Neurocognitive mechanisms behind emotional attention: Inverse effects of anodal tDCS over the left and right DLPFC on gaze disengagement from emotional faces

Background

Attention to relevant emotional information in the environment is an important process related to vulnerability and resilience for mood and anxiety disorders. In the present study, the effects of left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (i.e., DLPFC) stimulation on attentional mechanisms of emotional processing were tested and contrasted.

Methods

A sample of 54 healthy participants received 20 min of active and sham anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (i.e., tDCS) either of the left (n = 27) or of the right DLPFC (n = 27) on two separate days. The anode electrode was placed over the left or the right DLPFC, the cathode over the corresponding contra lateral supraorbital area. After each neurostimulation session, participants completed an eye-tracking task assessing direct processes of attentional engagement towards and attentional disengagement away from emotional faces (happy, disgusted, and sad expressions).

Results

Compared to sham, active tDCS over the left DLPFC led to faster gaze disengagement, whereas active tDCS over the right DLPFC led to slower gaze disengagement from emotional faces. Between-group comparisons showed that such inverse change patterns were significantly different and generalized for all types of emotion.

Conclusions

Our findings support a lateralized role of left and right DLPFC activity in enhancing/worsening the top-down regulation of emotional attention processing. These results support the rationale of new therapies for affective disorders aimed to increase the activation of the left over the right DLPFC in combination with attentional control training, and identify specific target attention mechanisms to be trained.

     

Augmenting treatment efficiency in exposure therapy for PTSD: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial of yohimbine HCl

The alpha-2 adrenergic receptor antagonist, yohimbine, can facilitate fear extinction in animals and humans. One potential mechanism is increased noradrenergic activity and associated arousal in the presence of conditioned stimuli. Accordingly, yohimbine might augment prolonged exposure (PE) therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), where heightened exposure-oriented arousal is a theorized driver and empirical predictor of treatment success. A double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trial (NCT 01031979) piloted yohimbine augmentation in 26 males with combat-related PTSD. Participants were given one-time dose of yohimbine or placebo prior to the first imaginal exposure. Subsequently, both arms completed standard PE. The primary outcome was trauma-cued heart-rate reactivity a week after the drug/exposure visit, a highly specified, objective measure sensitive to incremental change. Secondary outcomes included arousal during the drug/exposure visit and slope of distress, PTSD, and depression over the course of PE. Consistent with hypothesis, yohimbine led to higher objective and subjective arousal during the drug/exposure visit and to lower trauma-cued heart-rate reactivity one-week later. One dose of yohimbine also led to greater between-session habituation and more rapid improvement on depression, but not PTSD, over the course of care. Results of this controlled pilot indicate support for continued investigation of yohimbine-augmented exposure therapy for PTSD.     

Positive memory enhancement training for individuals with major depressive disorder

When in a negative mood state, individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) may have difficulties recalling positive autobiographical memories in a manner that repairs that negative mood. Using cognitive bias modification techniques, investigators have successfully altered different aspects of cognition among individuals with MDD. However, little has been done to investigate the modification of positive autobiographical memory recall. This study examined the impact of a novel positive memory enhancement training (PMET) on the memories and subjective affective experiences of individuals with MDD (N = 27). Across a series of trials, participants first recalled a sad memory to elicit a negative mood state. They then recalled a happy memory and completed procedures to elicit a vivid, here-and-now quality of the memory. PMET procedures were hypothesized to promote mood repair via the recall of increasingly vivid and specific positive memories. PMET participants demonstrated improved memory specificity and greater perceived ability to “relive” positive memories. The procedures also repaired mood; PMET participants’ affect following recall of positive memories did not differ from control participants’ affect following recall of neutral memories. Results provide preliminary support for PMET as a method to improve the quality of positive memories and facilitate emotion regulation in MDD.     

Validity of Adolescent and Parent Reports on the Six-Item ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS-6) in Clinical Assessments of Adolescent Social Anxiety

Adolescents experiencing social anxiety often experience co-occurring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms. Yet, assessing for social anxiety poses challenges given the already time-consuming task of distinguishing social anxiety from other commonly co-occurring internalizing conditions (e.g., generalized anxiety, major depression). Assessors need short screening devices to identify socially anxious adolescents in need of intensive ADHD assessments. A six-item version of the ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS-6) was originally developed to identify adults who likely meet diagnostic criteria for ADHD, but its psychometric properties have yet to be examined among adolescents. We tested the psychometric properties of the ASRS-6 when administered in clinical assessments for adolescent social anxiety. Eighty-nine 14–15 year old adolescents and their parents (67.4% female; 62.1% African American; 30 Clinic-Referred; 59 Community Control) completed the ASRS-6, measures of adolescent social anxiety and depressive symptoms, and parent-adolescent conflict. Adolescent self-reported and parent-reported ASRS-6 positively related with scores from established measures of social anxiety, depressive symptoms, and parent-adolescent conflict. Further, adolescent self-reported (but not parent-reported) ASRS-6 scores significantly discriminated adolescents on referral status. Adolescent self-reported (but not parent-reported) ASRS-6 scores incrementally predicted social anxiety over-and-above depressive symptoms, which commonly co-occur with social anxiety. Conversely, parent-reported (but not adolescent self-reported) ASRS-6 scores incrementally predicted parent-adolescent conflict over-and-above depressive symptoms, which commonly co-occur with conflict. When assessing adolescent ADHD symptoms, adolescents’ and parents’ reports meaningfully vary in their links to validity indicators. As such, among adolescents assessed for social anxiety, clinical assessments of adolescent ADHD symptoms should include both parent reports and adolescent self-reports.     

