Personality cannot be predicted from the power of resting state EEG

In the present study we asked whether it is possible to decode personality traits from resting state EEG data. EEG was recorded from a large sample of subjects (N = 309) who had answered questionnaires measuring personality trait scores of the 5 dimensions as well as the 10 subordinate aspects of the Big Five. Machine learning algorithms were used to build a classifier to predict each personality trait from power spectra of the resting state EEG data. The results indicate that the five dimensions as well as their subordinate aspects could not be predicted from the resting state EEG data. Finally, to demonstrate that this result is not due to systematic algorithmic or implementation mistakes the same methods were used to successfully classify whether the subject had eyes open or eyes closed and whether the subject was male or female. These results indicate that the extraction of personality traits from the power spectra of resting state EEG is extremely noisy, if possible at all.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

Assessing the Overlap Between Three Measures of Food Reward

Food reward is an important concept for research in eating behaviors. Many food reward tasks have been developed and are in active use. However, little is known how much these tasks overlap. Here, we sought to compare three promising food reward tasks: (1) the Leeds Food Preference Questionnaire (LFPQ; a procedure combining explicit ratings of wanting and liking and an implicit wanting task based on forced choice), (2) a hand grip force task, and (3) an emotional attentional blink (EAB) task. Specifically, we assessed whether the tasks are sensitive to changes in hunger, correlate with each other, and correlate with trait binge eating and snack food calorie intake. Thirty-nine women aged 25.51 ± 5.99 years, with a BMI of 22.51 ± 3.58 kg/m2 completed the three tasks twice: after a 6-h fast and following a breakfast meal. In the fasted condition, participants were also given ad libitum access to snack foods to assess calorie intake. Prior to the two laboratory sessions, participants completed a trait binge eating questionnaire. Results revealed that the LFPQ’s explicit wanting and explicit liking subscales, as well as grip force reflected higher food reward scores in the fasted condition. The three metrics also correlated positively with each other. Explicit wanting and liking correlated with snack food intake, while grip force did not. None of the tasks were related to trait binge eating. Reaction times in the forced choice procedure did not reflect changes in hunger, but the task was nevertheless able to differentiate between foods varying in taste and fat content. The EAB was not sensitive to the hunger manipulation; neither did the task correlate with binge eating or energy intake. Collectively, our findings suggest that the explicit wanting and liking scales and the grip force task measure the same construct, whereas EAB results may be obscured by a variety of potential confounding factors. Future research could include additional food reward tasks in comparisons, measure covariates that may moderate the variables’ associations, and compare hunger-dependent changes in food reward in different subgroups

Tunne iseennast: praktiline sissejuhatus individuaalsete erinevuste psühholoogiasse

BeSt programmi toetusel loodud e-kursuse "Tunne iseennast: praktiline sissejuhatus individuaalsete erinevuste psühholoogiasse" õppematerjali

Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN): A review and meta-analysis of studies in psychiatric and neurological disorders

The visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) response is an event-related potential (ERP) component, which is automatically elicited by events that violate predictions based on prior events. VMMN experiments use visual stimulus repetition to induce predictions, and vMMN is obtained by subtracting the response to rare unpredicted stimuli from those to frequent stimuli. One increasingly popular interpretation of the mismatch response postulates that vMMN, similar to its auditory counterpart (aMMN), represents a prediction error response generated by cortical mechanisms forming probabilistic representations of sensory signals. Here we discuss the physiological and theoretical basis of vMMN and review thirty-three studies from the emerging field of its clinical applications, presenting a meta-analysis of findings in schizophrenia, mood disorders, substance abuse, neurodegenerative disorders, developmental disorders, deafness, panic disorder and hypertension. Furthermore, we include reports on aging and maturation as they bear upon many clinically relevant conditions. Surveying the literature we found that vMMN is altered in several clinical populations which is in line with aMMN findings. An important potential advantage of vMMN however is that it allows the investigation of deficits in predictive processing in cognitive domains which rely primarily on visual information; a principal sensory modality and thus of vital importance in environmental information processing and response, and a modality which arguably may be more sensitive to some pathological changes. However, due to the relative infancy of research in vMMN compared to aMMN in clinical populations its potential for clinical application is not yet fully appreciated. The aim of this review and meta-analysis therefore is to present, in a detailed systematic manner, the findings from clinically-based vMMN studies, to discuss their potential impact and application, to raise awareness of this measure and to improve our understanding of disease upon fundamental aspects of visual information processing

