A reflection on faces seen under mirror reversal.

Much of our visual experience of faces, including our own, is mediated by technology, for example when a digital photo depicts a mirror reversal of reality. How does this difference in visual experience affect judgments about appearance? Here, we asked participants to view their likeness in photographs that were reversed (as when viewed in a mirror) or not reversed (as when viewed directly). Observers also perceptually adapted (or not) to the reversed or non-reversed images in a 2 × 2 design.

Hippocampal Involvement in Safety Signal Learning Varies With Anxiety Among Healthy Adults.

Background: Safety signal learning (SSL), based on conditioned inhibition of fear in the presence of learned safety, can effectively attenuate threat responses in animal models and humans. Difficulty regulating threat responses is a core feature of anxiety disorders, suggesting that SSL may provide a novel mechanism for fear reduction. Cross-species evidence suggests that SSL involves functional connectivity between the anterior hippocampus and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex.

Multivariate links between the developmental timing of adversity exposure and white matter tract integrity in adulthood.

Early-life adversity is pervasive worldwide and represents a potent risk factor for increased mental health burden across the lifespan. However, there is substantial individual heterogeneity in associations between adversity exposure, neurobiological changes, and mental health problems. Accounting for key features of adversity such as the developmental timing of exposure may clarify associations between adversity, neurodevelopment, and mental health.

Development and validation of the Dimensional Inventory of Stress and Trauma Across the Lifespan (DISTAL): A novel assessment tool to facilitate the dimensional study of psychobiological sequelae of exposure to adversity.

Decades of research underscore the profound impact of adversity on brain and behavioral development. Recent theoretical models have highlighted the importance of considering specific features of adversity that may have dissociable effects at distinct developmental timepoints. However, existing measures do not query these dimensions in sufficient detail to support the proliferation of this approach.

Neural circuitry involved in conditioned inhibition via safety signal learning is sensitive to trauma exposure.

Exposure to trauma throughout the lifespan is prevalent and increases the likelihood for the development of mental health conditions such as anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Safety signal learning (SSL)--a form of conditioned inhibition that involves reducing fear via conditioned safety--has been shown to effectively attenuate fear responses among individuals with trauma exposure, but the association between trauma exposure and the neural mechanisms of SSL remains unknown. Adults with varied prior exposure to trauma completed a conditioned inhibition task during functional MRI scanning and collection of skin conductance response (SCR).

Lack of robust associations between prepandemic coping strategies and frontolimbic circuitry with depression and anxiety symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic: A preregistered longitudinal study.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing stressor that has resulted in the exacerbation of mental health problems worldwide. However, longitudinal studies that identify preexisting behavioral and neurobiological factors associated with mental health outcomes during the pandemic are lacking. Here, we examined associations between prepandemic coping strategy engagement and frontolimbic circuitry with internalizing symptoms during the pandemic.

Associations between early-life stress exposure and internalizing symptomatology during the COVID-19 pandemic: Assessing the role of neurobehavioral mediators.

Background: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is a major stressor that has been associated with increased risk for psychiatric illness in the general population. Recent work has highlighted that experiences of early-life stress (ELS) may impact individuals' psychological functioning and vulnerability for developing internalizing psychopathology in response to pandemic-related stress. However, little is known about the neurobehavioral factors that may mediate the association between ELS exposure and COVID-related internalizing symptomatology.

Neural effects of controllability as a key dimension of stress exposure.

Cross-species evidence suggests that the ability to exert control over a stressor is a key dimension of stress exposure that may sensitize frontostriatal-amygdala circuitry to promote more adaptive responses to subsequent stressors. The present study examined neural correlates of stressor controllability in young adults. Participants ( = 56; = 23.

Ensemble size judgments account for size constancy.

The natural environment is full of redundant information that the visual system compresses into an ensemble representation by averaging features of groups of items. Ensemble perception has been shown to operate with remarkable flexibility, efficiently integrating information across a variety of visual domains. In the current set of experiments, we tested whether average size representations reflect the physical size of objects displayed on a screen or perceptual transformations due to size constancy.

Emotional judgments of scenes are influenced by unintentional averaging.

Background: The visual system uses ensemble perception to summarize visual input across a variety of domains. This heuristic operates at multiple levels of vision, compressing information as basic as oriented lines or as complex as emotional faces. Given its pervasiveness, the ensemble unsurprisingly can influence how an individual item is perceived, and vice versa.

Flexible target templates improve visual search accuracy for faces depicting emotion.

