bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Event‐Related Potentials in a Visual Discrimination Task: Negative Waves Related to Detection and Attention
Authors: Czigler Istvan , Csibra Gergely 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTEvent‐related potential effects of deviant stimuli were investigated in a visual discrimination task. The stimuli (two angles within a frame) were either frequent (Standard) or one of two types of infrequent deviant (Deviant 1 or Deviant 2) stimuli. In comparison to the Standard stimuli, for Deviant 1 the two angles differed in their orientation, whereas for Deviant 2 the angles were identical but the frame was thicker. In Condition 1 the subjects counted the number of Deviant 1 stimuli. Of the 13 subjects, 12 did not detect the fact that some of the frames were thicker in this condition (i.e., for the Deviant 2 stimuli in Condition 2). The task in Condition 2 was the same (i.e., the target was Deviant 1), but the subjects were instructed about the thicker frame of Deviant 2 stimuli. In Condition 3, Deviant 2 stimuli became the targets. In comparison to the Standard, Deviant 1 elicited two posterior negative waves in the 120–180 and 240–300 ms latency ranges respectively. In addition, when Deviant 1 was the target stimulus (Conditions 1 and 2), this stimulus elicited the N2 and the P300 as well. In contrast, the irrelevant Deviant 2 elicited no such waves. In the target position (Condition 3), Deviant 2 elicited the second posterior negativity, the N2, and the late positivity. The earlier negativity is considered to be a correlate of processes connected to the automatic detection of the deviant features, whereas the later negativity is considered to be related to attentive processes, i.e., this wave is considered to be a member of the family of processing negativities.
The Roles of Deception, Intention to Deceive, and Motivation to Avoid Detection in the Psychophysiological Detection of Guilty Knowledge
Authors: Furedy John J. , Ben‐Shakhar Gershon 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThe present study focused on electrodermal differentiation between relevant and neutral items in the Guilty Knowledge paradigm. Three factors were varied in a between‐subjects design. The role of deception was examined by varying the type of verbal answer to the questions (“yes,”“no,” and remaining silent). The intention to deceive factor was examined by contrasting subjects told to delay their answer (“yes” or “no”) with those told to produce their answer immediately. Finally, motivation to avoid detection was manipulated by having half the subjects monetarily rewarded for an important (ego relevant) detection task (high motivation), whereas the remaining subjects were neither rewarded nor told that the task was important. The results indicated that a deceptive answer (“no”) to the relevant question was associated with an increased differential skin conductance responsivity, but better than chance detection rates were obtained with truthful (“yes”) and silent conditions. Equal and significant detection rates were observed when the responses were computed immediately following question presentation, whether the subjects had answered immediately or had delayed their answers. In contrast, differential electrodermal responsivity to the delayed answers was markedly attenuated. The motivation factor had no main or interactive effects on differential responsivity. The present results, together with those obtained in previous studies, suggest that whereas deception is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for psychophysiological detection, it may facilitate detection. Possible mechanisms through which such a facilitation could occur were considered.
Effects of Feedback on the Control of Skin Temperature Using the Tension‐Relaxation Experiment
Authors: Okouchi Hiroto 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThe effects of feedback on the control of peripheral skin temperature were examined using a tension‐relaxation experiment. Sixteen male undergraduates were assigned to feedback or no‐feedback groups and asked to increase the temperature of the right index finger immediately after decreasing with (in the feedback group) or without (in the no‐feedback group) feedback during 10 training sessions. A no‐feedback transfer session (post‐test) followed these sessions. During the training sessions, skin temperature corresponded to instructions in the feedback group, whereas it did not in the no‐feedback group. Feedback control did not transfer to the no‐feedback condition. These results were discussed in terms of the ceiling‐effect hypothesis in the baseline‐relaxation type experiment and of the subjects' cognitive events, including strategies.
