Dissociation of Pe and ERN/Ne in the conscious recognition of an error.

We evaluated the relationship between conscious awareness and the ERN/Ne and Pe in a digit entering task. On each trial, participants rated the accuracy of their responses on a three-point scale (incorrect, unsure, correct). The ERN/Ne was present on incorrect trials judged as incorrect.

Why humans deviate from rational choice.

Rational choice theory predicts that humans always optimize the expected utility of options when making decisions. However, in decision-making games, humans often punish their opponents even when doing so reduces their own reward. We used the Ultimatum and Dictator games to examine the affective correlates of decision-making.

Hypersensitivity to reward in problem gamblers.

Background: Recent research has begun to examine the neurophysiologic basis of pathological gambling. However, direct evidence of a behavioral deficit and an accompanying neurofunctional deviation in a realistic gambling context such as Black Jack has not yet been reported.

Methods: Electroencephalogram was recorded while 20 problem gamblers and 21 control participants played a computerized version of Black Jack.

Decision-making under risk: an fMRI study.

Recent research has focused on decision-making under risk and its neural bases. Two kinds of bad decisions under risk may be defined: too risky decisions and too cautious decisions. Here we show that suboptimal decisions of both kinds lead to increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex in a Blackjack gambling task.

An electrophysiological analysis of coaching in Blackjack.

Recent research has demonstrated that a negative deflection in the event-related potential (ERP) that is usually elicited by errors, negative performance feedback, and monetary losses, and which has been associated with response monitoring and reinforcement learning, is also present when we observe others. In the present study we aimed to extend these findings to the domain of coaching behavior. In many contexts of human social life, advice is given by experts to novices, e.

Drive for thinness and attention toward specific body parts in a nonclinical sample.

Objective: To examine the differences between participants scoring high versus low on a drive for thinness construct concerning their visual attention toward specific body parts. We hypothesized that participants scoring high on the drive for thinness subscale would show increased attention to body regions, which are important in the assessment of body weight and thinness like the waist, hips, legs, and arms.

Method: We examined eye-gaze behavior of a nonclinical sample of 51 male and female college students with an eye-tracking system as they were looking at pictures of young, attractive males and females.

Attentional Blink to emotional and threatening pictures in spider phobics: electrophysiology and behavior.

When two targets have to be identified in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm, perception of the second target (T2) becomes significantly impaired if it is displayed 200-500 ms after the first target (T1), a phenomenon labeled as "Attentional Blink" (AB). Here we investigate 14 spider phobics and 16 controls in an RSVP paradigm with neutral T1s. T2 pictures were neutral, emotional (positive or negative) or threatening (spiders for spider phobics).

Electrophysiological correlates of threat processing in spider phobics.

The electrocortical correlates of the processing of feared/fear-relevant and neutral stimuli were investigated in a pictorial emotional Stroop paradigm with spider phobic, social phobic, and nonphobic subjects. Subjects identified either the color of red or blue pictures of spiders, birds, or flowers (emotional Stroop task) or the object itself (identification task) by pressing different buttons. No emotional Stroop interference was found for spider phobic subjects when identifying the color of spiders as opposed to neutral stimuli.

Event-related brain potentials and affective responses to threat in spider/snake-phobic and non-phobic subjects.

We investigated cortical responses and valence/arousal ratings of spider phobic, snake phobic, and healthy subjects while they were processing feared, fear-relevant, emotional neutral, and pleasant stimuli. Results revealed significantly larger amplitudes of late ERP components (P3 and late positive complex, LPC) but not of early components (N1, P2, N2) in phobics when subjects were processing feared stimuli. This fear-associated increase of amplitudes of late ERP components in phobic subjects was maximal at centro-parietal and occipital brain sites.

Acupuncture decreases somatosensory evoked potential amplitudes to noxious stimuli in anesthetized volunteers.

Unlabelled: The effect of acupuncture on pain perception is controversial. Because late amplitudes of somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) to noxious stimuli are thought to correlate with the subjective experience of pain intensity, we designed this study to detect changes of these SEPs before and after acupuncture in a double-blinded fashion. Sixteen volunteers were anesthetized by propofol and exposed to painful electric stimuli to the right forefinger.