Review of Abnormal Self-Knowledge in Major Depressive Disorder

Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is an affective disorder that is harmful to both physical and mental health. Abnormal self-knowledge, which refers to abnormal judgments about oneself, is a core symptom of depression. However, little research has summarized how and why patients with MDD differ from healthy individuals in terms of self-knowledge.Objective: To gain a better understanding of MDD, we reviewed previous studies that focused on the behavioral and neurological changes of self-knowledge in this illness.Main Findings: On the behavioral level, depressed individuals exhibited negative self-knowledge in an explicit way, while more heterogeneous patterns were reported in implicit results. On the neurological level, depressed individuals, as compared with non-depressed controls, showed abnormal self-referential processing in both early perception and higher cognitive processing phases during the Self-Referential Encoding Task. Furthermore, fMRI studies have reported aberrant activity in the medial prefrontal cortex area for negative self-related items in depression. These results revealed several behavioral features and brain mechanisms underlying abnormal self-knowledge in depression.Future Studies: The neural mechanism of implicit self-knowledge in MDD remains unclear. Future research should examine the importance of others' attitudes on the self-concept of individuals with MDD, and whether abnormal self-views may be modified through cognitive or pharmacological approaches. In addition, differences in abnormal self-knowledge due to genetic variation between depressed and non-depressed populations remain unconfirmed. Importantly, it remains unknown whether abnormal self-knowledge could be used as a specific marker to distinguish healthy individuals from those with MDD.Conclusion: This review extends our understanding of the relationship between self-knowledge and depression by indicating several abnormalities among individuals with MDD and those who are at risk for this illness

Affective dependency graph for sarcasm detection

Detecting sarcastic expressions could promote the understanding of natural language in social media. In this paper, we revisit sarcasm detection from a novel perspective, so as to account for the longrange literal sentiment inconsistencies. More concretely, we explore a novel scenario of constructing an affective graph and a dependency graph for each sentence based on the affective information retrieved from external affective commonsense knowledge and the syntactical information of the sentence. Based on it, an Affective Dependency Graph Convolutional Network (ADGCN) framework is proposed to draw long-range incongruity patterns and inconsistent expressions over the context for sarcasm detection by means with interactively modeling the affective and dependency information. Experimental results on multiple benchmark datasets show that our proposed approach outperforms the current state-of-the-art methods in sarcasm detection

Depression and self-knowledge : behavioral and brain responses of reflected self-evaluation and implicit self-esteem in sub-clinical depression

