Emotion response patterns to transient stimuli in migraineurs and non-migraineurs : modulation of affective states as a step towards non-invasive treatment of migraine

Tese de mestrado, Ciência Cognitiva, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, Faculdade de Letras, Faculdade de Medicina, Faculdade de Psicologia, 2010Esta dissertação foi desenvolvida no contexto do estudo científico da emoção, e foca a modulação de estados afectivos através de estímulos perceptuais. O progresso deste trabalho foi guiado por dois objectivos principais: primeiro, o desenvolvimento do sistema Affective Multimodal Data Base (AMDB), uma ferramenta para indução de estados afectivos; e segundo, a realização de um estudo empírico, utilizando o AMDB, com o objectivo de examinar a modulação de padrões de respostas afectivas em pessoas que sofrem de enxaqueca com aura. O sistema AMDB é uma plataforma de software para a geração de estímulos afectivos através da combinação de sons, imagens estáticas e vídeos a ser utilizados em contextos de indução de estados afectivos. Contribuições deste mestrado para o desenvolvimento do AMDB incluem a adição de um interface gráfico para o utilizador, a implementação de apresentação de estímulos e gravação de respostas fisiológicas de forma sincronizada, melhoramentos na implementação modular do sistema, e por fim, a realização de um primeiro caso de teste do AMDB. A decisão de focar o estudo empírico, desenvolvido dentro do âmbito deste trabalho, na patologia da enxaqueca foi motivada pelo facto desta ser muito difundida e apresentar relações claras com os mecanismos de emoção. Os resultados deste estudo sugerem um perfil afectivo específico às pessoas que sofrem de enxaqueca com aura caracterizado por susceptibilidade intensificada a estímulos desagradáveis, potenciação de estados afectivos negativos em situações de repetida exposição a estímulos neutros ou desagradáveis, e disposição aumentada para a interrupção de estados afectivos positivos na presença de estímulos ambientais de cariz emocional neutro ou desagradável. Este estudo espera contribuir para a compreensão dos padrões de respostas afectivas específicos na patologia da enxaqueca, servindo como ponto de partida para o design de abordagens terapêuticas baseadas na modulação de estados afectivos.This thesis was developed in the context of the scientific study of emotion, and focuses on the modulation of affective states through perceptual stimuli. Two goals were pursued during the course of this master project. Firstly, the development of the Affective Multimodal Data Base (AMDB) system, a tool for multimodal emotion induction, and secondly, to conduct an empirical study, using the AMDB, that aimed at probing the modulation of affective response patterns in migraineurs. The AMDB system is a software platform for generating affective stimuli by combining sounds, pictures and videos, available in normalized affective stimuli libraries, into multimodal stimuli sequences to be used in emotion induction scenarios. Contributions of this master project to the development of the AMDB system include the addition of a graphical-user-interface, implementation of synchronized stimuli presentation and physiology response recording, improvement in the modular implementation of the system, and finally, realization of the first test-case of the AMDB system. It was decided to focus the empirical study on migraine, because it is a widespread pathology that presents a clear link with emotion mechanisms. The empirical study aimed at investigating dynamic patterns of affective responsiveness and modulation in migraineurs with aura. The findings from this study suggest an affective profile specific to migraineurs with aura characterized by an enhanced impact of unpleasant stimuli, potentiation of negative affective states when repeatedly exposed to non-pleasant stimuli, and high susceptibility to disrupt positive affective states in the presence of unpleasant and neutral environmental stimuli. This study hopes to contribute to the understanding of affective response patterns specific to migraine, and to provide insights for the design of therapy approaches to migraine based on emotion modulation, that could in the future help migraine sufferers ease the disease burden through the use of accessible media technologies

Isolating Action Prediction from Action Integration in the Perception of Social Interactions

