Dissociable neural correlates of trait and ability emotional intelligence: a resting-state fMRI study.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is one's ability to monitor one's own and other's emotions and the use of emotional information to enhance thought and action. Previous behavioral studies have shown that EI is separable into trait EI and ability EI, which are known to have distinct characteristics at the behavioral level. A relevant and unanswered question is whether both forms of EI have a dissociable neural basis.

EEG correlates of neutral working memory training induce attentional control improvements in test anxiety.

Attentional control theory states that high test anxious (HTA) individuals suffer from impaired attentional control. However, through working memory training it may be possible to improve such individuals' attentional control ability. This study investigated whether 20 days of working memory training (with emotionally neutral stimuli) does result in improved HTA individuals' attentional control ability.

Enhanced or impoverished recruitment of top-down attentional control of inhibition in test anxiety.

Controversy exists as to whether high test anxiety (HTA) individuals, when completing an inhibition task, increase or decrease top-down attentional control resources to maintain high task performance. In a flanker task experiment, individuals were confronted with a threat or no threat context in combination with a low or a high working memory load. The N2 measured top-down attentional control resource allocation.

ERP Evidence for Inhibitory Control Deficits in Test-Anxious Individuals.

Individuals with test anxiety [i.e., high test anxiety (HTA)] always treat tests/examinations as a potential threat.

Distinct neural substrates of visuospatial and verbal-analytic reasoning as assessed by Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices.

Recent studies revealed spontaneous neural activity to be associated with fluid intelligence (gF) which is commonly assessed by Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, and embeds two types of reasoning: visuospatial and verbal-analytic reasoning. With resting-state fMRI data, using global brain connectivity (GBC) analysis which averages functional connectivity of a voxel in relation to all other voxels in the brain, distinct neural correlates of these two reasoning types were found. For visuospatial reasoning, negative correlations were observed in both the primary visual cortex (PVC) and the precuneus, and positive correlations were observed in the temporal lobe.

Eye-movement evidence of the time-course of attentional bias for threatening pictures in test-anxious students.

Protocols for measuring attentional bias to threat in test-anxiety, a special form of trait-anxiety, are rarely found in the literature. In our eye-tracking study, we introduced a new protocol, and studied the time-course of attention to test-related pictures with varying threat levels in 22 high test-anxious (HTA) and 22 low test-anxious (LTA) subjects. To determine whether attentional bias to test-related pictures is due to test-anxiety and not to state-anxiety, we also included a third group of 22 subjects with high state-anxiety but low test-anxiety (HSA).

The gray matter volume of the amygdala is correlated with the perception of melodic intervals: a voxel-based morphometry study.

Music is not simply a series of organized pitches, rhythms, and timbres, it is capable of evoking emotions. In the present study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was employed to explore the neural basis that may link music to emotion. To do this, we identified the neuroanatomical correlates of the ability to extract pitch interval size in a music segment (i.

The processing of anticipated and unanticipated fearful faces: an ERP study.

This study examined the processing of fearful and neutral expressions, which could either be anticipated or not from a prime word (i.e., 'fear' or 'neutral') with or without predictive value.