Dreaming during a pandemic: Low incorporation of COVID-19-specific themes and lucidity in dreams of psychiatric patients and healthy controls.

The present study examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the emotional quality of dreams, the incorporation of pandemic-related themes, and the occurrence of lucid dreaming. Dream reports and lucidity ratings of psychiatric outpatients ( = 30) and healthy controls ( = 81) during two lockdowns in Germany were compared to those of healthy controls ( = 33) before the pandemic. Results confirmed previous reports that pandemic-specific themes were incorporated into dreams.

Adapting to a major crisis: Sleep and mental health during two lockdowns.

The present study aimed at investigating the impact of the pandemic on sleep and mental health in healthy individuals (n = 78) as well as in psychiatric outpatients (n = 30) during the first and the second lockdown in Germany, in March and November 2020, respectively. Sleep quality and anxiety were worse in patients compared with controls during both lockdowns. Further, patients but not controls exhibited higher levels of depression and overall psychiatric symptomatology during the second lockdown.

Investigating Nuisance Effects Induced in EEG During tACS Application.

Transcranial alternating-current stimulation (tACS) in the frequency range of 1-100 Hz has come to be used routinely in electroencephalogram (EEG) studies of brain function through entrainment of neuronal oscillations. It turned out, however, to be highly non-trivial to remove the strong stimulation signal, including its harmonic and non-harmonic distortions, as well as various induced higher-order artifacts from the EEG data recorded during the stimulation. In this paper, we discuss some of the problems encountered and present methodological approaches aimed at overcoming them.

Food has the right of way: Evidence for prioritised processing of visual food stimuli irrespective of eating style.

Visual attention for food is likely to play an important role for overeating. The attentional bias for visual food stimuli was investigated with respect to self-reported restrained, external and emotional eating style. Using a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation task (N = 103), the effects of visual food stimuli in the context of the attentional blink were examined.

On ignoring words-exploring the neural signature of inhibition of affective words using ERPs.

In the present study event-related potentials were used to shed further light on the neural signatures of active inhibition of the (affective) content of written words. Intentional inhibition was implemented by simply asking participants (N = 32) to ignore single words that served as primes in an affective priming (AP) task. In AP, evaluations about a priori neutral targets typically tend to shift towards the valence of preceding primes, denoting an AP effect (APE).

Effects of distinctiveness and memory on lateralized and unlateralized brain-electrical activity during visual word encoding.

The present study investigated a recently introduced left-lateralized component in the event-related potential (ERP), the posterior semantic asymmetry (PSA), in the context of an isolation paradigm. The PSA is a relative negativity that is most pronounced at temporoparietal electrodes, peaks around 300 ms, and is assumed to reflect early semantic processing of visual words. A free-recall, word-list-learning paradigm was conducted.

The posterior semantic asymmetry (PSA): specific to written not auditory semantic word processing.

The present study replicates the finding of a posterior semantic asymmetry (PSA; Koppehele-Gossel et al., Brain Lang 157-158:35-43, 2016), a lateralized event-related potential (ERP) suggested to reflect semantic activation from visually presented single words. This ERP negativity, derived from the subtraction of right-side from left-side scalp activity, again peaked around 300 ms at temporoparietal electrodes and was more pronounced in a semantic task, compared to both a silent naming task and a passive viewing task.

A template model of embodiment while dreaming: Proposal of a mini-me.

Dreams are usually centered around a dream self capable of tasks generally impossible in waking, e.g. flying or walking through walls.

A brain electrical signature of left-lateralized semantic activation from single words.

Lesion and imaging studies consistently indicate a left-lateralization of semantic language processing in human temporo-parietal cortex. Surprisingly, electrocortical measures, which allow a direct assessment of brain activity and the tracking of cognitive functions with millisecond precision, have not yet been used to capture this hemispheric lateralization, at least with respect to posterior portions of this effect. Using event-related potentials, we employed a simple single-word reading paradigm to compare neural activity during three tasks requiring different degrees of semantic processing.

Validity of content-based techniques to distinguish true and fabricated statements: A meta-analysis.

Within the scope of judicial decisions, approaches to distinguish between true and fabricated statements have been of particular importance since ancient times. Although methods focusing on "prototypical" deceptive behavior (e.g.

Induction of self awareness in dreams through frontal low current stimulation of gamma activity.

Recent findings link fronto-temporal gamma electroencephalographic (EEG) activity to conscious awareness in dreams, but a causal relationship has not yet been established. We found that current stimulation in the lower gamma band during REM sleep influences ongoing brain activity and induces self-reflective awareness in dreams. Other stimulation frequencies were not effective, suggesting that higher order consciousness is indeed related to synchronous oscillations around 25 and 40 Hz.

Lucid dreaming: an age-dependent brain dissociation.

The current study focused on the distribution of lucid dreams in school children and young adults. The survey was conducted on a large sample of students aged 6-19 years. Questions distinguished between past and current experience with lucid dreams.