Modulating what is and what could have been: The effect of transcranial direct current stimulation on the evaluation of attained and unattained decision outcomes.

The affective evaluation of decision outcomes, whether attained (e.g., disappointment) or based on the conscious realization that a decision made differently would have led to a better or worse outcome (e.

Skin Conductance Reactivity to Standardized Virtual Reality Combat Scenes in Veterans with PTSD.

Interest in virtual reality (VR) as a clinical tool to augment posttraumatic stress (PTSD) treatment has grown substantially in recent years due to advances in VR technology. Moreover, its potential assisted use in the PTSD diagnostic process has been recognized. In this study we examined physiological responding, skin conductance, to a standardized presentation of non-personalized combat-related VR events (e.

Transcranial direct current stimulation may modulate extinction memory in posttraumatic stress disorder.

Background: Abnormalities in fear extinction and recall are core components of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Data from animal and human studies point to a role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in extinction learning and subsequent retention of extinction memories. Given the increasing interest in developing noninvasive brain stimulation protocols for psychopathology treatment, we piloted whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) during extinction learning, vs.

The influence of cooperation and defection on social decision making in depression: A study of the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Game.

This study evaluated the influence of self-reported levels of depression on interpersonal strategic decision making when interacting with partners who differed in their predetermined tendency to cooperate in three separate computerized iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Games (iPDGs). Across 29 participants, cooperation was lowest when interacting with a predominantly defecting partner and highest when interacting with a predominantly cooperating partner. Greater depression severity was related to steadier and continued cooperation over trials with the cooperating partner, seeming to reflect a prosocial response tendency when interacting with this partner.

Deficits in Degraded Facial Affect Labeling in Schizophrenia and Borderline Personality Disorder.

Although deficits in facial affect processing have been reported in schizophrenia as well as in borderline personality disorder (BPD), these disorders have not yet been directly compared on facial affect labeling. Using degraded stimuli portraying neutral, angry, fearful and angry facial expressions, we hypothesized more errors in labeling negative facial expressions in patients with schizophrenia compared to healthy controls. Patients with BPD were expected to have difficulty in labeling neutral expressions and to display a bias towards a negative attribution when wrongly labeling neutral faces.

Can Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Augment Extinction of Conditioned Fear?

Background: Exposure-based therapy parallels extinction learning of conditioned fear. Prior research points to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex as a potential site for the consolidation of extinction learning and subsequent retention of extinction memory.

Objective/hypothesis: The present study aimed to evaluate whether the application of non-invasive transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) during extinction learning enhances late extinction and early recall in human participants.

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) Targeting Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Modulates Task-Induced Acute Pain in Healthy Volunteers.

Objective: Current chronic pain treatments target nociception rather than affective "suffering" and its associated functional and psychiatric comorbidities. The left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has been implicated in affective, cognitive, and attentional aspects of pain and is a primary target of neuromodulation for affective disorders. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can non-invasively modulate cortical activity.

Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) on Pain Distress Tolerance: A Preliminary Study.

Objective: Pain remains a critical medical challenge. Current treatments target nociception without addressing affective symptoms. Medically intractable pain is sometimes treated with cingulotomy or deep brain stimulation to increase tolerance of pain-related distress.

Does interoceptive awareness affect the ability to regulate unfair treatment by others?

In this study we aimed to investigate how awareness of bodily responses, referred to as interoceptive awareness, influences decision-making in a social interactive context. Interoceptive awareness is thought to be crucial for adequate regulation of one's emotions. However, there is a dearth of studies that examine the association between interoceptive awareness and the ability to regulate emotions during interpersonal decision-making.

The neural mechanisms of affect infusion in social economic decision-making: a mediating role of the anterior insula.

Though emotions have been shown to have sometimes dramatic effects on decision-making, the neural mechanisms mediating these biases are relatively unexplored. Here, we investigated how incidental affect (i.e.

Reappraising the ultimatum: an fMRI study of emotion regulation and decision making.

Emotion regulation strategies provide a means by which to modulate our social behavior. In this study, we investigated the effect of using reappraisal to both up- and downregulate social decision making. After being instructed on how to use reappraisal, participants played the Ultimatum Game while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging and applied the strategies of upregulation (reappraising the proposer's intentions as more negative), down-regulation (reappraising the proposer's intentions as less negative), as well as a baseline "look" condition.

The influence of emotion regulation on social interactive decision-making.

Although adequate emotion regulation is considered to be essential in every day life, it is especially important in social interactions. However, the question as to what extent two different regulation strategies are effective in changing decision-making in a consequential socially interactive context remains unanswered. We investigated the effect of expressive suppression and emotional reappraisal on strategic decision-making in a social interactive task, that is, the Ultimatum Game.