Fear‐Potentiated Startle in Humans: Effects of Anticipatory Anxiety on the Acoustic Blink Reflex
Authors: Grillon Christian , AMELI Rezvan , Woods Scott W. , Merikangas Kathleen , Davis Michael 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThe effects of fear/anticipatory anxiety on the acoustic startle reflex were investigated in humans using a paradigm involving anticipation of electric shocks. The eyeblink component of the startle reflex, elicited by an abrupt auditory stimulus, was measured in 9 normal volunteers during either the anticipation of electric shocks (anticipatory anxiety) or periods in which no shocks were anticipated (safe period). The eyeblink was consistently higher in amplitude, and shorter in latency, during periods when the subjects anticipated shocks, compared to the safe periods. This effect could not be attributed solely to a reduction in habituation and was statistically significant before the subjects actually received any shock (a single 30 mA stimulation on the median nerve). These results indicate that anticipatory anxiety can be measured objectively in humans using the fear‐potentiated startle reflex in a paradigm not actually requiring any shock. Because a great deal is known about the neuroanatomical and pharmacological mechanisms of fear‐potentiated startle in laboratory animals, this test procedure may be especially useful in humans to investigate the neurobiological substrates of anxiety disorders and their pharmacological treatments.
Complexities Related to Cognitive Slow Wave Experiments: A Reply to Rösler and Heil
Authors: Ruchkin Daniel S. , Johnson Ray 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTRösler and Heil (1991) were unable to replicate one of the results of our previous study of slow wave activity and mental arithmetic (Ruchkin, Johnson, Mahaffey, & Sutton, 1988). Thorough examination of the error rates indicates that the greater complexity of their response selection procedure caused crucial differences between how the task was performed in the two studies. Thus Rösler and Heil's study emphasizes the need to avoid using a response that is so complex that it produces a superfluous task that obscures the results.
A Negative Slow Wave Related to Conceptual Load Which Vanishes if the Amount of Load is Increased? A Reply to Ruchkin and Johnson
Authors: Rösler Frank , Heil Martin 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTRuchkin and Johnson (1991) claim that the mode of responding used by Rösler & Heil (1991) may have camouflaged effects of a negative slow wave that Ruckin et al. (1988) had found to be related to the difficulty of mental calculation problems. This criticism is addressed by three arguments which support the interpretation of Rösler and Heil (1991). According to this view, the negative slow wave in question is more likely related to unspecific processing factors, such as effort and event expectation, than to specific processing demands such as these induced by mental arithmetic.
Effects of Eating on Vection‐Induced Motion Sickness, Cardiac Vagal Tone, and Gastric Myoelectric Activity
Authors: Uijtdehaage Sebastian H.J. , Stern Robert M. , Koch Kenneth L. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the effect of food ingestion on motion sickness severity and its physiological mechanisms. Forty‐six fasted subjects were assigned either to a meal group or to a no‐meal group. Electrogastrographic (EGG) indices (normal 3 cpm activity and abnormal 4‐9 cpm tachyarrhythmia) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were measured before and after a meal and during a subsequent exposure to a rotating drum in which illusory self‐motion was induced. The results indicated that food intake enhanced cardiac parasympathetic tone (RSA) and increased gastric 3 cpm activity. Postprandial effects on motion sickness severity remain equivocal due to group differences in RSA baseline levels. During drum rotation, dysrhythmic activity of the stomach (tachyarrhythmia) and vagal withdrawal were observed. Furthermore, high levels of vagal tone prior to drum rotation predicted a low incidence of motion sickness symptoms, and were associated positively with gastric 3 cpm activity and negatively with tachyarrhythmia. These data suggest that enhanced levels of parasympathetic activity can alleviate motion sickness symptoms by suppressing, in part, its dysrhythmic gastric underpinnings.
