The expression and assessment of emotions and internal states in individuals with severe or profound intellectual disabilities

The expression of emotions and internal states by individuals with severe or profound intellectual disabilities is a comparatively under-researched area. Comprehensive or standardised methods of assessing or understanding the emotions and internal states within this population, whose ability to communicate is significantly compromised, do not exist. The literature base will be discussed and compared to that within the general population. Methods of assessing broader internal states, notably depression, anxiety, and pain within severe or profound intellectual disabilities are also addressed. Finally, this review will examine methods of assessing internal states within genetic syndromes, including hunger, social anxiety and happiness within Prader-Willi, Fragile-X and Angelman syndrome. This will then allow for the identification of robust methodologies used in assessing the expression of these internal states, some of which may be useful when considering how to assess emotions within individuals with intellectual disabilities

THE BORDER BETWEEN BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY- SEGMENTATION BASED ON CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR

In today’s economy, marketers have been facing two challenging trends: fierce competition between companies offering essentially similar products, and dealing with customers that are increasingly informed and demanding, but less and less loyal. Under these conditions, it has become imperative for managers and for marketing professionals to invest in business intelligence in order to find patterns in the consumers’ behavior that could predict their future buying decisions. In this report we have presented how Decision Support Systems, data analysis and customer segmentation can help companies to know their customers better in order to predict (and influence) their future actions. At the same time, we have argued that Business Intelligence should meet psychology and neurology halfway, and accept that there is a very high emotional subconscious component that produces a high degree of unpredictability in consumers’ behavior.DSS, business intelligence, consumer behavior, segmentation, buying decision process

The Appreciative Heart: The Psychophysiology of Positive Emotions and Optimal Functioning

This monograph is an overview of Institute of HeartMath's research on the physiological correlates of positive emotions and the science underlying two core HeartMath techniques which supports Heart-Based Living. The heart's connection with love and other positive emotions has survived throughout millennia and across many diverse cultures. New empirical research is providing scientific validation for this age-old association. This 21-page monograph offers a comprehensive understanding of the Institute of HeartMath's cutting-edge research exploring the heart's central role in emotional experience. Described in detail is physiological coherence, a distinct mode of physiological functioning, which is generated during sustained positive emotions and linked with beneficial health and performance-related outcomes. The monograph also provides steps and applications of two HeartMath techniques, Freeze-Frame(R) and Heart Lock-In(R), which engage the heart to help transform stress and produce sustained states of coherence. Data from outcome studies are presented, which suggest that these techniques facilitate a beneficial repatterning process at the mental, emotional and physiological levels

The Effects of Discrete Emotions on Risky Decision Making

Contrary to the dominant view that generally equates feelings with poor thinking, converging evidence indicates that decisions – including those involving risk – are influenced by affective experiences. Research, however, is limited to studies on undifferentiated, global positive versus negative mood states; less is known about the influence of discrete emotions. The purpose of this research was to extend the affect-cognition literature by (a) examining the effects of discrete emotions varying along the dimensions of valence and arousal, and (b) identifying the systematic ways that discrete emotions underlie risky decision making. We used a set of emotion-laden IAPS images to elicit and compare the impact of incidental emotions on risky decision making. One hundred and twenty-two undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of the four affective conditions: excitement, contentment, fear, and sadness. Following the emotion induction procedure, participants completed the Choice Dilemmas Questionnaire (CDQ) to assess their risk-taking propensity. Results indicated an interaction effect between valence and arousal for positive emotions, such that excited participants were significantly more risky in their decision making compared to contented participants. The discussion focuses on the theoretical and practical health implications of these findings. We recommend that future research capitalize on the insights gained from emotion research and use it favorably to improve decision making under risk

Economic Games Quantify Diminished Sense of Guilt in Patients with Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex

Damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) impairs concern for other people, as reflected in the dysfunctional real-life social behavior of patients with such damage, as well as their abnormal performances on tasks ranging from moral judgment to economic games. Despite these convergent data, we lack a formal model of how, and to what degree, VMPFC lesions affect an individual's social decision-making. Here we provide a quantification of these effects using a formal economic model of choice that incorporates terms for the disutility of unequal payoffs, with parameters that index behaviors normally evoked by guilt and envy. Six patients with focal VMPFC lesions participated in a battery of economic games that measured concern about payoffs to themselves and to others: dictator, ultimatum, and trust games. We analyzed each task individually, but also derived estimates of the guilt and envy parameters from aggregate behavior across all of the tasks. Compared with control subjects, the patients donated significantly less and were less trustworthy, and overall our model found a significant insensitivity to guilt. Despite these abnormalities, the patients had normal expectations about what other people would do, and they also did not simply generate behavior that was more noisy. Instead, the findings argue for a specific insensitivity to guilt, an abnormality that we suggest characterizes a key contribution made by the VMPFC to social behavior

The Psycho-neurology of Embodiment with Examples from Authentic Movement and Laban Movement Analysis

