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In social interactions, people have to pay attention both to thewhatandwho. In particular, expressive changes heard on speech signals have to be integrated with speaker identity, differentiating e.g. self- and other-produced signals. While previous research has shown that self-related visual information processing is facilitated compared to non-self stimuli, evidence in the auditory modality remains mixed. Here, we compared electroencephalography (EEG) responses to expressive changes in sequence of self- or other-produced speech sounds, using a mismatch negativity (MMN) passive oddball paradigm. Critically, to control for speaker differences, we used programmable acoustic transformations to create voice deviants which differed from standards in exactly the same manner, making EEG responses to such deviations comparable between sequences. Our results indicate that expressive changes on a stranger’s voice are highly prioritized in auditory processing compared to identical changes on the self-voice. Other-voice deviants generate earlier MMN onset responses and involve stronger cortical activations in a left motor and somatosensory network suggestive of an increased recruitment of resources for less internally predictable, and therefore perhaps more socially relevant, signals.

International audience; Affect, space and multisensory integration are processes that are closely linked. However, it is unclear whether the spatial location of emotional stimuli interacts with multisensory presentation to influence the emotional experience they induce in the perceiver.In this study, we used the unique advantages of virtual reality techniques to present potentially aversive crowd stimuli embedded in a natural context and to control their display in terms of sensory and spatial presentation. Individuals high in crowdphobic fear navigated in an auditory-visual virtual environment, in which they encountered virtual crowds presented through the visual channel, the auditory channel or both. They reported the intensity of their negative emotional experience at a far distance and at a close distance from the crowd stimuli. Whereas auditory-visual presentation of close feared stimuli amplified negative feelings, auditory-visual presentation of distant feared stimuli did not amplify negative feelings.This suggests that spatial closeness allows multisensory processes to modulate the intensity of the emotional experience induced by aversive stimuli. Nevertheless, the specific role of auditory stimulation must be investigated in order to better understand this interaction between multisensory, affective and spatial representation processes. This phenomenon may serve the implementation of defensive behaviors in response to aversive stimuli that are in position to threaten an individual’s feeling of security.

Clinical remission of depression may be associated with emotional residual symptoms. We studied the association of emotional blunting, rumination with neural networks dynamics in remitted depressed patients and cognitive performance during an N-Back task. Twenty-six outpatients in remission of depression (Hamilton Depressive rating scale score

International audience; Other's eye gaze is a powerful attention orienting cue that can change our perception of objects in the environment. Here, we seek to characterize the influence of attention orienting by eye gaze on the neural processing of visual targets. We used a Posner-like cueing paradigm to investigate with magnetoencephalography the brain responses associated with target processing. We analyzed the cerebral sources of the evoked responses to visual targets that were validly or invalidly cued by eye gaze. The effect of attention orienting was reflected in faster reaction times to valid than invalid targets. At the brain level, we showed an early influence of attention orienting by gaze with enhanced brain responses for invalid relative to valid targets. This influence was maximum contra-laterally to the target, with a right hemisphere dominance. Responses to targets presented in the left visual field were modulated between 91 and 400 ms in the right posterior parietal and occipital cortices. Responses to targets presented in the right visual field were modulated between 174 and 218 ms in the left superior parietal cortex. Our results confirm previous EEG studies that demonstrated early influence of attention orienting by gaze on target processing and provide evidence for the sources of this effect in occipito-parietal regions. This early influence may reflect the first stage of the perceptual changes induced by social attention.

Centuries ago, western philosophers of art proposed that an artifact may express emotion. The much older tradition of Chinese calligraphy and landscape painting sees in the brushstroke a central element of the emotional expressiveness of pictorial art. How emotion is detected and perceived from artwork is a current subject of exploration in psychology. We used Signal Detection Theory to determine whether or not naive subjects were able to detect the emotional classification proposed by an artist. Thirty pairs of Chinese characters were produced by an artist so as to render the same Chinese sign with different emotional expressive intensities: one with low emotional expressivity and a second with high emotional expressivity. Twenty-two participants were asked to rate emotional intensity on a 5-point scale while viewing each calligraphy. d', a sensitivity measure reflecting the capacity to detect a signal from a noisy background, was estimated from ROC curves. If the participants categorized the stimuli according to the artist's classification (or in direct opposition), d' would differ significantly from 0. Sixteen of the participants had d' values significantly different from 0, thereby showing that they discriminated the emotional categorization of the calligraphy. Those results indicate a significant sensitivity to the emotion expressed in a Chinese calligraphy by a non-Chinese speaking population ignorant of the art of calligraphy and the artist's intention.

