VR for Studying the Neuroscience of Emotional Responses.

Emotions are frequently considered as the driving force of behavior, and psychopathology is often characterized by aberrant emotional responding. Emotional states are reflected on a cognitive-verbal, physiological-humoral, and motor-behavioral level but to date, human research lacks an experimental protocol for a comprehensive and ecologically valid characterization of such emotional states. Virtual reality (VR) might help to overcome this situation by allowing researchers to study mental processes and behavior in highly controlled but reality-like laboratory settings.

Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty: How intolerance of uncertainty and trait anxiety impact fear acquisition, extinction and the return of fear.

It is hypothesized that the ability to discriminate between threat and safety is impaired in individuals with high dispositional negativity, resulting in maladaptive behavior. A large body of research investigated differential learning during fear conditioning and extinction protocols depending on individual differences in intolerance of uncertainty (IU) and trait anxiety (TA), two closely-related dimensions of dispositional negativity, with heterogenous results. These might be due to varying degrees of induced threat/safety uncertainty.

Theta-Burst Stimulation Combined With Virtual-Reality Reconsolidation Intervention for Methamphetamine Use Disorder: Study Protocol for a Randomized-Controlled Trial.

Background: Craving associated with drug-related memory is one of the key factors that induce the relapse of methamphetamine (MA). Disruption or modulation of the reconsolidation of drug-related memory may serve as an option for clinical treatment of MA addiction. This protocol proposes to use virtual reality (VR) to retrieve drug-associated memory and then use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) at the neural circuit that encodes the reward value of drug cues to provide a non-invasive intervention during reconsolidation.

Efficacy of approach bias modification as an add-on to smoking cessation treatment: study protocol for a randomized-controlled double-blind trial.

Background: Although effective treatments for smoking cessation are available, long-term abstinence is the exception rather than the norm. Accordingly, there is a need for novel interventions that potentially improve clinical outcome. Although implicit information processing biases, for example approach biases for smoking-related stimuli, are ascribed a dominant role in the maintenance of tobacco dependence, these biases are hardly targeted in current treatment.

Memory Retrieval-Extinction Combined With Virtual Reality Reducing Drug Craving for Methamphetamine: Study Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Relapse, often precipitated by drug-associated cues that evoke craving, is a key problem in the treatment of methamphetamine use disorder (MUD). Drug-associated memories play a major role in the maintenance of relapse. Extinction training is a common method for decreasing drug craving by suppressing drug-associated memories.

Emotion regulation in heavy smokers: experiential, expressive and physiological consequences of cognitive reappraisal.

Emotion regulation dysfunctions are assumed to contribute to the development of tobacco addiction and relapses among smokers attempting to quit. To further examine this hypothesis, the present study compared heavy smokers with non-smokers (NS) in a reappraisal task. Specifically, we investigated whether non-deprived smokers (NDS) and deprived smokers (DS) differ from non-smokers in cognitive emotion regulation and whether there is an association between the outcome of emotion regulation and the cigarette craving.

Neural responses to smoking stimuli are influenced by smokers' attitudes towards their own smoking behaviour.

An important feature of addiction is the high drug craving that may promote the continuation of consumption. Environmental stimuli classically conditioned to drug-intake have a strong motivational power for addicts and can elicit craving. However, addicts differ in the attitudes towards their own consumption behavior: some are content with drug taking (consonant users) whereas others are discontent (dissonant users).

Appraisal frames of pleasant and unpleasant pictures alter emotional responses as reflected in self-report and facial electromyographic activity.

Emotional pictures elicit responses across experiential, behavioral and physiological systems. The magnitude of these responses can be modulated by altering one's interpretation of emotional stimuli. Previous studies have indicated that appraisal frames affect subsequent interpretations of upcoming stimuli so as to alter self-reported emotions, ERP activity and autonomic responses.

An early attentional bias to BEGIN-stimuli of the smoking ritual is accompanied with mesocorticolimbic deactivations in smokers.

Rationale: Biased processing of drug-associated stimuli is believed to be a crucial feature of addiction. Particularly, an attentional bias seems to contribute to the disorder's maintenance. Recent studies suggest differential effects for stimuli associated with the beginning (BEGIN-smoking-stimuli) or the terminal stage of the smoking ritual (END-smoking-stimuli), with the former but not the later evoking high cue-reactivity.

Conditioned cues for smoking elicit preparatory responses in healthy smokers.

Rationale: Smoking cues are theorized to be conditioned stimuli (CSs) formed by repeated pairing with drug. Smoking paraphernalia can elicit subjective and physiological responses in smokers, indicative of positive affect and motivation to consume. Although these responses are probably the result of conditioning, direct evidence from human conditioning studies with physiological measures of motivational valence is rare.