knowledge and prior language experience.