Episodic memory for emotional information: Event-related potential and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies

The neural correlates of emotional episodic memory are investigated in a series of neuroimaging experiments (ERP, fMRI) through the comparison of memory effects elicited during retrieval of emotional relative to neutral information. In the first two ERP studies, it is revealed that emotionally-valenced words influence recognition memory primarily by virtue of their high levels of 'semantic-cohesiveness'. Furthermore, the findings reveal that the arrangement of emotional and neutral retrieval cues at test (blocked versus intermixed) influences processing carried out upon retrieved emotional episodic information. The findings across the third and fourth ERP studies indicate that incidental retrieval of emotional context (encoding environment) gives rise to greater activity in neural systems supporting episodic retrieval than does retrieval of non-emotional context. When context retrieval is intentional, by contrast, emotional and non-emotional episodic memory are associated with equivalent levels of engagement. The findings of the fourth ERP study are consistent with the existence of additional neural circuitry that is activated selectively by emotionally toned episodic information. In a final event-related fMRI study it is revealed that the retrieval of emotionally negative relative to emotionally neutral context elicits enhanced activity in brain regions including prefrontal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus and retrosplenial cortex. Recognition of words from positive relative to neutral contexts is associated with increased activity in prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex, and in the left anterior temporal lobe. The fMRI findings provide further support for the proposal that the incidental retrieval of emotional information enhances activity in networks supporting episodic retrieval of neutral information. In addition, the fMRI findings suggest that regions known to be activated when emotional information is encountered in the environment are also active when emotional information is retrieved from memory. Whilst the findings are noteworthy in their own right, they also have implications for future studies of emotional memory. It is proposed that the employment of paradigms which involve the retrieval of emotional context through presentation of non-emotional retrieval cues may offer advantages over paradigms wherein the retrieval cues themselves are emotional

Parafoveal and foveal N400 effects in natural reading:A timeline of semantic processing from fixation-related potentials

The depth at which parafoveal words are processed during reading is an ongoing topic of debate. Recent studies using RSVP-with-flanker paradigms have shown that implausible words within sentences elicit N400 components while they are still in parafoveal vision, suggesting that the semantics of parafoveal words can be accessed to rapidly update the sentence representation. To study this effect in natural reading, we combined the co-registration of eye movements and EEG with the deconvolution modeling of fixation-related potentials (FRPs) to test whether semantic plausibility is processed parafoveally during Chinese sentence reading. For one target word per sentence, both its parafoveal and foveal plausibility were orthogonally manipulated using the boundary paradigm. Consistent with previous eye movement studies, we observed a delayed effect of parafoveal plausibility on fixation durations that only emerged on the foveal word. Crucially, in FRPs aligned to the pre-target fixation, a clear N400 effect emerged already based on parafoveal plausibility, with more negative voltages for implausible previews. Once participants fixated the target, we again observed an N400 effect of foveal plausibility. Interestingly, this foveal N400 was absent whenever the preview had been implausible, indicating that when a word’s (im)plausibility is already processed in parafoveal vision, this information is not revised anymore upon direct fixation. Implausible words also elicited a late positive complex (LPC), but exclusively in foveal vision. Our results provide convergent neural and behavioral evidence for the parafoveal uptake of semantic information, but also indicate different contributions of parafoveal versus foveal information towards higher-level sentence processing

Mental-State Estimation, 1987

Reports on the measurement and evaluation of the physiological and mental state of operators are presented

ERP Analyses of Perceiving Emotions and Eye Gaze in Faces: Differential Effects of Motherhood and High Autism Trait