Negatiivisesti korostunut itsetuntemus on yksi masennuksen keskeisistä oireista. Tällaisen negatiivisesti korostuneen minäkuvan vaikutuksesta masennuksesta kärsivillä henkilöillä on taipumus nähdä itsensä vääristyneellä negatiivisella tavalla. Tämän ilmiön taustalla olevaa neurobiologista mekanismia ei kuitenkaan vielä tunneta kovin hyvin. Tutkimuksessa I kävin läpi olemassa olevia tutkimuksia ja huomasin, että masentuneilla henkilöillä negatiivinen itsetuntemus on yhdistetty vahvistuneisiin reaktioihin myöhäisten positiivisten komponenttien osalta ja muuttuneeseen toimintaan aivokuoren keskilinjan rakenteissa negatiivisesti vääristyneen suoran itsearvioinnin aikana, jossa yksilöt arvioivat itseään omasta näkökulmastaan. Tutkimuksessa II aivotoimintaa tutkittiin ”heijastuneen” itsearvioinnin aikana, jolloin yksilöt arvioivat itseään ulkopuolisen henkilön näkökulmasta. Toiminnalliset magneettikuvat skannattiin, kun osallistujat arvioivat itseään muiden mielipiteiden mukaan. Verrattuna kontrolliryhmään, dysforinen ryhmä (henkilöitä joilla oli lisääntyneitä masennusoireita ilman varsinaista diagnoosia) arveli muiden liittävän heihin enemmän negatiivisia piirteitä. Dysforisella ryhmällä oli myös kontrolliryhmään nähden poikkeavaa aivotoimintaa tempo-parietaalisessa liitoskohdassa muiden mielipiteitä heijastavan itsearvioinnin aikana. Tutkimuksessa III tutkittiin sekä kontrolli- että dysforisessa ryhmässä EEG:hen (elektroenkefalogrammi) aivojen herätevasteita, jotka liittyvät alhaiseen itsetunnon, jota puolestaan pidetään negatiivisen itsearvioinnin seurauksena. Herätevasteita mitattiin implisiittistä itsetuntoa mittaavan implisiittisen assosiaatiotehtävän aikana. Tulokset osoittivat, että toisin kuin kontrolliryhmässä, dysforisessa ryhmässä esiintyi suurentunut positiivinen aivovaste myöhäisellä aikaikkunalla (400-1000 ms). Tämä suurentunut positiivisuus näkyi silloin, kun itseen yhdistettiin tiedostamatta negatiivisia persoonallisuuden piirteitä verrattuna siihen, kun itseen yhdistettiin positiivisia persoonallisuuden piirteitä. Nämä tulokset viittaavat siihen, että subkliiniseen masennukseen (dysforiaan) liittyy kasvanut negatiivinen assosiaatio itseen, joka heijastaa matalaa implisiittistä itsetuntoa. Kaiken kaikkiaan tämä väitöskirja laajentaa ymmärrystämme Beckin kognitiivisesta masennusteoriasta tarjoamalla käyttäytymis- ja neurokuvantamisnäyttöä masennukseen liittyvästä negatiivisesta heijastuneesta itsearvioinnista ja alhaisesta implisiittisestä itsetunnosta. Tulokseni viittaavat myös siihen, että itseen liitettyä negatiivista vinoumaa ei esiinny ainoastaan kliinisessä masennuksessa vaan myös subkliinisissä väestöryhmissä, joilla on lisääntyneitä masennusoireita.Depression often involves negative self-knowledge, with individuals viewing themselves in a distorted, negative way. The neurobiological mechanism underlying this phenomenon is not yet fully understood. This dissertation consists of three individual studies that investigate behavioral and brain responses of negative self-knowledge in depression. Study I reviewed existing studies and found that, for depressed individuals, negative self-knowledge has been associated with enhanced responses at late positive components and altered activity in cortical midline structures during negative biased direct self-evaluation, where individuals evaluate the self through their own perspective. Study II investigated brain activity of reflected self-evaluation, where individuals evaluate the self through another person’s perspective, in participants with enhanced depressive symptoms (labeled as a dysphoric group). The functional magnetic resonance images were scanned while the participants were evaluating themselves according to others’ opinions. Compared to a control group, the dysphoric group exhibited negative bias in behavioral ratings and altered brain activity in the bilateral tempo-parietal junction during the reflected self-evaluation. Study III investigated brain responses of depression-related low self-esteem, which is considered a consequence of the negative self-evaluation, in both a dysphoric group and a control group. The electroencephalogram was recorded during an implicit association task measuring implicit self-esteem. The results showed that, contrary to the control group, the dysphoric group exhibited an enhanced late positive brain response when the self was unconsciously associated with negative personality traits, compared to when the self was associated with positive personality traits, within the time window of 400–1,000 ms post-stimulus latency. The results suggest a facilitated self-is-negative association, reflecting low implicit self-esteem, in sub-clinical depression. Overall, this dissertation extends our understanding of Beck’s cognitive theory of depression by providing behavioral and neuroimaging evidence for the negative reflected self-evaluation and the low implicit self-esteem related to depression. It also suggests that the self-negativity bias does not occur only in clinical depression, but also in sub-clinical populations with enhanced depressive symptoms

Review of abnormal self-knowledge in major depressive disorder

Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is an affective disorder that is harmful to both physical and mental health. Abnormal self-knowledge, which refers to abnormal judgments about oneself, is a core symptom of depression. However, little research has summarized how and why patients with MDD differ from healthy individuals in terms of self-knowledge. Objective: To gain a better understanding of MDD, we reviewed previous studies that focused on the behavioral and neurological changes of self-knowledge in this illness. Main Findings: On the behavioral level, depressed individuals exhibited negative self-knowledge in an explicit way, while more heterogeneous patterns were reported in implicit results. On the neurological level, depressed individuals, as compared with non-depressed controls, showed abnormal self-referential processing in both early perception and higher cognitive processing phases during the Self-Referential Encoding Task. Furthermore, fMRI studies have reported aberrant activity in the medial prefrontal cortex area for negative self-related items in depression. These results revealed several behavioral features and brain mechanisms underlying abnormal self-knowledge in depression. Future Studies: The neural mechanism of implicit self-knowledge in MDD remains unclear. Future research should examine the importance of others' attitudes on the self-concept of individuals with MDD, and whether abnormal self-views may be modified through cognitive or pharmacological approaches. In addition, differences in abnormal self-knowledge due to genetic variation between depressed and non-depressed populations remain unconfirmed. Importantly, it remains unknown whether abnormal self-knowledge could be used as a specific marker to distinguish healthy individuals from those with MDD. Conclusion: This review extends our understanding of the relationship between self-knowledge and depression by indicating several abnormalities among individuals with MDD and those who are at risk for this illness.peerReviewe

Taking Familiar Others’ Perspectives to Regulate Our Own Emotion : An Event-Related Potential Study