Event‐Related Potentials Elicited by Deviant Endings to Melodies
Authors: Paller Ken A. , McCarthy Gregory , Wood Charles C. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTEvent‐related potentials were recorded from scalp electrodes while subjects listened to well‐known melodies. The melodies ended either with the expected note or with a different note. This design was a nonlinguistic analogue of the design used by Kutas and Hillyard (1980b), who first reported that anomalous terminal words in sentences elicited N400 potentials. However, Besson and Macar (1987) reported that deviant terminal notes in melodies did not elicit N400 potentials. In the present study, additional time was allowed for expectations to develop for the terminal note. Deviant terminal notes did not elicit N400s. In both studies, however, the deviant notes elicited P300‐like waves. This outcome raised the possibility that N400 might have been masked by the positive potential. In a second condition in which P300 amplitude was minimized, N400s were again not evident. These results thus illustrate two additional situations in which nonlinguistic stimuli that deviated from a sequential pattern failed to elicit N400 potentials.
A Comparison between Two Methods for Assessing Heartbeat Perception
Authors: Knoll Joachim F. , Hodapp Volker 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTIn this study two methods assessing heartbeat perception ability were compared. Subjects (N = 64) completed Schandry's (1981) mental tracking task and Störmer's (1988) heartbeat discrimination procedure (based on Whitehead, Drescher, Heiman, & Blackwell, 1977). In addition, subjects were tested on their ability to estimate the duration of time intervals. A high degree of correspondence was found between the two heartbeat perception tasks for the extreme groups of very good and very poor perceivers, but a low degree of correspondence emerged for the middle range of performance (overall r= .59, p<.001). Time estimation did not correlate significantly with either heartbeat detection procedure. Blood pressure measurements taken after the Schandry task and between Störmer test blocks showed that blood pressure amplitude was elevated among good perceivers on both heartbeat detection tasks.
Beat‐by‐Beat Cardiac Responses in Normals and Schizophrenics to Events Varying in Conditional Probability
Authors: Steinhauer Stuart R. , Jennings J. Richard , van Kammen Daniel P. , Zubin Joseph 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTAnticipatory cardiac deceleration and poststimulus acceleration were studied in schizophrenic inpatients and controls during performance of a counting task. Reduced cardiac responding has been reported for schizophrenic patients for paradigms using relatively long intertrial intervals. During a relatively fast rate of stimulus presentation (3‐s interstimulus interval), changes in cardiac interbeat interval were measured in 20 inpatient male chronic schizophrenics and 18 control volunteers. Subjects counted an infrequent tone which was always followed by at least one frequent tone. Control subjects showed significant anticipatory cardiac deceleration preceding the unpredictable tones, whereas patients did not show a differential cardiac deceleration. Control subjects showed poststimulus acceleration that was inversely proportional to the conditional probability of events, whereas patients exhibited greatly reduced poststimulus acceleration; patterns for both groups resembled findings previously observed for event‐related potential and pupillary dilation data. Analysis of cardiac cycle time indicated significant variation in primary bradycardia associated with the delay between stimuli and immediately preceding R‐waves in controls (replicating Lacey & Lacey, 1980), with only an immediate bradycardia at stimulus reception for patients regardless of cardiac cycle time. The data reinforce the notion that the manner in which information is used by schizophrenics, as reflected by cardiac responsivity, differs both quantitatively and qualitatively from that of controls.
Third Ventricle Enlargement and Lower Heart Rate Levels in a High‐Risk Sample
Authors: Cannon Tyrone D. , Raine Adrian , Herman Therese M. , Mednick Sarnoff A. , Schulsinger Fini , Moore Marilyn 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTHeart rate activity and computed tomographic measures of structural brain abnormalities were evaluated in 32 individuals with a genetic risk for schizophrenia (offspring of schizophrenic mothers). Heart rate activity was assessed in 1962 when the subjects were a mean age of 15.1 years. Diagnostic and computed tomography assessments were conducted in 1980. Compared to individuals with normal third ventricles, individuals with enlarged third ventricles evidenced significantly lower heart rate levels overall and significantly lower heart rate during rest and during the periods preceding conditioning and test for conditioning stimulus trials. These effects were independent of age, psychiatric diagnosis, and abnormalities in other brain regions. Difficulties in interpretaton posed by the index of brain abnormality employed and by the 18‐year time interval between the heart rate and computed tomography assessments are discussed. Together with prior evidence of a relationship between third ventricle enlargement and reduced electrodermal responsiveness in the same subjects, these findings provide a preliminary indication that enlargement of the third ventricle may involve damage to diencephalic structures involved in autonomic nervous system activity.