Previous research suggests that predictive mechanisms are essential in perceiving social interactions. However, these studies did not isolate action prediction (a priori expectations about how partners in an interaction react to one another) from action integration (a posteriori processing of both partner’s actions). This study investigated action prediction during social interactions while controlling for integration confounds. Twenty participants viewed 3D animations depicting an action−reaction interaction between two actors. At the start of each action−reaction interaction, one actor performs a social action. Immediately after, instead of presenting the other actor’s reaction, a black screen covers the animation for a short time (occlusion duration) until a still frame depicting a precise moment of the reaction is shown (reaction frame). The moment shown in the reaction frame is either temporally aligned with the occlusion duration or deviates by 150 ms or 300 ms. Fifty percent of the action−reaction trials were semantically congruent, and the remaining were incongruent, e.g., one actor offers to shake hands, and the other reciprocally shakes their hand (congruent action−reaction) versus one actor offers to shake hands, and the other leans down (incongruent action−reaction). Participants made fast congruency judgments. We hypothesized that judging the congruency of action−reaction sequences is aided by temporal predictions. The findings supported this hypothesis; linear speed-accuracy scores showed that congruency judgments were facilitated by a temporally aligned occlusion duration, and reaction frames compared to 300 ms deviations, thus suggesting that observers internally simulate the temporal unfolding of an observed social interction. Furthermore, we explored the link between participants with higher autistic traits and their sensitivity to temporal deviations. Overall, the study offers new evidence of prediction mechanisms underpinning the perception of social interactions in isolation from action integration confounds

HESML: A scalable ontology-based semantic similarity measures library with a set of reproducible experiments and a replication dataset

This work is a detailed companion reproducibility paper of the methods and experiments proposed by Lastra-Díaz and García-Serrano in (2015, 2016) [56–58], which introduces the following contributions: (1) a new and efficient representation model for taxonomies, called PosetHERep, which is an adaptation of the half-edge data structure commonly used to represent discrete manifolds and planar graphs; (2) a new Java software library called the Half-Edge Semantic Measures Library (HESML) based on PosetHERep, which implements most ontology-based semantic similarity measures and Information Content (IC) models reported in the literature; (3) a set of reproducible experiments on word similarity based on HESML and ReproZip with the aim of exactly reproducing the experimental surveys in the three aforementioned works; (4) a replication framework and dataset, called WNSimRep v1, whose aim is to assist the exact replication of most methods reported in the literature; and finally, (5) a set of scalability and performance benchmarks for semantic measures libraries. PosetHERep and HESML are motivated by several drawbacks in the current semantic measures libraries, especially the performance and scalability, as well as the evaluation of new methods and the replication of most previous methods. The reproducible experiments introduced herein are encouraged by the lack of a set of large, self-contained and easily reproducible experiments with the aim of replicating and confirming previously reported results. Likewise, the WNSimRep v1 dataset is motivated by the discovery of several contradictory results and difficulties in reproducing previously reported methods and experiments. PosetHERep proposes a memory-efficient representation for taxonomies which linearly scales with the size of the taxonomy and provides an efficient implementation of most taxonomy-based algorithms used by the semantic measures and IC models, whilst HESML provides an open framework to aid research into the area by providing a simpler and more efficient software architecture than the current software libraries. Finally, we prove the outperformance of HESML on the state-of-the-art libraries, as well as the possibility of significantly improving their performance and scalability without caching using PosetHERep

The social is predictive : human sensitivity to attention control in action prediction

Observing others is predicting others. Humans have a natural tendency to make predictions about other people’s future behavior. This predisposition sits at the basis of social cognition: others become accessible to us because we are able to simulate their internal states, and in this way make predictions about their future behavior (Blakemore & Decety, 2001). In this thesis, I examine prediction in the social realm through three main contributions. The first contribution is of a theoretical nature, the second is methodological, and the third contribution is empirical. On the theoretical plane, I present a new framework for cooperative social interactions – the predictive joint-action model, which extends previous models of social interaction (Wolpert, Doya, & Kawato, 2003) to include the higher level goals of joint action and planning (Vesper, Butterfill, Knoblich, & Sebanz, 2010). Action prediction is central to joint-action. A recent theory proposes that social awareness to someone else’s attentional states underlies our ability to predict their future actions (Graziano, 2013). In the methodological realm, I developed a procedure for investigating the role of sensitivity to other’s attention control states in action prediction. This method offers a way to test the hypothesis that humans are sensitive to whether someone’s spatial attention was endogenously controlled (as in the case of choosing to attend towards a particular event) or exogenously controlled (as in the case of attention being prompted by an external event), independent of their sensitivity to the spatial location of that person’s attentional focus. On the empirical front, I present new evidence supporting the hypothesis that social cognition involves the predictive modeling of other’s attentional states. In particular, a series of experiments showed that observers are sensitive to someone else’s attention control and that this sensitivity occurs through an implicit kinematic process linked to social aptitude. In conclusion, I bring these contributions together. I do this by offering an interpretation of the empirical findings through the lens of the theoretical framework, by discussing several limitations of the present work, and by pointing to several questions that emerge from the new findings, thereby outlining avenues for future research on social cognition.Arts, Faculty ofGraduat