Current research on emotion regulation has mainly focused on Gross’s cognitive strategies for regulating negative emotion; however, little attention has been paid to whether social cognitive processes can be used to regulate both positive and negative emotions. We considered perspective-taking as an aspect of social cognition, and investigated whether it would affect one’s own emotional response. The present study used a block paradigm and event-related potential (ERP) technology to explore this question. A 3 (perspective: self vs. pessimistic familiar other vs. optimistic familiar other) × 3 (valence: positive vs. neutral vs. negative) within-group design was employed. Thirty-six college students participated and considered their own or target others’ feelings about pictures with different valences. Results showed that positive emotional responses were more neutral under a pessimistic familiar other perspective, and more positive under an optimistic familiar other perspective, and vice versa for negative emotional responses. In ERP results, compared with a self-perspective, taking familiar others’ perspectives elicited reductions in P3 (370–410 ms) and LPP (400–800 ms) difference waves. These findings suggested that taking a pessimistic or optimistic familiar other perspective affects emotion regulation by changing later processing of emotional information.peerReviewe

The cumulative effect of positive and negative feedback on emotional experience

The cumulative effect of positive or negative feedback on subsequent emotional experiences remains unclear. Elucidating this effect could help individuals to better understand and accept the change in emotional experience, irrespective of when they or others receive consecutive positive or negative feedback. This study aimed to examine this effect on 37 participants using self-reported pleasantness and event-related potential data as indicators. After completing each trial, the participants received predetermined false feedback; they were then assessed on a nine-point pleasantness scale. There were 12 false feedback conditions categorized into three valence types. The positive type consisted of three consecutive positive feedbacks and a fourth medium feedback; the medium type contained four consecutive medium feedbacks; the negative type consisted of three consecutive negative feedbacks and a fourth medium feedback. We abbreviated medium false feedback after three positive, medium, and negative false feedbacks as 3 pm, 3 mm, and 3 nm, respectively. The results showed that the score of self-reported pleasantness of 3mm was significantly lower than that of 3 pm and higher than that of 3 nm. The feedback-related negativity amplitude of 3 pm was significantly greater than that of 3 mm and 3 nm, and the late-positive potential amplitude of 3 nm was significantly greater than that of 3 pm and 3 mm. We found that individuals experienced medium feedback more positively and negatively after continuous positive and negative feedback, respectively. Our findings suggest that individuals should seek continuous positive feedback and avoid continuous negative feedback; this strategy may contribute to increased positive emotional experiences in the future.peerReviewe

Distinct neural-behavioral correspondence within face processing and attention networks for the composite face effect

The composite face effect (CFE) is recognized as a hallmark for holistic face processing, but our knowledge remains sparse about its cognitive and neural loci. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging with independent localizer and complete composite face task, we here investigated its neural-behavioral correspondence within face processing and attention networks. Complementing classical comparisons, we adopted a dimensional reduction approach to explore the core cognitive constructs of the behavioral CFE measurement. Our univariate analyses found an alignment effect in regions associated with both the extended face processing network and attention networks. Further representational similarity analyses based on the Euclidian distances among all experimental conditions were used to identify cortical regions with reliable neural-behavioral correspondences. Multidimensional scaling and hierarchical clustering analyses for neural-behavioral correspondence data revealed two principal components underlying the behavioral CFE effect, which fit best to the neural responses in the bilateral insula and medial frontal gyrus. These findings highlight the distinct neurocognitive contributions of both face processing and attentional networks to the behavioral CFE outcome, which bridge the gaps between face recognition and attentional control models.peerReviewe

Brain responses of dysphoric and control participants during a self‐esteem implicit association test

Previous studies have reported lowered implicit self‐esteem at the behavioral level among depressed individuals. However, brain responses related to the lowered implicit self‐esteem have not been investigated in people with depression. Here, event‐related potentials were measured in 28 dysphoric participants (individuals with elevated amounts of depressive symptoms) and 30 control participants during performance of an implicit association task (IAT) suggested to reflect implicit self‐esteem. Despite equivalent behavioral performance, differences in brain responses were observed between the dysphoric and the control groups in late positive component (LPC) within 400–1,000 ms poststimulus latency. For the dysphoric group, self‐negativity mapping stimuli (me with negative word pairing and not‐me with positive word pairing) induced significantly larger LPC amplitude as compared to self‐positivity mapping stimuli (me with positive pairing and not‐me with negative pairing), whereas the control group showed the opposite pattern. These results suggest a more efficient categorization toward implicit self‐is‐negative association, possibly reflecting lower implicit self‐esteem among the dysphoric participants, in comparison to the controls. These results demonstrate the need for further investigation into the functional significance of LPC modulation during IAT and determination of whether LPC can be used as a neural marker of depressive‐related implicit self‐esteem.peerReviewe