Negative Mood State Enhances the Susceptibility to Unpleasant Events: Neural Correlates from a Music-Primed Emotion Classification Task

Background: Various affective disorders are linked with enhanced processing of unpleasant stimuli. However, this link is likely a result of the dominant negative mood derived from the disorder, rather than a result of the disorder itself. Additionally, little is currently known about the influence of mood on the susceptibility to emotional events in healthy populations.Method: Event-Related Potentials (ERP) were recorded for pleasant, neutral and unpleasant pictures while subjects performed an emotional/neutral picture classification task during positive, neutral, or negative mood induced by instrumental Chinese music.Results: Late Positive Potential (LPP) amplitudes were positively related to the affective arousal of pictures. The emotional responding to unpleasant pictures, indicated by the unpleasant-neutral differences in LPPs, was enhanced during negative compared to neutral and positive moods in the entire LPP time window (600–1000 ms). The magnitude of this enhancement was larger with increasing self-reported negative mood. In contrast, this responding was reduced during positive compared to neutral mood in the 800–1000 ms interval. Additionally, LPP reactions to pleasant stimuli were similar across positive, neutral and negative moods except those in the 800–900 ms interval.Implications: Negative mood intensifies the humans' susceptibility to unpleasant events in healthy individuals. In contrast, music-induced happy mood is effective in reducing the susceptibility to these events. Practical implications of these findings were discussed.</p

Discovery of potential biomarkers for osteoporosis using LC/GC−MS metabolomic methods

PurposeFor early diagnosis of osteoporosis (OP), plasma metabolomics of OP was studied by untargeted LC/GC−MS in a Chinese elderly population to find possible diagnostic biomarkers.MethodsA total of 379 Chinese community-dwelling older adults aged ≥65 years were recruited for this study. The BMD of the calcaneus was measured using quantitative ultrasound (QUS), and a T value ≤-2.5 was defined as OP. Twenty-nine men and 47 women with OP were screened, and 29 men and 36 women were matched according to age and BMI as normal controls using propensity matching. Plasma from these participants was first analyzed by untargeted LC/GC−MS, followed by FC and P values to screen for differential metabolites and heatmaps and box plots to differentiate metabolites between groups. Finally, metabolic pathway enrichment analysis of differential metabolites was performed based on KEGG, and pathways with P ≤ 0.05 were selected as enrichment pathways.ResultsWe screened metabolites with FC&gt;1.2 or FC&lt;1/1.2 and P&lt;0.05 and found 33 differential metabolites in elderly men and 30 differential metabolites in elderly women that could be potential biomarkers for OP. 2-Aminomuconic acid semialdehyde (AUC=0.72, 95% CI 0.582-0.857, P=0.004) is highly likely to be a biomarker for screening OP in older men. Tetradecanedioic acid (AUC=0.70, 95% CI 0.575-0.818, P=0.004) is highly likely to be a biomarker for screening OP in older women.ConclusionThese findings can be applied to clinical work through further validation studies. This study also shows that metabolomic analysis has great potential for application in the early diagnosis and recurrence monitoring of OP in elderly individuals

Social Company Disrupts Fear Memory Renewal: Evidence From Two Rodent Studies

Renewal of fear outside treatment context is a challenge for behavioral therapies. Prior studies suggest a social buffering effect that fear response is attenuated in the presence of social company. However, few studies have examined the role of social company in reducing fear renewal. Here, we used a Pavlovian fear conditioning procedure including acquisition, extinction and test stages to examine social buffering effect on fear memory renewal in male rats. The test context was manipulated to be either different from the extinction one in ABC model, or same as that in ACC model. All conditioned subjects underwent extinction individually in Experiment 1 but with a partner in Experiment 2. In test, both experiments manipulated social company (alone vs. accompanied) and context (ABC vs. ACC). Experiment 1 showed more freezing in ABC than in ACC model during the test-alone condition, indicating a fear renewal effect which, however, was absent during the test-accompanied condition. Also, accompanied subjects showed less freezing compared to alone subjects in the ABC model. In Experiment 2, animals showed a similar freezing in ABC and ACC models despite being tested alone, implying that social company offered at extinction disrupted fear renewal. Again, we observed reduced freezing in accompanied relative to alone subjects in the test. These results suggest that social company is effective in disrupting fear renewal after leaving treatment context

Auditory-induced emotion modulates processes of response inhibition: an event-related potential study

This study investigated the impact of auditory-induced emotion on response inhibition. Fifty kinds of positive, neutral, and negative sounds were used as emotional materials whose presentation was followed by a Go/Nogo task. Event-related potentials were recorded for Go and Nogo tones. The response times for Go stimuli were longer under negative than under positive and neutral emotions. In addition, Go and Nogo stimuli elicited larger N1 amplitudes during neutral than during emotional conditions. Moreover, Nogo-related N2 was larger for neutral sounds than for positive and negative sounds. The Nogo-N2, however, was not different between positive and negative sounds. Therefore, auditory-induced emotions significantly modulated the behavioral performance and the process of response conflict monitoring, a central component to the activity of response inhibition.This study investigated the impact of auditory-induced emotion on response inhibition. Fifty kinds of positive, neutral, and negative sounds were used as emotional materials whose presentation was followed by a Go/Nogo task. Event-related potentials were recorded for Go and Nogo tones. The response times for Go stimuli were longer under negative than under positive and neutral emotions. In addition, Go and Nogo stimuli elicited larger N1 amplitudes during neutral than during emotional conditions. Moreover, Nogo-related N2 was larger for neutral sounds than for positive and negative sounds. The Nogo-N2, however, was not different between positive and negative sounds. Therefore, auditory-induced emotions significantly modulated the behavioral performance and the process of response conflict monitoring, a central component to the activity of response inhibition. NeuroReport 20:25-30 (C) 2009 Wolters Kluwer Health vertical bar Lippincott Williams & Wilkins