bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Cardiac Conditioning in the Rat: US Intensity Function and Response Constancy Theory
Authors: Galizio Catherine Nielsen , Eisman Eugene 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThe classically conditioned cardiac response to electric shock was examined in five groups of 10 rats each. Twenty trials were presented each day for 10 days with either a 1 mA, 2 mA, 3 mA, 4 mA, or 5 mA subcutaneous shock as the unconditioned stimulus (US). Data were evaluated with reference to a general theory of autonomic activity termed Response Constancy theory. A mathematical derivative of the theory is a significant negative correlation between prestimulus levels and change scores, i.e. the Law of Initial Values. The theory predicts that degree of control exerted by a stimulus is reflected by the ability of the stimulus to produce a particular level of activity. Decreasing variability of conditioned heart rate was monotonically related to US intensity throughout, and negative correlations between prestimulus levels and change scores were observed in all groups. Magnitude of decelerative change was an inverted U‐shaped function of US intensity in acquisition, and a monotonic function of US intensity at asymptote.
Perceptual Preparedness in Man: Brief Forewarning Reduces Electrodermal and Psychophysical Response to Noxious Stimulation
Authors: Waid William M. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThe finding that the skin conductance response (SCR) to a noxious stimulus is reduced by a warning has been attributed to the information the warning conveys or, alternatively, to interference with the SCR to the stimulus by the preceding SCR to the warning. The purpose of this study was to test whether a low‐intensity warning stimulus can reduce the SCR to a noxious stimulus independently of SCR interference and produce similar reductions in subjective judgments of stimulus intensity. Eighty subjects were exposed to 30 pairings of a warning with a 98‐dB (SPL) noise. The interval between warning and noise was varied (0.5, 1, 3, 11 sec) from one pairing to another. Contrary to the SCR‐interference hypothesis, there was a significant linear decrease in the SCR to noise from 0‐ to 11‐sec warning trials. Warnings of 1 sec also significantly reduced magnitude estimations of noise intensity. A control procedure with an innocuous 68‐dB tone substituted for the noise indicated that the SCR to innocuous stimuli may also be reduced by warnings, but that the corresponding magnitude estimations are not similarly affected.
Systematic Trends Across the Night in Human Sleep Cycles
Authors: Feinberg I. , Floyd T. C. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThe durations of successive sleep cycles, defined according to NREM (stage 2) or REM onsets, were objected to trend analysis in three groups of normal subjects and in a group of elderly patients with chronic brain syndrome (CBS). NREM sleep cycles showed consistent curvilinear trends for all groups except that the trend in children was distinguished by a lengthy first NREM cycle. REM steep cycles showed quite similar curvilinear trends for the three normal age groups with the middle two cycles being longer than the first and fourth. In the CBS patients, REM sleep cycles did not show a significant trend across the night. Real‐time cycles (i.e., with time awake included) manifested trends quite similar to those excluding waking. The trends in sleep cycle durations are normative characteristics of sleep which may not be apparent on a single night. A more constant cycle was found in the CBS elderly and may indicate brain pathology. Sleep cycle trends, along with such other temporal characteristics as the decline in stage 4, may provide clues to the metabolic processes which underlie the sleep EEG. They also provide a more exact basis for investigation of hypothesized biorhythm correlates of NREM‐REM cycles.
The Statistical Analysis of Heart Rate: A Review Emphasizing Infancy Data
Authors: Richards John E. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTHeart rate is a dependent variable used widely in psychological and psychophysiological research. Several statistical problems arise in the analysis of heart rate data, many of them specific to infancy research. The present paper discusses the problems of a statistically appropriate cardiac measure, the Law of Initial Values, the problem of differential variability in heart rate scores, and the use of multivariate statistical methods in analyzing heart rate data. Special attention is given to those problems and solutions which have potential application to the analysis of infant heart rate data. A flowchart is presented which may guide the researcher in the appropriate use of the several statistical techniques reviewed in this paper.
