Effects of aversive odour presentation on inhibitory control in the Stroop colour-word interference task

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Due to the unique neural projections of the olfactory system, odours have the ability to directly influence affective processes. Furthermore, it has been shown that emotional states can influence various non-emotional cognitive tasks, such as memory and planning. However, the link between emotional and cognitive processes is still not fully understood. The present study used the olfactory pathway to induce a negative emotional state in humans to investigate its effect on inhibitory control performance in a standard, single-trial manual Stroop colour-word interference task. An unpleasant (H₂S) and an emotionally neutral (Eugenol) odorant were presented in two separate experimental runs, both in blocks alternating with ambient air, to 25 healthy volunteers, while they performed the cognitive task.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Presentation of the unpleasant odorant reduced Stroop interference by reducing the reaction times for incongruent stimuli, while the presentation of the neutral odorant had no effect on task performance.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The odour-induced negative emotional state appears to facilitate cognitive processing in the task used in the present study, possibly by increasing the amount of cognitive control that is being exerted. This stands in contrast to other findings that showed impaired cognitive performance under odour-induced negative emotional states, but is consistent with models of mood-congruent processing.</p

Mood and cognition in healthy older European adults: the Zenith study

YesBackground: The study aim was to determine if state and trait intra-individual measures of everyday affect predict cognitive functioning in healthy older community dwelling European adults (n = 387), aged 55-87 years. Methods: Participants were recruited from centres in France, Italy and Northern Ireland. Trait level and variability in positive and negative affect (PA and NA) were assessed using self-administered PANAS scales, four times a day for four days. State mood was assessed by one PANAS scale prior to assessment of recognition memory, spatial working memory, reaction time and sustained attention using the CANTAB computerized test battery. Results: A series of hierarchical regression analyses were carried out, one for each measure of cognitive function as the dependent variable, and socio-demographic variables (age, sex and social class), state and trait mood measures as the predictors. State PA and NA were both predictive of spatial working memory prior to looking at the contribution of trait mood. Trait PA and its variability were predictive of sustained attention. In the final step of the regression analyses, trait PA variability predicted greater sustained attention, whereas state NA predicted fewer spatial working memory errors, accounting for a very small percentage of the variance (1-2%) in the respective tests. Conclusion: Moods, by and large, have a small transient effect on cognition in this older sample

Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ~1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of 40+8-8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 Mo. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ~40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One- Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ~10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ~9 and ~16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta

Linear increases in BOLD response associated with increasing proportion of incongruent trials across time in a colour Stroop task

Selective attention is popularly assessed with colour Stroop tasks in which participants name the ink colour of colour words, whilst resisting interference from the natural tendency to read the words. Prior studies hinted that the key brain regions (dorsolateral prefrontal (dlPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)) may vary their degree of involvement, dependent on attentional demand. This study aimed to determine whether a parametrically varied increase in attentional demand resulted in linearly increased activity in these regions, and/or whether additional regions would be recruited during high attentional demand. Twenty-eight healthy young adults underwent fMRI whilst naming the font colour of colour words. Linear increases in BOLD response were assessed with increasing percentage incongruent trials per block (0, 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100%). Whilst ACC activation increased linearly according to incongruity level, dlPFC activity appeared constant. Together with behavioural evidence of reduced Stroop interference, these data support a load-dependent conflict-related response in ACC, but not dlPFC

fMRI Evidence for the Effect of Verbal Complexity on Lateralisation of the Neural Response Associated with Decoding Prosodic Emotion

The pattern of intonation accompanying an utterance provides a powerful cue as to a speaker’s emotional state of mind. Most prior lesion studies have demonstrated that the nodal point for decoding these prosodic emotion cues is mediated by unimodal auditory cortex in the right posterior lateral temporal lobe. However, functional neuroimaging has brought with it increasing attention to the equivalent left hemisphere region in this role. This study used fMRI to quantitatively assess the hypothesis that involvement of the left posterior lateral temporal lobe depended on the linguistic load or verbal complexity of the prosodic emotion stimuli. BOLD contrast data was acquired on a 3T scanner whilst 16 healthy young adults identified the prosodic emotion in three conditions: ‘sentences’ comprised of words, a repeated monosyllable, and a single prolonged syllable (asyllabic). Whole brain analyses were performed using SPM5 and supplemented by posterior lateral temporal lobe region of interest (ROI) analyses. The whole brain analyses appeared to show bilateral temporal lobe activation across the conditions, however, the ROI analyses indicated a highly significant decrease in activity in the left ROI as verbal complexity decreased. Changes in right ROI activity were not statistically significant. Our results indicate that the likelihood of observing a notable left temporal lobe response in functional neuroimaging studies of emotional prosody comprehension depends on the verbal complexity of the prosodic emotion stimuli. Despite the right hemisphere dominance underlying this task, the left hemisphere region may be co-activated in its attempt to extract phonetic-segmental information from the acoustic stimuli whether or not the stimuli contain meaningful phonetic-segmental information

Decoding Emotional Prosody in Parkinson’s Disease and its Potential Neuropsychological Basis

Parkinson’s disease patients may have difficulty decoding prosodic emotion cues. These data suggest the basal ganglia are involved, but may reflect dorsolateral prefrontal cortex dysfunction. An auditory emotional N-back task and cognitive N-back task were administered to 33 patients and 33 older adult controls, as were an auditory emotional Stroop task and cognitive Stroop task. No deficit was observed on the emotion decoding tasks; this did not alter with increased frontal lobe load. However, on the cognitive tasks, patients performed worse than older adult controls, suggesting cognitive deficits may be more prominent. The impact of frontal lobe dysfunction on prosodic emotion cue decoding may only become apparent once frontal lobe pathology rises above a threshold

The Specificity of Age-Related Decline in Interpretation of Emotion Cues From Prosody

Older adults are not as good as younger adults at decoding prosodic emotions. We sought to determine the specificity of this finding. Performance of older and younger adults was compared on a prosodic emotion task, a “pure” prosodic emotion task, a linguistic prosody task, and a “pure” linguistic prosody task. Older adults were less accurate at interpreting prosodic emotion cues and nonemotional contours, concurrent semantic processing worsened interpretation, and performance was further degraded when identifying negative emotions and questions. Older adults display a pervasive problem interpreting prosodic cues, but further study is required to clarify the stage at which performance declines