Eyes and Ears: Cross-Modal Interference of Tinnitus on Visual Processing

The visual processing capacity of tinnitus patients is worse than normal controls, indicating cross-modal interference. However, the mechanism underlying the tinnitus-modulated visual processing is largely unclear. In order to explore the influence of tinnitus on visual processing, this study used a signal recognition paradigm to observe whether the tinnitus group would display a significantly longer reaction time in processing the letter symbols (Experiment 1) and emotional faces (Experiment 2) than the control group. Signal detection and signal recognition, which reflect the perceptual and conceptual aspects of visual processing respectively, were manipulated individually in different conditions to identify the pattern of the cross-modal interference of tinnitus. The results showed that the tinnitus group required a significantly prolonged reaction time in detecting and recognizing the letter symbols and emotional faces than the control group; meanwhile, no between-group difference was detected in signal encoding. In addition, any gender- and distress-modulated effects of processing were not found, suggesting the universality of the present findings. Finally, follow-up studies would be needed to explore the neural mechanism behind the decline in speed of visual processing. The positive emotional bias in tinnitus patients also needs to be further verified and discussed.Highlights:- The bottom-up visual processing speed is decreased in tinnitus patients.- Tinnitus primarily interferes with the detection of the visual signals in individuals

Loss of Vision Dominance at the Preresponse Level in Tinnitus Patients: Preliminary Behavioral Evidence

At present, the mechanisms underlying changes in visual processing in individuals with tinnitus remain unclear. Therefore, we investigated whether the vision dominance of individuals with tinnitus disappears at the preresponse level through behavioral study. A total of 38 individuals with tinnitus and 31 healthy controls completed a task in which they were asked to attend to either visual or auditory stimuli while ignoring simultaneous stimulus inputs from the other modality. We manipulated three levels of congruency between the simultaneous visual and auditory inputs: congruent (C), incongruent at the preresponse level (PRIC), and incongruent at the response level (RIC). Thus, we differentiated the cross-modal conflict explicitly into the preresponse (PRIC > C) and response (RIC > PRIC) levels. The results revealed no significant difference in the size of the preresponse level conflict between the auditory attention and visual attention conditions in tinnitus group. In brief, the preresponse level of individuals with tinnitus showed a loss in vision dominance. This may be due to the reduced interference of visual information in auditory processing

Social Comparison Manifests in Event-related Potentials

Social comparison, a widespread phenomenon in human society, has been found to affect outcome evaluation. The need to belong to a social group may result in distinct neural responses to diverse social comparison outcomes. To extend previous studies by examining how social comparison with hierarchical characteristics is temporally processed, electroencephalography responses were recorded in the current study. Participants played a lottery game with two pseudo-players simultaneously and received both their own and the other two players’ outcomes. Results of three event-related potential components, including the P2, the feedback-related negativity (FRN), and the late positive component (LPC), indicate that social comparison manifests in three stages. First, outcomes indicating a different performance from others elicited a larger P2 than evenness. Second, the FRN showed hierarchical sensitivity to social comparison outcomes. This effect manifested asymmetrically. Finally, large difference between the participant’s outcome and the other two players’ evoked a larger LPC than the medium difference and the even condition. We suggest that during social comparison, people detect if there is any difference between self and others, and then evaluate the information of this difference hierarchically, and finally interpret the situations in which oneself deviates from the group as most motivationally salient

Does Gender Matter in the Relationship between Anxiety and Decision-Making?

There is an ongoing debate about whether and how anxiety level affects behavioral performance in risk and/or ambiguous decision-making. According to the literature, we suggest that gender difference might be a confounding factor that has contributed to heterogeneous findings in previous studies. To examine this idea, 135 students who participated in this study were divided into six groups according to their gender (male/female) and trait anxiety level (high/medium/low; measured by the Trait form of Spielberger’s State-Trait Anxiety Inventory). All groups finished the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) for ambiguous decision-making, and the Game of Dice Task (GDT) for risk decision-making. Behavioral results revealed that the IGT but not the GDT showed an interaction between anxiety and gender. Specifically, men outperformed women in the IGT, but only when their trait anxiety levels were low. Meanwhile, the GDT showed a main effect of anxiety grouping, such that low anxious participants were more risk-seeking than their medium anxious counterparts. These findings indicate that gender selectively modulates the influence of anxiety on ambiguous decision-making, but not risk decision-making. The theoretical and practical implications of the current findings are discussed

Impaired Working Memory Updating for Emotional Stimuli in Depressed Patients

Although two previous studies have demonstrated that depressed individuals showed deficits in working memory (WM) updating of both negative and positive contents, the effects were confounded by shifting dysfunctions and the detailed neural mechanism associated with the failure in N-back task is not clear. Using a 2-back task, the current study examined the WM updating of positive, negative and neutral contents in depressed patients. It is found that depressed patients performed poorer than healthy controls only when updating positive material. Using event-related potential (ERP) technique, the current study also investigated the neural correlates of updating deficits in depression. According to previous studies, the n-back task was divided into three sub-processes, i.e., encoding, matching and maintaining. Our ERP results showed that depressed patients had smaller occipital P1 for positive material compared to healthy controls, indicating their insensitivity to positive items on early encoding stage. Besides, depressed patients had larger frontal P2 and parietal late positive potential (LPP) than healthy controls irrespective of the valence of the words, reflecting that patients are inefficient during matching (P2) and maintaining (LPP) processes. These two mechanisms (insufficient attention to positive stimuli and low efficiency in matching and maintaining) together lead to the deficits of WM updating in depression

Does Gender Matter in the Relationship between Anxiety and Decision-Making?

There is an ongoing debate about whether and how anxiety level affects behavioral performance in risk and/or ambiguous decision-making. According to the literature, we suggest that gender difference might be a confounding factor that has contributed to heterogeneous findings in previous studies. To examine this idea, 135 students who participated in this study were divided into six groups according to their gender (male/female) and trait anxiety level (high/medium/low; measured by the Trait form of Spielberger&#39;s State-Trait Anxiety Inventory). All groups finished the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) for ambiguous decision-making, and the Game of Dice Task (GDT) for risk decision-making. Behavioral results revealed that the IGT but not the GDT showed an interaction between anxiety and gender. Specifically, men outperformed women in the IGT, but only when their trait anxiety levels were low. Meanwhile, the GDT showed a main effect of anxiety grouping, such that low anxious participants were more risk-seeking than their medium anxious counterparts. These findings indicate that gender selectively modulates the influence of anxiety on ambiguous decision-making, but not risk decision-making. The theoretical and practical implications of the current findings are discussed.</p

Attachment affects social information processing: Specific electrophysiological effects of maternal stimuli

Attachment is critical to each individual. It affects the cognitive-affective processing of social information. The present study examines how attachment affects the processing of social information, specifically maternal information. We assessed the behavioral and electrophysiological responses to maternal information (compared to non-specific others) in a Go/No-go Association Task (GNAT) with 22 participants. The results illustrated that attachment affected maternal information processing during three sequential stages of information processing. First, attachment affected visual perception, reflected by enhanced P100 and N170 elicited by maternal information as compared to others information. Second, compared to others, mother obtained more attentional resources, reflected by faster behavioral response to maternal information and larger P200 and P300. Finally, mother was evaluated positively, reflected by shorter P300 latency in a mother+good condition as compared to a mother+bad condition. These findings indicated that the processing of attachment-relevant information is neurologically differentiated from other types of social information from an early stage of perceptual processing to late high-level processing