The relation of expression recognition and affective experience in facial expression processing: an event-related potential study

The present study investigates the relationship of expression recognition and affective experience during facial expression processing by event-related potentials (ERP). Facial expressions used in the present study can be divided into three categories: positive (happy), neutral (neutral), and negative (angry). Participants were asked to finish two kinds of facial recognition tasks: one was easy, and the other was difficult. In the easy task, significant main effects were found for different valence conditions, meaning that emotions were evoked effectively when participants recognized the expressions in facial expression processing. However, no difference was found in the difficult task, meaning that even if participants had identified the expressions correctly, no relevant emotion was evoked during the process. The findings suggest that emotional experience was not simultaneous with expression identification in facial expression processing, and the affective experience process could be suppressed in challenging cognitive tasks. The results indicate that we should pay attention to the level of cognitive load when using facial expressions as emotion-eliciting materials in emotion studies; otherwise, the emotion may not be evoked effectively

Event-related potential measures of the intending process: Time course and related ERP components

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The intending process plays an important part to the successful completion of many daily activities. However, few researchers have paid attention to this issue. This study was set to investigate the time course and the electrophysiological evidence of the intending process with a cue-respond task.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants were performing different cued conditions (deceptive, truthful, and watch-only). The time course of intending process was analyzed through the different effect of the cue stimuli.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The P2 component, that appeared between 200 and 400 ms after the cue was onset, can be observed in the intended conditions (deceptive, truthful), but cannot be found in un-intended condition (watch-only). The mean amplitude in P2 between the truthful and deceptive conditions was consistent with previous studies. P2 was thought to be the reflection of the intention process.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results suggested that the intention process happened 200 to 400 ms after the cue stimuli was onset, and the P2 in the posterior scalp during this period could be a specific component that related with the process of intention.</p

Brain activity in advantageous and disadvantageous situations: implications for reward/punishment sensitivity in different situations

OBJECTIVE: This study modeled win and lose trials in a simple gambling task to examine the effect of entire win-lose situations (WIN, LOSS, or TIE) on single win/lose trials and related neural underpinnings. METHODS: The behavior responses and brain activities of 17 participants were recorded by an MRI scanner while they performed a gambling task. Different conditions were compared to determine the effect of the task on the behavior and brain activity of the participants. Correlations between brain activity and behavior were calculated to support the imaging results. RESULTS: In win trials, LOSS caused less intense posterior cingulate activity than TIE. In lose trials, LOSS caused more intense activity in the right superior temporal gyrus, bilateral superior frontal gyrus, bilateral anterior cingulate, bilateral insula cortex, and left orbitofrontal cortex than WIN and TIE. CONCLUSIONS: The experiences of the participants in win trials showed great similarity among different win-lose situations. However, the brain activity and behavior responses of the participants in lose trials indicated that they experienced stronger negative emotion in LOSS. The participants also showed an increased desire to win in LOSS than in WIN or TIE conditions

Decision-making after continuous wins or losses in a randomized guessing task: implications for how the prior selection results affect subsequent decision-making

BACKGROUND: Human decision-making is often affected by prior selections and their outcomes, even in situations where decisions are independent and outcomes are unpredictable. METHODS: In this study, we created a task that simulated real-life non-strategic gambling to examine the effect of prior outcomes on subsequent decisions in a group of male college students. RESULTS: Behavioral performance showed that participants needed more time to react after continuous losses (LOSS) than continuous wins (WIN) and discontinuous outcomes (CONTROL). In addition, participants were more likely to repeat their selections in both WIN and LOSS conditions. Functional MRI data revealed that decisions in WINs were associated with increased activation in the mesolimbic pathway, but decreased activation in the inferior frontal gyrus relative to LOSS. Increased prefrontal cortical activation was observed during LOSS relative to WIN and CONTROL conditions. CONCLUSION: Taken together, the behavioral and neuroimaging findings suggest that participants tended to repeat previous selections during LOSS trials, a pattern resembling the gambler’s fallacy. However, during WIN trials, participants tended to follow their previous lucky decisions, like the ‘hot hand’ fallacy

Why the processing of repeated targets are better than that of no repetition: evidence from easy-to-difficult and difficult-to-easy switching situations

Background: Previous studies have found that the processing of repeated targets are easier than that of non-repetition. Although several theories attempt to explain this issue, the underlying mechanism still remains uncovered. In this study, we tried to address this issue by exploring the underlying brain responses during this process. Methods: Brain activities were recorded while thirty participants performing a Stroop task (Chinese version) in the MRI scanner. Using pseudo-random strategies, we created two types of switching conditions (easy-to-difficult; difficult-to-easy) and relevant repeating conditions. Results: The results show that, in difficult-to-easy switching situation, higher brain activations are found in left precuneus than repeating ones (the precuneus is thought related with attention demands). In easy-to-difficult switching conditions, higher brain activations are found in precuneus, superior temporal gyrus, posterior cingulate cortex, and inferior frontal gyrus than repeating trials (most of these regions are thought related with executive function). No overlapping brain regions are observed in con_CON and incon_INCON conditions. Beta figures of the survived clusters in different conditions, correlations between brain activations and switch cost were calculated. Conclusions: The present study suggests that the feature that response time in switching trials are longer than that in repeating trials are caused by the extra endeavors engaged in the switching processes

Sex difference in the effect of Internet gaming disorder on the brain functions: evidence from resting-state fMRI