Die Blickrichtung und ihre Richtung sind wichtige nonverbale Hinweise für die Etablierung von sozialen Interaktionen und die Wahrnehmung von emotionalen Gesichtsausdrücken bei anderen. Ob der Blick direkt auf den Betrachter gerichtet ist (direkter Blick) oder abgewendet (abgewandter Blick), beeinflusst unsere soziale Aufmerksamkeit und emotionale Reaktionen. Dies deutet darauf hin, dass Emotionen und Blickrichtung informative Werte haben, die sich möglicherweise in frühen oder späteren Stadien der neurokognitiven Verarbeitung interagieren. Trotz theoretischer Grundlage, der geteilten Signal-Hypothese (Adams & Kleck, 2003), gibt es einen Mangel an strukturierten elektrophysiologischen Untersuchungen zu den Wechselwirkungen zwischen Emotionen und Blickrichtung sowie ihren neuronalen Korrelaten und wie sie sich in verschiedenen Bevölkerungsgruppen unterscheiden. Um diese Lücke zu schließen, verwendete diese Doktorarbeit ereigniskorrelierte Hirnpotentiale (ERPs), um die Reaktionen auf emotionale Ausdrücke und Blickrichtung in einem neuen Paradigma zu untersuchen, das statischen und dynamischen Blick mit Gesichtsausdrücken kombiniert. Es wurden drei verschiedene Populationen untersucht. Studie 1 untersuchte in einer normalen Stichprobe die Amplituden der ERP-Komponenten, die durch die erstmalige Präsentation von Gesichtern und nachfolgende Änderungen der Blickrichtung in der Hälfte der Durchgänge ausgelöst wurden. In Studie 2 wurden aufgrund der atypischen Gesichtsverarbeitung und verminderten Reaktionen auf Augenblick beim Autismus die ERPs und Augenbewegungen bei zwei Stichproben von Kindern mit unterschiedlichem Schweregrad ihrer Autismusmerkmale untersucht. In Studie 3 wurde in einer großen Stichprobe die vermutlich erhöhte Sensitivität bei der Emotionsverarbeitung und Reaktion auf Augenblick bei Müttern im postpartalen Zeitraum mit besonderem Fokus auf die Gesichter von Säuglingen untersucht. Zusammenfassend zeigen die Ergebnisse der drei Studien, dass in sozialen Interaktionen die emotionalen Effekte von Gesichtern durch die dynamische Blickrichtung moduliert werden.The eye gaze and its direction are important and relevant non-verbal cues for the establishment of social interactions and the perception of others’ emotional facial expressions. Gaze direction itself, whether eyes are looking straight at the viewer (direct gaze) or whether they look away (averted gaze), affects our social attention and emotional response. This implies that both emotion and gaze have informational values, which might interact at early or later stages of neurocognitive processing. Despite the suggestion of a theoretical basis for this interaction, the shared signal hypothesis (Adams & Kleck, 2003), there is a lack of structured electrophysiological investigations into the interactions between emotion and gaze and their neural correlates, and how they vary across populations. Addressing this need, the present doctoral dissertation used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to study responses to emotional expressions and gaze direction in a novel paradigm combining static and dynamic gaze with facial expressions. The N170 and EPN were selected as ERP components believed to reflect gaze perception and reflexive attention, respectively. Three different populations were investigated. Study 1, in a normal sample, investigated the amplitudes of the ERP components elicited by the initial presentation of faces and subsequent changes of gaze direction in half of the trials. In Study 2, based on the atypical face processing and diminished responses to eye gaze in autism, the ERPs and eye movements were examined in two samples of children varying in the severity of their autism traits. In Study 3, In a large sample, I addressed the putatively increased sensitivity in emotion processing and response to eye gaze in mothers during their postpartum period with a particular focus on infant's faces. Taken together, the results from three studies demonstrate that in social interactions, the emotional effects of faces are modulated by dynamic gaze direction

Estimation of overlapped Eye Fixation Related Potentials: The General Linear Model, a more flexible framework than the ADJAR algorithm

The Eye Fixation Related Potential (EFRP) estimation is the average of EEG signals across epochs at ocular fixation onset. Its main limitation is the overlapping issue. Inter Fixation Intervals (IFI) - typically around 300 ms in the case of unrestricted eye movement- depend on participants’ oculomotor patterns, and can be shorter than the latency of the components of the evoked potential. If the duration of an epoch is longer than the IFI value, more than one fixation can occur, and some overlapping between adjacent neural responses ensues. The classical average does not take into account either the presence of several fixations during an epoch or overlapping. The Adjacent Response algorithm (ADJAR), which is popular for event-related potential estimation, was compared to the General Linear Model (GLM) on a real dataset from a conjoint EEG and eye-tracking experiment to address the overlapping issue. The results showed that the ADJAR algorithm was based on assumptions that were too restrictive for EFRP estimation. The General Linear Model appeared to be more robust and efficient. Different configurations of this model were compared to estimate the potential elicited at image onset, as well as EFRP at the beginning of exploration. These configurations took into account the overlap between the event-related potential at stimulus presentation and the following EFRP, and the distinction between the potential elicited by the first fixation onset and subsequent ones. The choice of the General Linear Model configuration was a tradeoff between assumptions about expected behavior and the quality of the EFRP estimation: the number of different potentials estimated by a given model must be controlled to avoid erroneous estimations with large variances

Ageing and Episodic Memory: Combining Neuropsychological and Event-Related Potential Approaches to Investigate Strategic Retrieval

