Emotion facilitation and passive avoidance learning in psychopathic female offenders

Research on psychopathy among incarcerated, Caucasian males has consistently demonstrated deficits in emotion processing and response inhibition. Using the PCL-R to classify participants as psychopathic or non-psychopathic, this study examined the performance of incarcerated, Caucasian females on two laboratory tasks: A lexical decision task used to assess emotion processing and a passive avoidance task used to assess response inhibition. Contrary to prediction, deficits in performance typically exhibited by psychopathic males were not exhibited by psychopathic females in this sample. Implications of these findings are discussed and an interpretation of the results in the context of the Response Modulation Hypothesis is presented

Temporal dynamics of emotional responding: amygdala recovery predicts emotional traits

An individual’s affective style is influenced by many things, including the manner in which an individual responds to an emotional challenge. Emotional response is composed of a number of factors, two of which are the initial reactivity to an emotional stimulus and the subsequent recovery once the stimulus terminates or ceases to be relevant. However, most neuroimaging studies examining emotional processing in humans focus on the magnitude of initial reactivity to a stimulus rather than the prolonged response. In this study, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the time course of amygdala activity in healthy adults in response to presentation of negative images. We split the amygdala time course into an initial reactivity period and a recovery period beginning after the offset of the stimulus. We find that initial reactivity in the amygdala does not predict trait measures of affective style. Conversely, amygdala recovery shows predictive power such that slower amygdala recovery from negative images predicts greater trait neuroticism, in addition to lower levels of likability of a set of social stimuli (neutral faces). These data underscore the importance of taking into account temporal dynamics when studying affective processing using neuroimaging

Clarifying the factors that undermine behavioral inhibition system functioning in psychopathy.

Psychopathic individuals are generally unresponsive to motivational and emotional cues that facilitate behavioral regulation. A putative mechanism for this deficiency is Gray’s (1971) behavioral inhibition system (BIS). To evaluate the association between psychopathy and BIS functioning, we administered a laboratory-based assessment of BIS functioning to a group of psychopathic offenders assessed with the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 2003). In addition, we tested the hypothesis that the effects of working memory load on BIS functioning would interact differentially with the PCL-R Factors. Replicating previous results, psychopathic offenders were less sensitive to BIS-related cues than controls. As predicted, working memory load interacted with Factor 2 (antisocial/impulsive), with higher scores predicting weaker BIS functioning under high-load though not low-load conditions. Results suggest new insights concerning the relationship among working memory, reward sensitivity, and BIS functioning in psychopathy. Keywords psychopathy; behavioral inhibition; working memory load; anxiety; PCL-R Factor

No Sustained Attention Differences in a Longitudinal Randomized Trial Comparing Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction versus Active Control

<div><p>Background</p><p>Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a secular form of meditation training. The vast majority of the extant literature investigating the health effects of mindfulness interventions relies on wait-list control comparisons. Previous studies have found that meditation training over several months is associated with improvements in cognitive control and attention.</p><p>Methodology/Principal Findings</p><p>We used a visual continuous performance task (CPT) to test the effects of eight weeks of mindfulness training on sustained attention by comparing MBSR to the Health Enhancement Program (HEP), a structurally equivalent, active control condition in a randomized, longitudinal design (ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT01301105) focusing on a non-clinical population typical of MBSR participants. Researchers were blind to group assignment. 63 community participants were randomized to either MBSR (n = 31) or HEP (n = 32). CPT analyses were conducted on 29 MBSR participants and 25 HEP participants. We predicted that MBSR would improve visual discrimination ability and sustained attention over time on the CPT compared to HEP, with more home practice associated with greater improvements. Our hypotheses were not confirmed but we did find some evidence for improved visual discrimination similar to effects in partial replication of other research. Our study had sufficient power to demonstrate that intervention groups do not differ in their improvement over time in sustained attention performance. One of our primary predictions concerning the effects of intervention on attentional fatigue was significant but not interpretable.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>Attentional sensitivity is not affected by mindfulness practice as taught in MBSR, but it is unclear whether mindfulness might positively affect another aspect of attention, vigilance. These results also highlight the relevant procedural modifications required by future research to correctly investigate the role of sustained attention in similar samples.</p><p>Trial Registration</p><p>ClinicalTrials.gov, <a href="http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT01301105" target="_blank">NCT01301105</a></p></div

CONSORT diagram detailing retention rates by study phase and reasons for dropouts.

<p>CONSORT diagram detailing retention rates by study phase and reasons for dropouts.</p

Means by Intervention and Time for Discrimination (Target Height), Sensitivity (Average A′), and Vigilance (A′ slope over blocks).

<p>Means by Intervention and Time for Discrimination (Target Height), Sensitivity (Average A′), and Vigilance (A′ slope over blocks).</p

Graph based on an HLM model of A′ data for each block by time point for both MBSR and HEP participants.

<p>A′ is a nonparametric version of D′, an index of perceptual sensitivity <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0097551#pone.0097551-Stanislaw1" target="_blank">[18]</a> in which a score of 1 represents perfect discrimination between targets and distractors, .5 represents an inability to distinguish target from distractors, and a score below .5 indicates response confusion.</p

Demographics by intervention.

<p>AA = African American.</p

Graphs of A′ data (with 1 <i>SE</i> error bars) for each block by time point for both MBSR and HEP participants.

<p>Graphs of A′ data (with 1 <i>SE</i> error bars) for each block by time point for both MBSR and HEP participants.</p

Intervention content comparison.

<p>Intervention content comparison.</p