The Effect of Common Versus Distinctive Stimulus Features on Electrodermal Orientation to Significant Stimuli
Authors: Ben‐Shakhar Gershon , Gati Itamar 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThe relationship between electrodermal responsivity and stimulus similarity was previously demonstrated in a series of studies. These studies were guided by a feature‐matching model according to which similarity is an additive function of the common and distinctive features of the stimuli. In these experiments common and distinctive features were simultaneously manipulated, thus confounding the effects of the two sets of features. In the present experiment, we examined the separate effects of these two sets of features by an independent manipulation of common and distinctive components of the stimuli. A modified version of the guilty knowledge technique was employed, with compound pictorial and verbal stimuli (schematic faces and verbal descriptions of people) as the relevant items memorized by the subjects. Skin conductance responses were measured during the subsequent presentation of a stimulus sequence comprised of a test stimulus, which shared some common components with the relevant stimulus, and several neutral control stimuli. As hypothesized, a larger number of distinctive components resulted in decreased responsivity. Yet, contrary to our expectation, the number of common components of the relevant and test stimuli had no effect on responsivity. Several hypotheses are suggested to account for this unexpected result.
Right hemisphere representation of autonomic conditioning to facial emotional expressions
Authors: JOHNSEN BJøRN HELGE , HUGDAHL KENNETH 
Published: February 2007

AbstractIn this experiment, a lateralized right hemisphere effect was found for electrodermal associative learning to facial emotional expressions. Sixty‐two subjects were presented simultaneously with a slide of a happy face in the right or left visual half field (VHF) and a slide of an angry face in the opposite VHF. Four groups were formed by the combination of the two VHF positions of angry/happy faces and the administration/omission of shock unconditioned stimuli. The results showed that simultaneous presentation of the angry face to the right hemisphere and the happy face to the left hemisphere, together with shock, resulted in a strong conditioned association with the angry face and a relatively weak association with the happy face. Furthermore, simultaneous presentation of the angry face to the left hemisphere and the happy face to the right hemisphere, together with shock, resulted in a relatively weak association with both stimuli. No significant differences were found for the no‐shock control groups. The present results confirm previous findings of a right hemisphere advantage for representation of associative learning.
Visual spatial attention to stimuli presented on the vertical and horizontal meridian: An ERP study
Authors: GUNTER THOMAS C. , WIJERS ALBERTUS A. , JACKSON JANET L. , MULDER GIJSBERTUS 
Published: February 2007

AbstractIn the first experiment, 48 subjects carried out a visual spatial attention task. Stimuli were presented at the vertical meridian, either above or below a fixation dot, and the subjects were instructed to attend to one of these stimulus positions and ignore the other position. In three different conditions, the distances between stimulus positions and fixation were 0.5°, 0.9°, and 1.3°. Subjects searched for the presence of prememorized target letters at the attended location: memory load was one or four items in different conditions. The P1/N1 enhancement typically found on the horizontal dimension was not observed on the vertical dimension. Instead, a positive shift of the attended compared with the unattended stimuli was found, which was most prominent at anterior electrodes. This positivity showed effects of the distance manipulation. The N2b‐P3a effect of attention and the effect of memory load (search negativity) normally present in this kind of selective search task were also found. Reaction times were faster when attention was directed above fixation than when it was directed below fixation. The event‐related potential data suggested that this difference could be attributed to a more efficient neglecting of irrelevant stimuli presented below fixation. In Experiment 2, we examined whether the absence of the P1/N1 enhancement as the result of spatial attention in Experiment 1 could be attributed to (a) the presentation of stimuli along the vertical meridian instead of along the horizontal meridian, (b) the use of midline electrodes instead of lateralized electrodes, and (c) the relatively small spatial separation between the relevant and irrelevant stimuli. Twelve subjects searched for the presence of a single target letter at an attended position in three different conditions. In two of the conditions the letters were presented to the left or right of fixation. The distance between fixation and the stimulus positions was 1.3° in one of these conditions and 3° in the other condition. In the third condition, the stimuli were presented at 3° above or below fixation. In all three conditions effects similar to those in Experiment 1 were observed. In addition, in all three conditions an enhancement of the P1 and N1 components was found at two lateral occipitotemporal electrodes.
