Search

Background: Very little is known about the neural circuitry underlying anger processing among alcoholics. The purpose of this study was to examine the altered brain activity of alcoholic individuals during transient anger emotion. Methods: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 18 male patients diagnosed with alcohol dependence in an inpatient alcohol treatment facility and 16 social drinkers with similar demographics were scanned during the viewing of anger-provoking film clips. Results: While there was no significant difference in the level of experienced anger between alcohol-dependent patients and non-alcoholic controls, significantly greater activation was observed in the bilateral dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the right precentral gyrus among alcoholic patients compared to the normal controls. Conclusions: In summary, specific brain regions were identified that are associated with anger among patients with alcohol dependency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Sexual behavior is an important role for the survival of species. The advancement of brain imaging methods has enabled the understanding of the brain mechanism related to sexual arousal. The previous studies on the brain mechanism related to sexual arousal have mostly conducted on block design paradigm. Methods: Despite its requirement for stricter experimental control, the event-related paradigm is known to be more efficient in detecting instant emotional and cognitive responses. The paradigm also enables the observation of hemodynamic responses through time. Therefore, this study used the event-related fMRI to examine the brain activation in various areas associated with sexual arousal as well as changes in hemodynamic responses with time. Results: Strong activations were observed in the various areas associated with sexual arousal comprised of various factors: (1) activation areas related to cognitive factors: the occipital lobe and parietal lobe; (2) activation areas related to emotional factors: the thalamus and amygdala; (3) activation areas related to motivational factors: the anterior cingulate gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, and insula; and (4) activation areas related to physiological factors: the precentral gyrus, putamen, and globus pallidus. We also identified the activation of the putamen and globus pallidus that were not well observed in previous block design studies. In the result of the hemodynamic response, the neural activity in those areas showed more transient aspects of the hemodynamic responses relative to the neural activity of other areas. Conclusions: These results suggested that the event-related paradigm is better at detecting the neural activity of the brain regions, which tend to appear suddenly, but disappear soon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The aim of the study was to examine the differences of boredom, pain, and surprise. In addition to that, it was conducted to propose approaches for emotion recognition based on physiological signals. Methods: Three emotions, boredom, pain, and surprise, are induced through the presentation of emotional stimuli and electrocardiography (ECG), electrodermal activity (EDA), skin temperature (SKT), and photoplethysmography (PPG) as physiological signals are measured to collect a dataset from 217 participants when experiencing the emotions. Twenty-seven physiological features are extracted from the signals to classify the three emotions. The discriminant function analysis (DFA) as a statistical method, and five machine learning algorithms (linear discriminant analysis (LDA), classification and regression trees (CART), self-organizing map (SOM), Naïve Bayes algorithm, and support vector machine (SVM)) are used for classifying the emotions. Results: The result shows that the difference of physiological responses among emotions is significant in heart rate (HR), skin conductance level (SCL), skin conductance response (SCR), mean skin temperature (meanSKT), blood volume pulse (BVP), and pulse transit time (PTT), and the highest recognition accuracy of 84.7 % is obtained by using DFA. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the differences of boredom, pain, and surprise and the best emotion recognizer for the classification of the three emotions by using physiological signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Previous research has shown that emotion can significantly impact decision-making in humans. The current study examined whether or not and how situationally induced emotion influences people to make inter-temporal choices. Methods: Affective pictures were used as experiment stimuli to provoke emotion, immediately followed by subjects' performance of a delay-discounting task to measure impulsivity during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results: Results demonstrate a subsequent process of increased impulsive decision-making following a prior exposure to both high positive and negative arousal stimuli, compared to the experiment subjects' experiences with neutral stimuli. Findings indicate that increased impulsive decision-making behaviors can occur with high arousal and can be characterized by decreased activities in the cognitive control regions such as prefronto-parietal regions. Conclusions: These results suggest that 'stabilization of high emotional arousal' may facilitate a reduction of impulsive decision-making and implementation of longer term goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Alcoholism is associated with abnormal anger processing. The purpose of this study was to investigate brain regions involved in the evaluation of angry facial expressions in patients with alcohol dependency. Methods: Brain blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) responses to angry faces were measured and compared between patients with alcohol dependency and controls. Results: During intensity ratings of angry faces, significant differences in BOLD were observed between patients with alcohol dependency and controls. That is, patients who were alcohol-dependent showed significantly greater activation in several brain regions, including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). Conclusions: Following exposure to angry faces, abnormalities in dACC and MPFC activation in patients with alcohol dependency indicated possible inefficiencies or hypersensitivities in social cognitive processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]