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Helen Payne, 'The Psycho-neurology of Embodiment with Examples from Authentic Movement and Laban Movement Analysis', American Journal of Dance Therapy, June 2017. Under embargo. Embargo end date: 7 June 2018. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s10465-017-9256-2.There is widespread agreement that thought is embodied cognition and that our earliest learning is implicit, through the body, and nonverbal expression. This article advances the proposition that the integration of thought and emotion is felt through the body. Embodiment and embodied simulation (ES) (Gallese in Neuropsychoanalysis 13(2):196–200, 2011) represent controversial topics in both the philosophy of mind (Clark in Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998) and cognitive neuroscience (Gallagher in Cognitive Syst Res 34–35:35–43, 2015a; Gallagher in Conscious Cogn 36:452–465, 2015b; Gallese & Sinigaglia in J Conscious Stud 18(7–8):117–143, 2011a; Gallese in Philos Trans R Soc B 369(1644):20130177, 2014). As a result of advances in these areas of research, there is a need to re-conceptualize our understanding of the mechanisms and processes involved in dance movement psychotherapy. Could ES be applied to the psychology of movement? This article attempts to apply this theory of embodiment to the practice of Authentic Movement (AM) and Laban Movement Analysis. The theory of ES is proposed as one possible explanation of how the witness in AM comes to know her inner experience in the presence of a mover, which may lead to an “offering” to that mover from the witness’ conscious body (Adler in Offering from the conscious body: The discipline of Authentic Movement, Inner Traditions, Rochester, VT, 2002). Furthermore, there is an examination of how ES connects to the task of movement observation and how meaning is arrived at from the various movement patterns observed.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Decision-Making: A Neuroeconomic Perspective

This article introduces and discusses from a philosophical point of view the nascent field of neuroeconomics, which is the study of neural mechanisms involved in decision-making and their economic significance. Following a survey of the ways in which decision-making is usually construed in philosophy, economics and psychology, I review many important findings in neuroeconomics to show that they suggest a revised picture of decision-making and ourselves as choosing agents. Finally, I outline a neuroeconomic account of irrationality

The dementia family caregiver

This report provides insight into the unique emotional and subjective experiences of the dementia family caregiver. Caring clinically for the caregiver requires an acute sensitivity to the needs of the individual. Healthcare professionals need to recognize the complex contributing factors that influence this experience. The subsequent decision for a caregiver to eventually move a family member from a home care environment into a long term living facility often is associated with an intense and conflicting emotional guilt response. Understanding the dementia caregiving experience provides an opportunity for clinicians to offer appropriate levels of support and assist the former primary caregiver in adapting to new roles and responsibilities during the transition out of homecare, recognizing family members as partners in the ongoing care process, and fostering positive family staff interactions within the facility.Communication Sciences and Disorder

Modulation of emotional appraisal by false physiological feedback during fMRI

BACKGROUND James and Lange proposed that emotions are the perception of physiological reactions. Two-level theories of emotion extend this model to suggest that cognitive interpretations of physiological changes shape self-reported emotions. Correspondingly false physiological feedback of evoked or tonic bodily responses can alter emotional attributions. Moreover, anxiety states are proposed to arise from detection of mismatch between actual and anticipated states of physiological arousal. However, the neural underpinnings of these phenomena previously have not been examined. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We undertook a functional brain imaging (fMRI) experiment to investigate how both primary and second-order levels of physiological (viscerosensory) representation impact on the processing of external emotional cues. 12 participants were scanned while judging face stimuli during both exercise and non-exercise conditions in the context of true and false auditory feedback of tonic heart rate. We observed that the perceived emotional intensity/salience of neutral faces was enhanced by false feedback of increased heart rate. Regional changes in neural activity corresponding to this behavioural interaction were observed within included right anterior insula, bilateral mid insula, and amygdala. In addition, right anterior insula activity was enhanced during by asynchronous relative to synchronous cardiac feedback even with no change in perceived or actual heart rate suggesting this region serves as a comparator to detect physiological mismatches. Finally, BOLD activity within right anterior insula and amygdala predicted the corresponding changes in perceived intensity ratings at both a group and an individual level. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE Our findings identify the neural substrates supporting behavioural effects of false physiological feedback, and highlight mechanisms that underlie subjective anxiety states, including the importance of the right anterior insula in guiding second-order "cognitive" representations of bodily arousal state

Modulation of emotional appraisal by false physiological feedback during fMRI

BACKGROUND James and Lange proposed that emotions are the perception of physiological reactions. Two-level theories of emotion extend this model to suggest that cognitive interpretations of physiological changes shape self-reported emotions. Correspondingly false physiological feedback of evoked or tonic bodily responses can alter emotional attributions. Moreover, anxiety states are proposed to arise from detection of mismatch between actual and anticipated states of physiological arousal. However, the neural underpinnings of these phenomena previously have not been examined. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We undertook a functional brain imaging (fMRI) experiment to investigate how both primary and second-order levels of physiological (viscerosensory) representation impact on the processing of external emotional cues. 12 participants were scanned while judging face stimuli during both exercise and non-exercise conditions in the context of true and false auditory feedback of tonic heart rate. We observed that the perceived emotional intensity/salience of neutral faces was enhanced by false feedback of increased heart rate. Regional changes in neural activity corresponding to this behavioural interaction were observed within included right anterior insula, bilateral mid insula, and amygdala. In addition, right anterior insula activity was enhanced during by asynchronous relative to synchronous cardiac feedback even with no change in perceived or actual heart rate suggesting this region serves as a comparator to detect physiological mismatches. Finally, BOLD activity within right anterior insula and amygdala predicted the corresponding changes in perceived intensity ratings at both a group and an individual level. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE Our findings identify the neural substrates supporting behavioural effects of false physiological feedback, and highlight mechanisms that underlie subjective anxiety states, including the importance of the right anterior insula in guiding second-order "cognitive" representations of bodily arousal state