Objective: Studies have shown that males are more prevalence than females in Internet gaming disorder (IGD). This study was set to explore the sex difference on the effect of IGD in resting states of the brain. Methods: Resting-state fMRI data were collected from 58 recreational Internet game users (RGU, male = 29) and 46 IGD subjects (male = 23). Regional homogeneity (ReHo) was used to calculate group difference between the subjects. A two-way ANOVA was used to explore the IGD-by-sex interactions. Correlations between addiction severity and the ReHo values were also calculated. Results: Significant sex-by-group interactions were found associated with the brain features in the right posterior cingulate (rPCC), left middle occipital gyrus (lMOG), right middle temporal gyrus (rMTG), and right postcentral gyrus (rPG). Post-hoc analysis revealed that comparing with same-sex RGUs, male IGD showed decreased ReHo in the rPCC, and the ReHo in the rPCC was also negatively associated with Internet addiction test (IAT) scores for male subjects. Moreover, male IGDs showed increased ReHo, but female ones showed decreased ReHo, in both lMOG and rMTG, when comparing with same-sex RGUs. Conclusions: Sex differences were observed in brain regions that are responsible for executive control, visual and auditory perception. These sex differences should be taken into consideration in future studies and the treatment of IGD

Altered brain functional networks in Internet gaming disorder: independent component and graph theoretical analysis under a probability-discounting task

Internet gaming disorder (IGD) is becoming a matter of concern around the world. However, the neural mechanism underlying IGD remains unclear. In present study, we used independent component analysis (ICA) and graph theoretical analysis (GTA) to explore the potential changed networks in IGD subjects compared to recreational game user (RGU) under a probability-discounting task. Imaging and behavioral data were collected from 18 IGD and 20 RGU subjects. Behavioral results showed the IGD subjects, comparing to RGU, prefer risky options to the fixed ones and spent less time in making risky decisions. In imaging results, the ICA analysis revealed that the IGD showed stronger functional connectivity (FC) in reward circuits and executive control network, as well as lower FC in anterior salience network (ASN) than RGU; for the GTA results, the IGD showed impaired FC in reward circuits and ASN compared to RGU. Taken all, these results suggest that IGD subjects were more sensitive to rewards and, at the same time, they usually neglect the potential punishment under a risky circumstance. Besides this, they were more impulsive in decision-making as they could not control their impulsivity effectively. This might explain why IGD subjects cannot stop their gaming behaviors even facing serve negative consequences

Altered Brain Activities Associated with Craving and Cue Reactivity in People with Internet Gaming Disorder: Evidence from the Comparison with Recreational Internet Game Users

Although the neural substrates of cue reactivity in Internet gaming disorder (IGD) have been examined in previous studies, most of these studies focused on the comparison between IGD subjects and healthy controls, which cannot exclude a potential effect of cue-familiarity. To overcome this limitation, the current study focuses on the comparison between IGD subjects and recreational Internet game users (RGU) who play online games recreationally but do not develop dependence. Data from 40 RGU and 30 IGD subjects were collected while they were performing an event-related cue reactivity task in the fMRI scanner. The results showed that the IGD subjects were associated with enhanced activation in the left orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and decreased activation in the right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), right precuneus, left precentral gyrus and right postcentral gyrus in comparison with the RGU subjects. OFC is involved in reward evaluation and ACC is implicated in executive control function based on previous researches. Moreover, the activation of OFC were correlated with the desire for game-playing. Thus, the higher activation in OFC might suggests high desire for game playing, and the lower activation in ACC might indicates impaired ability in inhibiting the urge to gaming-related stimuli in IGD subjects. Additionally, decreased activation in the precuneus, the precentral and postcentral gyrus may suggest the deficit in disentangling from game-playing stimuli. These findings explain why IGD subjects develop dependence on game-playing while RGU subjects can play online games recreationally and prevent the transition from voluntary game-playing to eventually IGD

Meta-analyses of the functional neural alterations in subjects with Internet gaming disorder: similarities and differences across different paradigms

Internet gaming disorder (IGD) has become a global public health concern due to its increasing prevalence and potential negative consequences. Researchers have sought to identify which brain regions are associated with this disorder. However, inconsistent results have been reported among studies due to the heterogeneity of paradigms and subjects. The present research aimed to combine the results of individual studies to provide a more coherent and powerful explanation. By selecting 40 studies utilizing a qualified whole-brain analysis, we performed a comprehensive series of meta-analyses that employed seed-based d mapping. We divided the existing experimental paradigms into 3 categories: game-related cue-reactivity, executive control, and risk-reward-related decision-making tasks. We divided all studies into three subgroups according to their paradigms. In cue-reactivity tasks, patients with IGD exhibited significant hyperactivation in the bilateral precuneus and bilateral cingulate and significant hypoactivation in the insula, but there were no differences in the striatum. In executive control tasks, patients with IGD displayed significant hyperactivation in the right superior temporal gyrus, bilateral precuneus, bilateral cingulate, and insula and hypoactivation in the left inferior frontal gyrus. In risky decision-making paradigms, IGD patients exhibited significant hyperactivation in the left striatum, right inferior frontal gyrus, and insula and hypoactivation in the left superior frontal gyrus, left inferior frontal gyrus, and right precentral gyrus. Our study aimed to discover the similarities among all studies and to explore the uniqueness of the different paradigms. This study further confirmed the critical role of reward circuitry and executive control circuitry in IGD but not under all conditions