Threat estimation is crucial for the adaptation of behavior to a dangerous situation. In anxiety, a bias to threat has been described as a core feature. Therefore, the sensitivity for threatening information in anxious individuals may have consequences for danger estimation. In this study, we used the affective priming paradigm to test the assumption that fearful expressions would facilitate danger detection in natural scenes in anxious individuals. Twenty-three high trait anxious individuals and 22 low trait anxious individuals participated in the study. They had to detect the potential threat of a target scene (neutral or threatening) following neutral or fearful face primes. High trait anxious participants detected threat more rapidly than low trait anxious participants, consistent with previous reports of emotional hypervigilance in anxiety. Furthermore, this effect was enhanced when the target scene followed a fearful expression: Only in anxious participants were reaction times shorter to detect danger following a fearful prime than a neutral prime. Our results tend to show that in anxiety, the hypervigilance to threat may be of an important value such as increasing the detection of a subsequent potential danger. Implication of attentional processes and attentional control is discussed.

Clinical remission of depression may be associated with emotional residual symptoms. We studied the association of emotional blunting, rumination with neural networks dynamics in remitted depressed patients and cognitive performance during an N‐Back task. Twenty‐six outpatients in remission of depression (Hamilton Depressive rating scale score

We present an open-source software platform that transforms the emotions expressed by speech signals using audio effects like pitch shifting, inflection, vibrato, and filtering. The emotional transformations can be applied to any audio file, but can also run in real-time (with less than 20-millisecond latency), using live input from a microphone. We anticipate that this tool will be useful for the study of emotions in psychology and neuroscience, because it enables a high level of control over the acoustical and emotional content of experimental stimuli in a variety of laboratory situations, including real-time social situations. We present here results of a series of validation experiments showing that transformed emotions are recognized at above-chance levels in the French, English, Swedish and Japanese languages, with a naturalness comparable to natural speech. Then, we provide a list of twenty-five experimental ideas applying this new tool to important topics in the behavioral sciences.

International audience; Social anhedonia is a more promising indicator of vulnerability to schizophrenia than physical anhedonia, both as assessed by Chapman scales. More broadly, the populations identified by these scales would have a propensity to different psychiatric disorders. This cross-sectional study examined the respective profiles of schizotypy, anxiety, and depression in French students with physical and social anhedonia, using psychometric and interview-based measures. Compared to controls (n=46), subjects with social anhedonia (n=19) reported higher schizotypal scores for interpersonal, paranoid, disorganization, and cognitive/perceptual dimensions, whereas subjects with physical anhedonia (n=35) had more extensive interpersonal deficits and paranoia. Both groups had more depressive and anxiety symptoms than controls, in particular subjects with social anhedonia.

International audience; Fear of crowds is a symptom found in agoraphobia (among others) and which has both visual and auditory relevant components. In order to examine the potential interest of auditory-visual virtual reality to treat fear of crowds, we investigated the efficiency of an auditory-visual virtual environment in evoking affective reaction. We conducted an evaluation test with healthy participants sensitive to the fear of crowds to explore the influence of auditory-visual virtual environment on affective reactions. Our application involves both high fidelity visual stimulation and interactive 3D sound. Our specific presentation of animated crowds of humans creates an environment that is highly arousing, suggesting that manipulating the sensory presentation together with the spatial location of stimulation might provide a way to modulate affective reactions.

