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• Stimulus arousal, stimulus type and task setting play important roles in emotional bias. • Increased stimulus arousal enlarges negativity bias. • Scenic stimulus leads to negativity bias while verbal stimulus results in positivity offset. • Explicit relative to implicit emotion task increases negativity bias. Emotional bias, which describes human's asymmetric processing of emotional stimuli, consists of negativity bias (Increased response to negative over positive stimuli) and positivity offset (the reversed phenomenon). Previous studies suggest that stimulus arousal (high/low), stimulus type (scenic/verbal), cultural background (Eastern/Western), and task setting (explicit/implicit) may modulate emotional bias, but with inconclusive findings. To address how the profile of emotional bias varies with these factors, a meta-analysis of emotional P3 event-related potential amplitudes was performed. Forty-nine effect sizes from 38 studies involving 1263 subjects were calculated using Hedges' g. The results highlight significant moderators of arousal, stimulus type, and task setting. Specifically, high-arousal stimuli enhance negativity bias relative to low-arousal stimuli; scenic stimulus leads to a negativity bias while verbal stimulus is linked with a positivity offset; explicit emotion tasks lead to negativity bias, whereas implicit emotion tasks do not exhibit emotional bias. These results indicate that emotional bias is labile depending on stimulus arousal, stimulus type and task setting. The implication of these findings for emotion regulation is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Test anxiety is a prevalent issue that many individuals struggle with. Previous research has indicated that individuals with higher levels of neuroticism are more prone to experiencing test anxiety. However, there is some indirect evidence suggesting that cognitive reappraisal may play a role in moderating this relationship. Thus, the present work aimed to examine the role of cognitive reappraisal in the effect of neuroticism on test anxiety through two studies. Methods: Study 1 used a questionnaire approach, utilizing the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI), the Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Five-factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) with a sample of 596 participants. Study 2 conducted a test-related emotional picture rating task to better measure emotional responses. A total of 180 participants took part in Study 2. Results: Study 1 and Study 2 have converged results: (1) neuroticism positively predicted individuals' test anxiety; (2) the predictive effect of neuroticism on test anxiety was moderated by cognitive reappraisal—the higher cognitive reappraisal ability, the lower the predictive effect of neuroticism on test anxiety. Conclusions: These results indicate that individuals with higher levels of neuroticism may experience stronger test anxiety, while cognitive reappraisal can mitigate test anxiety in neurotic individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although empathy for pain plays an important role in positive interpersonal relationships and encourages engagement in prosocial behavior, it remains largely unknown whether empathy for pain could be effectively altered by psychophysiological techniques. This study aimed to investigate the impact of a single session of diaphragmatic breathing practice on empathy for pain and examine the potential mechanism involving interoceptive awareness. A total of 66 healthy participants were randomly assigned to the intervention group or the control group. The intervention group received a 15‐minute diaphragmatic breathing (DB) practice with real‐time biofeedback, while the control group was to gaze at a black screen at rest and not engaged in any other activities. Before and after the invention, all participants were instructed to evaluate the intensity and unpleasantness of empathy for pain while watching different pictures with pain or non‐pain conditions. The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) was then administered to measure interoceptive awareness. The results indicated a significant interaction between group and time with regard to empathy for pain and MAIA. The DB group showed a statistically significant decrease in both pain intensity and unpleasantness during the pain picture condition, as well as a noteworthy increase in MAIA scores. The control group did not demonstrate any substantial changes. More importantly, the regulation of attention, a dimension of MAIA, had a significant mediating effect on the impact of diaphragmatic breathing on reported unpleasantness. Diaphragmatic breathing could serve as a simple, convenient, and practical strategy to optimize human empathy for pain that warrants further investigation, which has important implications not only for individuals with impaired empathy for pain but also for the improvement of interoceptive awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acceptance of emotion is important for humans' wellbeing and social functioning. Despite its regulatory advantages, the temporal dynamics of acceptance for regulating decision-related emotion remains unclear. For this purpose, Event-related potentials were recorded for outcome presentation, when participants either in explicit or implicit acceptance condition performed a Gambling Task. Results showed that acceptance effectively regulated emotional experiences, irrespective of how it was realized (explicit/implicit). Compared to viewing condition, explicit acceptance increased overall amplitudes of feedback-related negativity (FRN,180-240 ms) at the early stage and reduced P3 amplitude (240–440 ms) in general at the late stage, regardless of feedback valence or magnitude. By contrast, implicit acceptance did not influence the FRN amplitudes but increased the P3 amplitudes globally, an effect unaffected by feedback valence and magnitude. In addition, the P3 amplitude for explicit acceptance was negatively correlated with the ratio of risky choices, regardless of outcome valence. These results suggest that explicit acceptance is associated with cognitive conflict and resource depletion, while these adverse effects are not engendered during implicit acceptance. These regulatory effects are independent of specific feedback valence and magnitude. These findings highlight the role of implicit acceptance in cognitive demanding context, such as decision-making. • The temporal dynamics of explicit and implicit acceptance for regulating outcome-related emotion. • P3 amplitudes negatively predict risky choices. • Implicit acceptance regulates decision-related emotions without cognitive costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reappraisal of negative events is known to be useful in decreasing their emotional impact. However, existent evidence for this conclusion mostly relies on conscious, deliberate reappraisal that comes with the cost of cognitive efforts. The aim of the present study was to compare emotion regulation effects of conscious and unconscious reappraisal, which has been shown to be less costly in previous studies. Subjects randomly assigned to an unconscious reappraisal, conscious reappraisal, and control condition performed a frustrating arithmetic task. Subjective emotional experience and heart-rate reactivity were recorded. Participants primed with unconscious reappraisal showed the same decrease in heart-rate reactivity as those explicitly instructed to reappraise. In addition, the unconscious reappraisal group did not show reductions in subjective negative emotion, whereas this was significantly decreased in the conscious reappraisal group. Heart-rate reactivity was positively correlated with negative emotion ratings and negatively correlated with the positive emotion ratings. These results suggest that unconscious reappraisal is only effective in decreasing physiological consequences of frustrating emotion, but not in reducing subjective experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines whether the modality effect can be used to improve visual time perception. In Experiment 1, we used a time-reproduction task to explore the