Human Auditory Attention: The Olivocochlear Bundle May Function as a Peripheral Filter
Authors: Lukas Jeffrey H. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTTwo experiments examined whether focused attention toward a visual display would alter the sensory transmission properties of the human auditory nerve and brainstem centers to irrelevant auditory tone pips. In the first experiment, 16 subjects either listened to 1000 Hz, 50dB SL tone pips presented binaurally at 10/sec (“Listen”), or mentally counted letters flashed rapidly on a screen (“Look”). The auditory brainstem potentials recorded from the vertex were averaged on‐line in groups of 500 with a 10‐msec sweep and a bandpass of 150–1500 Hz. Results indicated that during the “Look” trials, Wave 5 generated from the inferior colliculus (7.322 msec latency) was significantly reduced in amplitude by 16.4% and increased in latency by 27 μsec. A second experiment with 8 subjects demonstrated that the effects of attention are limited to the auditory nerve component when using 8000 Hz stimuli but are significant for both the auditory nerve and collicular components when a mid‐frequency (2000 Hz) tone pip is used. These results suggest that during concentrated attention toward visual stimuli, irrelevant auditory stimuli may be attenuated at a peripheral level possibly through the action of the efferent olivocochlear bundle.
Cardiovascular and Electrodermal Response Patterns in Heart Rate Reactive Individuals During Psychological Stress
Authors: Lawler Kathleen A. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThe goal of this research was to examine the cardiovascular and electrodermal response patterns of heart rate reactive and nonreactive individuals to psychological stress. Sixty males were tested while resting, listening to tones, identifying tone patterns, and performing mental arithmetic. Dependent variables were blood pressure, heart rate (HR), and skin conductance responses. Based on the change in HR from baseline to the first minute of mental arithmetic, two extreme reactivity groups of 15 subjects each were formed. Results indicated that HR reactive subjects had higher systolic blood pressure and HR than nonreactives. Reactives showed greater HR lability during all the tasks and a phasic acceleration to tones, while nonreactives showed a deceleration. Finally, comparisons of skin conductance responses indicated that subjects who were nonreactive when measuring HR were more reactive when measuring skin conductance. The HR reactivity seen in these subjects has been linked to predisposition to psychosomatic illness, and the current findings are discussed in that light.
Dependence of EDR Recovery Times and Other Electrodermal Measures on Scale of Measurement: A Methodological Clarification
Authors: Sagberg Fridulv 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTEdelberg (1970) and Boucsein and Hoffmann (1979) found shorter recovery times with a constant voltage method as compared with a constant current method. In the present paper it is pointed out that this effect may be due to the use of different scales of measurement rather than to any electrophysiological aspects of the recording procedure. The mathematical relationship between resistance and conductance implies that recovery times are shorter for SCRs than for corresponding SRRs. For demonstration purposes, recovery times were computed from an SR record and compared with those computed from the same record after computerized transformation to SC. Research implications of the demonstrated effect are discussed, and the relevance of measurement scale to two other electrodermal measures, area below the curve and range‐corrected amplitude, is pointed out.
Heart Rate, Contingent Negative Variation, and Evoked Potentials during Anticipation of Affective Stimulation
Authors: Klorman Rafael , Ryan Richard M. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThirteen subjects low in fear of mutilation and 11 subjects high in this fear were exposed to repeated presentations of a 6‐sec tone followed by slides depicting a mutilated body or a 6‐sec tone of a different frequency paired with a slide of a neutral scene. For both groups, the N140 component of the evoked potential was larger following the signal for gruesome slides. Slow EEG activity displayed two negative waves. Notably, the late CNV wave was present even though a motor response was not required at the end of the foreperiod. Overall, high‐fear subjects' early waves tended to be larger preceding neutral scenes than gruesome slides, whereas low‐fear subjects showed a trend in the opposite direction. Similar but largely nonsignificant trends were present for the late wave.Heart rate reactions of both groups in the foreperiod included an early deceleration, acceleration, and a late deceleration. Among high‐fear subjects both the acceleratory and late deceleratory limbs were greater preceding mutilation than neutral slides. In contrast, low‐fear subjects' reactions lacked the acceleratory reaction and did not vary as a function of type of warning signal. These results, therefore, indicate differential autonomic patterns of anticipation of affective stimulation as a function of individual differences in fear.