1. 1. In the line of Zuckerman's studies on sensation seeking and optimal level of arousal, the authors hypothesized that high sensation seeking might be used to compensate for anhedonia due to basal arousal deficit. A population of interest was found with parachutists practicing skydiving, generally described as very high sensation seekers. 2. 2. After clinical assessment of emotional and affective components, amplitudes of the frontal P3 of the ERP were used as indices of arousal. 3. 3. Skydivers presented more negative symptoms (anhedonia and blunted-affect) than controls. This was observed in isolation from any depressive episode, which would suggest the presence of emotional deficit as a trait. As expected, skydivers presented more sensation seeking than controls. These two results taken together could indicate that sensation seeking is an adaptive reaction to anhedonia. 4. 4. ERP results showed that frontal P3 amplitudes were larger in skydivers than in controls, whereas in a previous study we showed the opposite in depressed patients with a similar emotional deficit. This could indicate that the frontal P3 amplitude does not reflect the emotional deficit per se. We suggest that it rather reflects the capacity to use some behaviors which improve automatic attentional processes in order to obtain arousing stimulation that could counterbalance the emotional deficit. Depressions with emotional deficit might be due to the lack of such a capacity.

The present study examined the influence of trait anxiety on the early stages of emotional face processing. In order to test if such early effect of anxiety could appear in response to positive as well as to negative stimuli, we recorded event-related potentials in response to both happy and fearful faces – contrasted with neutral faces – during a task where attention was explicitly directed to the emotion, in two groups differing by their anxiety level. We observed an amplification of the occipital P1 peak (90–120 ms) in response to happy compared to neutral faces in high trait anxious participants but not in the low trait anxious ones. Additionally, the N170 and EPN components were enhanced for the negative (fearful) faces, with no impact of trait anxiety. Our results provide evidence for an early bias towards positive stimuli in trait anxiety.

International audience; Combining excellent temporal resolution with accurate source localization is a challenge for brain imaging studies in humans. In this domain, showing evidence for the contribution of deep brain structures to magneto-encephalographic (MEG) signal may represent an important step. The amygdala, is an example of such structure that is essential for social cognition and emotional processes. To date, MEG studies have been mainly focused on cortical activities. Under the impulsion of Line Garnero, we tackled the challenge of detecting the activation of deep brain structures with non-invasive electromagnetic brain imaging methods and developed a new method to localize amygdala sources. Here, we first review amygdala structural and histological properties that argue in favour of the detection of its activity with MEG. Then we present a simulation study of amygdala contribution to MEG signal. This study was based on an original anatomical segmentation technique, which allowed distributing sources within the amygdala volume of each subject. Finally, we present preliminary data from a face perception experiment where amygdala activity was examined with this new distributed source imaging method.

International audience; The computation by which our brain elaborates fast responses to emotional expressions is currently an active field of brain studies. Previous studies have focused on stimuli taken from everyday life. Here, we investigated event-related potentials in response to happy vs neutral stimuli of human and non-humanoid robots. At the behavioural level, emotion shortened reaction times similarly for robotic and human stimuli. Early P1 wave was enhanced in response to happy compared to neutral expressions for robotic as well as for human stimuli, suggesting that emotion from robots is encoded as early as human emotion expression. Congruent with their lower faceness properties compared to human stimuli, robots elicited a later and lower N170 component than human stimuli. These findings challenge the claim that robots need to present an anthropomorphic aspect to interact with humans. Taken together, such results suggest that the early brain processing of emotional expressions is not bounded to human-like arrangements embodying emotion.

International audience; Hearing loss may lead to major changes in the social and emotional aspects of daily life. This follow-up study investigated the effect of hearing-aid use on emotional experience in adults with hearing impairment. Thirteen individuals with impaired hearing were tested before and after 6 months of hearing-aid use, and were compared with 19 individuals who had worn hearing aids for many years. The participants reported their daily emotional experiences, by completing questionnaires relating to sensory and social pleasure. After 6 months of hearing-aid use, individuals experienced more physical and social pleasure, whereas individuals using hearing aids for long periods of time reported similar levels of pleasure at the beginning and at the end of a 6-month interval. The participants also performed a visual task, in which they rated the intensity of pleasure they experienced in response to emotionally positive and neutral pictures differing in luminance contrast. In this task, pleasure typically decreases with decreasing contrast of the positive images displayed. Once they had been fitted with hearing aids, the participants reported lower levels of pleasure, especially at low contrast. These findings highlight that the anhedonia scales provide a measure sensitive to emotional improvements that accompany the partial restoration of hearing function, although these scales were not specifically designed for hearing-impaired populations. In contrast, the surprising decrease in pleasure ratings for pictures after the introduction of hearing-aid use may be because of the compensation of hearing loss by changes in visual attention functions.