accuracy (i.e., deviation of reproduced time from veridical time) and precision (i.e., variability of reproduced time) of time perception under auditory, visual, or audiovisual conditions. Results confirmed the existence of a modality effect. Experiments 2a and 2b and Experiment 3 examined whether adding auditory stimuli improves visual time perception. In Experiments 2a and 2b, participants were required to sound when the visual stimuli appeared. Results showed that the addition of sound to visual stimuli perception is associated with higher time perception accuracy than viewing visual stimuli alone. Given that sounding is not always applicable, we conducted Experiment 3, with participants asked to imagine sounds instead of sounding. Results showed that imaginary sounds improved accuracy. However, in Experiments 2a, 2b, and 3, neither sounding nor imagining sounds changed the precision of time perception. The findings of this study indicate that adding auditory stimuli reliably improves the accuracy of visual-time perception, irrespective of whether the sound is real or imagined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The current model of ADHD suggests abnormal reward and punishment sensitivity, although differences in ADHD subgroups are unclear. This study aimed to investigate the effect of feedback valence (reward or punishment) and punishment magnitude (small or large) on Feedback-Related Negativity (FRN) and Late Positive Potential (LPP) in two subtypes of ADHD (ADHD-C and ADHD-I) compared to typically developing children (TD) during a children's gambling task. Methods: Children with ADHD-C (n = 16), children with ADHD-I (n = 15) and typically developing children (n = 15) performed a children's gambling task under three feedback conditions: large losses, small losses and gains. FRN and LPP components in brain potentials were recorded and analyzed. Results: In TD children and children with ADHD-C, large loss feedback evoked more negative FRN amplitudes than small loss feedback, suggesting that brain sensitivity to the punishment and its magnitude is not impaired in children with ADHD-C. In contrast to these two groups, the FRN effect was absent in children with ADHD-I. The LPP amplitudes were larger in children with ADHD-C in comparison with those with ADHD-I, regardless of feedback valence and magnitude. Conclusion: Children with ADHD-C exhibit intact brain sensitivity to punishment similar to TD children. In contrast, children with ADHD-I are significantly impaired in neural sensitivity to the feedback stimuli and in particular, to punishment, compared to TD and ADHD-C children. Thus, FRN, rather than LPP, is a reliable index of the difference in reward and punishment sensitivity across different ADHD-subcategories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Studies from European-American cultures consistently reported that expressive suppression was associated with worse emotional consequence (e.g. depression) in comparison with acceptance. However, this conclusion may not apply to Chinese, as suppressing emotional displays to maintain relational harmony is culturally valued in East Asian countries. Thus, the present study examined the effects of suppression and acceptance on the depressive mood induced by a frustrating task in a Chinese sample. Method: Sixty-four subjects were randomly assigned to one of three instructions: suppression, acceptance or no-regulation during a frustrating arithmetic task. The experience of depressive emotion and skin conductance response (SCR) were recorded during pre-frustration baseline, frustration induction and post-frustration recovery phases, respectively. Results: Compared with the control and acceptance instructions, suppression instruction was associated with decreased depressive experiences and smaller SCR activity during frustration. There were no significant differences between acceptance and control groups in both subjective depression and SCR activity during frustration. Moreover, the suppression group showed a better emotional recovery after the frustrating task, in comparison with the acceptance and control groups. Correlation analyses verified that SCR reactivity was a reliable index of experienced depression during the frustration. Conclusions: Expressive suppression is effective in reducing depressive experiences and depression-related physiological activity (SCR) when Chinese people are involved. By contrast, the acceptance of depressive emotion in Chinese people does not produce a similar regulation effect. These findings suggest that cultural context should be considered in understanding the emotional consequences of suppression and acceptance strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Various affective disorders are linked with enhanced processing of unpleasant stimuli. However, this link is likely a result of the dominant negative mood derived from the disorder, rather than a result of the disorder itself. Additionally, little is currently known about the influence of mood on the susceptibility to emotional events in healthy populations. Method: Event-Related Potentials (ERP) were recorded for pleasant, neutral and unpleasant pictures while subjects performed an emotional/neutral picture classification task during positive, neutral, or negative mood induced by instrumental Chinese music. Results: Late Positive Potential (LPP) amplitudes were positively related to the affective arousal of pictures. The emotional responding to unpleasant pictures, indicated by the unpleasant-neutral differences in LPPs, was enhanced during negative compared to neutral and positive moods in the entire LPP time window (600–1000 ms). The magnitude of this enhancement was larger with increasing self-reported negative mood. In contrast, this responding was reduced during positive compared to neutral mood in the 800–1000 ms interval. Additionally, LPP reactions to pleasant stimuli were similar across positive, neutral and negative moods except those in the 800–900 ms interval. Implications: Negative mood intensifies the humans' susceptibility to unpleasant events in healthy individuals. In contrast, music-induced happy mood is effective in reducing the susceptibility to these events. Practical implications of these findings were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Whether conceptual and emotional incongruities can be differentiated was examined. [•] Both emotional and conceptual incongruities related to N400 effect. [•] Conceptual incongruity induced theta power increase. [•] Emotional incongruity induced gamma power increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Expectation decreased the susceptibility to fearful stimuli in prior studies using distracting tasks. The present study tests whether expectation remains effective in decreasing this susceptibility, when subjects focus attention on emotional properties. Event-related potentials were recorded for fearful and neutral faces, while subjects performed a modified emotion evaluation task during unpredictable and predictable conditions. Behavioral data showed faster response latencies during predictable versus unpredictable conditions. ERP data showed prolonged peak latencies in N1 (80–130ms) and larger amplitudes in P2 (130–180ms) and N200-300 components, for unpredictable fearful versus neutral faces. Conversely, all these components showed similar responses to predictable fearful and neutral faces. Source analysis suggested that medial temporal lobe mediated ERPs elicited by unpredictable fearful faces, while ventromedial prefrontal cortex mediated those elicited by predictable fearful faces, in the 130–180ms interval. Thus, we propose emotional expectation as a cognitive regulation strategy that reliably dampens human susceptibility to fearful stimuli. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The present study investigated the neural mechanisms that underlie the higher levels of subjective well-being in extraverts. The impact of extraversion on the human sensitivity to pleasant and unpleasant pictures of diverse emotional intensities was examined. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) for highly positive (HP), moderately positive (MP), and neutral stimuli in the pleasant session, and for highly negative (HN), moderately negative (MN), and neutral stimuli in the unpleasant session, while subjects (16 extraverts and 16 ambiverts) performed a standard/deviant categorization task, irrespective of the emotionality of the deviant stimuli. The results showed significant emotion effects for HP and MP stimuli at the P2 and P3 components in extraverts, but not in ambiverts. Despite a pronounced emotion effect for HN stimuli across the P2, N2, and P3 components in both samples, ambiverts displayed a significant emotion effect for MN stimuli at the N2 and P3 components that was absent in extraverts. The posterior cingulate cortices, which connect multiple neural regions that are important in interactions of emotion and extraversion, may mediate the extravert-specific emotion effect for pleasant stimuli. Thus, extraverts are less susceptible to unpleasant stimuli of mild intensity than are ambiverts, while extraverts have an additional enhanced sensitivity to pleasant stimuli, regardless of emotion intensity. Consequently, the decreased threshold for pleasant emotion and the increased threshold for unpleasant emotion might be essential neural mechanisms that underlie the higher levels of subjective well-being in extraverts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the neural mechanisms that underlie the higher levels of subjective well-being in extraverts. The impact of extraversion on the human sensitivity to pleasant and unpleasant pictures of diverse emotional intensities was examined. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) for highly positive (HP), moderately positive (MP), and neutral stimuli in the pleasant session, and for highly negative (HN), moderately negative (MN), and neutral stimuli in the unpleasant session, while subjects (16 extraverts and 16 ambiverts) performed a standard/deviant categorization task, irrespective of the emotionality of the deviant stimuli. The results showed significant emotion effects for HP and MP stimuli at the P2 and P3 components in extraverts, but not in ambiverts. Despite a pronounced emotion effect for HN stimuli across the P2, N2, and P3 components in both samples, ambiverts displayed a significant emotion effect for MN stimuli at the N2 and P3 components that was absent in extraverts. The posterior cingulate cortices, which connect multiple neural regions that are important in interactions of emotion and extraversion, may mediate the extravert-specific emotion effect for pleasant stimuli. Thus, extraverts are less susceptible to unpleasant stimuli of mild intensity than are ambiverts, while extraverts have an additional enhanced sensitivity to pleasant stimuli, regardless of emotion intensity. Consequently, the decreased threshold for pleasant emotion and the increased threshold for unpleasant emotion might be essential neural mechanisms that underlie the higher levels of subjective well-being in extraverts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The ability to detect and cope with unpredictable novel events is fundamental for adapting to a rapidly changing environment and ensuring the survival of the organism. Despite knowledge of gender differences in emotional processing, little is currently known about the impact of gender on neural processing of emotion-irrelevant, novel stimuli. Using two modified three-stimulus oddball tasks and event-related potentials (ERPs), the present study investigated the impact of sex on brain processing of novel events and the associated neurophysiological correlates. With novel and non-novel control stimuli used as task-irrelevant distracters, Experiment 1 showed higher novelty rating scores and larger size of novelty effects in brain potentials at 200–300ms and 300–430ms time intervals in females compared to males. After excluding the contribution of stimulus probability, Experiment 2 continued to display significant novelty effects in the response times and the amplitudes of the 130–500ms time windows. Most importantly, females displayed a sustained novelty effect in the late positive component (LPC) amplitudes of the 500–600ms interval, which was not observed in males. Therefore, Experiment 1 and 2 demonstrated that females are equipped with enhanced brain processing of emotion-irrelevant, novel stimuli. This phenomenon is independent of the established gender difference in infrequent stimulus processing. We suggest that our findings reflect the differential adaptive demands on females and males during evolution. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: As an ability critical for adaptive social living, behavioral inhibitory control (BIC) is known to be influenced substantially by unpleasant emotion. Nevertheless, how unpleasant emotion of diverse strength influences this control, and the spatiotemporal dynamics underlying this influence, remain undetermined. For this purpose, Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for standard stimulus which required no BIC, and for deviant stimuli that required controlling habitual responses, during highly unpleasant (HU), mildly unpleasant (MU) and Neutral blocks. The results showed delayed response latencies for deviant compared to standard stimuli, irrespective of emotionality. Moreover, there were significant main effects of stimulus type, and significant stimulus type and block interaction effects on the averaged amplitudes of the 230–310ms and 330–430ms intervals. In the deviant-standard difference waves which directly index BIC-relevant processing, these interactions were manifested by increased negative potentials as a function of the strength of unpleasant emotion across N2 and P3 components. In addition, these influences are specific to unpleasant emotion, as pleasant emotion of diverse strength produced a similar impact in the control experiment. Therefore, unpleasant emotion of diverse strength is different in impact on brain processing of behavioral inhibitory control. This impact is evident not only in early monitoring of response conflicts, but also in late processing of response inhibition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Though the humans are more susceptible to unpleasant stimuli of higher intensity, how the valence intensity of unpleasant stimuli impacts subsequent cognitive processing, and whether this impact increases with the unpleasantness, require clarification. For this purpose, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for highly negative (HN), mildly negative (MN) and neutral cueing pictures, and subsequently for the non-emotional target picture while subjects were required to discriminate the location of the target. Cue-induced ERPs showed more negative deflections for the HN than for the neutral pictures in the 450–650ms time interval. The emotion effect for the MN cueing stimuli, however, was non-significant in this interval. In contrast, target-induced P3 amplitudes were significantly more negative following MN versus neutral cueing pictures, while the P3 amplitudes were not significantly different between HN and neutral conditions, irrespective of cueing validity. Thus, despite weak immediate impact, MN stimuli influenced subsequent target processing more heavily than HN stimuli. This suggests that the impact of unpleasant events on cognition doesn''t necessarily increase with the unpleasantness. Mild unpleasant stimulus, which is weak in immediate emotion arousal, should not be neglected due to the likelihood of producing a sustained impact. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The present study investigated neural correlates underlying the psychological processing of the extent of self-relevance. Event-related potentials were recorded for distracting names different in extent of self-relevance while subjects performed a three-stimulus oddball task. The results showed larger amplitudes and prolonged latencies for high self-relevant than for moderate self-relevant, low self-relevant and non-self-relevant names at P2 component. Furthermore, N2 amplitudes were decreased for the high self-relevant and moderate self-relevant names than for the low self-relevant and non-self-relevant names. Moreover, the high self-relevant names elicited larger positive deflections than the moderate self-relevant names which, in turn, elicited larger positive deflections than the low self-relevant and non-self-relevant names at both P3 and 440–540ms intervals. Additionally, the peak latencies of P3 were prolonged during the high self-relevant and moderate self-relevant than during the low self-relevant and non-self-relevant conditions. Therefore, in addition to replicating the classic self-relevant effect, the present study extended previous studies by showing a clear self-relevant degree effect, with high self-relevant stimuli processed more preferentially in the brain relative to those low in self-relevance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The present study investigated the impact of auditory-induced mood on brain processing of cognitive control using a Stroop color-word interference task. A total of 135 positive, negative, and neutral sounds (45 of each) were presented in separate blocks for a mood induction procedure, which was then followed by a Stroop color-word task in each trial. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for color-word congruent, incongruent and neutral (color-word irrelevant) words and subjects named the printed colors of the words by pressing the appropriate key (irrespective of word meaning). Response latency was delayed during incongruent vs. neutral trials, and this cost did not interact significantly with mood states. ERP data showed prolonged peak latencies in the P200 component and more negative deflections in the Late Positive Component (LPC, 450–550ms) during incongruent vs. neutral conditions, regardless of mood states. Moreover, the negative deflections (N450) in the 450–550ms interval of the incongruent- neutral difference waves, which index cognitive control effect in brain potentials, was more pronounced in the pleasant, but not in the unpleasant, mood state when compared with the neutral mood state. These data suggest that, pleasant mood intensifies brain processing of cognitive control, in a situation requiring effective inhibition of task-irrelevant distracting information. In addition, N450 component serves as an affective marker, embodying not only cognitive control effect in the brain but also its interaction with mood states. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Considerable studies reported that females are more susceptible to affective disturbances such as depression, anxiety disorder, and phobia compared to males. Based on the close relation between emotional sensitivity and liability to affective disturbances (Hofer et al. []: NeuroImage 32, 854-862; Spearing []: Bipolar disorder, 2nd ed. Bethesda (MA): National institute of Mental Health), this study investigated the neural mechanism underlying the females' liability to affective disturbances by hypothesizing that females are more susceptible to negative emotions than males. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for highly negative (HN), moderately negative (MN), and neutral images in Experiment 1, and for highly positive, moderately positive, and neutral images in Experiment 2, whereas subjects (15 males and 15 females) performed a standard/deviant distinction task, irrespective of the emotional valence of deviants in both experiments. In addition to the prominent emotional reactions evoked by HN stimuli in both genders, Experiment 1 displayed conspicuous emotional responses of females to MN stimuli across N2 and P3 components, which were absent in males. In contrast, Experiment 2 demonstrated neither significant valence effect, nor significant valence by gender interaction effect at these components. Thus, although both genders are sensitive to HN stimuli, females, instead of males, are particularly susceptible to negative stimuli of lesser salience, and this female specific susceptibility does not exist to the positive stimuli. Therefore, females must be more susceptible to negative emotions in life settings, which may be one important mechanism underlying their higher prevalence of affective disturbances. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The present study investigated the influence of attention on the human sensitivity to valence differences in emotionally negative stimuli. Event-related potentials were recorded for unattended highly negative (EN), moderately negative (MN) and neutral pictures in Experiment 1 which engaged subjects in an auditory discrimination task; and for EN, MN and neutral pictures in Experiment 2 that required visual classification of pictures. Results of both experiments displayed increased negative deflections during EN than during MN and neutral conditions at 150–250, 250–350, and 350–450ms intervals post-stimulus. Moreover, MN stimuli elicited larger negativity than did neutral stimuli during 250–350ms interval in either experiment. This developed our understanding of the human sensitivity to valence differences in negative stimuli, by revealing that the brain sensitivity to the valence strength of negative stimuli exists stably, unaffected by attention access to some extent. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The present study investigated the electrophysiological correlates of the psychological processing of the collective self-relevant stimulus using a three-stimulus oddball paradigm. The results showed that P300 amplitude elicited by the collective self-relevant stimulus was larger than those elicited by familiar and unfamiliar stimuli. In addition, N250 and P300 amplitudes elicited by subjects’ own names were larger than those elicited by other name stimuli. In terms of lateralization of P300, the collective self-relevant effect was largest in the left region sites and the individual self-relevant effect was largest in the right region sites. Therefore, the present study extended previous findings by showing that the collective self, similar to the famous individual self, was psychologically important to humans. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The present study investigated the effect of music-elicited moods on the subsequent affective processing through a music-primed valence categorization task. Event-related potentials were recorded for positive and negative emotional pictures that were primed by happy or sad music excerpts. The reaction time data revealed longer reaction times (RTs) for pictures following negative versus positive music pieces, irrespective of the valence of the picture. Additionally, positive pictures elicited faster response latencies than negative pictures, irrespective of the valence of the musical prime. Moreover, the main effect of picture valence, and the music by picture valence interaction effect were both significant for P2 amplitudes and for the averaged amplitudes at 500–700ms interval. Negative pictures elicited smaller P2 amplitudes than positive pictures, and the amplitude differences between negative and positive pictures were larger with negative musical primes than with positive musical primes. Similarly, compared to positive pictures, negative pictures elicited more negative deflections during the 500–700ms interval across prime types. The amplitude differences between negative and positive pictures were again larger under negative versus positive music primes at this interval. Therefore, the present study observed a clear emotional negativity bias during either prime condition, and extended the previous findings by showing increased strength of the negative bias under negative mood primes. This suggests that the neural sensitivity of the brain to negative stimuli varies with individuals’ mood states, and this bias is particularly intensified by negative mood states. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The inhibition of inappropriate behaviors is important for adaptive living in changing environments. The present study investigated gender-related behavioral inhibitory control by recording event-related potentials for standard and deviant stimuli while subjects performed a standard/deviant distinction task by accurately pressing different keys within 1000 ms. The results showed faster reaction times (RTs) for deviant stimuli in women than in men, although RTs for standard stimuli were similar across genders. There were significant gender and stimulus interaction effects on mean amplitudes during each of the 170–230-ms, 250–330-ms, and 350–600-ms intervals, and women exhibited shorter latencies and larger amplitudes than men at deviant-related P2, N2, and P3 components. As an accurate, fast response to the rare deviant stimuli involves behavioral inhibitory control on the prepotent response whereas the response to the standard stimuli does not, it is clear that there is a general gender difference in behavioral control for human adults. This may relate to differential inhibitory demands by each gender during evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The recognition potential (RP), which is recorded at occipital–temporal sites 200–300 ms poststimulus onset, is an event-related potential (ERP) response to a recognizable stimulus during an object recognition task. Using the rapid stream stimulation (RSS) paradigm and a word detection task, the present study investigated the effect of word detection on RP activity by manipulating angular orientation and image version of Chinese characters. The results showed larger RP amplitude during the normal condition than during the mirror-reversed condition across angular orientations. Moreover, the RP latencies were delayed for 60°, 120°, and 180° orientations relative to the upright, and the amplitudes were larger for 0° and 60° orientations than for 120° and 180° orientations only during the normal condition. This suggests that, as mirrored by RP activity, different strategies depend on the difficulty of word recognition. More specially, piecemeal and serial processing strategy would be used when incoming information is sufficient for word recognition, whereas holistic strategy and the global analysis of categorical features would be used when a word cannot be recognized due to the degraded quality of incoming stimuli. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Previous studies have extensively reported an advantage of females in identifying negative facial emotions as compared with males. Nevertheless, why females are better in performance relative to males during emotion recognition tasks is still unknown, and the neural mechanism(s) underlying this phenomenon has yet to be directly investigated. As facial affects convey emotional information which is adaptively important and the recognition of a given facial affect generally evokes individuals'' emotion of the same type [Dimberg, U., 1997. Facial reactions: rapidly evoked emotional responses. J. Psychophysiol. 11, 115–123], the present study assumes that the female advantage in emotion recognition may result from the attenuated sensitivity of males to emotionally negative stimuli of lesser valence intensity compared to that of females. In contrast, each gender may be comparably sensitive to emotionally negative stimuli of enhanced salience as suggested by the emotional negativity bias. To test this hypothesis, event-related potentials were recorded for highly negative (HN), moderately negative (MN), and Neutral deviant images while subjects (15 males, 15 females) perform a standard/deviant categorization task, irrespective of the emotional valence of deviants. The results demonstrated more negative ERP deflections during HN condition than during MN and Neutral conditions at early N2 and later P3 components, irrespective of gender. Moreover, MN condition elicited significantly more negative deflections than the Neutral condition across N2 and P3 components only in females, and the MN−Neutral difference waveform in females during 250–450 ms interval was localized to the right prefrontal cortex. Thus, apart from the increased sensitivity of both genders to the highly negative stimuli, the present study demonstrated that women, instead of men, are sensitive to emotionally negative stimuli of lesser saliency, which may be an important mechanism underlying the female advantage in identifying negative emotions, and the right prefrontal cortex may be the neural basis underlying the female-specific sensitivity to emotionally negative stimuli of lesser salience. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The present study investigated whether the human brain is sensitive to valence differences in emotionally negative stimuli by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) for extremely negative (EN), moderately negative (MN), and neutral pictures while subjects perform a standard/deviant categorization task, irrespective of the emotional valence of the deviants. Using the same design, we also investigated the sensitivity of the human brain to valence differences in emotionally positive stimuli. Experiment 1 showed that EN stimuli elicited more negative deflections than MN stimuli in the early P2 and N2, later P3, and slow negative wave (SNW) components. In contrast, there were no differences in amplitude or latency in these components during the extremely positive (EP) and moderately positive (MP) conditions of Experiment 2. This suggests that humans are only sensitive to valence differences in negative stimuli, and that these negative valences could be processed differentially throughout the information processing stream even when individuals are highly engaged in a non-emotional task. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The promoter of prosocial behavior in fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic needs to be examined. Here, we examined the effect of experienced awe through cross-sectional (Study 1), a 3-wave longitudinal (Study 2) and experimental (Study 3–4) approaches. Study 1 showed that dispositional awe positively predicted one's prosocial behavior in the pandemic (N = 1281). Study 2 (N = 332) observed that experienced awe predicted higher prosociality, and this relationship was serially mediated by connectedness and empathy. Study 3 (N = 153) and 4 (N = 156) confirmed that elicited awe, compared to that of amusement and neutrality, promoted multiple types of prosociality (Study 3) and willingness of blood donation (Study 4) via serial mediation of connectedness and empathy. These findings suggest that the experience of awe increases one's connectedness to the world, which in turn enhances empathic concern and prosociality in pandemic fighting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated how unconscious priming of impulsivity control helps improve the performance of behavioral inhibitory control (BIC) using a Go/No‐go task and a two‐choice oddball task. Participants were divided into three priming conditions: impulsivity‐avoiding (IA), calmness‐pursuit (CP), and control group. Accuracy (ACC) cost (frequent–infrequent) in both tasks and reaction‐time (RT) cost (infrequent–frequent) in the two‐choice oddball task were used to assess BIC ability before and after the unconscious priming. The ACC cost, either in the Go/No‐go or in the two‐choice oddball task, was enhanced posttest relative to pretest, as indicated by the main effect of time. This effect arose from significantly increased ACC cost during posttest relative to pretest in the control group but not the IA and CP groups. Although no interaction of time and group was found in ACC cost analysis in either task, the analysis of RT cost in the two‐choice oddball task showed a significant interaction between group and time. Specifically, the IA group showed similar RT cost during posttest versus pretest, while the RT cost was significantly enhanced during posttest versus pretest in the CP and control groups. These results suggest that unconscious pursuit of an impulsivity‐avoidance goal is more effective in preventing one's impulsive behavior pattern than that of a calmness pursuit. Moreover, RT cost in the two‐choice oddball task is a more sensitive index than the traditional ACC cost in assessing one's BIC function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social exclusion can induce negative emotions and aggression. While previous studies have investigated the effect of trait acceptance on emotional experience and aggression during social exclusion, it is still unclear how different forms of acceptance strategy can downregulate negative emotions and whether this potential reduction of negative emotions should mediate the effect of acceptance on aggression. To address these questions, 100 participants