Respiratory and Vascular Responses to Simple Visual Stimuli in Autistics, Retardates and Normals
Authors: James Angela L. , Barry Robert J. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTExperiment 1 examined changes in respiratory period, peripheral pulse amplitude and cephalic pulse amplitude in autistic, retarded and normal children as a function of stimulus novelty. The respiratory measure showed habituation in the retardates and normals but not in the autistic group. Measures of peripheral and cephalic pulse amplitude showed no habituation in any group, but a higher mean response level for autistics. Autistic children thus differed from both retarded and normal children in two respects: a failure to habituate phasic respiratory responses, and enhanced response magnitude in the vascular systems. This experiment was replicated using groups of preschool children and university students. Results indicated significant age effects in the vascular systems, with preschoolers showing enhanced response magnitude. It was thus argued that autistics may display a general developmental lag in phasic vascular response measures, and an additional specific deficit indicated by failure to habituate respiratory responses. The implications of these group differences were discussed in relation to the etiology of autistic psychopathology.
Cognitive and Somatic Events Associated With Discriminative Changes in Heart Rate
Authors: McCanne Thomas R. , Iennarella Ralph S. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTIn Experiment 1, 23 males were given instructions to think about anxiety‐provoking cognitive events (n= 12) or relaxing cognitive events (n= 11) during 20 30‐sec training trials. Significant pretrial‐to‐trial increases in heart rate were noted during anxiety instructions and significant pretrial‐to‐trial decreases in heart rate were detected during relaxation instructions. In Experiment 2,39 males were again given instructions to think about anxiety‐provoking events (n= 19) or relaxing events (n= 20) during 20 30‐sec training trials. In addition, half of the subjects in each of these instructional conditions were given digital heart rate feedback consistent with their instructions (e.g., were reinforced for heart rate increases during anxiety instructions), whereas half of the subjects in each instructional condition were given feedback inconsistent with their instructions (e.g., were reinforced for heart rate decreases during anxiety instructions). As in Experiment 1, significant pretrial‐to‐trial increases in heart rate occurred during anxiety instructions and significant pretrial‐to‐trial decreases in heart rate were noted during relaxation instructions. The type of feedback which subjects received had no effect on the heart rate changes. The heart rate changes in both experiments were generally accompanied by parallel changes in respiratory rate but not by changes in chin muscle tension. It appears that cognitive events can produce increases and decreases in heart rate which are comparable in magnitude to those noted during biofeedback.
A Psychophysiological Comparison of Type A and B Men Exposed to Failure and Uncontrollable Noise
Authors: Lovallo William R. , Pishkin Vladimir 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThe present study examined resting levels of and stress‐related changes in blood pressure, peripheral vasomotor activity, heart rate, heart rate variability, electrodermal activity, and serum lipids in young men classified as Type A (coronary prone) or Type B (non‐prone) by a structured interview method. Stress was induced during two preliminary tasks by the occurrence of noise alone, failure alone, or noise plus failure. The results showed that during rest the groups differed only in vasomotor activity, the A's being more constricted than the B's. During work on the tasks, the groups were substantially the same in heart rate and blood pressure; however, the A's showed greater sympathetic arousal than B's in skin conductance level and spontaneous response rate. Extreme A's showed higher serum cholesterol than B's both before and after testing, and also showed a larger effect of noise on triglyceride levels than did B's.