Diminished heart rate complexity in adolescent girls: a sign of vulnerability to anxiety disorders?

Background and Objectives: Diminished heart rate variability has been found to be associated with high anxiety symptomatology. Since adolescence is the period of onset for many anxiety disorders, this study aimed to determine sex- and anxiety-related differences in heart rate variability and complexity in adolescents.

Methods: We created four groups according to sex and anxiety symptomatology: high-anxiety girls (n?=?24) and boys (n?=?25), and low-anxiety girls (n?=?22) and boys (n?=?24) and recorded their cardiac function while they performed regular school activities. A series of two-way (sex and anxiety) MANOVAs were performed on time domain variability, frequency domain variability, and non-linear complexity.

Results: We obtained no multivariate interaction effects between sex and anxiety, but highly anxious participants had lower heart rate variability than the low-anxiety group. Regarding sex, girls showed lower heart rate variability and complexity than boys.

Conclusions: The results suggest that adolescent girls have a less flexible cardiac system that could be a marker of the girls’ vulnerability to developing anxiety disorders.     

Self-construal,affective valence of the encounter,and quality of social interactions: Within and cross-culture examination

In two samples, one from Greece and another from Germany, we examined relationships between self-construal, emotional experience, and the quality of social interactions. In Greece, a more collectivistic culture, the negative affect people experienced in social interactions was more weakly related to the quality of social interactions for those higher in interdependent self-construal than it was for those lower in interdependent self-construal. In Germany, a more independent culture, a contrasting pattern was observed such that the positive affect people experienced in social interaction was more strongly related to the quality of social interactions for those higher in independent self-construal than it was for those lower in independent self-construal. These findings suggest that positive and negative affect in social encounters can have different effects for persons with independent and interdependent cultural orientations within different cultural settings.     

Psychometric Aspects of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire: Implications for Clinical Assessment and Research

The Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ) is a self-report measure that assesses self-criticism and dependency, 2 personality traits that confer vulnerability to depression (Blatt, 2004 Blatt, S. J. (2004). Experiences of depression: Theoretical, clinical, and research perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Over several decades, different, shortened versions of the DEQ have been constructed to offer an alternative to the complex scoring procedure of the original DEQ. This study explores the factor structure as well as the construct and convergent validity of the DEQ by comparing a clinical and nonclinical sample. We also compared the original DEQ with 5 shortened versions. There were 621 participants (358 university students and 263 outpatients). Fit indexes for models of the original DEQ did not meet minimum fit criteria. Moreover, the only versions with satisfactory fit were the Theoretical Depressive Experiences Questionnaire–21 (TDEQ–21) and the Theoretical Depressive Experiences Questionnaire–12 (TDEQ–12), which also showed acceptable construct and convergent validity. Finally, the diagnostic and clinical applicability of the DEQ is discussed.     

On the malleability of the meaning of contexts: the influence of another person’s emotion expressions on situation perception

Research on the relationship between context and facial expressions generally assumes a unidirectional effect of context on expressions. However, according to the model of the meaning of emotion expressions in context (MEEC) the effect should be bidirectional. The present research tested the effect of emotion expression on the interpretation of scenes. A total of 380 participants either (a) rated facial expressions with regard to the likely appraisal of the eliciting situation by the emoter, (b) appraised the scenes alone or (c) appraised scenes shown together with the expressions they supposedly elicited. The findings strongly supported the MEEC. When a scene was combined with an expression signalling a situation that is undesirable, or high in locus of control or sudden, the participants appraised the scene correspondingly. Thus, the meaning of scenes is malleable and affected by the way that people are seen to react to them.     

No evidence for unethical amnesia for imagined actions: A failed replication and extension

In a recent study, Kouchaki and Gino (2016) suggest that memory for unethical actions is impaired, regardless of whether such actions are real or imagined. However, as we argue in the current study, their claim that people develop “unethical amnesia” confuses two distinct and dissociable memory deficits: one affecting the phenomenology of remembering and another affecting memory accuracy. To further investigate whether unethical amnesia affects memory accuracy, we conducted three studies exploring unethical amnesia for imagined ethical violations. The first study (N = 228) attempts to directly replicate the only study from Kouchaki and Gino (2016) that includes a measure of memory accuracy. The second study (N = 232) attempts again to replicate these accuracy effects from Kouchaki and Gino (2016), while including several additional variables meant to potentially help in finding the effect. The third study (N = 228) is an attempted conceptual replication using the same paradigm as Kouchaki and Gino (2016), but with a new vignette describing a different moral violation. We did not find an unethical amnesia effect involving memory accuracy in any of our three studies. These results cast doubt upon the claim that memory accuracy is impaired for imagined unethical actions. Suggestions for further ways to study memory for moral and immoral actions are discussed.