International audience; Anhedonia is a personality trait associated with a decrease in the ability to feel pleasure. We investigated the experience of pleasure in individuals with physical and social anhedonia for positive pictures with varying levels of luminance contrast. Photographs with either a sensory or a social content were modified with a contrast-gradation procedure. Participants had to report the intensity of the pleasure they experienced in response to these pictures. Twenty-six subjects with physical anhedonia, 18 with social anhedonia and 34 control subjects completed the task. In controls, high-contrast pictures elicited an intense feeling of pleasure, whereas low contrast pictures elicited little pleasure. Although they were also sensitive to the modulation of contrast, subjects with physical and social anhedonia reported less pleasure than controls, across a larger range of contrast levels for sensory and social pictures, respectively. The findings suggest that the deficit in the experience of positive emotion in anhedonia is associated with a diminished pleasure intensity, fairly selective for the sensory or the social emotion dimension. This study encourages further investigation of the interaction between perceptual encoding and emotional processing in anhedonia.

BackgroundCognitive remediation is frequently based on computerized training methods that target different cognitive deficits. The aim of this article was to assess the efficacy of computer-assisted cognitive remediation (CACR) in schizophrenia and to determine whether CACR enables selective treatment of specific cognitive domains.MethodA meta-analysis was performed on 16 randomized controlled trials evaluating CACR. The effect sizes of differences between CACR and control groups were computed and classified according to the cognitive domain assessed. The possible influences of four potential moderator variables were examined: participants' age, treatment duration, weekly frequency, and control condition type. To test the domain-specific effect, the intended goal of each study was determined and the effect sizes were sorted accordingly. The effect sizes of the cognitive domains explicitly targeted by the interventions were then compared with those that were not.ResultsCACR enhanced general cognition with a mean effect size of 0.38 [confidence interval (CI) 0.20–0.55]. A significant medium effect size of 0.64 (CI 0.29–0.99) was found for Social Cognition. Improvements were also significant in Verbal Memory, Working Memory, Attention/Vigilance and Speed of Processing with small effect sizes. Cognitive domains that were specifically targeted by the interventions did not yield higher effects than those that were not.ConclusionsThe results lend support to the efficacy of CACR with particular emphasis on Social Cognition. The difficulty in targeting specific domains suggests a ‘non-specific’ effect of CACR. These results are discussed in the light of the possible bias in remediation tasks due to computer interface design paradigms.

International audience; Gaze aversion could be a central component of the physiopathology of social phobia. The emotions of the people interacting with a person with social phobia seem to model this gaze aversion. Our research consists of testing gaze aversion in subjects with social phobia compared to control subjects in different emotional faces of men and women using an eye tracker. Twenty-six subjects with DSM-IV social phobia were recruited. Twenty-four healthy subjects aged and sex-matched constituted the control group. We looked at the number of fixations and the dwell time in the eyes area on the pictures. The main findings of this research are: confirming a significantly lower amount of fixations and dwell time in patients with social phobia as a general mean and for the 6 basic emotions independently from gender; observing a significant correlation between the severity of the phobia and the degree of gaze avoidance. However, no difference in gaze avoidance according to subject/picture gender matching was observed. These findings confirm and extend some previous results, and suggest that eye avoidance is a robust marker of persons with social phobia, which could be used as a behavioral phenotype for brain imagery studies on this disorder.

