Investigating the association between emotion regulation and distress in adults with psychotic-like experiences.

Many individuals in the general population experience psychotic-like experiences in the absence of a psychotic disorder. The degree of psychological distress associated with these experiences is a key predictor of clinical outcomes. One factor that may influence the degree of distress from psychotic-like experiences is emotion regulation.

Social information influences emotional experience and late positive potential response to affective pictures.

Emotion experience and regulation frequently occur in social settings. Social influence is a common source of unconscious change in judgment in many contexts, but it has yet to be investigated as a form of automatic emotion regulation. Here, we demonstrate that nonpredictive social information (i.

Differential effects of self- and situation-focused reappraisal.

In the present research, we investigated the effects of self- and situation-focused reappraisal, which are 2 distinct types of cognitive reappraisal, on emotion experiences, memory, and electrocortical responses to unpleasant pictures. In Study 1, situation-focused reappraisal was found to improve recall accuracy, whereas self-focused reappraisal had no effect. Both strategy types were associated with reductions in self-reported negative emotion, with larger reductions during situation-focused reappraisal.

Fermented foods, neuroticism, and social anxiety: An interaction model.

Animal models and clinical trials in humans suggest that probiotics can have an anxiolytic effect. However, no studies have examined the relationship between probiotics and social anxiety. Here we employ a cross-sectional approach to determine whether consumption of fermented foods likely to contain probiotics interacts with neuroticism to predict social anxiety symptoms.

Screening for sub-threshold psychotic experiences and perceived need for psychological services.

Aim: Sub-threshold psychotic experiences (PEs) are common in the general population and may increase risk for psychological distress and psychosis onset, generating a need for effective community screening instruments. This study aimed to explore the utility of a brief, self-report, psychosis risk screening tool in predicting perceived need for psychological treatment among a non-clinical sample, above and beyond that accounted for by accompanying forms of psychopathology or trait neuroticism.

Methods: Construct validity, predictive validity and test-retest reliability of the brief, self-report questionnaire for screening putative prepsychotic states were determined among college students (N = 679).

Effects of subcallosal cingulate deep brain stimulation on negative self-bias in patients with treatment-resistant depression.

Background: The cognitive neuropsychological model states that antidepressant treatment alters emotional biases early in treatment, and after this initial change in emotional processing, environmental and social interactions allow for long-term/sustained changes in mood and behavior.

Objective: Changes in negative self-bias after chronic subcallosal cingulate (SCC) deep brain stimulation (DBS) were investigated with the hypothesis that treatment would lead to changes in emotional biases followed by changes in symptom severity.

Methods: Patients (N = 7) with treatment-resistant depression were assessed at three time points: pre-treatment; after one month stimulation; and after six months stimulation.

Screening for psychotic experiences: social desirability biases in a non-clinical sample.

Aim: Subthreshold psychotic experiences are common in the population and may be clinically significant. Reporting of psychotic experiences through self-report screens may be subject to threats to validity, including social desirability biases. This study examines the influence of social desirability on the reporting of psychotic experiences.

Event-related potentials reveal the effect of prior knowledge on competition for representation and attentional capture.

Objects compete for representation in our limited capacity visual system. We examined how this competition is influenced by top-down knowledge using event-related potentials. Competition was manipulated by presenting visual search arrays in which the target or distractor was the only color singleton compared to displays in which both singletons were presented.

Age-related differences in event-related potentials for early visual processing of emotional faces.

With advancing age, processing resources are shifted away from negative emotional stimuli and toward positive ones. Here, we explored this 'positivity effect' using event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants identified the presence or absence of a visual probe that appeared over photographs of emotional faces.

Frontal theta cordance predicts 6-month antidepressant response to subcallosal cingulate deep brain stimulation for treatment-resistant depression: a pilot study.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of subcallosal cingulate white matter (SCC) may be an effective approach for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) that otherwise fails to respond to more conventional therapies, but DBS is invasive, costly, and has potential for adverse effects. Therefore, it is important to identify potential biomarkers for predicting antidepressant response before intervention. Resting-state EEG was recorded from 12 TRD patients at pre-treatment baseline, after 4 weeks SCC DBS, and after 24 weeks SCC DBS.

Target resolution in visual search involves the direct suppression of distractors: evidence from electrophysiology.

Attentional selection requires both the enhancement of target stimuli and the suppression of distractors. Target enhancement and distractor suppression have been associated with separable components of the lateralized event-related potential: the target negativity and distractor positivity (Pd). We examined the distractor suppression mechanisms indexed by the Pd.

Orienting to external versus internal regions of space: consequences of attending in advance versus after the fact.

We examined effects of knowing where to attend to-be-remembered information in advance versus after the fact. Participants performed a visuospatial short-term memory task with orienting cues that appeared before or after a memory display and reported whether a probe item had appeared on the cued side. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for cues, memory displays, and probes.

Dynamics of target and distractor processing in visual search: evidence from event-related brain potentials.

When multiple objects are present in a visual scene, salient and behaviorally relevant objects are attentionally selected and receive enhanced processing at the expense of less salient or less relevant objects. Here we examined three lateralized components of the event-related potential (ERP) - the N2pc, Ptc, and SPCN - as indices of target and distractor processing in a visual search paradigm. Participants responded to the orientation of a target while ignoring an attentionally salient distractor and ERPs elicited by the target and the distractor were obtained.

Anger management: age differences in emotional modulation of visual processing.

Although positive and negative images enhance the visual processing of young adults, recent work suggests that a life-span shift in emotion processing goals may lead older adults to avoid negative images. To examine this tendency for older adults to regulate their intake of negative emotional information, the current study investigated age-related differences in the perceptual boost received by probes appearing over facial expressions of emotion. Visually-evoked event-related potentials were recorded from the scalp over cortical regions associated with visual processing as a probe appeared over facial expressions depicting anger, sadness, happiness, or no emotion.

Event-related potentials dissociate effects of salience and space in biased competition for visual representation.

Background: Selective visual attention is the process by which the visual system enhances behaviorally relevant stimuli and filters out others. Visual attention is thought to operate through a cortical mechanism known as biased competition. Representations of stimuli within cortical visual areas compete such that they mutually suppress each others' neural response.

Steady-state signatures of visual perceptual load, multimodal distractor filtering, and neural competition.

The perceptual load theory of attention posits that attentional selection occurs early in processing when a task is perceptually demanding but occurs late in processing otherwise. We used a frequency-tagged steady-state evoked potential paradigm to investigate the modality specificity of perceptual load-induced distractor filtering and the nature of neural-competitive interactions between task and distractor stimuli. EEG data were recorded while participants monitored a stream of stimuli occurring in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) for the appearance of previously assigned targets.

Competitive interaction degrades target selection: an ERP study.

Localized attentional interference (LAI) occurs when attending to a visual object degrades processing of nearby objects. Competitive interaction accounts of LAI explain the phenomenon as the result of competition among objects for representation in extrastriate cortex. Here, we examined the N2pc component of the event-related potential (ERP) as a likely neural correlate of LAI.

Visual perceptual load modulates an auditory microreflex.

The postauricular reflex (PAR) is a vestigial microreflex evoked by an abrupt auditory onset. Previous studies have indicated that the PAR is unaffected by auditory selective attention. Here, we report that the PAR can be modulated by a crossmodal manipulation of attentional demands within the visual modality.