Processing of auditory stimuli during auditory and visual attention as revealed by event‐related potentials
Authors: ALHO KIMMO , WOODS DAVID L. , ALGAZI ALAIN 
Published: February 2007

AbstractAuditory event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during auditory and visual selective attention tasks. Auditory stimuli consisted of frequent standard tones (1000 Hz) and infrequent deviant tones (1050 Hz and 1300 Hz) delivered randomly to the left and right ears. Visual stimuli were vertical line gratings randomly presented on a video monitor at mean intervals of 6 s. During auditory attention, the subject attended to the stimuli in a designated ear and responded to the 1300‐Hz deviants occurring among the attended tones. During visual attention, the subject responded to the occasional visual stimuli. ERPs for tones delivered to the attended ear were negatively displaced relative to ERPs elicited by tones delivered to the unattended ear and to ERPs elicited by auditory stimuli during visual attention. This attention effect consisted of negative difference waves with early and late components. Mismatch negativities (MMNs) were elicited by 1300‐Hz and 1050‐Hz deviants irrespective of whether they occurred among attended or unattended tones. MMN amplitudes were unaffected by attention, supporting the proposal that the MMN is generated by an automatic cerebral discrimination process.
The lateralized readiness potential preceding brief isometric force pulses of different peak force and rate of force production
Authors: SOMMER WERNER , LEUTHOLD HARTMUT , ULRICH ROLD 
Published: February 2007

AbstractPrevious studies have reported that the lateralization of the readiness potential is unaffected by force amplitude of brief unimanual responses. However, Because those studies did not spectify rate of force production, response force probably was mainly controlled by force unit duration rather than by recruitment of force units, which may explain this negative finding. To enforce recruitment control, we factorially combined peak force (10% or 50% of maximal voluntary finger force) and time to peak force (100 or 200 ms). A precue provided advance information about the responding index finger (left vs. right). After 1 s, the imperative stimulus followed, requiring a brisk isometric flexion of the specified index finger. Symmetric effects, maximal at the vertex, of both force and rate of force production were observed 200–100 ms before the imperative stimulus in stimulus‐synchronized averages and 200–100 ms before response onset in response‐synchronized averages. However, neither force nor rate to force production affected the lateralized readiness potential. We conclude that this measure does not reflect movement parameters but appears to indicate an abstract preparation of lateralized response channels.
Modulation of spinal reflexes: Arousal, pleasure, action
Authors: BONNET MICHEL , BRADLEY MARGARET M. , LANG PETER J. , REQUIN JEAN 
Published: February 2007

AbstractThe human startle reflex is reliably modulated by the affective valence of foreground pictures, with larger reflexes elicited when viewing unpleasant relative to pleasant scenes. If this modulation is due to priming of the defensive startle reflex by an aversive foreground, a different pattern should occur for a reflex that is not inherently defensive in nature. In the current study, affective modulation was investigated using the spinal tendinous (T) reflex, which is well documented as sensitive to differences in arousal and is involved in actions that are both appetitively and defensively motivated. As such, T reflexes elicited during unpleasant pictures were not expected to be augmented relative to those elicited in the context of pleasant pictures. Results showed that T reflexes were facilitated during processing of arousing stimuli – either pleasant or unpleasant relative to low‐arousal neutral materials. These effects of emotional stimuli on T‐reflex amplitude are consistent with the hypothesis that motivational priming underlies affective reflex modulation.