This thesis investigates the effect of normal ageing on the strategies adopted during episodic memory retrieval, using a combination of neuropsychological profiling and neuroimaging data measured during performance on a source memory exclusion task. The exclusion task is a type of source memory task where participants distinguish between targets (studied items from one source e.g. female voice), non-targets (studied items from another source e.g. male voice) and new items. Unlike a source memory task where three separate buttons are pressed for each item at test, in the exclusion task one button is pressed for targets and a second for non-target and new items. As this task is more complex than a normal source memory paradigm and also allows participants to perform the task in more than one way, it places high emphasis on the use of strategies to facilitate retrieval and is therefore ideal for investigating strategic retrieval. Previous source memory studies have shown that while older adults are reasonably good at recognising whether items are old or new, they show marked impairments at remembering the source in which items were presented at study. Dual process theories propose that the age-related decline in source memory occurs because recollection becomes impaired with ageing whereas familiarity remains relatively spared. The results reported in this thesis support dual process theory. Experiment 2a showed that, behaviourally, as expected, the young outperformed the elderly. Event-related potentials (ERPs), recorded while a source memory exclusion test was performed, revealed that both young and older adults showed bilateral frontal and left parietal old/new effects, thought to index familiarity and recollection respectively. Importantly, the magnitude of the left parietal effect was significantly reduced in the older adults. The ERP findings also suggested that dual process theories represent an oversimplification of episodic memory decline with age. In Experiment 1a, three temporally and topographically distinct late frontal old/new effects were present in the younger adults: a bilateral anterior frontal effect (450-900ms post stimulus), a right prefrontal effect (900-1300ms) and a right frontal effect (1300-2000ms). Significant positive correlations between the magnitude of these effects and performance on neuropsychological tests of executive functioning in Experiment 1b, revealed that the bilateral anterior frontal effect was related to working memory, strategy use and planning; the right prefrontal effect was related to working memory and planning while the right frontal effect was related to planning. By contrast, the older adults in Experiment 2a only produced the right frontal effect, which correlated with planning across all three time windows in Experiment 2c. Post-retrieval monitoring in older adults therefore appeared to be qualitatively different than their younger counterparts. Performance on the neuropsychological tests in Experiment 2b, revealed that the older adults’ working memory and strategy use was impaired compared to the young, whereas planning was relatively intact, suggesting that age-related differences in post retrieval processing may be due to reduced executive functioning in older adults. Identifying distinct late frontal effects and demonstrating a relationship between these effects and specific executive functions is a novel finding. The presence of a left parietal target greater than non-target difference in the young adults from Experiment 1a and 2a was interpreted as the young reducing recollection of irrelevant non-target information. The modulation did not differ in magnitude for targets and non-targets in the elderly adults from Experiment 2a, suggesting they were less able to reduce activation of goal irrelevant non-target information. The results in the young adults from Experiment 1a also highlight the importance of considering the context of source information on the processes engaged at retrieval. The bilateral frontal effect was significant for the retrieval of the intrinsic context (source information inherent to the studied item), but not the extrinsic context (source information not inherent to the studied item). This finding was interpreted within a unitisation framework, where the intrinsic context became unitised with the item and enhanced familiarity based remembering. The findings also highlight that in order to fully understand post retrieval processing in both young and old adults, focus should move away from examining quantitative differences in the right frontal effect over long time periods and instead identify qualitatively distinct late frontal effects that may reflect the engagement of various executive functions over time

Neurobiology of Sensory Deviance: Using EEG to Measure Visual and Auditory Mismatch Negativity in Children with Autism

Sensory processing, in particular processing of sensory deviance in one's environment, is important for functioning in a fast-paced world. Deficits in sensory processing may underlie the deficits in social interaction, communication, and restricted or repetitive behaviors seen in autism. We can use Event Related Potential (ERP) research to investigate processing of sensory changes through the mismatch negativity (MMN), or a difference ERP waveform computed by subtracting a neural response to a frequently-occurring standard event from a rare deviant event. Until recently, most research has focused on mismatch negativity in the auditory modality, but there is evidence that visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) can provide important information about sensory processing in both typical development and autism. In addition, the ways in which auditory ERP components interact with behavioral responses to changing sensory stimuli measured through behavioral observations and parent reports are poorly understood. Preliminary results in the auditory modality showed that the amplitude of the P3a and N2 ERP components predicted high levels of sensory seeking behaviors, and further that this relationship was dependent on the amplitude of P1. This suggests that task orienting may be related to sensory seeking behaviors, given modulation by early mechanisms of stimulus detection. Preliminary data also indicate relationships between auditory ERP components and behaviorally measured sensory response patterns. The goal of this research was two-fold. The first aim was to characterize vMMN in typically developing 8-12-year-old children, and the second aim was to investigate differences in vMMN observed in children with autism. Results from this work showed that both typically developing children and children with autism display a vMMN with two negativities, while adults only display one negativity. Further, the first negativity observed in the children with autism occurred earlier than in the typically developing children, and amplitude of the second negativity correlated with age in the typically developing children only. These results suggest that children with autism may exhibit enhanced processing of basic stimulus features and attenuated processing of memory comparisons with standard events. Further research may result in improved intervention strategies customized to individual sensory processing deficit type and severity.Doctor of Philosoph