The uncovering of the time course of amygdala activation is a challenge for non invasive electromagnetic brain imaging methods. Here, we propose a new method to detect the activation of this deep brain structure with magnetoencephalography (MEG). The originality of our model is to use a realistic anatomical and electrophysiological model of the neocortex and amygdala, together with distributed source imaging performed simultaneously throughout the cortical surface and the amygdala volume. In a first step, we analyzed the extent to which simulated activation of the amygdala may result in detectable MEG signals. This simulation study demonstrated that MEG is sensitive to amygdala sources. Then, our method was applied during an experimental protocol where fearful and neutral faces with direct and averted gaze were presented. Such stimuli are known to activate the amygdala from fMRI and intracranial EEG studies. Early peaks of amygdala activity were detected at 100 and 160ms post-stimulus onset. This shows an amygdala contribution to the first stages of face processing.

International audience; OBJECTIVE: We combined event-related potential (ERP) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) acquisition and analysis to investigate the electrophysiological markers of the inhibitory processes involved in the number/length interference in a Piaget-like numerical task. METHODS: Eleven healthy subjects performed four gradually interfering conditions with the heuristic "length equals number" to be inhibited. Low resolution tomography reconstruction was performed on the combined grand averaged electromagnetic data at the early (N1, P1) and late (P2, N2, P3(early) and P3(late)) latencies. Every condition was analyzed at both scalp and regional brain levels. RESULTS: The inhibitory processes were visible on the late components of the electromagnetic brain activity. A right P2-related frontal orbital activation reflected the change of strategy in the inhibitory processes. N2-related SMA/cingulate activation revealed the first occurrence of the stimuli processing to be inhibited. Both P3 components revealed the working memory processes operating in a medial temporal complex and the mental imagery processes subtended by the precuneus. CONCLUSIONS: Simultaneous ERP and MEG signal acquisition and analysis allowed to describe the spatiotemporal patterns of neural networks involved in the inhibition of the "length equals number" interference. SIGNIFICANCE: Combining ERP and MEG ensured a sensitivity which could be reached previously only through invasive intracortical recordings.

International audience; Human faces are the main emotion displayers. Knowing that emotional compared to neutral stimuli elicit enlarged ERPs components at the perceptual level, one may wonder whether this has led to an emotional facilitation bias toward human faces. To contribute to this question, we measured the P1 and N170 components of the ERPs elicited by human facial compared to artificial stimuli, namely non-humanoid robots. Fifteen healthy young adults were shown sad and neutral, upright and inverted expressions of human versus robotic displays. An increase in P1 amplitude in response to sad displays compared to neutral ones evidenced an early perceptual amplification for sadness information. P1 and N170 latencies were delayed in response to robotic stimuli compared to human ones, while N170 amplitude was not affected by media. Inverted human stimuli elicited a longer latency of P1 and a larger N170 amplitude while inverted robotic stimuli did not. As a whole, our results show that emotion facilitation is not biased to human faces but rather extend to non-human displays, thus suggesting our capacity to read emotion beyond faces.

Objectives Previous studies revealed that adolescence is a period of risk for doping and drug addiction and that young athletes who used doping agents reported low self-esteem. We conducted a preventive study with the aims to investigate whether young adolescents displayed an attentional bias to doping-related words and whether this attentional bias was related to physical self-esteem. Method Ninety seven adolescents (44 girls and 53 boys) from 11 to 15 years-old participated to a study designed to measure reaction times (RT) in a Stroop emotional task related to doping, cheating and control words. They also completed the Physical Self-Perception Profile subscales assessing perceived general self-esteem, physical self-worth, physical condition, sport competence, body attractiveness, and physical strength. Results Participants exhibited longer RT after doping words than after control words. RT was also longer after doping than after cheating words. Participants belonging to the low physical self-esteem group exhibited larger carry-over effects than those who were in the high physical self-esteem group. Conclusions These findings suggest that attentional resources allocated to doping words are already present at the onset of adolescence, and that they may be linked to a psychological feature (physical self-esteem) considered as a risk factor of substance abuse in young adults involved in competitive sports.

