Cardiovascular stress reactivity, habituation, and adiposity.

The relationship between adiposity and cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality is complex. One pathway through which adiposity may influence future health outcomes is by altering how biological systems respond to stress. The current study aimed to examine the association between two metrics of adiposity (body mass index and waist-hip ratio) and two indices of cardiovascular stress responses (reactivity and habituation).

Emotional context effects on memory accuracy for neutral information.

Despite decades of study, it remains unclear how emotional contexts influence memory for non-emotional information. In two studies, we previously found memory accuracy for neutral information encoded in an emotional context differed by valence. Specifically, neutral images encoded in a negative context were remembered with similar accuracy as those encoded in a non-emotional context, and neutral images encoded in a positive context were remembered with less accuracy than a non-emotional context.

Emotional response in schizophrenia to the "36 questions that lead to love": Predicted and experienced emotions regarding a live social interaction.

Evidence suggests that individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) report anticipatory pleasure deficits compared to controls and that these deficits are linked to decreased motivation to engage socially. However, these deficits have been identified via self-report measures of hypothetical pleasant stimuli, leaving it unclear whether they exist in reference to actual social situations. To address this issue, we created a live social interaction that minimized the reliance of higher-order cognitive processes.

Differential emotional abnormalities among schizotypy clusters.

Schizotypy, a multidimensional personality organization that reflects liability to develop schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, has been associated with a number of emotional abnormalities. Yet, the exact nature of any emotional abnormalities in schizotypy is relatively unclear. Using an ethnically diverse nonclinical sample (N = 2637), the present study identified homogenous clusters of individuals based on positive and negative schizotypy dimensions and explored three interrelated domains of emotion traits closely tied to functional outcomes and quality of life: affective experience, emotional awareness, and meta-level emotions.

Emotional word usage in groups at risk for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders: An objective investigation of attention to emotion.

Both extreme levels of social anhedonia (SocAnh) and extreme levels of perceptual aberration/magical ideation (PerMag) indicate increased risk for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and are associated with emotional deficits. For SocAnh, there is evidence of self-reported decreased trait positive affect and abnormalities in emotional attention. For PerMag, there is evidence of increased trait negative affect and increased attention to negative emotion.

Real-world applications for brain-computer interface technology.

The mission of the Georgia State University BrainLab is to create and adapt methods of human-computer interaction that will allow brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies to effectively control real-world applications. Most of the existing BCI applications were designed largely for training and demonstration purposes. Our goal is to research ways of transitioning BCI control skills learned in training to real-world scenarios.