The association of dispositional anxiety with the NoGo N2 under relaxation instruction vs. speed/accuracy instruction.

Prior research suggests that cognitive control, indicated by NoGo N2 amplitudes in Go/NoGo tasks, is associated with dispositional anxiety. This negative association tends to be reduced in anxiety-enhancing experimental conditions. However, anxiety-reducing conditions have not yet been investigated systematically.

The reality of virtual reality.

Virtual reality (VR) has become a popular tool for investigating human behavior and brain functions. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether VR constitutes an actual form of reality or is more like an advanced simulation. Determining the nature of VR has been mostly achieved by self-reported presence measurements, defined as the feeling of being submerged in the experience.

Midfrontal Theta Activity Is Sensitive to Approach-Avoidance Conflict.

Midfrontal theta (FMθ) in the human EEG is commonly viewed as a generic and homogeneous mechanism of cognitive control in general and conflict processing in particular. However, the role of FMθ in approach-avoidance conflicts and its cross-task relationship to simpler stimulus-response conflicts remain to be examined more closely. Therefore, we recorded EEG data while 59 healthy participants (49 female, 10 male) completed both an approach-avoidance task and a flanker task.

Do food images as action outcomes evoke a reward positivity?

Favourable compared to unfavourable action outcomes typically evoke a positive-going amplitude shift at frontomedial electrodes in the scalp-recorded electroencephalogram. Since prior studies on this Reward Positivity (RewP) have heavily relied on monetary outcomes, it is still debated whether the RewP is also elicited by other kinds of reward. We addressed this issue by focussing on food as another major category of daily reward.

The reward positivity reflects the integrated value of temporally threefold-layered decision outcomes.

In reinforcement learning, adaptive behavior depends on the ability to predict future outcomes based on previous decisions. The Reward Positivity (RewP) is thought to encode reward prediction errors in the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC) whenever these predictions are violated. Although the RewP has been extensively studied in the context of simple binary (win vs.

Aiming at ecological validity-Midfrontal theta oscillations in a toy gun shooting task.

Laboratory electroencephalography (EEG) studies have already provided important insights into the neuronal mechanisms of performance monitoring. However, to our knowledge no study so far has examined neuronal correlates of performance monitoring using an ecologically valid task outside a typical laboratory setting. Therefore, we examined midfrontal theta and the feedback-related negativity (FRN) using mobile EEG in a physical shooting task within an ecologically valid environment with highly dynamical visual feedback.

Young Children Respond to Moral Dilemmas Like Their Mothers.

There is a large scientific interest in human moral judgments. However, little is known about the developmental origins and the specific role of the primary caregivers in the early development of inter-individual differences in human morality. Here, we assess the moral intuitions of 3- to 6-year-old children and their mothers ( = 56), using child-friendly versions of five trolley dilemmas and two control scenarios.