Theories of visual attention hypothesize that target selection depends upon matching visual inputs to a memory representation of the target - i.e., the target or attentional template.

Ventral hippocampus interacts with prelimbic cortex during inhibition of threat response via learned safety in both mice and humans.

Heightened fear and inefficient safety learning are key features of fear and anxiety disorders. Evidence-based interventions for anxiety disorders, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, primarily rely on mechanisms of fear extinction. However, up to 50% of clinically anxious individuals do not respond to current evidence-based treatment, suggesting a critical need for new interventions based on alternative neurobiological pathways.

The Frozen Effect: Objects in motion are more aesthetically appealing than objects frozen in time.

Videos of moving faces are more flattering than static images of the same face, a phenomenon dubbed the Frozen Face Effect. This may reflect an aesthetic preference for faces viewed in a more ecological context than still photographs. In the current set of experiments, we sought to determine whether this effect is unique to facial processing, or if motion confers an aesthetic benefit to other stimulus categories as well, such as bodies and objects-that is, a more generalized 'Frozen Effect' (FE).

Precise Ensemble Face Representation Given Incomplete Visual Input.

Humans can recognize faces in the presence of environmental noise. Here, we explore whether ensemble perception of faces is similarly robust. Is summary statistical information available from crowds of faces that are visually incomplete? Observers viewed sets of faces varying in identity or expression and adjusted a test face to match the perceived average.

Correcting "confusability regions" in face morphs.

The visual system represents summary statistical information from a set of similar items, a phenomenon known as ensemble perception. In exploring various ensemble domains (e.g.

Mixed emotions: Sensitivity to facial variance in a crowd of faces.

The visual system automatically represents summary information from crowds of faces, such as the average expression. This is a useful heuristic insofar as it provides critical information about the state of the world, not simply information about the state of one individual. However, the average alone is not sufficient for making decisions about how to respond to a crowd.

Individual differences in ensemble perception reveal multiple, independent levels of ensemble representation.

Ensemble perception, including the ability to "see the average" from a group of items, operates in numerous feature domains (size, orientation, speed, facial expression, etc.). Although the ubiquity of ensemble representations is well established, the large-scale cognitive architecture of this process remains poorly defined.

Butalbital and pediatric headache: stay off the downward path.

Despite limited evidence from the literature surrounding safety or efficacy, butalbital-containing medicines (BCMs) have maintained their rank as "go-to" prescribed migraine and headache relief drugs in the United States, despite bans on these barbiturates in Germany and other European countries. Providers at the Pediatric Headache Program at Boston Children's Hospital recommend that clinicians prescribe triptan-based medications instead of BCMs, given the known negative side effects of BCMs on the general population, and the uncertain longitudinal trajectory of BCMs on developing brains.

The frozen face effect: why static photographs may not do you justice.

When a video of someone speaking is paused, the stationary image of the speaker typically appears less flattering than the video, which contained motion. We call this the frozen face effect (FFE). Here we report six experiments intended to quantify this effect and determine its cause.

Sensorimotor coupling in music and the psychology of the groove.

The urge to move in response to music, combined with the positive affect associated with the coupling of sensory and motor processes while engaging with music (referred to as sensorimotor coupling) in a seemingly effortless way, is commonly described as the feeling of being in the groove. Here, we systematically explore this compelling phenomenon in a population of young adults. We utilize multiple levels of analysis, comprising phenomenological, behavioral, and computational techniques.

Efficient summary statistical representation when change localization fails.

People are sensitive to the summary statistics of the visual world (e.g., average orientation/speed/facial expression).

The visual system discounts emotional deviants when extracting average expression.

There has been a recent surge in the study of ensemble coding, the idea that the visual system represents a set of similar items using summary statistics (Alvarez & Oliva, 2008; Ariely, 2001; Chong & Treisman, 2003; Parkes, Lund, Angelucci, Solomon, & Morgan, 2001). We previously demonstrated that this ability extends to faces and thus requires a high level of object processing (Haberman & Whitney, 2007, 2009). Recent debate has centered on the nature of the summary representation of size (e.

Averaging facial expression over time.

The visual system groups similar features, objects, and motion (e.g., Gestalt grouping).

Seeing the mean: ensemble coding for sets of faces.

We frequently encounter groups of similar objects in our visual environment: a bed of flowers, a basket of oranges, a crowd of people. How does the visual system process such redundancy? Research shows that rather than code every element in a texture, the visual system favors a summary statistical representation of all the elements. The authors demonstrate that although it may facilitate texture perception, ensemble coding also occurs for faces-a level of processing well beyond that of textures.