International audience; The subjective experience conferred by auditory perception has rarely been addressed outside of the studies of auditory hallucinations. The aim of this study is to describe the phenomenology of auditory experiences in individuals who endorse magical beliefs, but do not report hallucinations. We examined the relationship between subjective auditory sensitivity and a 'psychotic-like' thinking style. Hyperacusis questionnaire scores were compared between 25 high scoring participants on Chapman's magical ideation (MI) scale, 25 high scoring participants on Chapman's physical anhedonia scale and 25 control participants, pre-selected from a large student pool (n=1289). The participants who obtained high scores on the MI scale rated their auditory sensitivity higher than the two other groups. Our results indicate that, in healthy subjects, subjective auditory sensitivity is associated with MI without the mediation by anxiety commonly observed in pathological cases. We propose that hyperacusis associated to high scores of MI may be a predispositional factor to deviant auditory experiences. The relative uncoupling of perception from auditory sensory input may result in a central hypersensitivity, which could play a role in triggering off the experience of auditory hallucinations.

We sought to determine whether the neural traces of a previous cognitive developmental stage could be evidenced in young adults. In order to do so, 12 young adults underwent two functional imaging acquisitions (EEG then fMRI). During each session, two experimental conditions were applied: a Piaget‐like task with number/length interference (INT), and a reference task with number/length covariation (COV). To succeed at Piaget's numerical task, which children under the age of 7 years usually fail, the subjects had to inhibit a misleading strategy, namely, the visuospatial length‐equals‐number bias, a quantification heuristic that is often relevant and that continues to be used through adulthood. Behavioral data confirmed that although there was an automation in the young adult subjects as assessed by the very high number of accurate responses (>97%), the inhibition of the “length equals number strategy” had a cognitive cost, as the reaction times were significantly higher in INT than in COV (with a difference of 230 ms). The event‐related potential results acquired during the first session showed electrophysiological markers of the cognitive inhibition of the number/length interference. Indeed, the frontal N2 was greater during INT than during COV, and a P3(late)/P6 was detected only during INT. During the fMRI session, a greater activation of unimodal areas (the right middle and superior occipital cortex) and in the ventral route (the left inferior temporal cortex) was observed in INT than in COV. These results seem to indicate that when fully automated in adults, inhibition processes might take place in unimodal areas. Hum Brain Mapp, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

International audience; OBJECTIVE: Using functional MRI, we investigated whether, like healthy subjects, patients with schizophrenia show a relative hemispheric specialization in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) for spatial and shape working memory (WM). We hypothesized that reduced specialization in schizophrenia would reflect a failure to adopt optimal domain-specific strategies and would contribute to WM deficits. METHODS: Twelve healthy subjects and 16 schizophrenia patients performed spatial and shape WM tasks and a non-WM control task. Direct comparisons of the spatial and shape WM tasks assessed specialization. RESULTS: Despite deficient WM performance, both patients and controls showed a relative hemispheric specialization in ventrolateral PFC for spatial (right) and shape (left) WM and did not differ in this regard. CONCLUSIONS: The finding of intact hemispheric specialization in ventrolateral PFC suggests that patients employ the same domain-specific strategies as healthy subjects during spatial and shape WM. Rather than reflecting a failure to adopt the optimal strategy, we hypothesize that WM deficits in schizophrenia reflect impairments of executive processes that are required for WM performance regardless of domain. These processes are associated with activity in the dorsolateral PFC, a region that has been repeatedly implicated in studies of WM.

The capacity to sustain attention was explored in a sample of anhedonic subjects according to the Chapman physical anhedonia scale. Sustained attention was determined by studying task-induced changes over the duration of the Eriksen response competition task [Percept. Psychophys. 16 (1974) 143]. Anhedonic subjects had longer reaction times (RTs), but missed no more targets than control subjects. Anhedonic subject RTs got longer with time-on-task (TOT) and displayed greater intra-subject variability. These results confirm those of a previous study indicating that anhedonic subjects may have developed a more conservative response strategy [Psychophysiology 37 (2000) 711] and suggest that this strategy may result in a more rapid decrease in energetical resources. Moreover, the greater intra-subject variability demonstrates the importance of assessing performance over time and its relationship to the variability of responses in the cognitive performance of anhedonic subjects.