were recruited and randomly divided into three groups: control group (CG, N = 33), conscious acceptance group (CAG, N = 33) and unconscious acceptance group (UAG, N = 34). Negative emotions were induced by the cyberball game and measured by the modified PANAS. Aggressive behavior was assessed by the hot sauce allocation task. Results showed that anger, rather than other negative emotions, mediated the effect of acceptance on aggressive behavior. Conscious and unconscious acceptance both effectively regulated anger, hurt feelings and aggressive behavior during social exclusion. Compared to conscious acceptance, unconscious acceptance was associated with less reduction of positive emotion and had a better effect on reducing sadness. These findings highlight the advantage of applying unconscious acceptance strategy to regulating social exclusion-induced emotions for the purpose of reducing aggressive behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Emotion is known to interact with behavioral inhibitory control (BIC), an ability critical for adaptive living. Nevertheless, how emotion valence influences this control, and the spatiotemporal dynamics underlying this influence, remain undetermined. For this purpose, the present study recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) for a standard stimulus which required no BIC, and for deviant stimuli that required controlling habitual responses during pleasant, neutral and unpleasant blocks. Behavioral results showed prolonged reaction times (RTs) and diminished accuracy rates for deviant than for standard stimuli, irrespective of the emotionality of deviants. Moreover, there were significant main effects of stimulus type, and significant stimulus and emotion interaction effects on the averaged amplitudes of the 200–300ms and 300–500ms intervals. Through analyzing the deviant–standard difference ERPs that index BIC directly, we found larger N2 and smaller P3 amplitudes during the unpleasant block than during the neutral block. The pleasant block, in contrast, showed a trend of more pronounced P3 amplitudes than the neutral block. Thus, by synchronizing BIC with emotion induction, we found distinct impact of pleasant and unpleasant emotions on behavioral inhibitory processing, not only in early monitoring of response conflicts but also in the late stage of response inhibition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Automatic emotion regulation (AER) plays a vital role in the neuropathology underlying both suicide and self-harm via modifying emotional impact effortlessly. However, both the effortless account and the neural mechanisms of AER are undetermined. To investigate the neural changes at AER, we collected functional MRI (fMRI) in 31 participants who attended to neutral and disgust pictures in three conditions: watching, goal intention (GI), and reappraisal by implementation intention (RII). Results showed that RII (but not GI) decreased negative feelings and bilateral amygdala activity without increasing cognitive efforts, evidenced by the reduced effort rating and less prefrontal engagement during RII compared with during watching and GI. These emotion-regulatory effects of RII cannot be explained by emotional habituation, as the supplementary experiment (N = 31) showed no emotional habituation effects when the same disgust pictures were presented repeatedly three times for each watching and GI condition. Task-based network analysis showed both RII and GI relative to watching increased functional connectivities (FCs) of the ventral anterior cingulate cortex to the left insula and right precuneus during conditions, two FCs subserving goal setup. However, RII relative to GI exhibited weaker FCs in brain networks subserving effortful control, memory retrieval, aversive anticipation, and motor planning. In these FCs, the FC intensity of putamen-operculum/lingual and paracentral-superior temporal gyri positively predicted regulatory difficulty ratings. These findings suggest that the setup of implementation intention automatizes emotion regulation by reducing the online mobilization of emotion-coping neural systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive reappraisal is associated with major depressive disorder (MDD), while spontaneous activity patterns of the default mode network (DMN) is implicated in reappraisal and MDD. However, neural mechanisms subserving the close association of spontaneous reappraisal and depression are unclear. Spontaneous reappraisal, depression and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) were measured from 105 healthy subjects. We assessed the temporal complexity (Hurst exponent), Regional Homogeneity (ReHo) and fractional Amplitude of Low Frequency Fluctuation (fALFF) profiles of DMN, a network involved in both reappraisal and depression. Mediation effects of these standard measures on the relationship between reappraisal and depression, and the contributions of each DMN subregion, were assessed. Results indicated that Hurst exponent (H) of DMN, whether extracted by independent component analysis (ICA) or region of interest (ROI), was significantly associated with reappraisal scores. An individual with a higher reappraisal score has a lower Hurst value of DMN. Mediation analyses suggest that H of DMN partially mediates the association between reappraisal and the degree of depression, and this mediation effect arises from the contribution of medial prefrontal cortex. Neither ReHo nor fALFF showed a similar correlation or mediation effect. These findings suggest that temporal dynamics of DMN play an important role in emotion regulation and its association with depression. H of DMN may serve as a neural marker mediating the association between reappraisal and depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methamphetamine (hereafter, meth) addiction results in various emotional problems linked to structural impairments in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). In this paper, we investigated whether high-frequency (10 Hz) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of the left dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) can improve emotional attention. Thirty-one meth addicts were randomly assigned to a 10 Hz or sham rTMS group; additionally, 31 healthy participants were enrolled, who were required to respond as correctly and quickly as possible to a yellow arrow embedded in an image depicting emotional content (neutral, fear, sadness, or disgust). Results showed that the healthy participants responded more rapidly to negative compared to neutral stimuli, while meth addicts responded indiscriminately to stimuli representing disgust, fear, and neutral content. The randomization check showed no significant differences in the pretest of emotional attention measures between the 10 Hz and sham groups. However, 10 Hz rTMS yielded faster response to negative pictures than to neutral pictures, which was similar to the performance of healthy participants but Sham not. However, this attention bias effect persisted in the 10 Hz group 2 weeks later. These results demonstrate that high-frequency rTMS of the left DLPFC can improve the emotional attention of meth addicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stimuli that have been frequently used to induce self-relevant processing are highly familiar to individuals (e.g., self-name [SN] and self-face). One’s surname is an important form of collective self-concept; it represents the line of ancestry, and is psychologically salient. According to this concept, a stranger with the same surname may also elicit salient self-relevant processing, despite unfamiliarity; however, this has not yet been directly investigated. The present study adopted a three-stimulus oddball paradigm and multimodal electroencephalography to study the potential self-relevant processing of such stimuli. Behavioral results indicated that same-surname unfamiliar (SSU) names were rated more self-relevant than different-surname unfamiliar (DSU) names, although they were rated equally unfamiliar to subjects. Analysis of EEG data showed similar P2 enhancement in response to SN and SSU when compared to DSU. In contrast, the self-relevant effect on P3 amplitudes and theta synchronization