Striate Muscle Tensional Patterning in Frontalis EMG Biofeedback
Authors: Fridlund Alan J. , Fowler Stephen C. , Pritchard David A. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTFour normal male subjects were exposed to 5 30‐min alternate‐day sessions of continuous frontalis EMG biofeedback training preceded by 15‐min adaptation periods. A computer‐controlled scanning electromyograph sampled integrated EMG activity from the frontalis and seven adjunctive muscle groups. Tensional profiles for all eight muscle groups were assembled every 1.84 sec, resulting in an 8 × 960 data array for each session. Statistical analyses revealed that although frontalis EMG levels decreased significantly in the training, those of adjunctive recording sites did not. Cross correlation analyses for session 1 frontalis and adjunctive site EMG levels showed typically negligible correlations at all temporal lags, although some neck sites showed moderate cross correlation with the frontalis in 2 subjects. Separate principal‐component analyses for sessions 1 and 5 produced little evidence for a general muscle tension factor. Low coefficients of congruence between session 1 and session 5 truncated‐component solutions demonstrated little replicability of tensional linkages from the first to the last session.
VER Similarity between Alcoholic Probands and Their First‐Degree Relatives
Authors: Buffington Veronica , Martin Donald C. , Becker Joseph 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the visual evoked response (VER) similarity of 36 nontwin pairs of relatives. Subject pairs were obtained from a study of alcoholism and affective disorders. Pairs differed in age, sex, and history of alcohol abuse. Because of these differences, plus the assumed positive influence of genetics on VER similarity, nontwin relatives were expected to have less similar VERs than those previously reported for twins but more similar VERs than the nonrelative pairs. Two VER parameters were investigated: waveform and a slope measure of augmenting‐reducing. A new randomization test of similarities was used in the analyses. As predicted, the VER waveforms and slopes of nontwin relative pairs were less similar than those reported for Mz twins but significantly more similar than those of random pairs.
Immediate Effects of Repeated and Non‐Repeated Instructions and Task Difficulty on Task, Cardiovascular, and Respiratory Performance
Authors: Rogers Robert L. , Elder S. Thomas 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTTo assess the effects of instructions and task difficulty on task, cardiovascular, and respiratory behavior in a situation where the instructions were either given once or repeated on the second day, a 3 by 3 by 2 experimental design was employed. Three sets of instructions (POSITIVE, CONTROL, NEGATIVE) were compared factorially with three difficulty levels (EASY, MODERATE, HARD) of a slide identification task, and observations were carried out over 2 consecutive daily sessions in which the initial instructions were repeated for only half of the subjects on the second day. Thirty‐six undergraduates served as subjects and simple reaction time, error rate, heart rate, respiration rate, respiration amplitude, skin temperature (hand and forehead), and diastolic blood pressure were recorded simultaneously. That task conditions were different from one another was confirmed by comparisons of reaction time and errors during the tasks, with the EASY groups exhibiting the best performance and the HARD groups showing the longest reaction times and the most errors. That the differential instructions influenced cardiovascular performance was evident when comparisons were made among finger pulse amplitude, diastolic blood pressure, and hand temperature. Reaction times and error rates were unaffected by the differential instructions. With the exception of diastolic blood pressure, comparisons between days 1 and 2 revealed that instructional differences which emerged on day 1 were either attenuated or eliminated by day 2. Comparisons between repeated and non‐repeated instruction groups failed to yield any reliable differences.
