Neural correlates of the perception of dynamic versus static facial expressions of emotion

Aim: This study investigated brain areas involved in the perception of dynamic facial expressions of emotion

Synthesis and Thermal Study of Hexacoordinated Aluminum(III) Triazenides for Use in Atomic Layer Deposition

Amidinate and guanidinate ligands have been used extensively to produce volatile and thermally stable precursors for atomic layer deposition. The triazenide ligand is relatively unexplored as an alternative ligand system. Herein, we present six new Al(III) complexes bearing three sets of a 1,3-dialkyltriazenide ligand. These complexes volatilize quantitatively in a single step with onset volatilization temperatures of similar to 150 degrees C and 1 Torr vapor pressures of similar to 134 degrees C. Differential scanning calorimetry revealed that these Al(III) complexes exhibited exothermic events that overlapped with the temperatures of their mass loss events in thermogravimetric analysis. Using quantum chemical density functional theory computations, we found a decomposition pathway that transforms the relatively large hexacoordinated Al(III) precursor into a smaller dicoordinated complex. The pathway relies on previously unexplored interligand proton migrations. These new Al(III) triazenides provide a series of alternative precursors with unique thermal properties that could be highly advantageous for vapor deposition processes of Al containing materials

Facial emotion recognition and alexithymia in adults with somatoform disorders

The primary aim of this study was to investigate facial emotion recognition (FER) in patients with somatoform disorders (SFD). Also of interest was the extent to which concurrent alexithymia contributed to any changes in emotion recognition accuracy. Twenty patients with SFD and 20 healthy, age, sex and education matched, controls were assessed with the Facially Expressed Emotion Labelling Test of FER and the 26-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Patients withSFD exhibited elevated alexithymia symptoms relative to healthy controls.Patients with SFD also recognized significantly fewer emotional expressions than did the healthy controls. However, the group difference in emotion recognition accuracy became nonsignificant once the influence of alexithymia was controlled for statistically. This suggests that the deficit in FER observed in the patients with SFD was most likely a consequence of concurrent alexithymia. It should be noted that neither depression nor anxiety was significantly related to emotion recognition accuracy, suggesting that these variables did not contribute the emotion recognition deficit. Impaired FER observed in the patients with SFD could plausibly have a negative influence on these individuals’ social functioning

Regulation of emotions in the community: suppression and reappraisal strategies and its psychometric properties

Objective: The German Version of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) has recently been published. The questionnaire investigates two common emotion regulation strategies (10 items) on two scales (suppression, reappraisal). Major aims of the study were to assess the reliability and factor structure of the ERQ, to determine population based norms and to investigate relations of suppression and reappraisal to anxiety, depression and demographic characteristics

Direct electrophysiological evidence for prefrontal control of hippocampal processing during voluntary forgetting

Forgetting does not necessarily reflect failure to encode information but can, to some extent, also be voluntarily controlled. Previous studies have suggested that voluntary forgetting relies on active inhibition of encoding processes in the hippocampus by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) [1, 2, 3, 4]. During attentional and sensorimotor processing, enhanced DLPFC theta power alongside increased alpha/beta oscillations are a neural signature of an inhibitory top-down mechanism, with theta oscillations reflecting prefrontal control and alpha/beta oscillations occurring in areas targeted by inhibition [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. Here, we used intracranial EEG recordings in presurgical epilepsy patients implanted in DLPFC (n = 13) and hippocampus (n = 15) during an item-method directed forgetting paradigm. We found that voluntary forgetting is associated with increased neural oscillations in the low theta band (3–5 Hz) in DLPFC and in a broad theta/alpha/beta (6–18 Hz) frequency range in hippocampus. Combining time-lagged correlation analysis, phase synchronization, and Granger causality in 6 patients with electrodes in both DLPFC and hippocampus, we obtained converging evidence for a top-down control of hippocampal activity by the DLPFC. Together, our results provide strong support for a model in which voluntary forgetting relies on enhanced inhibition of the hippocampus by the DLPFC

Regulation of emotions in the community: suppression and reappraisal strategies and its psychometric properties

Objective: The German Version of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) has recently been published. The questionnaire investigates two common emotion regulation strategies (10 items) on two scales (suppression, reappraisal). Major aims of the study were to assess the reliability and factor structure of the ERQ, to determine population based norms and to investigate relations of suppression and reappraisal to anxiety, depression and demographic characteristics