decreased linearly from SN, SSU, to DSU conditions. Thus, both the behavioral and electrophysiological data indicate that unfamiliar names with the same surname can evoke reliable self-relevant processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current work investigated whether the neural correlates of empathy for pain are altered by mood valence of observers. Following mood induction, participants watched pictures representing painful or nonpainful situations. We used EEG to record neural activity and assessed event-related desynchronization at central sites during pain observation. Greater mu desynchronization was observed during painful relative to nonpainful situations in positive and neutral mood but not in negative mood. We also found that the pain empathy effect, indexed by mu suppression differences between painful and nonpainful conditions, was smaller in negative than in neutral and positive mood, while this effect was similar between neutral and positive mood. The current study demonstrates that observers' mood states influence the motoric component of empathy for pain, and specifically the negative mood suppresses the motoric empathic resonance for others' pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the effects of emotion of different emotional intensity on memory have been investigated, it remain unclear whether the influence of emotional intensity on memory varies depending on the stimulus valence polarity (i.e., positive or negative). To address this, event-related potentials were recorded when subjects performed a continuous old/new discrimination task, for highly negative (HN), mildly negative (MN) and neutral pictures in the negative session; and for highly positive (HP), mildly positive (MP) and neutral pictures in the positive session. The results showed that relative to neutral stimuli, both HN and MN stimuli showed increased memory discrimination scores, and enhanced old/new effect in early FN400 (Frontal Negativity), but not late positive component (LPC) amplitudes. By contrast, relative to MP stimuli, HP and neutral stimuli showed increased memory discrimination scores and enhanced old/new effect in LPC but not FN400 amplitudes. Additionally, we observed a significant positive correlation between the memory discrimination score and the old/new effect in the amplitudes of the FN400 and LPC, respectively. These results indicate that both HN and MN stimuli were remembered better than neutral stimuli; whereas the recognition was worse for MP stimuli than Neutral and HP stimuli. In conclusion, in the present study, we observed that the effect of emotion intensity on memory depends on the stimulus valence polarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nitric oxide (NO) is an important retrograde neuronal intracellular messenger which plays an important role in synaptic plasticity and is involved in learning and memory. However, evidence that NO is particularly important for the acquisition of contextual fear conditioning is mixed. Also, little is known about at which stages of the contextual fear conditioning does NO make its contribution. In the present study, we used 7-nitroindazole to temporarily inhibit neural nitric oxide synthase at either the pre-exposure stage or conditioning stage in a two-process paradigm and examined the potential contribution that NO makes to the contextually conditioned fear. Results showed that the expression of contextual fear memory was significantly impaired in rats treated with 7-nitroindazole (30 mg/kg, i.p.) prior to the pairing of context-shock ( p = 0.034, n = 8), but not after the conditioning phase ( p = 0.846, n = 8). In addition, the expression of contextual fear memory and reconsolidation was not significantly impaired by 7-nitroindazole administered prior to the context pre-exposure stage or prior to another context-shock learning. These findings suggest that NO is specifically involved in the acquisition but not the consolidation, retrieval or reconsolidation of contextual fear memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explored whether neuroticism modulates the impact of extraversion on attention orienting to pleasant and unpleasant pictures of diverse emotional intensities. We measured event-related potentials for highly emotional, mildly emotional, and neutral stimuli in both pleasant and unpleasant blocks, while subjects (16 stable ambiverts, 15 stable extraverts, 17 neurotic ambiverts, and 17 neurotic extraverts) were asked to perform a standard/deviant categorization task, irrespective of the emotionality of the deviants. The results revealed a modulation effect of neuroticism in the impact of extraversion on emotional attention. On the one hand, irrespective of extraversion, emotionally stable samples showed increased N200 amplitudes for highly unpleasant (HN) stimuli relative to mildly unpleasant (MN) and neutral stimuli, while these samples exhibited no significant emotion magnitude effect in the pleasant block. On the other hand, although neurotic samples, both extraverts and ambiverts, showed enhanced N2 amplitudes for HN stimuli than neutral stimuli, neurotic extraverts displayed increased N2 amplitudes for highly pleasant (HP) and mildly pleasant (MP) stimuli than neutral stimuli, which was absent in neurotic ambiverts. These results extend our understanding of the relationship between extraversion and emotion by showing that neuroticism amplifies the positive emotional bias of extraverts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Eriksen Flanker task has been widely used as a measurement of cognitive control, however till now information is still scarce about how the neuroanatomical properties are related to performance in this task. Using voxel-based morphometry technique (VBM), the current study identified a set of distributed areas where the gray matter volume (GM) correlated positively with participants’ efficiency in interference inhibition. These areas included the bilateral prefrontal gyri, left insula and inferior temporal gyrus, the left inferior parietal lobule. Further analysis using a novel machine learning algorithm with balanced cross-validation procedure confirmed that in these areas the GM-behavioral association was unlikely a byproduct of outlier values, instead, the gray matter volume could predict reliably participants’ interference inhibition efficiency. These results underscore the importance of the fronto-parietal and insula systems to the brain functioning of interference inhibition from the neuroanatomical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The composite face effect (CFE) is central for face recognition research, its association with attention processes has been long debated but neuroimaging evidence remains absent. • Neurocognitive correlates of the CFE were investigated by fMRI scanning, leveraging independent functional localizers, univariate and multidimensional analyses. • Multidimensional scaling identified two principal dimensions in the behavioral CFE effect, suggesting the contribution of attentional and decision components. • Beyond the face processing network, univariate GLM analysis revealed noticeable involvement of regions in the attention network in the CFE effect. • ROI-based and whole-brain representation similarity analyses showed better behavioral-neural correspondence in the attention network over the face processing network. 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 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The present study investigates the human brains′ sensitivity to the valence strength of emotionally positive and negative chinese words. Event-Related Potentials were recorded, in two different experimental sessions, for Highly Positive (HP), Mildly Positive (MP) and neutral (NP) words and for Highly Negative (HN), Mildly Negative (MN) and neutral (NN) words, while subjects were required to count the number of words, irrespective of word meanings. The results showed a significant emotion effect in brain potentials for both HP and MP words, and the emotion effect occurred faster for HP words than MP words: HP words elicited more negative deflections than NP words in N2 (250–350ms) and P3 (350–500ms) amplitudes, while MP words elicited a significant emotion effect in P3, but not in N2, amplitudes. By contrast, HN words elicited larger amplitudes than NN words in N2 but not in P3 amplitudes, whereas MN words produced no significant emotion effect across N2 and P3 components. Moreover, the size of emotion-neutral differences in P3 amplitudes was significantly larger for MP compared to MN words. Thus, the human brain is reactive to both highly and mildly positive words, and this reactivity increased with the positive valence strength of the words. Conversely, the brain is less reactive to the valence of negative relative to positive words. These results suggest that human brains are equipped with increased sensitivity to the valence strength of positive compared to negative words, a type of emotional stimuli that are well known for reduced arousal. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We designed a novel task, partially incongruent categorization (PIC), to examine the timing of cognitive control. In the PIC task, participants categorized the probe stimulus according to a specific concept, and the number of features corresponding to the concept was varied. When there was one feature (c1 condition), the probe would elicit only categorization, but when there was more than one feature (c2 and c3 conditions), the probe would also elicit cognitive control. Here, the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials (ERPs) was utilized to investigate the temporal patterns of activity during conflict detection and control. Cognitive control elicited a N2 that was much larger in response to c2 and c3 than c1 in stimulus-locked waveforms, and no difference was evident between c2 and c3. The N2 was followed by a P3 that was much less on c2 and c3 than c1 trials, with no difference between c2 and c3. A dipole source analysis for two difference waves, c2−c1 and c3−c1, further showed that the corresponding dipoles of the N2 and P3 in the cognitive control conditions were in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and prefrontal cortex (PFC), respectively. Taken together, the present findings support that ERP components in response to the PIC task reflect the time course of cognitive control: the N2 responds to conflict information and subsequently activates the P3 to control this conflict. The connection between the ACC and PFC is supported by their sequential activation within trials. Hum Brain Mapp, 2008. © 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 15 healthy adults while they performed a category induction task. Two geometric figures characterized by three dimensions (color, shape, and stripe orientation) were presented simultaneously to subjects who were asked to identify their shared attributes. Pairs of figures sharing common attributes composed the category induction condition and pairs of identical figures composed the non-induction condition. It was hypothesized that non-induction only involves abstracting shared attributes from one stimulus, but category induction involves identifying shared attributes by comparing the two stimuli. The ERP waves elicited by induction and non-induction did not differ on N1, P2 and P3b components, but larger frontal N2 and smaller central-parietal PSW components were elicited by category induction. These results suggest that the processing of category induction is reflected in the PSW 400–650ms post-stimulus. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Emotional regulation is known to be associated with activity in the amygdala. The amygdala is an emotion-generative region that comprises of structurally and functionally distinct nuclei. However, little is known about the contributions of different frontal-amygdala sub-region pathways to emotion regulation. Here, we investigated how functional couplings between frontal regions and amygdala sub-regions are involved in different spontaneous emotion regulation processes by using an individual-difference approach and a generalized psycho-physiological interaction (gPPI) approach. Specifically, 50 healthy participants reported their dispositional use of spontaneous cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression in daily life and their actual use of these two strategies during the performance of an emotional-picture watching task. Results showed that functional coupling between the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the basolateral amygdala (BLA) was associated with higher scores of both dispositional and actual uses of reappraisal. Similarly, functional coupling between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the centromedial amygdala (CMA) was associated with higher scores of both dispositional and actual uses of suppression. Mediation analyses indicated that functional coupling of the right OFC-BLA partially mediated the association between reappraisal and emotional response, irrespective of whether reappraisal was measured by dispositional use (indirect effect(SE)=-0.2021 (0.0811), 95%CI (BC) = [-0.3851, -0.0655]) or actual use (indirect effect(SE)=-0.1951 (0.0796), 95%CI (BC) = [-0.3654, -0.0518])). These findings suggest that spontaneous reappraisal and suppression involve distinct frontal- amygdala functional couplings, and the modulation of BLA activity from OFC may be necessary for changing emotional response during spontaneous reappraisal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implementation intentions (II), which specify how to respond in a given situation based on the goal, is known for its automaticity of regulating emotion to the specified situation. However, it is unknown whether such regulatory effects can be generalized to unspecified situations. For this purpose, we performed four experiments, each consisting of specified (bloody) and unspecified (non-bloody) stimuli with the goal of disgust (Exp.1–2) or unpleasant (Exp.3) regulation. Results showed that II reduced negative feelings for both bloody and non-bloody situations (Exp.1). This generalization effect was absent for goal-unrelated, frightening situations (Exp.2). However, broadening the goal extended the generalization effect to the frightening situation, an effect further amplified when a flexible response was used (Exp.3). Moreover, the II buildup did not disrupt feelings for pleasant situations (Exp.4). These results provide the first evidence that II-based emotion regulation is generalizable to unspecified, goal-related situations and that increasing goal coverage expands the generalization. • The emotion regulation effects of reappraisal-based Implementation intention (RII) can be generalized to goal-related, unspecified situations. • Increasing the goal coverage and using flexible response amplify the generalization effect of emotion regulation during RII. • The RII buildup does not disrupt positive feelings for pleasant situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Feminine women have Larger emotion-related LPP amplitudes than masculine men. • Feminine women have less fronto-parietal coupling than masculine men during negative stimulation. • Androgyny eliminates the above sex differences. The role of gender role in interpreting sex differences in emotion is unknown. The present study examined how gender role moderates sex differences in emotional reactivity. Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded in sixty-eight subjects with typical or androgynous gender roles when they passively observed neutral and negative pictures. Behaviorally, typical females (feminine females) reported higher emotional rating than typical males (masculine males), while androgynous males and androgynous females reported no significant differences. Electrophysiologically, we found higher late positive potential (LPP) amplitude in typical females compared to typical males, while this pattern of sex difference was absent in androgynous subjects. The network analysis of EEG data indicates that typical males showed enhanced network coupling strengths between frontal/prefrontal and parietal areas than typical females, which was again absent in androgynous subjects. These findings suggest that gender role is an important determinant in the interpretation of sex differences in emotional reactivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]