International audience; OBJECTIVE: We investigated whether spatial working memory (WM) is associated with functional specialization of the right prefrontal cortex (PFC) relative to WM for shapes. We designed spatial and shape WM tasks that are relatively easy to perform and that minimize both task-switching and manipulation demands. The tasks use identical stimuli and require the same motor response. METHODS: We presented 12 subjects with target shapes that appeared in particular locations. Subjects maintained either the location or the shape of the targets in WM and responded to each probe by indicating whether it was a target. During a non-WM control task, subjects indicated whether the probe appeared on the right or left side of the screen. Subjects were scanned with a 3.0 T Siemens scanner and data were analyzed using SPM99. The WM tasks were compared to identify PFC activation that was different for spatial versus shape WM. Each WM task was also compared to the control task. RESULTS: compared with shape WM, spatial WM performance was faster and more accurate and was associated with increased right ventrolateral and frontopolar PFC activation. In contrast, compared to spatial WM, shape WM was associated with increased left ventrolateral PFC activity. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate hemispheric specialization for spatial versus shape WM in the ventrolateral PFC. The increased activity in the right PFC for spatial WM cannot be attributed to increased task difficulty, the stimuli used, or the response requirements. Rather, we propose that differences in performance and activation reflect the use of configural processing strategies for spatial WM.

International audience; Individuals with non-clinical anhedonia use unusual strategies to achieve normal performances, as shown by the atypical physiological pattern observed since the earlier stages of information processing. In this study, we explored the relationships between emotional and perceptual processes. Few studies have explored perception mechanisms in anhedonic individuals, particularly for auditory stimuli. We used psychoacoustic procedures to estimate auditory sensitivity in anhedonics, and dynamic-induced evolution in this sensitivity during a perceptual training paradigm. Frequency discrimination thresholds (FDTs) and absolute detection thresholds (ADTs) for pure 1-kHz tones lasting 40, 100, and 200 ms were measured for the left and right ears before and after six 2-h frequency discrimination training sessions involving exclusively 200-ms tones in the right ear. Overall, the training involved 4500 repeated measures of FDTs. No difference was found between anhedonics and control participants for the dynamic frequency discrimination thresholds improvement induced by training. Frequency and level stimulation sensibility was not different between the two groups, despite an unusual instability across measurements in the pre-training session for anhedonic subjects. The results are discussed in terms of dynamic information processing strategies modifications in the anhedonic personality trait.

International audience; Attentional and information processing impairments have been evidenced in nonclinical anhedonic subjects. However, the extent of attentional deficit has not been determined. We studied focused attention, the ability to reject irrelevant or distracting messages, in anhedonic nonclinical subjects. The event-related potentials and behavioral performances of anhedonic subjects were compared with those of control subjects during the Eriksen focused attention task (C.W. Eriksen & B.A. Eriksen, 1974); the task combined one compatible and one incompatible condition, the latter causing an interference. Anhedonic subjects exhibited a smaller P300 and slower reaction times than control subjects. Varying task conditions had different effects on anhedonic subjects and controls, suggesting that anhedonic subjects may have developed a conservative response strategy. In view of previous works, these results suggest that attentional impairment is not ascribed to specific processes, but may involve a more global deficit, that is, a resource allocation deficit.