Cardiac Orienting and Startle Blink Modification in Novel and Signal Situations
Authors: Bohlin Gunilla , Graham Frances K. , Silverstein Louis D. , Hackley Steven A. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTPrior work, has shown that reflex blinking can be facilitated by directing attention to the reflex stimulus. It was assumed that if facilitation were due to sensory enhancement, blinking would also be facilitated by novelty‐induced orienting prior to the reflex‐eliciting stimulus. The assumption was tested by establishing an expectancy for weak tactile stimulation to be followed by an acoustic reflex stimulus and then introducing, without announcement, trials on which weak acoustic or visual stimuli occurred and were followed by the reflex stimulus. Interspersed control trials of the reflex stimulus alone provided baseline data. Novel trials did produce the expected facilitation of reflex latency and magnitude. Similar effects were obtained when the same stimuli were presented to a different group of subjects with instructions to judge duration of the reflex stimulus on control trials and when warned by the weak acoustic and visual stimuli. In both experiments, blink latency but not magnitude was facilitated by the irrelevant tactile stimuli, thus supporting previous suggestions of a dissociation between these measures of reflex strength. A third group of subjects, receiving identical stimulation, was instructed to attend to the weak acoustic and visual lead stimuli but to perform no task. Attending to the lead stimuli did not produce facilitation of either blink magnitude or latency.
Physiological Responses to Clicks during Zen, Yoga, and TM Meditation
Authors: Becker David E. , Shapiro David 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTTwo studies have been widely quoted as indicating the differing states of consciousness in Zen vs Yoga meditation. A replication and extension were attempted. Very experienced Zen, Yoga, and TM meditators with average lengths of experience of 7.5 yrs, 5 yrs, and 7 yrs, respectively, and two groups of controls were presented with auditory clicks during meditation. EEG alpha suppression and skin conductance response both showed clear habituation which did not differ among groups, thus failing to replicate the earlier studies. The N100, P200, and P300 components of the EEG average evoked potential were also measured.
Slow Cortical Potentials in Subjects With High or Low Scores on a Questionnaire Measuring Physical Anhedonia and Body Image Distortion
Authors: Lutzenberger W. , Elbert T. , Rockstroh B. , Birbaumer N. , Stegagno L. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTSlow cortical potentials, response speed, and peripheral physiological responses were investigated in two experiments with four groups of male subjects. Experiment 1 examined constant foreperiod reaction time in a sound‐light‐button press sequence with an interstimulus interval of 2 sec. Experiment 2 investigated constant foreperiod reaction time conditions with a sudden change from controllable to uncontrollable offset of an aversive imperative stimulus. There were two visual warning stimuli of 6‐sec duration followed by an aversive or neutral imperative stimulus to be terminated by button press within 1 sec. Forty trials of this contingency were followed by 40 trials with 5‐sec duration of imperative stimuli irrespective of response speed. Subjects were selected by high or low scores on two questionnaire scales measuring physical anhedonia (PA) and body image distortion (BI).In the first paradigm subjects with high PA scores as compared to low‐scoring subjects showed less resolution of left precentral CNV after S2, i.e., a more pronounced postimperative negative component. In the second paradigm a postimperative negative variation (PINV) developed in all groups, but was more pronounced in frontal recordings and in subjects with high PA and BI scores. Results are discussed in the context of electrocortical phenomena observed in psychopathological groups.
Occipital Alpha Activity as a Measure of Retinal Involvement in Oculomotor Control
Authors: Wertheim A. H. 
Published: February 2007

ABSTRACTTwo experiments were carried out to test the hypothesis that a reduction of alpha energy in the occipital EEG reflects an increased dependency of oculomotor control on retinal feedback. In an ocular pursuit task subjects followed a target with their eyes. The target either moved in a repetitive, predictable pattern or varied unpredictably. Subjects were instructed to minimize eye‐tracking errors during the task, and performance feedback was provided. Oculomotor control depends on retinal feedback during on‐target performance in the unpredictable condition and during error correction in both conditions. However, subjects' on‐target performance in the predictable condition may involve some degree of automatic control, which is less dependent on retinal feedback. As expected, alpha activity was maximal in this condition. In a second experiment, alpha activity was shown not to reflect impaired information processing, since here again alpha was greatest during correct on‐target performance in the predictable condition, while reaction times (to visual stimuli presented in the moving target) were shortest in this condition and appeared to be independent of the amount of alpha during stimulus presentation.