Perceived onset time and position of a moving stimulus

During the few past years, there has been a growing interest in the timing and locating of moving stimuli. The most popular spatio-temporal phenomena that have been studied are the flash-lag effect (FLE) [Nature 370 (1994) 256] and the Fröhlich effect (FE) [Z. Sinnesphysiol. 54 (1923) 58]. Most often these phenomena are examined by some spatial task (e.g., judging whether moving and flashed stimuli are spatially aligned or not; explicitly pointing or adjusting the moving stimulus position). Usually, from the measured spatial offset temporal differences in processing of moving and stationary stimuli are inferred. Our experiments show that this practice may not be justified because the spatial and temporal properties were clearly disassociated for the movement onset perception. The disassociation demonstrates that the FLE and FE are most probably based on different internal representations

Detection of motion onset and offset: Reaction time and visual evoked potentials analysis.

Abstract Manual reaction time (RT) and visual evoked potentials (VEP) were measured in motion onset and oVset detection tasks. A considerable homology was observed between the temporal structure of RTs and VEP intervals, provided that the change in motion was detected as soon as the VEP signal has reached critical threshold amplitude. Both manual reactions and VEP rise in latency as the velocity of the onset or oVset motion decreases and were well approximated by the same negative power function with the exponent close to ¡2/3. This indicates that motion processing is normalised by subtracting the initial motion vector from ongoing motion. A comparison of the motion onset VEP signals in two diVerent conditions, in one of which the observer was instructed to abstain from the reaction and in the other to indicate as fast as possible the beginning of the motion, contained accurate information about the manual response

Detection of motion onset and offset: Reaction time and visual evoked potentials analysis.

Abstract Manual reaction time (RT) and visual evoked potentials (VEP) were measured in motion onset and oVset detection tasks. A considerable homology was observed between the temporal structure of RTs and VEP intervals, provided that the change in motion was detected as soon as the VEP signal has reached critical threshold amplitude. Both manual reactions and VEP rise in latency as the velocity of the onset or oVset motion decreases and were well approximated by the same negative power function with the exponent close to ¡2/3. This indicates that motion processing is normalised by subtracting the initial motion vector from ongoing motion. A comparison of the motion onset VEP signals in two diVerent conditions, in one of which the observer was instructed to abstain from the reaction and in the other to indicate as fast as possible the beginning of the motion, contained accurate information about the manual response

Assessing the overlap between three measures of food reward - data storage

Food reward is an important concept for research in eating behaviours. Many food reward tasks have been developed and are in active use. However, little is known how much these tasks overlap. Here, we sought to compare three promising food reward tasks: 1) the Leeds Food Preference Questionnaire (LFPQ; a procedure combining explicit ratings of wanting and liking and an implicit wanting task based on forced choice), 2) a hand grip force task, and 3) an emotional attentional blink (EAB) task. Specifically, we assessed whether the tasks are sensitive to changes in hunger, correlate with each other, and correlate with trait binge eating and snack food calorie intake. Thirty-nine women aged 25.51 ± 5.99 years, with a BMI of 22.51 ± 3.58 kg/m2 completed the three tasks twice: after a six-hour fast and following a breakfast meal. In the fasted condition, participants were also given ad libitum access to snack foods to assess calorie intake. Prior to the two laboratory sessions, participants completed a trait binge eating questionnaire. Results revealed that the LFPQ’s explicit wanting and explicit liking subscales, as well as grip force reflected higher food reward scores in the fasted condition. The three metrics also correlated positively with each other. Explicit wanting and liking correlated with snack food intake, while grip force did not. None of the tasks were related to trait binge eating. Reaction times in the forced choice procedure did not reflect changes in hunger, but the task was nevertheless able to differentiate between foods varying in taste and fat content. The EAB was not sensitive to the hunger manipulation; neither did the task correlate with binge eating or energy intake. Collectively, our findings suggest that the explicit wanting and liking scales and the grip force task measure the same construct, whereas EAB results may be obscured by a variety of potential confounding factors. Future research could include additional food reward tasks in comparisons, measure covariates that may moderate the variables’ associations, and compare hunger-dependent changes in food reward in different subgroups

Editorial : Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) : A unique tool in investigating automatic processing

nonPeerReviewe