The human voice is a powerful tool to convey emotions. Humans hear voices on a daily basis and are able to rapidly extract relevant information to successfully interact with others. The theoretical aim of this thesis is to investigate the role of familiarity on emotional voice processing. Chapters 2 and 3 present behavioral and electrophysiological studies investigating how self- versus non self-produced voices influence the processing of emotional speech utterances. By contrasting self and other, familiarity is here assessed at a personal level. The results of Chapter 2 show a dissociation of explicit and implicit processing of the self-voice. While explicit discrimination of an emotional self-voice and other-voice was somewhat impaired, implicit self-processing prompted a self-advantage in emotion recognition and speaker discrimination. Chapter 3 reports a prioritization for the non-self voice in the processing of emotional and low-level acoustic changes, reflected in faster electrophysiological (EEG) and behavioral responses. In Chapter 4, the effect of voice familiarity on emotional voice processing is assessed at a larger sociocultural scale by comparing speech utterances in the native and a foreign language. Taken together, this thesis highlights some ways in which the ‘otherness’ of a voice - whether a non-self speaker or a foreign language speaker - is processed with a higher priority on the one hand, but with less acoustic precision on the other hand.; L’objectif théorique de cette thèse est d’étudier le rôle de la familiarité vocale sur le traitement de la voix émotionnelle. Les chapitres 2 et 3 présentent des études comportementales et électrophysiologiques portant sur les contributions spécifiques de la voix du self et la voix de l’autre sur le traitement de la parole émotionnelle. En comparant le self et l’autre, la familiarité est évaluée ici à un niveau personnel. Les résultats du chapitre 2 montrent une dissociation chez les participants des traitements explicites et implicites de leur propre voix. Alors que la discrimination explicite de leur propre voix émotionnelle est réduite, le traitement implicite de soi entraîne un avantage pour la reconnaissance des émotions et la discrimination du locuteur. Le chapitre 3 montre que les voix inconnues sont priorisées par rapport à la voix du self dans le traitement des changements émotionnels et acoustiques de bas niveau, par des réponses électrophysiologiques (EEG) et comportementales plus rapides. Au chapitre 4, l’effet de la familiarité sur la perception des émotions vocales est évalué au niveau socioculturel en comparant la langue maternelle et étrangère. Au travers de ces études, cette thèse met en évidence les différentes manières par lesquelles «l’étrangeté» d’une voix - qu’il s’agisse d’un locuteur autre que le soi ou d’une langue étrangère - est traitée avec une priorité plus élevée, mais une précision acoustique diminuée.

The human voice is a powerful tool to convey emotions. Humans hear voices on a daily basis and are able to rapidly extract relevant information to successfully interact with others. The theoretical aim of this thesis is to investigate the role of familiarity on emotional voice processing. Chapters 2 and 3 present behavioral and electrophysiological studies investigating how self- versus non self-produced voices influence the processing of emotional speech utterances. By contrasting self and other, familiarity is here assessed at a personal level. The results of Chapter 2 show a dissociation of explicit and implicit processing of the self-voice. While explicit discrimination of an emotional self-voice and other-voice was somewhat impaired, implicit self-processing prompted a self-advantage in emotion recognition and speaker discrimination. Chapter 3 reports a prioritization for the non-self voice in the processing of emotional and low-level acoustic changes, reflected in faster electrophysiological (EEG) and behavioral responses. In Chapter 4, the effect of voice familiarity on is assessed at a larger sociocultural scale by comparing speech utterances in the native and a foreign language. Taken together, this thesis highlights some ways in which the ‘otherness’ of a voice - whether a non-self speaker or a foreign language speaker - is processed with a higher priority on the one hand, but with less acoustic precision on the other hand., L’objectif théorique de cette thèse est d’étudier le rôle de la familiarité vocale sur le traitement de la voix émotionnelle. Les chapitres 2 et 3 présentent des études comportementales et électrophysiologiques portant sur les contributions spécifiques de la voix du self et la voix de l’autre sur le traitement de la parole émotionnelle. En comparant le self et l’autre, la familiarité est évaluée ici à un niveau personnel. Les résultats du chapitre 2 montrent une dissociation chez les participants des traitements explicites et implicites de leur propre voix. Alors que la discrimination explicite de leur propre voix émotionnelle est réduite, le traitement implicite de soi entraîne un avantage pour la reconnaissance des émotions et la discrimination du locuteur. Le chapitre 3 montre que les voix inconnues sont priorisées par rapport à la voix du self dans le traitement des changements émotionnels et acoustiques de bas niveau, par des réponses électrophysiologiques (EEG) et comportementales plus rapides. Au chapitre 4, l’effet de la familiarité sur la perception des émotions vocales est évalué au niveau socioculturel en comparant la langue maternelle et étrangère. Au travers de ces études, cette thèse met en évidence les différentes manières par lesquelles «l’étrangeté» d’une voix - qu’il s’agisse d’un locuteur autre que le soi ou d’une langue étrangère - est traitée avec une priorité plus élevée, mais une précision acoustique diminuée.