Affective dysfunctions in adolescents at risk for psychosis: emotion awareness and social functioning.

Studies of individuals at ultra high risk (UHR) for psychosis have revealed deviations in cognitive and neural development before the onset of psychosis. As affective impairments are among the core dysfunctions in psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, this study assessed emotion processing and the relationship with social competence in adolescents at risk for psychosis. Thirty-four adolescents at UHR for psychosis and twenty-three non-clinical controls completed the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire, a measure of emotion awareness.

Seeing is believing: trustworthiness as a dynamic belief.

Recent efforts to understand the mechanisms underlying human cooperation have focused on the notion of trust, with research illustrating that both initial impressions and previous interactions impact the amount of trust people place in a partner. Less is known, however, about how these two types of information interact in iterated exchanges. The present study examined how implicit initial trustworthiness information interacts with experienced trustworthiness in a repeated Trust Game.

Interactive decision-making in people with schizotypal traits: a game theory approach.

Studies that have investigated whether deficits in social cognition observed in schizophrenia are also present in schizotypal individuals have largely been inconclusive, and none of these studies have examined social interactive behavior. Here, we investigated interactive decision-making behavior in individuals differing in the amount of schizotypal symptoms using tasks derived from Game Theory. In total 1691 undergraduate students were screened with the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Brief version.

Emotion regulation strategies in patients with schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia patients might experience difficulties in applying two widely used emotion regulation strategies, reappraisal and suppression. We investigated the relationships among emotion regulation strategies, alexithymia (i.e.

Involuntary interpretation of social cues is compromised in autism spectrum disorders.

A new social distance judgment task was used to measure quantitatively the extent to which social cues are immediately and involuntary interpreted by typically developing (TD) individuals and by individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The task thus tapped into the ability to involuntary "pick up" the meaning of social cues. The cues tested were social attention and implied biological motion.

Deficits in implicit attention to social signals in schizophrenia and high risk groups: behavioural evidence from a new illusion.

Background: An increasing body of evidence suggests that the apparent social impairments observed in schizophrenia may arise from deficits in social cognitive processing capacities. The ability to process basic social cues, such as gaze direction and biological motion, effortlessly and implicitly is thought to be a prerequisite for establishing successful social interactions and for construing a sense of "social intuition." However, studies that address the ability to effortlessly process basic social cues in schizophrenia are lacking.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex disrupts digit span task performance.

The digit span task measures the maintenance of information in short-term memory, and is one of the most widely used tests in clinical and experimental neuropsychology. Functional imaging studies have suggested a role of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in digit span performance. It remains unclear however, whether activation of this area is critical for task performance.

Fearful faces in schizophrenia: the relationship between patient characteristics and facial affect recognition.

Although schizophrenia has often been associated with deficits in facial affect recognition, it is debated whether the recognition of specific emotions is affected and if these facial affect-processing deficits are related to symptomatology or other patient characteristics. The purpose of the present study was to explore whether particular patient characteristics are associated with the recognition of specific facial expressions in patients with schizophrenia. Sixty-four patients with a DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia were assessed with a computerized test of degraded facial affect recognition.

Object-location memory in schizophrenia: interference of symbolic threatening content.

Introduction: Monitoring environmental stimuli for their emotional relevance is inherently associated with spatial processing. In schizophrenia, deficits in spatial working memory on one hand, and abnormal emotion processing on the other, have been documented, but these have not been related to each other. In the present study, we investigated whether a specific aspect of spatial memory (i.

Exploring the nature of facial affect processing deficits in schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia has been associated with deficits in facial affect processing, especially negative emotions. However, the exact nature of the deficit remains unclear. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether schizophrenia patients have problems in automatic allocation of attention as well as in controlled evaluation of facial affect.

No words for feelings: alexithymia in schizophrenia patients and first-degree relatives.

Objective: Alexithymia refers to difficulties in emotionalizing, fantasizing, verbalizing, identifying, and analyzing emotions. The goal of this study was to investigate features of alexithymia in patients with schizophrenia. In addition, we investigated if alexithymia would be associated with vulnerability to schizophrenia, by studying unaffected first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients.

Affective state and decision-making in the Ultimatum Game.

The emerging field of neuroeconomics has provided evidence that emotional as well as cognitive processes may contribute to economic decision-making. Indeed, activation of the anterior insula, a brain area involved in emotional processing, has been shown to predict decision-making in the Ultimatum Game. However, as the insula has also been implicated in other brain functions, converging evidence on the role of emotion in the Ultimatum Game is needed.