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<div>Data structure:</div><div><br></div>-Stimuli<div>-Experiment_1</div><div>-Experiment_2</div><div><div>-Experiment_3</div><div>-Experiment_4</div></div><div>-AutismQuotient_Exp1to4</div><div><br></div

Rescue of F508del-CFTR by RXR motif inactivation triggers proteome modulation associated with the unfolded protein response

F508del-CFTR, the most common mutation of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein, disrupts intracellular trafficking leading to cystic fibrosis (CF). The trafficking defect of F508del-CFTR can be rescued by simultaneous inactivation of its four RXR motifs (4RK). Proteins involved in the F508del-CFTR trafficking defect and/or rescue are therefore potential CF therapeutic targets. We sought to identify these proteins by investigating differential proteome modulation in BHK cells over-expressing wt-CFTR, F508del-CFTR or the revertant F508del/4RK-CFTR. By 2-dimensional electrophoresis-based proteomics and western blot approaches we demonstrated that over-expression of F508del/4RK-CFTR modulates the expression of a large number of proteins, many of which are reported interactors of CFTR and/ or 14-3-3 with potential roles in CFTR trafficking. GRP78/BiP, a marker of ER stress and unfolded protein response (UPR), is up-regulated in cells over-expressing either F508del-CFTR or F598del/4RK-CFTR. However, over-expression of F508del/4RK-CFTR induces the up-regulation of many other UPR-associated proteins (e.g. GRP94, PDI, GRP75/mortalin) and, interestingly, the down-regulation of proteasome components associated with CFTR degradation, such as the proteasome activator PA28 (PSME2) and COP9 signalosome (COPS5/CSN5). Moreover, the F508del-CFTR-induced proteostasis imbalance, which involves some heat shock chaperones (e.g. HSP72/Hpa2), ER-EF-hand Ca2+-binding proteins (calumenin) and the proteasome activator PA28 (PSME2), tends to be ‘restored’, i.e., in BHK cells over-expressing F508del/4RK-CFTR those proteins tend to have expression levels similar to the wild-type ones. These findings indicate that a particular cellular environment orchestrated by the UPR contributes to and/or is compatible with F508del/4RK-CFTR rescue

Computational Model for Changing Sedentary Behavior through Cognitive Beliefs and Introspective Body-feelings

Sedentary behavior has emerged as a serious risk factor for numerous health outcomes. However, little work has been done to approach the problem through social-cognitive theories. In this study, a network model has been proposed for sedentary behavior intervention based on Influential determinants from major social-cognitive theories i.e., theory of planned behavior and health-belief model. Accounting for these determinants means that we are influencing behavior with a peripheral route, for which we included the somatic markers as a body-feelings in the model. An effective behavior change techniques from literature are used to affect these determinants to change the sedentary behavior. The model has been mathematically represented and simulated using a network-oriented modelling technique for an office employee

Isolating shape from semantics in haptic-visual priming

The exploration of a familiar object by hand can benefit its identification by eye. What is unclear is how much this multisensory cross-talk reflects shared shape representations versus generic semantic associations. Here, we compare several simultaneous priming conditions to isolate the potential contributions of shape and semantics in haptic-to-visual priming. Participants explored a familiar object manually (haptic prime) while trying to name a visual object that was gradually revealed in increments of spatial resolution. Shape priming was isolated in a comparison of identity priming (shared semantic category and shape) with category priming (same category, but different shapes). Semantic priming was indexed by the comparisons of category priming with unrelated haptic primes. The results showed that both factors mediated priming, but that their relative weights depended on the reliability of the visual information. Semantic priming dominated in Experiment 1, when participants were free to use high-resolution visual information, but shape priming played a stronger role in Experiment 2, when participants were forced to respond with less reliable visual information. These results support the structural description hypothesis of haptic-visual priming (Reales and Ballesteros in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 25:644–663, 1999) and are also consistent with the optimal integration theory (Ernst and Banks in Nature 415:429–433, 2002), which proposes a close coupling between the reliability of sensory signals and their weight in decision making.This work was supported by a PhD scholarship to author AP from the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/76087/2011), an Exchange Fellowship to author AAB from the Dr. Michael Quinn Memorial Fund, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, an NSERC (Canada) Discovery Grant to author JTE, and Grants to author SS-F from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PSI2010-15426 and Consolider INGENIO CSD2007-00012 Grants, the Comissionat per a Universitats i Recerca del DIUE-Generalitat de Catalunya (SRG2009- 092), and the European Research Council (StG-2010 263145)